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come away with me

The sunrise was the colour of rotting and bruised beets, but that was usual at this time of year.

You often wondered what colours painted the sunrises and the sunsets outside the valley. Never once had you set foot outside the makeshift faerie ring around this little cluster of hills that you called home. It was for your safety, Nurse always insisted on every occasion that you thought to ask. She never once gave you a straightforward answer when you would follow that question with “Safe from what?”

The sunrise was a sickly colour, and it was one that you did not like. It reminded you of the times when you had fallen as a child and hurt your knees, scraped your elbows. The one saving grace of this pallid purple-red in the sky was the imminent arrival of summertime.

Summertime was when some of the warriors of the Black Claw would return to their childhood villages and tarry a while to hunt for sport. Numbered among these most valiant men was your one true love, and you could hardly wait to fall into his arms once again. You only ever saw him in the flesh during the summer when the weather was too hot for making war, after all.

“Is something troubling you, child?”

You scrambled to turn to your nurse, straightening your back as though you had reason to keep up appearances. Nurse always knew what was on your mind, so there was no reason to hide and absolutely no reason to be embarrassed. Despite this, you felt the back of your neck warm.

Clearing your throat, you said, “I am waiting for the return of my beloved, is all.”

There was a mischievous twinkle in Nurse’s eyes, and you braced yourself for her usual spiel on a certain variety of topics. Among those that frequently poured from her lips were love and youth and dalliance, which you have your ears full of since you had your first monthly discharge of blood.

These things were the talk of women, Nurse said whenever you waved her off to ramble on about “girlhood” this and “seduction” that. Listening with one ear tuned in to her words and one to the sounds outside the house certainly helped, but you would never admit to that.

You would never hear the end of Nurse’s ribbing if you did.

“The boy will be home by the next moon, won’t he? The son of the county lord,” Nurse said, lifting a teacup to her lips. You were seated a fair distance away from her, and yet you wrinkled your nose as though an offensive smell had tickled it. Nurse hardly ever drank from that particular teacup unless her tea was stirred with honey, milk and whiskey.

Even with her sitting at the dinner table while you were by the window, you could smell the alcohol as though an unfinished bottle of a local brew was sitting right under your nose.

“Yes,” you said, stifling the enthusiasm in your tone to curb teasing from your nurse. “My Tetsurou will be home for the summertime, as he has been for the summers past and as he will be in the summers to come. He will come home and I will meet with him.”

Out of the corner of your eye, a rather sombre expression passed over Nurse’s face. You blinked, facing her properly this time, and it was already gone. She wore her usual gratified expression when she had a drop of alcohol, or more than a drop.

“Is there something amiss, Nurse?” you asked, standing up from the wide windowsill where you had been sitting.

There was a panic in her eyes when you approached, and her feelings were made more apparent to your eye when she angled herself away from you. The barely there tightening of her fingers around the handle of the teacup was the one sign you did not want to see, but that settled the matter that she was hiding something from you and it was bad news.

You had to know what it was, especially if it would – might, you told yourself in an attempt to stave off any unnecessarily pessimistic thoughts – hamper Tetsurou meeting you. Or you, being present to receive him.

“Something is amiss,” you said, and you hoped to coax some truth out of her this time.

It surfaced at every instance when you were curious about something or the other. Nurse had this horrid habit of either misdirecting you with shrewd answers and ambiguous ideas, or of keeping a vow of silence. To whom she had made this vow, you did not know. Perhaps it was to your birth parents. To the ones who sent you here to the far reaches of the mountainous countryside sprawling with forests and faeries to arrest any attempt at finding you who were supposedly lost.

Supposedly lost, or perhaps, supposedly dead or never born.

You did not yet know if you wanted the truth on this particular matter. However, you did want to know if there was something that Nurse felt was amiss with this coming summertime. Would there be a war that prevented Tetsurou from returning home at the appointed time? Would he fall ill? Would he be affected by a bout of mischief of a faerie angered by his Black Claw brothers in arms?

“Something is wrong, and you need to tell me, Nurse,” you said, pleading, desperate.

You put a hand on her shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze, aiming for it to be a reassuring thing for your nurse rather than a show of your immaturity that blossomed in utter impatience. Given the atmosphere surrounding this conversation, you supposed that your impatience would be forgiven.

There was the sound of Nurse emptying her cup of tea, noisy and quick, a contrast to how she normally savoured each sip. She set the teacup down on the dinner table and gestured for you to join her at the adjacent seat.

You pulled your hand away from her shoulder and sat, tucking the chair in. The floorboards squeaked in protest. For the first time, Nurse paid it no mind. Not to the unseemly restlessness to the way you moved. Not to the scratches in the floorboards that would surely be visible and running against the grain of the wood from your actions.

Nurse took both of your hands in hers once you had taken your seat, her hands almost leathery to the touch from her hard work at maintaining the home all by herself. You had always offered to lend a helping hand, clumsy as you might be from being unpractised in domestic work. Nurse had never once allowed you to, opting instead to light the oil lamp for your desk and laying out books on poetry and on medicine and on histories and on faeries to read.

If you were to be taken from these hills and from your nurse because you had reached the age of womanhood, you would surely not leave.

In anticipation of the worst, you hardened your heart just as you hardened your hands around both of the Nurse’s. She clutched your hands with equal force, and you hoped that she, too, would surely not allow you to leave. Not allow you to be taken.

At least, not without force.

“You have been promised to a man, my dear girl. From the time of your birth,” Nurse said, and your resolve was shattered for a reason entirely different than what you had been expecting. Her words quivered with her lips, and you knew that it was not for an excessive intake of whiskey in one morning.

You were anticipating a war where you would be a spoil or an unfortunate victim of happenstance. Perhaps your beloved would be fighting in it, or perhaps he would not, for it was a matter that was out of his hands.

You have been promised to a man that you have never met, never danced with amongst the flowers, never kissed under starlight, never longed for in his absence.

The world outside the house was starting to wake up from its slumber, becoming warm like the red in the sky and the yellow of the sun.

“I– Am?”

The world was starting to grow warm but your breath felt cold in your body, and its chill spread over your arms and your shoulders and your back. You felt a sudden, burning urge to drown yourself in the fur blankets of wintertime that was already past.

“Yes.” The word left your nurse in a long exhale, and you felt the slightest ember of warmth seeping back into your bones. “From birth, you have promised to a man. However, I tell you there is a way to circumvent this.”

Nurse released your hands with a reluctance, but she rose from her seat with abruptness. You placed your hands in your lap, watching Nurse busy herself with searching for something. “There is a way, yes. There is. There is a way,” she said, over and over, and you could not be certain if it was for your ears, or for her own.

“There is a way,” Nurse said once more, having acquired a hefty book bound in leather that was dyed in a curious reddish brown from her shelves and shelves and shelves full of books in leather bindings of mismatching colours. She dusted the book off with a quick sweeping over of the hand, and she returned to the dinner table and set it in front of you.

Nurse moved the book so that you could read the wisdom inscribed on its pages. She put her finger to a paragraph that has many notes scribbled in the margins between the words on the page, some phrases circled and other phrases underlined here and there.

You clenched your jaw to mask your bewilderment, but you gave an unflinching “yes” when she asked you if this way was one that you were willing to take, no matter the consequence.

It was at the clearing of the forest that separated the valley where you lived from the rest of your countrymen where you met Tetsurou during the summertime.

Your chest was unusually tight as you fell into his arms, feeling out of breath even if you had not run and you had not exhausted your voice in shouting for him. When he embraced you with a strength that made itself known only when he would be leaving until the next pallid purple-red sunrises, you paid little mind to it, the moment when you could be held by him suddenly more precious than it has ever been.

“Tetsurou,” you began, your voice sounding strangled. You cleared your throat unnecessarily, and tried again with, “We need to leave this place. Together.”

When your words hung in the air without a response from him, you were afraid that you had said the wrong thing. Did he know–

“My heart, did your nurse tell you?”

It took all of your strength to loosen your grip on him and pull away ever so slightly so that you could look in him the eye.

“Your betrothed is the king over all our lands. Did you know that?” he asked.

The moment when Nurse had revealed the truth of your birth and of your blood and of your departure from your birth mother’s arms came rushing back, and it was as though you had moved back in time. Your limbs grew to mimic milling stones, heavy and heavier still.

Tetsurou was so handsome in the moonlight.

Even if he might very well be disavowing what connection he had with you, you could not find it in you to look away from him. You drew in your breath slowly, wanting to burn the image of him in your mind’s eye. His hair that was dark and plush like the throat feather of a raven. His skin that was unblemished and fair like fresh-fallen snow. His lips that were red like new blood at the throat of slaughtered livestock.

What a beauty he was! The more you dwelt on it, the more your resolve faltered.

If your beloved was the price you had to pay to gain freedom from a bond that was not yours, you could pay it. It would be summers and summers before you would be able to confidently assure yourself on a wise decision made with much haste, but you would pay this price and you would grow to be content with your outcome. That, even if–

It was the touch of Tetsurou’s hands at your waist, familiar and easy, that drew you out of the deep waters in your mind.

“Do you wish to be with him?” he asked, and his voice was a caress in your ears and to your heart. You returned his forwardness in kind, putting your arms around him again and running your palms over the muscles of his arms, his sides, his back.

“I have a king of my own choosing, and he is not a king over these lands on which our feet stand. My king is a warrior most beauteous and most fearless and most noble, and I would have no lesser man than he,” you said, keeping your eyes fixed on his and watching the hesitation steeling his eyes give way to a tenderness that reserved only for you. You melted into him, becoming compliant to his move when he drew you into a nearly crushing embrace.

You melted, and you felt him melted also, feeling the way the heart thundering within him was soothed from your embrace, from the kisses and honeyed whispers you left along the line of his shoulder.

“Your betrothed is the king on the throne to which I made a vow on my life. But if you will it, I will go with you wherever you wish.”

long lashes and other things

A blur of pink flashed across your periphery when you turned to look at something or the other at the call of your name from behind you. You scrambled to wheel yourself out of the way in your desk chair, despite not knowing what pink thing was, but stopped halfway to the corner of your room when a bout of raucous laugher broke out from the direction where that thing came.

You frowned, curses rolling off your lips under your breath, and you used your feet to push yourself back to your desk.

“You should’ve seen the look on your face!” was what Monoma managed to spit out in between taking breaths and laughing at your reaction of fleeing the thing he had thrown in your direction. He was bent at the waist, hands planted on his knees as he laughed and laughed and laughed like a madman.

“It’s just an envelope, goodness–”

All things considered, you supposed you would be a more likely candidate for a madman than your less than pleasant roommate. You were the one tolerating his presence in this apartment when you could afford to move out to one where you would be the only tenant, and for what? Only madness explained it.

However, that could be said of rental prices and the general cost of living in this area too.

You flipped him the bird as he was straightening himself up from humouring himself so well that he had tears in his eyes. Monoma paid no mind to the gesture that you were currently pressing into his cheek since he was close enough, opting to stoop and pick up that wretched thing of pink that had fallen somewhere by your feet when he had hurled it at you like a projectile without warning.

“It’s all bent now because you wheeled yourself and this clunky chair all over it,” he said, placing a pink envelope on your desk and leaning over you slightly as he did so. “Your poor secret admirer’s bound to be broken-hearted when they realise how terrible you are with this proof of their feelings.”

You attempted a hiss, but it clearly didn’t come across as reviled as you intended when he scoffed in your face.

“It’s your fault that it was on the floor to begin with. You chucked it at me out of nowhere. Fucking hell,” you said, swivelling wildly so that the protrusion at the backrest of your desk chair hit him in the side with the force of your movement.

He let out a satisfying little “guh!” at being elbowed in the kidney by your chair, and you decided you wouldn’t eat half of his cheese in retaliation. He did come into your room without knocking first, after all. That was one of the first house rules you laid down, second only to him not eating your food without your permission.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Monoma asked, the pink ‘proof of romantic feelings’ that he had weaponised earlier all but forgotten at the far right of your desk. He busied himself with scrutinising the glass cabinet of figurines you had with the intensity of an interning medical student, arms crossed and a finger placed thoughtfully – too artfully – at the chin.

You were reaching out for the envelope as he asked, and you felt the urge to read the thing was that probably love note inside it drain out of you in an instant.

For a moment, your eyes went to the document you had compiled of all the advanced readings you still had to do for classes. There was a good two hundred pages’ worth of reading left. You had been wanting an excuse to take a break, but since he wanted you to read the love note now–

“You’re really not going to read it now?” came his voice again.

The hand you had on your mouse stilled in scrolling to where you had left off before the intrusion. There was an unfamiliar tone to his voice that made you want to pick up the envelope and see what was written on the note inside.

Love note or not, you were deathly curious now.

“Are you nervous on their behalf?” you asked, gauging his reaction. Monoma maintained his thinker pose, but there was something about the way he stood in front of your glass cabinet that betrayed an uncharacteristic stiffness in his posture.

Why was he being like this? It was definitely refreshing to see him break character from his usual mostly insufferable self, but his slight show of hesitation was uncanny to watch. The effect was heightened with how he had ego enough for a tribe of men who were much taller and far broader than him, a fun fact about him that you had ascertained as the truth from your fifteen months of living with him.

“If that’s your way of telling me you want to know me better” – you made sure to audibly gag at that, but it didn’t do anything to hinder that arrogant mouth of Monoma’s – “it’s working.”

He wasn’t hesitating at all; he was simply attempting an awkward pause for dramatic effect.

Typical Monoma.

There was a smug smile on his lips when he took a step to angle himself in your direction. You grimaced, shooing him with your hand.

“Nah, I’m good,” you said, making a show of spinning yourself in your chair to face away from him and back to your readings. “I think I know you plenty well already.”

Your statement incited an indignant noise from Monoma, and you quickly stifled the laugh bubbling up in your chest at how scandalised he sounded.

If it bothered him so much that you weren’t clamouring for his attention, he was obviously the one more accustomed to people noticing him and his presence between the two of you. This realisation made you think about how strange it was that he enjoyed mocking you by saying things like “you’re so popular that you get love notes, huh?”

“My favourite colour.”

You shrugged, not bothering to dignify his blatant challenge with an emotionally charged response.

Monoma took the bait immediately, coming up behind you and tugging you away from your desk. He spun you around in your chair to make sure you were facing him. You raised your chin more than what was needed to look him in the eye, and he responded in kind by squaring his shoulders in a half-baked attempt at intimidation.

Not that it ever worked on you, but you knew he liked to draw attention to his shoulders for some reason. Something about them being “such a good place to lean”, and that you were clearly letting them rot.

Him saying borderline – or overtly, in about half of these occasions – flirtatious things to you unironically was one of the least strange things about him. This fun fact was what you have deduced from these past fifteen months under the same roof as him. Monoma likely enjoyed the thrill of making people mentally and emotionally stumble with his unexpectedly sweet words. He did look like the sort who enjoyed watching people stumble and then fall.

You would pity him for the fact that these flirtatious advances hardly ever worked on you, but that would be pumping more hot air into his already large head. Not the best thing to do in a situation like this. It did, however, make you stop for a moment to wonder how this arrangement of renting an apartment together would’ve panned out if you were someone else. If you were less indifferent to him.

Despite your bold declaration of knowing him well, you still didn’t know if someone more susceptible to his charms would’ve been a more fun roommate for him to have, or not. It might be for the best if you don’t ever know him well enough to find this out.

“You don’t know, do you?” Monoma attempted a dig at you, but you remained impassive, still shoulders-deep in your own thoughts and close to drowning.

As he leaned closer to you and you watched him inch closer – or rather, you watched him watch your reaction to him closing the distance between your face and his – you couldn’t help but admit to yourself that he was undoubtedly quite handsome.

His lashes were long and fluttered prettily against his cheeks with every minute shift in the muscles of his face. This wouldn’t be something that you noticed normally, but with him taking many pains to come and be physically close to you, it was getting more and more difficult not to take note of his good looks.

Just like now.

You’ve lived with the plethora of his strange and occasionally heart-fluttering ways for fifteen months already. It wouldn’t be the first time he brought his face within a hand’s breadth of yours. You weren’t confident enough to say that you wanted this to be the last.

It was something that had taken a lot of getting used to, but for what?

You bit down on your lower lip on purpose, and it delighted you in ways that you couldn’t explain when Monoma’s eyes immediately snapped to your mouth.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one in this apartment with strange habits like being unnecessarily flirtatious just because. Just for the fun of it.

There was a breeze that crept in from the open window to the side. Its movements, as gentle as they were, seemed to stir the entire room that had gone stagnant from all your thinking. You became aware of the few specks of dust flitting about in your room, visible and reflecting golden in the late afternoon light. One of the specks of dust that you were watching as it hovered by his ear was whisked further back with another breeze, and your laptop came into view.

Right. Your readings.

This was alright for a distraction, but you really needed to get back to your readings. Those two hundred or so pages weren’t going to read themselves, and you’ve almost perfected the art of getting one Monoma Neito to leave you alone.

Almost.

You stood up suddenly, making sure to knock him away from you. He fumbled with his footing for the briefest of moments, his arm coming out to slam a hand at the edge your desk to steady himself.

“I’m going to get something to drink. You better be out of my room when I come back,” you said, taking a sharp turn and walking out.

No sooner had you stepped over the threshold that separated your space in this house from the common spaces, than his voice came from behind you, “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now.”

It was a rare – and unbidden – surge of daring that came alight in your veins at those words, like a previously sleeping engine suddenly ignited to life. Perhaps he hadn’t intended for you to hear them, but you’ve already heard them and you were unduly affected by his tone, his words. Him too, if you’d allow yourself that much.

Was Monoma usually this sly?

You were already turning on your heels at his words. There was a look in his eyes that told you this new development pleased him. He was right to be pleased, since you too–

“I’m only going to say this once, so don’t you make me repeat myself,” you said, licking at your lips and watching him take that in. “Come here and get your kiss, Neito-kun.”

Taglist:

house-hunting is for losers 

For lack of a better word, Futakuchi was a handful, to say the least.

You knew it even before you dated him. The way there were always girls who liked his handsome face and supposedly princely ways. How they swooned over the mere passing of his sporty frame even with a good bit of space between them and him in the hallways. And there was the way the boys frequently had their faces puckered, as if they had bitten into something unexpectedly sour, when he opened his mouth to speak. Either that, or how they broke out in laughter, loud and raucous the way large groups of teenagers tended to be.

Futakuchi Kenji was a handful of a person, and you knew this from the start. Still, you dived headfirst into him, telling yourself that you had two hands. You had two hands, so having one hand full wasn’t going to be a problem.

And you were right, but only most of the time. Now was not one of those times.

“I hate house-hunting,” Futakuchi said, dragging out his words the way small children did when they complained. He had on a displeased pout, and it was apparent even from the relatively pixelated version of him that you saw on your screen. “When will you be back? I keep getting recommended the shittiest of houses by the agent. Must think I’m a typical dumb male human with no interest in house-y things or something.”

At his expression of his severe plight, you laughed, and the wrinkle seated between his brows deepened further.

“My training will be over soon,” you said, rolling onto your side from holding your upper body up with your forearms. You quickly switched off the auto-rotate function on your phone once you were on your side, propping your phone up on a stuffed animal that Futakuchi had gifted you from your university days.

It felt so far away. The time when the two of you were still kids and allowed to cling to your childish ways in small doses. Having graduated from university seemed to be a signal fire into the void that you had become an adult. That you had become fully self-sufficient.

You didn’t feel you were. Not yet.

“It won’t be too long. Just hold out for the meantime. For me?” you asked, fluttering your eyelashes at your boyfriend. His internet connection was much faster than yours, so you were sure that you looked halfway decent on his screen even if you looked comical on your own.

Futakuchi snorted in that familiar impish fashion of his, but the happy crinkles at the corners of his eyes told you what you needed to know. “You think I’ll be happy waiting here like an old dog just because you say ‘for me’?”

You smiled, and pulled your phone closer to your face so that you could appear to be giving him a kiss. Having overestimated the amount of force required to move a small thing like a phone had you smacking yourself in the face and letting out an emphatic string of expletives in the early morning.

Your boyfriend cackled like the witch-imp-man-gremlin-creature that he was. As you watched him through the thin screen of pain-born tears in your eyes, you realised that it had been a while you saw him laugh like that. Like the two of you were still kids. Like the two of you still had the freedom to run and laugh and exist without a single care weighing down your shoulders.

It wasn’t just the house-hunting that dampened the twinkle in his eyes and suffocated the laugh on his lips. There were other things at work, and you felt a twisting in your chest that you couldn’t be there with him. There with him in person, so that you could wrap your arms around him. So that you could smack yourself in the face by accident early in the morning for his amusement and at your own expense.

“I’m sorry, Kenji," you said.

He swiped at the happy tears that had formed at the corners of his eyes, and blinked once, and then twice. “What was that?”

You shifted, turning your head so that a bigger portion of your face was missing within the pillows that held your head up. “I’m sorry that I’m not there with you,” you said. Because you had chosen this. Chosen a company that sent you overseas as soon as your probation period was over. Chosen to go with it with no resistance whatsoever.

Your parents had been against it at first, insisting that their little girl didn’t need to go away so soon. That their little girl didn’t need to go so far. It was Futakuchi who had stood up for you then, when it was also him who was most reluctant about your temporary departure from home.

“You did this for you. I’m proud of you, you know? You’re all grown up, and I love that about you. Don’t go all ‘oh, I regret it’ on me. Not after I went against your dad to his face,” he said, and you saw how he paled a little as he looked back on the same memory you reminiscing. “Fuck, that was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

This time you laughed, but the sound that left your mouth was watery. You were sniffling before you recognised that you had already started tearing up.

“Those better be tears of gratitude. Or tears because you’re so in awe of your awesome fiancé.”

You nodded desperately.

“You’ll do great picking out a house for us,” you said, because you knew that this was the thing that burdened Futakuchi as you spoke to him. “Just don’t pick that one where the toilet is in the entryway? Definitely not that one.”

“Wouldn’t it be so romantic for you to get back from work and see me on the toilet first thing though?” he asked, his hand going to his chin, and he posed as if you had asked to take his picture. “Just like those couples on TV.”

You gagged into your pillow, making retching to the best of your practically non-existent acting ability. He laughed, and then reiterated his point.

“That’s part of the vows. Something about ‘in hygiene and in filth’, was it?” he asked, waggling his brows at you playfully as he stroked his chin in a way that was supposed to be annoying but that all the more endeared him to you.

The audacity of this man, indeed.

“I love you,” you said, just as Futakuchi opened his mouth to go off on a tangent about the strange things that he cooked up in that pretty mind of his that worked only in mysterious ways. It’s been years since you’ve been by his side, and you still didn’t understand what went on up there. “I’ll be home soon, so wait for me, okay? I just–”

“If I didn’t already accept your proposal, I’d totally be expecting one right now,” he said, pausing to draw in a long breath. “I love you too, Y/N. I love you a lot. Come back home quickly so I can kick your ass at Mario Kart or whatever. If you take too long, I’ll be better at knitting than you by that time maybe.”

You called to mind all five of Futakuchi’s attempts at knitting, how clumsy and frankly terrible he was at all of them, and you scoffed.

For good measure, you gagged into your pillow as dramatically as you could once again. Then, you booed him, making sure that he got a clear view of your thumbs down. Your hand looked slightly pixelated on your own screen, but you were sure that he got it in 1080p on his.

“You completed one single project, babe. I’m sure you’ll need more than a miracle for that to happen. Maybe six miracles. Don’t think you’ll get that lucky,” you said, fully preparing yourself some bout of teasing. Some incredulity from him, maybe.

You kept a smirk on your face, because you knew that if there was one thing you were good at that Futakuchi was decidedly terrible at, it was crafty things like knitting. The man was blessed in pretty much all other aspects of life, so the crafting gods decided to stay their hands when it came to their turn to give him a blessing or completely pass him over. And pass him over they did.

It was cute in its own way that he could somehow screw up a simple beginner’s pattern that was used to teach small children how to knit. It was cute when it should’ve repulsed you, in the same way someone witty and infuriating like Futakuchi should’ve repulsed you, but it didn’t. He didn’t.

In fact, you grew to love it, the strange and annoying and adorable way that he was.

“I know I won’t get that lucky. I already have you propositioning me on the daily, after all. Must’ve used the only six miracles I’ll ever get on you.”

Futakuchi coughed immediately after he ended his sappy admission that hit you out of the blue, the hand that was on his chin for a bit having crept up to cover the lower half of face. He had almost completely missed covering the apples of his cheeks where his blush was the most prominent somehow, and your heart sang at the sight. At the pink in his face. At the way he refused to look you in the eye just yet. At the most un-Futakuchi “I love you” spiel that you ever had the pleasure of hearing with your own two ears.

“I also used the only six miracles I’ll ever get on you. I’d do it again, if I could,” you said, throwing your useless pride away. Throwing your need to tease him away, because it was utterly useless in this moment.

“Good,” he said, his eyes on yours and the contact burned in the best of ways. “Good, because I’ll never give up six miracles for anyone else.”

Bonus:

“I didn’t even want look at this house,” was what the sour look on Futakuchi’s face told you.

You gave his hand a warning squeeze, applying enough force for him to curse under his breath and attempt to shake off your hand. He threw you a glare, but it melted into a neutral expression when the real estate agent turned around at the apparent commotion that was happening behind her.

“Is there a problem?” Suzuki-san asked, giving a momentary pause in her sales pitch for the house that you and your boyfriend were currently viewing.

You shook your head too vigorously and pulled on a too-wide smile in an attempt to ward off any concerns she might have. A place that you and Futakuchi could both call your own had been a long time coming, after all. You couldn’t afford to screw this up.

Suzuki-san reciprocated and smiled back, but the expression she had on was unreadable, save for the upturned corners of her mouth. She resumed the house viewing as though she had not been distracted, going on to show you the master bedroom on the second floor.

“There’s no bathroom on the second floor,” Futakuchi whispered, leaning down to get his mouth as close to your ear as possible. You gave his hand a squeeze of agreement this time, caressing the back of it with your other hand.

“I know,” you mouthed, as you watched Suzuki-san open the built-in closet in the master bedroom.

She did a sweeping gesture across the entire length of the built-in, trying too hard to exaggerate the size of it. You were sure that she also knew that it was smaller than the average not-built-in closet. Even Futakuchi’s clothes alone wouldn’t fit in it.

You gave her a tight smile when Suzuki-san turned to the two of you, gesturing for you to accompany her out since she had already shown you the entire house. As you followed her down the stairs, she started asking how you liked the house and which of its features were to your liking. Futakuchi easily deflected any questions she had with polite stock phrases and answers that betrayed nothing, things that he had learned from all the house-hunting shows you watched together.

As long as she believes that you didn’t vehemently dislike the house.

Futakuchi might not have any issues with expressing his distaste for things, but you weren’t the same as him. You were glad that for your sake, he was being agreeable.

“So?”

“I hated it,” he said, now that Suzuki-san was out of earshot when the two of you were already at least two train stations away from the house. “The built-in’s smaller than the one in the place I’m renting. And the only real bathroom’s downstairs! Did the people who designed the house expect me to walk up the stairs naked and wet or something? I could slip and fall and die naked and still wet.”

You scoffed at his words, until you realised exactly what he said.

“Wait. You don’t dry yourself off before leaving the bathroom when I’m not there?”

Futakuchi merely shrugged, and you gave him a quick jab in the side to get a proper answer out of him. He frowned, sidestepping you but forgetting that he was still holding your hand. So you were dragged along, and you stood facing him despite his attempt to get away from a second jab that came anyway.

“The bathroom’s literally three steps away from my closet,” he said, as if that explained anything.

You stared, trying to remember how his place looked like from all the times you had stayed over for the night or for the weekend. He had towels and robes, didn’t he? He used those towels and robes even when you weren’t there, didn’t he?

“Kenji, why are you the way you are?”

He made a show of sweeping his hand through his hair and said, “Bold of you to say that when you’re the one who asked me to marry you.”

little things

i. words of affirmation

It was snowing again.

Not that it should surprise you. It snowed in Snezhnaya most of the year anyway, so to see the world around you perpetually blanketed in white was common. 

You took a pause from the book you reading and leaned your forehead against the glass of the window to your left, taking in the contrast in temperature with a sigh. The cold was nice, since it wasn’t yet the time of year when the winter was at its harshest.

“You know, I can only tolerate a certain amount of inefficiency. Get to filling out your paperwork already, Y/N,” came Scaramouche’s voice from behind you. You remained as you were, even pressing the tip of your nose against the cool glass and watching the way your exhale condensed into a fleeting white patch on the surface of it.

“Oi, did you hear me?”

You grunted as a means of response, pulling yourself away from the window and onto your feet. “You’re being an asshat. And for what? There’s no one here but you and me,” you said, taking your seat at the desk directly opposite his and examining the height of the documents that had accumulated on your desk.

In response, a scoff came from the other side of the room, and expectedly, not much else.

So much for taking a day off. You sighed again, and tucked your chair in to get to work.

“Good pet,” he said, not even looking up from his own paperwork when he heard the telltale rustling of paper from your half of the room.

 ii. quality time

“Get dressed. You’re coming with me.”

You watched Scaramouche’s back as he left your room, closing the door with a little more force than necessary. As per his cryptic instruction, you changed out of your loungewear to put on your Fatui uniform and exited your room to meet him as quickly as you could.

“Does Her Majesty the Tsaritsa have an urgent mission for us today?” you asked, matching his speed two steps behind him, which was the smallest acceptable distance between him and you.

He came to a sudden stop at your question, and you put out a hand to steady yourself on the wall beside you. You righted your posture and waited for an explanation or an answer. When Scaramouche started laughing, you wondered if this was his attempt at a prank because Master Childe has said something offensive about his personality. Something about Scaramouche being “a soggy piece of bread”.

Scaramouche was indeed quite the stickler for things and that could ruin whatever fun could be derived from doing it, but you could bring that up when Master Childe was around to rub more salt into the wound.

He turned around, the soles of his slippers hitting the tiled floor as he closed the gap of two steps in one much larger step.

“Do I have to explain myself to you? I’m going somewhere and you’re coming with me. It’s simple as that,” Scaramouche said.

You met the silent challenge in his gaze with a level stare of your own. A few minutes ticked by in silence, before you broke it and said, “I thought it was a work thing that you called me out for. You should’ve said so if you just wanted to hang out.”

 iii. gifts

You awoke to the sound of rather intrusive knocking on your door.

Swinging your legs over the edge of the bed and standing up, you rubbed at your still half-closed eyes for a moment. “I’ll be there in a moment,” you said in the direction of the door, forcing your senses to come alive so that you could walk over to it without tripping over the air over crashing face-first into the floor.

You opened the door, and it surprised you when one of the lower-ranked Fatui agents stood on the other side of it.

“I’m sorry to wake you at this hour like this, Sergeant, but this delivery had to be signed by you as quickly as possible.” Vlad’s tone was apologetic, so you waved off his concerns with a little smile.

“It’s alright,” you said, reaching over to sign the document placed on top of the large box that he was holding. On the document, you read that this package was from Scaramouche and wondered what it could be. Judging from the shape of the box, it couldn’t be a weapon that needed sharpening, though if he needed that, he would’ve just told you to meet him at the arsenal.

When you took the box from Vlad and felt the weight of it in your arms, you concluded that it might be a gift. The Fatui agent apologised again and shut the door for you before he left. You set the box down and used the utility knife under your pillow to open it.

The title of the book at the very top of the pile within the package grabbed your attention, and you were glad it did. Even with all the training you underwent to become one of the more prominent personnel of the Tsaritsa’s Fatui, you couldn’t suppress the wide smile on your face when you realised what it was.

So the asshat Scaramouche did remember your birthday, after all.

 vi. physical touch

“Serves you right for not bringing an umbrella. You know how fickle the weather here in Inazuma is.”

You scanned your surroundings, but there was nothing that offered any decent protection from the impending rain. These parts of Inazuma were mostly fields, lacking any large trees that might have leaves that could keep just your head dry should the rainfall before you could find shelter.

Scaramouche laughed at your predicament, expectedly safe from the rain since he had an abnormally large hat on his head. The hat was large enough to cover the two of you, and yet he had chosen to ridicule you instead of offering some kind words.

However, you mused, this was much better than fake sympathy.

The dark clouds overhead rumbled, angry and ready to unleash the storm. You began running towards a hilichurl camp in the distance, desperate to keep yourself from getting caught in the rain. It interfered with your Electro Vision, so you had to make sure to avoid getting wet. You did have many an unfortunate incident where you hurt yourself from using your Vision while it was wet, and you wanted to ward off any such accidents again by being careful.

There was a series of footfalls from beside you. A hand snatched at your wrist, and you tumbled into Scaramouche from the force of the pull.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, removing his hat and placing it on your head.

You were about to thank him profusely for the rare show of goodness. This was even rarer than a direct compliment from the Tsaritsa herself, after all. The words of gratitude died on your tongue when he put his hands on either side of the hat and slammed it down on your head.

“You will enjoy being covered from the rain, do you hear me?”

You nodded, deciding to swallow your thanks rather than give it to Scaramouche. He kept his hands on your head for a long moment, trying in vain to make you cower under the intensity of his gaze.

The heat from the palms of his hands lingered longer than you’d care to admit.

 v. acts of service

You were limping as you entered the infirmary.

It was late, and all of the staff doctors and nurses had predictably called it a day a few hours prior to your arrival. You pulled a chair with your uninjured hand to the shelving unit and table where all of the medicines and bandages were kept, pulling out some disinfectant and an appropriately sized roll of bandage before you sat to treat your own wounds.

Carefully rolling the fabric of your pants up to expose the stab wounds on your leg, you internally grimaced at how much blood you had lost for the wounds being so small. The little knives used by those runaway inmates must’ve been covered with a poison that kept the blood flowing against the body’s natural response to stop it. Your pants leg and boot were sticky with your own blood, and you were grateful that you hadn’t passed out from blood loss.

You groaned, out of annoyance at yourself and not out of pain.

The door to the infirmary creaked as it was opened. You acknowledged whoever it was that came in with a quick “Hello” as you reached for a clean cloth to apply pressure to the wounds.

“I told you not to go drinking with that gorilla last night.”

You grunted as a means of reply, and lifted your injured leg to rest the ankle of it on a chair that was near enough to reach. There was a screech of the metal legs of another chair being dragged to where you sat, and Scaramouche snatched the cloth from your hand to press it to your wounds for you.

“Go to bed,” you said, your tone betraying your guilt.

He did tell you not to drink with La Signora last night. However, your salary was loose change compared to that of the Harbingers’ and you didn’t want to miss out on free alcohol. It had been too long since you had gorged yourself on wine on someone else’s tab, so you took La Signora’s offer albeit with too much eagerness. She had told you that it was cute, so you supposed it didn’t put her off.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m doing you a kindness, and you tell me to go to bed? Just bleed out and die already, then.”

Despite the harshness of his words, he never lifted his hand from your leg. He even reached for a bottle of disinfectant and moved to pour it over the cloth to drench it and clean your wounds.

“Then I’ll die. See you in hell, I guess,” you said, taking another bottle of disinfectant and treating the scrape wounds on your injured hand yourself.

without question 

i.

“Do you need some space?” came Midoriya’s voice from the right.

Todoroki looked up from his phone and waved off his friend’s concern, and said, “It’s fine. I’ll only be a while.” Despite Todoroki’s words, the other man still left him be, already knowing that he was calling you from catching a look at the name on the screen.

Todoroki watched Midoriya sprint away and out of sight, his ears unnaturally pink. As his phone continued ringing, he wondered if calling you in the break room at the agency was something to be embarrassed about. Before he had the time to ponder, you picked up.

“Hello, Y/N.”

You returned the greeting with a much more apparent enthusiasm in your voice, and it brought a small smile to his face. Todoroki glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above where he sat as he told you about his day.

“Have you had dinner? It’s already late,” he said.

“I just got the food I ordered!” – your voice sounded far from the speaker, and it was further muffled by some shuffling noises and the crinkling of plastic – “I think I got too much, though. At least, I’ll have leftovers? I can just heat gyudon up and eat it for breakfast tomorrow.”

You talked about other things that happened in your day. Todoroki asked you several questions here and there, making interjections and nodding along as he listened to you. You mentioned the colleague of yours who often brought their home-baked goods to the office, and he could picture the wide smile on your face as you gushed about how tasty their brownies were. He made a mental note to take you to that café that made brownies just the way you liked it on his next off day.

“So how was patrol today? Give me all the tea,” you said, and there was the sound of you reaching the end of your drink over the speaker.

Todoroki gave a little hum as he reflected on how he spent the past few hours at work, a finger on his chin. “It went well. Just some small-time villains. No casualties other than a motorcycle or two,” he said. “I’d rather do today’s paperwork at home, but I have to stay until it’s done. Kirishima hasn’t celebrated his birthday with the agency yet, so he’s buying dinner today.”

He waited for you to continue the conversation, listening to the sound of you slurping your soba in the meantime. “Free dinner! That’s so nice of him. Wish Kiri-kun a happy birthday from me again, okay?”

“–you see that? I think she was totally making eyes at you, man,” was the loud voice that announced Kaminari’s presence before the sight of him did.

Half a step behind Kaminari was the birthday boy himself, who looked to be in disbelief at his friend’s statement. Kirishima made a sheepish grab for the back of his neck as the other man kept wiggling his eyebrows at him, saying “It’s true!” about this and “You better believe it!” about that. Todoroki acknowledged their presence by nodding to them as they both entered the break room, turning his attention away for a second before bringing it back to you.

You asked Todoroki to confirm if it was indeed Kaminari that you heard from the other end of the line. Before Todoroki could say anything at all, Kaminari beat him to it with “Hey, Todoroki! Updating the wifey on today’s events as usual?”

The man in question simply said, “Of course,” as naturally as he would’ve commented on the fact that he was wearing a shirt. In the midst of Kaminari’s laughter and Kirishima’s chatter, Todoroki missed the way you quickly recovered from almost choking on your soba.

 ii.

You crossed your arms as close to your chest as you could and rubbed at them vigorously, lagging two steps behind Todoroki on your usual walk from the mall back to the train station. He instinctively shrugged off his jacket and held it open for you to slip your arms into. You gave a soft whisper of thanks, putting the proffered jacket on and pulling it tight against your shivering body.

“I’m sorry you always have to give me your jackets. I’ll be sure to return this one though,” you said, the tip of your nose still pink from the cold and he thought to lean over to leave several kisses on it for warmth. You flushed a little more prominently with his action, a bout of giggles falling from your lips, and he was the one who felt warmer for it.

Todoroki shook his head, tugging on the zipper until it closed the jacket all the way to the neck.

“You can keep it, Y/N. I’ll just buy myself a new one,” he said, putting his left hand on the small of your back and using his quirk to gently heat it up for you.

You gave him your thanks once more before you continued walking, and he fell into step with you. “That’s an expensive hobby you have there, Shou-kun,” you said, your laugh condensing into a mist in the cold December air. “I’ll return this one, for sure. I know it’s one of your favourites.”

Todoroki shook his head again, a small smile on his face. He moved the hand he had on your back to your hip, steering you away from the fire hydrant in a disguise of snow that you would’ve bumped into otherwise.

“I don’t have a favourite jacket. A scarf, maybe, but not a jacket.”

There was a little wrinkle at the bridge of your nose, and he knew that you didn’t accept his truth as the truth. He really didn’t have a favourite jacket. It was just a piece of clothing to him, especially since he didn’t quite need it with his ability to regulate his body temperature. It was more that you liked it when your outfits matched, and he was more than happy to oblige you. It was just clothes, after all. He could always do with less, and he could also always buy more.

“Shou-kun, there’s a section of my closet at home that’s all your jackets and sweaters and hoodies. I couldn’t believe that I’ve swiped that much of your stuff until I went to rearrange my clothes the other day,” you said, gesturing to the jacket you wearing that was obviously not yours from the sagging shoulders and the too-long sleeves. “You’re going to run out of clothes if I don’t give them back.”

A stray snowflake fluttered down, blown off the clumps seated on the tops of the streetlamps by the wind. It landed squarely on the crown of the beanie on your head, and he quickly brushed it off before it could melt and leave a wet spot.

“I won’t run out if I buy new ones.”

You gave a groan of mock annoyance, the glimmer of mirth in your eyes giving your true feelings away. 

“It’s not a problem for me at all. Trust me,” he said, hoping that repeating himself would help to assuage whatever guilt you felt for taking his clothes. Wasn’t sharing a way to show that he cared? He would’ve thought that you appreciated it, rather than feel bad for his sake.

“Aha! I’m getting a bonus this Christmas, so I’ll just buy you some new clothes to replace the ones I took. How about that?” you asked, bouncing on the balls of your feet in the excitement that you found a happy middle ground for this little conundrum.

He raised an eyebrow at your solution.

On one hand, he was glad that you were getting paid extra. You had wanted to buy yourself something nice for the extra hours you put into work these past two months, so he would’ve preferred it if you spent your Christmas bonus on yourself instead. On the other hand, you might be miffed at him for not accepting your generous offer.

“Y/N, my love.”

Todoroki started as sweetly as he could, mulling over his words in his head. At his use of a term of endearment, you didn’t give him much of a pause to think when you grabbed onto the front of his turtleneck with both hands and pulled him down for a kiss.

When you released your iron grip on his shirt, he let out a breath and found that he had all but forgotten what he originally wanted to say.

Instead, Todoroki said, “You can keep all of my jackets and sweaters and hoodies, because I’ll have everything back when we’re married. What’s mine will also be yours and yours, mine.”

 iii.

“Mirin only likes me when I have food,” Todoroki said. The expression on his face was blank, save for the distraught look in his eyes that told you all you needed to know. You couldn’t help but laugh at his predicament, him repeatedly attempting to coax your cat to him by putting its favourite toys on his lap but to no avail.

Todoroki watched how easily your cat crossed the room at a single call of its name, frigidly ignoring him in favour of stretching itself out on your lap that was empty of any toys. You scooped Mirin up in your arms and planted yourself beside your sulking boyfriend, gently pushing your cat in his direction.

Mirin gave a dissatisfied yowl, purposely dragging out the sound, before turning to shove its head into your belly.

“I told you,” Todoroki said, the pout that was absent in his face evident in his voice. He called the name of your cat as sweetly as he could, leaning over your lap where it lay. “He doesn’t like me. The other cats in your neighbourhood do, but not Mirin.”

He gathered his knees to his chest and curled into your side, watching how your cat relished in your touch and purred into your hand. When you reached your free hand up to idly run your fingers through his hair, he leaned even further into your side.

“Shou-kun, you’re heavier than me, you know!” Your words sounded like a complaint, but there was a smile in the tone of your voice, so Todoroki remained in place. A sharp tug on the ear that you could reach, and he immediately righted his sitting position, his back as rigid as a flagpole.

“Are you ignoring me too, Y/N?”

You cooed over your boyfriend’s admittedly cute show of moping, to which he asserted his point further. "Your cat ignored me, and now you’re ignoring me too. Poor Shouto,” he said, the drama in his voice convincing enough to be a line straight out of a television drama with raving reviews.

“Poor Shouto,” came that television drama male lead-esque voice again, and you caved. You lifted Mirin off your lap and gently tossed it to its bed somewhere to your left. With both your hands now free, you put all your strength into lugging Todoroki into your arms, to which he gave a contented hum.

“Are you still going on about ‘Poor Shouto’?” you asked, smiling into his hair when he pushed his face into your neck in the same way that Mirin often pushed its face into your legs or belly. You peppered some kisses into Todoroki’s temple as a means of soothing him on behalf on your cat.

“Not anymore,” Todoroki said, putting his arms around you and giving you a squeeze. “But I think Mirin’s not going to be happy when he’s my cat too.”

 (+ i.)

It was still early.

Todoroki craned his neck to check the time, but he quickly found that he would have to turn around and disturb your sleep to do that, so he settled back into the position that he woke up in. If the darkness in the room was any indication, it was not quite sunrise yet. The little gap in the curtains showed that the world outside was due to wake up sometime soon, the black of the night already shifting to grey with the movement of the sun.

He should’ve remembered to close those curtains before climbing into bed with you. Your back was facing the window, but he knew that you were a light sleeper and easily woken by lights and sounds. Inching closer still to your sleeping form, he moved the hand draped across your waist upwards so that he could shield your eyes from the imminent sunrise.

The sound of your even breathing eventually lulled Todoroki back into sleep, for when he woke up again, the sun was already high in the sky. There was the sound of birds chirping outside the window. He easily could make out the rumbled of engines moving along the little two-lane street that ran along the side of his apartment building.

You were still sleeping soundly in his arms, the hand he had placed at your cheekbone still covering your eyes from the light outside.

His chest warmed immeasurably when you shifted ever so slightly closer to him at a particularly loud squawk from a bird only a short distance away from the apartment. You were so precious, and he loved you so much. There was a lightness to the emotion, and he soared with it, despite the fact that his body stayed under the covers with you in his bed.

He loved you so, so much.

The thought brought to remembrance the ring he had bought some months back, in a velveteen box that he purposely hid away in a slightly larger box meant for a watch. Iida had been kind enough to let go of one of the boxes from his collection of watches when he found out about the ring, telling Todoroki that you would enjoy the surprise.

Todoroki had taken his friend’s advice and was waiting for an opportune moment to ask you properly. To ask you to marry him. He had alluded to it plenty of times in the past, but never on purpose. Talk of being married to you always slipped out of his mouth because it was always on his mind.

You stirred with a long, sleep-addled groan, before you became aware of Todoroki’s eyes on you. “… So this is what you’re doing when I’m asleep, huh?” you asked, retracting yourself from his hold slightly so that you had room to stretch your arms without hitting him.

“Y/N, you should stay,” he said, not quite hearing the question you had just asked when his thoughts were becoming too loud. I want you to be my wife. I want you to stay with me forever and ever and ever–

You blinked slowly, turning back on your side and moving back to him.

“You should stay for breakfast and then forever,” he said. “Y/N, my love, my one treasure, will you marry me?”