5 years ago i was dating a guy that liked bikini pics of every girl in existence & had the emotional intelligence of a 10 year old, today im with a man that brags about me to anyone that will listen, doesn’t look at or have any interest in other women, and just carried me to bed bc i got sleepy after reading
No Strings Attached || Chapter 1 || Collision Course
🎧 Song on Loop: Everyone Here Wants You || Jeff Buckley
🌟 Author's Note: Sanemi x Fem!Reader || 3.6K Words || MDNI
🌪️ Summary: What happens when two people who can’t stand each other keep getting thrown together by a mutual friend? When both are hiding unrequited crushes and a storm of pent-up tension? When the lines between anger, want, and need start to blur? The messiest situationship ever, that’s what.
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖
It was a quiet day, unremarkable at a glance.
The quad lay careless beneath a stained-glass sky, heat rising from the bricks in slow, patient breaths.
Sanemi shouldered through it like a dare.
He moved as though the campus belonged to him, sharp-edged, his steps loud, and his voice louder.
An oversized white tee and baggy jeans, a silver tag chain glinting at his throat in the right slant of sun.
Heads turned toward him and then away just as quickly. Throats were cleared. Steps adjusted.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew why.
He knew his resting face looked like trouble.
Knew the scars, the stare, the way he walked.
People moved around him like weather, giving him space the way you do a storm: careful and wary.
It was fine. It was useful.
Inosuke matched his stride, practically vibrating with the thrill of being outside and loud and unpunished. Zenitsu flailed behind them in a panic orbit, clutching a smoothie like it could ward off bad luck.
“Dude, don’t...don’t walk backward again,” Zenitsu begged, voice cracking on the word backward.
“Remember last time?”
“I remember you screaming,” Sanemi said, stepping off the path just to ignore the idea of paths. “Same difference.”
“It is not the same difference!”
Sanemi turned to grin at Inosuke. Then impact. His teeth flashed, Inosuke’s eyes widened, and he crashed into her like a moving wall.
The impact wasn’t catastrophic; it was clean and stunning, the way cue balls strike and choose new lines. It stole time from the world for half a second.
Sound dulled. The quad blurred.
She went down hard, hand striking brick, breath knocked from her chest in a startled, painful rush.
The star at her throat flashed in the sun and settled crooked: one bright, humiliating betrayal of grace.
Sanemi came to a stop.
Not because he was kind.
Because physics forced him.
For a single beat, the part of him that knew how to be decent rose up, quick and instinctive: Say sorry.
It made it to his throat and died there.
He’d been mid-step, mid-joke, mid-heat.
He was already irritable with the day, with Zenitsu’s voice drilling into his skull. The collision landed like proof the world was determined to test him today.
He didn’t offer a hand.
“Watch it,” he said.
She shot him a glare, brows furrowed, lips curling like she was a second away from scowling outright.
He blinked, surprise flickering across his face.
The world had taught him people flinched at his voice, at his height, at the way anger lit his bones.
The world had taught him people apologized with their eyes before their mouths ever caught up.
But she didn’t.
She scoffed and pushed to her feet without taking what he didn’t offer. Dirt powdered her palm; she wiped it on her jeans with a neat, composed swipe.
Her hair had fallen forward with the impact; she tucked it back with two fingers, precise. Her nails, perfectly manicured, looked indecently calm for someone who’d just been knocked to the ground.
Zenitsu was already in motion, gawking, frantic, abandoning Sanemi’s shoulder to scoop scattered papers with trembling hands.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry, he…he’s…Shinazugawa, dude?!?” Zenitsu pivoted to her, hands up in useless prayer. “Are you okay? Do you need water? Are you injured? Do you need me to call campus—”
“I need people to look forward,” she smiled.
It wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be. It cut anyway.
Sanemi’s mouth curled without a smile.
“It was an accident.”
She laughed quietly and asked, “An accident?” The softness felt wrong as if brittle, edged with ice.
She stepped in, close enough that the fabric at her wrist brushed the cotton of his shirt, and pressed one manicured finger to the center of his chest.
It wasn’t hard.
“Then perhaps,” she said evenly, every word deliberate, “you should be the one to watch it.”
Sanemi stared at the finger like it had broken a rule.
Heat threaded the back of his neck: anger or embarrassment, he wasn’t checking which.
The chain at his throat suddenly felt too tight.
“Maybe you should try not standing in the middle-”
“It’s a walkway,” she cut in, voice going flatter.
Kinder.
Scarier.
Zenitsu made a sound like a kettle coming to boil, then clamped his mouth shut with both hands as if physically stopping himself from making it worse.
Sanemi’s chin tipped a fraction.
The calm in her eyes, the unimpressed certainty of it, undid him more thoroughly than defiance ever could, stirring something restless beneath his ribs.
Irritation.
Interest.
The long, thin wire that connects both.
“How cute,” he said, grin sharp enough to hide the apology. “You always talk like that after you trip?”
“I didn’t trip,” she said. “You—”
Zenitsu thrust a stack of papers at her, breathless.
“Here you go, I think this is all of them…please don’t sue us, he has no money, his credit score is…”
“Shut up,” Sanemi snapped.
Up close, she was annoyingly pretty.
Not in a loud, obvious way. Pretty in the gentle way that made noise hate itself. A soft babydoll top over jeans, star pendant catching light, lashes dark enough to make her eyes look impossibly deep.
His brain betrayed him, curiosity tipping him forward like it had permission. He stepped closer before he could stop himself. “Say it again,” he said, low.
The way he asked for a rematch.
Her lashes lowered, then lifted.
“You should watch where you’re going.”
The words slid into his skin and stung.
“You good?” Inosuke boomed, head appearing from nowhere, upside down where he’d bent to retrieve a pen cap with his teeth like some kind of deranged trophy.
“I was,” she said mildly. “Until three seconds ago.”
Sanemi’s smile went thin. “It’s not that serious.”
She blinked once and he felt it like a slap.
“It doesn’t have to be serious to be your fault.”
He should have walked away.
He should have done a thousand things that weren’t standing here letting a stranger make his pulse pick up.
Zenitsu looked from one to the other, eyes wide.
“People usually say sorry when they knock someone over!” Zenitsu squeaked, fear crackling in his voice.
“People usually pay attention,” Sanemi shot back.
He flicked his gaze to the papers in her hands, to the neatness of her posture like she’d never been on the ground at all. “Campus isn’t some brochure.”
At that, something in her expression actually moved.
“Incredibly ignorant,” she said, and the words were a scalpel: light, sharp, definitely cutting. “Go yell at a bench or something. I don’t have time for this.”
Sanemi’s jaw clenched, reflex hard enough he felt it in his teeth. He’d expected a flinch or a flirty dodge.
He got none.
The only two people who hadn’t learned to fear the weather he carried were Kanae and this stupid girl.
It made the underparts of him bristle.
“Big word for a sidewalk,” he scoffed.
“Small thought for a man your size,” she returned.
Her phone started ringing, the tone far too gentle for someone so sharp. Cute. Annoyingly so.
She met his eyes for a heartbeat longer, then reluctantly let her gaze slide back to her phone.
“I really don’t have time,” she murmured to nobody in particular, already stepping past. “Excuse me.”
She didn’t thread delicately around him.
She pushed through, her shoulder thudding his with a satisfying, calculated knock. His body shifted because physics insisted.
Jasmine and vanilla lingered faintly around her, and for reasons he couldn’t name, it felt calm. Graceful.
“Princess,” he said without meaning to.
It came out like a reflex. Like a mistake.
She pivoted half a step, just enough to let him see the line of her profile under the harsh noon light.
“Don’t call me that,” she said.
Then she was gone into heat and noise.
The afternoon rearranged its weight.
The brick underfoot felt wrong somehow, the air too light, and Zenitsu produced a drawn-out squeak.
“What,” Sanemi snapped.
Zenitsu flapped the abandoned smoothie like a fan.
“She just…you just…are you okay?”
Inosuke popped upright, triumphant with the rescued pen cap. “SHE DID NOT FEAR YOU!”
Sanemi rolled his eyes so hard it felt like exercise.
“Congratulations. You found a person.”
“Two,” Inosuke cut in. “Kanae doesn’t fear you.”
The name hit him like a thrown pebble to the ribs: tiny, accurate, unwanted. His jaw loosened, then set again.
“She’s different,” he said, and tried to sound bored.
She was.
Kanae’s gentleness took his edges and sanded them down, turning the worst parts of him obedient.
Kanae taught him carefulness without shame. Her kindness was sunlight: warm, constant, unearned.
This girl, whoever she was, took those rough edges and reflected them back at him without bleeding.
She made him meaner, louder, made him see all the parts of himself he preferred to pretend didn’t exist.
It was not the same.
He didn’t like that his bones knew the difference.
Zenitsu craned his neck to see down the path where she’d gone. “That was Y/N, right? The peer mentorship, Delta Theta, nice to everyone Y/N?”
Sanemi didn’t look. “How am I supposed to know.”
“Because she helped Inosuke find the counseling center that one time and he swore fealty to her?”
“I SWORE WEDNESDAYS,” Inosuke corrected.
Zenitsu ignored him, eyes still tracking the empty path like it might give him answers. “And because everyone knows her,” he added, tone soft in the dangerous way. “Also because you got humbled.”
Sanemi grimaced and turned. “Say that again.”
Zenitsu hid behind the smoothie. “No thanks.”
They continued chatting, the moment smoothing itself over until it felt like nothing had happened.
A booming cheer carried across the quad as Rengoku waved. “SHINAZUGAWA! SPLENDID!”
He breathed through his nose and waved him off.
“Yeah, yeah. Give me a second.”
They went. The day resumed its show.
But the moment had lodged a splinter under skin: impossible to ignore once you knew where to press.
Sanemi’s problem was that his brain didn’t know how to shut up. He tried to outrun it anyway.
Apparently, that girl was some kind of angel.
And somehow, he was the one exception.
She was some peer advisor named Y/N, and, to his annoyance, she was kind of famous on campus.
But the problem was this: he didn’t get the gentle version everyone else did: the girl who smiled politely, listened quietly, patience made human.
The version he got was sharper. Icy. Beautiful in a way that made his temper feel embarrassed.
Sanemi hated defiance in general. He hated it when people tried to challenge him just to see if the scars had teeth. He hated it when people used tone like a weapon because he’d been raised by weapons.
But hers wasn’t performative.
She wasn’t playing with him.
She’d looked at him like he was simply wrong.
Like his volume didn’t impress her, like his face didn’t scare her, like the storm didn’t get special treatment just because it had chose to arrive loud.
He tried not to think about her mouth.
The worst part was the comparison.
Kanae was beautiful. Kanae was kind. Kanae was… good. She was the kind of girl you didn’t ruin with your messy hands. She was the kind you looked at and thought, I should be better. I should be worthy.
Y/N didn’t make him want to be worthy.
And then, as if his brain wanted to punish him, it offered up the most treasonous thought of all:
She might be prettier than Kanae.
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖
[04:47 PM] kanae: Can you come with me to grab coffee? I’m picking up trays for the sorority meeting!
Sanemi stared at the message like it was a lifeline.
Kanae was safe.
Kanae was quiet relief.
Kanae was the one person who could take the edge off his day without asking him to explain why he had an edge to begin with. She was the soft hand on his forearm that made his temper sit down and reflect.
So he went.
Kanae stood with her tote bag tucked against her hip, hair half-up, cheeks faintly pink from walking in the sun. She looked like summer’s gentler version.
“Hello Shinazugawa,” she said brightly.
“Hey,” he answered, immediately calmer.
Inside, the café was cool enough to feel like mercy.
The line was long, full of students who looked like they were being held upright by caffeine alone.
Kanae stood beside him, rocking gently on her heels, scanning the menu. Sanemi watched her.
She was pretty in a way that made the world feel less sharp. Her laugh was soft, her eyes kind.
Her existence felt like forgiveness.
So why did his mind insist on tucking Y/N’s face into the space beneath his ribs, like a joke gone wrong?
Kanae ordered first. “Two iced lattes: one with vanilla, one plain,” she told the barista, then added, “and three trays of coffee for pickup, please.”
The barista blinked. “Three trays?”
Kanae smiled sweetly. “Sorority things.”
Sanemi stepped forward to pay without thinking. Kanae glanced up at him. “You don’t have to…”
“Yeah, I do,” he cut in, already tapping his card.
“Thank you,” she said softly, low enough not to draw attention. “You’re always taking care of things.”
He shrugged, because praise made him itchy.
They moved to the side to wait. Kanae took out her phone and started checking off names on a list.
Sanemi tried to quiet his brain. It didn’t quiet.
Kanae didn’t ask immediately. She just watched him, patient as a sunrise, as if she’d learned long ago that his storms didn’t like being stared down.
Then she asked, softly, “What’s wrong?”
Sanemi blinked and looked down at her. “Nothing.”
Kanae’s lips curved. “That was not convincing.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted, because he was stupid.
Kanae’s eyes softened. She chuckled under her breath, then tilted her head like a big sister about to say something gently devastating. “Shinazugawa…”
He groaned. “What.”
“You know you can’t hide things from me,” she said softly. “Your face gives you away every time.”
“My face is always like this.”
“Exactly,” she said, amused. “So when you look more worn than usual, it doesn’t slip past me.”
A quiet tension settled in his chest, immediate and unwelcome, because she didn’t know anything.
Not the depth of it, not how easily he bent to her voice, how one word could render him undone.
She saw him as he meant to be: loyal and watchful, roughened by life, but gentle where she held him.
The irony was sharp enough to make him laugh.
Kanae blinked at him. “Why are you laughing?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly tired.
“Because you don’t know anything.”
Kanae’s smile didn’t shift. “Then tell me something.”
He should’ve shut up. He should’ve nothing.
He should’ve kept it buried, let the words sour and die before they ever reached the air.
Instead, softened by the café’s cool stillness and the warmth of Kanae’s voice, he found himself talking.
“I bumped into this girl,” he said, blunt.
Kanae’s eyes brightened with interest.
“Don’t get excited,” he snapped, then immediately regretted it because Kanae didn’t deserve snap.
“She’s annoying.”
Kanae tilted her head, thoughtfulness softening her gaze as she looked up at him. “Annoying how?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“She talks back. She acts like she’s above me.”
Kanae hummed softly. “Is she above you?”
“Kanae,” he muttered, a frustrated sound slipping.
Kanae smiled. “Does she scare you?”
He looked down at her, expression tightening. “No.”
Kanae let out a thoughtful hum, gaze lowering.
“Then why does she bother you so much?”
Because she’s pretty.
Because she’s defiant.
Because she pulls at something inside that won’t stay contained, and I hate how badly I want it to be mine.
He did not say any of that.
“She’s just irritating,” he said, like the word could grind the truth down to something manageable.
Kanae nodded slowly. “I see,” she said softly.
Sanemi frowned, the café noise pressing in.
“That’s all? No clever comment?”
Kanae laughed under her breath. “I’m thinking.”
“Don’t think too hard,” he said, tone edged.
She looked up at him, thoughtful. “So this girl… she’s mean to you?”
“She’s rude,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”
Kanae’s eyebrows arched in quiet surprise.
Sanemi sighed, like he was being asked to confess to a crime. “We ran into each other. And she looked at me like I was… dirt. Like I’m some ignorant brute.”
Kanae’s expression shifted, her brows furrowing.
“Did she call you that?”
“She didn’t have to,” he muttered, eyes fixed on the ground. “It’s the look. The tone. I’m not stupid.”
Kanae hummed thoughtfully, eyes downcast, fingers fidgeting with her hair. “And how did you handle it?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
The truth cut deeper than he liked.
“I told her to watch where she was going,” he said, which was technically true and morally incomplete.
Kanae smiled, knowing, and tipped her head.
“Sounds like you started it.”
“I did not—”
“And yet you did,” Kanae said gently, like she was soothing a barking dog. “You always do.”
Shame flared hot and tight beneath his ribs.
His eyes narrowed. “Are you taking her side?”
Kanae blinked, surprised. “I’m simply curious.”
“About what.”
Kanae inclined her head, innocent in tone if not in intent. “About why she’s even crossed your mind.”
Sanemi’s stomach dropped. His face heated.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Stop.”
Kanae laughed, eyes crinkling as she softened. “Okay,” she said kindly. “I won’t tease you.”
He looked away, annoyed at how grateful he felt.
After what felt like an eternity, the barista finally called Kanae’s name, and she moved to collect the trays, balancing them carefully in her slender arms.
Sanemi sighed, his expression soft despite himself, and stepped in to take most of the trays from her.
He almost passed for a gentleman.
Kanae didn’t argue. She just smiled.
The sun flared the second they stepped outside, blinding them. Kanae laughed through a squint, tucking a strand of hair back with her free hand.
The gesture held his attention for a beat too long. Then, inexplicably, Y/N surfaced in his thoughts.
He wondered if she could be soft in the same way, hair tucked back, lashes lifting, something gentle.
Or if she’d do it sharply instead, tucking her hair back with a glare, looking at him like an idiot.
He groaned under his breath.
Kanae peered at him, fingers skimming his forearm.
“Still thinking?”
“I’m always thinking.”
Kanae hummed, eyes forward. “If she gets under your skin, maybe she’s more than just annoying.”
His jaw locked, a sudden weight sinking in his gut.
Kanae had no idea.
No idea that he wanted to tell her, over and over, that she was the only one who crossed his mind.
Instead, he scoffed and shut his eyes. “Don’t start.”
Kanae didn’t push. She never did.
After a beat, she spoke absently, as if she was thinking out loud. “She sounds like someone I know.”
Sanemi grunted, jaw tight, and thought of Y/N.
Kanae was warmth and patience, gentle in every way. Y/N was cold, defiant, and all sharp words.
He couldn’t imagine the two of them knowing each other, much less sharing the same social circle.
“I doubt it,” he replied, exhaling through his nose.
Kanae let out a soft chuckle and nodded.
They dropped the trays off at the sorority room.
Kanae thanked him with a quick, warm squeeze of his forearm, her small ritual of affection, and then disappeared into a flurry of planning and laughter.
Sanemi watched her go, huffed out a breath, then shoved his hands into his pockets and walked off.
He hadn’t confessed anything that mattered.
The conversation was supposed to close the loop.
His mind stayed occupied all the way home.
His phone lit with a couple messages: Rengoku shouting about a meeting time, Inosuke sending a photo of a cat, Zenitsu spiraling about a quiz. He answered with the appropriate amount of irritation.
Then silence returned.
And just like that, his mind slid back to that wretched woman again. It wasn’t fair.
He imagined her on the floor again, hair disheveled, glaring up at him, and hated how clearly he could see it.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing.
That she was just a girl who talked back.
He told himself he’d never see her again, that she was just some girl he’d bumped into, nothing more.
But as he stared at the ceiling, he found himself thinking about her top, about how it hugged her upper body before falling away, light and deliberate.
The way she’d moved like elegance was a weapon.
“Stop,” he told himself, like he was talking to a dog.
His phone lay silent on the coffee table, and he fought the growing ache urging him to look her up.
What was that club Zenitsu said she was in…?
He opened the fridge and stared, hoping hunger would do what willpower hadn’t. It didn’t. He shut it.
He tried to ground himself by thinking of Kanae: sweet, gentle Kanae, with soft lips and kind eyes.
He wouldn’t see her again, Y/N was nothing more than a passing moment. That was the end of it.
Outside, the quad’s bells chimed, laughter rose and faded, a dog barked and Sanemi heard it all.
He didn’t know it yet, wouldn’t admit it for weeks, but the reason he couldn’t stop thinking about her wasn’t because she was defiant.
It was because she was defiant with him.
And his world, apparently, had other ideas.
He passed out on the couch with his phone untouched and his pride stubbornly intact, ignoring Inosuke’s hooting and Zenitsu’s wailing entirely.
The sun would come up in the morning, and he would see her again, because fate was cruel like that, and because “never” had never listened to him anyway.
We don’t believe in pure love anymore. We don’t even believe anyone can truly love us. Love has stopped being about hearts; it has become a game. Who falls first? Who gets hurt first? Who pretends better? We play hard to get. We read malice in every move. Love used to be soft, love used to be calm, now it’s nothing but confusion dressed as passion, chaos sold as romance. One day he loves you, the next day he vanishes. One day you’re his world, the next day you’re a stranger. We’ve even named the emptiness: situationships and many other fancy names, as if new words can make emptiness feel less empty. Love is no longer love. It’s a performance. It’s a strategy. It’s a battlefield of fragile egos. It’s pathetic. And the scariest part is, I don’t know how much lower we can still go.
