Few things were as entertaining as watching Sakura squirm at the sight of the slightest bit of romance.
He’ll blush, and pout, and completely lose his tough-guy demeanor at the barest hint of affection around him. It’s so easy to rile him up, too, that sometimes even fake flirting will get him antsy.
A fact that Suo used and abused, much to your pain and suffering.
If you were being honest, it was more amusing than you liked to admit. Watching how Sakura would flush and stammar and shout that you were in public, damn it all, when Suo would fix the collar of your shirt or tuck a strand of hair behind your ear like the lead straight out of a romance novel.
But over time, it turns out the joke was on you, because you started to get affected by all Suo’s teasing.
At first, it was mindless. Meeting Suo’s bright smile with one of your own, wrapping your arm around his when walking in the street, always choosing the spot beside him. Simple, easy stuff that somehow got Sakura flustered despite the fact that it was all completely innocent.
Now you’re starting to think that maybe he just saw what you had originally been blind to. Your own overwhelming feelings for your friend.
“There you are, sweetheart,”
“Come on! I’m eating here!”
“Sakura,” You grin, subconsciously sliding over in the booth to make room for Suo beside you. Plans had been made to meet at Café Pothos for breakfast before school, and you and Sakura had been the first to arrive. Then came Nirei, and now Suo has made his appearance with his typical charm. “You’re never going to make it in life if you can be brought to your knees by flirting.”
Except, you’re not much better than him, but that’s neither here nor there.
“You wanna take this outside?”
“Now, Sakura,” Suo hums, smiling like always. He takes his seat beside you, and you have to make a conscious effort to not look at him like he’s the sun and you’re in severe need of his rays. “Is that any way to talk to someone as beautiful as—”
“Shut up!”
You’re giggling into your breakfast in seconds. It’s funny, watching Sakura stutter over his false threats, but you’re also trying to hide your own rosy cheeks. You’re finding it harder and harder to convince yourself that Suo’s words are just teasing.
Sometimes, you can convince yourself that he’s being serious.
“Ruinin’ my breakfast, and shit.” Sakura grumbles through a mouthful of food that definitely doesn’t seem to be ruined to him. You roll your eyes with a grin, delving into your own food to try and force your mind to focus on something other than the heat of the body sitting next to you.
It helps that Nirei steers the conversation into safer directions, always playing the middleman between Suo and Sakura’s teasing and bickering. You’re quieter than usual, but you don’t think it’s that noticeable, until you remember just who exactly you’re with.
“Everything alright?” Suo’s voice is low, meant only for your ears. It helps that Nirei is excitedly showing Sakura something in his top secret journal to keep them both distracted, but you’re fighting a blush when you glance to your left and find Suo too close for being just friendly.
And Sakura isn’t even paying attention to the teasing for it to have any effect.
“I’m good,” You lie, because your heart is racketing up to a pulse that’s most definitely not good and you think Suo probably read just how not alright you were before he even asked. It’s a pain, truly, to have someone as observant as him in your life and try to hide something as massive as your feelings from him.
You force a smile, hoping that it’ll convince him, and you think you might be safe for one more day when he meets your expression with a smile of his own.
But then you remember who exactly you’re talking about, and that you could never hope to decipher what he’s thinking behind his smiles.
“We’ll catch up with you two later,” Suo tells Sakura and Nirei as he stands. You’re watching him in confusion, an expression that’s only mirrored on Nirei and Sakura’s faces. It turns into a flush as Suo adjusts his stance to face you, having not followed him out of the booth, and he extends his hand for you to take and join him.
You do so, mostly because you can’t find any words to decline. Sakura has no trouble, and your exit from the café is to the sound of his grumbles and complaints. Suo sets his hand on the small of your back to guide you carefully through the semi-crowded restaurant, but you know it’s only in an effort to tease Sakura one final time before departing.
Except, he doesn’t drop his hand once the two of you step outside.
You’re confused. There’s no one around for him to perform for, no one to tease but you. Your stomach twists at the thought, pout forming on your lips as you consider the possibility of Suo being affectionate to tease you.
Maybe you owe Sakura an apology. It’s not so fun when you’re on the receiving end, and you kind of wish you were ever able to tell Suo no. But his tongue is too sharp and his smiles too sweet, and you find yourself agreeing to his every whim.
“Where are we going?” You ask instead, hands shoved deep into the pockets of the hoodie you threw on over top of your uniform. You risk a glance to Suo out of the corner of your eye to find him smiling softly as always, his own attention fixed on something you couldn’t pinpoint ahead of you both.
“Nowhere in particular.” He says, as if that answered your question. You think that if he wasn’t ushering you along with a hand on your back, you might’ve dug in your heels and refused to move. But his palm is warm against you and you hadn’t realized until then that you were chilled. Or maybe it was all in your head, and you were coming up with any reason to keep Suo close. “You seemed uncomfortable at the café, so we left.”
Like it was as simple as that.
“It wasn’t because of the café,” You confess before you really understand what you’re saying. You clamp a hand over your mouth, a tad dramatic, as Suo stops walking and turns to face you. You hadn’t meant to say it outloud, but there’s no going back.
“So something is wrong in that pretty little head of yours,” He states evenly. His expression only shifts minutely, but you notice the change in an instant. His easy going smile has disappeared, and in its place is what you recognize to be a concerned frown, though to someone who doesn’t know him as well as you do he might just look unaffected.
A gentle hand reaches up to remove your hand from over your own mouth. Except, he doesn’t let it go, and instead brushes his thumb over the inside of your wrist and holds it delicately.
“There’s no need to hide things from me, you know.” His voice is smooth, gentle, and you gather all your resolve to build a defense against his sweet tone and even sweeter gaze. It’s barely enough to keep your confession at bay, but your blush seeps through the cracks of your self-made walls.
“Mhm,” You hum, though you’re not strong enough to keep from looking away from him. Your stare darting to the side is no doubt a dead giveaway that you’re lying to his face, so you suck in a breath and decide to give him one truth to keep another hidden. “It’s just… do you always have to use me to tease Sakura? It was fun at first, but now I think it’s kind of annoying.”
It’s not a lie, per say. You do think it’s annoying, but not because it’s you Suo is using to get under Sakura’s skin. Mainly, you’re annoyed at yourself for getting attached to someone who wasn’t even taking anything seriously.
“What are you talking about?”
You freeze up at the way Suo’s expression twitches with an edge of confusion, like he’s really not sure about what you mean. It makes your own brows knit together in a display of the unsure feeling slowly oozing through your bones.
“Huh?” You manage to squeak out. He’s still holding your wrist, you realize in a moment of weakness, when you feel him squeeze just tight enough to draw your attention to his touch on you. And it’s not performative, the way he’s holding you, thumb once more brushing gently across your skin. It makes your face heat up, how softly he’s caressing you.
“What do you mean, I’m using you to tease Sakura?” He repeats your words, and his usual carefree attitude is completely gone. It’s one sign of many that you’ve misread the situation, and your face flushes brighter as you bite your tongue to keep the first thought that tumbles through your mind from falling past your lips.
“You, uh, you know…” You trail off, sighing when it becomes clear he’s waiting for you to explain further. You’re certain that knows what he’s been doing, but you can’t understand why he’d act like he doesn’t. You square your shoulders and lift your chin, trying to seem braver than you are by facing him head on. “The flirting, Suo. You don’t mean it, and it’s just a game to get a reaction out of Sakura.”
“I see.” Suo hums. You watch as his smile slowly finds its way back to his face, though you’re not sure what to make of it. For the nth time, you wish that Suo was easier to read. Except, you don’t really, because then he wouldn’t be Suo. “You’ll be happy to know that’s not what I was doing.”
You’re certain that you didn’t understand him correctly. He’s still smiling, still holding your wrist, and you feel your eyes narrow in suspicion. Suo finds it amusing, somehow, and his smile widens enough to make room for his soft laugh that tumbles through his lips.
“You don’t seem convinced.” He grabs your other hand in one fluid motion, but you don’t dare tear your gaze away from him to track the movement. Instead, you’re left to guess based on feeling alone what it looks like as he threads your fingers together and pulls you half a step closer. With how confused you are, you tumble towards him easily. “I’ll admit, at first I was eager to see just how easily Sakura would fluster at the smallest sign of affection. But I quickly realized it was you whose blush I’d rather see.”
So you were right, after all. It was just an excuse for Suo to tease you. You try to tug your hands from his, but he doesn’t let you. Instead, he pulls you another half-step closer, hands trapped between the two of you and his smirk entirely too close to your own face for any semblance of comfort.
“But can you blame me when you’re just so adorable?” His words are like honey and you’re certain you flush from your ears down to your toes. It’s embarrassing, honestly, how you so easily forgot that you were supposed to be annoyed by his flirting.
“You’re too smooth. A silver tongue.” You complain on a sigh. He’s still holding your hands, so all you can do is drop your chin forward until you’re resting your forehead against his collarbone. He chuckles at your conflicting words and actions, and you feel the vibrations.
“Thank you,” He counters. Finally, he drops one of your hands, only to lift your chin so that you’re forced to look at him. It’s intimidating, honestly, but you’re struck by the determination in his expression that’s rooting you to your spot. “I’m going to kiss you now, and it’s because I want to, and I know you want me to.”
“Nothing to do with Sakura?” You’re asking the question before you really think about it, the words leaving you in a breathy whisper that has Suo’s smile widening just slightly.
“Not a thing.”
And then his lips are on yours in a kiss so gentle you feel it buzzing all the way to your toes. He’s still holding your chin, controlling the pressure of the kiss, but you’re more than willing to let him lead. You’d still be stuttering over your words and refusing to believe that he’s flirting for any reason other than his own amusement if he hadn’t led the way in every step of the conversation.
Suo kisses the way he lives his life—completely in control of every measured decision. It knocks the breath from your lungs, and you’re panting by the time you finally part. He’s still smiling, but something in the lines of his face seems more settled.
“Sorry for assuming,” You murmur, voice gentle enough to spur Suo on to bump your forehead with his. You use the proximity to steal another kiss, because you can, because you’re still in disbelief that you can do so.
“No need to apologize.”
You’re thinking that he’s leaning in to kiss you again, so you close your eyes and tilt your chin forwards. Except, his movements freeze with the sound of a scream.
“H-hey! It’s bad enough you ruined my breakfast, but now I can’t even walk to school!”
Sakura. You jump apart from Suo, though he’s quick to keep you close by with a hand wrapped smoothly around your waist. You’re still blushing, still grinning, as Sakura tracks the movement and somehow manages to go even more red.
Suddenly, you find Skaura’s inability to cope with affection far more amusing than you ever had before.
being anaxa's special person is like taking up a job for babysitting. it means cleaning up the messes sparked by his brash words, warning him to 'act proper' before the situation escalates, nagging at him to eat and rest like a rebellious teenager's caretaker. but it also means caring for a heart as brittle as chalk, a presence as fleeting as a firefly's glow. his thoughts seem to stretch much farther than your own, like he'll slip away from your fingertips to a separate plane of existence - incomprehensible and unreachable to you.
so, you hold him like he'll disappear any moment, in the dead of night, hand over his mouth as you stroke him slow, dragging out every second. his exposed chest glistening with perspiration, everything on display for your eyes to take in, and you can't help but dip your head down to ravage the man pliant underneath you, all while never breaking the steady rhythm you've set for him to comfortably chase his high.
the consistent up-and-down movement along his dick, your teasing nibbles on his hardened nipples and the mere proximity of your body pressed against his has got anaxa coming undone in no time. you instinctively remove your hand initially clamped on his mouth to drink in his soft moans as he paints sticky white all over your palm and the sheets. at the same time, you're whispering sweet nothings to him with your lips ghosting the corner of his, coaxing him to seek the contact himself.
he looked so lost in the pleasure in your eyes; so much in bliss, so content. and you wish he'd stay this way forever - no disdain from other scholars, no shitty prophecy, no more of his musings about his inevitable end. amidst your lips crashing against each other and a pair of eager hands exploring your body, anaxa halts when he feels something moist drip on his cheek - your tears.
"..(name)? why are you crying?"
he furrows his brows when you give no answer, his grip turned firmer, much tenser due to the lack of reassurance of your well-being. however, you know better than to let the cogs of his mind turn too long for your liking, so you simply pull him in an embrace, hoping he doesn't notice your involuntarily shaking hands. (he wouldn't ever not notice, to your dismay)
"don't leave... anaxagoras..."
your plea comes out meek, quiet and unconvincing, a moment of vulnerability you'd like to undo so you try to distract him with a barrage of feather-light kisses across the crown of his head. being deathly afraid of his departure, you tend to drown your lover with your affection, attack him with intimacy, treat him with the utmost gentleness. you try to make yourself worth staying for.
but of course, anaxa can be stubbornly endearing at times like these. "...if ever in another life, you can- ..will have me. over and over again. i promise, my dear."
and with that, he joins your lips together once again. being anaxa's special person is suffocating, as you struggle to catch your breath through the heaving of your weeps, as well as when the air in his chambers you've spent many nights in now weighs heavy with his absence.
being anaxa's special person is a cycle of heartbreak you choose to stay in.
You and Iwaizumi are on your way back from a meal out with friends, cruising through the quiet streets as he drives you home. It’s that in between hour where it’s not quite day, not quite night, where the sky is the colour of cotton candy and the sun is barely peeking out between the clouds.
You’re halfway into a rant about one of your friend’s questionable love life when something—or someone, rather—stops you dead in your tracks.
Literally, because Iwa brakes at the red light.
“So then I told her, why don’t you just dump his ass if he’s so—holy crap he’s cool.”
You barely register Iwa’s inquisitive hum when the low growl of a motorbike creeps up beside the car.
Damn. That’s hot.
He’s like the personification of an eclipse.
Black helmet. Black jacket. Black jeans. Slick black bike. You can’t even see this man’s face, but his demeanour alone is enough to do something to your pulse.
You bite your lip to contain the cheesy grin that’s about to break out onto your face and turn to Iwa. “He is so fine."
Iwa gives the stranger a quick side glance and huffs something close to a laugh. “You into bikers now?”
“Didn’t used to be. I’ve been getting a bunch of videos on my Instagram, though, and I’ve kinda been converted.”
Iwa shakes his head in either amusement, or bemusement—hard to tell. What’s clear is that he’s not fully grasping the appeal of this majestic individual, so you smack his arm like it might knock some sense into him.
“No, Haji, look. I’m serious.” You ball your hand into a fist and gnaw on your knuckles to contain a squeal. Your brain replays the time Maki and Mattsun called you a crazed lunatic and said Hajime was your carer—only to stomp the thought back down.
“What do I do?” you breathe.
“You can’t even see his face."
“Doesn’t matter,” you chide, ignoring Iwa's painfully typical male response. “It’s all about the body language. The aura, you know?"
"Can't say I do."
"Never mind."
You’re leaning forward now, peeking through the side mirror, heart kicking up as you admire the handsome stranger. Iwa’s right—you can hardly see the guy’s face through the helmet visor, but your imagination does all the work for you. Sharp jaw. High cheekbones. He’s got a lazy slouch that fits the brooding image you’ve painted of him perfectly. One hand rests on the throttle, the other tapping a rhythm on his thigh like he’s got nowhere better to be.
“Should I say something?” you whisper, rocking in your seat like a kid who just spotted a celebrity and is building up the courage to ask for an autograph.
“Want me to open the window?”
“No—“
Whirrrr.
You stare frantically at Iwa as the window slides down with a mechanical whir, and the purr of the biker's engine fills the silence.
"How could you do this to me—"
Iwa just clears his throat, gaze fixed on the road ahead as if to say, from now on, I am no longer present. Good luck.
Your stomach flips.
It's fine. You're overthinking. Maybe he didn't even hear. Maybe you can play this off. For all he knows, you just rolled down the window for some fresh air.
The biker turns his head.
Annnd you just made eye contact.
Well, you think you did. It's impossible to tell with his visor tinted so dark, but it definitely felt like eye contact. You realise you're still staring when the biker subtly jerks his chin at you in silent question.
Something wrong?
You’ve barely got time to think. The light will turn green any minute and it dawns on you that you might miss your chance.
And so—because you’re well-versed in the art of biker Instagram reels and see these kinds of interactions all the time—you lean out the window just a little and put on your best smile.
“I like your bike,” you call, only to immediately regret it because surely you could’ve said something better than that.
The man tilts his helmet slightly, like he wasn’t expecting the compliment. His voice is muffled, low, and amused when he replies:
“Thanks. You drive?”
Oh. Does he think you’re a fellow biker?
You snort at the thought. “God, no. I don't think that'd be safe for anyone." You wave a dismissive hand before adding, "I'm just the co-pilot."
He rolls his shoulder back, spine straightening just enough to give you a better look.
Hm. He’s broader than you imagined. Taller, too.
Guess being hunched over was hiding all that potential.
“Mm. The hard job,” he says—and if your ears aren't deceiving you, you'd say he was teasing.
Perfect. You can't help but grin. Now's your chance.
"The hard job," you echo. "Are you hiring?"
Iwa lets out a sound caught between a laugh and a groan.
The guy laughs—just a little. Deep and dry and unfairly attractive. Success, you think. At least you made him laugh.
Then, without looking away, he flips his visor up.
You try not to stare.
Dark, tired eyes. Green like freshly picked apples. Strands of messy brown hair falling over his forehead. It feels like a tease—one that has you impatiently wondering what the rest of him looks like under all that gear.
“What’s your name, passenger princess?”
You can hardly believe your ears. As if he's actually going along with this.
“(Y/n).”
“Suna,” he says. “You free Friday?”
Ohmygod. Ohmygod.
“You don’t even know what I like,” you goad, emboldened now that you've confirmed his interest.
He revs the engine once in response—slow and suggestive. “I know one thing.”
Your face warms.
Then he shifts forward slightly, one hand reaching into his jacket pocket. When it re-emerges, he’s holding a phone—already unlocked, already open on the “new contact” screen.
He doesn’t say anything, just gives a little tilt of his head as he extends it toward you through the window.
You take it and blink down at the screen.
Suddenly, you no longer remember your own name.
Your mind scrambles, fingers hovering uselessly over the keyboard as your brain reboots. When it finally does, your thumbs fly across the keyboard. You add your name, number, and a cute little emoji for good measure (a bike and princess emoji), then you hand it back, biting back a grin like a kid in a candy store.
He glances at the screen. His shoulders bounce, just once, like he laughed under his breath. Then he slides the phone back into his jacket.
The light turns green just in time.
“See you Friday, (y/n),” he says. And somehow, you have a feeling he’s smirking.
He lifts two fingers off the handle in a lazy little salute, then peels off into the night.
You spin in your seat so fast the seatbelt locks in place. “Haji, did you see that?! I got a date in like under two minutes!”
He’s already turning the corner, half smiling at your success. “Sure did. Guess that means I’m dropping you off on Friday?”
You giggle into your palms.
Best. Red light interaction Ever.
thank you to everyone who likes, comments &/or reblogs! ☺️
Synopsis: Years after the fact, through your unspoken grief for a home and a woman you once knew, you recount how you met a boy named Anaxagoras.
HSR Masterlist
Pairing: Anaxa x F!Reader
Word Count: 11.6k
Content Warnings: two timelines running in tandem, angst, animal (dromas) death, canonical character (anaxa's sister) death, anaxa's sister is given a name, written before 3.5, childhood friends to lovers, mentions of bullying (including phsyical harm), light smut (fingering, virginity loss, it's only one scene that's not too explicit but mdni please!), grief and trauma, use of an original character for narrative reasons, anaxa might feel ooc (i mostly based him on what we know of his youth from his first character story + took some liberties with his backstory so he's not a hater yet #SORRY), canon...adjacent??? i suppose??? i wouldn't say it's canon compliant or non compliant it just kinda exists, i haven't played past the first half of 3.1 so i lowk don't even know bro like that this is just vibes
A/N: so it is actually not choki's birthday for almost another two weeks admittedly BUT !! i finally had Something to write and so i could not help myself SKDJHF for those of you who aren't up to date with my nonsense this is a little birthday gift i have thrown together for my beloved friend @chokifandom (the biggest profnax glazer i know) to choki — thank you for being both my trusted adult and my top goon, i could ramble on and on but to be honest that covers everything i could ever hope to say 😭 and to everyone else — sorry for butchering mr anaxagoras like this but i hope you enjoy regardless !!
Lasthenia, that stoic, unflappable woman, is growing tired of your silence. You know she is, not because you have some gift for reading people but because she says it to you plainly, in as many words: it’s been months since you came to the Grove. That boy you traveled with has settled in perfectly fine. Why can’t you? You’re not sure how to tell her that Anaxagoras has not been perfectly fine a day in his life, that when you both were children he would play with steel mice and tin birds, and now that you are older he comes to your room and stands in the doorway, clenching his fists, biting his lips until they bruise purple and bleed gold, for he can’t really bear to look at or speak to you anymore — but neither can he bear to leave you alone, not for good, not for any measure of time. But Lasthenia isn’t there in your room, she doesn’t see any of this, and so you suppose to her you are the only broken, defective thing, and he did indeed come to the Grove perfectly fine.
“What can I do to help you?” she asks you. This is how it always begins, and just like always, you shrug halfheartedly, tracing patterns in the dust gathering on the cedar surface of her desk.
“I don’t know,” you say. She clears her throat, and you wait for the next line in your standard dialogue, where she will tell you that she can’t do anything for you if you won’t even tell her what you're thinking, but to your surprise she instead slides something across the table.
“He mentioned you like painting,” she says by way of an explanation. You don’t need to ask her who he is, because there’s only one person here who would know that about you, but you do raise your eyebrows when she gives you a canvas and a pot of pigment, nodding towards them. “How about you test them out?”
“What should I make?” you say, and although it’s impassively done, when you dip the brush into the pigment, you take a moment to marvel at the richness of the hue seeping into the bristles. After swiping a small, experimental stroke in the corner of the paper, you look up at her expectantly.
“Anything,” Lasthenia says. “Whatever’s on your mind.”
“Okay,” you say, and then the two of you sit in silence. She watches you as you go along, which disconcerts you slightly in the beginning, but then you grow so involved in it that you can’t bring yourself to mind very much, busying yourself with the swoops and lines and curves that are beginning to form a familiar scene, one you won’t ever forget, no matter how many years have passed since it happened.
When you are done, you present it to her shyly, biting your tongue as she inspects it. For some reason, you want her to like it, to praise you for your efforts and tell you you’ve done well. The longer she doesn’t say anything, the more the tension brewing in your stomach grows, and when she finally looks up with the slightest of smiles, you think you may throw up if another second passes.
“What is it?” she says.
“Huh?” you say. “Isn’t it…obvious?”
“Of course it is,” she says. “Your work is beautiful, after all; he wasn’t lying when he said you’re talented. I want to know the story behind it.”
“Oh,” you say, and to your surprise you find you’re actually a little eager. In all your years, only Anaxagoras has ever cared enough to ask you about your art, to touch the drying colors and beg to learn them. Yet here is Lasthenia, her face softening into something resembling a woman you knew as a child, a younger woman whose hair was pale as well, albeit not silver like Lasthenia’s, and who was so gentle that even the dromases sang for her.
A lump rises in your throat then, at the thought of her, of dear, beautiful Hellanike, and you try to swallow it back, because if you cry now then you will never stop, and you don’t want that, especially not in front of Lasthenia, who hardly knows you. Taking a deep breath, you wait until it abates, until the pressure on your chest vanishes, and then you squeeze your eyes shut with enough force that pricks of light begin to form behind your lids.
I am in the Grove. I am in the Grove. I am in the Grove. You repeat this mantra enough times that Hellanike’s screaming abates, and only then do you open your eyes and face Lasthenia, who is blessedly back to being stern-faced and old and nothing like her.
“It’s a boy and a girl,” you begin, your index finger brushing against the rough outline of the boy’s face. You did not have time nor material to give him a proper expression, but you know he’s scowling, as he always is, not out of anger but because he is that deep in thought. You can picture so clearly how his brow was furrowed that day, his face pinched as he leaned against the headstone and stared at you and asked you what you were doing. “They’re in a graveyard.”
“A graveyard?” Lasthenia prompts. You nod.
“His parents have been dead since he was but a baby. You would think he’d be saddened by it, but he’s not, not really,” you say. “Not yet, anyways. It’ll be some years before either of them ever learn what it means to mourn.”
He’s an unfortunate and sorry sort, Anaxagoras, the kind of boy that one might pity if they have the heart for it and tease if they don’t. They whisper about him, your peers, their parents, pointing out his worn clothes and messy hair, the bruises on his cheekbones and the scrapes on his knees — they call him a mess, a boy whose dreams far outweigh his station, and then they laugh. How many questions he asks. How many stupid things he says, and yet he claims he will be the most knowledgeable man in the world someday! Anaxagoras the Idiot. Anaxagoras the Fool. He will certainly be remembered as such.
You both are in the same class when you begin school, though often, privately, you think that there’s some unfairness in that. The rest of you cannot even read, after all, and then there is Anaxagoras, who asks the teacher questions with words you cannot even pronounce, who says things that your tongue sits too thick and heavy in the cavern of your childish mouth to ever have hopes of replicating.
The others call him names, but he is deaf to their barbs and their witticisms, which you do think you admire. You notice him first in this setting, where he is tucked away in the shade of an oak tree, hunched over something in his lap while someone or another berates him. You think of asking them to stop, but in truth you are afraid, and so you can only watch in silence as they snatch his work away from him, holding it up to the light before shouting and dropping it.
It’s a dromas heart, still beating. A girl vomits. A boy kicks him and calls him sick, which he does not respond to, only picking the heart up once more, curling in on himself and hugging it protectively to his chest, narrowing his eyes against the glares of your classmates.
Later, you find out that the heart is fake, made of steel and sap instead of flesh and blood. He made it, according to his sister, who is an animal tamer by the name of Hellanike. She rushed to the school as soon as she was summoned, a young dromas toddling after her and nudging Anaxagoras fondly when it sees him, and she is distraught when she hears that the heart has been destroyed by the school’s principal. He made that, and you took it from him! What sort of a principal are you?
The principal tries to reason with her, but then Hellanike sees the boot-shaped mark on Anaxagoras’s face and she is inconsolable. Taking her brother by the shoulder, she curses at the principal, and then they both leave, the dromas stumbling over its own feet as it tries to keep up with Hellanike's furious pace.
He comes back the next day like nothing ever happened, but now he has this reputation of being macabre as well as insufferable, so he continues to be left alone. You do not think he minds, not particularly; maybe he even prefers it, but that doesn’t stop you from your wishing and your gazing, for you are quite taken with him, and even more now that you know the heart was his all along.
Those flowers which bloom in his hands and never wilt, the glass scales he weighs dead leaves in, the brass frogs that leap in place by his feet — how convoluted they are, how fascinating! To you who are a child, he has touched life in the way only a god can, and so you regard him with the careful caution of a devotee, too frightened to go any closer but too endeared to ever go very far.
He speaks to you only once, in an activity where you are told to draw something to your tastes. You scribble out a dromas, the big, mean one that follows Hellanike around your small city and howls whenever anyone approaches her, and Anaxagoras leans over to look at it, inspecting it carefully with those discerning vermillion eyes of his.
“That’s nice,” he says brusquely, and then he takes the well of purple dye from you. You glance over, your cheeks warm from the praise, and see that he, too, has sketched a dromas, although his is far more scientific in nature, a diagram from the side, measurements marked out in neat tick marks, body parts labeled in sloping handwriting that you can’t quite read but can at least infer.
“Yours is—” you begin, but your voice dies in your throat when he looks back at you and tilts his head. He waits, but when it becomes clear you have no intentions of continuing, he shrugs and turns away, beginning to fill in the dromas’s sturdy body with violet like you never spoke in the first place.
When you are seven, your mother’s uncle passes away. He was old when you were born and you never knew him well, but it is your first intimate brush with death and so you are shaken by it entirely despite all of that. In fact, a week passes before you can bring yourself to trudge to the graveyard and place flowers atop the dark earth where he is buried, your head spinning curiously, peculiarly, at the thought that he is somewhere in the ground beneath you, still wrapped in that shroud of his, tucked away in a casket, his body rigid and grey and bloodless.
“What are you doing here?” The voice is soft, curious, but you cannot stop yourself from shrieking at it — you weren’t expecting anyone to be here, for you didn’t see a single soul when you entered the desolate place, and for a second you think it must be a ghost scolding you for some perceived misconduct. “Why are you screaming?”
He’s not a ghost, although he is waifish enough to be confused for one. Anaxagoras is slender and small for his age, after all, his little figure white and bony, his fingers too long for his hands, his eyes too large for his face.
“I’m sorry, you just took me by surprise,” you say. “I thought — I thought you must be some kind of monster.”
“I see,” he says.
“I’m visiting my mother’s uncle,” you say, because now that you are not seeing him in the harsh light of the schoolyard, he is a little more approachable, a little more like any other boy that you might be friends with. “And you?”
“My parents,” he says casually, tapping on the headstone for emphasis. “My sister says it’s the anniversary of their wedding today, and that I should visit them and wish them well.”
“Hellanike,” you say.
“You know her?” he says. He looks kinder when he speaks of his sister, a smile dawning on his face, and even a blind man could tell from the unprecedented melody in his voice that he loves her in a way he loves little else.
“Who doesn’t?” you say rhetorically. Even the most difficult of beasts are turned to lapdogs by her touch, and even the most difficult of men are turned to saints by her gaze; you doubt there’s anyone in the city who hasn't heard her name.
He exhales at this, you guess in amusement. “True enough. Say, you’re in my class, aren't you?”
“Yes,” you say, though not without a moment of hesitation. Suddenly the bruise on his shoulder stands out stark against his skin, and you think of how easy he is for the others to abuse, how inviting it is to mock him, how simple it is to beat someone who cares so little they don’t even bother fighting back. “We haven’t really spoken much.”
“Right,” he says, and then he stands, brushing himself off, patting his parents’ gravestones, his expression dimming for the briefest of moments before he nods at you politely. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Wait,” you say when he turns to leave. You are sure you won’t have the boldness to do this ever again, but in the solemn gloom of the graveyard, you are suddenly spurred into action and loath to let him leave. “Wait, Anaxagoras, I — can I be your friend?”
He blinks at you once before shrugging. “Sure.”
“Sure?” you say, for you were expecting something elaborate, some profound declaration worthy of this designation you are bestowing on him. He has no friends, you are certain, and of the ones you have, you don’t like any as much as you think you may like him. So shouldn’t there be something to mark this moment? Something more grandiose?
“If that’s what you want,” he says. “Is there anything else?”
“No,” you say, suddenly very relieved and more than a little flustered that you have been so worried all this while when it was so simple in the end. “No, that’s it.”
“Okay,” he says. “Bye.”
It’s a strange place to begin a friendship, but Anaxagoras is a strange boy, anyways. The two of you become something like a pair, and although your companionship cannot make him less ragged, cannot make his clothes finer and his hair neater, at least the whispers and the wounds are lessened now. He never thanks you for it, never pays enough mind to, but you know he must be grateful somewhere deep inside, because Hellanike tells you so, and Hellanike never lies.
It means so much to me, she murmurs in your ear, that first time you meet her, her arms winding affectionately around your torso, that you protect my little brother so well.
You tell her it’s nothing. She smiles and tells you it’s everything.
“I think we made a lot of progress last time,” Lasthenia tells you. You furrow your brow, because you can’t quite understand what she means by that. All you did the last time you met her was paint a picture and explain what it meant; there wasn’t anything resembling a proper breakthrough like she’s implying. You feel the same, not worse but certainly not any better. Still, Lasthenia seems pleased enough, and painting is better than pretending to be deaf to her inane questions, so when she gives you a fresh canvas and a reed pen, you accept it without protest.
“Will you tell me what to do this time?” you say. She shakes her head.
“No, just do what you’d like,” she says. You hum and begin to doodle something or another, you’re not really sure what — it’s just nice to scratch the pen into the page, to gouge and gouge away at it until an image begins to form. “So, you’ve known Anaxagoras since you were a child?”
“Hm?” you say. “Oh, yes, we were very young when we met. He was my…”
“Your best friend?” she completes for you. You almost laugh at this, thinking back to that final night before he left your hometown for the Grove, the sound of his harsh breaths in your ear, the feel of his hand between your legs, but then instead of his bed you are remembering the floor beneath it and you are shaking and Hellanike is screaming and your vision is blackening, your lines growing jagged and long instead of sure and sharp.
“We knew each other,” you say shortly.
“You speak in the past tense,” she notes. “Did you two have a falling out?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” you say. “There’s no bad blood between us. We just aren’t close anymore.”
“It’s natural. Sometimes you outgrow your friends,” she says, but she speaks like she knows that’s not what happened. You detest her for just a second, detest how self-assured she is, but you push it down. It’s not her fault. These people in the Grove, they’re all like that, and you shouldn’t resent Lasthenia any more or less than you resent the others.
“Exactly,” you say.
“That boy and girl in the graveyard from your painting,” she says. “You mentioned they wouldn’t learn grief for a long time. What do you think taught them? You seemed to have something in mind.”
“The boy’s sister,” you say immediately, without even thinking about it.
“She died?” she says. You grit your teeth.
“Eventually,” you say. “Everyone does at some point, right?”
“Of course,” she says. “But—”
“Anyways,” you say, shoving your half-finished sketch in front of you and cutting her off in one swift motion. “Here. Do you like it?”
“Yes, it’s wonderful,” she says, thankfully taking the redirection with grace. “Are the boy and girl the same as the ones from the last painting?”
“They’re older now,” you say. “And that’s a dromas they’re with. The boy is fond of dromases.”
“Why do you think he is?” she says.
“Well, really his sister is the one who loves them,” you say. “But he loves her, and so it’s the same in the end.”
“Why can’t dromases fly?” he asks you one day. You are sitting at his dining table, and Hellanike is cooking dinner for you both, although you have told her time and time again that there’s no need to waste food on you.
“Stop speaking,” you say. “I’m working on your lips.”
He is your favorite model, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he is the only one who is willing to do it. In exchange for being allowed to tell you his favorite theories while you work, he poses how you command him to and does not complain when you study him intently; he calls it a symbiotic relationship, which is his way of saying that you both are friends and do things for one another when you can.
“Can you hurry up?” he says, for patience is not yet one of his virtues. It’s funny to you that the ever-tolerant Hellanike’s little brother is so short-tempered when he wants to be, so you don’t mind it too much, but today you nudge his leg with yours.
“I’ll be done in a minute or so,” you say, looking up from your practice only to glare at him when he opens his mouth again. He shuts it immediately, although his brows do draw together in silent rebellion. “Thank you. As for your earlier question, well, why would they? They’re children of Georios, are they not? They have no use for the sky.”
“I knew you would say that!” he bursts out, all at once. You sigh, because when he is like this there is no stopping him, and then you turn your paper so that you can perfect the shading of his hair instead. “Who cares, though? If they’re children of Georios or Aquila or Phagousa or whoever, why does it matter? Wouldn’t they be happier if they could fly?”
“Certainly,” you say dryly.
“Then they should,” he says. “Why should we let the gods tell us who we can or cannot be?”
“If you’re not careful, you’ll be thrown out of the church for saying things like that,” I say.
“Oh, whatever,” he says, waving his hand dismissively. “Those priests are useless anyways. They’re too scared to question the world around them, so they just spout nonsense from their scrolls and call it revelations. If I were a dromas, I wouldn’t let a priest or a god stop me from flying.”
“What about your lack of wings?” you ask. “That might be a problem.”
“Not so,” he says. “I can’t be limited so easily.”
“You’re ridiculous,” you say when he punctuates it with a snicker and you realize he’s joking.
“On a more serious note, though,” he says. “What’s to say you can’t fashion a set of wings from wax and put them on a dromas? It could fly then, surely, just like my birds.”
He speaks of the mechanical birds he crafts with his own hands, little creatures which can take to the sky and sing as readily as their living brethren. One of them sits in your room, and it likes to coo you to sleep, so you keep it on your dresser and pet its little head with your index finger whenever you walk past.
“A dromas is a bit bigger than a metal nightingale,” you say.
“Then I’d give it bigger wings,” he says, always so quick with a rebuttal, always so ready. “There’s nothing saying I can’t.”
“Well, go on and fashion a pair of wings for Rhode, and we’ll see how far she can fly,” you say, speaking of the young dromas that Hellanike has been raising for almost as long as Anaxagoras has been alive. She is lazy and affectionate, to Anaxagoras especially, for according to Hellanike she views him as her own son despite being younger than him.
“Rhode’s inability to fly has nothing to do with her being a dromas, and everything to do with her being entirely unmotivated,” he says with a snort.
“What’s all this about Rhode?” Hellanike says, balancing a steaming dish in one hand and three plates in the other. Her eyebrow is raised as if she’s angry, but she’s smiling, and anyways she’s incapable of anger, so it comes across as more of a silly thing than a true rebuke. “You shouldn’t tease her, Anaxagoras. She’s not bright for a dromas, but her heart is bigger than any you’ll meet.”
“What good does that do her?” he says, rolling his eyes and pushing the plate with the larger of the two portions towards you. You try to refuse it, but you’ve long since learnt that both he and his sister are too proud to accept anything resembling charity, so, pressing your lips into a thin line, you take it and begin to eat, albeit begrudgingly. “She’d never survive in the wild.”
“That’s right,” you say, interrupting sagely. “She can’t even fly.”
“Fly!” Hellanike says. “Why, have you heard of a dromas that could?”
Anaxagoras shoots you a look that makes it nearly impossible for you to maintain your composure, especially in front of the earnest Hellanike, who seems to really think that you have discovered such a thing. You open your mouth, but the only thing that escapes it is a strangled laugh, and so he kicks you under the table and gives his sister a bright grin.
“We were just discussing it,” he says. “If you give a dromas wings, might it not fly?”
“Oh, I see,” she says, because she’s better than you, better than anyone, and so she entertains his notions as if they are legitimate theories instead of just flights of fancy. “Maybe not Rhode, but Argos could.”
Argos is one of the dromases whose owner has sent him to Hellanike so she can attempt gentling him. He’s a beast of a thing, bred for war, and thus far she is the only one allowed close enough to him to touch. She’s right, too, it’s a lot easier to imagine him taking to the skies than Rhode, but even then it’s humorous, for he is such a behemoth that your mind cannot even fathom how he might lift himself into the sky.
“A fair point,” he says.
“I think that even if you gave him wings, he wouldn’t know what to do with them,” you say. “Just because he could fly doesn't mean he would.”
“We could teach him,” Anaxagoras says.
“Some things can’t be taught,” you say. “How could you make a creature that doesn’t even know what flight is understand that he must now take to the skies? How would wings be any different from a saddle?”
He’s about to shoot back with some other argument, you’re sure of it, but before he can, Hellanike is raising her hands in an attempt to calm you two. Neither you nor he can really refuse her, so you both grow silent and turn to her obediently, for it’s clear she has something to say, and this draws a smile out of her.
“I heard something interesting today,” she says. “From some merchants. They mentioned a holy sanctuary called the Grove of Epiphany.”
“So what?” Anaxagoras says. He’s never put much stock in divinity, and Hellanike knows this better than anyone, so you wonder what has driven her to bring this up.
“It’s an academy,” she says. “Devoted to Cerces, and to the pursuit of wisdom.”
Anaxagoras’s eyes light up, just for a second, although he immediately quashes that faint and fiery desire. You see it, though, just as you see every little change in his demeanor, in his very being.
“Well, anyways,” she says. “I just thought you might find it interesting, that’s all.”
The conversation moves on to other, lighter things, but the wanting does not fade from his irises. It has been imprinted in his soul, that need, that hunger, and he cannot forget it so easily. That night was the first time, although not the last, that you grew aware of the fact he would someday leave you for good.
“Do you ever consider trying to reconcile with Anaxagoras?” Lasthenia asks you, the next time you visit her. You are busy glancing around her office, trying to see where she must keep the art supplies she keeps miraculously bringing for you, so at first you do not register the question. Then, when you do, your spine stiffens.
“Did he tell you to ask me that?” you say. She shakes her head.
“I was only wondering out of my own curiosity,” she says. “Do you think that talking to him would make you feel better? Like I keep telling you, he’s adjusting to everything quite well. He could help you.”
“No,” you say immediately. “No, he — it would make it worse. For both of us.”
“Why is that?” she says.
“Can I draw?” you say instead of answering. Then, cringing at your rudeness, you hastily add: “It doesn’t matter. It just would.”
She regards you with condolence brewing in her eyes; for a moment, you think that she’s going to keep pressing, that she’ll withhold her materials from you until you explain everything to her, and that’s something you can’t bring yourself to do. So you rip at the skin around your nails and chew on your lower lip, a habit you learnt from Anaxagoras when you both were young, and you try your best to pretend that it isn’t real, that none of this is real, that Hellanike is still alive and Anaxagoras still speaks to you and Rhode is there, waiting outside of the window for you to give her a treat she is far too spoilt to deserve.
“Alright,” she says. “But I do have a request this time.”
“What is it?” you say, for you are so desperate to move on that you grasp at her words and her parchment like they are lifelines, like the only thing saving you from drowning is the feel of the brush in your hand and her orderly inquiries.
“Draw something pleasant,” she says. “Maybe that boy and girl. We’ve spoken a lot about their sadness, but how about a time when they were happy with one another?”
“I don’t know if they ever were,” you say, worrying with the ink pot’s lid, screwing and unscrewing it absentmindedly.
“Come on, now,” she says. “That isn’t fair to them, is it? Of course they must have been, at some point.”
“And if I said they really weren't?” you challenge.
“Then I would ask you why you did that to them,” she says. You let out a bark of laughter.
“I ask that, too,” you say. “Every day, I ask Thanatos why they did this to us, to me, but they never answer. Sometimes, there is no reason. Sometimes, it just happens.”
“But you can change that,” she says gently. “You can be better than Thanatos and the rest of the titans.”
“You sound like Anaxagoras,” you say, for even here, he has made something of a name for himself as a blasphemer.
“I don’t mean it like that,” she says. “This is your story. You can make them happy if you want.”
“Fine,” you say after a moment. “Yes. They were happy on one occasion, for a short while. An hour or maybe less.”
“Why is that?” she urges as you take the pen to your paper. “What made them so happy?”
“Because he fucked her,” you say sardonically, half-hoping the shock of it will bring her to leave you alone. She seems the prim type, but to your surprise, she doesn’t even flinch, only nodding pensively.
“Yes, that could make anyone happy,” she says. “Is that what you’re drawing, then?”
The detached approach causes your face to burn with shame, embarrassment flooding you as you sink deeper into your chair. She’s taking you seriously, and somehow this is more invasive, more violating than if she had been mortified by it.
“No,” you mutter. “I’m drawing a dromas.”
You show her as proof — it really is just a rough diagram of a dromas, the body parts labeled, Rhode written neatly in the corner. It’s contrary to her instructions, but Lasthenia doesn’t point that out, taking it in stride and examining it like it’s a piece in a museum.
“Incredible,” she says. “You have an excellent understanding of anatomy. You didn’t even have a reference, but this is nearly textbook-worthy. I know several people who would pay a lot of money for talent like that; I’ll be sure to recommend you if it ever comes up.”
“Thank you,” you say. “Is that all for today?”
“Do you think it is?” she says as you get up. You pause, and for a second your resolve wavers. A voice in the back of your mind whispers, wouldn’t it be nice? If you could tell someone about it…wouldn’t it be nice?
Then you realize that the voice is Hellanike’s, and so you leave before she starts screaming again.
Argos’s breeders made such a sum from his sale — apparently some representative of Kremnos’s royalty found him so fine that he was bought on their king’s behalf — that they were willing to give Hellanike a third of it, although she had not asked for any commission after sending him back to them, as docile as a lamb but with enough spirit to march alongside any army, even one such as Kremnos’s.
You and Anaxagoras only learn of this after the fact, and you are opposite in your reactions — he is delighted, for even that third is more money than he’s ever seen in his life, and you are irritated, for you believe she should’ve demanded more. She certainly deserves more, for without her, Argos would’ve long ago been put down for his bad manner, but she is too humble to ever give herself that much credit, and so all she says is this: a third is more than enough for what I want.
You’ve never known Hellanike to want much, so you ask her what she’s talking about, and although he doesn’t say anything, you know Anaxagoras is intrigued as well. She looks around furtively before beckoning you closer and lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper.
“I paid one of the traveling merchants,” she says. “He’s leaving in a fortnight, setting out for the Grove of Epiphany, and — and I asked him to take you with him, Anaxagoras.”
“What?” he says. “Me? Hellanike, why would you do that? You should’ve saved it.”
“What would I save it for? I make enough to feed Rhode and I as it is, and I know you’ve always wished to go. You’re meant for more than living the rest of your life here,” she says.
“What about you?” he says. “Where will you go?”
“Nowhere!” she says, as cheerful as ever. “I’ll stay right here, and I’ll brag to everyone that my little brother is going to be an eminent scholar. You’ll be the pride of our town!"
“I don’t want to go if you won’t be there,” he says.
“Oh, don’t say that, I already paid for your journey! Anyways, you can visit me whenever you’re able, so it’s not like you’ll never see me again,” she says. He turns to you as if for support, but you click your tongue.
“You’ve spent years waiting for this,” you say. “Don’t let something as fleeting and silly as homesickness stop you from going.”
“Alright,” he says, and when Hellanike crosses her arms and you pretend to scowl, he beams at you, like he’s proving a point. “Alright! I’ll go.”
“You’ll go!” Hellanike says, as happily as if she is the one who’s getting the chance to escape our remote hometown. “We have to start packing.”
“Two weeks isn’t long at all,” you agree. “The time for you to leave will be upon us before you know it.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he says. “It’s a long time.”
Then he does this thing he’s begun doing recently, his arm brushing against your own, quickly enough that it might be an accident but closely enough that you are left hot and shy from it anyways. And it’s just him, just Anaxagoras, so you shouldn’t feel this way, but you do, which only exacerbates it further. You’ve known him since you were little, you’ve braided his hair and fed his dromas countless times, so why now is it that your stomach knots itself into something tangled and sick from just that slightest, barest touch? Why is it that lately you are finding it difficult to speak with him, when your entire friendship thus far you have never approached him with anything but level candor?
You know you should tell him something, especially as the day of his departure grows nearer and nearer, but you don’t know what it is that you should say. He’s confused by it, you are sure, because your conversations are stilted instead of easy as they always used to be, but he’s never been good with this sort of thing, either, so he never brings it up. He does stop touching you as frequently, though, which you are as glad for as you are saddened by — your mind is a bit clearer, at least, and if you turn your back it’s almost like you are children and he will never leave and you will never feel so unwell again.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says. His room is empty, hollow without his things littering it, his various instruments and texts carefully packed away, his clothes folded around them to keep them safe. It makes the two of you feel closer than you are, although in truth he is perched on his bed and you are about to leave.
“Yes,” you say, and your voice does break when you do, but you do your best to pretend it doesn’t. “The journey isn’t too long by dromas, right? Write as soon as you get there.”
“Of course,” he says.
“To me, too,” you say. “Not just Hellanike.”
“I always planned to,” he says, and you can hear the way he must be rolling his eyes when he does.
“You’ll like it there,” you say, your hand resting on the doorframe, your forehead leaning against it. You are poised like you are about to walk away, but you have no intention to, not yet. You just don’t want him to see that your eyes are watering and your lower lip is trembling. “You can ask as many questions as you want, and there will be people who can actually answer them.”
“That’s right,” he says.
“It’s good,” you say. “It’s really good.”
“You’re crying,” he notes.
“I’m not,” you say. It comes out brattier than you would’ve liked, but to your eternal relief, he doesn’t point that out.
“Turn around, then,” he says. You remain still instead of obliging, and he exhales with something like amusement. “So you are.”
“You’ll make fun of me if I am,” you say. “I’m not.”
“I won’t,” he says, uncharacteristically gentle. “You have to know I wouldn’t do that to you. Come sit with me for a while longer, and if you want to cry, then I promise I won’t say anything about it.”
“You should sleep,” you say, a last-ditch attempt at denial. If you sit with him it will hurt even more when you have to get up and face the loss anew; it’ll be better, you think, for you to flee now, while you are on your feet and hardened to it. “You’re leaving early, Hellanike said.”
“Who cares what she said or when I'm leaving?” he says. It’s so willful you're taken aback, even though you’ve always known him to be stubborn. “It might be a while before I see you next. I don’t mind staying up the entire night, even. Like we used to.”
The mention of your childhood is what causes you to cave, as he must have known it would. The reminder of your youth, when you both would sometimes share a bed and he would lull you to sleep with stories of great bursts of fire in a faraway sky, is enough for you to flinch and then, before you know it, you are crossing the room and collapsing beside him. You’re not sure which of you lies down first, but then you both are splayed out atop his blanket and his pinky is just a hair’s breadth away from yours.
“You’ve been angry at me recently,” he says.
“I haven’t,” you say, but you still can’t look at him. “I’m not angry. Especially not at you. I don’t think I’ve ever been angry at you.”
“But something is bothering you,” he says. “I’m not an idiot. I can tell these things.”
“I need more time,” you say finally, after allowing yourself a single chuckle at the prospect of anyone calling him an idiot, even him. “I thought I would have longer to understand it, but now you’re leaving and I’m still so unsure.”
“Understand what?” he says. You turn on your side, so that you can look at him; he’s staring at the ceiling, and you are suddenly struck by how beautiful he is. You’ve never really considered it before, never thought to call him such a sweet word, but it’s apt, and the longer you look at him the more you are convinced it is. He isn’t spindly and odd-looking anymore, the way he was when the two of you first met — he’s beautiful, he is, his skin gold in the candlelight, his eyes a dark, unreadable sanguine, his hair loose and fanned out on his pillow.
“All of it,” you say.
“I can help you, if you’ll let me,” he says, and now your fingers are touching, although you are sure you haven’t moved. “Just tell me everything. I’ll understand it for you, so that you don’t have to.”
“You don’t need to do that,” you say, although it’s more of a deflection on your part than it is out of any real concern for him. You’re scared of what he’ll think, what he’ll discern. Will he laugh at you? Will he cast you from his bed and demand you leave at once? Of course he is going away tomorrow anyways, so maybe it doesn’t matter, but this makes you even more distraught, because it’s so immediate now. In the morning, he will set out for the Grove of Epiphany, and he will spend the rest of his life somewhere you can’t reach him, not for a long time. Maybe not ever.
“Please,” he says. “Just this once, let me listen to you.”
He tilts his head to look at you entreatingly; you are helpless to deny him, but you are also frozen, burdened by the weight of his stare, and so you do the only thing you can and roll over, your back to him as it has been more and more frequently.
The bed whines as he shifts with you, tucking his chin over your shoulder, his hand hovering over your waist but not yet touching it. You swallow, but you do not move away as you think he must anticipate — instead, you take his hand by the wrist and drag it up so that his cool palm can rest against your overwarm cheek.
“I like it when you do that,” you confess, because his newfound proximity has driven away all the will you might have mustered to argue. “Whenever your knee knocks against mine, whenever your arm slips past my own…I like it.”
“Hm,” he says, like this is a crucial finding that he must take into proper consideration.
“I don’t think I should, though,” you say. “Not so much.”
“Why not?” he murmurs.
“Because it’s you,” you say, keeping your gaze trained on a blank spot on the wall, willing your eyes to stay just as dry as they are now, your voice to remain exactly as steadfast.
“You want it to be someone else?” he says. “Echephron, maybe? Iasus? Hypenor?”
He’s naming boys from your town, the very boys who once tormented him. At first you think he is mocking you, and you almost get up and tell him you will go, if he means to be like this, but then an edge of despair enters his tone and it’s all you can do to cut him off before he can continue.
“No,” you say. “It’s just — I’ve known you for so long, and never have you made me feel so ill with…whatever this is. I have always told you everything, so why now am I shy? We’ve shared a bed countless times, so what about tonight is different?”
“I think,” he says, with the surety of a doctor describing some age-old and incurable malady, “you like me.”
“What?” you say, a knee-jerk reaction to this absurd new development, which perhaps isn’t so new or so absurd after all.
“You like me,” he repeats, and although he sounds victorious, he’s the furthest thing from smug. His hand pulls away from your face, and you almost beg for it back, but then it’s dancing along your side and coming to rest over your navel and your supplication dies before it can form. “You do.”
“What does it matter?” you say after a long pause where you neither confirm nor deny the claim. “If you’re leaving tomorrow, then what does any of it matter?”
“It matters to me,” he says. “It would’ve driven me mad to go so far away without knowing for certain.”
You lace your fingers through his rough ones, because you are so overcome with the need to hold onto him you cannot bear it any longer. His thumb pets along your knuckles, and a choked laugh escapes you, because it is so foreign and yet so familiar at once, and how could you have been so foolish? Of course it ended up this way. Of course it did.
“I like you,” you say, repeating it over and over as if it will make it more true. “Oh, I like you, I like you—”
You will cry if you continue, so you purse your lips and squeeze his hand, which is still on your stomach, and you do it so tightly you are surprised he doesn’t yelp. Miraculously, though, he really doesn’t; he only presses a kiss to your temple, a ghostly, lingering thing.
“Don’t stop,” he says. “Tell me again.”
“I like you,” you say. This time when he kisses you, it is at the angle of your jaw, and you must stop yourself from shivering for fear that it will chase him away.
“Once more,” he says. “So that I can be sure of it.”
“I like you,” you say. Now his nose is against your neck and his lips are at the tender place where your throat meets your shoulder and his palm is searing into you, you are sure it is, but you make no attempt at removing it.
“I like you, too,” he says. “So much. For so long. I was going to tell you, I swear, before you left to go home — well, I might’ve told you earlier, if only I had known…”
“Can I stay?” you say. “I don't want to go home. I want to stay with you tonight. Tell me I can.”
“Shall I wake Hellanike?” he says. “You might prefer sleeping in her room. Her bed is bigger.”
“No,” you say, and then, in the sort of bravery you can only summon now, when there is nothing left for you to lose barring your pride, which you have long ago relinquished to him anyways, you guide his hand from your stomach, taking it slowly, carefully, to where your waistband sits low on your hips. “No, there’s no need to wake her. I want to stay with you, Anaxagoras.”
Your hold on him loosens as he moves his fingers with deft curiosity, your nails digging into his forearm when he experimentally dips them into the place where your thighs come together. You inhale sharply, and you feel his chest vibrate against your back as he hums, cataloguing this reaction before repeating the motion, this time grinding the heel of his palm against you at the same time before pausing, only resuming when you make a small, pathetic sound to prompt him to continue.
He is so close to where you want him, but you want him closer and closer still, and you think he knows this and finds some humor in denying you that final plunge of his fingers inside of you, threatening it, tracing around it until you are sure you will burst, but never quite following through, leaving you to teeter on that precipice.
“Anaxagoras,” you say finally, when you grow tired of waiting. “Please.”
“Please what?” he says, and instead of sounding cocky, there is a faint hint of worry in his voice. You are reminded in that instant that you have never seen him with another girl, with anyone else, really, meaning that this is as foreign to him as it is to you. You swallow, and before you can burn away from the shame of asking, you steel yourself to it.
“Inside,” you say. “I want you inside of me, please, please…”
“You have to tell me if it hurts,” he says before indulging you slowly, methodically, with the same patience he uses to build those intricate models of his, the same delicacy and care. You groan at this newfound sensation, and immediately he freezes before beginning to withdraw, apologizing fervently until you cut him off before he can leave you empty again.
“Keep going,” you say. “Don’t leave.”
“Okay,” he says breathily, and then he is peppering kisses to your nape, you suppose to soothe your quivering, which only mounts more and more with every successive thrust of his fingers into you.
“I feel strange,” you say, and you don’t know whether an eternity has passed or a mere instant, for your mind is hazy and all you can think of is him and whatever is building deep within me. “An—Anaxa, Anaxa, I feel strange—”
“Do you want me to stop?” he says, without even teasing you for the way your tongue has grown so leaden in your mouth that you are stumbling over his name, the very name you are generally so fond of repeating as often as you can.
“No,” you say, your muscles involuntarily clenching at the mere prospect. “No, keep going, keep going, I just — my stomach, or no, not my stomach, somewhere else, I don’t know, I’ve never—”
Your babbling tapers off into a soft exhale as the edges of your vision blur and you clutch his arm so that you aren't swept away. He is saying something to you, but it takes a second for the air to return to your lungs and your awareness to creep back.
“It’s okay,” he says when you realize that there are crescent marks indented along the inside of his elbow where you have pressed into him, not hard enough to draw blood but enough that the skin there is angry and red. “It’s okay, it’s okay, please don’t worry. It’s okay.”
A single tear drips from the corner of your eye, and then another and another and another, splashing onto the sheets that your cheek is pressed to as you sniff in a vain attempt to suppress them before he can notice. But Anaxagoras is far too observant to miss it, and he pushes on your shoulder until you are flat on your back, so that he can loom over you, his brow furrowing as you cry in earnest.
Before he can ask you why you are being so irrational, you wrap your arms around his neck, knowing it is selfish but unable to stop yourself, tugging him closer to you until your lips meet, the salt of your sobs mingling with the taste of his sincere mouth. You cling to him, only drawing back to gasp for air briefly before you return to him once more, your hands beginning to wander until they are tugging his clothes off of him. He responds in kind, albeit with far more control than you, and then you are left bare, his chest to yours, his palms on the back of your head, your own skimming along the ridge of his spine.
“Are you sure?” he says, but it’s really more of a formality than anything, your legs already spreading wider to accommodate him, your fingers already combing through his hair. You nod anyways, and when he enters you, you begin to weep again, although it is not from pain, as you once thought it might be.
“Don’t leave tomorrow,” you beg. “Don’t leave me, I don’t want you to leave me — I’ve only just gotten you, please don’t leave tomorrow, please don’t leave—”
“I won’t,” he says, and he punctuates it with a roll of his hips against your own. “I’ll stay. I’ll stay here, I will, I will, I don’t care, I don’t care for the Grove or the merchants or any of it, I’ll stay with you, just like this.”
He kisses away your tears as he finishes on your thighs, and then his fingers find their home in you once more until you, too, are spent. You both lie side-by-side for a moment, neither of you looking at the other, the evidence of your union drying against your skin, pearly in the candlelight, and then he clears his throat.
“You know I still have to go,” he says, a little awkwardly.
“Yes,” you say, busying yourself with counting the dust motes swirling in the air.
“I shouldn’t have said I wouldn’t,” he says.
“I shouldn’t have asked you not to,” you say. “I didn’t mean it. I’m happy for you. This is what you’ve always wanted.”
“I’ve always wanted you, too,” he says, matter-of-factly, the simpleness with which he does so nearly caustic. It’s just another thing. Just another truth. He’s always wanted you, too.
“You don’t have to say that,” you say, feigning a laugh, because the time for crying has passed. “It’s not the same.”
“Yeah,” he says with a heavy sigh, because he knows better than to lie to you. “I guess not.”
“I’ll be here when you come back to visit,” you say. “And when we’re older, maybe I’ll go to the Grove, too. It’s not like this is goodbye forever.”
“Yes,” he says. “You should do that. Come to the Grove, I mean. Rhode is almost old enough to carry two people and their things for such a long journey, so you and Hellanike can ride her and cut the cost of the passage in half.”
“Exactly,” you say. “It won’t be that long. Long enough for you to gain some acclaim, but not long enough that you forget about me.”
“I won’t forget about you. Not ever,” he says, and then he helps you stand so that you can sneak towards the washroom, cleaning yourselves off together shyly, kissing only when you are sure that your footsteps have not caused Hellanike to stir.
You remain in his bed with him that night, your head on his chest, his knuckles rubbing against your cheek idly as you both drift off. The faint scent of mint and lemon soap sticks to him, and the steady rise and fall of his breathing is a melody all on its own, the kind of lullaby that even one of his pretty little tin birds could never replicate. It is easy for you to pretend like nothing will ever happen to the two of you, to fall asleep and dream of the countless nights you might spend exactly like this — but when you wake up the next morning, he is already gone, and you can pretend no longer.
“What’s that?” Lasthenia says. She’s given you paints again, but although they are your favorite medium, you cannot bring yourself to make anything beautiful from them. Instead, the colors bleed into one another, black ringing the canvas and red streaking through it, forming an incoherent tangle of something or another. Well, it may be incoherent to anyone else, but you can hear Hellanike’s voice emanating from the mess, can feel the floorboards digging into your back, can smell the corroding metal and taste rusty iron bursting from your unbitten tongue, so to you it’s the opposite.
“The bed,” you say. The page isn’t meant to take as much paint as you are slapping on it, and it crinkles in the most saturated places, protesting the thickness, but you continue without asking for a new sheet. “His bed.”
“The boy’s?” she guesses.
“Yes,” you say. “His bed at home.”
“Why is it dark?” she says.
“Because the girl is hiding beneath it,” you say without looking up, squinting and tilting your head before deciding that even now, it is too bright. Dipping the brush in the black ink, you splatter more without care for how it might fall, continuing to do this, although it is such a waste of what is no doubt the result of an entire month of efforts from some poor scholar or another.
“From him?” she says.
“No!” you say vehemently, for even the mere notion of hiding from him is unthinkable. “No, he left some time earlier to pursue greater things, and wherever he is, he is safe, at least. She’s hiding from the monsters.”
Lasthenia reaches across her desk to place a hand on your upper arm. The gesture is surprisingly maternal, but you do not allow yourself to dwell on it, because she isn’t your mother, she isn’t even Hellanike, and so you cannot embrace her and wail like a child.
“Such ugly things, those monsters,” you say. “They frighten that girl to no end, and worse so because they have paralyzed her completely. The boy’s dromas stopped its bellowing a few hours ago, and his sister has moved from pleading to resignation, and all the girl can do is hide under the bed and hope it ends soon.”
“And did it?” Lasthenia asks you.
For a moment, you think to yourself that if she pries your brush from your hands and embraces you, you will finally give in. But of course, why would she do that? This is only her job, dealing with people like you, who are too difficult for anyone else to manage. She holds no love for it, for you.
More dark ink. Now the entire canvas appears to have been dipped in black dye.
“No,” you say, finally satisfied with this final product. “She’s still there.”
“Still hiding?” Lasthenia says.
In the back of your mind, Hellanike is weeping, her throat too raw for anything more. You weep with her, though only in that place tucked far away from the rest of the world; to Lasthenia, to this abhorrent present where you are now, you only offer a tight smile.
“Yes,” you say. “I think so.”
A trumpeting cry from Rhode is the only advance warning you and Hellanike receive when the Black Tide comes. She’s uncommonly docile even for a dromas, and you’ve never heard her scream before — judging by the frown on Hellanike’s face, she hasn’t either, and so instead of rushing outside to comfort her, she hesitates, peering through the window first and then gasping.
“Lock all of the doors,” she instructs you, her gaze trained on the horizon.
“Hellanike?” you say. “What’s going on? Is Rhode alright?”
“There’s no time,” she says, and so rarely is she stern that you comply without further complaint, glancing at her one final time over your shoulder before checking all of the doors, making sure that they are secured before returning to her side.
Rhode is still causing a ruckus, and you are surprised that Hellanike has not gone to her yet. After all, she loves Rhode, more than anything or anyone except her little brother, so how can she leave her to her suffering? You almost ask, your mouth going so far as to open, but Hellanike raises her finger to her lips, shaking her head before you can.
“We can’t delay anymore,” she murmurs, and then she places a hand on the small of your back, pushing you towards the stairs. “I’ve heard stories from the merchants about these fiends. They’re called the Black Tide, and they kill everything they touch slowly, without mercy. They travel quickly, fleeing once they have wrought complete destruction, but sometimes, if you are a particularly good fighter, or if you can escape their notice…you can survive.”
“Then we must hide!” you say, reaching for her wrist so that you can yank her along with you. She pulls it out of your reach, leaving you bewildered, and then she shakes her head, her eyes crinkling at the corners
“You must hide. Hide, and no matter what you think you hear, do not leave until the beasts are well and truly gone,” she says.
“But what about you?” you say.
“Out there, they are killing Rhode,” she says gravely. “She is a dromas, and so she is no easy prey, but there is some gryphon-like creature rending her flesh with its claws, and soon she will fall and it will pounce upon her underbelly and she will die. It is her sacrifice which has given us a chance that no one else in the city got: a chance to adequately prepare ourselves. Maybe it’d be more prudent if I hid, but — but they are killing Rhode, don’t you see? I can’t.”
“You’re going to protect her,” you realize, because this is who Hellanike is. “Let me come!”
“Absolutely not,” she says. “I will not put you in danger. Enough of this; we’re running out of time. Go, and remember what I told you.”
“‘No matter what you think you hear, do not leave until the beasts are well and truly gone,’” you repeat uncertainly.
“Yes, that’s it,” she says.
“But—”
“No matter what,” she says emphatically, kissing your forehead afterwards with her typical good nature. “Darling little girl. Run now. Hide before it is too late.”
You want to tell her you won’t, but even in the best of times it is impossible and futile to argue with her, for she is more stubborn than she lets on, more stubborn than even her brother, who is notorious for the vice. So you turn and race up the stairs, crawling into the small space beneath Anaxagoras’s bed without thinking, lying flat and making yourself small behind his drooping blanket and praying to every titan you can think of to protect her, to protect you.
The day passes differently when you are stuck in a place like that. So many times you nearly stand in surrender, thinking that surely they must have moved on by now, but on each occasion, some instinct stops you. By the third occurrence, however, you resolve to ignore that insistence, but then the air is split by the moan of splintering wood, followed by a horrified shout.
Hellanike. The shout was definitely hers, and her words ring in your mind once more: no matter what you think you hear, do not leave until the beasts are well and truly gone. She swears loudly, and then there is the sound of fighting, of furniture breaking and dishes shattering on the ground, and all you can do is stuff your fist in your mouth, so that when you begin to sob in terror, at least it is soundless.
She sounds like a child when they tear into her, crying and shrieking, high-pitched and utterly frightened. You cannot see her, but her voice reverberates through the house, and so it is like you are there with her, watching those demonic creatures rip her into shreds until she resembles one of them, lifeless and bent in ways that should be impossible. Bile rises sour in your mouth, but you swallow it down, far too frightened at the prospect of accidentally inhaling it to even try spitting it out.
They are cruel and unhurried in killing her. You don’t know if they can understand revenge and so draw it out more than they otherwise would’ve, or if this is just how they always are; you also don’t know which of these options is worse, but that matters less. Whatever their motivations, the fact is that the Black Tide creatures take their time with Hellanike, refusing to kill her until she is reduced to an incomprehensible wreck that, in her final moments, can only whimper for her long-dead mother.
You don’t move from under the bed for what seems to be hours but could be more or less, and even then it is only because you hear footsteps, actual footsteps, not the spectral ones of the demons which have been haunting the house thus far. They are in a pattern you recognize, too, and so you clamber out of the cramped space and open the door to Anaxagoras without questioning why he is here, or how. You just fall against him, allowing him to hold you tightly, fisting the fabric of his himation for some semblance of grounding.
“You’re alive,” he says. “When I saw Rhode’s half-eaten carcass in her corral, I assumed the worst, but you — you’re alive.”
“Everyone else is gone,” you say, your knuckles pale as you cling to him with all the strength left in your cramped body.
“Everyone?” he says, and his body, which had relaxed so readily against yours only a few seconds prior, stiffens again. “What do you mean by that?”
The longer you don’t answer, the more you feel his panic begin to grow, but the worst part is that you cannot even tell him that what he is thinking is wrong. You know what his next question is, and he knows what you will answer it with, but the two of you go through the charade in miniature anyways, because he still has to do it. He still has to ask, he’s just that kind of person, there’s no version of him which ever won’t.
“Hey,” he says, though he does not push you from the safety of the crook of his neck, where you have buried your face. “Hey. Where’s Hellanike?”
“Lasthenia says that you and I should talk,” Anaxagoras says. When he had come to your chambers, you had half-expected him to stand motionless in the doorway as he always does, as he always has ever since you told him that his sister is dead. “I told her I’m trying, but she seems to think that’s not good enough.”
“What are we meant to talk about?” you say, and although you do not explicitly invite him, he is more than quick enough to read into your implication. Ducking into the room, he shoves the door behind him, allowing it to slam shut with an air of finality.
“You know,” he says.
“I don’t,” you say, continuing to massage oil into your face. You can see his form reflecting in the mirror — he is becoming more and more a man with every day he spends in the abundance of the Grove, impossible to ignore, muscles covering bare bones, scowls replacing awed smiles — but you do your best to act like you don’t.
“My sister,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“What?” you say. Of all the things you imagined he might come up with, the chance of that being the first thing he said to you was relatively low, if not nonexistent. Though then again, he thrives on such stakes, so maybe it’s not a surprise that he has once more proven himself eccentric.
“She died on her own terms,” he says. “You had nothing to do with it.”
The silver-backed mirror turns to water, your visage and his alike swimming in it, unsteady as the lump in your throat turns swollen and furious. You know you should set the bottle of oil down before you can drop it, because the crystal will be torturous to clean should it shatter, but the tendons of your hand have seized, and it’s all you can do to remember to breathe.
“I don’t blame you,” he continues. “Do you think I do?”
“I should’ve told her not to go to Rhode, to come and hide with me,” you say, your voice so quiet it is nearly inaudible. “I should’ve fought with her a little longer.”
“She never would’ve listened to you,” he says. “She would never have left Rhode like that.”
You squeeze your eyes shut. “Then I should’ve helped her. The two of us, maybe we could’ve—”
“You would’ve died,” he says dispassionately, cutting through the cacophony echoing in the chamber of your skull with an efficiency only he possesses. “You’re not some Kremnoan soldier or Okheman guard. You’re not a demigod or a Chrysos Heir. You can’t use a sword or a spear. What else would you have done but died as well?”
“Wouldn't it have been better that way?” you say.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “I would’ve had to mourn you both.”
“I’m sorry,” you say. “Anaxagoras, I’m sorry—”
“It’s not your fault,” he says again. You’ve lost track of how many times he’s repeated that phrase, but he hasn’t grown tired of it yet, and so he goes on. “Blaming yourself won’t change anything.”
“It should’ve been me,” you say.
“It shouldn’t have,” he says. “It shouldn’t have been anyone, but that tide is indiscriminate in who it takes.”
He shifts from foot to foot, like he is weighing the merits of further discussion, and you grieve for the time that the two of you spoke to each other without having to think about it. But now you are like this. Now his sister is dead and your home is destroyed and neither of you can ever go back.
“Thank you,” he says, all in a rush, like he cannot be rid of the words soon enough.
“What?” you say, taken aback.
“Lasthenia said I should be honest with you about how I feel,” he says. “So, thank you. For hiding. For running away. For living.”
When you finally bawl, it is excruciating, the months upon months that you have denied that blade of anguish from splitting you open compounding until you think it will kill you. You stain his tunic with your tears and cause blood to bead along his biceps from how you dig into him, and he does not complain, only murmuring in your ear in that wretched, broken voice of his, thick and profound with loss: it’s not your fault, I’ll bring her back, it’s not your fault, thank you for being alive, it’s not your fault, I love you. I love you. It’s not your fault. I love you.
image credits: official scene recoloring and blue line dividers by me; beige line dividers by @/thecutestgrotto
i'm up at 4 am and thinking about hushed conversations with anaxa at 4 am. being wrapped in his arms as he sleepily entertains your nonsensical thoughts. he won't try to stop you from talking, nor will he (intentionally) fall asleep on you. he listens as intently as he can and tries to follow the conversation as best he can with his eye remaining closed.
if you had a nightmare, he'd be a little more alert and either actively participate in conversation to lull you back into a more peaceful sleep, or listen sympathetically to the terrors that kept you awake.
4 am anaxa who is running on 2 hours of sleep and the satisfaction of late night cuddles is extremely... normal. even more so than when he's feeling affectionate during the waking hours of the day. his speech is heavy with sleep, his eye remains closed, and he responds with little more than an affirmative grunt every so often.
eventually, you talk so much that you lull yourself back to sleep mid-sentence. which is good — anaxa had fallen asleep fifteen minutes before you did.
Fluff + Slight Angst | Kamo Noritoshi x GN!Reader
Home is Where the Heart is
SUMMARY
Nowhere else to call home but here, with you
CONTENT
NOT SPOILER FREE, mostly fluff, mentions angst, gender neutral reader, mentions of trauma, ALL CHARACTERS ARE 18+
AUTHOUR'S NOTE
Ik this man barely has any screen time but I just feel like he's just a lil guy after finding out about him post culling game arc?????????? I felt like he deserved some love so I wrote this is one go. Enjoy! <3
WORD COUNT: 833
You love Noritoshi regardless of whatever stupid clan he comes from and when you first explained that to him, his eyes blew wide. His whole life was about being heir to the clan despite being it’s “bastard.” He always held an amount of resentment towards his clan for what they put him and his mother through. So when you call his clan "stupid" he couldn't help but lightly laugh and mentally agree with you.
He loved his mother more than anything and her not being part of the clan broke him in multiple ways. They treated her like dirt and also drove her away from him. It all resulted in her finding her own home, creating her own family, leaving Noritoshi where she thought he’d be safe.
But here he was,
no longer the heir, no longer anyone’s son.
He had nowhere to call home.
But you came along. Bursting into his life in a dazzling light. He always came off aloof to protect his heart from being broken again. he reasoned that if he didn’t let anyone in, he’d never get hurt again.
But he threw that out the window when he got to know you. He didn’t care what you did to him, he just wanted to let you in. Maybe it was rash of him but he trusted that you wouldn’t hurt him. He didn’t know why he did it, maybe it was just a desperate attempt to cling onto someone to help him heal, or maybe he just sensed that you were someone he couldn’t not have in his life. You were too good to let go of, so he didn’t.
Seasons changed and you two got closer, Noritoshi wasted no time in taking you out on dates and spoiling you. He had so much love to give and gave it all to you.
Of course he also had his classmates but he just couldn’t express himself the same way with them. But since he met you, his classmates noticed changes. He became more gentle, more kind, more warm.
You were always there for Noritoshi, always comforting him and listening to his past. Your heart ached for him and sometimes you’d even cry for him. Sometimes you’d just end up crying together and even though it was sad, it felt cozy. You were healing something in him that he didn’t know how to cure. He didn’t even know it was curable until now.
Noritoshi is also a very giving lover in return. He's always showing his love for you with acts of service or gift giving because the poor boy isn't too great with his words or physical affection. Quality time is a given with him though, whenever he wants to do anything, he asks you if you want to join but most of the time he'll just plan the whole thing around you. He's always there for you when you need him too, doing his best to comfort you by spending time with you and doing anything you need him to do. He also always grabs you a cup of tea when you aren't feeling well, it's how he says "I love you."
You love him so much and don't understand why the Jujutsu world and his clan treated him so badly. The poor man has done so much for the clan when his father paid him no mind. They treated him like a prized possession only because he inherited blood manipulation. They never truly loved him as a son of the clan. It was disgusting.
He was treated like Gojo Satoru but in the Kamo clan. But since he was a half blood, when the firstborn son awakened his powers, they chose him over Noritoshi instantly. He was almost jealous of Satoru. Despite all the pain and suffering, at least his clan still chose him at the end of the day, at least he was of pure blood.
Your boyfriend used to struggle a lot with the concept of being unwanted, unneeded, replacable. But you've filled any and all of the voids left in his soul. Getting closer with his classmates thus makes his heart overflow.
His life is painted in color now, the dull filter that used to fog his vision has now lifted. He swears you the moment he saw you, you were the one holding the bow and arrow despite him being the sorcerer, and you shot him straight through the heart. The colors he now sees seeped out from his heart slowly starting from that day. He describes it like an injury but you actually healed him and you've actually now started an inside joke where you'll pretend to shoot him and he'll pretend to get shot. It's a sweet joke that's always followed by innocent giggles.
Noritoshi doesn’t care anymore about clans or family nowadays. He knows that home is where the heart is. He knows that family is where the heart is.
watching xianxia is so fun because usually when i'm halfway through a drama and i want to reblog things, i have to be really careful when going through the tag and not look too closely at anything to try not to accidentally spoil stuff that happens later
but when i watch a xianxia drama and go through the tag i'm totally fine even if i look at everything because absolutely none of it makes any goddamn sense out of context. like i find gifsets of the main characters getting married. in one they're getting married to other people and in another they're getting married to each other. twice. then i find gifsets of those same characters dying in five different ways. in one scene one is dying in the other’s arms. in the next scene they’re dying together. someone straight up disintegrates into glitter. and i still have no idea if any of them end up alive or dead or married or alone or what on earth happens at the end
my roman empire is us (the trailblazer) meeting ratio and him greeting us with "oh it's you, I remember you", and the realization hitting we have not seen him, as the mc, since the bug and cat cakes event. and to him we are just that. my mind went immediately to;
"you were a wonderful experience"
"you were everything"
because we ratio defenders, analysis writers, we explain him, defend him, research him, love him, we go ON AND ON about him and, I was so excited when I saw him standing in penacony near the current divergent universe, and to be met with such a reality check truly broke my heart. veritas ratio you are everything, even when we are, in game and out of the game, just perceived as a mere fan, enthusiast. but I would mention, that it is refreshing to be perceived and talked to like a normal person from a scientist and a genius when EVERY genius so far has treated us like an experiment, and a need to explore our bodies and use us- to the point of poisoning us. it is so in his character at the end of the day, to do, the bare fucking minimum btw, and treat us as a human being. hopefully, we get more of him, a companionship mission or something, because it is unfair that a character as great as him is kept away from us, we are left to live on crumbs, moreover left to live on dust when it comes to our canonical interactions in game.
Prettiest pleases can you do HSR men reacting to finding their S/O sleeping on the couch waiting for them. Adventurine, Boothill, Sunday, and Dr. Ratio specifically?
Them Reacting to You Falling Asleep on the Couch, Waiting for Them
Author's Note : It seems like someone haven't read my rules *lightly pinches your cheek* but since you asked so nicely, here you go~ Hope you liked it!
Featuring : Aventurine, Sunday, and Dr. Ratio (the favoritism might be evident for the Aventurine one but you can't blame me, he's my dearest husband)
Aventurine
He unlocked the door to your shared apartment, feeling guilty. The gambler had promised to take you out for dinner tonight, only for him to come home late since Jade announced an urgent meeting which he cannot flew away from. He expected you to look all grumpy or maybe you've gone to bed already. He can't even contact you beforehand since he left his phone inside his office when he was called in. The duration also stretches a lot, adding up his frustration. He checked his phone after the meeting ended, having 17 missed calls from you.
He takes off his shoes before he walks in to see you sleeping on the couch with your outing attire still on. Aventurine's previously irritated face turns into a sad frown at the view. He kneeled beside you, reaching out to stroke your cheek before kissing your forehead. You unexpectedly stirs in your sleep and ended up waking.
“Mmm.. Aven?” You rubbed your eyes, sleepiness still very much evident.
“I'm sorry I broke my promise, sweetie. Let me make it up to you, do you still want to go? Are you mad at me? It's quite alright, you deserve to feel like that… Even with your clothes and all, ready to go… I'm sorry,” He shot you a sad smile before you're considering his offer. “Look, I'll get you anything you want, just name it,” He feels really bad about disappointing you.
No, you'll never be mad at him, you were worried about him. You scanned on his face, fatigue clearly present on his beautiful face and his eyebags evident. Probably for the ungodly work hours. Having to drag him out around the city right now will be the last thing you want.
You grab his cheek as your thumb strokes around the lower part of his eyes before you sigh. The blond unconsciously leans more to your touch, it soothes him.
“I wasn't mad, honey, I was really worried… I thought something bad might come up as you didn't answer my call, but now it seems that you're alright and that's all that matters,” You smiled before kissing his temple. Aventurine let out a soft chuckle, closing his eyes as he indulged himself in your touches.
“You always have your way around words… so, what do you want to do now?”
“With those eyebags? Let's clean up and go to bed, Aven, we can go out some other time.” he makes a cute pout, this is supposed to be about you, not him!
“Are you sure?”
“You said I can get anything I want?” He can't help but to fake cry at how you're so considerate towards him, he really is a lucky one.
Sunday
Sunday came back a bit later than usual. At this time of the night, you're supposed to be asleep. He walks in before peeking in the living room, only to see you sleeping on the couch.
Were you waiting for him?
He walks over to you, you shouldn't be sleeping on the couch. He carries you up bridal style as he takes gentle steps towards your shared bedroom, not wanting to wake you up. Sunday's plan failed as you stirred awake in his arms.
“You're home,” He smiles at you before kissing your head affectionately.
“I just came. Why were you sleeping on the couch? Were you waiting for me?” There's a light tint of sadness on his voice. He should've come home earlier. You giggled before you leaned impossibly closer to him.
“Mmhm, I bought you a newly released cake. There was a long line and I thought it'll sell out very soon, so I bought you one and meant to surprise you!” he lightly blushed at your words, he did eye those delectable treats but he hasn't got the time to get one for himself and he doesn't want to be seen as a sweet tooth either.
“How considerate of you, dove,”
“Now that you're here, let's eat it together!” He smiles at your enthusiasm.
“There's nothing I'd like more,”
Veritas Ratio
Ratio has his personal schedule and he is sticking to it very well, work life and personal life should be balanced, and he was supposed to go home according to his usual hours. The thing is, something came up and he came home later than his schedule and it irks him. He'll get less beauty sleep and less time to indulge in his bath after this.
Knowing your habit, you'll be mostly asleep by now. Although he proved his theory wrong the moment he sees you asleep on the dining table, your head rests on your arms as you slightly drool.
He scoffed at the view, that position cannot be good for the bones and you would wake up with a cramp. Ratio walks closer to you to carry you back to bed but he spotted his favorite meal being wrapped neatly. He can feel the pang of guilt and he sighed, great, he should really stricken his students who have taken a little too much of his time.
The scholar tries to pull you away from the chair but you wake up at the process.
“Oh, you're back…” You yawned as you stretched, letting out a little ouch at the pain on your back.
“Do I have to tell you directly to not sleep on the dining table? It's bad for your health,” You let out an awkward laugh so he shook his head, feigning disappointment.
“I made you your favorite food, and I thought you'd come home in the usual hours so I wait and… yeah, I fell asleep,” he leaned down to kiss on top of your head before answering,
“You're.. Such a loveable dork,” He can't stay mad at you as somehow you always got his soft side.
“Unfortunately I have a routine to catch up to before having dinner,” You know exactly what he meant and you let out a whine.
“Yeah I know, I'll wait on the bed then-” he cuts you mid sentence,
“-Care to join me?”
---
Serious question. How do you earn those cat paw badges? I WANT ONE.
⎯ there is a certain touch of beauty to witnessing a side of theirs revealed to you so naturally. it becomes as easy as breathing if you just let it happen... so, will you? ( or in other words, a way you enable them to be themselves. )
#STARRING. aventurine, dr. ratio, sunday, dan heng ft. gn!reader. { 4.2k words }
#TAGS. fluff, established relationship. more: minor spoilers for aven's backstory (described mostly abstractly), ratio is referred to by his first name, i called sunday a nerd (sorry), dr. ratio & dan heng are certified workaholics.
#P/S. i think i may have yapped a little considering the word count but i hope it ends up being a good kind of yapping. tysm for reading! ♡
will you let aventurine hold you close when he sleeps? . . . whether it's an arm slung over your hips or his nose buried in your shoulder or fingers tracing shapes onto your skin. he doesn't ask for too much; only that you grant him the permission to cradle you in his arms, somewhere within his reach. it's a habit, he hopes you don't mind.
you have to wonder, though. considering the plenitude of pillows on the bed, why do his hands still seek you out? with all the credits he spent on those cotton-stuffed angels, you thought aventurine would relish them a bit more. but ah-ah, see? that is where you're wrong. sure, the pillows are extremely comfy but he always has a preference for things with much, much more value.
and the truth — well, his truth — is that even the softest cushions from oti mall couldn't compare to the privilege of laying his head on your chest, he'd say. especially when you brush his hair with your fingers - oh, one of the easiest ways to paradise. truly, the best value there is! can you blame a man for being honest and a little lovesick?
(“sappy,” you accuse. he pouts, offended.)
but aventurine has a flair for theatrics, you know that. his witty quips are as feather-light in weight as light-hearted they are in intent. but his touch - in the forms of kind caresses or rhythmic taps to a tune from his forgotten culture - lingers on your skin, with a yearning so heavy. you question whether it could be nostalgia or instead, silent awe at a reality he never imagined could ever be his.
(kakavasha remembers. clinging onto you for warmth like he once did to his sister, falling asleep with her prayers to mama fenge in his ears. the avgins believed gaiathra triclops to be the symbol of humility; so naturally, their prayers to her should also be humble, not too quiet but not too loud. all in moderation. for a frail child like him, those gentle prayers alone were enough to let him drift into a dreamless slumber and to ignore the shackles of reality if not for the briefest moments.
time passed. came a time where the melody he associated with slumber was no longer a soft voice lulling him but pure static, a noise to distract his mind from the chains around his wrists. they burned themselves onto his skin, searing, but he was already too familiar with the sensation to care. the mark on his neck was unwelcome, laughing at him, but he too laughed at his own pitiful reflection so what's the difference, anyway?
time passed again, the call of slumber then turned into clattering noises of chips doused in gold and dice thrown onto a surface. he thought it'd stay that way forever but before long, it morphed into up-and-down waves he couldn't decipher initially. they're gentle, faint like a human's breathing: your breathing as you allowed him to lie beside you for the first time, he realized back then. although he deems himself unworthy, an ugly grime on your pristine existence that still insists on cradling him — but despite it all, he finds this last melody to be his favorite so far.)
✧ a moment among the stars:
ticklish.
the sensation, minor yet still impactful enough, causes you to stir out of sleep. the light of noon greets your eyes and you become vaguely cognizant that the root of it all is the tufts of blond hair brushing against your neck.
there is a solid weight on your torso and a pair of slender arms loosely wrapped around your waist - but they're nothing you haven't grown used to. you comb your fingers through the messy locks licking at your skin, instinctively, and the fragrant scent of what you register as penacony's limited edition perfume kisses your nose.
“...ugh, what system time is it?” you let out a grunt, shifting around slightly to let your limbs breathe. you don't get an answer to your question, instead, aventurine's arms reestablish their hold on you. hooking you closer to him as if to wring out whatever proximity is left, if there is even any. his simple proclamation of “who cares?”, in a sense.
there it is again, that ticklish feeling. you feel soft lips grazing feather-like kisses against your collarbone. oh, he definitely isn't letting go just yet. truly merciless, a dozy morning thought accompanied by your tired sigh. the noise still comes out fond, however, so your feigned act of annoyance is fooling no one.
“it's warm, you know,” you grumble. but the yawn escaping your mouth right after betrays whatever stern image you're trying to adopt. not like you can ever be too stern with him. aventurine knows this, yes, and he gives you an A+ for effort each time.
“mhm,” he finally speaks, snuggling into your chest with no care about anything in the world, “g'morning to you too, lovely.”
his favorite mornings aren't his favorite if not thanks to your innocuous complaints and delightful attempts at pushing his pretty face away, no? a lazy grin graces the stoneheart's lips and eyes like exquisite gems, although sleepy, flutter open to gaze at you languidly. he takes the sight of you in then lets out a sigh - a fond noise just like yours earlier; the both of you really are two peas of a pod.
you must look a terrible mess right now and yet, the sight of you has aventurine smiling dazedly. “ah, what a spectacular sight. i really am the luckiest man in the galaxy,” he hums in approval. you want to roll your eyes but stops as he leans up to pepper (ah, one necessary correction: smother) kisses all over your face, arms dragging you closer to his chest like a cage. your eyes widen comically. what a nefarious trap, he has the advantage!
every remnant of sleepiness clinging to your mind evaporates. you squeal with laughter, shoving at his shoulder using the strength of a baby deer because no, you don't really want him to stop. he knows that too, of course.
“mwah, mwah, mwah—”
“pfft...! kakavasha, i can't breathe!”
(he has half a mind to pinch his skin, as if to remind himself that this is real. he can feel your giggles tickling his skin as if to tell him in return: yes, you are.)
will you let veritas pour his heart out after a long day? . . . well, that could count as too much of an overstatement. others say, “that man is like a brick wall!” some more dare to whisper, “doesn't his temper already exhaust whatever emotional quota he has?!” needless to say, everyone knows that dr. ratio is a man ruled by the mind, not by the heart. alright, that's quite true - but does that imply he has discarded the latter altogether? if so, then you beg to differ.
(not in the literal sense, of course! the heart is a vital organ of the body. saying otherwise would be akin to spitting on his shiny phd in biology... or his seven other phd's at that.)
the pedestal which the public places veritas ratio on reaches still great heights, even if it may not rival an ivory tower a member of the genius society resides in. it is so high up that mundane troubles of those below can't reach a genius like him, surely? well, as tall as he stands - somehow, the universe grants you a front row seat for a particular sight that proves otherwise.
if only they knew the doctor has a habit of mumbling these incomprehensible (more like barely intelligible) grumbles under his breath, striking a resemblance similar to a grumpy old cat. if you strain your ears hard enough, you might catch a “...this has to be it...” or “...i dare not think so...” from time to time as he roams around the room with materials in his hands.
(absurd, people would say. but you think it's extremely cute.)
veritas doesn't say it out loud - but you can tell by the hunch in his stiff shoulders, by the one or two sighs he huffs every six minutes - that he is itching to tell somebody of all the tomfooleries he has encountered today. of course, the topics he laments about vary; it's only when you hear him exhaling the loudest sigh that you get to find out.
mostly though, it's about his students and remarks on how they can further improve their performance — sure, he could phrase it a little gentler — but you still find it sweet that he cares. if not that, then it'd be about indolent colleagues, complicated formulae and more. on some days, he'll even let out an exasperated “truly mind-boggling! could you believe that?” to which you'd reply with an “uh-huh, go on.”
at the end of a ranting session, veritas takes careful note to leave a kiss on your person afterward. no matter where it is - on the lips, the cheek or your hand. no matter where you are - sitting on the couch beside him, behind the kitchen counter or across the room. the warmth that stays on your skin when he pulls away is somewhat tingly. appreciative, you think, especially when he looks at you with such loving eyes that his colleagues would be sure to retch in shock if they were a witness.
looks like you are right on the money; he has never discarded his heart, after all. so yes, to rephrase - will you lend veritas a listening ear when he needs it?
✧ a moment among the stars:
“...yet another headache.”
as unsubtle as ever, the doctor's complaint is barely hidden behind the guise of a mumble. those neatly styled violet bangs of his aren't doing an excellent job at concealing that frown strewn across his forehead either. veritas's posture is tense, a dead giveaway, as he goes over the piles of documents on his desk.
you cock an eyebrow upon seeing the stamp belonging to the intelligentsia guild on one of the papers. definitely work. it has been two system hours since he took a seat at the work desk, you concur, or lifted a finger to do something besides flipping through drafts. a mere glance at the stack of documents is enough to convince you that those researchers at the guild must really value veritas's input.
a perk of being a genius, maybe? the phantom of a weight lands alight on your shoulders. with a mug of black coffee in hand, you make your way to him. your footsteps are without a sound, only the noise of porcelain being placed down onto woodenware is enough to announce your arrival. “rough day at work?” you ask, peering down at his progress.
(a doctor's handwriting really is something. you resist the urge to squint.)
veritas doesn't seem to mind. if the way he smiles at the sight of you, albeit tiredly, is any indication. “hah,” he rests a hand on his temple and scoffs wryly, “so much grievances like you wouldn't believe.”
oh, he is teetering on the precipice of a tangent but stops himself. “...fret not, i'm fine. this is hardly something beyond my expertise,” he shakes his head, the motion causing his reading glasses to slide down a smidgen down the bridge of his nose.
you're too familiar with the self-assured bravado he puts on. you're quite endeared, actually. “okay, mr. i-require-no-rest,” you take the glasses off his face and he breaks into a frown. at the childish tone you're using or for having his reading glasses taken away, you don't know.
“why don't you take a little break?” you suggest. veritas sighs, “need i remind you that dilly-dallying is for fools who wish to waste their time?” and crosses his arms defiantly. he knows your strategy, he has come face-to-face with it several times.
“do you think a break with me is a waste of time?” you present him with a rhetorical question, quite the difficult adversary.
(and he keeps losing to it every single time.)
“well, that's—” the doctor nearly splutters, taken aback. “that's different if you insist on inserting yourself as a variable,” he infers, putting emphasis on the last part accompanied by an incredulous look.
“the answer is up for debate then,” you shrug with a cheeky smile. your hand then deftly lifts the mug you previously set down to your lips, veritas's eyes dilate in bewilderment. “so,” you hum at the rich taste of your handiwork, “wanna tell me about your day? haven't heard about the council in a while.”
“you—” he gasps in defeat, “i thought that was supposed to be my mug of coffee.”
(he has a slight pout on his face, but you dare not point it out lest it disappears in the blink of an eye.)
“our mug of coffee,” you take a few more sips with an innocent decadence. “all is fair in love and war, doctor.”
“i can never win with you,” he buries his face in his palm with a groan. you laugh heartily, a sound that chimes like quaint little bells in his ears - it elicits a reaction from his lips, for them to quirk up at the corners in the smallest of ways.
“regardless. . .” veritas relents and reaches for your free hand. you let him. “it seems a break wouldn't be so amiss, after all,” he then presses a kiss on the side of your wrist, affectionate.
(your heart skips a beat.)
will you let sunday regale you with facts you've never heard of before? . . . a man of eloquent words, no less a man of educated mind. you have no doubt that the books in the dewlight pavilion really aren't just there for show - not that you're allowed to browse through them at your own desire. a servant's voice would stop you in your tracks should your fingers ever brush against something in the family's secret bookshelf.
how mysterious.
but sunday makes it known to the staff that you, in particular, are allowed more access to the shelves - perhaps, not too much - but more than even mr. mccoy, at least. with the way you have to crane your neck far up to pinpoint the tallest height that the shelves reach, you wonder: has sunday gone through everything here personally?
your immediate answer is most likely. you know sunday fairly well; to have something that he hasn't scrutinized from the inside out in his possession will surely gnaw away at his psyche incessantly. not being in the know at all times is a looming fear for him. but of course, you have other ways to confirm the answer for yourself.
pick out a book from a shelf there, either intentional or purely arbitrary, and watch as sunday carefully traces his steps towards you. his curiosity is piqued, which topic has caught your interest this time? but he tucks it under proper cordiality. with a hand behind his back, he'd utter your name in the softest tone and ask the familiar question of “would you like to know more?” — asking for your permission to ramble, essentially — you find this tendency of his to be charming, so you nod each time.
(and he smiles when you do. a smile less refined at the edges, kinder and relaxed.)
the best place to start from is always the beginning. you think sunday agrees because he often starts by telling you the history and its origins before moving on to its impact on the galaxy, then his personal stance on the topic. it's a pattern, you notice, his ramblings have a pattern. and it's consistent every time, you might've believed he was reading off a script. and what's more? sunday is blissfully oblivious of it.
fascinating. you ponder: what kind of things you can do with this information? decisions, decisions, decisions. . . but ultimately, you opt for keeping it a secret like a treasure only you're allowed to see.
(that might be true in a way. you don't doubt that robin, his dear sister, is familiar with this side of him. does that mean he treasures you like he does her? your chest starts to feel a bit lighter.)
if you were to point it out, you fear you might never witness it again - goodness, to know that he has been displaying such foolishness or rather, what he viewed as an embarrassing freudian slip in front of you? his wings might as well resort to covering his face for good until the end of time.
as you listen to him talk (with such elegance at that), you can't help whatever tender look you have on your face. really, who would've thought the head of the oak family could be such. . . a nerd?
(you hope in secret that sunday will be more willing to show sides like these to you in the future. and that they're not a weakness at all, not when they're shared with you.)
✧ a moment among the stars:
“it looks like you're fascinated by the dreamscape nursery rhyme this time.”
sunday spares the article in your hold no further inspection. one glance at the cover and walls of memorized information rush to the front of his mind. he looks familiar with it; could it be a part of his childhood too? but then again, everything found here is within his knowledge.
“i am,” you say with intrigue, “it got me ruminating for a while.”
you meet his gaze, stumbling upon yellow irises that glimmer akin to gold under penaconian chandeliers. you think you see a hint of affection in them, swimming around your reflection like a school of fish in a pond. it makes you smile.
he smiles back, oblivious to your thoughts but returns your gesture. he asks, “how so?” and you reply without delay, “i read through it and the morbid undertone took me by surpri—”
or at least, it's supposed to be without delay until you realize sunday has stepped closer in order to peer down at the page you're holding open. and suddenly, you're extremely aware of every minute detail like how his breath brushes against the side of your cheek and how his chest rumbles as he hums in acknowledgement.
(you flush in the neck and he perceives this reaction of yours with mirth.)
“my apologies,” sunday chuckles and pulls away, “i've simply forgotten the rhyme and wished to refresh my memory.”
“somehow, i feel that isn't the case...” you mumble accusingly. that seems to amplify whatever little amusement he gets from flustering you. “oh, my dove. i can assure you that it is,” he caresses your head, a little placatingly.
most times, sunday isn't so laidback about giving affection in public — since he has an image to maintain — so you assume the fact that the servants are out and about, leaving only you and him here, plays a role in his unusual boldness. you accept the gesture with a bashful pout.
“now, where were we?” sunday clears his throat, “ah, yes. some people have noted on the nursery rhyme's strange quality but still, it retains its popularity in penacony. it is also widely assumed that the hound resembles the bloodhound family while—”
you hold back an amused sigh, but it's more out of fondness than anything. he'll start from the history then the effect on the general public, as per usual, but you're not the only predictable one here. you'd listen to him anytime too, won't you?
(you do adore when the head of the oak family would put off his public figure mask around you. if only for just a while.)
will you let dan heng rest his head on your lap when it's just you two? . . . the sense of comfort it provides isn't something he can explain with words. as if he has ever been good with words in the first place. saying a sentence bereft of logical reasoning or witty remarks doesn't come easily to the express’ guard. neither does intimacy. . . but you know that already, don't you?
after all, it isn't a secret that dan heng prefers speaking with his actions. if to show one's intentions is the end goal, then actions are the fastest route to choose. words, although able to sweeten the trip like how a beautiful scenery can, will eventually lead to actions regardless so why take the extra step?
but you're different from him; you articulate what you think and what you mean. you're honest in ways that keep catching dan heng off guard without fail — just like the first time you offered your empty lap to him when his head was swirling in pain — but he supposes that is one of your charms. “words can be useful. we're not all born mind readers,” you told him once and he hummed, accepting of your perspective.
(“look at you two! opposites attract!” march chirped. he recalled shooting her a look of indignation and she rubbed the back of her head sheepishly in response.)
dan heng has learnt to grow used to your propensities - but by far, your shameless invitations are still one matter that can't be comprehended even with time. he cannot understand; how you smile as you sit on his futon in the archives (he doesn't mind), how you link gazes with him so effortlessly, how you pat your lap knowingly and say, “why don't you rest your head here?”
(he has to restrain himself from bursting into flames like a heliobus.)
sometimes, he'll accept reluctantly or he'll decline with an underlying tone of longing he doesn't want you to notice. because as much of a good hold dan heng has on nonchalance, he cannot deny that this particular gesture of yours has left a mark on him.
(it remains persistently.)
when he rests his head on your lap, he can't help but take a deep inhale - your fragrance fills his senses and he discards the selfish desire to keep it all to himself. your fingers are soothing as they thread through his hair gently. the feeling that washes over him is serene, almost comparable to submerging himself in the pure waters of scalegorge waterscape.
when overcome by such a tranquil state of mind, dan heng wonders what expression he might be making at that moment? he always keeps his eyes closed, so it's a shame he may never know. but you do, and you don't think you've ever seen him look so at peace before like he does now.
(perhaps, that's why you keep offering him this in the first place.)
✧ a moment among the stars:
“someone looks tired,” you state with a pointed stare. the archives isn't a room too spacious and the only ones here are you and him. the target of your sentence is obvious.
but dan heng doesn't take the bait, barely looks away from the entry he is currently authoring. still, he spares you a glance and hums glibly, “are you projecting? if so, feel free to use my bed in the meantime.”
you let out a noise, something gibberish that conveys disappointment but it is effectively drowned out by the typing noises. “you haven't even touched the food i bought you,” your voice becomes mellow, “why don't you rest for a while?”
he isn't convinced, you think, since his fingers are still hard at work. the new info the team brought back must've been a lot if he's that focused.
“dan heng?” you try again, hopeful for the last time. you don't take him for a fool, of course, he'll know when he reaches his limit and have proper rest then. but would that really be ideal? a second passes and that hope flickers like a dimming light. but just an inch before the edge of giving up, the typing slows to a stop.
“. . .alright,” he murmurs. finally, after a good hour spent drawing patterns on his backside with your eyes, dan heng turns around to face you. he look tense, you note with abject concern.
“here,” you usher him to your lap, empty and conveniently so. dan heng shoots you a blank look - this isn't the first time you offered and this isn't the first time he reacted like that. you try to suppress a laugh, failing gloriously at it. “just for a little bit,” you utter through a stifled fit of chuckles.
dan heng shakes his head, not in rejection but in defeat. his eyes slip close, second nature, as he leans to situate his head on your lap. you welcome him with a hum and let your fingers card through his hair. a calm sigh falls from his lips like a water droplet in springtime.
“this. . . is nice,” he admits, sudden and unprompted. you nearly doubt your ears for a moment there. did he— “i don't hate it is, uhm, what i mean to say,” dan heng adds and it dawns on you that your ears are still working. his eyes are still closed, not that you'd expect anything else, he prefers to treat it as a shield from being face-to-face with embarrassment.
(or to avoid your ecstatic gaze. he can feel warmth rushing to his cheeks already.)
“i know,” you smile, brushing away a few messy strands from his forehead. he isn't an open book but you think you've read the pages enough to remember all the little details. “but thanks for telling me. i'm no mind reader but i think i can read yours pretty well.”
“i shall provide no further comment,” he holds back an incredulous exhale, yet his lips still curl slightly at the corner. you feel the teeniest desire to trace the curve of his lips with your fingertip but settle for silently admiring them instead.
“it's fine. i know the answer already,” you say, words dripping with affection. such a shame dan heng never looks up at you during a time like this. because if he did, he wouldn't have missed seeing the sheer fondness in your gaze that rains down on him in light showers. a true shame.
(one day, he'll gather the courage. maybe.)
— thank you for reading! reblogs with comments are most appreciated. ♡
hello! i read ur draken n baji w a street race s/o and rlly enjoyed it! can u do one w rindou, shinichiro and mitsuya? btw i rlly rlly luv ur writings ><
❀ GOTTA GO FAST | TOKYO REVENGERS
🤍 haitani rindou, sano shinichiro, mitsuya takashi
💿 gender neutral, second pov (you/your), fluff, established relationship, au - everyone lives / nobody dies, timeline: highschool, imagine
📅 july 19, 2021
🔗 masterlist ,, version: 01, 02
truthfully, they should have expected their lover had a side to them as well. they just didn't think that you were a street racer. it explains your driving.
. . . HAITANI RINDOU
If there was one thing everyone who knew of the Haitani brothers, it was that their partners are as… simply put, unique as them.
If there was one thing Rindou knew was that you love speed. You love the thrill of having the wind in your hair, slapping your face as you grin wide and spread your arms on the back of his motorcycle. You loved cutting people off, smirking when it was your time to drive as Rindou held onto his seat for his dear life.
If there was one thing Rindou did not know was that you were into street racing.
He should have guessed it, he should have seen it. But he didn’t and Rindou felt as if he was stupid as he sits on the passenger seat beside you. “Y/n, is this even legal?”
You gave him a look, raising a brow in amusement. “Rindou, you literally rule Roppongi’s underworld with Ran, I’m sure this is nothing. Plus, there’s this unspoken rule between racers that we’re not allowed to attack each other and it’s greatly respected.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Of course that’s not what he meant, he’s very much aware of his status, thank you very much. Though the information about the rules was new, he didn’t even know that such rules existed. “What I meant was, if it’s alright to have another person in the car?”
Rindou loves you and when he found out that street racing was your latest addiction (for the past three years ever since you saved enough to get a second hand car—a race car), he was supportive. That’s just amazing and it may be illegal but it’s not like his own moral compass is upright as well.
If anything, it just made things make even more sense than before!
And by complete idiocy, he offhandedly mentioned wanting to ride with you on a race three days prior to current time. Now, he’s here.
You only shrug, hands on the steering wheel and eyes set forward as the host signals the round was about to start. “It would help them finally win against me so they don’t mind that much.”
Rindou looks at the car beside you from the window, the sleek black color looking intimidating, and he raises a hand to hold onto the roof handle. Just wishing for the best. Maybe he should get off, especially after hearing that will lessen your chances of winning this. Perhaps Rindou is content with just watching from the sidelines…
The back of his head slams onto the car seat as you press on the gas pedal without any warning other than a wave of the flag. “Y/n, fuck-”
The side of his face meets the window as you swerve so suddenly, leaning onto the motion with ease, a contrast to Rindou’s clumsy actions, desperately trying to hold onto something.
Rindou loves you, and he thinks this is amazing and all, and that you looked so cool, but let him get off!
. . . SANO SHINICHIRO
Shinichiro had worked on your car before. It was the sole reason why he branched out from fixing up motorcycles to learning more about cars, because he saw how much you loved and treasured the vehicle.
He doesn’t ever regret it.
He just didn’t know that you were using said car in street races. Illegal street races. That got you money. Which is no problem. Shinichiro still clearly remember his days in Black Dragon, even if he sometimes acts as if he didn’t to run away from the embarrassment of the stupid things he did and say during his time as President.
Shinichiro warily looks at the people gathered, chatting and showing off their cars in front of the abandoned warehouse. He could name at least half of the cars present, the others clearly more topnotched than some.
You were walking with a swagger, head up high and a smirk on your lips. Your sweet BMW was sitting neatly, Shinichiro leaning on it with feigned calmness.
You were supposed to stay at his place today, to help him with some things in the shop so when you cancelled at the last minute, Shinichiro couldn’t help but be curious and ask what came up. And when he found out? He was jumping in your car before you could stop him.
He can hold onto the questions after the race. That is if you don’t get hurt, or killed, or-
Shinichiro closes his eyes, trying to mute his thoughts. Dammit, he really is getting older if he’s worrying about getting hurt in races like these. Getting hurt had always been a part of life and he had always welcomed it as a chance to learn and grow, he is after all, Black Dragon’s founder. Now, he’s just about to have a heart attack at the thought of you getting hurt.
Will he stop you though? Of course not. Shinichiro isn’t stupid nor is he blind. From where he is, he could see the pride on your shoulders and the brightness on your face as you approached the host who greeted you happily.
If this is what makes you happy, so be it. He just needs to remind you of safety precautions and to call him if something happens.
Shinichiro avoids looking at any of the guests’ eyes, opting to stare at you instead, feeling the comfort of your car on his side. He could still remember the adjustments he made just a few days prior, most likely to help you in this race. You told him that you were getting quite the price if you won the race tonight and Shinichiro sure as hell isn’t letting you lose.
You look over your shoulders, gaze searching for him and when you finally meet his, Shinichiro offers you a smile. You turn back after giving him another one of your smirks, nodding to the host, and Shinichiro can’t help but wonder what you were talking about for you to look for him like that.
“What was that about?” He asks once you return, standing in front of him as he blocks the door to the driver’s seat. Some people were moving their cars out of the way, as the main race for the night was about to start with you as one of its leading actors.
You smile up at him, so softly and childish that Shinichiro could almost forget that haughty smirk and that sharp gaze from earlier (that is doing things to him, mind you). “He asked me if I had a boyfriend and I told him that I had a fiancé.”
. . . MITSUYA TAKASHI
There was that look in your eyes that Mitsuya can’t exactly decipher.
The car smoothly comes to a stop in front of a red light as the screen shows the time nearing to late eleven in the evening. Mitsuya drowsily blinks, leaning his face on the window and glancing at the lights of Tokyo, drained out of his mind after today’s misadventures with Toman.
He hopes that classes would be miraculously cancelled tomorrow because he really can’t do it.
“What’s wrong?” He murmurs sleepily as the look remains in your eyes, your lips pursed. That look was almost desperate, your shoulders tense and your expression serious. There was something you wanted to do and Mitsuya was pretty sure it wasn’t a kiss from him.
You blink, turning your head to look at him. You gave him a small smile but Mitsuya, despite his tiredness, could tell that it wasn’t completely there. “I have to tell you something.”
Mitsuya sits up, pulling on his seatbelt. He hums, awaiting your words.
Before your voice could leave your mouth, you pause as the rev of an engine cuts you off. It was coming from the lone red cars beside yours, a Toyota if Mitsuya recalls correctly. You narrow your eyes in a challenge and Mitsuya sits up even straighter at the sudden change in your demeanor.
Then, it was as if a better idea flashes in your mind as you glance at him. “Takashi,” you start off with a small smile. “I think it’s better to show you than tell you.”
“What?”
You roll down your window and Mitsuya could see the way you grinned, almost manically, just like how Mikey does whenever he leads Touman into fights that they will win.
“You up for a race?” You cheekily ask and Mitsuya gapes as the other driver gives a small interested smile, interest clearly piqued.
“Just until before the crosswalk in Akihabara,” he replies and you let out a small laugh, so different to your earlier seriousness that Mitsuya almost feels betrayed.
You lean back comfortably, already giving a nod before pulling your window back up. “Y/n, a race?” He asks, getting jumpy and once more pulling at his seatbelt. He continues on staring at the other car and glancing at the traffic light as the seconds continue to count, just a few more before the light turns green.
“Relax,” you slowly say, noticing his apprehension. You give him a small smile and Mitsuya can’t help but calm down just from the sight of it. “This isn’t the first time I did this.”
“What?”
You sheepishly grin at him and Mitsuya just continues on blinking blankly. What? Was this what you wanted to tell him? That you get into races that have chances of you either getting hurt or straight into jail?
First of all, shit, that’s cool. He can just imagine you giving the same smirk with your hands on the wheel and smoothly turning into a sharp corner as if it was nothing. Second of all, how did he not guess this just from how much you took care and upgraded your car??
“Though this is the first time I had someone beside me while racing.”
Mitsuya gulps, giving you a small shaky smile. “I have younger sisters and an already busy mom, Y/n.”
You burst out laughing, short but joyful, mindful of the time counting down. There were ten more seconds left and you finally switched the gears, hands on the wheel and winking at him. “You’ll find that I’m one hell of a driver and you’ll fall for me even more.”
There’s a nonchalance that carries around your man, one that comes from years of training of gaslighting the twins and making them turn against each other, or the scoldings from Kita-San that could’ve got so intense with his disappointment Rintaro could cry.
He’s gotten good at keeping a stoic emotion and making you act out. He loves to pretend he doesn’t care.
“It’s because he doesn’t,” Atsumu assures, playing with the strings of his hoodie.
You roll your eyes, “trust me, he cares. You just don’t see it.”
“And I never will. Because it doesn’t happen.”
You raise your brows in challenge, and he matches your brow raising. “Wanna bet on it?”
“Wager?”
“If I can prove to you Rintaro actually is a dork for my attention, I want a signed Kiyoomi jersey.”
He scoffs, “can’t you just ask Kiyoomi for one?”
“Komori tells me not to bother him after games.”
Atsumu rolls his eyes, “okay. And when he doesn’t show he’s a loser, I want all you can eat at Onigiri Miya and you pick up the bill.”
“….”
“What?”
“Osamu doesn’t naturally give you all you can eat?”
“No?”
“Oh…”
“Does he GIVE IT TO YOU?!”
You give him a cheesy smile and quickly move to grab your keys, his jaw slacked in betrayal, only for him to roll his eyes, “whatever. Either way, we’re going when I win. What’re the keys for?”
“You’ll see.”
You jingle your keys with a small smirk, making sure to do it loud enough for him to hear down the hall. Atsumu shakes his head in disbelief, only for his hand to cover his mouth as socked feet quickly become louder as Rintaro barrels down the hall.
A lanky frame fills the doorway, “where you goi-“
Atsumu and you let out a string of cackles, his hand smacking his knee while Rintaro scrubs his face with his free hand, the other one holding a controller for his, hopefully, paused game.
“Dawg I hate you for real,” he sighs, coming into the room to kiss your head. You smile and angle your head to kiss him for real, which he complies with happily and making Atsumu gag. His green eyes dart to glare at Atsumu, “I wish osamu was an only child.”
“Damn, bringing guns to knife fights,” the blonde snorts. “Not my fault you got caught in 4K, dickhead.”
“Not my fault you’re a single loser.” He leans down to kiss your lips, “where’re we going?”
“No where,” you hum happily. “Just wanted to make sure you were still obsessed with me.”
He beams down at you while Atsumu groans in disgust.
