Shin Asakura - Blog Posts

THE NUMBER ONE SAKAMOTO FANBOY: SHIN ASAKURA

this has to be the first time this has been said in an anime 😭😭😭

ASAKURA SHIN YOU HAVE CHANGED LIVES (mine specifically)

Asakura Shin

that… that’s my family…

I LOVE THEM

commentary

your safeword (Resident Evil—you chose it yourself)

nice call back to the prequel

You can do whatever you want to me.” Which was an insane thing to say,

tumblrina my sweet you are not well and i feel bad for laughing

He likes you a lot. He wants to give you nice things.

he does!! its so palpable, how much he likes the reader

He likes you a lot, wants to give you nice things.

making me sappy

Sure, he’ll give it to you. But why do you want him to be so rude about it? Whatever happened to saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’?! So anyway, he does it.

when it comes to tumblrina this guy has the backbone of a chocolate eclair its kinda endearing.

He knows then that this is his moment: the stars have aligned, and he can finally fulfill your favourite fantasy.

imagining shin in his head like (ITS TIME!! WHO KNOWS WHEN THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN, I MUST TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO PLEASE HER IN HAND AND NOT LET GO)

(Though it's not like he’s thought of destinations for your next five anniversaries or anything. Nope. Not at all.)

fake idgafer i see you yearning for domestic bliss

But after a moment of shock, Shin hears a mental cheer from you that’s so loud that it nearly has him laughing.

i just hear party poppers and the generic kids "yaayy" going off, but like, base boosted

Shin encounters one of the major limitations of ESP: if you can't form a coherent thought, then Shin can’t read it. He can only see the knot in your brow, feel the discombobulation in your mind as you try to make out the exact shape of your desire. See it in your face when you can't.

so well written. bc sometimes it really is about the incoherent thoughts. you know it, but you cant formulate or share and not even espers can decode that (and maybe that's disheartening too)

In response, you started to take benadryl and melatonin before going to bed, and you promised that you would absolutely, 100% not stab him if you woke up in spite of that.

this is so good. she is crazy. i love her

What if you wake up and you feel complicated, empty—not as good as you thought you would?

like the first time shin didnt cuddle after sex :(((

This dream version of you is chatty. Infinitely chattier than your real self.

:(( something something abt how she only speaks freely in her mind and in her dreams, both places where only shin can reach

(The real Shin would never do this—he would probably start crying if you ever talked about any of this stuff out loud to him, actually.)

bro same

I kinda feel like I maybe didn't like having sex at all.

:(( yeah i feel ya

He’ll need to keep this a secret and carry it to the grave—or at least for another five years, after which it might make more sense to bring up as a serious conversation.

this guy's a Yearner capital Y and he's in it for the long game (IN THE GOOD TIMELINE, THE ONE THAT WILL PERSEVERE TRUST)

“Don't pay attention to whatever you can hear from my mind, by the way. It's not anything you should worry about.” I don't want you to feel guilty.

:(

Cooking for you with his hands that he once used only for killing

STOP im getting emotional

The scene isn't making him feel horny, exactly. It's more like it's making him feel warm.

i think the level of horny ppl like shin get when they experience peace and domestic bliss is unparalleled. nothing tops being safe with your loved ones and the security of a future together

and he's going to start a family with you, and he hopes the baby will have your smile and eyes and hair, and he's going to take so many photos of the two of you, and holy shit he's so glad you don't have ESP.

funny how yearning wasnt invented until yinyuedijun!shin was written. also he is such a loser (affectionate)

how it still didn't feel as good as Shin’s touch because you didn't get to kiss him and feel his arms around you at the end.

bc yeah sex is cool and all, but the intimacy and closeness of being with somenoe you trust and care for is second to none

“You’re not ‘someone’, you're my wife,” he says, fully talking with his dick, “I wouldn't marry anyone other than you, and I wouldn't put a baby in anyone other than you.”

that's so sweet. HIS HEART IS IN HIS DICK, YOUR HONOR!

There's a long, heavy pause before you think, You're gonna be such a good dad, Shin.

actually tearing up rn

There's someone beside him, and it isn't you.

just rip my heart out atp

Shin wasn’t exactly raised to expect that he'd someday have a family, either. Never even thought about it, because he was sure he'd never get it. But even if he’s never expected such a life, Shin can’t help but hope for it when it comes to you.

in the theme of 'i bet on losing dogs': my baby my baby..

anyways this was so good. so enjoyable and so fun to read!! i hope the spirits have freed miss mao and that she's feeling better (⁠✷⁠‿⁠✷⁠)

on the other hand, that ending made me feel like

TRUST FALL | asakura shin x f!reader

Shin is a painfully vanilla guy but tries his best to let you live out your kinky fantasies. You have a breakdown when you try to indulge his very normal one. (Or: 3 times Shin humoured your kinks + 1 time you humoured his.)

11.5k words, sequel to situationship. nsft tags: fingering with the power glove, free use, somnophilia, domesticity kink + breeding kink. all sex is consensual (sometimes veers into cnc territory, shin relies on esp to obtain consent), none of it is rough or mean. toward the end of the fic, the narrative focuses on anxieties and/or desires about starting a family. chapter 203 spoilers. dividers by @/cafekitsune!

IMPORTANT: the reader is hypersexual due to off-screen sexual trauma, which is not explicitly described, but is discussed. there is also one non-graphic nightmare related to this trauma that turns into a horny dream about shin (lol). 20% of this fic is a psychosexually strange healing narrative, 80% of it is just silly porn.

Sometimes, Shin is glad that he can hear all your thoughts.

Mind you, it's not like he doesn't want to give you some privacy. God knows he's tried a million times to tune out your internal monologue the way he can normally do with other people, and god knows you’ve tried your hardest to imitate the cognitive trick that Nagumo does to keep his mind hidden away from Shin. The reality is, though, that your feelings always overpower any psychological barrier that the two of you attempt to create. Your thoughts are always too loud for him to ignore, usually because you're either too happy or too horny around him to keep them quiet. Apparently Shin has that effect on you.

But often he doesn't mind it. It’s sometimes even convenient. Helpful for all the stuff that you want to do in bed, for example.

Now, Shin’s known from Day 1 that you're kind of a freak. He’s seen enough of your psyche to understand the exact nature of your sexual fantasies, and on the day that you became an official couple, he went home and googled how you're supposed to have safe, sane, and consensual sex with a person who dreams of doing the exact opposite of that. Although Shin is himself a strictly vanilla guy, and the two of you were already having perfectly nasty vanilla sex that was satisfying you—he likes you a lot. He wants to treat you right, give you nice things. This includes everything from flowers to chocolates to exciting orgasms for the rest of your life, even if it means he’ll need to get a little freaky about it.

Shin’s since ended up learning a lot about BDSM, and he’s also ended up trying a lot of basic BDSM practices that don't really work on you. You are shockingly bad at enforcing your boundaries. You always get too horny to remember your safeword (Resident Evil—you chose it yourself), find it too much work to use nonverbal cues, and you dry up whenever he tries to use the traffic light system.

“It doesn't matter,” you once whined at him, “it’s not like I’d ever not wanna have sex! You can do whatever you want to me.” Which was an insane thing to say, and exactly why Shin feels like you should know how to use a safeword. But when he tried to explain this to you, you’d crawled into his lap and begged him to fuck you anyway. His dick got so hard that he could only say yes, though he first made you understand that it would be regular sex, not the stuckage roleplay you'd been asking him to try.

Regular sex. You're only supposed to be having regular sex.

There is no reason why you should be in tears right now, desperately trying to stop yourself from cumming on Shin’s fingers—and all over his power glove.

This is mostly your fault. Mostly. Ever since seeing Shin nearly kill someone using the thing, you've fantasised about him having it on in bed. Specifically, you’ve fantasised about him wearing it while his fingers are knuckle-deep in your dripping pussy. Shin wasn't ever planning on humouring those daydreams, but, well. He likes you a lot. He wants to give you nice things. If you want to have a mind-blowing orgasm while you're grinding your clit against the power glove, he'll let you—on the condition that you don't ruin it.

You've been having a lot of difficulty fulfilling this condition.

You're breathless, broken. Face tight from the effort of holding back your orgasm for so long. You’ve cum nearly twice now, and only didn't because Shin decided not to force it. Not yet, anyway. He admits he's being a little mean: every time he curls his fingers and rubs your sweet spot, he feels your cunt drip for him and he can’t help but do it more. The tears pearling up at the corners of your eyes and the way you're trying to squirm away from his hand would ordinarily make him stop—even make him worry—but then he hears you thinking, right there, right there, feels so good Shin you make me feel so good do that again, and then of course he has to comply.

“Shin,” you whimper, “I’ll cum if you don't stop that.”

You try to pull away again, hips jerking back from his touch, but your pussy is begging for him—tight and wet and greedy for more. His fingers are soaked, as is the black steel encasing his palm. Part of Shin feels like the glove has already been ruined; the rest of him is too horny to care. Completely unrepentant, his thumb rubs gentle circles into your clit, and he feels his cock throb at the noise you make.

“Shin,” you whine, “don't.”

He glances up at you. “You want me to stop using my fingers?”

No. You bite your lip. Pretend to look distressed. “I… I’ll make a mess if you don't.”

“I'll slow down,” he promises, and when he eases the pressure on your g-spot, your inner disappointment is so loud that he knows what he should do next.

When Shin lowers his face between your legs and pushes your thighs open with his free hand, you squeal.

“Shin!”

“What? I’m not using my fingers. Should be fine, right?” He doesn't need to wait for a response—he already knows what you're thinking—so he leans down and puts his mouth on you the way he's been wanting the whole night.

You whine when you feel his tongue on your clit. Clench immediately around his fingers—more Shin please I want more please touch me the way I like, you know where—so he curls them again, and the way you cry makes him want nothing more than to get on top of you and fuck you properly.

But that's not how you want to cum. You don't want to cum on his cock; you want to finish on his fingers, soak the sheets, and probably ruin Natsuki’s day with a repair call. So Shin closes his eyes and starts sucking at your clit, and he’s relentless about it—even though you try to push him away, even though you start keening and telling him to slow down, even when you’re panting hard and pleading with him to give you a break. “Shin,” you say, voice breaking, “Shin, no, I can't, please, I'll—I’ll cum, you gotta stop, no no no, I can't, I can't—”

You sob. Fully cry as your back arches, and Shin groans as you gush all over his fingers. Can’t help but watch as you fall apart for him, the way you’ve been wanting the whole time. He admits that it was hot seeing you cum despite the fact that you were begging not to, knowing that he was the one to make you lose control. Still, Shin is a vanilla guy; as soon as you've calmed down, he's wiping away your tears and studying you carefully.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Was that alright? I was reading your mind the whole time and did whatever you were saying to me, but I was still a little worried that—”

You throw your arms around him and shut him up with a kiss.

Once Shin gives up on the use of safewords and starts relying on his clairvoyance, the free use thing also becomes a lot easier.

Now, it isn't like you aren't beaming into Shin’s mind—whether at the store, in your home, or even on the train—that you want him to fuck you at all times. It isn't like he's happily obliging whenever he's over at your place, as many times as his dick will allow. But he likes to ask first, and he likes to hear you say yes first. Unfortunately, you have the specific fantasy that Shin doesn't care what you want—you just want him to manhandle you and pull you onto his cock whenever he feels like it. Also, it's apparently very important that he takes you by surprise, and that he keeps going even if you complain about it?

Shin truly doesn't get it. He's not opposed to having frequent sex. He likes you a lot, wants to give you nice things. You want his cock inside you at all hours of the day? Sure, he’ll give it to you. But why do you want him to be so rude about it? Whatever happened to saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’?!

So anyway, he does it.

It’s hard catching you by surprise. His ESP tells him that you do want—and now expect—to be fucked nearly every moment of every day. You want it in the morning, when you wake up in bed and heat starts curling in your belly at the sight of him next to you. You want it when you're in the kitchen, trying to focus on making dinner while you squeeze your thighs together and try to relieve some of the heat between your legs. You want it as you clean the windows, your panties soaked and thighs messy with slick, thinking of the way Shin fucked you against the glass just the day before.

Want you inside me, Shin, you think nearly all the time. Want you to use me. Please?

This is how you find yourself leaning against the kitchen counter, all the dishes in the sink forgotten as your pussy squeezes around his dick. How you find yourself warming his cock as the two of you watch TV, your focus on the screen wavering as his fingers circle your bud. How he ends up interrupting you when you’re trying to read, pulling down your top so he can squeeze your breasts and tease your nipples through your bra. Stress relief, he calls it, which is true. There are fewer things that take his mind off his ex-assassin troubles than playing with your tits as you squirm on his lap, listening to you squeal and whine as you try to read. Sometimes he can get you to cum that way, too—just by licking and pinching your nipples and letting you grind yourself on his thigh.

It takes him a long time to actually get you off-guard, though.

He finally manages it when he comes home after a late shift in the store, wound up from nearly (but not actually!) killing two hitmen. It wasn't the violence that had bothered him, really; it was the fact that those pricks had knocked over an entire shelf in the store in the process of attempting murder. Couldn't they have attacked Mr. Sakamoto outside?! It took fucking forever to clean up and restock all those cooking wines and soy sauces. Assholes.

To his significant shame, Shin spent his entire commute afterward thinking of coming home and seeing you. Not to kiss you and cuddle with you, which was the sort of thing he wanted to do at the start of the relationship—but to pull you onto his lap and hear the cute noises you make whenever he plays with your body. Apparently that's now his stress response after several weeks of your free use policy, which makes him want to die a little bit. But as this been your explicit goal, he also decides not to fault himself for it too much.

By the time he's stepping into your apartment, he's already hard and thinking about which positions he’ll fuck you in.

In a miraculous twist of fate, Shin catches you while you're folding laundry and thinking about the news, rather than the way his dick felt inside you last night. He knows then that this is his moment: the stars have aligned, and he can finally fulfill your favourite fantasy.

“Shin,” you say, face lighting up. “Welcome home! I didn't hear you come in.”

When he kisses you, you beam at him in a way that's so pretty and innocent that it makes his cock twitch and has him feeling bad about what he's about to do. The two of you could have a wholesome night in for once. You're in the mood for it. He can tell from the way you’re chattering at him about your day off with Lu, and how you’re thinking about maybe doing a trip to Hakone with him because of a travel ad you saw on the subway. I've only ever been once on a mission… it would be nice to go as a couple next time. I wanna go to a ryokan with Shin…

Shin would definitely enjoy a couple’s trip with you. Not just to Hakone, but everywhere else in the world too. Maybe it can be an annual thing, something to do for anniversaries. (Though it's not like he’s thought of destinations for your next five anniversaries or anything. Nope. Not at all.)

Ordinarily he'd start trip planning with you on the spot, but this is an unprecedented opportunity, and his dick is throbbing from the sweet way you keep looking at him. You're in the middle of talking about plans for the rest of the evening, still folding laundry, when Shin's hands slip beneath the hem of your t-shirt.

He feels like a creep doing it. It's rude, right? It's so rude. You were thinking just now about making some popcorn and cuddling up to him and watching John Wick tonight. You weren't expecting to feel his palms sliding up your sides and cupping your breasts. Or for him to start kneading them.

But after a moment of shock, Shin hears a mental cheer from you that’s so loud that it nearly has him laughing.

Of course, you don't voice your enthusiasm. “Shin,” you whine instead, squirming as his fingers start circling your nipples, “I'm—ah—trying to get these chores done.”

“I’m sure they can wait,” he says, pulling you backwards. His cock presses against your ass and your thrill is palpable in his neurons. “This’ll be quick. I promise.”

You don't give in immediately. You chide him a little, then make a half-hearted attempt at continuing at your task. Your hands shake as you pick a shirt out of the basket and start folding it, all while you're being groped and teased and rutted against like a toy. You’re opening a drawer when Shin’s hand wanders between your thighs and he runs his fingers along your shorts. They're thin enough for you to feel his touch through the fabric, and you shudder when he starts rubbing your pussy through them—with a precision that has you melting, because he can hear it when you think about how good it feels when he touches your clit like that, especially while he's ignoring your complaints about it. Who knew you had it in you, Shin? you giggle internally. (Definitely not him, he wants to reply.)

He slides a hand into your shorts, and that's when you drop the laundry and give up.

Shin finds himself fucking you for the better part of the night, first from behind, then from beneath you. The sight of you bouncing on his cock drives him so crazy that he has you pinned underneath him not too long later, moaning and drooling as he drives you into the mattress. He only stops when you start thinking that you're starting to feel too sore. (You can keep going anyway, Shin, you tell him, but he knows he wouldn't be able: it kills his boner whenever you're in any kind of pain.)

But even if you’re a bit uncomfortable, you're practically glowing by the time he's finished.

“That was so fun,” you say as you kiss him. “You should do that more often.”

Shin snorts. “I don't think we can have sex any more than we already do without my dick falling off.” He gives you a curious look, suddenly worried. “Is this really not enough for you, though? ‘cause I can do other things if you want. Use my mouth, or toys, or whatever…”

You seem confused. “Well, it's not really about how many rounds we go…”

He blinks. “It's not?”

“No.”

“Then what is it about?”

You tilt your head. “Haven’t I said it? I mean, I've definitely thought it. It’s about being treated like a ho—”

“I know,” Shin interrupts, deadpan, and you giggle. But then he's studying you intensely; if he wants to give you exciting orgasms for the rest of your life, he'll need to understand what makes you tick.

“What’s the appeal of, uh… being treated that way? If it's not just about how many times we do it in a day?”

Shin encounters one of the major limitations of ESP: if you can't form a coherent thought, then Shin can’t read it. He can only see the knot in your brow, feel the discombobulation in your mind as you try to make out the exact shape of your desire. See it in your face when you can't.

“Who knows,” you finally say. “It's just hotter the way we did it just now, I guess? Like, it's a whole genre of porn. Tons of people like it.”

He frowns. Shin truly doesn't get it, and he wishes he did. But he doesn't need to understand your fantasies to humour you, as long as it makes you happy.

Though... there is one free use scenario he can't deliver.

No matter how many times he’s tried and how many times you've begged him, Shin can't bring himself to have sex with you in your sleep.

He feels a bit bad about it, honestly, because you clearly really want it. You've pleaded with him to try it out for the past twenty nights in a row, slept in exceptionally revealing lingerie just to tempt him, and have recently begun a diabolical routine of teasing him every night. You make out with him, rub yourself on him like a cat in heat, and grind your core on his aching cock through your tiny little panties—all before rolling over in bed and knocking out.

But despite your new habit leaving him with the worst case of blue balls in the world, Shin just can't bring himself to touch you in your sleep.

He doesn't get how it's supposed to work in the first place. It's a kink you probably picked up from all the fanfiction and doujinshi that's rotted your brain, and it doesn't make sense at all when applied to real life. A trained assassin is the worst person to try somnophilia with: “You're a light sleeper and your first instinct is to kill anyone who startles you,” he’d pointed out once. “How am I even supposed to touch you in your sleep without you waking up and accidentally stabbing me?”

In response, you started to take benadryl and melatonin before going to bed, and you promised that you would absolutely, 100% not stab him if you woke up in spite of that. (Okay, it might be more like 90%, but Shin can just use his ESP to see the future and dodge, right?) This flabbergasted him, but also didn't really surprise him.

It also didn’t really help.

The heart of the problem is that somnophilia is truly just too freaky for Shin. Despite everything he's tried with you, nothing really hits like vanilla sex. Even when he's enjoying the more adventurous stuff, he can only do so if he knows without a doubt that you're fully into it, and that's just kind of impossible if you're asleep when he's doing it. What if you wake up and realise that you didn't want any dick that night, actually? What if you wake up and you feel complicated, empty—not as good as you thought you would?

“But I’m always going to want it,” you insist, “and I'll like whatever you do with my body! You don't have to worry about all that.” Which is, again, an absolutely insane thing to say—but Shin doesn't know how to explain that to you. Your mind buzzes with frustration and something that feels a little like heartache whenever he tries, a knot in your chest that you don't really understand yourself, and it makes him feel so bad that all he can do is kiss you until your sadness ebbs away.

So Shin keeps his hands to himself, even when you're having the horniest dreams he's ever seen.

He doesn't mean to peer in on them. It's just impossible not to when you're next to each other in bed and your subconscious is making you think and feel crazy things. The sad dreams are probably the loudest ones, but the wet dreams are a close second. And this current dream is both very wet and very loud. Whenever Shin closes his eyes, he sees it clearly: some faceless man is on top of you, inside you. With each thrust of his hips, you shift in your sleep—thighs pressed together, hips twitching. Hot breaths, little whimpers. Your body is begging to be filled.

Shin doesn't take it personally that you're dreaming of some random guy instead of him. It's part of a particular kind of free use fantasy for you—the idea of anonymous men using you impersonally, like some kind of gloryhole. You used to think of it so much in your waking hours that it's lost all shock value to him. It doesn't turn him on, either—it's just not his thing.

So he lies down next to you and prepares to fall asleep to some pretty mundane gangbang visions. He's nearly drifted off when something happens that makes his eyes open wide—

You start to feel uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable, uncertain. You've just realised that you can't recognise the face of the man on top of you, that you aren't sure if it's Shin. You’re squirming, wanting to get away, because I don't want anyone other than Shin to touch me, I don't want anyone other than him to use my body, I don't want anyone other than him inside it. A sense of panic grips you, and now the whimpers you're letting out don't sound needy anymore.

You sound afraid.

Shin is on you immediately. A hand on your cheek, his voice soft so as not to scare you. “Hey,” he says, “I’m right here. I'm right here. Wake up for me, okay? C'mon.”

He shakes you gently, and then not so gently, and now he's wondering what ungodly cocktail of sleep meds you took to stay unconscious like this. But even if you aren't awake, you can still hear him, his voice cutting through the fog of your sedative-fueled dream—and that's enough to comfort you. You can make out his features now, which are so handsome that you can't help but calm down.

Oh, your dream self says, it is you. Hi, Shin.

Shin sighs. “Hi,” he says, voice full of relief. “Yeah, it's me.”

The little smile you give him is so tender that his heart lurches. I'm so glad, you sigh. I don't want anyone else to do this to me.

This dream version of you is chatty. Infinitely chattier than your real self. I wouldn't have minded some other guy on top of me in the past, you know? you tell him as he undresses you. As long as I came, I didn't really mind whoever was inside me. It's not like I got to choose anyway. I was using my body for missions, so I only slept with whoever I got assigned. Cumming was a nice bonus though.

The Shin in your dream kisses a path from your jaw to your neck to your breasts, ignoring you. (The real Shin would never do this—he would probably start crying if you ever talked about any of this stuff out loud to him, actually.) He doesn't reply as you keep babbling about what sex used to be like for you, about all the stuff that Shin’s seen in your sadder dreams. Not that you think they're sad; you don't know that you sometimes cry in your sleep. You don't think it's too strange that the kind of sex you had for missions sometimes made you pretend that you weren't in your own body, that the kind of things being done to it weren't also being done to your heart. As long as your body had an orgasm, then you were probably enjoying it—that only makes sense, right?

But then you started sleeping with Shin, and sex always feels so different now. Shin doesn't just make you cum; he makes you feel like you're melting. Like you don't want to be anywhere in the world except in his arms where he can hold you and kiss you and hopefully fuck you a second time.

I never liked going multiple rounds with other people the way I do with you, you observe. I kinda feel like I maybe didn't like having sex at all. But you like it if it's Shin. All the things you hated doing with other people—being held, being kissed, being used—you always enjoy doing them with Shin. You’re actually pretty sure that you were doing them all wrong before you met him, and it's nice that your body feels right whenever he touches you now.

That's what you like most about when he fucks you, actually. You can always trust Shin to make your body feel right.

That's when it clicks for him: the shape of your desire, the reason your heart twinges when Shin starts talking about safewords and boundaries and how he can't just do whatever he wants with you. It makes him feel an ache in his own chest, and he finds himself leaning down to kiss your forehead, and then—after a long, thoughtful pause—the silky contour of your mouth.

The Shin in your dreams moves in lock-step with him. Kind of. He kisses you as well, his hands wandering all over your body. But then he gets wildly out of character. Shin goes bright red when he hears the porn dialogue he's been assigned. He wants to wake you up so he can tell you that he wouldn't ever call you his cum dump (what the hell), but it's making you wet that you're being treated like one—and to his utter shame, Shin’s dick is starting to twitch too. Something about you squirming underneath him, desperate and vulnerable for him even when asleep, is making his brain short-circuit.

When you start begging him to touch you—please, Shin, I was so scared I need to feel you now, need you inside me right now, want you to use my pussy, only you and no one else—Shin feels something inside himself snap.

And he touches you.

He starts with your breasts, because that seems least likely to disturb your sleep, and god knows he doesn't want you to wake up and witness him doing something so deranged. But your eyes stay closed even though you feel his touch in your dreams, your nipples pebbling as he teases and pinches them. Your brow dips and you whine, and you only get louder when his tongue starts swirling around a nipple—but you stay fully asleep.

When he reaches down, he's unsurprised to find your panties soaked through. Not just from your juices, but also from all the cum he left inside you earlier in the day. He strokes you through the ruined satin, a thumb rubbing your swollen clit, and he’s startled to feel you get even slicker. His dream self wonders at how sensitive you are, how needy your pussy is, and Shin cringes at hearing himself saying all that—but he also agrees. You always make a point of using toys to keep yourself stretched out for him if he's not around to do it himself, and your body is at this point practically trained to expect his touch—but even then, it's shocking how ready you are to take him even when unconscious.

When he pushes your panties to the side, he sees your hole is fluttering around nothing—both here and inside your dream. The sight makes him lose any shred of self-restraint, and he frees his dick from his sweats and starts fisting himself until his length is slick with his own pre-cum. Your subconscious can't quite recreate the feeling of taking his cock, leaving you panting and unsatisfied, and he fully intends to fix that.

He lines himself up with your slick folds—and he pushes into you.

Shin can hardly believe that you're still sleeping right now, all while your pussy helplessly swallows his cock. He'd feel bad if he didn't know how blissed out you were, your subconscious flooding with euphoria, your body overfilled with pleasure. He's being pretty rough with you in your dreams, but he's careful with you in reality, the way he's always told you he'd be.

Plus, he really doesn't want you to wake up.

But despite his best efforts, your eyes open. You're groggy, confused, not understanding what's happening and how come your breasts are exposed or why is there a cock inside you—and then your eyes are going wide as your pussy starts pulsing around him, and you're gasping and crying as you feel yourself soaking everything.

By the time you figure out what's going on, Shin’s come back to his senses. He blurts an apology on instinct, launches into a garbled explanation of why he was fucking you—but you just give him a dazed smile, a sweet little kiss, and then you turn over to spread your dripping pussy for him.

“Keep going, Shin,” you say, voice drowsy but no less clear. “You're still hard, right? Use my body until you feel better. Promise I'll like it.”

Shin sucks in a breath, feels the last threads of his sanity snapping. He's a vanilla guy, after all. Nothing hits like hearing you ask to be fucked out loud—except for maybe the sight of his cum dripping out of your swollen, needy pussy, your cunt fluttering around nothing and clearly wanting his cock back inside it. The combination is driving him wild.

You don't end up getting any more sleep after that.

The two of you do a lot after that. Way more than Shin ever thought he would in bed, including the most embarrassing roleplays in the world. There was the stuckage roleplay, the sex worker roleplay, the school classroom roleplay, the french maid roleplay, and—perhaps the worst of them all—the chikan roleplay.

(Yes—the two of you tried the free use thing in public, with Shin feeling you up during a commute home as you squirmed and pretended to ignore it. He'd tried to be subtle, telling himself he would stop if anyone noticed what you were doing, but you kept thinking that you really wanted him to keep going, so of course he had to oblige. Shin now can't take the Yamanote line without wanting to die from shame, nor without thinking about you instantly cumming on his fingers when he told you that you were being watched.)

But despite all those insane sex acts, nothing scares him as much as when you ask about his kinks.

“I don't have any specific fantasies,” he says quickly. “I'm a vanilla guy. You know that.”

“Uh huh. Sure. I also know that you're lying.”

He tries not to sweat.

“It’s okay, Shin,” you say delicately. “You don't need to be embarrassed. Breeding kinks are very common and respectable. It's the most normal thing out there, if you think about it. Humans need to procreate somehow, don't they?”

Shin can't form a response. He’s too busy visualising potential escape routes from this room, of which there are none because you are much faster than him and could easily intercept him if he bolted. When he accepts his fate, he forces himself to look at you and finds himself being stared at. Studied.

“So,” you say.

“S-so?”

“Tell me what flavour of breeding kink you like.”

His face burns. “What do you mean, flavour?”

“Like the kind of scenario where the breeding is happening. Like omegaverse, or hybrids, or those stories where someone's chained up and forcibly bred. You know.”

Shin realises then that he absolutely cannot tell you the fantasy that has him furiously jacking off when you aren’t around. He just knows you wouldn't understand it, and possibly you'd also read too much into it. Maybe you'd even freak out and break up with him. He’ll need to keep this a secret and carry it to the grave—or at least for another five years, after which it might make more sense to bring up as a serious conversation.

But you're very, very persistent about asking, and around five weeks later, he caves and tells you everything.

“Pleeease, Shin,” you beg for the millionth time, batting your lashes and giving him wide, pretty eyes you know he can't resist. “Whatever it is, I promise I won't judge. Like—I’m the last person who can make fun of anyone for their kinks. You know the kind of shit I read.”

Shin does indeed know the kind of shit you read—he’s also read it all, secondhand through your thoughts—and he does indeed know that you are in no position to judge anyone else for their preferences. But judgment isn't what he's worried about. It would be easier if it were. If his breeding kink had anything to do with omegaverse or hybrids or the weird dubcon stuff you described, it would be far less incriminating. But given the truth, he coughs and tries to crack a joke—“I dunno, it might be too freaky even for you”—and you give him a look so disappointed that he nearly flinches.

“H-hey—what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I just wish you trusted me. “I’m fine, I promise.” I trust you with my thoughts. How come you can't trust me with yours? “Don't pay attention to whatever you can hear from my mind, by the way. It's not anything you should worry about.” I don't want you to feel guilty.

The two of you have a strict rule, given your lack of mental boundaries: when Shin overhears something that you don't want to discuss, he's supposed to pretend it never happened. Usually he obliges, but this is just impossible to ignore. You have a point: you are willing to be vulnerable around him 24/7. There are no psychological barriers between the two of you. Each moment you choose to be with Shin, you also choose to forfeit all privacy for your heart—an act that confuses Shin as much as it moves him. Because everyone dislikes his uninhibited access to their minds. Everyone has something to hide. Everyone should be at least a little bit afraid of him—you, most of all.

The one time Shin voiced all this, you gave him a funny look and thought, I don't understand what you mean.

Because you don't mind that Shin can hear all your thoughts. You don't mind him knowing your insides, feeling out all the places that make you feel nauseous and bruised and dirtied. You don't mind that he's seen things about you that make you feel disgusted with yourself, things that make you feel like your body is undeserving of love—because you know he won't judge you for any of it. Because Shin is a good person, he’s good to me and he's good to my body, better than anyone else has ever been and will ever be. That must be why I have such mind-blowing orgasms when I sleep with him.

I didn't know how good sex could feel until I met you, Shin. Did you know that?

Shin did know that. He had actually figured all that out some time ago from seeing your dreams, which is only making him feel worse. His access to your thoughts is so unlimited that he understands your desires better than you do yourself. It's only fair that you should also understand some of his, right?

Besides, it's just a kink. A harmless kink. You won't think too hard about it, right?

Right?

He clears his throat.

“I…”

You glance at him, curious.

“I'm kinda into… like, a domestic kind of scenario… with the whole, uh…”

He can't bring myself to say it, so you do it for him: “The breeding thing? Like, you’re into the idea of breeding me in a domestic roleplay?”

Shin is going to die. But he perseveres, because it's you, and you deserve this bare minimum from him: “Yeah… like. You're a housewife, and we… y'know.”

You give him a blank stare, which then gives way to understanding. “Oh! I know what you mean.”

“D-do you?”

“Yeah! Like those doujinshi where there's a lonely housewife and the neighbour cucks her husband by sleeping with her, right? Or her daughter’s boyfriend sleeps with her. Or the husband’s father.” You hum, studying him, somehow not reacting to the way his jaw just dropped. Just what the hell have you been reading when he isn't around? “Or is it one of those wedding NTR scenarios?”

“What? No!” Shin really is going to die. But he comes clean, because he won't be able to live with himself if he gets roped into a roleplay about any of those situations: “I just mean, like. We’re a married couple, and we’re trying for a baby.”

You stare, and he hears the open confusion in your mind. Apparently you can't fathom why anyone would find a life of domestic bliss sexy if it's not about to involve some form of cucking. But you keep your word and don't judge him: “Oh. Well, that'll be easy enough to do.”

Shin blinks. “You mean… you’ll do it?”

“Of course I'll do it,” you say, warm and reassuring. “I wanna make you feel as good as you make me feel, Shin.”

Something in him melts at the words, especially because he can hear that you're saying them with your whole heart. Every response he can think of is lacking, and he's at a painful loss for a reply. But then you cheerfully add, “And anyway, you fingerbanged me on the Yamanote line. This is the least I can do in return,” and Shin goes back to wanting to disintegrate.

Despite Shin’s insistence that his fantasy has nothing to do with the R18 cucking doujinshi that you read, you seem dead set on taking inspiration from them. For the next week, he's subjected to some of the worst imagery he's ever encountered as you “perform research” for the scenario you're planning for him—which is to say, he reads a great deal of ecchi manga through your thoughts. Their contents make him incredibly afraid of whatever you'll come up with, but he's also oddly touched at how committed you are to the whole thing, so he can't help but leave you to your machinations.

And to be fair to you, you do your due diligence by asking him additionally what he wants.

“What’s your idea of domestic bliss?” you say one afternoon, when the shop is slow and sleepy and Lu is mercifully absent. “Like, what do you imagine a happy household looks like?”

Shin knows the answer immediately: Mr. Sakamoto with Ms. Aoi and Hana. Eating a home-cooked meal around a table with them and Lu. Waking up each morning to the scent of miso soup and the noise of a laughing child. Hana running into the store as she returns home from school, carefree and loved. Watching you teach her how to fold origami cranes so you can make some to hang from her ceiling. Seeing you beam when she says, Thank you, neesan.

Being embraced by you when he comes back to the store after almost dying. Feeling you wipe the blood off his knuckles before kissing them. Hearing you say, Welcome home, I missed you, let’s eat dinner. Cooking for you with his hands that he once used only for killing.

That's family to Shin. All of you, in the store, together.

Now, Shin will absolutely die if you use such sacred memories as a reference for this roleplay, so he doesn't voice any of this. Problem is—he doesn't have any other reference point for what a family should be. He grew up in a lab, and then afterwards he watched his father explode on a ship. You can't exactly fill in the gaps for him either, given how you were raised, and he constantly listens to the buzz of your disappointment at having no real material to work with for this roleplay.

“I dunno,” Shin eventually says. “Maybe, like, I come home and you’re in the kitchen? And I help you make dinner? And we eat together and go to bed together. I feel like that's what a married couple does.”

You hum. “Yes, that sounds right. And I'm wearing an apron, right? With a conservative outfit that's still tight enough to be kind of sexy?”

“Uh…”

“And I'm super lonely because you've been neglecting me because of work and we haven't had sex in two years?”

Shin is baffled. You can't even go two hours without asking him to have sex—two years is unfathomable. “Uh…”

“And the neighbour has made several passes at the lonely housewife next door, but I turn him down because I only want my husband’s cock inside me, right?”

Shamefully, Shin’s dick twitches at this last suggestion. Still, he says, “Er, no, I’d really just like you to act as you normally do. I don't need a re-enactment of The Neighbourhood Housewife series.”

“Aw, okay… And you're really sure you don't want me to wear an apron?”

Shin overhears a thought, and he almost snorts. “You're free to wear one if you want.”

“I just feel like aprons do a lot for me.” You give Shin—and his shop apron—a meaningful look. “Don't you?”

Shin tries not to flush. A little afraid that you'll next suggest that he wears an apron and plays a lonely househusband, he hastily says, “Good point. I think you should wear one.”

When Shin gets home that Friday, he discovers that aprons do a lot for him too.

This revelation is shocking for him, given all the housewife-centric porn that he's been forced to read secondhand. He's seen probably half a dozen women in nothing but aprons and hardly reacted to any of them, but the sight of you in a sky blue apron, humming as you chop away at some carrots, is doing something horrible to him.

The setup is getting to him too. There are couple photos placed throughout your apartment (among them is his personal favourite, taken among the cherry blossoms at Himeji Castle), as well as a fake wedding band on your finger (he’d picked out one with you at your insistence, and Shin thought it was funny at the time but now his ears are going pink at the sight of it). The air is rich with the fragrance of cooking rice and simmering curry. New curtains, a vase of flowers on the table, unfamiliar decor and some of his personal effects are placed throughout the living room—all to create the illusion of just having moved in together.

The scene isn't making him feel horny, exactly. It's more like it's making him feel warm.

It’d be nice if the two of you could live together like this, he thinks. If Shin could really come home to this everyday, and if you could really greet him with a kiss and smile, and if you could cook together and spend time together and fuck nasty together, if you could take your husband’s cock every day and get filled up with his—

Oh. Those are your thoughts. Not Shin’s.

He clears his throat, and he half-expects you to crack a joke about your dirty monologuing, but instead you put down your knife and come by to kiss him on the cheek. “Welcome home, dear,” you say warmly, and Shin’s heart jumps at the pet name. You smile as his cheeks flush: My husband is so handsome, you think, and Shin feels like he's about to explode.

Somehow, this is harder for him than fingerbanging you on the Yamanote line. That was mortifying, but this roleplay is quickly revealing things about his psyche that frankly distress him. Still, he plays his part, and tries to get into the appropriate mindset. You're his wife right now—his beautiful, pretty, gorgeous wife who he lucked out with and somehow married and now he’s has a home with you, and he's going to start a family with you, and he hopes the baby will have your smile and eyes and hair, and he's going to take so many photos of the two of you, and holy shit he's so glad you don't have ESP.

Anyway, he comes up with an underwhelming response: “H-hi. How was your day?”

“Good,” you say. “Was nice to get a break from work. Missed you the whole time though. You kept me waiting too long.” Wanted to feel you inside me all day, you whine at him mentally, and Shin doesn't know how actual married couples go about their daily lives. If you were really his wife and he heard you thinking like that, he'd probably never leave the house.

(Roleplay, he reminds himself immediately after. This is a roleplay. He shouldn't think about actually marrying you. That would be a dangerous route to go down, and he definitely hasn't thought about it before. Nor dreamt about it. No, sir.)

“I'll make it up to you,” he promises.

“You'd better.” You point at the curry that's simmering on the stove. “You can start by helping me with dinner.”

The way the rest of the night is similar to a regular evening together. The two of you cook together, eat together, and clean together. The only difference is that instead of hearing you monologue in your head about how much you want your boyfriend to fuck you, Shin is instead subjected to fantasies about your life as newlyweds. You beam a false memory of your wedding night directly into his head, and the mental image of Shin fucking you in your wedding dress has him so bricked up that he nearly breaks several glasses.

By the time you've both showered and gone to bed, Shin has been tortured for hours with detailed fantasies about your married sex life. (They involve various sets of bridal lingerie, an amorous honeymoon in Thailand, and sex on every surface in the apartment. All unprotected, of course, and accompanied by tender kissing each time.) Somehow, you don't break immersion even once. Even when Shin joins you in bed, you're thinking about how lucky you are to have him as your husband.

Shin doesn't think he's ever been so hard in his life.

You giggle when you’re straddling his lap, feeling it for yourself through your silk slip. “Someone’s excited.”

“‘Course I am,” he says between kisses. “How couldn't I be?”

How couldn't he be, if you were his wife?

(Roleplay, he reminds himself again. Roleplay. This is a roleplay! It's not good to think in marital hypotheticals. It's stupid, really. But he's doing it anyway and holy shit is it making him horny.)

He reaches under your slip, isn't surprised to find your cunt bare and dripping for him. Stretched myself out for you while I was at home today, you think as you move your lips against his, hot and messy and addictive. Used a toy, but it just wasn't the same as my husband’s cock.

He groans against your mouth as he reads your memories of your day: not a fabrication like the hazy visions of your false wedding and honeymoon, but detailed and heated and real. How you really did feel the frustration of a lonely and neglected housewife and couldn't help but take your favourite vibrator and spread yourself out on your shared bed. How you split yourself open on it and moaned his name as it stretched you out. How you gushed as you came, and how it still didn't feel as good as Shin’s touch because you didn't get to kiss him and feel his arms around you at the end.

He feels crazy when he lays you out beneath him. Insane when he studies your gaze, honeyed with lust, and your pussy, pretty and glistening for him. You give him a smile that's shy—genuinely shy, he can tell from your thoughts, because you've done a million freaky things but you've never acted out anything so tender before. Never played house like this, never imagined a cozy and warm life where you get to have a family.

He's never really thought of it before, either. He never had a cozy and warm life growing up, and he didn't really think he could ever change enough that he could have one. Never thought he could have a family, and maybe this is just a roleplay, but it's the first time he's really envisioning himself starting one.

“Are you gonna put a baby in me, Shin?” you ask shyly, and he nearly cums in his pants.

Shin generally likes to take his time with you in bed. Even if he can hear you mentally whining for his cock, he ordinarily likes to tease you with his tongue and fingers first. But he's desperate to be inside you today, and he can tell that you aren't upset by how quickly he frees his cock and presses it against your entrance. He can feel himself throbbing as he slides between your folds, his cock twitching at the slick and sticky noises from your cunt.

“So eager,” you tease. You break immersion just to taunt him, bedroom eyes turning sly: Wow, you really do get off to this stuff. Never would have pinned you for the type to enjoy breeding someone like this—

“Wife,” he corrects you without thinking, and you blink.

“Huh?”

“You’re not ‘someone’, you're my wife,” he says, fully talking with his dick, “I wouldn't marry anyone other than you, and I wouldn't put a baby in anyone other than you.”

You stare at him, wide-eyed. Shin is vaguely aware of your heart pounding as he lines his cock up with your entrance, your pussy fluttering even as your mind scrambles for words. “O-oh, really? I mean, I guess that is what the scenario-ohhh—aah…”

Your mind goes blank as Shin pushes into you, and Shin’s finding it equally hard to think. He can never get used to how you feel around him—tight and hot and perfect—and it’s even more overwhelming this time thinking that he'll get you pregnant. The thought has him feeling so insane, he can't help but start fucking you immediately.

You gasp when he starts thrusting, driving his cock into you at an angle that has you curling your toes. Pleasure bursts in your mind as he hits your sweet spot, your pussy squeezing around him each time. He's touched you so many times, fucked you into oblivion so many ways, committed every inch of your body and mind to muscle memory—it’s easy for him to take you apart, force you toward a quick finish.

Your hole starts dripping uncontrollably, and your belly tightens in a way that short-circuits your thoughts. Shin reaches between your bodies before you can fully comprehend it, rubbing your clit until you’re whimpering.

Sometimes your mind sounds very needy when you’re about to climax—more more more, right there, right there, don't stop, don't stop—and sometimes you sound pretty depraved—that’s right, Shin, fill me up, wanna be your cum dump—and sometimes you sound very tender—please kiss me, please hold me, please be as close to me as you can—but right now, you just sound shocked.

A-already? you think, dazed, and before your brain can catch up with what he's doing, Shin presses down on your belly and grinds his cock against your g-spot and suddenly you're tearing up as you gush all over him.

It's so hard not to cum with you. Shin nearly has to resort to using ESP on himself to keep it from happening. But he fucks you through your orgasm without pause, and he doesn't really slow down until you're a hazy, fucked out mess. Every inch of your body is so wrung out from pleasure that Shin can't hear a single, coherent thought—just a mindless rush of dopamine—which means you're probably relaxed enough to take his cock just the way he wants.

He brushes his lips against yours, sweet and easy, before he says, “Let me know if this is too much.”

“Hmm?” Not ready to form real words yet, you think, What are you up to, Shin? and You can do whatever you want with my body, you know that now.

Shin answers by throwing your legs over his shoulders. You squeal when he practically folds you in half, grabbing at the sheets when he starts to move again. Your pussy tightens around him as he pumps his cock into you, your body eager for more even though you just came. Deep, you think, gasping, it's so deep—

Shin feels it when he hits your cervix, and he hears you thinking it too. You keen when he does it again, moaning at the feeling. Feels good, Shin, you reassure him, your fingers reaching for your clit. Keep going. It's all he needs to hear before he starts pounding into you again.

He feels like an animal when he fucks you like this. Can't think about anything other than how deep he is inside you and how completely he's going to fill you up, how you're going to be walking around with his cum inside you for days. You’re thinking about it too—please, Shin, want your cum in me, want it in my womb, want you to breed me, please, please, wanna give you a baby—

Shin groans, his hips stuttering to a halt as his cock starts twitching, and soon he's pumping thick ropes of cum into you. You follow not long after, you pussy milking his cock as you gush all over him. He lets it, too—stays inside you the whole time and makes sure that you take it all, the two of you kissing each other hungrily. Only pulls out once you're both spent, and you whine at the emptiness afterwards.

Your hole is stuffed so full that his cum drips out of you almost immediately; you make a small noise as you feel it soaking the sheets. Somewhat predictably, you reach in between your legs, spreading yourself to give him a show.

“You came so much,” you say. “I can’t keep it all inside me.” As if you even tried.

Shin is used to your cumshot displays, but he feels his throat go dry at the sight anyway. “Um…” He licks his lips, and he’s momentarily torn between cleaning you up with his mouth and pushing it all back inside you. “Aren’t there, um. Positions you're supposed to stay in after? To help. With keeping it in. To get pregnant, I mean.” At least Shin remembers this fact from one of the many breeding fics you read over the past week.

“Are there? Oops.” You give him a guilty look. “I didn't know that. I guess we're gonna have to do that all over again.”

Shin snorts. Figures. “I'm gonna need a few minutes,” he says. Then he lies down, pulls you with him. “I wanna hold you first anyway.”

You make a happy noise as you're wrapped up in his arms, his chest pressed against your back as he curls around you. Apparently still committed to your role, you grab your phone as you snuggle up to him and look up post-coital positions for couples trying to get pregnant. Shin watches you type on your screen, idly touching you all the while—his lips kissing your shoulder, his fingers running along the arc of your hip. “Oh, huh, you're right. I'm supposed to lie down and keep my lower body elevated…”

“Elevated?”

“Yeah, people put a pillow underneath their hips sometimes… or sometimes they put their legs up.”

He makes a face as he tries to imagine it. “Sounds uncomfortable. I feel like the pillow thing should be enough… not that I think it's gonna make a difference with how often you like to have sex, anyway.”

You laugh. “Kind of a wonder I'm not pregnant already, huh?” Then you give him a look that's supposed to be shy, but is a touch too playful to be convincing. “But hopefully I will be after this.”

Heat crawls up his neck as he listens to your thoughts. You're not even imagining anything especially filthy—just thinking about what it'll feel like to carry his child. Shin recognises some of your monologuing from a fanfiction you read two days ago, a lot of which is sort of sensual. But it's really the original, non-sexual bits that are doing a lot for him. Stuff like how you'll probably have really bad morning sickness, but you know Shin will be there to rub your back as you throw up. Or how you're worried about whatever weird cravings you’re going to get, but you know Shin will buy whatever snacks you want. Or how uncomfortable you'll be when your stomach gets huge and the baby starts kicking, but I bet Shin will be excited to feel that, though.

There's a long, heavy pause before you think, You're gonna be such a good dad, Shin. Because Shin is a good person, he's good to you and he's good to your body and he's good to everyone at the store. He’s going to be so good to his child, and he’ll be good to their mother, too.

Shin doesn't realise that his fingers are resting on your stomach until he feels you lay your own over his. He closes his eyes and imagines a life there, cradled beneath the hand that he once only used for killing, the laugh of a child carefree and loved, the sound of your voice welcoming him home at the end of the day—every day, for the rest of his life—and obviously it's just a roleplay, it's a roleplay and he's being a moron for thinking in marital hypotheticals, but he says, “I can't wait to start a family with you.”

You stiffen.

Shin blinks. He listens for your thoughts, but there's only a long, crawling silence, and then you bolt upright and say, “Resident Evil.”

His eyes go wide. He sits up, reaches out for you—“H-hey, what's wrong?”—but you're already slipping out of bed.

“Need to pee!” you squawk. “Don't want to get a UTI, y'know?” And then you're gone and the bathroom door is slamming shut.

Your apartment is small, just like most places in Tokyo. The washroom is well within 400 metres of the bed, so Shin can fully hear you crashing out in there. The thoughts are incomprehensible at first—garbled words, high pitched buzz, flashbulb images. Chain link fence. Bloodied knife. Needle in a child’s arm, a string of cranes hanging above their head. Zombies on a screen, Mario and Princess Peach. An older boy with white hair, pinching a crease into flower-patterned paper. Niisan left me they all left me they never wanted me. Nobody ever wanted me, except for Sei-nii but that was only to use me for missions so many missions I lost count. A dark room full of men, their jugulars slashed. Other men, other rooms over the years. There are so many of them, so many men inside my body using my body has Shin ever looked in my head and counted them all?

The sound of chimes in a convenience store. Your favourite place in the world. Then Shin at the stove, in an apron. He's so handsome. Now he's holding a baby, a little boy who looks just like him.

There's someone beside him, and it isn't you.

You turn on the shower, and the rush of water is loud so Shin can't hear the sad little noise you make with your throat, although you can probably hear everything in my head, right? Sorry. Please ignore me. I'll be normal in a minute.

Shin wants nothing other than to kick open the door to help you, but his guilt stops him. His regret at how invasive his powers are, at how he can't shut out your thoughts, so loud and raw, when you most need privacy. It's the least he can do to respect your wishes and leave you alone.

He sits on the bed, listens as the roil of your thoughts become a simmer and then still. The shower turns off. The toilet flushes. I really don't want a UTI. You wash your hands, count to ten, and you come out looking and sounding so calm that if Shin couldn’t read minds, he'd never guess that you just had a mental breakdown in the toilet.

“Hi,” you say neatly as you sit down, and Shin pulls you into a hug so suddenly that you yelp.

“I said to ignore my thoughts!” you whine, squirming in his grip, trying to get away.

Shin actively stops himself from sighing. “I don't need to hear your thoughts to know something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I'm fine! I'm normal. I'm very normal right now.”

He gives you a long, unimpressed stare, but you return it with the look of a prey animal about to bolt, and he realises he has to humour you.

“...alright,” he says, “you're normal. Nothing's wrong.” Shin watches you uncertainly, seeing the tension in your body, hearing the rush of blood in your skull. You're staring at your fingers, remembering how to fold the wings of a paper bird. Trying to focus on the motions and not the person who taught them to you. Trying not to let Shin see all the people you miss and all the things that weren't meant for you.

You find it hard to look at him, so he stares at the wall instead.

“Do you want to be left alone right now?” Shin guesses.

Your voice is very, very small: “...yeah.”

Shin’s brow knots, but he can't hear anything other than a vague emptiness from your heart now, and he shouldn't be listening anyway. Shouldn't exploit the fact that your mind is so defenseless around him.

He's pulling himself away when you say, “Wait.”

You’re visualizing escape routes out of the apartment right now. You'd beat Shin in each one, and you'd be able to disappear from Tokyo long before he could ever catch up to you. But you stay on the bed instead, fidgeting as you stare at your lap, and even though your face is calm, the flood of your thoughts is so scared and sad and hopeful that Shin finds his head and heart aching simultaneously. He wants crush you in his arms and say all the things you want to hear—and then all the things you need to hear, but don't know.

But he stops himself.

“If there are thoughts you want me to ignore,” he says, “then you'll need to say the ones you want me to know out loud.”

You wince. You trust Shin with listening to all your thoughts, but actually voicing them is something you're not very good at yet. Assassins are secretive by nature, and you were raised to be a killer. I’ll throw up if I say this, you think, face miserable.

“You'll throw up if you don't,” Shin points out, feeling your stress response in his brainstem.

You nearly look—and feel—physically pained when you say, “I… I’d like it if you stayed.”

Shin's not sure when his own heart started feeling so heavy, but he's relieved to feel the weight lift. “Okay.”

So Shin settles next to you in bed, and after a moment, you start to relax. The anxious chatter of your mind goes quiet. The old memories stop blinking at you. You try to focus on your boyfriend to further ground yourself. He has a handsome face so it's easy. He goes bright red at the thought, which makes you smile.

Shin cracks a joke, which makes you snort, and after that you crawl pretty eagerly back into his arms. You demand kisses and he happily obliges. Your fingers seek him out and he knows to hold your hand. You rest your head on his chest and you listen to him talk about all the goings-on the store, the upcoming movies he wants to see, the ryokan he's booked for the two of you, and now you're very drowsy.

People's thoughts get slippery and strange when they’re on the verge of sleep. Sometimes it's garbled nonsense, but sometimes it’s their unguarded feelings. Shin hears yours, faint and scared but so very, very tender:

Wasn’t raised for a life like that… Never even thought about it… But if it's Shin…

Shin wants to grab you and make you look at him. If it's Shin, what?! he wants to ask. Suddenly, he’s having insane thoughts about if you’d like to actually live together and when's the right time to get serious and come to think of it, Mr. Sakamoto wasn't much older than him when he got married, right? Maybe he's not crazy for having daydreams where your face is lighting up at a diamond ring that he got you. Not a fool for wanting to come home to you every night. Not losing his mind for thinking that it might be nice to have kids at some point down the line.

Not stupid for maybe sort of really wanting to have them with you.

It did make him feel like he was insane, when he first started having those thoughts. Shin had never contemplated any of that stuff before. He’d grown up in a lab. Drifted through life being rejected for his powers. Shot his own father and watched him die. The only person who looked out for him after that was Mr. Sakamoto, and then he dipped soon afterwards anyway. All this to say, Shin wasn’t exactly raised to expect that he'd someday have a family, either. Never even thought about it, because he was sure he'd never get it.

But even if he’s never expected such a life, Shin can’t help but hope for it when it comes to you.

He would really like to tell you all this, but by the time his own mental crashout is over, you're fully asleep and drooling on his chest. So deep in the REM cycle that when Shin tries to read your mind, he catches you dreaming about kissing him on the Yamanote line, giggling into his mouth as his ears turn red. Typical.

There's a ring on your finger, different from the pretend-play version you left in the washroom. This one’s got a diamond, simple but pretty. It suits you.

Shin commits the design to memory, and he decides to stay up a little bit longer, watching the dream with which you've trusted him.

END

notes: the funniest part of this fic to me is how much build-up was required for shin to try the most standard kinks on tumblr dot com. i am very sorry if you felt misled by the summary/tags, expecting to read something super kinky only to find that this fic was fairly vanilla. i blame shin.

also i know this is not my best writing </3 I actually lowkey wanted to delete it all at the midway point alskdfjsldfkj but we move. please do let me know if you liked it!!!!

getting more and more excited for the sakadays anime!!! the manga was such a fun read & i’m so happy with how they look!!! nagumo looks so cute with his big brown eyes and shin is so cool!! AND SAKAMOTO!!! just so so happy with this!