Horchata

Aren Kuboyasu:

My boy.

He finds out about your interest when he hears a scream from the classroom beside him.

He rushes inside, ready to fight what he assumed was a gangster terrorising the school... for some reason.

Only to be met with a bunch of students gathered around in a circle.

Somehow, he came to the conclusion that they were gathering around a dead body, that was placed there by a gangster... for some reason.

His sense of urgency doesn't waver away after he realises that it was just a cockroach, a very, very big cockroach. He was even taken a back by how scarily large it was. Was that normal?

Everyone around him was screaming at each other to squash it. Even Aren was pushed closer. Apparently it was because he had a 'dangerous vibe.'

He stepped closer, preparing the soles of his foot. Raising it up, and just before he could step down on it. He saw a cup placed over it.

He looked further and saw you.

You carefully placed a paper under the cup, nudging the bug to crawl on it.

You stood up, the students around you yelling to just kill it.

You rolled your eyes, "for theses types of roaches, if you step on it, it lets out a really gross smell. Like, really gross."

The people around you started to yell but for a different reason. To hurry up and toss it outside so it doesn't stink up the place.

That basically got him interested in you.

He followed you outside the school, placing the cup and paper down on the floor and watching it scurry away.

He was confused as to why you insisted on saving the bug rather than just ending it's life.

Of course, Aren's a lot more familiar with violence. If he sees anything dangerous, his first instinct is to kill now and ask later.

The next time he sees you, you were way too engrossed in a book. He didn't have much to do, so he just watched you.

He saw you flip a page, meeting you with a huge picture of a centipede. Not only that, but arrows showing you each body part and anatomy of it.

That made him really curious.

He marched up towards you, and pointed to the picture.

You looked at him confused, wondering if he was interested in bugs like you were.

"Do you like that because you find the unsettling interesting?" He questions you, interrogates you. Eyeing you up and down as if your interest in the creepy crawly was because you were also interested in something much darker.

In his mind, he associates bugs with corpses. Soil and rotting flesh. Ants crawling across a grave, and a worm crawling out of the eyes of a skeleton.

"Uhh, no.. I just think they're cute." You raise an eyebrow, unsure what he wanted of you.

Oh, right.

Right, yeah, no, right.

He forgot that not everyone was living in the same world as him.

He had to remind himself that what he saw as dangerous, wouldn't even cross other people's mind as so.

"Oh."

The both of you just stared at each other.

"Would you... like to read with me...?" You questioned, unsure how to progress the conversation. He just nods and sits down.

Aren isn't really scared of bugs like other people are.

Besides, there are a lot of things that are much more disturbing that he's seen before.

Aren wouldn't kill a bug unless it was bothering him; flying in front of him and buzzing around in his ear.

Despite what everyone else might think, when he kills a bug, he wouldn't go do it in a super violent way. He'd give it a good smack with whatever heavy object he could find. To make it quick and painless. He even goes to bow right after to ensure that it's treated with respect for the afterlife.

He finds your bug ramblings so ridiculously cute. He loves how happy you sound whenever you talk on and on about things that you were so knowledgeable about.

He's also really amused that you could just.. remember all of that.

He has his own interesting, well, interests. And he doesn't really understand why you would be interested in something that a lot of people see as scary.

Sometimes he correlates it himself.

That a lot of people see him as scary but you don't. And maybe that's why you enjoy hanging out with him so much.

"You know, the reason that we're so afraid of bugs is because their movements, shapes, and colours set off warnings in our brains and creep us out." You tell him as the both of you walked along the hallway. Another one of those giant cockroaches appeared again in the classroom.

"Also the fact that they have more than two legs and that the legs are as small as sticks, it triggers people to feel physically itchy just from looking at it." You were seemingly getting lost in your own thoughts, ever so often muttering facts about the specific bug that you just saw.

"You don't feel physically itchy when looking at them?" He asks, focused on the way your face contorted. You shook your head.

"Well... I just notice how beautiful they are, rather than how.. gross a lot of people make them out to be." You smile, adjusting your footing to catch up with him.

"Don't get me wrong, I do agree that a lot of them don't look aesthetically pleasing, but under that, they're just trying to get by." You explain, simple as so. "There's something so beautiful in the way that they mean well, they just happen to look intimidating."

Yeah, he can definitely correlate it to himself.

"Also, they're just trying to live, y'know? The poisonous ones attack humans because humans seem threatening to them." You looked at him while you tell him that. In a way, you could see Aren to be a bug. If that even makes sense.

Aren means well. People just can't see that. You can though, definitely.

-ˋˏ┈┈┈┈

Shun Kaidou:

Kaidou's the one that screams whenever he sees a bug.

When he sees one, his brain goes off, he grabs whatever's closest to him, and starts smacking that bug senseless.

He tries to convince himself that bugs are sent by the Dark Reunion to spy on him so that he can hide his actual fear, and his denial about it.

He figures out about your interest in bugs when he's in the park, doing whatever bullshit he usually does.

He accidentally steps on a singular ant and in a split second, he finds himself in a pile of angry ants.

He's panicking, he's yelling.

You show up, tap him on the shoulder. He yells.

"Hey," you point at the mini creatures beneath him.

"So, ants have this thing where they lay down a pheromone trail, and these trails are still prevalent even after the ant is dead. And these pheromones attract other ants because they follow the scent trail."

He stares at you, blinks once, and then yells again.

Deadass thinks you're a witch casting a spell on him. Nothing you just said was processing in his noggin.

"The more you kill them, the more you attract their friends." You conclude, letting out a sigh.

"Oh." He just stops stomping on them, and takes a big step back.

And because it's him, he falls in love with you instantly. How? Because you laughed sweetly at him.

This is where he spirals.

He follows you around discreetly (not) and spies on you whenever you're busy reading up on your info.

You notice him, because of course you do.

Eventually you just set your book down and call him over.

"You need something?"

"No!"

You let him stick around anyway.

He realises your love for those little thingies and so he asks you tons of questions every three seconds.

"Why are spiders so yucky looking? Not that I'm scared of them or anything!" He's literally looming over you because of how fascinated he is with how much you know about these things.

"Spiders are only 'yucky looking' to us. Just because they're different and not what we're used to."

"But what about centipedes?"

"Same thing."

"Caterpillars?"

"Still the same thing."

I feel like Kaidou would NEVER make fun of you for having such a 'weird' interest, because has has definitely had a weird interest himself.

My guess is crystals.

He loves it when you'd ramble to him. Only to him.

He's obsessed with the way your voice flows nicely through his ears. It's like white noise for him.

And he's super protective of it too.

We all know that when he's down, he's down BAD. He gets super jealous whenever you'd ramble to someone else.

For a while he'd think that your extensive knowledge is some kind of superpower. Like how when he takes his bandage off, he gets all super crazy and whatever.

He's just so obsessed with the way you're so passionate about bugs.

That something as simple as that makes you so happy and brings you so much joy.

He'll hang around whenever you stop by a terrarium, he'll try his best not to get disgusted though, because he doesn't want to break your spirits.

"Here." He shoves a small box to your hands. Wiping off his palms onto his pants frantically. The box had tiny, tiny holes on the top.

You reach to open it, which makes him rush to you. "No no, open it in like, in your lab or something." He scratches the back of his head. "Not cause I'm scared or whatever." He mutters.

"Kaidou, what is this?" You ask him. He gives you a sheepish smile.

"It's uh... a Mo--" he scrambles, "Mownark butterfly?" He stutters, racking his brain on how to pronounce it.

Your eyes light up. Something that he wishes he could burn to the back of his brain. "A monarch butterfly??" You yell out excitedly.

"Well, it's not a butterfly, it's like a caterpillar." He points to the box once again. It gave him the absolute creeps the first time he looked at it to gift it to you.

The only reason he got it for you in the first place was because you mentioned that you used to own one when you were younger. And that she had died years ago. Something that devastated you.

"You said you wanted one." He added once again.

He's a broke boy, but he's willing to do what he can to make your days happier (and to make you like him more).

And his plan was a success. You practically lunged towards him, engulfing him in a hug.

"Woah---!" He turned into a bright pink. A blushing and stuttering mess.

"That means a lot Kaidou!" You beamed up at him.

Mission success.

-ˋˏ┈┈┈┈

Kusuo Saiki:

We all know this guy hates bugs.

The last time he saw a cockroach, he made every distant moon blow up.

He's standing there, in shock, eyes wide and staring at the eight legged insect standing idly on top of his table.

He was damn near using his powers to slam his table onto the wall and blow up another building.

Imagine his gratitude towards you when you save him from a nasty spider.

You didn't even do much besides lifting it up by one of it's many leg and placing it out the window. Watching it run off and closing it for good measure.

Dusting your hands off. You sit back on your table and resume doing your schoolwork, like it was nothing.

The entire rest of the class, he's staring at the back of your head like you grew a second one.

Dude, he thinks you're a superhero by now.

He's also observing the way you're looking out at the window, it's even more surprising when he takes a peek into your mind.

'Where did that little arachnid run off to.'

What? You were searching for that thing?? Were you interested in it or something?

-- A mental gasp --

Were you one of those people that enjoys insects?

Well, whatever. Either way, you saved his life (an over exaggeration). And you also saved the universe from being blown up.

And he owes you deeply.

Naturally, he's going to keep a close eye on you.

For a very long while, he just goes into your thoughts and finds even more fascinating things about yourself.

You're just very descriptive about nearly every being that he would cause the second coming because.

'Just imagine if I have get a beetle blister. That would suck.'

That really would.

He hears your ramblings through your mind before you could say it to him.

Any fact that you say to him, he already knew way before you.

He still lets you go on though, because he likes seeing you find joy in being heard.

Because of his less than social behaviour, he doesn't really respond much, if anything, at all.

If he's particularly generous, he'll very discreetly drift your attention to the pavement, and a very conveniently placed Japanese trapdoor snail.

Where did that come from? Who knows.

Maybe it's a miracle of nature.

"If you get bit by a beetle, the venom that they let out forms really bad blisters." You're really just ranting to yourself. You don't even know if he's listening, he probably isn't at this point.

"And it lasts for hours, even weeks..." you're pondering to yourself at this point. One would think that you yourself had gotten bit.

You glanced at him, lingering your gaze at the way he seemed like he wasn't listening in the slightest. You stopped talking, worried that you might be chasing off another person yet again.

He was listening. He's always listening, of course.

Normally, he wouldn't care if he unintentionally hurt someone's feelings (or so, he'd like to believe). He's just not very keen about his responses.

The entire time you've been talking, he's been staring at the ground, at the soil. Trying to find whatever insect it is that you seem worthy enough to fawn over. Which is all of them. But he wanted to find one good enough without having to conjure it up with his powers.

Eventually, he spotted an Asian lady beetle standing idly on a leaf. He lifted his hand to point at it.

The second you saw it, you could feel your eyes physically lighten up.

"No way!" You immediately rushed to it, grabbing Saiki by the arm and dragging him with you. "I thought they were only legally allowed to be in farms or gardens because they're good for pest control..?"

That's a good point. He should've thought about that before purposefully walking the both of you to somewhere sunny.

Whoops.

At least you're happy though.

Tagylist

and yet, something more— so much more that your chest aches with something so full that your hands feel hollow. silly you, who told you to fall in love with a forest fire?

then again, suguru doesn’t just burn— he consumes. truly and utterly. fire takes all, it spares no one. and you? you’re just a fawn in the wake of his warmth, basking in something that’s more than enough to scorch you.

(but he doesn’t.)

not because he shouldn’t— but because he dare not to. steady hands ground your own; singed fingertips gasping in protest— but you’ve never so . . . mellow. like a dying out bonfire, sucking in dewy breaths.

suguru, suguru, suguru.

(your suguru.)

“. . what’s wrong?” you watch, eyes widening when he stirs— eyebrows furrowing in the same way it always does. “. .wh—. . haaah, you okay?”

oh, shit. did you actually say that loud?

“nothing’s wrong,” a soft hum leaves the back of your throat— and a selfish little part of yourself you keep tucked away wants him to stay like this forever, “go back to sleep.” content. wanted.

suguru’s voice tries to catch onto your own, a little heavier as it’s laced with sleep. but his syllables still catch your own, cradling them so softly— even when he’s like this, half asleep with tangled sheets strewn aside and the evening sun kissing his face.

and so, you cradle them right back— hands wrapping around his head, nose finding its way back home to his temple. a soft brush of your lips, just one— and that’s all he needs to pull you back into the fire once again.

although, the burning trees have died down to something much more tamed— a firefly amidst the tips of your sunlit strands, whispering your name and his in a voice you’re sure you’ve heard before.

“. . love you,” says suguru. you raise a brow at the impetuousness— only for your poor little heart to squeeze in its too small cage when you realise that he’s still asleep. “. . love you, love. . you.”

(suguru, suguru, suguru.)

“. . i love. . i love you too,” your lips find his temple again— but this time, they stay, unafraid to cradle the sun that shines so bright. your sun that shines so bright.

(your suguru.)

maybe the fireflies whispered to him your message in the place of his dreams— because suguru’s lips form a barely there smile. soft, like the wispy flames of a distant star. it flickers, but stays forever, even when he doesn’t.

and behind him, the sun sets, smiling an envious, bittersweet smile at your warmth that burnt so much more than their own— leaving behind their child to your love.

✦ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ⨾ @satorus-princess / @mimuju / @besidesjustmyamour / @naf3211 / @jelxqa / @helloxkittylo / @nimbusonik / @sugurusladyknightt / @maybemethebeloved / @mikaari0 / @gojoswaterbottle / @lawverrmango / @kurtcokeaine / @mayyhaps .