The Night We Met

hai :3 can i request an enemies to lover miguel o hara fic where they get stuck in a closet together and reader kinda has to sit on his lap because there isnt any space and so after a few minutes of being in there, reader pisses off miguel and miguel kisses them to shut them up and then the rest is history ig 🙇‍♀️

PLS AND THANK YOU! 🙇‍♀️

also pls make the reader speak spanish im BEGGINGGG.

CLOSET

hi! ofc you can! I did my best! I’m sorry that it sucks and is cringy😀😭

Miguel O’ Hara x Hispanic Reader

Masterlist

Warnings: Suggestive Language, Maybe a glimpse of smut, and Miguel being an asshole

You were one of Miguel’s first recruits, you had been working in the spider society for as long as it had existed, you and Miguel were close (or you would like to consider that) since you both shared the same culture and language and it was easier for you to communicate with him when your English wasn’t as good as it is (since in your universe Spanish was the predominant language) and he would be one of the few people who could understand your accent or you speaking Spanish when you forgot a word.

He took it as his personal job to teach you English until you perfected it and people who didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to guess that it wasn’t your first language( though sometimes you still would forget words in English or express yourself better in Spanish) you would both mutually bring food for each other or bond over music, so yeah you considered yourself close to him.

That was until he started becoming way more stressed about everything, yeah he has been a sour asshole ever since his canon event, but people were at least able to get small responses and have conversations that weren’t all about work with him, but as the spider society grew, he felt a lot of pressure on him and started drowning himself in work to the point that he would isolate himself for days until he got everything he needed done, he could spend weeks without sleeping and eating, and obviously as he became more stressed his memories started to impulse even worse emotions on him than they did before.

Of course this made you and your other teammates worried about him, so you started to bring him lunch, make sure he slept, and just went to see if he was okay, but you checking up on him started to annoy him as he got more irritating because of the lack of sleep and the accumulation of stress, so one day he just decided you annoyed him and soon that annoyance turned into hatred, or that’s what he thought it was.

This made him become snappy at you and we all know he can be the greatest asshole, at first you’re patient with him, thinking it will pass, but as it gets worse you reach your ending point and lose all patience starting to respond to him the same way he talked to you.

The sudden change weirded everyone out, but they also noticed that ever since you started hating Miguel back, his mood became even worse, well everyone noticed except for you, which surprised everyone since you were one of the smartest people in the spider society.

So thats why everyone refused to go to a mission with Miguel when he asked them to, arguing that they already had a mission, or that they had something really important to do, until Miguel had no other option but to take you and you had no other option but to go with him.

“Do i reaally have to go with him? I mean can’t he just ask Ben instead?” You said to Jess

“Nope honey, Ben has a really important therapy session”

“Okay? so then ask Gwen? Pavitr? Hobie? anyone else?”

“He already did, they’re all busy”

“Then why can’t you go”

“As important as the spider society is, I have an ultrasound appointment today, so I can’t go even if I wanted to”

“Well the world just hates me then doesn’t it”

“Maybe it does, or maybe it’s doing you a favor”

“Trust me, being alone with him is not a favor, i don’t want to be screamed at about how i’m annoying and a fucking- what was the word? uhm una carga? how did you say that?”

“A burden?”

“Yeah that! I don’t want to be called a burden and shit like that”

“You’re no burden, but I’ll tell you what you sound like, a teenage girl, come on, you’re an adult, you can take things in a professional way”

“Well the one that’s childish is him not me”

“Uh huh, well i’ve gotta go, good luck!”

“Yeah whatever”

You were now approaching Miguel’s office while wishing you were dead ‘Puta madre neta me lleva la verga, ahora si ya no tengo de otra más que ir’ (Fuck this shit, now I really don’t have any option but to go), you were starting to grow nervous as you approached his door, you hadn’t been alone with him since your last fight where he directly called you annoying and a burden, but now you had no other option.

After finishing the mission without actually talking to each other unless necessary, you both came back to the HQ, when you arrived it was weirdly quiet and no one seemed to be there doing their duties even if it was not that late, which was really weird, that was until you saw Peter B. approaching you with a worried look

“Hey y/n, have you seen MayDay? I can’t find her, usually it takes me an hour, but it’s been four hours and I haven’t been able to find her and I’m starting to get worried” Peter said to you while still running up to you and then catching his breath

“Oh, um I’m sorry but we just got back from a mission so we haven’t seen anything, but we can help you look!”

“No we can’t” Miguel said

“Yes we can, anyways where was the last place that you saw her Peter?” You said after glaring at Miguel as if looks could kill

“Well, I think it was in that one room that has a closet.. I always forget what it’s called”

“Okay yeah, I know which one you’re talking about, let’s go take a look”

Miguel followed them even if he said he wouldn’t be helping, Mayday being on the loose could press a lot of buttons and break a lot of things and cause a lot of problems, so there he was, inside of the closet with you, while Peter “looked” around the room, until they heard a loud noise of the door closing and now he was trapped inside with you, the worst thing is that because of the lack of space you ended up in his lap.

“Great, just what I needed”

“You know I’m not happy about being here with you either okay?”

“Oh is that so? or was this your little plan to get me trapped with you and to get all up on my personal space”

“WHAT? I would NOT do that, and I do NOT want to be in the same room as you you fucking asshole!”

“Oh yeah am I an asshole? sorry I couldn’t understand you with that accent”

“WHAT? okay now you’re being unreasonable, you want me to say it in Spanish? I will, Yo no planee esto wey, yo no quiero estar en el mismo lugar que tu, yo no quiero que me hables, yo no te quiero hablar y mucho menos molestar tu pinche espacio personal, así que neta hazme un favor y cállate un rato que ya no te aguanto cabrón, neta deja de cagar el palo y de ser un pendejo de la nada y ni me trates de culpar porque yo ni se que chingados te hice para que me odies tanto-“. (I didn’t plan this, I don’t want to be in the same place as you, I don’t want you to talk to me or to talk to you or even less to be all on your fucking personal space, so please do me a favor and shut up a little because I can’t deal with you anymore, please stop being such an asshole out of nowhere and don’t blame me because i don’t even know what the fuck I did for you to hate me so much-) That’s when you felt something on your lips, and it took you some time to realize he was kissing you, Miguel O’Hara was kissing you, you sure as hell felt as a teenage girl, butterflies in your stomach and everything.

On the other side Miguel was starting to get nervous as you didn’t return the kiss, he was starting to pull away and about to say he was sorry and he didn’t mean it when he felt you pulling him close and kissing him again, at first it was just a sweet kiss, but then it started to get heated, he couldn’t help but moan when he started feeling you grinding against him, with each second passing making him harder, he started kissing your neck and sucking “Fuck Miguel- you’re gonna leave marks” but he didn’t care, he continued, hearing your moans was paradise to him, he wanted to take you there so bad, until, they heard a knock “Um guys? are you okay?” Peter B said as he unlocked the door and opened it making Miguel groan in annoyance “This isn’t over.” he said before the door completely opened and revealed a Peter with a smiling Mayday in his arms.

This was life changing

genius. [akaashi keiji x f!reader] chapter three.

>>You struggle to pay rent on your limited graduate student salary, and your worst enemy agrees to help you out.

or

You realize you need to find a partner for your faceless porn account, and Akaashi Keiji is the only man who meets all your requirements.<<

series status: [ongoing]

previous. || masterlist. || next.

a/n: so much to say and so little time to say it

[feel free to buy me a cup of coffee!]

When you come to, you’re completely slumped over Akaashi, your head buried in the crook of his neck and his arms hanging loosely around you. He’s breathing hard, jostling you where you lie flat on top of him.

“Shit,” he breathes, lifting one hand to his hair and curling his fingers into the locks. You make a small noise, one that’s neither awake nor asleep, and he taps his other hand on your back lightly. “You good?”

You nod groggily and try to lift onto your hands. Your arms shake, so you adjust, but the motion has you both flinching, because Akaashi’s still inside of you. “Fuck,” you whisper to yourself, oversensitive, and he drops both hands to your hips, breathing out shakily while he lifts you off of him. You start to fall sideways onto the bed, but he catches you, throwing his body toward yours and catching you so that you don’t hit the mattress too hard.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he says, a furrow in his brow when you glance up at him. “I put you through a lot.”

“Yeah, you tend to,” you joke weakly, your head lolling to the side as he sits up. You both sigh hard, Akaashi barely managing to crawl to the end of the bed for your phone and both sets of underwear before he returns to his spot. “Thanks,” you mumble when he hands everything to you, and, as you’re sliding your panties on (and ditching the bra, because you can’t be bothered right now), you look down at the sheets. “The bed’s dirty.”

“Don’t care. Need a nap.” He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, groaning. You curl up on your side next to him, your eyes heavy and your muscles aching. A nap sounds glorious.

Before you can drift off, however, his words are ringing through your head.

‘You know me better than that.’

Your eyes crack open, and you stare at the side of his face. His head is bobbing slightly as he starts to fall asleep, eyes flickering open and shut, and you feel distantly bad for interrupting.

“You’re really not doing it on purpose? Any of it?” you whisper, half-hoping it doesn’t wake him at all.

His eyelids flutter, and he turns his head groggily to meet your gaze. When he sees you looking, he turns onto his side, achingly slow, until he’s facing you, too. And then he shakes his head, the exhaustion clear in his every move.

“Not at all,” he whispers back, surprisingly open with you in his tired state. “Are you?”

You frown slightly, confused. “What could I be doing on purpose?”

His eyes slide shut for a moment. “Everything.” 

You get the feeling that what he’s just admitted is bigger than what you have the space to process right now. So you just shake your head, too, and echo his words back. “Not at all.” 

“Okay,” he breathes, after a pause that’s so long that you’d wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “That’s settled, then.”

“I don’t think anything’s settled.” You could probably stop whispering, but the world outside is starting to grow dark, taking this room with it, and the only light in the house comes from the kitchen, so far away from the space between you and Akaashi. And his pinky is brushing up against yours, twitching as he falls asleep, but he’s reaching sleepily for it anyway, hooking your fingers together just before his breath evens out. You’re not sure that he realizes he’s done it.

You want to let him sleep – you want to sleep. But you need his answer. So you squeeze your pinky against his once, and his brows twitch as he wakes again. He hums softly, marking his attention.

“What do we do?” you ask, your words as vague and unclear as your head feels. He swallows, unknowingly shifting marginally closer to you. 

“Told you,” he breathes, a little slurred. “Not doing it on purpose. Jus’ happens.” He lets out a tired sigh and shifts again. “Everything jus’ happens…” 

“So, what d’we do?” you say again, eyes flitting all over his face for an answer.

“Nothin’,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “Nothin’ to do but let it happen.”

You stare at him so long that he falls asleep again, his head tilted toward yours. You wonder if you can do that – just let it happen. Whatever that means – whatever it is. You wonder if you can just give in to Akaashi Keiji like that.

‘You know me better than that.’

You suppose that’s alright. Because he’s giving in, too.

When you finally drift off to sleep, it’s with your forehead pressed against his and his finger curled around yours.

–

Keiji flies up in a tangle of limbs and a gasp that wakes you. 

“Shit-” His eyes fly to the window, seeing that dawn’s well past come. You groan, still curled up on your side, and his head whips around to the bedside table, his phone snatched up in an instant. 

It’s almost 7am.

“Fucking shit-” He rolls out of bed, missing his footing and tumbling right off of it. He hits the floor in a pile of his own body, groaning and shaking it off as best as he can, and you sit up quickly, caught off guard by his crash landing.

“Akaashi-”

“Shit, fuck-” He trips over his own feet, still half-asleep, and tries to locate his clothes. “It’s almost 7. I have to get home and shower and get my shit. I have to teach at 9.” He snatches his shirt off the floor and pulls it on, letting out a frustrated groan when he realizes it’s on backwards.

“Take an Uber. I’ll pay for it,” you try, but he just shakes his head, rushing to twist the shirt around.

“Need my bike later–wait.” He looks at you, in his boxers and his half-on shirt and his crooked glasses. You stare back, in your underwear and your bedhead and a pillow pressed to your chest in order to hide your body from him in this new daylight. “We only filmed one thing.”

Your eyes go wide, and you’re breathing ‘fuck’ as you stare up at him. He looks around the room, blinking hard. “What do we do?” he asks, still standing there like an idiot.

“I’m free tonight if you want to come back,” you offer. He nods – he thinks he’s free, too.

“Yeah, that works.”

“Okay, then take an Uber home, since you’re just coming back,” you push again. “And leave your shit here.”

“Okay,” he sighs, searching for his jeans. “That’s fine.”

He finds them on the other side of the bed, entirely unsure how they’d gotten there, and starts to hop into them. There’s a moment of silence, one where he goes through the mental list of his things – wallet, keys, phone – before you’re speaking.

“Akaashi.”

“Hm?” he hums, taking one last hop to get his jeans up to where they need to be before he’s wrestling with the zipper.

“You said last night that there’s nothing we can do except let things happen.” Keiji pauses with his fingers on his zipper, back turned to you and eyes flicking down at nothing while he thinks. Had he said that? “Did you mean that?” you ask quietly.

He tugs his zipper up and does the button, blinking rapidly. His ears start to warm with some unknown embarrassment. “I suppose I did.”

“So… are we just gonna…” You don’t finish the question, but he hears it, anyway, and his heart flips in his chest. 

Are we just gonna keep doing this? Whatever we want?

He glances over his shoulder at you, turning slightly while he tightens his belt around his hips. “What is it, huh?” he asks, a soft smirk lifting on his lips. “You attracted to me, Freak?”

You scowl, but he sees the interest in your eyes. It’s the same interest that plucks at his nerves now, as he’s doing up his belt and staring down at you where you sit, naked in the bed that he’s fucked you in twice this week.

“I think you know the answer to that,” you bite, but it’s lacking its usual edge. You’re nervous. 

He doesn’t have it in him right now to fuck with you, because he’s nervous, too. “Yeah. I do.” He scoops up his phone and runs his fingers through his hair. “Okay, I have all my shit, I think.”

You tap quickly on your phone with an uncertain nod. “Okay,” you say after a moment. “Uber will be here in two minutes.”

He nods, rushing to the door. “Thanks,” he breathes, and then he stops himself with a hand on the door frame. He shouldn’t leave like this. 

Backing slowly into the room again and eyeing you where you sit, he sighs. “Freak.”

You look up from your phone, frowning. “Is that just gonna be your new name for me-”

“I’m attracted to you, too.”

Your mouth drops open, and his splits in a smug grin that hides how terrifying it had been to admit that. 

“But you probably figured that out, didn’t you?” he asks quietly. When you just swallow and nod shallowly, he nods back. “So, yes. We’re ‘just gonna’.” He quotes your unfinished question and offers no ending. The rest of it sits between you, the silence empty and full at the same time.

You let out a long breath after a moment. “Okay,” you whisper. 

The sound of it – of your agreement to the unsaid proposal he’d just made – makes his fingertips go numb.

“Okay,” he breathes back. “I’m gonna go.”

“Okay.”

As he sits in the back of the Uber, Keiji tries to remember what he’s in such a rush for.

–

The time between October 25th and November 11th passes in a blur.

You and Akaashi find a flow, one that’s surprisingly easy. He comes over twice a week, as planned, and the world around you – outside of you – reduces to nothing but the things that happen inside the walls of your apartment. You both leave everything behind and enter into the suspended disbelief that carries you through this arrangement. 

He bends you over every surface in the spare bedroom and forces you to forget who you are, not that that’s hard with the way he handles you. You talk back as often as you can, because the way his eyes light up when you do tells you he likes the challenge. That no one challenges him quite like you. You bump heads throughout the day, over and over again, only to fall into each other at night in a way that’s wonderfully in sync – two pieces of different puzzles that fit together as though they’d been made that way. 

You start to think after a while that every argument you find yourself in with Akaashi Keiji only serves to make this thing between you stronger when you’re alone. Because on the days that your tension is particularly bad, you find it that much easier to give in to him. On the days when you’re particularly combative, he’s that much more eager to mold you into what he wants. Easy, like putty under his fingertips, you give for him – and he gives right back, just like he’d promised.

He still won’t let you touch him, not in the way that you want. After two weeks, he still won’t let you show him how to get out of his own head. He spanks you, ties you up, bends you in ways no one ever has before and makes you do things that would be completely humiliating if not for the fact that it’s him making you do them. You know that – you’re aware enough to know that it’s because it’s him.

That it’s always been because it’s him.

So even if he won’t let you do the one thing you keep asking for – tears in your eyes, a pout on your lips, anything that might make him give in to you – you can’t find it in you to be too upset. Because a deal is a deal, and Akaashi Keiji’s good for his word. And in return for giving him what he wants, he fucks you in your favorite position, once and then twice more in the same night, because you’re just that good at listening.

You listen to him, no matter the request, and he makes it worth your while without fail.

It bleeds into your everyday life without either of you realizing it. 

Not the sex – never the sex. But things are different now. That suspended disbelief reaches, aching and stretching, into the corners of your days, touching the tension between you and then slipping away before you have a chance to recognize that things are changing.

Akaashi sits in the back of the LEM meetings now, where no one can see him. He lets other people take the round table, slipping in at the last second and taking a seat against the wall instead of coming five minutes early like he always does. He does it on purpose – you know he does, because he makes two choices. 

The first is that – on days when you don’t present – he sits right behind you and taps his foot ever so lightly on one of your chair legs, just to remind you he’s there. And when you inevitably inch forward, he’s quick to adjust, because the universe had cursed him with long legs and he’s more than willing to use them. If you grow annoyed enough to turn and glare at him, you’re always unlucky enough to catch the smirk tugging at his lips and the heated look in his eye, because he gets off on you snapping at him. 

You both know that now, and he’s not ashamed to admit it, anymore. Not to you.

The second – much, much worse – comes on the days that you do present. Because you’re forced to speak to a group of your peers and advisor for twenty minutes straight. Twenty minutes where Akaashi Keiji sits in the back of the room and undresses you with his eyes. His long, dark eyelashes flutter as his gaze travels across your body, and his bottom lip gets trapped between his teeth without hesitation. His head tilts this way and that, giving him the angles he needs to ogle you. 

A few seconds on the hem of your skirt, giving way to thighs that, when pressed together like that, hide the marks he’d left only the night before. A few seconds on your throat, because, if he strains his eyes enough, he can see the traces of himself there, purple and slathered in concealer. A few seconds on the buttons of your blouse, the same buttons you’d had to sew back into your shirt because he’d accidentally ripped them off in his rush to undress you last week. 

But maybe that’s your fault for wearing one of your roleplay blouses to campus that day. Maybe you’d done it on purpose. Maybe, over the last two weeks, you’d come to anticipate the shiver of nerves that would run down your spine when your day to present would come back around. Maybe you’d started to look forward to the way he would inevitably grill you with questions after spending twenty minutes flustering you, because – as you’d come to learn – Akaashi Keiji’s preferred form of foreplay had always been psychological.

Maybe that’s what you get for choosing him.

Maybe that’s why you’d choose him again in a heartbeat.

It takes too long to notice that other people are starting to see it, too. That, when Bokuto digs through your fridge and holds up a container of kung pao chicken in confusion, your stuttered excuse of having Akaashi over to grade exams together hadn’t passed over with Kuroo as well as you’d hoped. That, when Akaashi beckons you away from lunch to go to Syntax lecture together, Tsukishima’s eyes follow you out of the dining hall, watching you two walk closer together than usual. That, at Bokuto’s parties, Yachi had started to realize that Akaashi was careful with her personal space on that couch, but not yours.

It takes too long to notice those things, for both of you. Because you’re both too busy noticing each other.

At night, Akaashi doesn’t text you anymore. He just logs on to xxxvids .com and pings you, no matter how many times you tell him to stop being weird. He pings you there and takes up most of the time you could be spending responding to other messages, talking about absurdly normal things like grading and dissertation progress. It adds to the suspended disbelief, and you think that maybe you both know it. He always drops a five-star review at the end, and, after a week of it, he starts gifting you the in-chat badges and stickers that cost money. He sends them without hesitation, the money adding up so quickly that you start to threaten to block him. 

‘You won’t block me,’ he always messages back. ‘You like my attention too much.’

You hate how well he knows you.

So you start to text him your solo videos before you post them. Because you know him, too. Because you know that all you have to do is attach a cheeky message – ‘since you liked it so much the first time ;)’ – before he comes running, your phone ringing angrily every time.

‘You better cut it out,’ he always says. 

‘What’re you gonna do, punish me?’, you say. Because you know that he will.

You know that Akaashi will always give you what you want, no matter how far you push his limits outside of the bedroom. Because as long as you give him what he needs when it matters, he’ll do just the same.

That understanding becomes real in ways you hadn’t predicted, much too soon.

–

Keiji tugs on the collar of his turtleneck in annoyance, the fabric rubbing against his skin in a way that irritates him. He passes through the mass of people in the dining hall, grimacing when his shirt sticks to his skin, the heat a bit unbearable.

It’s still too warm out to be wearing something so clearly meant for winter, but he’d been in a rush this morning, and he hadn’t had time to cover up the hickies you’d left on him two nights ago. He’d cursed you and your family line when he’d spotted the marks in the mirror, because he certainly did not have time to cover them up with the concealer you’d bought him. He’d picked out the first high-neck item he could find in his closet, which just so happened to be this awful wool sweater that’s heavenly in the cold and absolute hell any other time.

You’re already at the table with Bokuto when he finds you, and he sees your eyes drop to his neck. Your eyebrows go up with interest, and you’re hiding a smirk, because you know exactly why he would ever have chosen such a bad outfit for today’s weather. He sits with a sigh, his loudly clattering tray one of the many micro-decisions he’s making to let out his irritation today.

“Hi, Bokuto,” he says quietly, only acknowledging you with a nod of his head. You nod back, seeing when he rolls his eyes subtly at you. It makes you smile, so you turn it on Bokuto, because that’s more natural than smiling at Keiji.

“Kou, have you heard back from the Expo?” you ask, giving the larger man all your attention. Keiji’s eye twitches slightly, and he digs into his lunch, trying not to let you see. But he knows you have, because you always do. 

Sometime in the last two weeks, you’d picked up on the way his shoulders tense when you talk to Bokuto, on the way his jaw clenches and unclenches when you touch him. On the way he’s just that much meaner in bed afterward.

He’s not stupid enough to believe he’s not a little bit possessive. He’d felt it enough times over the last few days. 

It always starts with an annoyance that strums in his veins when his best friend hugs you – because there’s a heat map on your body that only Keiji can see, one that shows him all the places he’d put his hands the last time he’d fucked you. And he has to sit there and watch Bokuto’s hands cover it all up. 

It’s worse when Bokuto lingers, friendly and unassuming, in your personal space, because Keiji knows you won’t smell like you afterward. He always tenses when it’s not your perfume in his nose when you pass him by. His mind goes blank when it’s Bokuto’s cologne instead, stronger than his own and not at all suited to your skin.

It always leaves him feeling like a fucking dog, overcome with some strange urge to pull you close – in public or otherwise – and drown you in things that smell like him. His cologne, his shirts, his coat, he doesn’t fucking care. It irritates him. And you’d noticed.

Of course you’d noticed – because you’re annoying like that. You’re annoying enough to feed into it, giving Bokuto extra smiles and extra sweetness when Keiji’s around, because you know that, the next time you’re alone with him, Keiji will make you cry and beg for forgiveness.

And it doesn’t matter how many times he reminds himself that it’s not his business to be jealous. It’s not his business to be possessive, because there’s nothing for him to be possessive about. You’re not his. 

But you lean into it. So he does, too.

You lean into it now, touching your fingers down on Bokuto’s arm when you ask him about the conference. It starts on Friday, and the results still aren’t out yet. It’s concerning, enough that it’s made everyone more high-strung than usual – conference results coming out with less than a week for speakers to prepare is unheard of.

But Keiji’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about the fingers you have on Bokuto’s wrist, wondering if you remember that, two nights ago, you had those fingers wrapped around his-

“No, I haven’t!” Bokuto exclaims, snapping Keiji out of his growing frustration. “It’s so weird and annoying! Have you?”

You shake your head, pouting slightly, and Keiji’s rice spoon shakes in his clenched fist. He’s really not in the space to do this today.

“We haven’t, no. Our advisor’s starting to get a little pissed,” you say in faux contemplation. You press one fingertip to your bottom lip and tap thoughtfully a few times. Keiji wonders if it’d be okay for him to throw himself across this table and tackle you.

When your eyes slide to his, catty and challenging, he loses his mind.

Dropping his spoon in the metal bowl with a jarring clang, he leans back, sighing performatively. “God, I think I chose the wrong outfit for today.”

Bokuto looks him over, nodding enthusiastically, but Keiji keeps his eyes locked on yours. You know to be wary of him, at least – your eyes narrow, and his even out, your challenge accepted.

“Yeah, dude, you really did. It’s way too hot to-” Bokuto goes quiet, staring. His eyes are locked on the place where Keiji has a finger hooked into his collar and is tugging it down, presumably to air out his warm neck.

His warm neck, where there are some rather you-shaped love bites marking his skin.

Your face drops, mouth hanging open and eyes wide as you stare at him. Keiji doesn’t react, because Bokuto’s looking at him, not you, but he does turn his gaze on his friend and tug on the collar a few more times with a relieved sigh.

“So hot in here. I made a mistake.”

“Dude.” Bokuto stares, open-mouthed, and then reaches for him, yanking the collar all the way down and exposing Keiji’s hickies completely. “Have you been sleeping with someone?!”

Keiji stares you dead in the eyes when he says–

“Just someone from my department.” He watches your gaze turn deadly, and he smiles politely at the glare you shoot him, turning back to his friend. “I don’t think you’d know her. It’s really casual.”

Bokuto immediately turns to you, and you fix your expression with impressive speed.

“Do you know who it is?” he asks excitedly, practically vibrating in his seat. “Y/n, please tell me you know who it is. Please, please, please-”

“Uh-” you stutter, laughing nervously and shaking your head. “Our department’s pretty big, Kou. And I’m not really in the habit of getting in Akaashi’s business.” 

It’s a solid save, Keiji will give you that. But he can’t help but smirk, because he can tell you’re not going to be letting this one go any time soon.

“Um, but-” He plasters an embarrassed grin on his face, nudging Bokuto in a way that’s meant to be sheepish. “We’re keeping it kinda quiet, okay? So don’t tell anyone?”

The man’s eyes go wide, and he’s nodding very solemnly. “Yeah, I totally get it. I won’t say anything!”

Your chair screeches when you push it back, standing to full height. Keiji watches you with disinterest.

“I just remembered,” you say through gritted teeth. “We were supposed to go over that handout before lecture. Should we go?”

Keiji just lifts his brows and looks down at his lunch. “I’m still eating.”

Your nostrils flare, and a rush of excitement flies down his spine. Picking up your bag, you smile sweetly down at Bokuto. “Sorry, Kou. Let’s get dinner tonight?”

Keiji can’t wait to get you alone.

He and Bokuto watch you go, Bokuto waving and yelling ‘see you tonight!’ across the crowded room. Keiji eats his meal silently, watching when Kuroo, Tsukishima, and Yachi break through the mass of bodies and make their way over to the table. The two men are stealing glances at each other as they walk, but Keiji’s learned that if he minds his own business, then Tsukishima tends to do the same.

And it’s important to him that Tsukishima does the same.

“Was that Y/n we just saw?” Kuroo asks as he sets his tray down. Bokuto nods bouncily.

“She said something about a handout that she and Akaashi need to go over.” He looks down at Keiji, who’s stuffing his mouth full of food at record speed. “Shouldn’t you go with her?”

Keiji nods, cheeks stretched to their limits as he tries to swallow it all. “Mhm,” he says, grimacing as the food goes down and then shoveling more in. He picks up his bag as he’s still eating, swinging it over his shoulder and snatching his tray up. “Gotta go-” He chokes a bit, barely recovering as he’s waving goodbye over his shoulder. He feels Tsukishima’s eyes on him for only a moment before the sensation passes, and he’s grateful he and the blond have come to a silent agreement.

He makes a beeline for the door, all but bursting out in a run as soon as he hits the sidewalk. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he yanks it out, heart pounding at the thought that it’s you.

[2:38PM]

Bokuto: DONT WORRY AKAAAASHI!!! 

Bokuto: I WONT TELL ANYONE ABOUT YOUR SECRET SITUATIONSHIP!!!

Keiji laughs to himself, pocketing the phone again as he heads straight for the Linguistics building. 

He only makes it to the corner before he’s being dragged around the side of the dining hall and slammed against the brick wall.

“You asshole-”

He closes his eyes and laughs, your voice washing over him in a giddy wave. “This doesn’t look much like a Syntax handout-” 

“You told him.” You lean in close, and he meets your eyes with ease, the grin tugging at his lips satisfied.

“No, I didn’t,” he says. “I told him I’m fucking a girl in my department. It could be anyone.”

“He’s gonna figure out it’s me-”

Keiji takes your face in his hand, squeezing tight and pulling you close, not unlike the way he’d done it in the stairwell two weeks ago. There’s something about the way you’d said it – like you really don’t want Bokuto Koutarou to find out you’re hooking up with him – that makes him angry. Irrationally so, because it’s not his place to be angry at all. But still, he grabs you. He grabs you, and then he turns you around, pushing you up against the wall with his body.

“You wanna play with me, Freak?” he mumbles, his voice cold as he stares down at you. “You wanna flirt and touch and smile at him like that when I’m around?” Your eyes are heated, so different from his own, and he wonders if you realize that it turns him on when you look at him like this. He leans down, close enough that he watches your eyes drop to his lips in a slight panic, because every breath you let out passes through his lungs next. 

He hopes you feel it in yours when he whispers, “Then I’m gonna play with you, too.”

Your gaze hardens on his, but he’d felt the shiver of anticipation that had just wracked your body. It eggs him on, makes him want to do worse.

“If you wanted to fuck Bokuto, you should have asked him instead,” he says, his voice hard. “But you asked me. Not him.”

Your eyes flick between his, and then your gaze clears of its anger. Keiji’s brow furrows.

“You’re jealous,” you whisper, amazement coating your words and sticking to him like honey. He scoffs, shaking his head. 

“I’m not fucking jealous-”

“You’re so fucking jealous, Akaashi-”

“Y/n,” he growls, pushing you up harder against the wall, but you just stare up at him, a wild look in your eye that makes him completely and utterly nervous. “I’m not jealous.”

“Well, you’re something,” you breathe, the smile on your face unable to be stopped, even with the way he’s squeezing your cheeks together. “What’s wrong, huh? Worried I might not just be yours to play with?”

His veins run cold, and there’s a terrifyingly significant part of him that wants to take you right here, just to prove a point. To make you scream right here, in public, so close to the dining hall where anyone – maybe even someone in particular – might pass by and discover you. It makes him crazy.

You make him crazy.

“If you fuck anyone else–” he whispers, cold and hard and laced with a threat. “–then this is over. You hear me, Y/n?”

He thinks you’re going to be angry. He’s saying something completely irrational. He’s being possessive and gross and terrible, and you should be angry with him. It’s not his place – none of this is his place. You can fuck whoever you want to. It was unspoken that there would be no one else, but it was never part of the rules. You should be kicking and screaming and fighting him with everything you’ve got.

But you don’t. 

“I hear you, Akaashi,” you just breathe, staring up at him with wide, twinkling eyes. You look excited, like you’d been waiting to bring this out of him. Like you’d wanted this from him, because there wouldn’t be any other reason that you would–

Keiji blinks, realization filling him. “You… aren’t attracted to Bokuto, are you?”

You grin wide, evil and wicked as you search his eyes. “God, you’re possessive.”

He wants to crawl into a hole and die.

–

You don’t see Akaashi again until Tuesday morning. He’d sat through Syntax lecture the day before with his head in his hand, ears burning and phone buzzing uselessly in his pocket with the teasing texts that you were sending him. He hadn’t checked his phone once, because he could see you typing and, based on the shit-eating grin on your face, they weren’t texts that he was safe to check in public. He’d booked it from the lecture hall the moment your advisor had stepped away from the podium, and he hadn’t answered any of your calls. At some point he’d just turned his phone off, but you couldn’t bring yourself to be worried about it, because, like clockwork, he’d pinged you online.

[9:07 PM]

tokyohandsome: i hate you.

tokyohandsome: youre the worst thing thats ever happened to me.

You’d just sent him another text to his phone, a voice note of you laughing and asking if he would still give you five stars even if you don’t message him back. He does exactly that, and then he texts you back –  a middle finger emoji.

You look forward to seeing him on Tuesday, but every thought of Akaashi Keiji leaves you when you check your email in the morning.

[06:22 AM] Notification of Conference Acceptance – Poster Presentation

You stare at the email, a mix of excitement and dread swirling in your gut. You’d gotten in. You’d gotten into the conference. A poster presentation isn’t as much of an achievement as a full talk – you’d have to stand around in the poster session for an hour just talking to whoever would be willing to drop by and listen for a few minutes, instead of having the attention of a dedicated audience for twenty minutes plus a Q&A session – but an acceptance is an acceptance. It’s an accomplishment and a point of pride to be accepted to conferences, especially to one like Ling Expo.

Ling Expo, which starts in three days.

Three days to make a poster, with teaching responsibilities, pilot data to analyze, and a dissertation chapter due to your advisor tomorrow afternoon.

Right. Okay, then. Time to get to it.

–

You don’t think you’ve ever had a day quite this bad before. It’s barely 11am, the LEM meeting something that you’d consider a break right now, and you feel like you’ve been put through hell. You’d spent the morning analyzing data and trying not to cry when your code for the analysis had returned an error message for the sixteenth time. You’d gone through your advisor’s comments on your last chapter draft, trying not to cry again when you’d seen the major revisions he’d left in the margins for the section you haven’t done yet. And then you’d taught your Semantics class, trying not to cry again when someone had asked a question that you’d just answered four minutes prior.

By the time you flop down at the round table in the lab room, your head is screaming and you’re about one minor inconvenience from sobbing in front of everyone. 

When Akaashi silently sets a steaming hot latte down in front of you, you think you might start sobbing anyway.

You look up at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. You don’t see that everyone else is looking at him too, the whole room falling silent as they watch him act out of character. “Why?”

He doesn’t look much better than you. “Poster or talk?”

You blink. You hadn’t told him you’d been accepted. “Poster.”

He smiles, not like he’s proud of you but like he’s satisfied that he’d been right. “I got a talk.”

The room relaxes – he’s just gloating. Your advisor laughs low next to you, almost like he’s relieved that the universe isn’t turning on an odd new axis. But you keep your eyes on Akaashi’s, because you can see he’d meant it for what it really is.

He’s checking on you.

He takes the seat on the other side of your advisor, and you hear him breathe a sigh of relief when he sips from his coffee. You try yours, feeling your life come back to you just a little bit. 

Your advisor casts a look around the room, clearing his throat as he surveys you all.

“Based on the varying states of despair I’m seeing, we got a few acceptances to Ling Expo.”

The group of you laugh, and you feel that interesting wave of camaraderie fall over you that always comes around the time of this conference. That reminder that, even if you’re all different people working on different research, you’re just a group of twenty-somethings who landed in the same school, in the same department, working for the same advisor at the same time.

At the finish line, you’ll be vying for the same jobs – the same research positions, the same professorships, the same industry careers. But for now – for one weekend a year – the ten of you in this room represent the man at the head of the table, and, as brutal and unrelenting as he can be, there’s a reason it’s his lab group that gets invited to the biggest conference in Japan every year.

There’s a piece of you that’s glad that things between you and Akaashi had smoothed out this year – that, even if you still wage an academic war with him every chance you get, things between you will be different this weekend. Because, of the ten of you, there are exactly two PhD candidates in the room. Only two who will be watched above the rest, because only two are on the job market at this very moment, their competence on display in front of the brightest linguists in the country.

Two, who sit on either side of the head of the table at this very moment.

The stress comes down on your chest harder than before.

“I know it’s really short-notice,” your advisor says, shaking his head and staring down over his bifocals at his laptop screen. “The organizers have been a little scattered this year, but I guess it happens to the best of us.” And then he claps loudly, you and Akaashi flinching at the noise. “That said, they didn’t book enough rooms for everyone, so we’ll have to do some sharing.”

You nod emptily, too caught up in your mental to-do list for the rest of the day to really register what he’s said. It’s happened before, anyway – the larger, interdisciplinary conference always ends up drawing massive attendance records across all departments. You’d had to share a room two years ago, with a girl who works for one of the top three translation companies in the world now.

If you manage not to fuck up this weekend from the sheer lack of preparation, you might impress someone long enough to land a similar job.

Your mind lingers on that for the next few minutes, the pressure to represent your advisor well weighing down heavy on your shoulders. You should start your poster after this meeting – if you skip lunch, you might be able to finish it before the Syntax lecture. And – if you aren’t stopped for questions by students on the way out – you might be able to troubleshoot the data code for the rest of the day. You could probably afford to order takeout for dinner. That way you don’t have to waste time cooking, and you can even take a break afterward by hauling your stuff down to the coffee shop by your apartment and working there on the dissertation draft until morning. Oh, but there’s grading that needs to get done by Thursday night, and you won’t have time tomorrow-

“-eiji and Y/n. And I think that’s it.”

You blink, turning to your advisor. He’s already looking back at you, eyebrows raised.

“That is fine, right?” he says, smiling innocently. You hear the scattered snickers of your lab-mates, and you can only look over the man’s head at Akaashi. He’s staring back, eyes guarded and ears tinted pink.

Sharing a hotel room with Akaashi?

“What?” you say dumbly. “Sorry. I was doing damage control in my head for my workload.”

It eases Akaashi’s tension, his shoulders relaxing as he laughs with the rest of the room. Your advisor nudges you good-naturedly. 

“You and Keiji are together for room placements,” he repeats. “I know it’s not ideal, but we’ve got an odd number of guys and girls, so we need one co-ed room.” He looks between you lazily, as though his logic had been obvious. “And you two know each other best, so…”

Somehow, Akaashi looks more guarded now.

You’re not sure you’re in a place mentally to unpack everything this man’s just said. So you just nod along, ignoring the look of surprise Akaashi gives you when you only mumble ‘yeah, that makes sense’. 

“Great!” you advisor beams at you, returning to the rest of the group. “Now, about the presentation schedule-”

You tune out for the rest of the meeting, certain you must have fallen asleep with your eyes open, because Akaashi’s nudging your shoulder as he passes behind you on the way out. You blink, seeing that it’s already noon.

You rush to your office, barely hearing when there’s a knock at your door two hours later. A dark head pokes past, but you just keep your eyes locked on your double monitor setup, your fingers flying across the keyboard of your laptop as you fill in the text boxes of your poster.

“Y/n.” You just hum at the call of your name, watching the screen fill up with the literature review you’d boiled down to just a few bullet points. The dark head becomes a whole body, tall in the doorway of your office. “Y/n, it’s time for lunch.”

You blink, only pulling your eyes away from the screen because you’d filled in the whole section and could afford the break in your concentration. Akaashi’s at the door, staring down at you expectantly. When you don’t move to join him for lunch, his eyebrows go up.

“You have to eat.”

“Oh,” you say, shaking your head and going back to your screens. “I’m good. Too busy.”

“To eat?”

“To eat.”

He sighs hard. “Are you going to lecture after?”

You nod absentmindedly. “Have to. ‘s my job.”

“And you’re not going to eat?”

“Akaashi,” you say with a distressed laugh, turning to him again. “Please. You’re killing my concentration.” You gesture generally to the door. “If you don’t go eat soon, you’ll be late to lecture.”

He only steps further into the room, glancing out into the hall before shutting the door behind him. When he rounds your desk, it’s to examine what you’re working on. You recognize that, only weeks ago, you would never have let Akaashi Keiji see the state of your workspace.

But now, you just let his eyes fly across your laptop and monitor, too tired to do much more than lean back in your chair with a sigh. You’ve got the poster template up on your big monitor, zoomed in to the 300% mark so you can fill out the boxes. Your laptop screen is split in two, one side filled with a previous version of your talk slides and the other taken up by your dissertation chapter, the glaring red strikethroughs and lengthy comments left by your advisor popping out against the text.

He doesn’t comment on the state of your draft — on the mistakes and lack of understanding, on your flaws as a researcher, your places of improvement. He doesn’t comment on all the ways you don’t match up to him, even though the difference between your poster presentation and his talk presentation speak loud enough for both of you.

He doesn’t comment on your shortcomings or the state of your stress, loud and angry and visible in everything about you. He just sighs and crosses his arms and says —

“Do you want to cancel tonight?”

Your blood runs cold. 

You forgot he’s supposed to come over tonight. You didn’t count him in your schedule.

Still, the idea of not seeing him makes you feel weird.

You don’t look up from your screen. “Only if you’ve got too much going on.”

You leave it up to him. You want him to say he’s free, that he doesn’t want to cancel. You don’t want to cancel, even though the extra five hours would probably save you from drowning just a little bit. But you don’t want to tell him that — you don’t want to tell him that the thought of him cancelling makes your stomach hurt and your chest twinge with disappointment. You don’t want to show him that you’d rather throw yourself into worse stress tomorrow rather than giving yourself more time tonight.

 You don’t want him to see how badly you want to see him tonight.

“I’ve got time tonight,” he says quietly, and you don’t turn to look at him, even though you really want to. Even though you can hear that there’s more in his voice than the words he’d said. Because you know he doesn’t have time, either.

“Okay,” you say, nodding once and then sitting up to return to your poster. “If you don’t go eat now, you’ll be late to Syntax.” 

He leaves without another word.

When you join him in lecture, he drops a banana and a protein shake in your lap. You eat silently, swallowing over the lump in your throat.

–

Something’s not right.

By all counts, everything is fine. Everything’s as it should be. Akaashi has one hand planted firmly on your bare waist, the other locked tight around both your wrists as he keeps them pressed to your stomach. It feels good, the way he’s pushing his hips into yours – it always feels good. Never once has sex with Akaashi not felt good.

But now – even as your back is arching against the mattress and your legs are spreading further to let him in, the silence filled with the sound of your breathless pants mixing with his – something’s not right. 

It’s not him that’s not right. 

But it is. 

It’s the way he’s staring down at you, cyan eyes cold and detached. It’s not new, and normally it works wonders for you. Normally, it plucks at a strand of pleasurable desperation in your soul, one that wants to please him and give him anything he wants, even when he doesn’t tell you what it is. 

Tonight, that strand is plucked over and over, harder and faster until it’s wound tight. Tight enough to snap, because the way Akaashi Keiji’s disinterest is pulling at you is starting to hurt.

“What’s with you, huh?” he mumbles, half-distracted as his eyes roam your body and linger on how your breasts bounce when he thrusts hard into you. “You’re not so bratty tonight. You losing interest?” 

You shake your head, the string pulling at your spine. “No, it’s not-”

“If you’re losing interest-” he starts, cyan eyes snapping to yours. Filling with looming disappointment, like you’re not doing enough for him tonight. Like you’re not doing enough to keep him here. “-then I’ll lose interest, too.”

You’re not enough.

You feel your face twist before you can stop it, brows pinching together hard and eyes squeezing shut. Your mouth drags down in a deep frown, and your chest stutters as you try to keep a sob in, your eyes burning with tears all at once.

“‘m sorry,” you gasp, wanting to hide behind your hands but finding them trapped in Akaashi’s grasp. “I’ll try harder, I promise-” You cut off, body jerking as you sob, tears hot and angry as they fall down your cheeks. Your nerves are frayed, shocking and sparking at your skin and forcing every new sob to the surface. Your breath comes short, and you can’t find more no matter how hard you look for it.

You notice too late that Akaashi’s stopped moving.

You want to play it off, want to feed into his dacryphilia, if only to save face. “I can do better, baby-” you try, but it comes out weak and pathetic. Covered in the kind of tears that couldn’t possibly do much for him. “Just tell me what to do-”

“Y/n.”

You gasp, not expecting the hard edge of his voice or the sound of your name. Your eyes fly open, vision blurry and eyes stinging. He’s staring down at you, his own gaze full of alarm. “What’s your color right now?”

Your chest caves in.

“Yellow,” you cry, shaking your head and tugging at the restraint on your wrists. He lets you go, and you slap your hands down over your face, crying hard. “Yellow, it’s yellow-”

It’s red.

But you don’t want him to think it’s because of him – it’s not because of him, and you know that. You know, even in your anguish, that it’s because of how stressed you are. You can feel it in the cruel voice that taunts you, whispering that you’re not enough. Not enough for this program, not enough for your advisor, not enough for your dissertation or the field or anything else that you absolutely need to be enough for.

You’re not enough for Akaashi, either, but that’s not his fault. He hasn’t done a single thing wrong.

So you tell him your color is yellow.

But he hears it for what it is. 

Hears you for what you mean, even when you don’t say it.

You sob when he pulls out of you, because you don’t feel like you’re enough to keep him here, but you don’t try to convince him to stay. You just cry into your hands, your frayed edges made more jagged by the wail of your own voice, viciously loud and echoing off the walls as you curl up in place and let the sobs wrack your body.

You hear him moving around the room, hear him swear under his breath, hear your phone hit the bedside table. And then the mattress moves, shifting with his weight as he clambers back over you.

“Hey.” His hands find your biceps, palms steady and warm on you. He pulls you up, and you let him move your body however he wants. You just cry, embarrassed and hurting and wanting so desperately for this whole thing to be over. “Come here-” He lifts you into his lap, maneuvering you until you’re sitting chest to chest with him, legs wrapped around his waist. 

You throw your arms around his neck and press your body to his, crying loudly into the crook of his neck. His chest is warm against yours, and you can feel the fabric of his boxers sliding against your thighs. And his arms are strong and anchoring, belting around your waist and pulling you as close to him as you can physically be.

Akaashi Keiji feels safe, and you so very badly want him to stay.

“I’m sorry,” you sob, face hidden in his neck. “I’m so sorry - you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s okay,” he says, and you feel him speak more than anything else, his voice low and vibrating in his chest and in yours. He’s pulling the comforter around you both, and you’re safer still, wrapped up in this little bubble with him. “It’s okay. I was too mean tonight-”

“No, you weren’t!” you argue, angry with yourself for making him doubt this. “You weren’t too mean – everything was fine-”

“Y/n, you’re crying in my arms right now,” he jokes, but his hold on you never falters. He only pulls you closer. 

“But it wasn’t you,” you say, shaking your head against him. His throat is warm, and you can feel his heartbeat on your cheek. It pulses hard with anxiety, and you hate that you’ve done that to him. “It was everything else, I’m just-” Your tears are still flowing, but your chest doesn’t hurt so much. Your breath is easier to find. “I’m just not in a good place tonight.”

“I know,” he mutters. You feel his lips pass over your shoulder. “I know you’re not, but I still wasn’t nice enough. I should have been nicer.” His mouth is warm as it pushes gently against your skin. “I should have read you better,” he whispers.

“That’s not your responsibility,” you protest weakly. But his fingers are drawing warm shapes in your back, and you’re coming down from your peak of stress-crying, and all you feel now is extreme exhaustion.

“Yes, it is,” he breathes with finality. His lips are against your ear now, and his breath is sending waves of shivers down your spine – it usually sets you on edge, but in this moment it calms you, the feeling of him pressed against you completely as he whispers in your ear. “I have to know how to read you – how to know what you need from me.”

Your brain, worn and frayed, likes the sound of that.

“Okay.”

He stays quiet for a moment – mere seconds where he sits completely still with you in his arms. Where your chest presses firmly against his, your heartbeat slowing to match his, and then both of them slowing together, back to normal. Where your face presses to his skin, and his face presses to yours, the two of you breathing in time.

The thing that had slid into place and locked tight all those weeks ago – when you looked into Akaashi Keiji’s eyes the first time you’d slept together, the first time you’d gone over the edge with cyan in your mind – rattles now, chains jangling against your spine and pushing hard behind your ribcage. In the spot where your soul sits.

“Okay,” he says.

And then he stands, taking you with him. He wraps you up in the comforter and takes you, completely naked and wrapped around him like that’s all you know how to do, out of the room and into the living room. He pads through the room with you obstructing him in every way, and he does it with ease, pushing his way into your pantry and snatching the box of pop-tarts off the middle shelf.

He drops the box haphazardly on the coffee table and takes a seat on the couch, careful not to hurt you but still rough – certain and final – about the way he turns you in his lap. You sit with your back against his chest, swaddled and a little confused but otherwise allowing him to do as he pleases in any way he pleases. Your mind is too hazy to make any decisions, too cloudy to question his. Your brain is too hot, the jagged edges of your judgment too muddled and eroded away for you to do anything except trust him.

You leave your life and your body in Akaashi Keiji’s hands, because it’s Akaashi Keiji who knows what to do with them.

When he turns on the nature channel silently and comments ‘series about whales today’ with a half-interested hum, you start to cry in your hands again. He lets you, his thumb rubbing circles into your skin the only indication that he’s got his attention wholly on you.

He takes one hand off of you after a moment, only to hand you a pack of strawberry pop-tarts. And then to pick up his phone, previously discarded on the cushion. You watch through strawberry pop-tart and blurry vision as he orders Chinese food – wonton soup and two orders of dumplings.

Comfort food.

You cry harder, one hand clasped over your mouth as you listen to the narrator talk about whale migration. When Akaashi’s done ordering, he tosses his phone down and pulls you close again, letting you turn halfway so you can bury your face in his neck.

“Ready to talk?” he mumbles, soft and coaxing. You’ve never heard him speak to you like that before.

“Just stressed,” you whisper weakly, unable to give him more. Too tired to say more. 

His thumb pushes warmly against your hip on its path around the circle. “Ling Expo?”

You nod. “Dissertation, too.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding once. “I saw his comments on your draft. Er–” He laughs lamely. “The size of the comments, rather.”

You don’t respond. You know he’s further along in his dissertation than you are – he’s probably past the point of major foundational issues. It feels like you’ll never get there.

“Just feels like nothing I do is good enough.”

You don’t question why you tell him that. You just recognize that you’re comfortable enough to.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just nodding and keeping his eyes on the TV while he runs his thumb across your skin.

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” he finally says. You keep quiet, curled up against him and wondering where this is going. “I feel like you know that,” he adds. “But I just… thought I should make it clear.” His fingers find your hair, tangling tight and pulling you away with a firm hand so he can look at you. His nose brushes yours while he flicks his eyes between yours, searching you. Reading you. And then he shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean what I said. About losing interest.”

You’re enough for me.

Your throat tightens and your eyes well up, and his mouth is tugging into the ghost of a smile. “Don’t cry again,” he whispers.

“I’m gonna cry again,” is all you say.

He’s kind enough to let you hide your face from him again before you do.

When he has to go downstairs to get the food, there’s a hole gnawing at the center of your chest. 

That’s new.

You sit in silence, wrapped up in blankets and staring emptily at the TV. Thinking about the anxious knot in your stomach – about the angry tug of emotion in your throat, threatening to force tears into your eyes again.

When Akaashi slips back through your front door, the knot eases and the emotion mellows out.

That’s definitely new.

You eat in silence while staring at the TV – you in your swaddle and Akaashi in the jeans and hoodie he’d been wearing earlier – and then you stare at the TV some more, your mind turning over and over on itself as you try to figure out where this feeling had come from. The one that needs him.

After an hour, he says something quietly about getting home. You just apologize for cutting the filming short, and he offers to come over tomorrow. Your chest pulses with unplaced emotion. 

He leaves. 

You sit on your couch and stare at nothing, the TV off now. 

The knot is tight and making you nauseous. The emotion is rolling up into a painful lump in your throat. Your eyes burn with tears that won’t fall.

–

Keiji sighs and pulls his fingers through his hair, tugging tight and searching the shelves of the convenience store. 

He doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s nothing in this store that will make you feel better. He keeps picking random shit up – cookies, chips, snacks that he thinks you might like – and putting them back, uselessly trying to find something to ease your stress just a little bit. The clerk at the front is starting to stare at him, a bored teenager with judgmental eyes watching him be indecisive in the middle of the store.

He feels like throwing up. His head is hot and there’s an irritated pull in his gut, like he’s forgotten something. He keeps closing his eyes, willing it to go away, but every stupid snack he picks up and puts back down – a claw-machine stuck on repeat – makes the feeling worse. 

He picks up a can of coffee. Stares down at the label. Puts it back.

You only drink almond milk.

He needs to get home and shower, to use the rest of the night to work on the slide deck for his Ling Expo talk.

He walks one aisle over and surveys the sweets again. Picks up a package of cookies. Stares down at the label. Puts it back.

You like oatmeal, not oatmeal raisin.

He needs to grade and work on his dissertation chapter. 

Over to the far wall, the last shelf before the freezers. Picks up a bag of chips. Stares down at the label. Puts it back.

You don’t like this brand of shrimp chips.

There are a million things he needs to do.

His eyes drift slightly to the right, to the pints of ice cream lined up behind the lightly frosted freezer door.

You do like cookies and cream.

He stares at it, at the label that stares back at him, and the tug in his gut yanks hard at his nausea. 

He’s not going to get anything done like this.

Reaching over with an irritated sigh, he rips the door open and plucks the offending pint of ice cream off the shelf. He takes it to the clerk, too embarrassed to make eye contact.

“Girlfriend upset about somethin’?” the teenager asks.

Keiji doesn’t answer him, glaring down at the counter while he pays.

–

There’s a knock at your door thirty minutes after Akaashi leaves.

You’re curled up in the middle of your bed in oversized clothes when it comes, stomach turning as you try to sleep. Disappointment seeping through your skin, because you feel like something’s missing.

When the knock sounds, you turn in bed, surprised. You climb out slowly, padding through the apartment to the front door and peeking through the peephole.

Your heart sends a pulse of electricity through your whole body. You pull the door open, eyes wide.

“Akaashi?”

He stares down at you, lips pursed with frustration and ears tinted pink. He thrusts a hand out, a plastic bag dangling from his fingers.

“Here.” 

You take it, peering inside. “Ice cream?”

“Yeah.”

You blink up at him. “Thank you?”

He just nods. You wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. He just lingers, staring down at nothing.

And then he takes a step toward you, and his eyes meet yours.

Your breath catches in your throat.

You let him in wordlessly. He sets his shoes neatly in your foyer before moving to his spot at the couch and dropping his bag right where it was half an hour ago. He turns to look at you, scratching awkwardly at the side of his head.

You almost miss the way his eyes flick toward your bedroom curiously and then down at your pajamas.

Your bedroom. Not the spare room.

Your eyes well up when you realize that he means to stay the night. 

He exhales in disbelief, but you just cross the room in three strides and throw your body against his, arms wound around his neck and face lost in the collar of his hoodie.

He scoffs, even as his arms snake around your waist. “You’re such a crybaby,” he mutters, but any mockery he makes of you is overshadowed by the way he lifts you off your feet, pulling you closer. The bag falls from your hand, hitting the ground, and you wrap your thighs around him and lock your ankles behind his back.

He takes it as permission and carries you to your room without another word.

When he drops you to your mattress, it’s followed up by the shedding of his jeans and hoodie and the press of his body to yours, warm and safe and terribly confusing – because your body is used to this in a different room, in a different context. Not in your own bed, and not for any purpose that allows you to keep your clothes on.

But Akaashi just clambers toward you, hands rough on your body as he pulls you toward him. You hug him close, heartrate picking up when he throws himself between your thighs and wraps his arms tight around you, his face burning when he presses it to the crook of your neck.

You hold him like that, crying into his hair and feeling shivers race down your spine when he presses one kiss to your throat, and then another.

“Just go to sleep,” he whispers. “Everything’s fine. Just go to sleep.”

It takes you almost an hour to drift off, because your heart won’t calm down, but neither will his. It’s loud against your torso, and you can only imagine how annoying your own must be in his ears. You can only imagine how embarrassing your body’s being right now, because every brush of his lips against your skin makes your pulse beat just a little bit harder, and you know he can feel it.

You know he can feel it, but he keeps kissing you, anyway. 

His heart skips against your body, too. But he keeps kissing you, anyway.

You’re asleep before you can piece together that the aching nausea and the disappointment under your skin have faded away.

–

You wake up on Wednesday morning without an alarm.

It’s weird, because you always need an alarm. You always set an alarm.

But there’s a shift in the mattress beside you, so you don’t need one today.

You turn, peeling one eye open and staring up at the man leaning against your headboard. 

He hasn’t noticed you yet, because there’s a paper in his hand. A paper covered in sticky notes and highlighter and handwritten comments.

Your handwritten comments.

You watch him for a moment, watching the way he squints down at your comments and turns the pages this way and that so he can read the sideways ones better. His glasses sit on the end of his nose, and his hair is askew from sleep, pillow creases on his face and neck. The sunlight filters in through your sheer curtains in a way that makes his skin glow, but he sits in an otherwise dim room, not a single light in sight as he reads your thoughts on his work.

You blink groggily, and a thought crosses your mind – distant and strange – that it might be nice just to stay here like this. You, curled up in your comforter, watching Akaashi Keiji read quietly in the early morning light in your bed, shirtless and disheveled and entirely at peace with you.

You wonder if it would be too much to ask.

Akaashi sighs quietly and shakes his head at something you’d commented, and you can’t help but alert him that you’re awake.

“Somethin’ you don’t like?” you ask, watching him blink and turn to look down at you. 

He sighs again, shaking the paper in his hand with slight frustration. “Why don’t you say any of this shit in LEM?” When you don’t answer, he shuffles through some previous sheets, searching the margins and then pointing. “Like this. Why didn’t you tell me that these counter-examples exist? This is important data.”

You smile to yourself, too sleepy to argue with him. “I was worried that you’d thought of it already and just hadn’t written it there. I didn’t want to look stupid bringing it up to you.”

He cuts you a glance. “I’ve never thought you looked stupid.”

“No?” you say, smiling when he rolls his eyes. “You talk to me like you think I might be.”

“I don’t,” he sighs. And then he gestures to something you’d scratched into the edges with massive red question marks. “I think you’re the only one in that room who could think of this.”

“You really think I’m smart?” 

It’s a remnant of last night, that insecurity. You tell yourself that it has to be, that you wouldn’t be asking him something so vulnerable otherwise. It’s too personal, asking him to evaluate your intelligence when it’s the one thing you’re measured most critically on.

“Yeah,” he says plainly. Answering you plainly, like he’d never thought twice about it. “I do. And it pisses me off when you don’t.” He sighs again and then shuffles to the edge of the bed, waving the paper at you again. “I’m keeping this. I need it.”

The thought that he could ever need something from you makes your heart lodge uncomfortably in your throat. “Okay.”

“It’s 6:30,” he adds, standing and stretching his arms high above his head. You watch him, eyes lingering on his chest and the way his boxers slip under his hip bones when he lengthens his body like that. You tamper down the urge to put your mouth on those two spots, to press kisses there that taste like comfort and early morning. “Just so you know.”

“Okay,” you say again simply, wishing so dearly that you could just stay here. Knowing you could never ask him to stay here with you. “What time do you teach?”

“Nine.” He eyes you a moment, long enough for you to wonder if he’d seen you watching him wistfully. “I don’t have clothes here.”

“Oh.” The thought of him leaving makes your chest hurt. You recognize the feeling from last night. “Do you need to go back to your place?”

“Yeah.”

Oh.

You swallow, pushing away the odd, aching panic that’s rising in your chest. You don’t want him to leave. 

Akaashi chews on his lip. You reach for your phone slowly, like you want him to stop you. “Do you want me to call you an Uber?” you ask.

“Sure.” He swallows, watching you a moment. “Do you-” You lift your eyes. He looks away. “Do you want to go with me?”

Your nerves sizzle and snap, but the anxiety is washed away instantly.

You don’t know what to do with these feelings.

“Okay,” you whisper, staring up at him with wide eyes. His eyes flick to yours nervously, and then his lashes flutter as he looks away.

“Okay. Get dressed.”

You listen, that strand of desperation plucking away at you in ways that it really shouldn’t. 

Neither of you says anything about the pint of melted ice cream in your living room.

–

When Keiji shoulders his door open, it’s with a panicked glance around his apartment. He’s normally tidy, but this week has been especially difficult, and he doesn’t need you seeing the extent of his stress in the way he stops taking care of his space.

You stand awkwardly in the foyer, glancing around and then back at him. He’d noticed on the ride here that your face is more flushed than usual, that your eyes linger on him more than usual. He wonders if you feel the same strange need to be near him, or if there’s something else going on.

Because his eyes keep lingering on you, too.

He feels an itch under his skin, one that prickles and irritates him until he’s with you. He’d felt it this morning, when the threat of leaving your apartment without you had been on the edge of your conversation.

It had started last night, in that stupid convenience store.

Even now, as he ushers you into the room and gestures for you to sit on the couch, he feels weird about leaving the room. He’s only going to shower, for fuck’s sake. He needs to shower, because it’s already 7:15 and he still needs to prep for his class. But he lingers, rushing into the kitchen to make coffee in order to buy more time.

“You can raid my pantry if you want,” he calls from the coffee machine, hurriedly scooping coffee grounds into the basket. “You can eat whatever you want – it won’t take me long to get ready.”

“Okay,” you say, much closer than he’d expected. He turns, surprised, and finds you lingering at the entryway. Glancing at him and then away, flushing with embarrassment as you hover for no reason.

The thought that you hadn’t even wanted to be a room away from him makes Keiji’s skin burn with desire.

Something’s off. Something’s new, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.

You drift past him into the room, opening cabinets at random and peering inside with blank curiosity. Peering inside this little piece of his life, not necessarily searching for anything in particular but curious all the same. Keiji’s chest swells with emotion – a need to be nearer to you, closer to you than this.

He feels insane.

He shouldn’t need you the way he does.

You open the pantry door, leaning halfway inside as you poke around. “‘s really neat in here. Only you would be this neat.”

He’s got his hands on your waist before he can process that he’d crossed the room.

You gasp, eyes wide as he spins you around. “What-”

He shuts the door to the pantry by pinning you against it. Your breathing picks up when he presses flush to you, but your fingers are in his hair regardless. Your body opens up for him regardless, welcoming and familiar and trusting.

He wants to ruin you for anyone who’s not him.

Keiji drops his mouth to your throat, pushing his lips hard to the pulse point and breathing you in. You shiver, your head dropping back against the door. He tugs your hips against his to make a point – a point he probably shouldn’t make.

“‘Kaashi-” you gasp, and his entire body lights up with dangerously frayed nerves, the knot in his chest sparking and hissing with the threat of worse.

He doesn’t feel close enough to you. He wants more. 

Your fingers tug through his hair hard, and he groans quietly against your neck. He feels when your skin warms, feels when your fingers start to tremble. He’s making you nervous, nervous enough to shake in his arms. 

It’s a dangerous realization, the fact that he can make you feel this way. 

He knows that once you figure him out, too – because you will – he’ll be done for.

“Akaashi, we can’t,” you whisper.

He hadn’t considered fucking you in his apartment, but the fact that you had makes him want to cancel his class and keep you here all day.

“I know,” he breathes, his head spinning and his face radiating heat against your skin. “I know, I just-” He sighs hard. “Fuck.” 

There’s a low noise that climbs up your throat, one that he feels more than hears, and a part of him – the irrational part that wants to fuck you against this pantry door right now – wants to ask if you want to shower with him.

God, he doesn’t want to be apart from you, not even for that.

“You have to shower,” you mumble quietly, like you’re reading his mind and coaxing him gently away from the thought. He hopes that you’re coaxing yourself away, too.

“Okay,” he says, swallowing hard. He doesn’t want to let go – especially since you’re not letting go, either. “Okay. I should go.”

“You should go.”

He’s not convinced.

“I should go,” he says again, a little stronger. Stronger, because his hands are slipping under the hem of your shirt and pulling you closer instead of pushing you away.

“You should go, Akaashi,” you say, too, but it’s weaker this time. You’re weak to him – weak for him.

He’s so fucked. 

“Y/n,” he breathes, a warning inlaid and his pleas embarrassingly audible. Begging you to be strong with him, because he can’t do it on his own.

Your fingers slip out of his hair and clamp down on his shoulders, and you manage to peel him off of you. “Akaashi,” you say, your tone wavering but sharper than before. You’re trying. “You have to shower. We’re gonna be late.”

He meets your eyes and regrets it instantly, that swimming feeling filling his head and his face burning that uncomfortable, sticky hot again. 

“Yeah,” he whispers shakily, swallowing hard. “You’re right. I have to go.”

Your eyes drop to his lips, filling with a yearning that’s painfully clear for him to see.

Fuck.

He pushes off of you, backing away quickly and scrubbing at his brow. “Yeah. You’re right,” he repeats, louder this time. It doesn’t help, the thought of kissing you slamming into him hard enough to make him dizzy. “You’re right.” He turns away, padding quickly out of the kitchen and leaving you in the kitchen. “I’ll be back.”

The time away from you doesn’t help clear his head.

He just spends it thinking about kissing you.

–

Akaashi’s acting as weird as you feel.

The walk to campus happens in silence. When you walk into your usual coffee shop together and immediately run straight into Yachi, he flushes hard and mutters something about ordering first before making a beeline for the counter. You know there’s nothing you could say to save that moment – not with Hitoka staring knowingly into your soul – so all you’re able to do is smile weakly and chat with her in line, three customers behind Akaashi. She doesn’t pry, and you wonder briefly if all of your friends can see what you and Akaashi are trying so hard to hide.

He keeps it up throughout the day. But so do you.

So do you, because the way he’d acted in his apartment – taking up your space like it’s his own, like he’s unable to do otherwise despite trying – makes you think it’s okay to feel this way. To feel like you need more, even if you’ve already taken too much.

In your office, finalizing your dissertation draft and sending it off to your advisor, your mind is muddled, drifting often to the office just across the hall and the man sitting just inside. Your head is staticky, fuzzy, and you have to fight not to go over there. You have to fight, because half of you feels like you’ll be able to concentrate better on your work if he’s around, but the other half of you knows there’s no chance in hell of getting anything done if he’s in the same room.

It turns out there’s no need to fight, because he makes a decision for you.

A knock comes to your door an hour before lunch, the silhouette on the other side of the frosted glass all too familiar. 

The way he drags his eyes over your form when he walks in and then glances back into the hall with his bottom lip caught between his teeth makes you shiver visibly. He sees it – you know he does, because his eyes fly right back to you, heated and examining. Like he’s looking for something. 

When he mumbles ‘change of scenery’ under his breath and then crosses the room to fold into the chair on the other side of your desk with his laptop, you know he’s found it. The two of you don’t speak, but you can feel him watching you while you work, and you’re moving with a slight wobble in your step by the time you head to the dining hall.

At lunch, he sits right across from you, in Bokuto’s usual spot. You don’t say anything about it, not wanting to draw attention. Not wanting him to know how much you notice him.

You don’t say anything about the way he presses his knee between your legs, either. It shakes you to your core, that gentle nudge of his knee against the inside of yours. Your body sparks with nerves, but you don’t say anything, because he’s still talking to Tsukishima about jobs as if he hasn’t just rattled you of your ability to act normal at lunch. 

You say nothing, just letting his body heat nestle between your knees and trying your best not to burn at the feeling. His eyes flick to yours just briefly enough to mean nothing to everyone else – but it means everything to you, because he drops his gaze to your mouth before he looks away, and suddenly you’re back in his apartment, pushed against his pantry door with his mouth less than a breath’s distance from yours.

He swallows hard and returns to the discussion Tsukishima’s having with Yachi, Bokuto and Kuroo caught in their own conversation about the conference this weekend. You breathe deep and try to respond to Kuroo’s comment about the group meeting up at the hotel bar in everyone’s free time, but then Akaashi’s shifting across from you. He stretches his leg out under the table and takes up your personal space with purpose, and your words are lost in your throat.

It’s a reminder that Akaashi Keiji is possessive.

You wonder if he realizes how much you like when he’s like this.

You make it through lunch, somehow, and then walk in silence beside him to the Syntax lecture. You make uncomfortable eye contact with your advisor when you enter the lecture hall – uncomfortable, because he’s flicking his eyes between you and Akaashi and then smiling to himself as he turns away. 

You promise yourself that you’ll make it through lecture without incident, but that goes out the window the second Akaashi shifts and bumps his thigh against yours, halfway through the class.

Your breath catches in your throat sharply. He bumps your leg again and then leaves it there, thigh pressed firmly to yours. Only a moment passes – a moment where you trick yourself into thinking it means nothing, for your own sake – before his hand is sliding across your thigh, heat searing through your jeans.

You stiffen, scanning the room nervously. But you always sit in the very back of the hall, so no one’s able to see what’s happening. No one’s going to catch anything Akaashi does, which you’re confident he’s already calculated. Still, you don’t want to risk anyone glancing back, so you don’t speak to him.

You just wrap your fingers around his wrist, squeezing tight in warning.

He just slips his hand between your clenched thighs, curling warmly around the curve of your thigh and digging his fingertips into the plush give of your body. Your skin erupts in goosebumps, and you become needy almost instantly. The way he rubs circles into your jeans with his thumb makes you needy. The way he handles your body with ownership – the way you’d let him handle you last night, like you belong to him – makes you want him much more than you should. Makes you want him physically, but also in ways that you never had before. Not before last night.

You glance at him out of the corner of your eye. And then you shiver, because you realize that he’s hard in his slacks.

Oh.

He meets your eyes when your body reacts to him, and that gnawing, yearning feeling in your chest worsens.

His eyes are glazed over, distracted and hot. Distracted by the same terrible neediness that’s plaguing you.

Oh.

He looks away, squeezing your thigh again before moving his hand away and tugging his cardigan down over his tented pants subtly. Your chest swims with disappointment for the moment it takes him to extract his phone from his pocket, and then it fills with hope. 

Your own phone buzzes in your bag a second later.

[3:44 PM]

Akaashi: am i still coming over tonight?

Oh, dear god.

–

“That’s it, princess.”

Your mind fogs over with the feeling of him – of Akaashi’s voice in your ear, of every whisper that heats your brain that much more. Of the tingles that had started plaguing your every nerve the moment he’d started this – this praise – and simply don’t seem to be anywhere near easing up.

You rock your hips back where you sit in his lap on the couch of your spare room, arching your chest forward into his and breathing roughly when his arm curls tighter around your waist. You’ve got both hands on his shoulders, anchoring yourself to him like it’s your only link to sanity, and he’s using the hand he doesn’t have wrapped around you to push and pull at your hips, guiding you against him whenever you’re unable to do it yourself.

You feel full of him, warm and safe and muddling every thought that crosses through your mind while he fucks you. He fucks you slow, slow enough to trick you into thinking that it’s you who’s leading here. He fucks you slow and whispers that cursed praise in your ear and against your throat, knowing without ever having asked that it’s what you need from him tonight.

“Just like that, baby,” he breathes, his cock twitching against your walls when you moan to yourself, genuine and quiet and just for him. “You’re doing so good, fucking me so good.” You whimper into his hair, struggling to remember that there’s a camera and that you have a job to do. That your sounds can’t just be for him. That your pleasure can’t only be his.

But you want it to be, even just this once. You want to be his, just this once.

“‘m close,” you whisper, feeling that familiar, welcome tug under your navel.

“Come for me,” he breathes back, his lips brushing against your cheek. “Give it to me. You can do it.” 

You can’t help it. It’s entirely out of your control, spurred on by this entire week and the way he’s treated you. The way he’s handled you, in ways only he can. By the need you’ve been feeling, acknowledged and echoed tenfold in him, too. You really can’t help it.

And, looking back later, you can’t bring yourself to regret it.

“‘Kaashi,” you whisper against his temple, your pleasure washing over you in waves that are so close to what you need.

Akaashi stops moving his hips before you can get there.

Your heart stops at the same time.

He lifts his head, leaning back just enough to look you in the eye. Your breath cuts short, and you let him search your face – eyes flicking between yours before they fly across your other features. You let him search you, because you can’t bring yourself to hide anything.

“What did you say?” he whispers, alarm in his expression but not in the way you’d expected. Alarm that checks you, alarm that betrays a lingering anticipation in eyes that you can only see because you’ve spent so long learning him.

You purse your lips together, too scared to say it again.

He doesn’t need you to.

He just drops his gaze to your mouth, shoving you right back into that moment in his apartment, and all you can do is part your lips in surprise. All he needs to do is lift his head, just a few more centimeters.

He tastes like quiet desperation, the kind that’s been building for far too long.

He curls his fingers into your hair and swallows audibly, his lips still on yours even as he tugs you closer. You’re more than happy to follow his lead, breath stuttering nervously against his mouth. 

Each push of his lips against yours is more heated than the last. Until his grip on the back of your head stings a little, until the pass of his tongue over the seam of your lips makes your stomach flip and your limbs go a little more numb. Until he’s angling his head against yours and pulling you close, his grip tightening and his body shifting under you.

You don’t realize he’s putting you on your back until your skin meets the soft sheet on the couch, until he’s hooking a hand under your knee and keeping your legs spread while he pushes his hips against yours, his lips warm and urgent. 

You flush nervously, your head going hotter than before and your thoughts scrambling without warning. You can’t take it – the feeling of his mouth on yours while he fucks you, the feeling of his moans traveling down your throat whenever your walls clamp down around him, the most turned on you’ve ever been.

That familiar tug comes back stronger than before, rushing you to the edge with each push of his lips and each pass of his tongue against yours.

And when he murmurs your name into your own mouth, quiet and soft and tinged with warning, your fingers and toes go numb.

“Say my name again,” he breathes, angling his hips in a way that has you seeing stars. “Please. I’m really close.”

You pull your lips from his and wrap your arms around his neck, pushing your mouth close to his ear and moaning quietly when his thrust has your head bumping gently against the arm of the couch.

“Come for me, baby,” you whisper, your own orgasm following close behind when you hear how he moans in your ear, quiet and just for you. “Please, ‘Kaashi – I need it. I need you.” 

He groans into your skin, and you bask in the warmth that he fills you with, his hips stuttering and your name pressed into your throat. You fall quietly over the edge with him, different from before. It washes over you this time instead of hitting you hard, in waves that feel like comfort and sun on your skin. In waves that make you all the more aware of his hands on your body and his breath fanning over the crook of your neck, of the way he whispers your name on the last push of his hips against yours. Of the way you whisper ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ against his shoulder absentmindedly when you come.

It’s hazy, the way you fall with him. And you realize, with your heart pounding and your head swarming sleepily with gratitude, that it’s just what you needed to put all your broken pieces back together.

That Akaashi Keiji puts all the pieces back together.

oh shes petty and i dont like her LMAO

birds of a feather : ninth circle of shame

OCTOBER 18, 9:41 PM

location— bokuto’s “housewarming” party

atsumu leads you out of bokuto’s bedroom and down the stairs. once you’re back in the atmosphere of the party, you feel a wave of nausea hit you like a pang when the smell of the sweat of the crowd, the myriad of perfumes, the drinks and the food stuff makes a rather weird combination.

atsumu notices as your face scrunches up in disgust and you reflexively put a hand against your mouth and your nose, gagging.

he surmises, rubbing your back, “this is making you uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“then let’s get out of here.” he suggests as he begins to lead you to the door, offering, “i’ll drive you to your dorms.”

you want to decline his offer and leave by yourself, but something inside of you holds you back. you aren’t sure why you don’t retort, but a little while longer with atsumu is all you want. since you’ve already indulged him for the night, letting him drive you back doesn’t sound so bad at this point.

you nod, accepting his proposal, “alright, that sounds good.”

“we should also get you something to eat on the way, you must be starving.” he proffers, teasing you as he pats your tummy.

you turn around to glare at him, shoving his hand away. he entertains your temper tantrum for a moment before he smirks, bragging, “though i think i fed you more than enough.”

“that should’ve satisfied your hunger.” atsumu’s hand finds your back once again, and he starts walking towards the door, while you match his steps.

as you’re about to exit the venue, bokuto spots you by the door. he sprints towards the two of you in order to stop you from departing.

he practically shouts in your ears, greeting you enthusiastically, “hey hey hey!”

you wave at him, a small smile lining your lips, “oh, hey bokuto.”

“hey, bokuto san.” atsumu says, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. now that he’s been spotted with you, he’ll have to face unnecessary questions from his senior’s end.

bokuto eyes at the pair of you, stitching his brows together and crossing his arms as he analyses the sight in front of him. he doesn’t miss out on your smudged lipstick and your messy hair. if that isn’t apparent enough, your dress looks unruly too since you put it on in a hurry. atsumu’s ruffled hair and the fact he put on his shirt the other way around don’t go amiss either. the two of you haven’t showered either. over all, anyone with a pair of eyes can quite simply figure out you’ve fucked.

he taunts atsumu, hitting his arm playfully, “didn’t you say you were done with her?”

“but she’s in your arms tonight, once again.” he remarks, laughing, rendering atsumu and you in a rather awkward position.

atsumu notices the change in your expression and pulls you closer to himself, whispering to you, “it’s okay, i got this.”

neither of you wishes to explain the circumstances. you’d rather keep the story to yourself. it’s your personal life and no one has to know. not even a close friend. your relationship is complicated to begin with. since there is no concrete label as of now, there needs to be no description either.

you give atsumu a dismissive look, gesturing not to delve into the details. in response, he extends his hand from your the small of your back to squeeze your arm, signaling that he understands what you’re tying to say.

“it’s not what you think.” atsumu begins explaining, “we both just ran into each other.”

you nod, agreeing with whatever he has to say, in an attempt to add to the credibility of his lies, “yea, totally.” the nervousness in your tone is hard to miss.

“we just ran into each other and decided to have a drink together.” you claim, putting on your best smile, but deep down, you’re sure he knows you’re lying through your teeth. with the crack in your voice coupled with the nervousness in your tone, anyone can tell.

bokuto sneers, raising a brow at you, inquisitive, “is that why the two of you were upstairs all this while?”

“the last i checked, the bar is downstairs.” he states, pointing towards the bar in the kitchen.

“upstairs?” you blurt out, surprised that he was aware regarding your whereabouts. now you’re just hoping he doesn’t know you were in his room. if he does, you‘ll pass out of shame.

“i don’t mind that you lovebirds used my room.” he begins. he laughs mockingly as he whispers to the two of you, “i just hope you haven’t made too much mess in my room.”

“if yes, i’ll make you guys clean up until sunrise.” he quips at you and atsumu, ruffling your hair while he pats atsumu’s back.

neither you nor atsumu are sure how to react. you’re just glad that atsumu is right next to you, pacifying you as he squeezes your arm in reassurance. because if you were in this situation by yourself, you would’ve probably disintegrated into the ninth circle of shame.

atsumu covers up, reciprocating bokuto’s energy as he laughs back at the joke, “we were careful not to make a lot of mess.”

“don’t worry, bokuto san, you’ll just need to do a little bit of cleaning around.” he reports. the two of them chuckle in unison.

you aren’t sure what’s so funny about the situation you’re stuck in. if anything, you’re too embarrassed to even look bokuto in the eye. not only did he catch you red handed with miya after the two of you declared that you were done with one another, but also confronted you regarding the inappropriate use of his master bedroom.

you don’t know how atsumu has it in him to pretend he isn’t embarrassed by all of this, but you’re nervously looking to the ground, cheeks flushed red as a result of immense shame.

but that doesn’t hold you back. you’re curious as to how bokuto found out, so you put forth a question, “bokuto san, don’t mind me, but how did you know we were in your room?”

“you should ask tobio.” bokuto advices, informing you, “he practically stormed out of the party.”

he shrugs, saying, “i tried to stop him and ask him why he’s leaving so soon, which is when he told me something he probably shouldn’t have.”

“you’ve really upset him, yn.” bokuto mentions, pursing his lips, shaking his head, expressing disappointment.

you’re at a loss of words when you realise the blunder you’ve committed. you ditched tobio to spend the night with atsumu despite promising him that you wouldn’t. the one thing about tobio and you is that you never break the promises you make to one other, and you just indulged in the one thing that was forbidden in your friendship.

you don’t know what you’re supposed to do next. you find your head in an absolute mess and your heart haunted by guilt that overflows through your veins.

you excuse yourself, running off, “i need to leave.”

“i should follow her.” atsumu decides, leaving bokuto by the door as he opens it to run after you.

it takes him a while to find you and catch up to you in the maze of cars outside bokuto’s house. but he’s easily able to do so, because you find yourself at a dead end with no ride to go over to tobio’s place to clear things out with him.

“hey, calm down, yn.” atsumu approaches you, wrapping his arms around you from the hindside.

he kisses your head, consoling you, “it’s going to be okay, don’t worry.”

you shout at him, unwrapping his arms, annoyed because you know he probably doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation, “you don’t get it.”

“we never break promises.” your voice cracks as tears begin streaming down your face.

you instinctively hug atsumu, looking for comfort in his embrace, asking in desperation, “what do i do?”

at first, atsumu responds with silence, he only hugs you tighter before he pulls out a kerchief from his pocket. he pulls you out from the hug and makes you rest against the bonnet of a random car to wipe the tears off your face. your eyes are already puffy red and cheeks crimson. he hands you the kerchief to help yourself whenever needed, and kisses your forehead and pulls you into a hug once again.

“you should talk it out with him.” he advises, rubbing your back to pacify you, “that’s the only way.”

he reassures you, kissing your head as he coddles you, “since you’re best friends, you’ll probably be fine.”

he gently separates you from himself, taking your hand in order to guide you to his car, “come on, let’s go.”

“we should sit in my car, okay.” he states, trailing to where his car is parked with you under his wing.

he unlocks the car using the remote key, opening the back door for you to hop in. once you’re settled inside, he follows you and takes a seat right beside you, closing the door behind him.

he offers you his bottle of water, picking it up from the cup holder. you take it from him and begin chugging it down, hoping to assuage your anxiety and dissipate your nerves.

“slow down.” he warns you, taking the bottle from your grip.

you point at the bottle, conveying, “i need more.”

“later. you’ve had enough for now.” atsumu declines, throwing the bottle away and it lands in the leg space of the passenger seat, denying you the possibility of retrieving it.

you’re still baffled at yourself. the right term would be to say that you’re disappointed in yourself because you completely forgot about tobio somewhere along the way.

although it wasn’t until atsumu began pleasuring you and your brain became hazy. that’s most likely how you forgot. but that doesn’t make it right. it’s also the fact that you had given a thought to the idea of returning to tobio instead of entertaining atsumu, but you still chose not to.

you feel terrible because you know he would’ve never done this to you. it would’ve been fine if you would’ve informed him. it would’ve still upset him, but you know he would’ve understood. but to ditch him randomly because you were too desperate to entertain your crush’s shenanigans, there should be no forgiveness for you.

you conclude after you think things through for a good while, and gauge your options, “i should text him.”

atsumu encourages your idea, “yea, sounds good.”

you rest your head again his shoulder and he puts his arm around you, holding you close. he kisses your forehead, squeezing your arm in reassurance, “it’s going to be alright, kitten.”

you pull out your cellphone in order to text tobio. atsumu instantly looks away so as to not invade your privacy, but his support for you remains constant as he continues to rub your arm, letting you know that he’s right next to you.

彡 atsumu was planning on dropping yn as soon as they re entered the party, but decided to stick to her because he couldn’t let go.

彡 tobio was never going to confront yn and let it go but he decided to take a stand for himself.

彡 tobio isn’t upset only because yn ditched him. he saw that one coming. he’s majorly upset because of his jealousy.

彡 even while he was upset with her, tobio was worried about yn’s safety and was willing to drive back to the party just to drop her off.

previous : no love, only the lack there of

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🐰 i have a thing for writing morally black characters or some shit like that.

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birds of a feather : ground rules

warning/s : suggestive content and smut, minors DNI

OCTOBER 18, 10:32 PM

location— atsumu miya’s car

following the end of your conversation with tobio, you throw your cellphone to the floor, agitated at how it turned out. you don’t know what it is that you were expecting, but definitely not the blatant rejection you faced. if only he would’ve rendered you a chance to explain yourself, maybe you could’ve roped him into hearing an acceptable justification. not that you didn’t try to explain yourself, it seems, you just failed to do a good job at it, or rather, there was no appropriate justification on your end.

the thud resulting from your cellphone hitting the ground makes atsumu turn his neck in the direction of the sound. he notices the cellphone laying on the ground, then turns to look at you and notices the frown stitched into your face.

atsumu puts two and two together and concludes that the conversation between you and tobio didn’t go the way you expected it to. he doesn’t want to implore, but ends up inquiring anyways, “what’s wrong, yn?”

“damn him, that tobio.” you grunt, continuing to complain, “i hate him so much.”

atsumu flicks your forehead, rolling his eyes, “i’m sure you don’t.”

“he’s your best friend, after all.” he stresses on the term as he drags you closer to himself, lifting you to put you on his lap.

he puts his arms around your waist, postulating, “he’ll come around eventually.”

atsumu nuzzles his head between your boobs, and you reflexively begin running your fingers through his hair, grumbling, “he could’ve at least heard me out.”

“some best friend he is.” you hiss, rolling your eyes.

atsumu slaps your back, taunting you, “we could say the same about you.”

“you ditched him for a random guy, after all.” he mentions, raising his head to smirk at you.

you purse your lips, mumbling, “you’re not just some guy, tsumu.” you lift his head to place a quick kiss on his lips. just as you’re about to withdraw, he pulls you in for a second kiss. his brisk hands unzip your dress and lugs away from the kiss, smugly smiling at you as he reaches to remove your hair-clip, allowing your hair to flow down your back.

he runs his hand through your hair, putting his forehead against yours, whispering against your lips, “i really hope i’m not.”

you kiss him on the cheek and descend to leave a trail of your kisses from his cheek right down to his neck. you open up the buttons of his shirt, giving him a hickey underneath his clavicle. you grin at him once you’re done, locking lips with him once again. he pulls away, fingers still meddling with your hair, chuckling, “marking your territory once again, are you?”

he points to the corner of his lip, brandishing the hickey you gave him earlier, before pulling you closer to him. he shifts your hair to the other side, pressing his lips against your neck, leaving a mark, making you groan. he claims, his warm breath condensing against the cold skin of your neck, “you’re mine, kitten.”

“only mine.” he asserts, kissing the blade of your shoulder, leaving another mark against your skin.

you nod, accepting his claim as you pull your body away from his. you rub your thumb against the skin around the corner of his lips, tainted by you, smugly smiling at him as you lock in his gaze, “i thought you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“i’m just a man.” he shrugs, kissing you on the cheek, then on the neck, followed by your shoulder, confessing, “i’m no fool to deny the touch of a woman like you.”

he drags your sleeves down, pulling the dress off your torso to reveal your brasier. he unlocks the hooks in a moment using a single hand, and rips the garment away from your skin, throwing it on the front seat. it reveals your breast. he slides your dress further down to reveal your abdomen.

he begins by kissing the undersurface of your boobs, then goes on to kiss your nipples, one after the other. the feeling of his soft kisses against your sore spot fires your nerve endings, turning you on, inciting you whimper. he then slides his hand underneath your dress, putting it against the inside of your thigh.

“in the car?” you shoot him a look, wide eyed, “are you insane?”

“shh.” he puts a finger to his lips, demanding no reluctance from your end before he moves his hand upwards along the skin of your thighs, making you ticklish as he approaches the strap of your underwear. he pulls at it, making you flinch when he releases his fingers the elastic recoils against your skin.

he engages his fingers with the strap of your underwear once again, pulling it down to clear his access. he advances his fingers towards your cunt, targeting your clitoris first and foremost. you moan loudly when his fingers run against your sore spot. he repeats the motion of his fingers yet again, demanding you to moan for a second time in row.

atsumu laughs, satisfied as his manoeuvre proves to be fruitful. he inserts his fingers inside your pussy, skilfully moving them around, stimulating you in an attempt to get you to cum. the motion of his fingers inside your cunt irks you to whimper over and over again. you finally cum when he brushes his fingers past your clitoris once again.

he doesn’t stop there. he intends on stimulating you further more. his fingers find themselves hovering around the same spot knowing far to well where your body prefers to be touched by him. he teases you by gently rubbing his fingers against your clit. you whimper, “t-tsumu, more.”

you mumble, huffing as you feel yourself cum and the cum dripping down your legs onto his pants, “p-please, more.”

atsumu laughs, razzing you as he wipes the cum off his pants and paints it on your lower lip, “now lick, kitten.” you don’t follow his order, too stupefied as your hormones are surging and all you want is more of him and the pleasure he has to offer you.

atsumu licks the cum off your lip himself, smirking as he gulps it down, praising you, “my kitten tastes so good.”

he confesses, entwining his fingers with your own, kissing your knuckle, “so glad you’re all mine to take.”

“aren’t you, now?” he drops your hand, questioning as he cups your chin, withholding your gaze, expecting you to answer.

you hum, still dazed, agreeing, “yes, all yours.”

“i’m pleasuring you so well, kitten.” he sneers at you, putting his fingers inside your needy cunt once again, urging you to cum as he glides along your walls and skilfully rolls his fingers inside you.

you cum with his fingers still inside your pussy. your fluid drips down his digits. he pulls his sticky fingers out of your cunt, and then puts them in once again, dictating, “you know you need to pleasure me too.”

“i know i—.” you nod, agreeing with him, but he cuts your words short, taking his fingers out of your pussy and cupping your chin with the same hand that was inside you earlier.

he licks the liquid off his fingers with his hand still on your face, giving you a taste of yourself when he kisses you. the sweet taste of your own mess dissipates on the surface of your tongue. he withdraws, putting his fingers on your clitoris, squeezing the spot, demanding, “kitten, i’m hard now.”

“and you better pleasure me.” he orders, smirking as you whine loudly, cumming once again, dirtying his fingers for a second time.

he withdraws his fingers and forces them in your mouth, letting you have another taste of yourself. you squelch, but you lick the cum off his digits. he stares you in the eyes with a smug look painting his face, while you’re in a complete haze, staring at him blankly as he removes his fingers from your mouth. he kisses you on the lips, appreciating, “you’re a good kitten.”

“now be better and make me cum.” he instructs, squeezing and nibbling at your nipples, coaxing you to whimper in pain and in pleasure.

you nod, accepting his demand of being pleasured by you. he throws you off him and points to his pants gesturing you to unbuckle and take them off. you struggle all over the place trying to unlock his belt and loosen his pants. you final achieve your goal, revealing his large, hard and veiny penis that stares you down, waiting to be put either inside your mouth, or your cunt, whatever seems easier to get into.

atsumu pushes you down, putting pressure on your shoulder as he lays you flat on the car seat. he climbs on top you, ready to insert his dick inside your cunt. he spreads your legs apart, entwines his fingers with your own, and pins your hands on either side of your head, against the car seat. he begins to put his penis inside your vagina, gently sliding it in. you feel his large self scaling your walls as his dick enters your cunt, and you feel it slide outside of you too.

although he’s been inside of you before, but because he’s so big, the feeling of his dick moving inside and outside of you hurts you and pleasures you all the same. he puts his wood inside of your cunt once again, hoping to stimulate your g spot and incite an orgasm on your end.

he continues the motion of his dick, sliding it inside your cunt, then pulling it out of you, and at a certain point, you’re overstimulated, moaning and groaning continuously. while he’s still inside of you, you experience a sexual high, an orgasm incoming, and you cum, tainting his dick. aroused by your neediness, atsumu cums as well, carelessly inside of you.

he takes his dick out of you, leaning in to kiss you on the lips. he gives you a break when he notices his erection is gone and his dick has softened. meanwhile you’re breathless and all over the place, but also overstimulated enough to cum once again. with the liquid dripping down your thighs, he makes an effort to lick it off and clean up for you.

once he’s done, he puts his weight on top of you, resting his head against your breasts squishing them under his weight. he places his hand on your cheek, patting it, praising you, “you were a good girl tonight.”

“i’m hungry.” you mumble as your stomach groans, making atsumu burst out in laughter.

he cracks a joke, “looks like i wasn’t enough for you.”

“clearly not.” you chuckle, joining in his humour, smiling tiredly at his face.

you surmise, gauging the state of the two of you, “we also need a shower.”

“mhm.” atsumu hums, nuzzling his nose between your breasts. he then slides up and kisses you on the lips before getting off you.

he takes a spot at the end of seat, putting on his underwear and his pant. he collects your underwear from the floor of the car and your brasier from the front seat, handing you the pair in order to slide the garments on. you stretch your hand and receive the garments, requesting, “i’m sore, can you pull me up?”

“sure.” he nods as he grabs your hand and drag you off the car seat.

he asks, gesturing at your brasier, remembering you had a hard time putting it on earlier, “need any help?”

you shake your head, signaling that you’d prefer to be aided by him. you turn your back to him, sliding your arms into the straps of your brasier. you collect your hair and tie it into a ponytail, allowing maximum visibility to make the task easier for him. he puts the hooks into their respective eyes, cupping your boobs, kissing your cheek as he teases you, “just making sure they’re secured.”

“you don’t need to.” you take his hands off your breasts, rolling your eyes.

you slide your underwear into position, then pull up your dress into the correct position, turning around once again, requesting, “can you zip it?”

“sure.” atsumu agrees to do it for you, helping you out.

he suggests, nervous hand scratching the back of his neck, unsure if you’ll consent, “you should spend the night at my place.”

“i don’t mean to force you,” he starts blabbering nervously, stuttering around his words, “i mean you can shower then we can have some food and sleep.”

you can’t help but laugh out loud at the nervous mess that he instantly became at the mere thought of inviting you over to his place. you find it ironic because he had no trouble thrusting his dick inside of you not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times so far. but now that he has to invite you to spend the night, he’s getting cold feet. you don’t think it’s embarrassing on his behalf, just comedic.

he isn’t sure what warranted your laugh, but it makes his more nervous, and he continues jabbering, “i don’t have anything fancy at home right now, but we can have some ramen.”

you keep staring at him with an amused expression on your face, letting him prattle and stumble around his multiple suggestions. you’re still in disbelief that this is the same man who has made sexual advances on you on multiple occasions and succeeded in subduing you every single time.

“maybe we watch a movie or two before heading to bed.” he goes on, rephrasing, “no, but a lot warm shower first, of course.”

you kiss him on the lips to shut him up for once and for all. he reciprocates, kissing you back. his hand finds itself dragging your sleeve down once again. but you slap his mischievous arm, halting him, “enough.”

“let’s go to your place already.” you push him off you, leaning toward the back door to open it up so that he can get to the driver’s seat.

“yea, let’s go.” atsumu mutters as jumps out of the back seat. he closes the door behind him, simultaneously opening the door to the front seat. he puts himself into the driver’s position and keys the car in order to get the engine going. he begins driving in the direction of his apartment.

you request, pointing to the stereo, “put on some music. won’t you, tsumu?”

“yes, kitten, whatever you want me to do.” he complies, turning the knob to raise the volume, proceeding to select a radio station at random.

in the backseat, you’re bemused at his choice of music, but before you can retaliate and coerce him to switch stations, your body, extremely sore from all the pleasure seeking tonight, drifts off to sleep almost instantly.

atsumu notices when his terrible choice of music doesn’t incite a response from you and he’s met with dead silence from the back seat. he turns around to check on you, only to find you passed out in your spot, neck hanging in the air without any support.

he pulls his car to the side of the road and gets out of his seat. he opens the back door to position your body such that you lay flat on the backseat in a rather comfortable position, as opposed to your previous one. he jumps back into the driver’s seat and begins driving towards home, reaching out to lower the volume of the stereo, declining the possibility of disturbing you while you’re sleep.

OCTOBER 18, 11:25 PM

location— atsumu’s apartment complex

once you reach atsumu’s apartment complex, he parks the car in his designated spot. he gets off to open the back door and grabs your purse first, sliding it over his arm. he then lifts your body off the seat as subtly as possible, such that you aren’t woken up by his movement. he carries you all the way to his flat, supervising diligently, making sure that any move he makes doesn’t lug you away from your slumber.

standing in front of the door to his apartment, he finds himself in a dilemma, unsure of how to reach for his key in order to open the door. with his hands busy holding you close, the task seems unachievable. left with no option but to disturb you, he whispers into your ear, “you need to wake up, kitten.”

“i’m sorry.” he apologises, kissing your forehead.

when you don’t wake up in the first go, he repeats, whispering into your ear, “come on, kitten.”

“it’s time to wake up.”

you feel his hot breath against your ear drum, forcing you awake. you flutter your eyes open, finding yourself in his arms, quite confused, unsure of the circumstances. after analysing for a moment, you realise you must’ve fallen asleep and he must’ve had to carry you all the way to his apartment.

you mumble, voice sleepy, “i’m sorry.”

“you can let me down now.” you say, yawning, jumping out of his arms, “i’ll be fine.”

you put your head against his shoulder, sleepy eyes on the verge of closure, and he supports you by the waist as he reaches for the key and opens the lock. he pushes the door open, entering himself. then, he take your hand, leading you in. closing the door behind him, he drops down to his knees to free your feet from your footwear.

you step back in hesitance, chirping, “you don’t have to.”

“please, i can do it myself.” you insist, squatting down to release the straps of your shoes, but you’re so sleepy, you lose your balance and fall to the ground.

you squeal, “ah, shit.”

“well that was certainly embarrassing.” you chuckle at yourself, rubbing the nape of your neck nervously. atsumu doesn’t laugh at you, he only makes an effort to help you out. he takes your foot in his hand, unbuckles your ankle strap and takes the heel off. one followed by the other.

he gets off the ground himself, then holds out a hand for you to take. you accept, putting your palm in his. he grips you by the hand and helps you, pulling you up. he instantly lifts you in his arms. you’re taken by surprise in the first few seconds but after a while, you don’t mind in the least. your muscles are far too sore to be put to work and if the cause for the same is aiding you with the commute, you aren’t going to be one to complain against it.

he carries you inside his apartment, leaving the genkan, and takes you straight to his bedroom. he puts your figure on the bed. without saying a word, he walks into his closet.

a muffled voice speaks from the inside, “i know you’re very tired, but i’m going to draw you a bath right now.”

“you should clean up.” he recommends.

he walks out of his closet with a towel, a pair of night suit that belongs to a female and one of his own hoodies. he puts the towel on the chair next to his mater bed, then places the two options on the bed sheet in the space next to you, pointing at the night suit, informing, “that belongs to rin.”

“and that’s mine.” he points to his hoodie.

he offers you a choice, “choose whichever you want.”

he shrugs, explaining himself, “i understand that rin’s clothes may make you uncomfortable, but i only brought them out because you’re the same size as her.”

“it’s okay.” you purse your lips at him, declaring, “i think i’m gonna go with your hoodie.”

he nods, quickly clearing rin’s outfit from the bed, “of course, not a problem.”

“the bathroom is right there.” he points to a door, guiding you to the bathroom.

you drop your back against the bed, babbling as you yawn, closing your eyes, “you go first.”

“i’m going to lie down for a while.” you say, turning on your side, drifting to sleep.

he nods, leaving you on the bed as he walks into the bathroom, “alright, i’ll be right back.”

atsumu takes a shower first, changing into a set of fresh clothes. he comes out of the bathroom to find that you’re still asleep in the same position he left you in. he sits beside you and leans closer to wake you up, when he notices your light snores. he chuckles to himself because he finds it absolutely adorable.

he tickles your feet, whispering in your ear, “it’s your turn now, kitten.”

you’re jolted awake by the ticklish sensation spreading across your foot plantar aspect. you whine, reaching out to slap his hand, “what the hell.”

“stop it.” you grunt, rubbing your eyes open.

he takes you by the waist and drags you out of bed. he picks up the towel from the chair, putting it on your shoulder.

he gives you a light push in the direction of the bathroom, instructing, “go take a shower, i’ll be in the kitchen.”

“okay, i’ll go.” you maffle, yawning as you enter his bathroom.

you close the door behind you, while he walks out of the bedroom and trails towards the kitchen to make preparations for dinner for two.

once you’re done, you put on his hoodie, tie your hair into the towel for the water to be absorbed by the fabric, and walk out of his bedroom. you navigate your path to the kitchen and find atsumu waiting on you, two packets of shin ramyun, a pot to cook it in and cutlery to serve, as well as other necessities arranged on the island.

“i was expecting the food to be ready by the time i made it out of the shower.” you approach him, sighing in disappointment when you find the packets of ramen untouched.

he raises his brow at you, wrapping an arm around your waist, dragging you closer, “is that why you took your sweet time, kitten?”

“precisely.” you nod, adding to his sarcastic remark, walking out of his hold to lift the pot off the marble top.

you take it to the sink to fill it up with water. he follows, turning the tap for you while you hold the pot underneath the stream of water. once it’s filled a little under the brim, he closes the tap and you place to pot on the stove. he turns on the heat, adjusting it to maximum so that the water will come to a boil faster.

“dry my hair, i’ll cook for us.” you instruct, releasing the towel that binds your hair. you hand it to him.

he accepts your request, putting the towel over your head, massaging your hair as he makes sure the remainder of the water is soaked up by the towel that has already done a good enough job. you turn around to grab the packets of ramen from the kitchen island. atsumu follows your lead, focusing on drying your hair while you move back to the stove.

you ask, cutting open the first packet of ramen to retrieve the cake of noodles, “how the hell did you come out of the bathroom with dry hair, anyways?”

“one, mine is short.” he justifies, dropping the towel over your shoulder. he pinches your cheek, mentioning, “two, i used a hairdryer.”

you sigh, slightly disappointed in yourself, “seems i completely missed it.”

“you can use it now if you’d like.” he suggests, picking the towel off your shoulder, putting it on your head once again, continuing to dry your hair.

you decline, insisting, “no, thanks. i should cook the ramen first.” you cut open the second pack to retrieve the second cake of noodles.

once the water comes to a boil, you add the raw noodles to the pot, minimising the heat. you take the tastemakers out of both the packets, putting them to the side. you peek around, looking for the bin.

you ask, holding out the waste in front of his face, “where do i throw this?”

he drops the towel on your head, collecting the waste from your hand and walks over to the bin in the corner of the kitchen to discard it. you continue keeping a watch over the noodles being cooked in the pot. he returns and begins massaging your hair once again.

“you’ve done enough.” you state, turning around to face him. you take the towel off your head and walk to the dining table in order to temporarily place it on a chair for it to dry a little.

you walk back to the stove to check on the ramen. you take a pair of chopsticks and pick a noodle out of the pot. you blow some air over it, then chew on the noodle to confirm that it’s cooked. once you’re sure, you turn off the heat and drain the water, adding the tastemaker to the pot. you mix it around, making sure it spreads evenly, before you serve the noodles in two plates.

you grab the noodles with your pair of chopsticks, and turn around to offer the bite to atsumu, “here, have this.”

atsumu takes up your offer, complimenting your skills, “good job, chef.”

“but nothing tastes as good as you, kitten.” he sneers at you, then closes the distance between the two of you to place a kiss on you lips.

you scrunch your face, disgusted, complaining, “really, tsumu? you had no business saying that right before dinner.”

“my bad, kitten.” he sighs, apologising.

he relieves your hand of the plate and places it next to the other plate that has been served. he wraps his arms around your waist, locking you in his hold. he kisses you, thrusting his tongue inside your mouth, playing around. you pull back instantly, wiping the saliva dripping from the corner of your lips.

“really?” you roll your eyes, whining in disbelief that he still wants more for the night after doing you twice already.

he mumbles, pushing the loose strands of your hair behind your ear, “of course, only if you want to.”

“my body is sore, i can’t.” you decline, pushing him off you. you move on to grab your plate of ramen and start walking towards his couch.

you reason with him, “besides, i need to finish my ramen before it gets cold.”

“of course.” he grieves, his smug smile lowering into a frown as he approaches his own plate of noodles and trails to the couch to join you for dinner.

he puts his plate on the coffee table, putting his arms around your waist, lugging you closer to himself. you’re busy eating your ramen while he kisses your cheek, then your neck, unwilling to let you go, unwilling to touch his share of the food. he isn’t desperate to eat his ramen, he’s only desperate for you. meanwhile you don’t think you can take any more action for the night.

he hugs your tighter, canoodling with you, mumbling, “you’re so cute, kitten.”

he puts his chin on your breasts, mentioning, “so squish, just like obi chan.”

at the mention of her name, obi chan appears, meowing. she jumps on top of the sofa, taking a spot on your lap. atsumu pats her butt, frowning, “obi chan, leave. we’re busy.” the cat gets off, agitated and starts walking in the direction of the bedroom.

“don’t act like a baby.” you warn him, offering a bite out of your own plate, “have the food before it gets cold, will you?”

he takes your plate away, putting it on the coffee table. you lean closer to the table to grab a hold of it, but he stops you and pulls the hoodie off you, revealing that you’re wearing nothing underneath.

“idiot.” you screech, quickly shielding your breasts using your hands.

he apologises, bowing down to you, “i’m sorry i didn’t know you were wearing nothing underneath.”

“i washed my bra and left it to dry.” you explain, vigorously pulling the hoodie out of his grasp to put it on.

he smirks, shrugging, “well nothing i haven’t seen before.” you slap his cheek, albeit not vigorously.

he pretends to be hurt, grunting, “ouch.”

“deserved.” you announce, grabbing your plate of noodles, continuing to dine.

you instruct atsumu, pointing at his untouched plate, “eat.”

he doesn’t bother following your order, instead he nuzzles his nose against your freshly washed hair, speaking in an undertone, “i’ll have it later.”

“right now, i just want you.” he reveals, interrupting the bite of noodles you’re about to gulp down, when he cranes his neck, putting it in the way to kiss you on the lips.

you return his kiss before shoving his face aside. you quake at him, playfully slapping his cheek, then pinching it, “you’re so clingy for someone who doesn’t even want me in his life.”

he wraps his arms around you again, pulling you in closer. you turn your head to kiss his cheek before going back to your dinner. he interjects your next bite, chowing it down himself, laughing at the offensive look that his action put across your face. you roll your eyes, preparing another bite for him, holding it out for him to take.

“i never said i don’t want you.” he confesses, moving your hair out of his way to nibble at your ear, stating, “i just don’t want a girlfriend right now.”

atsumu instantly drops down on one knee. you pay him no heed, knowing all too well that nothing worthwhile is going you drop out of his mouth over the span of the rest of the night. you continue eating the final remnants from your plate of ramen.

still on his knees, he grabs a bite of noodles from his bowl, holding it out to you, proposing, “miss yn, though i cannot make you my girlfriend right now, would you like to be my girlfriend who’s not my girlfriend?”

you know exactly what it means. it doesn’t take you long to figure out that he just wants to keep you around for the sex until further notice. he may proceed to make you his girlfriend or just use and drop you, whatever the future him decides. you want to deny deny deny, but you recall that you had a conversation regarding this issue with him prior this night and still ended up sleeping with him a while later. you’re definitely not god’s strongest soldier when it comes to this man.

“that makes no sense.” you roll your eyes, flicking his forehead, ordering, “get off the damn floor now.”

“fool.” you chastise him.

he stands up, taking his spot next to you, caging you in his embrace once again, nuzzling against you neck, mumbling in a dejected tone, “i’m sad that you rejected me.”

“you just asked me to be your fuck buddy.” you run your fingers through his hair, commenting, “of course i rejected you.”

he looks up at you, smirking at your face, making a claim based on your past experiences, “you and i both know you’ll be weak for me any time i ask you for it.”

“fair enough.” you accept, making no attempt to hide your lack of rigidity when it comes to man clinging onto you.

you give it a thought. you shouldn’t, but you still do. you look at the situation from all angles and you conclude that the worst that can happen is that you end up falling for a man who possibly won’t reciprocate your sentiments. that will probably equal to a few days of crying and whining to shoyou and yachi. but if the tables turn and you successfully make him fall in love with you, you’ll be a winner. the chances of the latter becoming a reality are rare, but you’re willing to take a chance as long as the probably of it isn’t zero.

it sounds stupid, but you can’t deny that you’ll never be able to decline atsumu’s approaches. if you’re to run into him ten thousand more times along the course of your lifetime, you’ll end up in his arms every single time, allowing him to take advantage of you as he pleases. you’re just that weak for some reason, lacking a spine. hence, you choose to no longer see the harm in accepting his shit proposal.

you welcome his offer, muttering, “whatever, i don’t care if we do this.”

“great.” he rejoices, embracing you tighter, kissing your head vigorously multiple times.

you interject his joy, “but i have a few conditions.”

“nevermind.” you drop the idea of mapping any ground rules regarding your arrangement, not that you had planned any to begin with. you didn’t even know you’d end up in an agreement of such nature with him. you were just about to make up some rules at random.

but you still lay down one single rule, “let’s keep our contact to a minimum.”

“we’ll restrict our contact only to our arrangement.” you make a declaration, holding out your hand to sign a treaty with the opposing party, “agreed?”

“agreed.” atsumu grins at you, shaking your hand, utterly satisfied in himself for bagging a girl so effortlessly.

彡 yn said yes to atsumu because of her big fat crush on him, other than the fact that she can’t say no to him.

彡 yn and atsumu ended up watching her favourite movie (how to train a dragon) before they went to bed.

彡 atsumu ended up asking yn if she’d like to spend the day with him and despite her own rule, she ended up saying yes.

彡 yn’s waffles tasted bland because she forgot to add sugar to the batter. so she had to compensate with syrup.

彡 atsumu posted yn on his official account on purpose. he very much intended to do so.

彡 chiyo is extremely happy about atsumu and yn being a thing because she likes tobio.

彡 atsumu picked out the lego set specifically for yn because she’s an artist and he wanted to give her something she would be interested in.

彡 for a change atsumu and yn didn’t end up sleeping together after their date. he just dropped her off at her dorms.

previous : ninth circle of shame

masterlist | next :

🐰 imma take my leave.

taglist— @wolffmaiden @viscoolreal @kafkassexchoe @luna-mothii @bomjug @le000xxgrd @dazqa @ineednanami @iluvaquaphor @debussy42 @choizzn @bunninio @empress-pug-pug @karasunoya @sereniteav @yuminako @reooreo @loveelylacey @nbcvs @whosmarjj @spicana

in every other life- s.r.

a/n: my soul is in this mf fic. there's a lil sexual tension lol! this is a behemoth of pining. so much fucking pining. this guy needs you like air wtf!! ALSO the poem is from a book, the lover's dictionary by david levithan. summary: the love of spencer's life is also his best friend, and she goes on a few dates. he does not handle it well, internally. ft. metaphysics by our dear genius boy. wc: 3.3k (holy shit)

While he recognizes that no direct injustice has actually been done to him, he can’t help but feel that it’s so unfair. 

Because Spencer had never actually wanted much of anyone, actually. He was too much of a child through his entire education, and he’d found anyone that he’d even consider had almost instantly had dismissed him. He’d grown used to a life where companionship wasn’t a desire that crossed his mind. 

But he wanted her. 

His lovely friend, his coworker, who was the kind of lovely that it feels unfair you’d ever have to take your eyes off of. She’s the best person he’s ever met, the sort of wonderful you read about but never convince yourself you’ll ever see. He knows the shape of her, has her form memorized from watching, waiting for her to step into the office every day.  

It was only a matter of time until he wasn’t the only one with his eye on her. 

She’s actually absurdly easy to want. There’s nights where they watch something, often what he picked, Doctor Who or some other science fiction which would be great if he could focus on anything but her. Her warm disposition ruminating his too-small apartment with a kind of light that follows his every movement. He’d adore her even if she wasn’t, but it’s impossible to ignore how beautiful she is- the kind of pretty that you hardly expect to see in real life. 

“Hey you,” her so-sweet voice is what breaks him out of his daydreaming, and he looks up at her lovely face smiling down at him. Fondness seeps through her tone, and it’s everything he can do not to preen that her first thought at seeing him is one of pleasure. 

“Hey back,” he says, greeting her with a warm grin of his own. “How was your weekend?”

It’s a calculated question. 

She had canceled their weekly movie night. He’d tried not to look too disappointed, like the idea of her next to him on his couch, of her nimble fingers raking through his unkempt hair while something nice, but far less wonderful than his company played in the background wasn’t all that was keeping him going. These days, and he knows it’s likely delusion, that she sometimes seems to gaze back at him with a similar sort of desperation, hooded eyes and tenderness. 

It’s a liminal space, those nights. How can people be two things at once? You cannot be both in love and not. In the low-light of his place, under his blanket- it’s like Schrodinger’s experiment. She can’t love him like a friend and more at the same time- it resists the laws of physics. She is his best friend, a fact he knows as sure as gravity and the elements, and believing anymore than that- it’s asserting an impossibility. 

When they’re alone together, though. It seems like the impossible exists. 

But she’d canceled it, something she hadn’t done for the months they’d been engaging in their little tradition. So there had to be a reason. She sits next to him, her desk next to his. 

She looks a little disheveled, only in an adorable way- but a little like she’s been busy, like her flow is disrupted.

“It was good! I finally went out with that guy Penelope’s been begging me to let her set me up with.”

It’s all that he can do not to freeze up. 

Penelope has been trying to get her to go out with her friend Ben, which Spencer thinks is a stupid name, by the way, and secretly he’d been so, so pleased when she had brushed off the invite. It’s a dangerous thing, hope. He tries not to have too much of it, tries to savor the thought of her, of more for moments of particular vulnerability. It’s treacherous, to want her the way he does. He knows he can’t let himself feel it all the way. 

And logistically- romance is not a reason for a valid reason for him to be panicking the way he is, but all he can think about is the physics. Two opposite things cannot be true at the same time. 

“You know, studies suggest that even now, the majority of couples are meeting in person or through friends over any other medium.” 

It hurts to say. She’s part of a couple, one half a whole that he doesn’t complete. 

“Seriously? I’d have thought it’d changed by now. I guess it’s safer to date someone you know.”

She’d date someone she knew? Is that what she prefers? 

“How did it go?” He hears Emily ask, and this conversation is already the bane of his existence.

“Guys, it really wasn’t a big deal! We got dinner, it was just a little thing.”

Spencer isn’t experienced in dating, but he does know that dinner is a serious date. Coffee is a smaller thing, but dinner-

Dinner means she got pretty for him. Probably picked out a dress for the evening, spent time on a carefully manicured look. Spent hours of her precious, rare, time on him. 

It’s not fair how much he fucking hates this guy. 

“Dinner is not nothing!” Penelope squeals, and he would love to share in her excitement, except it kind of feels like a piece of his heart is being shredded. 

“Dinner means coming up to my place, have coffee, oh look who doesn’t have her hair done-“

Please kill me, he thinks. Please. 

“Oh, that definitely did not happen.”

Thank god. 

Except he can’t miss her flush, how her expression shifts- and he has the sickening feeling he’d be hearing that guy’s name again. 

When they all settle around the table, her doe eyes focused on gruesome images that were the exact antithesis of her spirit, he couldn’t help but feel that even if it hurt, there was finality. 

The cat was out of the box. Two things cannot be true at once, and so only one is- she does not love him, at least not the way he does. 

Ben, is not in fact, going away. 

If he had more willpower or self-preservation, Spencer would keep his distance from her, but the truth of it is that as much as he wants to be the person she turns to, her smile is most of why he can stand his job anymore. 

It’s a Tuesday, and everyone is grumbling about being pulled in early in the morning, but he’s just happy to have a reason to leave the house.

“Spence!” He hears her excited voice carry, the pretty sound picking his ears up at once. “I got you coffee. It’s hazelnut, and it’s like, 90% sugar. You’re gonna love it.”

She beams at him, and he takes it in his hands. Their hands brush, and he tries so hard not to notice how soft her hands are. Her name is on the cup, and an unconsenting fantasy of her name meaning that he’s hers creeps into his mind before he can bat it away.  

But her cup says Ben. 

“Thanks,” he says her name, tries to sound measured and friendly. “Coffee date?”

She preens, and god, if this guy doesn’t get how lucky he is it might be thing thing that actually sends him over the edge after all these years.

“Just a quick thing, we were just in the same place and he bought me a coffee, I’d already gotten yours.”

If there’s two roles he can fill and he doesn’t get to pick, if he’s stuck with friends, he’s gonna be great at it, and he’s gonna be grateful. Because knowing her is a grace in itself, the kind of thing you should could yourself so lucky to have. 

“He sounds like a great guy,” he hears himself say, “I’m glad you’re doing this.”

It’s the right thing to say. He’s sure of it. The thing he’s not sure of is why the smile she offers him doesn’t reach her eyes. 

The next time he notices the cracks in their relationship, it’s when they’re out. She’d suggested this bookstore-cafe kind of thing, and he’d jumped at the thought, all of his favorite things in one afternoon. He’d felt foolish spending so much time picking out his outfit out, wearing the blazer she’d once complimented-he’d actually stuttered so hard in thanks that Morgan laughed for a full minute when she left the room- but she always looked beautiful, and he knows he sometimes pales in comparison. 

“Oh, I love this one!” She thumbs over the spine of a thin book of poetry. She’s wearing a forest green sweater that hugs her frame, and a bracelet hangs on her delicate wrist. He loves looking at her, though he tries to conceal it. His goal of being a supportive friend includes trying not to make it that known how gone for her he is. 

“I don’t read too much poetry,” he admits, “But I’m sure you have excellent taste.” 

Her keen eyes skim through the pages intently, clearly seeking out a specific passage before stopping, gaze alight with recognition. 

Her tone is molasses-sweet when she begins reading, and his heart skips a beat.

“When I say be my lover,” her voice hitches, reverent of the quote and he is reverent of her, “ I don’t mean ‘let’s have an affair. I don’t mean Sleep with me. I don’t mean Be my secret. I want us to go back to that root. I want you to be the one who loves me. I want to be the one who loves you.”

It feels impossible to look away from her, doe eyes practically sparkling in the low light of the shop, and there it is. His heart’s in his throat. Of all the things you could have told Spencer he’d experience, hearing her lovely voice wrap around the words be my lover in hushed tone, in sacred sweetness, would never ever be one he’d guess. 

He’s not sure how he feels about the multiverse theory, but right now, he can feel all the versions of himself pressing right up against him. Can see into lives he doesn’t get to live, lifetimes where his love isn’t a buried, worn-out tattered thing to keep his ever-frigid chest warm. Versions of himself that in this very moment can smile back at her, warm and open and kind, and kiss her perfect smile. 

Because he would be her lover. He would come home to her, spend the rest of his life building a home that she could fit  into. It’d be easy, actually. She’s easy to imagine- nights of laughing in a shared kitchen, evenings where her company is a fine wine, sipped at leisure with the comfort of knowing it’s never going to slip from your grasp. 

“I like that,” he says, voice too vulnerable for his own good, eyes unable to tear from the eye contact. “I really like that.” 

In the root of it, he already is her lover. He is the one who loves her. She’s just not his. 

It comes to a head on a Friday. It’s a few weeks from he book shop, and the air feels heavier between them now. The last handful of Fridays he’s sat with the ghost of what used to be their plans, empty time lingering where in its’ place used to be her company. 

He doesn’t know if she’s been with Ben. He tries not to think about it. 

The sound of her voice lingers in his mind, sweet and bitter in his mind like old lemon candy, the kind his mother would save for special occasions. He’d spend any amount of money he had to hear her lovely voice say those words to him out of the context of a poem. 

At work, they seem almost normal. Like one of them wasn’t desperately in love with the other; like a genius and his lovely, incredibly empathetic, kind best friend. In the field, their actions flow together seamlessly. She is always the first to listen and to understand (and god, isn’t it intoxicating to have someone meet you in understanding) and there is nothing to suspect is off.

But there’s still a cloud lingering. The poem- the soft melody of her voice curling around the words, the request of it all, the way she had sounded so wanting- and then, there’s Ben. 

She doesn’t mention Ben to him, of course, but Penelope does. Penelope, all bows and bright colors and cheeriness keeps bringing the absolute worst news to Spencer with a smile on her face. 

He’s taking her out for drinks! Oh, he’s reading her favorite book, do you know what it is?

This anger isn’t an emotion that he’s familiar with. A roar of possessiveness, the bite of it not tempered at all by rationality. Has he touched her?

It seems almost a tradition at this point when she shakes him out of his jealous storm of thought.

“Spence?” she muses, “You alright?” They’re alone at his desk, everyone having fled for their own evening and weekend plans. This was one of the Fridays that she had agreed to spend with him, and he wonders if he’ll be able to handle the scent of her shampoo so close after such a lapse of the sensation. Will all of his judgement go where he can’t follow?

“Yeah,” he says, tucking his papers into his bag, “I’m excited for tonight.”

His place is actually a short walk from the office. He’d been embarrassed to show her the place at first. It’s all function over fashion, and a bit cramped, but she’d looked at as though it was made of something more, something good. She didn’t even tease him. It had actually been her idea, to start these movie nights. 

Ironic, really. 

The walk was pleasant, the weather a little frigid but still nice, and she looks beautiful under the setting sun. It’s incredible to him, how her lashes catch the light and make her irises look like polished stained glass. His favorite color. Through the looking glass of another life, he sees a version of himself that gathers her up in his arms. In this daydream, she grants him one of her smiles that seems to carry its’ own light, and leans into his body like it’s the only thing that keeps her steady. It’s so clear. On the other side of the veil, he kisses her reddening nose, and keeps her warm himself. 

In the here and now, Her coat is long, and hangs low by her ankles. It’s an elegant thing, like the woman who wears it, and Spencer would be grateful for a lifetime of just looking.They stop in front of his door, some invisible force stopping him from entering. 

She sheds the coat inside his home. It smells like the candle she got him for his birthday, a reminder of her grace. He’s saved a bottle of wine for them, a sweet thing for the sweetest thing he’s known. 

“I’m sorry,” she speaks the warmth of the beverage on her tongue, and it should feel abrupt but it doesn’t.

“What for?” He can’t imagine what she would have to apologize for. 

“I know things have been…off between us,” she says carefully, considering the phrasing of each word. He watches her with a reverence, his hazel eye brimming with affection with nowhere to go. “You’ve been so great through it.”

Her legs are thrown across his own, and she’s dangerously close to sitting in his lap, but not exactly. He’s missed having her this close, the last time she’d been in his orbit was before she’d had reason to be gone. She smells floral. He fights With limited filtering through his already treacherous mind he thinks, He can’t take this from me. I still get her like this. 

“I’m not entirely sure what it is.” 

She slowly shuts her eyes, go for a moment to somewhere he can’t follow. Her cheeks are rosy from the cold. 

“This whole Ben thing.”

“Oh.”

Logically, it always had to come back to this. Someone else had the good fortune to know her like this, to be the person she reads poetry to in deep meaning to. 

He’s been stealing moments from someone who’s not his to take them from. 

“I don’t even know how I wanted you to react.” she murmurs, staring at the rim of her glass. 

“I just want you to be happy” His voice is something low, grit in the sound of it. His hand rests on her thigh. There’s warmth blanketing the room and he wants to kiss her. He wants to kiss her all the time. 

She laughs, but it’s not her normal laugh. It’s tinny and a little bitter. He pushes his luck, and reaches out to brush the side of her face, moving the hair but still holding her face. Her breath smells like strawberry wine and temptation. 

It feels different tonight. Low light and tension that could be sliced with wire. Every part of her is in reach, and something in the air makes all of this talk of relativity, of physics, moot. 

Like maybe he’s not in the only world they don’t end up together. 

Her face is warm and soft under his touch and he loves the sight of her. He’s never touched her like this. Every point of contact feels electric, addicting. 

“What is it? The Ben thing?” He doesn’t know what he’s expecting to hear. What he wants, is for her to tell him that it doesn’t matter anymore, that she picks him-

“I only went out with him the once.”

“What?”

“I told Penelope I was still going because it made her happy and she said I couldn’t keep going to your apartment and reading you poetry and call that romance.”

Romance? 

Wasn’t it romance, though? 

Her eyes widen in something akin to horror. 

“Shit, Spence- I’m sorry, that is so fucked of me to say-“

“You,” he tries to say calmly, “aren’t going out with Ben.”

She blinks. 

“No?”

He has spent so much time living in other lives, existing in the minds of versions of himself he wasn’t lucky enough to be. Drinking coffee imagine a life colored in her presence, falling asleep yearning for the presence of something lighter than what he has to carry. 

He can’t exist in two places. That was the entire basis of the experiment. 

He moves his other hand to hold hers, and somehow she’s shifted to being on top of him, and he looks up at her with unwavering desire. 

Spencer isn’t good at wanting people, but it comes naturally with her. Less of an action and more an urge, a course of motion to which he is at the mercy of. This is what leads him to close the gap between them, and kiss her. It’s 

Her delicate fingers run through his hair, and she can’t be close enough, please, and he could spend the rest of his life kissing her, actually. He probably will spend the rest of his life thinking about the soft sigh he pulls out of her. 

“I want it to be me,” he manages to say through shallow breath, still so close that his lips brush hers every other word, “I want to be the one you pick. I want it to be me.” His hazel eyes seem to shift in the moment, swirling with emotion. 

She brushes a lock of his overgrown hair out of his face. He normally shaves when he sees her, but he’d been so busy that he’d forgotten, and felt embarrassed of it now. That is, until she runs her index finger along the edge of his jawline.

It’s then she leans down and kisses him again, pliant and good, his hands around her waist. He breathes a prayer into her mouth, one that hopes that she never ever comes to her senses about him. 

“Spence,” she says, her voice golden silk, a kindness.  “There was never anyone else to pick.” 

no

window pains | jason todd

Summary: He's got a habit of coming in through the window. You want him to start staying... and using the door. 

Pairing: Jason Todd x gn!reader 

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings/tags: injured Jason Todd (he's okay dw), angst, pining, mentions of Jason's death.

A/N: sooo.... i guess i'm a dc girlie now. just a reminder that every character i write will always be 18+!!! this is probably canon divergent but we make our own canon.

If you like this fic and want to see more, please let me know through reblogs ♡

the divider

"Can't you enter my apartment like a normal person?"

"You know who you're talking to, right?"

"You're getting blood on my carpet, Todd."

It doesn't really matter. He'll come back and scrub it out as soon as his ribs are whole. And fuck if he's not good at getting blood out of surfaces. Jason Todd ought to start a housekeeping column. 

You catch his limp as he climbs over the windowsill. It almost topples him, but he gets to the couch before it does. He doesn't make a sound. 

That had freaked you out the first few times he'd stumbled through your window. Once, he came with part of a windshield wiper impaled in his shoulder. He'd lain on your couch so still and so quiet, you'd thought Red Hood had croaked in your apartment. Which would not have been a good look for you. Or maybe it would. Depends on who you ask. 

Sometimes you want to tell him to make sounds. To hiss and grunt and complain. To grab your wrist so you'll slow down as you pull thread through flesh. 

But it's not your place to request such a thing. You don't know where you reside in Jason Todd's life, but it's not somewhere where you can request to hear him hurt. 

Outwardly, his injuries aren't bad-looking. He takes off his helmet and tosses it somewhere under the coffee table. You offer a hand to help him lie down on the couch—he doesn't take it. 

"Jesus Christ, Jay." You suck in a sharp breath and peel back his bloody suit. "What'd you do?"

"Took a midnight stroll in the Botanical Gardens. Why, what'd you do?"

You frown, eyebrows pinching in the center of your forehead. Jason's stomach is mottled with purple and red bruises. There's a sticky gash right above his hip. A knife. Or a sword, maybe. Apparently, swords are commonplace in Gotham. 

"How'd they get you?" you ask. 

It's a rule-break. Jason's number one policy: don't ask questions.

You always do. Even when it was new, this… thing between you two, you'd ask. Who were they? Why did they hurt you? Did you hurt them back?

The last one, you always know the answer to. 

"There were, like, ten of them," he says. "Cut me some slack, will ya?" 

He has a cut across his lips. A ringed finger that caught on his skin, you guess. You wonder if he'd wince if you kissed him. If he'd wince at the pain or the kiss itself. If you'd know the difference. 

Rage suddenly cuts through you. It makes your hands careless, cruel; you pull the bandage around his waist too tight. Jason coils up slightly. 

"Jesus—ever heard of bedside manner?" he asks, looking at you through his lashes. 

"Ever heard of not breaking into someone's apartment and making them patch you up?"

"I don't make you," Jason says easily. "You wouldn't do it if you didn't want to."

That only increases your rage. Because he's right. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to be. You'd have kicked him out four first aid kits ago if you minded. 

You yank down his shirt and pack up the kit. Jason shifts on the couch. A sliver of skin above his waistband is still exposed. You have to turn your head to force your gaze away. 

"No bandaids?" he asks. "All my cuts'll be exposed to the elements."

"You can put them on yourself." 

His cheek could use one. And his eyebrow. You're not in the mood. 

Jason doesn't say anything in response to that. You get up to put the kit back under the sink. 

"Can I crash here?" 

"Do what you want," you say, suddenly exhausted. Like it's you who just went six rounds with Gotham's scumbags.

You peek over the kitchen counter when you hear rustling and the couch springs squeak. Jason leans heavily on the arm of the couch, reaching for the window. You walk over and stand in front of him. 

"What're you doing?" you ask. 

"You want me to go," he says flatly. "So I'm going."

"I didn't say that, I said—"

"I can read between the lines." 

"If you could read between the lines as well as you think you can, we wouldn't be in this situation," you say. 

"What situation?"

You turn your head. "Nothing."

Jason steps towards the window. You block him again. 

"What is the matter with you?" you ask. "You're injured. Lie down."

"I'm not your responsibility," he says, glaring. "I'm leaving."

"No, you're not. And since you're allergic to using the door, you don't have a choice."

Jason's eyebrow rises. "Are you saying you'd physically prevent me from leaving?"

You lift your chin. "If that's what it takes."

"Hm. Can't tell if your confidence is stupid or brave."

"Lie the fuck down, Todd."

His lip curls. "I don't stay where I'm not welcome."

Sometimes you forget how young he is. Not that you're not also young, but, well… you don't feel your youth as acutely as other people your age might. It's something you two have in common. 

Here, in the gritty glow of Gotham, you are reminded that Jason Todd died once. Before he finished school. Before he fell in love. 

Your stomach churns every time you see that Y-shaped scar on his torso, strapped over him like a chain. 

"I didn't say that you're not welcome," you say. 

"Yeah, well, you didn't have to."

He sags against the couch and it occurs to you that he's as exhausted as you feel. 

"Can you just—" You touch his bicep. He winces even though there's no injury there. "Can you just lie down?" 

You stare at each other for another minute. Slowly, Jason lays down. His eyes are alert instead of heavy with sleep. Instantly, you feel guilty for making him think he has to be cautious around you. His hand curls protectively over his stomach. 

"Do you want a blanket?" you ask. 

He squints. "It's August."

"I know, I… I thought maybe the blood loss made you cold." 

"'M fine. Perks of being risen from the dead." 

You watch him get settled for a minute. He shifts his weight to his uninjured side and meets your gaze. His eyes are gray in the weak light. 

"You're tired of me," he says. 

Your head snaps up. "No, I'm not."  

"You are."

"I'm not tired of you, Jay."

You see it. The fear. He thinks this is the last time you'll let him in. He doesn't know you can't lock him out. You won't. 

You get up and go to get the kit from the sink again. Jason follows your movement the whole time. His face scrunches in confusion when you sit in front of the couch and unzip the kit. 

You pull out the tiny red bandaids. You'd bought them as a joke, initially. It had made Jason laugh and that had been reason enough to keep buying them. And then he let you actually put them on.

You peel the adhesive off of one and gently stick it on his cheek. He blinks at you, thick, dark lashes kissing the corners of his eyes. 

"I'm not tired of you," you say softly. 

"I'd be tired of me." 

"You keep this city safe. How could I be tired of Gotham's defender?"

Jason scowls and turns his head into the cushion before you can put the second bandaid.  

"I'm not its defender. The others protect this city a hundred times better. Nightwing does it with a smile on his face."

"I like that you go out there even when it's hard, Jay," you say. 

He doesn't respond. You lean in, so close that you can count the freckles on his neck. 

"Can I finish putting the bandaids on?" you ask. 

"I don't need 'em."

"You do. You need another on your forehead."

"It'll heal fine without it."

Your shoulders bunch like a cat on defense. You grab his cheek (gently, always gently) and his head whips to yours in surprise. 

"Jason Todd, I am not tired of you. I'm tired of the fact that you only come by when you need fixing."

He scowls. "I never asked you to fix me. If you want me to leave, I'll leave."

"I don't want you to leave, I want you to stay!" you burst. 

Jason scoffs. "No, you don’t. I'll overstay my welcome real fast."

"Maybe I care about you on purpose!" you say, voice rising. "Maybe I didn't stumble through a window; maybe I walked through the door and bought the bandaids and learned how to stitch wounds because I wanted to."

He suddenly looks overcome by grief. The agony in his face startles you. 

"I don't know how to use the door anymore," he says quietly. "All I do is stumble through windows."

Your hand slips off of his cheek. Jason closes his eyes; they fly open when you stick the second bandaid above his eyebrow. 

"You can come in any way you want to," you say, face an inch away from his. "As long as you come back to me."

His gaze darts to your mouth. You don't kiss him hard. He breaks anyway.

You avoid the right side of his mouth entirely, not wanting to pull at his cut. Jason shudders into your mouth. You cup his pulse through his neck and it quickens.

His eyes are wet when you pull away. His chest heaves like he's been swinging through the city. 

"I wanna try to use the door," he says. 

You touch the bandaid on his cheek, humming. 

"Then I'll leave it unlocked."