Okay at this point y’all should know letting me go to town with a Tendou promt is gonna end up… special. Thank you so much for this ask by the way. I owe you my life ♡
This was his worst nightmare. He didn’t know how he could possibly wind up late to a one o’clock class on a friday, but somehow, he found a way to do it.
Nobody gave him any odd stares as he slinked through the open doors at 1:27, much to his luck. That didn’t stop his nervous system from roiling, though. He couldn’t help but wonder why today, out of all the days of the year, (although the school year had only being going on for a week and a half) everyone in his literature class decided to show up. There wasn’t an empty seat open, at least, nowhere in the safe zone. The only open area he could see was front and center, and he would rather die than be placed in a situation like that. At this point, he figured if nobody saw him, he could just turn around and head home.
Although, that wasn’t the case.
Through his clunky reading glasses, the professor stared him down. He didn’t say a word but judging by the malice painted on his face, Tendou knew he was going to be in deep shit if he didn’t take a seat. He bowed, and as quick as possible hurried into the open seat in the front. The professor payed him no mind after that, he was one more irrelevant student out of 200. Although, the student next to him seemed to mind him very much. She had her chin rested in the palm of her hand, blowing small gum bubbles whenever the professor had turned his back. She kept sending Tendou a coy side gaze, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t put him on edge. His options were to either confront her about it and have the ordeal be over with, or stare her down right back. He went with the first option. Clearing his throat lightly, he leaned his cheek against his wrist and shifted himself in front of her line of vision. When she made eye contact with him, it was almost like her entire demeanor vanished. Tendou smirked.
“Any reason you’re staring at me, hm?” He expected her to shake her head and look away, maybe even scoot down the bench a little bit. He wanted her to be afraid of him, it’s what people who gave him dirty looks deserved. He expected fear, but there wasn’t any. Instead she kept a steady gaze and smiled bashfully, the apples of her cheeks flushing generously.
“I’m sorry if I was looking at you funny, uh, you can’t help a r.b.f.” She giggled nervously, her gaze shifting away, “I was looking at your hair, I… I really like it.”
Tendou had not expected this at all. Really, he was almost at a loss for words. He had gotten a set of passive aggressive insults ready and everything, but they were in no case needed. She complimented him. He must’ve made an odd expression, because her eyebrows turned up in confusion.
“Well, uh, thank you.” Is what he managed to splutter out, nodding his head and slowly turning back to the front of the room. The professor was rambling but Tendou hadn’t paid attention to a word he said. The only thing he could think of was the girl sitting next to him. Who was she? She had been the only person to send him a positive vibe on campus, and even if it hadn’t been such a tremendous compliment, it was a lot better than a backhanded “monster” remark. Much better.
Tendou made sure he’d never wind up late for a lit class again. That Tuesday he huddled through the doors at 12:55 with the rest of the class. For some reason, he had been looking out for her, even though he knew he shouldn’t. She was just a person trying to be nice, trying not to make a situation more awkward. She could hurt him, and he didn’t need that. But the moment he saw her already sitting down in the front of the room, blowing the same pink bubbles as she did last time, he made a beeline towards her direction.
“Hey.” He said, placing one hand upon the open desk to her right. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
“Not at all!” She peeped, moving her bag closer to her side, allowing him more space to sit.
“Thank you.” He nodded, throwing his bag onto the floor next to him.
“My name is __, by the way. It’s nice to meet you again.”
“__, huh? The name’s Tendou.” He hadn’t been making eye contact with her but he could see her staring at him from the corner of his eye. He liked her, but he didn’t. He refused to believe that she was being nice to him, truly. There had to be some sort of strings attached, some ploy she was scheming, he solely believed she was all but nice. He hated his trust issues.
Class resumed per usual, mostly spent on discussing a popular book everyone had read in high school. He spent the majority of his time on Reddit, not like anyone really noticed, though. Just as fast as it had come, it was now over. He rushed to pick his bag up off the floor before he felt a pat on his shoulder. He turned back around and cocked his head, stank eyes meeting those of a doe.
“Do you have any other classes today?” She inquired, shuffling with her own bag as he did with his.
“No, why?”
“You… wanna go grab a coffee with me or something after this?”
This definitely caught Tendou by surprize. He blinked a few times, then chuckled. He couldn’t help but shake his head.
“And why in the world would you want to do that?” His words dripped with malice, and she seemed confused by his statement. She gaped for a moment before she came up with something to say.
“To get my daily caffeine fix and keep my social life intact? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, it was just a suggestion, I mean-”
“Sure, __, I’d love to.” He smiled, slinging his bag over his shoulder and waiting for her to slide out after him. Internally, he was screaming. Although this situation was so simple, it was so hard for him to wrap his mind around. Somebody who barely knew him wanting to get to know more about him. Never, ever in his life had a situation come up like this. It had to be a setup.
While walking next to her, Tendou had noticed a lot of things. She was significantly shorter than him, much shorter than any girl he had been involved with in the past. She had a spring in her step that made her seem more lively than most, but when he looked in her eyes, she had the same lethargic vigor as any other college student. He reckoned that he liked her eyes, though.
“So.” She said, the chilly air around them billowing her breath. “ What made you decide to come here?” Tendou shrugged.
“To get as far away from home as possible, to be honest.” At this she laughed, not because what he said was funny, though.
“I can relate. I think by the middle of senior year I was pretty much just throwing darts at a map and going with the farthest place away from there.”
“Ah, don’t tell me you really did that, now? You must have an aspiration in mind, right?” __ looked up at Tendou and shrugged, then sighed.
“I mean, I’ve always wanted to become a neurosurgeon, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. What about you?” She looked up at him, but didn’t receive a response. This girl had to be kidding, Tendou thought.
“Clearly you’re smart enough to even think about being a neurosurgeon. Don’t give me that ‘I can’t do it’ bullshit.” He stuck his tongue out at her, to which she snorted in response. “I’m here for law, doesn’t that sound fun?”
“Like a lawyer? What made you want to be a lawyer?”
“Well, what made you decide you want to cut into people’s skulls for a living?”
“My sadistic streak.”
Tendou shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. He sucked his lips in and shook his head, holding back a smirk.
“I was so-o joking ple-ease don’t take that seriously.” She covered her mouth with her hands. She shook her head apologetically and Tendou couldn’t help but find it hilarious.
“Why should I listen to you? It might just be another one of your sadistic thoughts, hm?”
“Oh, this is a horrible first impression. I’m so sorry.”
“Sadists don’t say sorry, __.” She gaped, then popped her lips.
“On the topic of sadism, what kind of things are you into?” She inquired.
“Are you asking me about my kinks or what I do for fun?”
“The second one!”
“Well, uh, the first one could apply to both.” He smirked, only for her to wiggle her eyebrows. “But uh, to sum me up, I’m basically just a taller than average nerd.”
“Well, I’m a shorter than average nerd, it’s nice to meet my kin.”
They arrived at the coffee shop near his dorm room a quick minute later. He didn’t know what to think of __, not one bit. For now, he decided that he liked her. She got him. At least, she got the person he presented himself as. She listened to everything he had to say and more, and judging by her demeanor she liked talking to him. He found out she liked anime and could name all 196 countries on earth. He found out she was a dancer in high school but quit because she had to, not because she wanted to. He told her all about Shiratorizawa, the good parts, at least. He brushed the thin skin above the hard flesh and decided that, if they were to stay friends, he’d let her in on the cruelty later on. Her coffee order was just as odd as she was, it took her longer to explain than it actually took them to make. She was different, Tendou could sense it, and he could sense something else creeping up on him too.
At the end of it all she had given him her phone number. He warned her that he may just send an onslaught of memes to her at three in the morning, but that made her want to give him her number even more. “I’d rather get unsolicited memes than unsolicited nudes”, is what she said. He had dropped her off at her dorm at six and on his entire walk home he felt dizzy. He was overthinking again, but it couldn’t be helped. Although in the front of his mind, all was positive. She liked him, she wasn’t afraid of him. She complimented his hair and his freckles and his sense of humor. She was flirting with him, she liked him. There was nobody she was using him for, she said it herself that she barely knew anybody. But why couldn’t he bring himself to believe her? Maybe one day, he’d bring it up to her. For now, he just wanted to pass out.
“You wanna get deep, Satori?”
It was a question she had asked at two in the morning on the friday night before spring break. A question that made his heart race out of his chest. They were alone in his dorm room along with dozens of empty soda cans, all the lights off besides the cheap lamp on his nightstand. They sat on his bed, legs crossed, facing each other. For the longest time none of them said a word, before Tendou let out a sigh.
“You really wanna get deep with me, __?”
“I’ve wanted to get deep with you since the day we met.” She shrugged, taking a subconscious sip of her coffee. “Is that weird?”
“Kinda… not judging though.” Tendou shrugged. He cracked his neck and placed his half empty can of coke on the nightstand. “I trust you well enough to tell you my tragic anime villain backstory. You cool with that?”
“Lay it on me.”
Tendou sat silent for a moment, contemplating the situation he was wedged into. It was way too late and he was already high on the feeling of sleep deprivation, and there was nothing left for him to lose.
“I was kind of a weird child. Hell, I’m still a weird child depending on who you ask. Ah, weird elementary schooler, we’ll go with that. I’ve always loved volleyball ‘cause its so fast paced without getting physical. I was addicted to that… rush. You prolly don’t get what I mean by that.”
“I feel what you mean.”
“Good. I started playing when I was six or seven-ish. Loved it. Didn’t love me though. The other kids… the other kids would bully me. A lot. I was called a… a monster. They didn’t like my hair or my eyes or my freckles or the way I moved…. I was just a human version of road bump. In their way. They’d beat me up but I never fought back. I always went home with a split lip or a black eye… tons of scrapes. It was really hard… insanely. I ended up beating one of them in a volleyball match with this block, which pretty much became my signature. I told you ‘bout the Guess Block, right? I wasn’t bullied as much after that, at least, not physically. Middle school sucked. I mean, middle school sucked for everyone, right? My teammates talked so much shit, so did my coach. I was included but damn, I was never included. Nobody liked me but I kinda just had to deal with that. I didn’t even like myself. Until high school came. Damn, when I say high school was the best three years of my life, I mean it. Best team ever, awesome group of guys. The type of people who would kick someone’s teeth in if they looked at you funny. It was acceptance, I… I loved it. Sometimes I even forgot that people ever hated me ‘cause these guys made up for every shitty moment of my life up until then. I wanna say those were the only friends I’ve ever had. The only people who didn’t see me as… a monster. Graduation sucked, it was like leaving the only paradise I had ever known. I’m proud to say I cried for three days straight in my bedroom afterwards. You can quote me on that if you ever need blackmail, by the way, __. When I met you here I think I was sceptical about you for two months straight. I’ve never met somebody who was nice to me outside of that volleyball team and you were just… weird. Like, what’s this pretty girl talking to me for? She’s using me, she’s so using me. I dated two girls in the past, one I dated for a week before she cheated on me with another guy in my class, horrible, right? And another dated me for a day and broke it off ‘cause she told me the only reason she got with me was to get closer to the volleyball captain. The volleyball captain was my actual best friend, just to let you know. Then uh, I met you and you were nice to me. You were genuinely the first person out of the team to not think I’m a monster and… and I dunno. That’s my fucked up life, beat that.”
She didn’t say a word as he finished up his rant. His face was red and he refused to look her in the eye. She knew it now. She knew the roots of his trust issues and his depression, the thoughts he’s never told anyone. She was silent as she reached over and pulled him into her arms, holding him tight as he shook. His arms found their way around her middle and he pulled her closer towards him, nuzzling his face in the crook of her neck. Tendou decided that this was nice, he could live like this.
“I’m so sorry, Satori.”
“It’s alright.”
“You know, the first time I saw you I thought you were crazy attractive?”
“Really?”
“That’s why I was staring at you. I could’ve screamed.”
“You’re lying.”
She said nothing after that, compensating to running her fingers through his matted hair.
“Satori?” She peeped after a moment of brief silence. He sniffled, lifting his head out of the crook of her neck.
“Hm?”
“You know those two girls you dated?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Have you ever been kissed?”
Satori gawked at her with wide eyes. If his heart hadn’t been hammering before it sure was now. He sighed, and shook his head.
“Will I be the biggest loser on earth if I say no, I haven’t?”
“No…” she shook her head. She blinked slowly then sighed. “Satori, can I kiss you?”
His mind went blank for a moment. It was now three in the morning and nothing else mattered to him besides her, sitting in his arms and looking at him like he meant the world to her.
“Yes.”
So she did.
She cradled his head in the palm of her hand and wasted no time in pressing her lips against his. He had short circuited, his mind even more scrambled than it had been before. He didn’t know what to do so he just went with whatever he could. His nose bumped against hers, same goes for teeth, but she was soft. She pulled away for a split second and let out a puff of air, then went back to delicately kissing him.
She pulled away after a moment, looking into his eyes and brushing the pad of her thumbs across his cheeks. She was flushed up to the core, and it made Satori smile.
“You deserve to be loved, Satori. You deserve everything. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met and I’m insanely proud of you. I love you.” She whispered, thumbs still brushing circles across his freckled cheeks. Her words made him tear up, but she didn’t notice. Maybe she did, but payed no mind to it. She loved him. That’s all he ever wanted to hear.
“I love you too, __. Thank you.”
He didn’t quite remember what happened next, it all being just a sleep induced blur. What he did know is that the next morning he woke up with her cradled in his arms, under the covers with her hands in his hair. For the first time in ages, he had woken up happy. He didn’t want to move, hell, he didn’t even want to think. He wanted her to kiss him again, he wanted to tell her he loved her again. He wanted her to be his.
For the first time in his life, Tendou Satori had felt loved.
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