#rage.rambles

Even Sasha’s pissing him off, leaning up against you from behind and laughing coquettishly along with you, batting her big brown eyes at the group of guys surrounding you both. There’s blood in the water; it’s a popular vacation week, and the little beach town you’ve all chosen is filled with people your age, looking for a one-night-stand or a summer fling. Eren watches as you tuck a stray hair behind your ear, cocking your head as the blond one explains something overenthusiastically, like he thinks you’re stupid, and grinds his jaw hard enough to shake his vision. You’re a prize catch alright, and Eren’s torn between watching the slimeball practically salivate over you or sparing himself the heartache. A fresh drink would be a good start.

“You look homicidal.” Armin, disappointingly, sidles up beside him, waving two fingers at the bartender.

“I don’t.” Eren rolls his eyes, sucking down the last of his bourbon and coke. He can feel Armin watching him, but all he cares about for the moment is a bit of salve to soothe the sting of watching you practically parade yourself around the pool table.

“You do,” Armin corrects. “Please tell me this wasn’t the ‘plan’ you mentioned earlier.’”

“No, Armin, watching her get slobbered on by a bunch of assholes wasn’t a part of the ‘plan’, alright? Now will you back the fuck off?” Armin only turns to Eren and blinks, wide blue eyes tugging at the guilt Eren tries not to have patience for. He fails. “Sorry, I’m just– sorry.”

Armin orders them both drinks, and Eren sulks in his own misery, trying to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the grainy wood in front of him. An airheaded laugh floats over his shoulder like an unwelcome breeze, and Eren pauses a moment before he realizes that it came from you. He bristles; you don’t laugh like that, all whiny and hollow, at least not when Eren makes you laugh. Half of his fresh bourbon is gone in one sip.

“Maybe she’s drunk,” Armin says quietly, the dip of his voice the first indicator of sympathy Eren’s gotten from him since this morning. It stings more than it soothes.

“I don’t care.” Eren shrugs, sitting up and letting that cold mask he’s so familiar with fall over his face. “It’s a busy week, there’s plenty of ass around here.”

“Eren–” Armin shuts up as soon as he catches a glimpse of the lethal glare on Eren’s face. Eren wants to apologize again at the wounded expression Armin offers, but being soft, like he promised himself he would try being, has only gotten him a front-row seat to his own personal nightmare so far. He’s out of patience for the night.

“Not fun, is it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eren turns to his left, scowling.

Jean had called to apologize a few days after their near-fight in Armin’s kitchen, blaming it on a broken heart. Eren knows Jean well enough to know it was more likely the result of Jean’s nasty temper and the drinks he’d been pounding, but he had still been running on the hope that you’d be calling him any day then, and he’d accepted. Ten years of friendship, reluctant at times but unquestioned always, was too much to throw away, especially since Eren would soon have you in his arms. While the you-related part of Eren’s plan hadn’t quite come to fruition yet, at least he and Jean were finally on neutral terms for the first time since the start of your past relationship.

Or so Eren thought, given that Jean now seems to be set on running his fucking mouth.

Jean nods towards the pool table, smirking a little when you brush a hand against the linen shirt of one of your admirers, when you chew into your bottom lip and cock your head, frowning at the pool table like you’re unsure. Eren can see two– no, three shots just from where he’s standing. It’s so unlike you, the stupid-but-cute act. His stomach churns.

“She’s not a bad actress, that’s all.”

“Actress?”

“Well, wasn’t she acting when you two were pretending to be together?”

Eren weighs his options carefully. So, Jean knew that the relationship had been a farce, but he must not have known where you’d wound up that night. Interesting. “Something like that.”

“Yeah.” Jean takes a long sip of his beer, much too cool for Eren’s liking. “She really knows how to rile you up.”

“Thin ice, Kirstein.”

“I just mean,” Jean gestures to you and your tight little dress, and Eren realizes far too late that he especially doesn’t want Jean of all people seeing you like this, “maybe it’s on purpose.”

“What?” Eren grunts, growing far too irritable to keep listening to whatever bullshit Jean’s spouting. His cocktail is essentially just a glass of ice at this point in an effort to keep his mouth busy instead of ruining the tentative peace he’d established with Jean. See? I can be soft.

“No need for a new trick if the old one already works.” Jean shrugs. “I was mostly moved on by Connie’s birthday, if I’m being honest, but shit still got under my skin, I mean– you know that.”

Eren ticks his jaw, watching you bend over again, ass facing him, watching the fabric ride up so far he can almost make out your clothed pussy. Despite himself, he narrows his eyes, wondering if from here he’d be able to get a glimpse of your panties, even just the outline of what’s been keeping him up at night, what he’s been fisting his cock to, biting into the knuckles of his free hand to hold back little huffs and groans, for the last two months. You’re standing up straight again far too soon, smiling bashfully as your cohorts clap appreciatively at a shot you’ve made. Sasha throws her arm around your neck, and Eren rolls his eyes. Imagine that.

“What’s your point, Kirstein?” Eren crunches down viciously on an ice cube, raises a needy hand towards the bartender. “Not to crush your heart, but I don’t think she’s fucking with you.”

“Who said anything about me?” Jean’s eyebrows lift meaningfully. Eren turns to glare at him, trying to parse out Jean’s meaning. Jean only shrugs half-heartedly, leaning back on the bar and grinning. Sasha’s body slams into his out of nowhere, halfway between hugging him and making grabby hands for Jean’s baseball cap.

“Jean, give me–”

“Down, girl,” Jean practically swats her away, “don’t you have plenty of friends to play with already?”

“Those creeps?” Sasha’s face screws into a frown, and Eren’s ears perk up. Creeps, huh? “They’re an open bar tab, not my friends. Want to sneak a shot while they’re not looking?”

“What?” Eren pipes up, leaning in to make sure he’s hearing this right.

“Shots,” Sasha mimes taking a shot, looking at Eren like she’s not quite sure if he’s wholly there or not. “Mister…” she studies the red Visa in her hand, “Taylor is buying!”

Eren accepts whatever sticky, horrible shot Sasha ends up offering him, forgoing the toast to look over at you in a new light. He realizes suddenly that you don’t seem very drunk at all, no– the slow drag of your fingers over that blond one’s hand seems very intentional, but then, he notices something new: a pile of cash sitting on the edge of the table. He tilts his head, a smirk toying at the corner of his mouth. Eren observes with more curiosity than anxiety this time as you cock your chin up, throw a twenty of your own onto the table, laugh a little too hard at a joke that he can just tell you don’t think is all that funny.

“If you two will excuse me,” Sasha says slyly, slinking off back to the pool table in the corner.

Too many memories to count scurry through your mind at once, ants escaping their home after their little mound is cruelly destroyed by a child-sized boot. It’s Keigo holding the door for you and your small cardboard box of belongings, hissing “Good luck.” through a mirthless smile. It’s a flurry of scenes from your time at Vaganova, your teenage self squinting critically at the flare of your developing ribcage in the mirror and blotting bloodstains out of your shoe ribbons. It’s your mother, too gripped with empathy to respond, listening to you blubber on the phone half a planet away. It’s a drunken kaleidoscope of a new hand sliding up your dress, blond hair, the booth of a club. Are you sure about this? It’s your first night in your one bedroom apartment, your first in Japan after eight months here, eating a sad onigiri from your new 7/11 on the floor and skimming the fine print of your lease to see if you’re allowed to use a drill on the walls.

You can make out the thick white lines of a crosswalk under your heels and stumble along the pathway, too weary to react to the blaring car horns around you with anything but a bleak hope that they don’t hit you. Maybe.

“Hey!” A voice barks behind you, a distant lighthouse in your consciousness, but you keep stumbling forward, sure that there will be a sidewalk ahead of you somewhere. “Hey!”

Bakugou, your dizzy mind grasps onto his name at the exact moment a thick forearm slams into your waist, dragging your helpless body out of the line of traffic. Good, is all you manage internally. Bakugou is good.

“The fuck’s the matter with you?” Bakugou practically shouts from above you. Your feet are still moving, staggering along with his urgent grip until he brings you to a stop in an alleyway. Blinking rapidly up at him, you realize that the wetness on your face isn’t entirely of your own making, but that it’s pouring, rainwater dripping from the tip of his nose to splatter on your forehead. He looks furious, but mentally, you’re still coughing up proverbial water, and you don’t feel close enough to shore to delegate attention to the anger on his face. “Just dragged you out of traffic, for fuck’s sake.”

“Thanks,” you say lamely, teeth beginning to chatter. Bakugou fixes you with a hard glare before sighing, a defeated sound that clues you in to just how pathetic you must look. For a fleeting moment, you’re glad for all the hopelessness calcifying in your chest; it lets you put away your pride for long enough to be taken care of.

“Talk to me,” Bakugou orders, voice still firm but now with an air of kindness that makes your stomach churn. The sickening warmth grows almost unbearable when he tucks his jacket around your shoulders. “What happened back there?”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, hesitant, but Bakugou only stands and waits, resolute in his steady determination to drag the darkness out of you.

What had made you snap? Even after your episode—the theatrics of which are growing more and more embarrassing to remember as you sober up—it’s hard to say what the final nail in the coffin was. Keigo hasn’t texted you in weeks, which is a double-edged blessing in and of itself. Mina had treated you to a full hour of getting-ready time, complete with constructive critique until you were confident in your dress, in your makeup. You’re not even halfway through your first glass of wine, so your instincts might be swayed by emotion but certainly not alcohol. This restaurant had never been a date spot in your last relationship; Keigo would die rather than stoop to suffer through a fancy tasting course. Despite your fears of conversation about the agency, Denki’s date—who was Endeavor’s newest social media manager, you remind yourself, in case you forget to kill him later—was bubbly and kind, leagues above the shallow, fame-seeking women he’s usually plagued by. Wait…that, your mind finally has a surprise snap of clarity. Denki brought a good date tonight, Denki.

“D-Denki,” you stammer out, looking up at Bakugou with realized eyes, as if he’s supposed to understand immediately.

“Kaminari made you cry?” Bakugou’s face screws up with renewed rage, red eyes flitting toward the warm light exuding from the French restaurant he’d just chased you out of.

“No, sorry, listen.” You grab at his shirt frantically as if the fabric is the conclusion you’re trying not to lose. Clearly you catch him off guard if the slack of his face is anything to go by, but you press forward. “His date is nice.”

“Eh.” Bakugou shrugs. You roll your eyes, tugging again at his clothing.

“Denki,” you repeat with emphasis, “has a nice date. Denki of all people!”

“What does that have to do with you?” Bakugou’s eyebrows connect confusedly. You can tell he’s trying to be patient, and you can tell you’re not being specific enough, but the irritated huff flies out of your teeth before you can stop it. “Look, I’m trying–”

“How did Denki land a nice date before me?” You finally spit, releasing Bakugou to fist at the red tip of your nose irritably. “Denki!”

Despite himself, Bakugou coughs out a laugh, earning himself what’s probably a hilariously infuriated glare from you. He holds his destructive palms out to you in apology, figuratively putting his belly up.

“Sorry, sorry. You really can get mean when you’re riled up, can’t you?”

“Bakugou,” you hiss in warning, taking a step towards him. That shakes him up enough, and he clears his throat, straightening his jacket on your shoulders.

“So, what? Dunce-face gets laid and somehow that means you’re never gonna?”

When he spells it out so plainly, a wave of prickly shame drips down you from head to toe, and you can feel the result of it in a rise of warmth to your chest. “When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“It is stupid,” Bakugou affirms, but there’s no teasing in his tone. “I mean, just last week, we–”

“Jesus,” you cut him off, digging your palms into your eyes. “I was there, no need to recap.”

Oh, you were there, alright. You were there for every thigh-shaking, earth-shattering second of it, the first time, the second time, the third time. It’s become a bit of a drunken pitfall for you, this Bakugou thing. Sure, you had a crush on him back when you were with Keigo, and the irony of it isn’t lost on you considering the circumstances of your breakup, but you’d like to think you understand plenty enough about Bakugou to know that pursuing anything with him is walking onto thin ice with a weighted vest on. That hasn’t stopped you from letting his bedroom floor become acquainted with the lacier bits of your wardrobe, though.

“Right.” Bakugou rolls his eyes, but you catch something on his face before the sarcasm settles in, something odd and vulnerable. Hm. “This have to do with the chicken?”

That gets an honest to god laugh out of you, wet and ugly and probably accompanied by a snot bubble, if you can stand to admit it. In the wake of the breakup, Bakugou had used his well-worn foul mouth to dub Keigo with all sorts of terrible, wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap epithets, likely in the spirit of cheering you, but you insisted it only made you feel worse. He’d had to improvise.

When you settle, you wipe at your tears—and maybe a little at your nose, ugh—and meet Bakugou’s understanding eyes shyly. “Maybe.”

“Figured.” Bakugou’s arm is around your waist without a word, tugging you tightly to him to avoid a splash of water kicked up by a car speeding down the street behind you. You know that, while he won’t pry, he’s going to want you to tell him. You’re already familiar with the quiet fascination Bakugou’s developing with your scars; who left them, when, how tender they are if he prods. You two aren’t prone to long-winded, tear-laden pillow talk, but it isn’t unusual for him to launch a blind question into the sticky dark enveloping you after he’s thoroughly disarmed you beneath his sheets. His heart thuds through his shirt against your ear, steady and scarred in its own right, and it steels you against your own nerves.

“The day we broke up,” you sniffle, pulling away from him and letting a satisfying, post-cry gasp rock through you. “The day I left him. It was a nasty fight for a lot of reasons, but I– I keep replaying the worst part in my head.” You take another shuddering breath, bracing yourself to experience the words out in open air again, outside of the private torture chamber of your memory. “Keigo said no one would ever love me the way he did, no one would ever love me again. Not to bother trying.”

To his credit, Bakugou absorbs the admission quietly. You can audibly hear his breath constrict in his chest, but he manages to choke down whatever expletive-filled response comes to his mind first.

“You don’t believe that,” he finally manages, voice strained.

“I guess not,” you mutter, feeling a deep sense of self-loathing begin to take root in your bones. The strength in you that you attributed to a sense of reinforcement was, in hindsight, a spark of odd, unearned hope. What did you expect him to say?

“Come on.” Bakugou shakes your shoulder lightly, looking down at you. When you avoid his gaze, he scoffs. “You can’t look me in the goddamn eye and tell me you honestly believe nobody’s ever gonna fall for you. Try it.”

“Bakugou–”

“Well?” Bakugou grabs you by the chin none-too-carefully and forces your gaze to his.

He almost takes your breath away.

In the myriad of tragedies over the last two or three months, it’s been easy to grow comfortable with Bakugou’s looks, but here, in the right lighting with your heart haphazardly skipping every other beat in your chest, you have to fight the urge to shrink away from him. The stern set of his pink lips, eternally downturned but oh, so soft, the sharp line of his jaw offset by the molten gold of the restaurant’s lighting, the harmonious slope of his nose; every word you can think of falls short, but his eyes steal the show. There’s something new glimmering in the carmine, something disarming and raw and entirely in defiance of every pre-conceived notion you’ve ever held about Bakugou. You can’t put your finger on it, but you can take a chance on it.

“No,” you say, hardly managing to conjure up a shy smile as a cop out, “no, I don’t think that.”

“Good,” Bakugou says curtly, a similarly awkward smile stretching over his face. He drops your chin and takes a step or two away from you, probably for his own sake more than yours. You watch the contractions of his shoulders, the nervous shake of them. It takes everything you have to open your mouth again.

“I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”

Bakugou freezes for a millisecond, peering over his shoulder at you. His jaw twitches, eyes sweeping over your figure. The contemplation is gone as soon as it appears; he rolls his shoulders back and shakes them out a bit, like you’ve seen him do on television before chasing headfirst after something that could—and actively wants to—kill him. Bakugou nods tersely to himself before turning to face you head-on.

“Yeah,” he sighs, “maybe. But I’m not gonna.”

His mouth is on yours before you can even think about puzzling out his meaning, big, warm palms cradling your cheeks lovingly like he isn’t kissing you like he’s desperate, like the atmosphere has suddenly become devoid of oxygen and his only chance of breathing is staying there with you, like his very life depends on it.

“B-Baku-Bakugou,” you try in between kisses, reeling in your surprise as quickly as you can manage. He’s had his mouth damn near everywhere on your body at this point, but never like this.

“Katsuki,” he breaks away momentarily to breathe it into your mouth, that elusive, given name of his that he keeps under a layer of barbed wire. “Say it for me, Katsuki.”

“Katsuki,” you put his name right back on his tongue, choking down a weak little moan when he grunts openly into your mouth in approval. Bakugou—Katsuki’s— hands have travelled far below your cheeks by now, sliding under his jacket and grabbing roughly at your waist, at the scrunch of your dress, at the curve of your hip. You drink down each sound he pours into your mouth greedily, arms wrapping around his neck as he backs you into the brick of the alley. You gasp around his tongue when your back hits the wall, letting him cage you in however he sees fit. You’re struck with the idea that he needs this, needs you, maybe just as much as you need him, and it levels you, your body going pliant in his arms.

A series of lecherous honks from the street break you apart with a wet smack, Katsuki turning to send a murderous glare over his shoulder. You can smell burnt caramel on the palm he’s planted against the wall beside your face, and you tap his elbow gently to bring him back to you. When his eyes land on you, affection chases the anger from his brilliant irises, his cheeks swelling with the hint of a smirk that tries to hide in the shadows of his face.

“Do I need to make myself any more clear?” he asks, the last bricks of the wall he’s spent so many years building around himself and subsequently dismantling holding fast. His businesslike tone draws a wet giggle out of you, and you tighten your arms around his neck to bring his lips to yours for a quick, chaste kiss of confirmation.