“I swear, this place is haunted. The lights keep flickering.” (Cordelia to Guinaifen)
Amber eyes became impressively bright at the notion, even as another round of popping and flickering ensued. The idea that there might be a spirit nearby, creeping along behind them as they tip-toed through the abandoned building, made a wave of goosebumps ripple along the length of her arms.
"Quick, get your phone out!" She gave Cordelia's arm a harmless shake before she dug her own device. "We can record it and watch the footage back later!"
Her screen flashed, and within that same second, her camera had been activated. It was telling ( but not surprising ) that she had an even quicker shortcut to it, the phone panning across the small room they had entered moments ago.
"We should upload this too. If we don't notice anything, maybe someone else will."
[PERSON] Another person suddenly runs into the room, breaking the moment completely. (Katsuki to Eijiro)
Eijiro played it off easily enough, but a single thought ( itchy and irritating with guilt ) had been plaguing him since the night of their first kiss.
He had enjoyed it, of course. He cared for Katsuki too deeply to take for granted any amount of affection given to him, but a small part of his heart declared that their first kiss coming off the heels of a long and cold week of little to no interaction felt wrong.
It couldn't be redone because it had already happened, but he hoped that he could make up for the fact that they had yet to share a real, genuinely sweet kiss since deciding to be together.
"Hey, Kats." He tapped the eraser end of his pencil against his own cheek and peered towards the blond slumped over his work. "I've been thinkin' lately, and. . ."
He felt intensely red eyes move to him, and his throat knotted in response. Eijiro wasn't so bashful that he would reconsider, but he couldn't quite meet Katsuki's gaze. Instead, he turned his chair and inched closer.
"It's been a few days since you kissed me that one time, and it's been botherin' me that I haven't done it too. I don't want you thinking that I didn't like it, or that I don't have the guts to do it too.''
His nerves were getting the better of him, and he knew it showed in the way he babbled. Before he could be told off or snipped at, he gathered up his courage and tugged at Katsuki's collar. All he wanted was to be the one to initiate this time around, but the moment he thought he felt his boyfriend's breath hitch, he heard the door open.
It wasn't a secret to anyone in 1-A that the two were together, but Eijiro still put plenty of distance between himself and Katsuki when their moment to be alone was shattered. In fact, he was the first to stand, his bulkier body creating a wall between Katsuki and the unwelcome intruder because it appeared to him, for a flash of a second, that Katsuki was about to lose his cool.
"Hey!" A booming laugh hardly covered up the fact that the redhead was flustered. "Did you need help studying too?"
"Promise me this won't change anything." 💋 (Hawks to Himari)
A mere second after he spoke, both hands moved to cover his mouth.
She would never admit to him that she had daydreamed about this moment over the course of several months, but it was the reason why she found stopping him to be as painful as it was. Kissing him would remind her that all of the hardship over the last year had been worth it, but she couldn't allow it if it meant things remained the same.
"Keigo. . ." It felt strange to say his name and know that it wasn't meant to be kept a secret. "Everything is going to change if we do this."
Doe eyes peered up into his sharper ones, and in them pooled unshed tears. She had always been emotional, letting the smallest happenstance hit her hard in her bleeding heart, and now was no exception. Part of the blame lay in the fact that she had touched him with bare hands, but he had assured her time and time again that she could and should.
"I know a lot has happened to you. Everything has been shaking and falling apart, and you want it to be still." She moved her hands away from his mouth, palms cupping his cheeks adoringly.
Anxiety would have taken over if it weren't for the fact that when others weren't feeling at their best, her need to comfort and love overwrote her instinctual desire to hide from uncomfortable situations.
"We can go slow. You've been going at break-neck speed for as long as I've known you, and I'm more than okay with taking it easy for a while. But we're going to change during that, and I think I'm okay with that too."
She rubbed her thumb against his stubbly skin and pushed herself up onto the tips of her toes. Her nose nuzzled at his cheek, then her forehead came to gently rest against his.
"Us changing together doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think we'll be just fine, so if you still want to k—kiss. . ." Now her nerves decided to rear their ugly head. Her face warmed and became pink, and her hands began to tremble. "We can try again."
"I’m a truth-teller. Some people can’t handle it." Katsuki to Eijiro
"I keep tellin' ya, dude, your honesty is great, but. . ."
He watched as the girl that had stopped them bit down on her lip and hurried away, all of the hope that had brightened her eyes sinking into disappointment and shame.
"I'm not sayin' you had to lie to her, but you could have been a little nicer about it. Pretty sure she started crying." Attempting to change the dynamo was like trying to change the course of a river with his bare hands on his own. Eijiro wasn't sure that he wanted to fully deviate from his personality because Katsuki's honesty could be admirable, but a little consideration every now and then wouldn't hurt him.
( Right? )
"Cause I'm not sure it was the truth that hurt her feelings. I think it was the way you said it."
And while you're at it, check his personal files, the ones he keeps on the private phone he carries.
Those words haunted her. For three days, they replayed themselves during her quiet moments — before sleep, while she ate her breakfast and on her walk to work. She tried to ignore them, but it was impossible to shake them loose when that treacherous villain's voice clung to her like stinking cigarette smoke.
"I can't..."
She lingered in the door of his personal office, blue eyes glued to the plain desk he so rarely lounged behind. As his secretary, it was her job to tend to his messes and ensure his most important space was organized. There were certain drawers she didn't touch, as she was sure that she would feel the same if she had someone tend to her desk. He was allowed his privacy, and she wanted to respect that.
The longer she gazed at the desk, however, the thinner her resolve became. Every passing second added to her anxiety, the what if's and doubt thick and dripping into the foundation of trust she had built with the hero over the last year.
"This is stupid. I shouldn't listen to a bad guy."
She should have turned away then, but she didn't. She stepped forward and closed the door beside her, glad for the fact that her boss's sidekicks weren't around.
With quiet footsteps, she crept forward. She couldn't imagine that he trapped the desk when the office sat so high up the building, but she was exceedingly cautious as she rounded the desk and pushed his chair aside.
"I'll just look. I won't find anything in there, anyway."
She ignored the drawers she normally looked through. He gave her permission to rifle through those, so it didn't make sense that he might hide a strange phone there.
The first drawer was empty. No surprise there. He didn't seem the type to fill his desk with garbage or useless trinkets. The second drawer had a stack of papers and pristine folders, and the third was the same.
"Where would he even hide another phone?" She tried to search through the second and third drawer, but it was as she lifted the hefty stack of envelopes that she felt something strange. She set the stack aside, save for the bottom most envelope. It was thicker and heavier than the rest, the lump inside distinctly phone-shaped.
"I can't tell what it is." She tried to justify putting it back and ignoring it. "Even if it is a phone, it — it could be for a lover or something."
She stared the envelope down, sweat beading along her hairline and palms. A quick flip, and she realized that the envelope wasn't sealed. She assured herself again and again and she could put it back after opening it and discovering the contents inside.
But she didn't.
She opened the loose flap, pulled out a small phone and stared at the screen as it brightened in her palm. Her hands shook, even as she grasped at her own fingers to calm the violent trambling.
Her habit of speaking into the air ceased now that she knew she was too far into her search. It was pointless to pretend that she hadn't found it, and it seemed just as pointless to stop there. She needed to know more, and the only way to learn was to access the phone.
If this phone was treated the way any other phone was, it likely had a pin. She had only a small handful of tries before it locked her out for good. That meant she needed to be careful and keep her guesses to a minimum.
There were the obvious choice, but attempting the digits of his birthday and birth month failed. She tried to switch the formatting, but that too failed.
"What would it be?" She tried to wrack her mind, but there were so few numbers associated with the hero. It made her wonder: what was the truth, or was she a horrible secretary? He made her feel as if he were the best he'd had since his start as a hero, but it felt like an easy claim to question now that she knew about the phone.
"Knowing him, it's probably something random." She jammed at the screen with her thumb three more times, each try denying her access. "Of course, I'm not going to be able to get in."
This was likely a ruse, or a clever trick meant to amuse the villain that had told her about the phone to begin with. For all she knew, it had always been here. He could have a habit of keeping old devices, and Dabi had only gotten under her skin because there was a chance that Hawks had a phone somewhere in his desk.
She had one last try, then she would have no choice but to put it back.
"Let's be a little silly then." She shrugged and tapped in her own birthday. He had made it a point to tell her once that he wouldn't forget it. Their relationship was meant to be professional, but she had believed him when he made that bold claim.
The screen unlocked, and regret seized her chest.
"He didn't..." He had, and now she had to dig deeper. Her first thought was to check his contacts. There was a single entry, the name a single emoji. There was plenty of room to make assumptions, but she had to know for certain to whom the number belonged,
She knew in the not-so-distant future that she would wish she hadn't pressed the 'call button, but she did because it would kill her all the sooner if she didn't.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m right here, okay? I’m not gonna leave you. I’m never gonna leave you.”
(Levi to Aya~)
Hurt/Comfort Starters
It had been a nightmare of all things - dying, at the hands of some demon, slowly and painfully. She'd awoken with a startled cry. The other brothers were all either busy or out of the house tonight, so she ended up in front of Levi's room. Honestly she had just hoped he'd be awake and willing to distract her - play some video games or something.
She hadn't expected him to take one look at her, at her red and teary face, and drag her into a hug, her face against his chest. Still, she didn't question his sudden boldness, arms wrapping around him as they stumbled back into his bedroom.
Curled up against his side in his bathtub bed, Aya found herself slowly drifting back off to sleep, the sounds of his breathing and the fish tank reminding her of the place she once called home, relaxing her.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m right here, okay? I’m not gonna leave you. I’m never gonna leave you.”
Aya almost doesn't hear his words, whispered against her hair. But she does, and she smiles sleepily, turning and burying her face against his side. "Thank, um, thank you..." Soon enough she's asleep once more, safe and secure in the crook of his arm.
’ You smell like a lawn mower. ’ (Bakugo, turning his nose up at Eijiro)
"What do you expect, dude? I was outside doin' chores." Living on school grounds didn't mean kicking up their feet when they had free time. This was, for the moment, their home, and homes needed to be taken care of.
The responsibility of lawn maintence swapped from week to week, and this week meant the job landed on Eijiro's strong shoulders. Pushing around a lawnmower for two hours, making sure that the grass was perfectly even around 1-A's dorm meant he was bound to smell like the acrid aroma of gasoline and bitter grass.
"Guess I should take a shower now that I'm done, but bein' outside got me kind of pumped. I'm gonna go ask Aizawa-sensei if there are any more chores I can do!"
& + How do you feel about me. (Dabi smirking at Aya)
Send & + a question, and my muse must answer
Aya sighs, wondering how exactly she should answer him. "I, um... it's... complicated?" She starts, chewing on her bottom lip as she ponders the question. To be entirely fair the prompt never said she had to answer honestly. Just that she had to answer. But, she'd try to answer honestly anyways. "You're, um, you're a villain. A 'bad guy'," she uses air quotes around the phrase, "and, um, and I know, logically, I should be afraid. But, um... but I'm not. At least, um, no more so than I would be around anyone else I didn't really know that well." If he wanted to hurt her, he'd have done so already.
He made her nervous, yes, but so would any strange man who showed up at her house injured in the middle of the night, especially if she didn't know them well. "I, um, I feel like you're definitely a lot more complicated than the media likes to claim, and, um, perhaps I'm fool, but I don't think you're pure evil or anything like that."
He was a young man raging against the world, a world that had - from what she'd seen on the news - he'd felt like abandoned him. And... she couldn't blame him for being angry at that. The anger definitely should have been redirected elsewhere, but hey. And she knew that, in theory, she should have long since reported him to the heroes. Heck, she worked at the school responsible for educating heroes - she DEFINITELY should have reported him by now.
But he didn't deserve to be beat within an inch of his life, which is likely what would happen if All Might rolled up with half the school in tow. "I, um, I feel you deserve a lot better than what's been given to you."
"If, um, if it's compliments you're looking for, I can tell you that, um, that I do think you're handsome." She adds, a soft flush on her face, feeling oddly bold for once.
