#one of my most recent classes had a problem where like 30% of students were caught using AI to code | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

queenshelby · 4 years ago

Text

The Law Student (Part Two)

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: Age Gap, Fluff

Words: 1,601

Notes: In this fic, Cillian is about 20 and the Reader is about 30. It plays in early 1996.

You had started the morning by running into your ex who, to your surprise, went to the same coffee shop as you every morning.

‘Damn’ you thought. Surely you had to find a different one now and, just as you left the shop abruptly, you ran into one of your students.

‘Oh my god, I am so sorry’ you said as you spilled part of your coffee onto his black t-shirt.

‘That’s not a problem’ Cillian said as you quickly reached for some napkins before trying to dry off his t-shirt like some kind of idiot. ‘Seriously, it’s fine’ Cillian repeated, chuckling as he did while he reached for your hand and moved it away.

‘I didn’t burn you with this, did I? I am so terribly sorry’ you said with great worry and, to your surprise, Cillian lifted his t-shirt up slightly to check his skin and, by doing so, exposing his lower abdomen.

‘See, no burn marks. It’s fine. Seriously’ he then said before he was greeted by two young female students, leaving you standing right then and there.

Over the past few days, you most certainly learned that him and his friend Nathan were rather popular with the ladies in their group and you weren’t really surprised. You had also learned that they both played in a band until recently and almost took a up a record deal in the UK.

Whilst you never put your mind to it, you heard that they were certainly well known in the area after having played several gigs throughout the past few years.

‘See you later’ Cillian then said suddenly as he walked past and, as he did, you breathed in the scent of his aftershave which was mixed with a hint of coffee now.

‘See you Cillian’ you said with slightly rosy cheeks and, with that, you ordered another coffee and left.

***

Later, as you started one of the lectures and handed out an assignment which you had announced to the students a few days earlier, you were surprised by a flyer that was left on your desk.

You had no idea who had left it there, but it intrigued you. It was an advertisement for a music event at a local pub, not far from the university and your favourite cover band was playing.

Clearly, none of your students would have known that but you knew that there was another lecturer who had taken an interest in you.

His name was Mathew and, unlike you, he wasn’t very popular with the students. In fact, he was somewhat obnoxious and annoying. According to him, the reason you were well liked by at least the male students in your classes was because you were hot and not because you were kind and caring.

Did you care about Mathew’s opinion though? Probably not and, when your students handed in their assignments one by one after ninety minutes, a familiar scent made you raise your head from the documents in front of you.

‘Are you going?’ Cillian asked, looking at the flyer in front of you.

‘Am I going where?’ you asked, looking at him with confusion.

‘To the gig?’ Cillian asked, pointing to the flyer.

‘Maybe, yes’ you said, cheeks blushing again in a way that they shouldn’t.

‘Stop flirting with the teacher Murphy, come on. We have to go’ Nathan said as he stepped up behind Cillian and apologised to you on Cillian’s behalf.

‘Fuck off man. I am just asking a question’ Cillian chuckled before giving you yet another wink while being pulled away by his friend.

‘See ya’ Cillian then said, waving and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes but wave at him nonetheless.

***Cillian’s POV***

‘Alright man, are you ready for tonight? Party at my house? Got your guitar ready?’ John, another friend of Cillian’s who was studying at the same university but in a different faculty, asked as he swooped by in the cafeteria.

‘Sorry man, I’ve got plans’ Cillian said, having forgotten about the party.

‘What plans do you have? Both Nora and Siobhan will be at my house tonight. That should give you an incentive’ John laughed, knowing that both women were interested in Cillian and he had made out with at least one of them.

‘Sorry, can’t do’ Cillian said, having made plans to go to the gig for which he had sneakily left you the flyer on your desk.

‘What about you Nathan?’ John asked, but Nathan shook his head. He had promised Cillian to go with him, even though he didn’t know why Cillian wanted to go there in the first place. He had his suspicions, but couldn’t confirm them.

***

Later that day, Cillian and Nathan indeed went to the gig at the local pub but there was no sight of you.

Somewhat disappointed, Cillian ordered two pints of Guinness before Nathan and him sat down at one of the high-top tables not too far from stage which is when Cillian heard a familiar voice.

‘John told me you guys would be here. His party got canned because his parents cancelled their trip to Dublin’ Siobhan said before giving Cillian and Nathan a kiss on their cheeks to greet them.

Nora was also there, accompanying Siobhan and Nathan thought that this was rather amusing. Cillian, on the other hand, was somewhat annoyed.

He had a drunken one-night stand with Siobhan he tried hard to forget about and keep a secret but, with the way she was acting, this was almost impossible.

‘So, what are you doing for the weekend Cills? Want hang out?’ Siobhan then asked, causing Nora to cringe. Did she know that they slept with each other, Cillian wondered? Probably not.

‘Studying actually’ Cillian sighed, looking at the pint of Guinness in front of him.

‘He wants to impress the new lecturer, thinks she is hot’ Nathan then laughed, earning him a nudge from his friend.

‘Fuck off man’ Cillian told him again.

‘You mean Y/N Y/LN? She’s married, is she not?’ Nora then asked somewhat surprised.

‘Separated actually’ Nathan corrected her.

‘Would you just fucking stop it. I don’t care about our teacher’ Cillian said, rolling his eyes.

‘Talking of which, she’s here too. Now I am not sure if I should be surprised or not Cillian. What do you think?’ Nathan chuckled as he pointed towards the other side of the bar, which is where you were standing.

Cillian’s head turned immediately and he glanced over towards you and smiled but, you had not noticed him.

In his mind, you were simply stunning, wearing somewhat tight jeans and a white t-shirt. Your hair fell over your shoulders in long waves and you wore the smallest amount of make-up.

You clearly came alone, that much was obvious. And, you liked Guinness too which was a bonus.

Eventually, you noticed him and Nathan and gave them both a quick wave and smile before minding your own business.

‘Cillian’ Nathan said for the third time by this point and it was obvious to him, Siobhan and Nora that his gaze was transfixed on you and he didn’t listen to them at all.

‘What?’ Cillian asked as if he had just snapped out of a trance.

‘Do you want another beer?’ Nathan chuckled and Cillian nodded before volunteering to get it.

***YOUR POV***

You almost felt out of place in an establishment like this, packed with students and not many people over the age of 25. Nonetheless, you looked forward to the gig.

‘Hey’ you then suddenly heard behind you and, when you turned around, Cillian was there, wearing another plain black t-shirt and some worn out jeans that were ripped around the knees.

There was something about him that intrigued and you knew that it shouldn’t. After all, he was your student.

‘Hi Cillian’ you responded. ‘Did you leave that flyer on my desk by any chance?’ you blurted out, unable to hold back your thoughts.

‘Me? No. Why would I?’ he said, shaking his head and his look was genuine and you believed him.

‘Okay, I was just wondering. Never mind. Please forget that I asked’ you said nervously before you went silent and sipped on your beer.

‘Do you want another drink?’ Cillian then asked and you looked at the half full pint in your hand and shook your head.

‘No, thank you. My glass is still more than half full Cillian Despite, it would be inappropriate for me to accept a beer from one of my students’ you explained.

‘It’s just a beer Y/N, but that’s fine’ Cillian chuckled and, just as he did, the band started and you had no choice but to part ways. Cillian had to return to his friends and you certainly did not want to hang out your students at an event like this.

The fact that some of your students were at the gig did not, however, prevent you from dancing and enjoying yourself and it didn’t take long for you to meet some suitors on the dance floor including Mathew, the other lecturer who had taken a liking in you.

But men didn’t interest you following your separation from your husband James and you pretty much told them where to go while you felt Cillian’s eyes on you almost the entire night.

You weren’t sure whether it was curiosity on his behalf or something else. Why was he looking at you? And why did he continue to look at you for such a long period of time?

Tag List:

@cutebutpsychoe (cannot tag)

@fastfan

@kpopgirlbtssvt

@cdej6 (cannot tag)

@kathrinemelissa (cannot tag)

@landlockedmermaid77

@crazymar15

@m3th-kate (cannot tag)

@damedomino

@lauren-raines-x

@miss-bunny19

@halleisheree (cannot tag)

@skinny-bitch-juice

@odorinana

@cloudofdisney

@lexiwoods (cannot tag)

@weepingstudentfishhorse

@allexiiisss (cannot tag)

@geminiwolves

@letsstarsfalling

@ysmmsy

@chlorrox

@tommyshelbypb

@chocolatehalo

@music-lover911

@desperate-and-broken

@magnetosleftear69 (cannot tag)

@mysticaldeanvoidhorse (cannot tag)

@peaky-cillian

@lelestrangerandunusualdeetz

@december16-1991 (cannot tag)

@captivatedbycillianmurphy

@romanogersendgame

@randomfangirl2718

@dorothea-hwldr (cannot tag)

@missymurphy1985

@peakyscillian

@lilymurphy03

@deefigs

@theflamecrystal

@livinginfantaxy

@rosey1981

@elenvampire21 (cannot tag)

@hanster1998

@mariapaiva13 (cannot tag)

@fairypitou

@zozeebo

@kasaikawa

@littleweirdoalien

@sad-huffle-nerd

@theflamecrystal

@peakymalfoyscullymulder (cannot tag)

@0ghostwriter0

@stylescanbeatmyback

@1-800-peakyblinders

@datewithgianni

@momoneymolife

@mcntsee

@janelongxox

@basiclassy

@being-worthy

@chaotic-bean-of-smolness

@margoo0

@vhscillian

@littleweirdalien (cannot tag)

@crazymar15

@im-constantly-fangirling

@namelesslosers

@littlewhiterose

@ttzamara

@cilleveryone

@peaky-cillian

@severewobblerlightdragon

@dolllol2405

@pkab

@babaohhhriley

#cillian murphy smut #cillian murphy #cillian murphy x reader #cillian murphy imagine #cillian murphy x y/n #cillian murphy x you

90 notes · View notes

embrassemoi · 4 years ago

Text

Surrounded by the Moon and Stars ✷ 17

Pairings: Sirius B, Remus L, [F]Reader Content: Language, possible errors A/N: slight head-hopping

Masterlist: Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Chapter 17: The Stalking Map

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

January 31st, 1976 | 11:30 pm

“Move your arse over!” Lily whispered. Moments after the lights went out, she crawled out of bed, her silky nightgown dragged across the floor as she walked over to Y/N. In one hand, she held a pillow, the other, Toulouse.

Y/N giggled, scooting over. “Can't get enough of me?”

“Hush! You know what I mean,” she blushed. Lily slipped in, the bed dipped as she wiggled around, making herself comfortable. But the small size didn’t help as they were slightly cramped together, leaving little space for either girl to move. Y/N made a note to herself to charm her bed so it’d be larger.

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

February 2nd, 1976 | 12:23 am

“You really shouldn’t cram studying like this.”

A candle burned brightly inside their closed curtain drapes as Y/N continued to stress over an upcoming test.

“You’re smart — but you’re lucky if you manage a troll.”

“Be anymore encouraging, will you?” Y/N muttered out sarcastically.

Lily rolled her eyes, getting up from her pretzel seated position as her hand reached out, disappearing beyond the curtain drapes. Leaning over and supporting herself by gripping the bed frame, she grabbed a coffee pot and two teacups, pouring a steaming amount into each. She handed her one, Lily’s eyes squinted, her tongue poking out in thought before beginning. “So, five birds will be ejected from the wand with a blue light…”

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

February 4th, 1976 | 1:12 am

They stared at each other for a moment before Lily’s mouth twitched upwards. The silence only lasted for a few beats before they both erupted into roaring laughter so strong that they had to lean into each other to prevent themselves from rolling off the bed.

“No. You. Didn’t!” Y/N exclaimed.

“What was I supposed to do? Not punch him?!” “Precisely!”

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

February 5th, 1976 | 10:59 pm

Lily danced, jumping around on her bed. Her bright hair bounced around wildly whilst Y/N held her wand, pretending it was a microphone. One earbud was in Lily’s ear, the other in hers.

‘Yes, I’ve been brokenhearted!’ They mouthed to each other, despite there being a silencing spell around Lily’s bed.

‘Blue since the day we parted,

Why? Why? Did I ever let you go?

Mamma Mia now I really know!’

Y/N took her hands, pretending to play chords as if she were in front of an actual piano, mimicking the erratic backtrack. Lily shook with laughter before she slowly sank onto the bed as her hair sprawled out.

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

February 9th, 1976 | 12:17 am

“Ginger —”

“I consider that harassment and bullying. Do you know how many detentions I can give you?”

“Haha — ginger.”

“Ten points from Gryff —” “No —” “TWENTY POINTS FROM —” “I’M SORRY!”

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

February 11th, 1976 | 1:37 am

“What do you wanna know?” She whispered.

Speckles of starlight slipping through the cracks of their drapes. Lily, for whatever reason, seemed restless. It always seemed like whenever it was extremely early in the morning, there was a change in Lily’s demeanour.

Lily averted her gaze, biting her bottom lip, “Tell me a secret.”

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

February 12th, 1976

After almost two weeks of their almost nightly rendezvous, they’d gotten closer than they have in the past six months and it seemed like Lily knew her better than she did at times.

Lily was practically bouncing off the walls. Every day, she seemed to become more radiant, happier, bubblier and Y/N couldn’t help but wonder what caused such a spike in her mood.

The redhead wove their way out of the bustling crowd, her arm linked with Y/N’s. She’d caught a few times, Lily looking at her every now and then before she seemed to stare for a little longer than what was considered polite. She’d forced a cough, fiddling with a strand of hair with her free hand; looking everywhere — or at anything, but her.

Sometimes Y/N felt and sounded like a broken record.

Repeating her thoughts over and over again, analyzing herself and the people around her; overthinking causing loads of unanswered questions… It was a problem that she didn’t know how to switch off.

Sometimes, it’d become too overwhelming, even to the point of tears in frustration and the constant overthinking. It would start with a flicker of interest, morphing into a spiral of questions, then irritation before spreading through her veins like a wildfire, spiking with anxiousness or fury. But recently, her over-thinking wasn’t necessarily overwhelming or maddening, this time it was purely curious. It was as if she blinked an eye; suddenly Lily would be acting fine — normal to becoming strange and skittish within mere seconds.

Perhaps it was stress?

February began and the workload for the OWLs was beginning to wear down on everyone. To be dramatic, every day became a blur, all merging into one blob: wake up, head down to the hall, class, lunch, class, study — then become too overwhelmed from studying and have the urge to cry or yell, dinner, study more, then sleep. With hardly any time to retain the information and the OWLs set to start late May, Y/N’s main goal was to memorize every bit of information rather than learn what it meant; that was for another time.

Whenever the fifth or seventh years weren’t in class, they were studying in the library, the hallways, even at dinner or lunch. It was so busy that the Marauders made it a point to swing by — even Mary and Marlene were becoming frequent visitors too. Mostly, they studied, but other times it ended with Lily constantly threatening James with detention (which he already received one and lost around forty house points after starting a small fire — which nobody knew how it even happened), Peter brought baked goods but ended up spilling a cup of tea over his notes and robes; Sirius and Marlene often mucked around while Y/N and Remus begun migrating to the common room after Pince threatened to throw them all out (and honestly, they were tired with everyone else’s shit).

And it had been taking a toll on Lily. She’d lost sleep and was slightly more agitated when it came to those around her and overall seemed to become quieter than usual.

Yeah, it was probably stress, but it didn’t answer her happy mood. Whatever it was, it looked good on her.

That day, they decided to eat lunch away from the Great Hall. They sat on a nearby window ledge, watching students idly as they passed back and forth, all having their own little lives. Y/N’s back was pressed against the window, her knees bunched together as Lily guessed the lives of people around them.

Young students, old students, some smiling, some frowning. Usually, Hogwarts was almost too overbearing. The swarm of bodies clung together like magnets, hard to separate, hard to pull yourself away from because soon enough, you’ll be roped into another set of magnets. While Hogwarts had been smaller in size and population compared to Ilvermorny, you could never catch a break here.

But, in times like these, they were able to come down from the high. It was fascinating and oddly calm; the noise, the chatter, it all became background noise.

And like a magician, Remus popped out, walking towards them. Lily waved Remus down, inviting him to sit with them. Although, Peter wasn’t that far behind as he came bouncing up behind. A few people waved to him, he’d even stopped a few times to catch up with a few students that passed.

Remus took the free seat next to Y/N, Peter next to Lily.

“Bloody cold here,” Peter said, rubbing his shoulder up and down, handing each girl a muffin before Remus, but he declined, waving around a small bag of blackberries.

Lily and Peter quickly fell into a conversation while she and Remus turned to talk. His leg brushed against hers before ripping away quickly. Even with just the slightest touch, Remus was a furnace. Y/N quickly looked up to him, their eyes meeting shortly. Her eyebrow curled up at him, wondering why he was so warm; had he been sick? He didn’t look bad…

She hadn’t been spending that much time with him as of late, aside from the study groups. But he smiles broadly. There was a weariness on his face that seemed to have chased away immediately. “Noon.”

“Noon! How have you been?”

His smile turns even brighter, so much as he could rival the stars. There’s a certain playfulness in his eyes, devilishly and sly. He looks too eerily like James, but it only tells her that he’d come up with another prank recently.

“Great,” there is amusement in his voice, so smug, so confident. “Came up with a new prank idea.”

Bloody knew it, as he’d would say.

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, let’s just say that there’s going to be a lot of dungbombs, Polyjuice potions and probably explosions.”

“Explosions?!”

“You’ll see.” Again, sounding so confident and smug. It put a smile on her face. “So what about you?”

Her mind racks around for a while; nothing much has happened recently; she’s stumped.

He considers her for a moment with a soft gaze, completely understanding. “We’re planning to mix in Polyjuice potion with pumpkin juice on Valentine's day at dinner. When the person drinks it; they should turn into who they fancy.”

“So where do the explosions come in?”

Remus gives a deep chuckle, “Now I can’t give away all my secrets, can I?”

But before she could make a witty retort, perhaps even convincing him to spill his deets, Peter calls out to Remus, pointing discreetly to a girl looking at them directly from the other side of the corridor. They all recognized her from the study group, a fourth year that comes on Wednesdays. She waved over to them — well, actually just at Remus as her other hand grasped an item behind her back.

He waves over, hesitantly getting up, “I’ll be back.

This wasn’t unusual — since he ran most of the fifth year groups, Remus constantly had younger students approach him in the halls. Although, they were all starstruck; after all, he was tall, a bit scary and a part of the oh so intimidating Marauders.

Their eyes were glued to his back as they watched the interaction play out. The girl tipped back and forth on her feet, swaying as she shyly looked up to him. She went on to a small monologue before pulling out a heart-shaped box of chocolates and holding it in front of herself.

Lily sucked in a sharp breath, a hand flying to her mouth to prevent giggling to seep out and the young girl overhearing, but it was out of entertainment rather than any malicious intent. Remus, however, did not look too phased, however, gave a pitiful smile, thanking the girl for her confession but letting her down softly. Within a second, the girl’s face contorted, her eyes swelling up with thick tears as she threw the chocolate box at Remu’s chest — but missed, scattering to the ground, as she bolted down the corridor.

“Blimey,” Peter breathed out, “That’s the third one this week. He’s going to beat Sirius for Valentine’s day confessions at this rate.”

“Well this is awkward,” Remus said, coming back to the group. He had picked up the box, an uncomfortable grimace on his face as he turned it around. Y/N looked up at him; he was flustered, unsure what to do. So, she patted his shoulder, gaining his attention and slid the box out of his hands and cracked it open; they were all sorts of different chocolate, milk, white, dark, truffles, shavings, even some had coconut while others were biscuits covered in it. It was intended for Valentine's day judging by the intricate and soft velvety packaging but she assumed that poor girl simply couldn’t refrain.

Yeah, she definitely should’ve waited — or not have said anything, but at least she had nerve. It felt like Y/N lacked the so-called Gryffindor trait often, so if anything, she applauded that fourth year.

The group looked at her oddly as Y/N shrugged, plopping a piece into her mouth. “What? Expensive chocolate is still expensive chocolate.”

She took the box, stretching her hand out, offering it to the group.

“Nu-uh,” Lily blurted, her wands waved out in front of her, “There’s no way I’m eating that.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you feel bad?! And that must be bad mojo! You broke her heart; why did you take the box?”

“Surely you saw her throw it at me! You didn’t expect me to throw it back at her?”

Lily stopped her scold, suppressing another fit of giggles before letting out a very loud snort. Y/N and Peter howled together at careless, ‘improper’ lady laughs that Lily usually didn’t make. Y/N liked the change, she seemed freer.

“Well, do you fancy anyone then?” Lily retorted as she composed herself.

Remus snorted too, scooted over to Y/N as she offered him the box. He nodded, grabbing a small bite-sized chocolate piece. He rubbed at his collarbone in a sheepish manner, cracking it which made Y/N and Peter's face scrunch up. “What do you think?”

“You should go and date around. Honestly, you have all these women at your feet and you’ve never gone on one.” Peter added.

“Yes, yes!” Lily urged, “Listen to him!”

“You guys care more about this than I do.”

If James and Sirius were the most popular students, James being goofy while Sirius was a playboy, and Peter had the most friends, Remus was definitely the most well-liked Marauder and the one with the coolest reputation; something that James was certainly jealous of. But the fact that he seemed oblivious to it, Y/N found hilarious and humbling, very unlike his friends.

His head shook. “Well then, what about you two. Do you fancy anyone?”

They both went red immediately. Peter bit the inside of his cheek before Y/N shoved the tray of chocolates his way; he grabbed a handful, eating them in complete silence. Lily, well, she went completely still, almost as if Remus had shot a spell at her. She coughed, looking away uncomfortably as a nervous chuckle embedded its way out.

Y/N’s eyes widened and she and Remus immediately whipped their heads to look at each other. Their mouths gaped, closing and opening like goldfish. Both of their minds reeled, thinking about the same thing. Remus snapped his head back to Lily, his finger pointing at her. “Godric! You do!”

“I-I do not! I don’t fancy anyone!”

“Spill! What’s he like?” Remus asked. They kept probing her for questions, in hope of an answer but she wouldn’t budge.

“Is it Potter?!” Peter asked, his happy mood dimming but he forced a chipperly grin.

Remus was choking on air itself, “You’re taking the piss!”

They all looked at her in burning anticipation. If it was true, James was going to have a field day. Lily’s eyes widened, reaching over to grab the lid of the chocolate box and wacked Peter with it.

They were a mess of giggles, particularly Remus and Y/N who watched Lily berate Peter for the sheer mention of James. They basked in the safe feeling of the sunlight on their skin, the warmth spreading through them and rivalled the bitter chill.

As more laughter erupted, memories created, chocolate eaten, the bell eventually rang. Lily parted off with Marlene and Peter, both in the small class, as Y/N joined Remus.

“You think it’s Potter? Can’t be, can it?”

“I think he’d cry if it was.”

“Truly, he’d go mental.”

“Or maybe Lily’s gone mad.”

Remus shrugged, a smirk tugged at his lips, “Perfect match then.”

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

Y/N slumped over her textbooks, watching as Bowie the Bowtruckle climbed into her hand. She hardly paid attention to what Kettleburn droned about.

“Alright! My pupils, listen up; next week, we’re starting a group project for the OWLs. But, I will be the one assigning the partners — oh don’t give me those faces! I have picked your partner based on grades and strengths. Ultimately you will both work together on hatching a Puffskein and care for it. It will be ongoing alongside the rest of your OWL studies and other projects I will assign.

“You will be graded on the overall health and happiness of your Puffskeins. We have gone over their care for a while and I think we’re ready to start. Remember to refer back to your books and do not hesitate to ask me. I have all your equipment ready to go next week.”

Kettleburn coughed, unfurling a piece of parchment with what the class assumed was a list of names.

“To start, Dorcas Meadowes and Lucinda Talkalot —”

Great.

Kettleburn continued to list name after name. Y/N brought a finger to Bowie, letting him touch her gently.

“ — Crabble and Evan Rosier.

“Amita Patil and Edmud Brown.

“Sirius Black and Y/N L/N.

“Susan Chang and Agnes —”

Wait.

Her eyes widened, sharply turning to Sirius who already stared back. Both of their mouths were agape. She hadn’t heard wrong.

“Now, don't ask me to change partners. I will do no such thing. We'll talk more about this next week. Class is dismissed — don’t forget about your paper due on Tuesday!”

Y/N watched as the class got up from their seats, her shoulders slumped dejectedly. Quickly, she stood, walking to the door and pushed the assignment quickly out of her head. But once reaching the door, a Slytherin knocked into her. His hands were pushed out, causing her books and notes to sprawl over the floor as he scoffed down.

“Sorry,” she groans out, “I didn’t mean —”

“Watch where you’re going, stupid Muggle.” With a sharp turn, Crabble walked away with a nasty smile.

Sirius had seen the entire ordeal go down, finding himself stuck at a crossroad; it took all the effort in the world to prevent himself from walking straight up to the boy, hexing him beyond belief, but casting a glance at her, struggling to process what just happened caused him to reassess his thoughts. Instead, he took a deep inhale, noting to himself to take care of that later, and strode towards her, dropping down as he picked up her books, shoving them neatly into her bag while collecting any loose sheet of parchment.

“You okay?” He asked with a voice so gentle it could have been mistaken for a whisper. He turned his head upwards to look at her.

Her eyes were foggy, a faraway look in them, completely in shock.

Sirius wasn’t sure what compelled him to, but his hand reached over, picking up her hand delicately in reassurance. His thumb stroked over her soft skin and helped to pull her to her feet.

The touch broke Y/N out of her daze; the physical contact caused both students to have a fuzzy, odd feeling settling at the pit of their stomachs.

His touch was so soft, so gentle despite his eyes brimming with rage that almost seemed feral.

But, she hardly noticed it as she nodded weakly, jaw clenched. Her mind reeled, attempting to process her emotions — completely baffled and shocked. It was so sudden she felt like she hadn’t had time to digest the situation. Muggle… the Slytherin used it in such a derogatory manner. A word meant to simply describe her sounded bitter — disgusting and low.

Sirius pulled back quickly, the hand flying straight up to his hair. A thought passed through his head, he wanted to reach out again, but he squashed it for more important manners.

“Are you okay?” He repeated.

“Why are you helping me?” She blurted out before she could stop herself. It was the only coherent thought she had at the moment. Sirius out of all people should be laughing at her, shouldn’t he? Being a Pureblood and all…

The comment and the way her eyes judged him quickly told him all he needed to know. A panged sigh went through him.

“Look,” Sirius grew stiff, “I —” he paused, “I may not particularly like you, but I don’t like blood purist arseholes who push women more.”

With another once over, Sirius checked for any scratches or injuries before calming down. “I can take you to the Hospital Wing. It was a nasty fall.”

She shook her head again. The last thing she wanted was for them to get along only out of pity. Sirius understood, handing over her bag and walked away. She watched as his hand clutched the straps of his bag; his grip was so tight that his knuckles were white. His other hand, the one that he touched her with, flexed several times before curling into a fist.

━━━━━━━━━༻☽༺━━━━━━━━━

Currently, she sat by the window ledge in the common room, writing a letter to her mother. Although, her mother hadn't responded to her letters since December. In fact, her mother had only responded to two of her letters throughout her stay; about six months. It made Y/N bitterly press her lips into a thin line. For once, it’d feel nice for her own mother to prioritize her, to make her feel more important than her work.

Blood-red silk curtains nearly swallowed her whole, letting in the little light from the stars outside. The fireplace and chandelier were lit and she could scarcely make out the familiar figure of messy hair, two tufts sticking out like always, swinging an arm over her shoulders. He whined, “Oi! Evans has been stealing you! I feel like I’ve hardly talked to you the past week!”

“Jealous much?”

“Of course,” he said sarcastically, “Anyway, I, the James Potter, your best friend —" "Right." "— am inviting you on a prank. In or out?”

“In,” she said without hesitation. After the Muggle situation, she would do anything to get it out of her head, even for just a few hours. She immediately got up from her seat, walking out the portrait hole. James threw his invisibility cloak over them.

“What are we doing? Is it Remus’ prank we’re doing now?”

James turned to her, his eyebrows deep in confusion. “He told you about that? He hardly tells us before the day of the execution. Anyway, anything you want.”

“Anything I want? What about your boy band?”

He looked over to her in confusion, sliding out a small bag filled with both of their favourite snacks, tossing it to her. “Not coming, just us. Although Remus is on patrol tonight and his mini-gift to you — or er — us, he’s making sure that the Gryffindor and Slytherin floors are cleared from teachers. Should go off without a hitch. So, I’ll ask you again, what do you have in mind?”

“Pranking the Slytherins,” she said without a pause which caused James to grin.

“Atta girl! Learning from the best!”

The prank itself was small in comparison to the prank she helped with on Halloween. Y/N decided on having the prank in the Great Hall for everyone to see. James produced about a dozen dungbombs from his bag, setting it under the Slytherin table and placing a timer on it, ready to be set off in the morning.

But she insisted on the one Slytherin from earlier. Crabble, was it? She asked James to help her give him a little bit more misery than the others. They placed a dozen hexes and jinxes on his usual seat: hair lost jinx, jelly legs, horn tongue hex, Engorgio, twitchy ears, bedazzling hex —

Right now was not the time for Y/N to forgive and forget — revenge was beautiful, fulfilling; she couldn’t wait.

But, their only downfall was that they weren’t on the floors Remus had cleared out for them. So when Mrs. Norris came up to them, only to dash out of the hall, it caused the two pranksters to finalize their escapade before James grabbed her hand and fled the scene.

They ran throughout the empty corridors as the clicking of their shoes echoed throughout the corridor. They were both laughing, smiling brightly. They ran past the Bloody Baron and Nearly Headless Nick, woke up most of the portraits before they heard the vague sound of Filch’s screaming.

“COME BACK HERE!”

“YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO CATCH US!” Y/N shouted, which had James snickering.

He whipped his head around and placed two hands around his mouth to make his statement louder, “YOU MUST BE LOOKING FOR A GALLEON, EH?! RENT BOY!”

After an abundance of sharp twists and turns, passing by countless hallways and secret tunnels, James seized a blank piece of parchment from his back pocket. He muttered a few words, opening it and ran down another set of corridors, through a tunnel and outside of the castle.

“What are you doing?!”

“Just trust me!”

There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation: Y/N had grown to trust James a long time ago.

They ducked under an overhead from the castle, far away from Filch. Their ragged breaths filled the air before Y/N snatched the parchment from James’ grasp. “What is this?”

A panicked look flashes through James before he reaches over, trying to pry it from her grasp.

“Nu-uh!” She waved in front of her.

He sighed, realizing that he wasn’t going to get it back and that lying was the worst possible option. “You can’t tell anyone — my chaps will have my head if you do —”

“Who do you think I am?! Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course,” he rolled his eyes at her guilt tripping, “It’s a map we all created — er — Moony was the one to create it. He came up with it and did most of the work. Anyway, it tells us where everything and everyone is at every minute of the day.”

On the front, it read in maroon colours of the boy’s code names, Moony at the very front.

Moony — Remus… always a surprise.

James opened it, flicking it open as he pointed to a pair of animated footprints sprinted around the page hurriedly; Filch's name appearing overhead. His name travelled across the paper at a fast pace, running and zigzagging down the halls in the opposite direction. And by the looks of it, Peeves was following him. Above, they could see Remus’ name close to where they used to be, his name moving quickly in what both assumed was him trying to look for them. He must’ve heard the screaming.

It truly was amazing their little map. She marvelled at the classrooms, every hallway, every inch of ground that covered the surrounding area. Passageways, hallways, doors and abandoned classrooms were all there. Although, a few areas were missing. She noticed how the little nook underneath the tapestry nor a large plot of land close to the left-wing of the castle had yet to be mapped out.

“I proudly present the Marauder’s map.” James boasts.

Her face scrunched up, “You mean the stalking map — perv.”

James faked an offended expression, a hand came to clutch his heart. “I was raised to be a gentleman!”

“Sure thing.”

He was about to make another joke before his face slowly fell upon realization, “Wait, really? Is that why Lily doesn’t like me?” He tugged down on his hair in distress, his eyes looking as if they were to pop out any second. “Do women think I’m perving around?!”

Y/N chortled, prying the map from his hands and slipped back into the castle while having a panicked James follow, completely freaking out in the background, spurting out concern after concern.

She followed the map, walking over to Remus who stood underneath a large painting. He escorted them back to the common room to prevent them from getting any possible detentions and not needing the invisibility cloak. But James continued to babble on about his (alleged and false) creepy behaviour, his emotions spiking while Remus watched the two.

“Okay,” he sighed, observing James have a meltdown as he clung to Y/N’s arm, spewing apologies if he had ever crossed a line. “What did you do? You broke him.”

"Nothing.”

He didn’t question it but his nostrils flared as he attempted to press his lips in a thin line, his face going as red as Lily’s hair.

102 notes · View notes

ghostgothgeek · 4 years ago

Text

Chaos.

Another for the Phic Phight! This one kinda combines two prompts and I had so much fun writing it! In this, Danny and Tucker don’t know Sam plays video games yet. 5,063 words.

"What do you mean you don’t feel the same way? We´ve had a mutual crush on each other for years." Sam says angrily after finally confessing her love to him. But Danny´s heart was beating hard for someone else entirely. Prompt by phantomfana.

Danny wants to ask his crush to the upcoming school dance. Prompt by Rikaleeta.

-----

It was another long night of ghost hunting for Danny. Technus took up the first part of the night, trying to take over the park’s new security system. Tucker was fortunately still awake to help him out with that. Then Johnny and Kitty rolled in, but they weren’t looking for trouble, they just wanted a date night and swore they wouldn’t be a problem. Apparently Fridays were their days off for “everything but each other”. Danny was a romantic, but he didn’t know if this was sweet or nauseating. Ember had put up a good fight, though. He was proud he only had one injury to tend to. He had dodged most of her attacks, but she was still a pretty advanced ghost. And, of course, Danny had caught the Box Ghost six, count them, SIX times. How did he always manage to get out?! He wasn’t difficult to take down, he was just a pest.

Danny sighed as he sat down at his computer chair. It was only 12:30 am, and it was a Friday. He could sleep in tomorrow and he deserved at least a couple hours of fun. He logged into his online gaming account and saw Tucker was online. Figures. He pulled up the chat anyway.

Astrohaunt: Hey Tuck. Still up?

Technopedia: You know it. Chaos signed on about a half hour ago and I’m not passing up the opportunity.

Astrohaunt: Dude is so good it’s unreal!

Technopedia: He goes to our school, I tracked one of his IP addresses and he logged in at school a few times.

Astrohaunt: Tucker wtf. That’s creepy!

Technopedia: I just want to make sure Chaos is actually a kid and not Lancer again!

Astrohaunt: I still can’t wrap my mind around Lancer playing Doomed…

Technopedia: Same. But Chaos IP is different from Lancer, so we good. Unless more teachers play Doomed.

Astrohaunt: I hate you for putting that image into my brain.

Technopedia: Sorry dude. But quick come join before someone else gets Chaos.

Danny, Tucker, and Chaos had made a great team. Whenever Chaos was around, they were actually able to progress through the game. They played several rounds until Tucker was caught by his mom and was forced to sign off, but Danny and Chaos kept playing.

TeamChaos: Hey, what’s up?

Astrohaunt: Omg dude you’re so awesome.

TeamChaos: Ha, thanks. Gotta blow off steam somehow.

Astrohaunt: Tell me about it! Between Lancer’s three projects and midterms and...other stuff...this is my only time to actually chill. I’ve been so stressed!

TeamChaos: Same. I did finish one of the projects though. I’m always here if you need to talk, you know.

Astrohaunt: Wow, I may just take you up on that offer. I’ve had a rough night.

TeamChaos: Lay it on me.

And so Danny, sparing the ghost hunting details, stayed up chatting with Chaos until 5 am. He got along really well with the guy, they had a lot of similar interests. This was just the first of many up-all-night conversations they shared. After a few months, Danny felt a special connection with Chaos, and yet, he didn’t even know his name!

Astrohaunt: We’ve been talking all these months and I still don’t know your name. I’m Danny.

TeamChaos: Oh, thought you knew. It’s Sam!

Astrohaunt: Hey! One of my best friends is named Sam!

TeamChaos: You don’t say!!!

The next day at school, Danny pulled Tucker over to him, whispering, “Dude, help. I think I might be gay....”

“What?!” Tucker shouted.

“Quiet, Tuck!”

“Okay, well uh...why?” Tucker sent him a weird look and took a step back.

“No, not you. Chaos. I think I have a crush on Chaos.” Danny ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to do! I never thought I’d be...you know. Chaos and I just have good conversations and he’s always there to listen to me when I need to vent. I thought maybe I found another best friend but...this is different. Chaos is so cool and I’m crushing and I don’t even know who he is or what he looks like! Or if he feels the same way! Maybe I’m just stupid and-”

“Dude, chill. You’re jumping too far ahead of yourself. Whichever way you, you know, swing...I’m still your best friend.” Tucker pulled out his PDA. “Let me see what I can find out. I know Chaos goes to our school.”

“Thanks, Tuck. As if being half ghost wasn’t hard enough! Oh, and he’s in our class, because he’s talked me through assignments and knows what they are and stuff. He’s almost as good as explaining things as Sam. Crap...Sam. Don’t tell her about this!” Danny started fidgeting.

“Well,” Tucker raised his eyebrows in surprise, “I can tell you with absolute certainty that Chaos is definitely a girl.”

“You found out who Chaos is?!”

“What, like it’s hard?” Tucker chuckled. “I traced the IP addresses she uses. I know who she is. So do you,” Tucker smirked, “It shocked me at first, but it makes total sense! And I can totally see why you like her.”

“Really?” Danny let out a breath in relief. “Okay that makes me feel a lot better...hey, maybe I can ask Chaos to the dance next Saturday!”

Tucker rested a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Go for it. Ask Sam. I’m almost positive she’ll say yes.”

“Okay, I will...wait, not Sam! Chaos!” Danny clarified. “Well, actually, I think Chaos told me her name was Sam. Ha, small world. I can’t wait to introduce Sam to Sam. I think they would really get along.”

Tucker busted out laughing, “Oh, dude. You go ahead and do that.” He left Danny standing there in the hallway, still laughing all the way to his next class.

Danny, a bit confused by Tucker’s laughter, shook his head and smiled to himself. Okay, good. He’d had enough identity crises to fill a lifetime. Chaos was definitely a girl. Now if he just knew Chaos returned his feelings, things might actually work out for him this time and he could actually have a girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Sam was having an internal debate of her own. Sitting in a class where the teacher couldn’t give two shits about what the students were doing, she had always used this class as her thinking time. Usually her thinking-about-Danny time. She nervously clicked her pen as she thought about recent events.

She and Danny spent so much time chatting online when they weren’t hanging out in person. Danny was a little bit more bold online, probably because he didn’t have to interact face-to-face or risk his pants falling down in public again. Online, they talked about everything. No topic was off limits. Plus, Sam felt like their friendship had only grown even stronger when they could chat online and not have to worry about blushing or getting teased by Tucker. Chatting online took away all the pressure and made it much easier to connect with Danny.

Danny hadn’t said anything yet, of course. He was probably scared. Hell, she was scared. She was already so in love with him, and getting closer online only further solidified that fact. She had never been in love before, and even though she hunts ghosts, this was more terrifying! She was fairly certain he returned her feelings, but both were too chicken to actually make that final step. They’ve been best friends forever. She didn’t want to mess up their already great dynamic or force Tucker to be the third wheel, though he did insist he was more than okay with that and encouraged them to finally get together.

Sam stopped clicking her pen as she suddenly remembered it was senior year. They hadn’t picked colleges yet, but whether they ended up going to the same school or not, things were going to change. Danny was very attractive, and going off to college meant girls may actually approach him when they didn’t know his parents were ghost fighters. The fact had never bothered Sam, but she did kind of like how it kept most girls at school from asking him out or giving him attention. Valerie had been a challenge, especially because she was a ghost hunter herself and probably wanted to get tips from his parents. Sam was glad that relationship ended relatively early. It was too hard on her. Joyous or not, though, she was still mad at Valerie for how she broke his heart.

But that was 2 years ago. They had all moved on and friendships were more or less mended across the board. This made Sam glance at her favorite picture of her and Danny. Tucker had taken the candid picture and it was now her phone’s background. In it, Danny was giving Sam a piggyback ride. Her arms were lightly strung around his neck, legs looped around his waist. Danny had kept going in the opposite direction Sam told him to go, which frustrated her but also made her laugh. She had rested her chin on his shoulder, her face pressed right up against his. Danny was looking at her and Tucker had captured that rare moment when Sam had a huge grin on her face, still laughing. She smiled at the picture. They would be okay no matter what. Their friendship would survive.

Anyway, Sam also realized she had already come close to losing Danny, in more ways than one. Whether it was to other girls or a ghost, there was always that anxiety stirring in her head that she could lose him entirely some day. Life was too short. She needed to take the plunge for both of them and just get them both over this hurdle, and they could finally, finally, actually get together.

Sam made her decision. It was now or never. She was going to tell him. Today. The trio was meeting up at Danny’s house later anyway, and if she got there early enough, she could talk to him before Tucker showed up and teased them about it. Sam firmly nodded her head to herself, a confirmation of her decision. It was finally time.

After school, Danny was pacing in his room, trying to figure out how he wanted to do this. Asking a girl to the dance wasn’t a huge deal, and yet at the same time, it was. He would rather ask in person, but he still didn’t know what Chaos looked like, so asking in person seemed to be off the table. He could look in the yearbook for all the girls named Sam at their school. He could already omit one Sam Manson from that list. How many Sams could possibly attend their school? It would be easier to ask Tucker, though. Tucker already knew who she was. Sam and Tucker were on their way over right now. When Sam wasn’t paying attention, he could ask Tucker for Sam’s full name.

Chaos Sam, not best friend Sam. God, this was so confusing. Why were girls so hard for him? Freshman year, Paulina only liked his ghost half and wouldn’t give his human half the time of day. Sophomore year, Valerie hated his ghost half and that hatred was more important to her than her feelings for his human half. Junior year, he had been denying that he was in love with his best friend. And now that he had finally accepted that he did like his best friend as much more than a friend, a new girl entered the picture and he now found himself trying to choose between two Sams. Because it apparently wasn’t hard enough for him already to make the biggest and most important change he could possibly make in a friendship, let’s add another crush to the mix and give them the same name.

Sam. Best friend Sam - that’s who he was planning on asking originally, even if he chickened out and had to ask her as a friend instead. Plus, he and Sam had somehow gotten closer recently, and he was pretty sure she liked him. Sure, it was only because Tucker told him so, but it was a possibility. The thing was, he didn’t want to ruin things. Especially because he truly didn’t know how Sam, best friend Sam, felt about him. She was a tough and courageous girl, surely she would have said something by now if it were true. So Tucker must be pulling his leg.

But he did have another option - Chaos Sam, who may actually return his feelings. Sure, the feelings weren’t nearly as strong as what he felt for his best friend, but the feelings were still there. Plus, if he got rejected by Chaos, it would be less heartbreaking than being rejected by Sam, someone he had known for years rather than months. He could deal with losing a newer friend, but not one of his best friends. Sam was too important and he knew he needed her in his life.

Danny sighed. This was really hard, but he made a decision. It was easier to go with Chaos than risk ruining things with Sam. Danny had enough drama going on in his life already, he needed an easy win.

He broke from his thoughts when the doorbell rang. He ran downstairs and opened it, only slightly surprised to see Sam there. She was usually early for things. He and Tuck were more prone to being late.

“Hey, Sam. Come on in!” Danny moved so Sam could enter his house. He shut the door and followed her upstairs and back to his room as she returned his greeting. She was pacing the same path he just had, muttering quietly to herself. She looked nervous. “Something on your mind?”

Sam was startled out of her thoughts. “Huh? Oh yeah.” She noticed his disheveled appearance, also noting he was fidgety. Was he going to do what she was about to do? “What about you, you look like you’ve been thinking a little too hard about something.” She smiled softly.

Danny chuckled, “Yeah, but it’ll resolve itself soon. I’ll worry about it after the movies. Tuck should be here any second. Oh, but I’m glad you’re early. Can you help me with something quick?”

“Of course.” Sam followed him to his desk, smiling and rolling her eyes when he pointed to a homework problem. “I should have known.”

Danny gave her a lopsided smile and watched as she showed him how to do the problem in her perfect handwriting. It took no more than a couple of minutes. Now, they were just waiting for Tucker to arrive.

Sam looked at the time. He would be here soon. She needed to do this now. She needed to tell Danny. She couldn’t wait until after the movies for him to tell her. She had already waited long enough and couldn’t bear another second.

“Danny, can I talk to you for a second?” She sat down on his bed and gestured for him to do the same.

Danny could sense the seriousness in her voice, and nodded anxiously. He was scared when Sam was serious about things. It was usually something bad.

“Danny…” She decided to get straight to the point. “I like you. As in like-like you. More than like, and more than a friend. And we’ve been doing this dancing around for at least 4 years now and I’m sick of it. I just want to be with you already. What do you say?” Sam held her breath as she waited for Danny to answer.

He stared at her with wide eyes before nervously rubbing the back of his neck and turning his attention to his shoes, avoiding eye contact with the goth. God, why him?! He had stupidly thought, for once, things would be easier for him this time. He had already sent an offline message to Chaos that he wanted to ask her something, and then Sam had to come along and tell him what he had wanted to hear for some time now. But he couldn’t blow Chaos off when he had already somewhat asked. Of course, his life just had to be complicated every step of the way. He really liked both girls and didn’t want to hurt his best friend. Regardless, he had to be honest. He owed Sam that much. “Well, I mean, yeah, but…”

“But what?” Sam whispered, clearly already upset. Fuck. Fuck fuck FUCK. This was exactly what he didn’t want to happen. He decided to try going with Chaos so he could avoid heartbreak from his best friend. The very thing he had been so afraid of, he was doing to her right now.

Danny sighed again. “But I can’t. I’m so sorry, Sam.” It was hard to choke out, but he said it, and he felt terrible. He pressed his lips together and kept staring at his shoes until Sam lifted his chin up, forcing him to look at her.

“What do you mean you don’t feel the same way? We’ve had mutual crushes on each other for years!” Sam said angrily, feeling her heart break as her best friend and love of her life rejected her confession of love. She was so sure he returned her feelings! Especially after all the great conversations they had shared online these last few months. “Or, at least, I thought we did.” Tears swelled in her eyes. Did he lead her on? “I-I need an explanation, Danny,” she quietly stated after he didn’t continue.

Danny frowned and his heart ached. He didn’t want to hurt his best friend like this. Hell, he really liked her! Of course their crushes were mutual! And if this had happened 6 months ago instead of now, he would have jumped at the chance. But now...now he had Chaos and already forced himself to stick with his decision. It was easy with Chaos; there was no friendship to risk, no denying of being lovebirds or brushing off kisses as fakeout makeouts. Plus, he couldn’t lie to his best friend. She would know if he was lying. And he already told himself she deserved the truth. “There’s...someone else…”

“What?” Sam whispered before turning angry again, “Paulina? Valerie? Star?” she spat out.

Danny shook his head, “Ew, no...it’s someone I met online...I’m so sorry, Sam. I like you a lot, I really do, but I think I’ve already come to the conclusion that I like this girl I met online, Chaos, and I have to try to see that through.”

Many emotions crossed Sam’s face as she pieced together what he just said. At first she was upset, but as he explained himself, she felt disbelief, confusion, anger, and finally, hope. He couldn’t really be that clueless, right? “Show me.”

“Huh? I mean, I don’t actually know what she looks like, but we message every night and she really understands me! I know it sounds ridiculous, but-”

“Show me,” Sam repeated. “Show me her profile.”

“You’re not going to hurt her, are you?” Danny questioned cautiously.

“No, of course not. Just shut up and show me the profile.” Sam was more calm now, and that was kind of scary. Even though Sam said she wouldn’t hurt Chaos, he didn’t want to give her the chance. But he knew how stubborn his friend was, and eventually in whatever way, she would force the information out of him.

Danny sighed and pulled up the profile to show Sam. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m still your best frien-”

“Shut up.” Sam scrolled through what Danny pulled up for her and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. Closing her eyes slowly, she took a deep breath. “Didn’t Chaos tell you her name?”

“Uh,” Danny thought, “oh yeah! She said her name was Sam, because I thought she was a boy at first and I had an existential crisis, but then Tucker told me-”

“Danny. I’m Sam.”

“No I know, and sure it’ll be a little weird cause you’re Sam and she’s Sam, it’s confusing, but I-”

Sam interrupted him once again. She could hear Tucker’s footsteps approaching. She was running out of time to not make this a spectacle. “No, Danny. Chaos. Sam. Me. I’m Sam. I am Sam,”

Tucker only heard the tail end of the conversation as he entered the room. Never able to pass up a comedic opportunity, he smirked and added “I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like green eggs and ham!”

It was suddenly silent in the room as his friends seized conversation and glared at him. Oops.

“Oh, am I interrupting something?” Tucker could see the fire in Sam’s eyes. “Uh, oh wait I forgot my...sock. I’ll be downstairs!” He raced out of the room.

Sam turned her attention back to Danny. “No, you stupid fucking MORON. I am Chaos. You’ve been talking to me the whole time. I thought you knew that!” Danny stared at her blankly until she pulled out her phone and he watched her log into her account, proving it to him. Sure enough, it was Chaos’s profile. He could see all the direct messages between them, including his offline message about wanting to ask her something.

“Wait, you? You’re Sam? I mean, Chaos? I mean Sam?” Danny looked back and forth between the profile and his best friend.

“UGH!” Sam shouted as she threw her hands in the air. “Yes, Danny. That’s me! Did you really not notice that Chaos was the same age as me and a girl who goes to our school? We have the same name and interests! Didn’t you wonder why it was so easy to talk right off the bat? I thought you put that all together and us just pretending to not know each other was a little bit you were trying to do or something!”

Danny stared at her as he continued to piece it all together. He was definitely embarrassed. He felt so stupid. How could he not tell that Chaos was Sam, his best friend since 7th grade? Talk about being totally clueless.

Wait. Clueless? Well, fuck! He got the nickname now!

His eyes flickered back and forth as he thought everything through. Eventually, he started to crack a smile. “Wait, so I’ve had a crush on you and also you? You’re the same person! This is great! Do you know what this means?!”

Sam slapped her forehead and began walking downstairs. “I don’t even know if this is worth it anymore…”

“Wait, how come Tuck and I never knew you played video games! We can enter team tournaments! You’re so good!” Danny chased after her.

Tucker watched as Sam grumbled about Danny caring more about video games than her. An excited Danny was right on her tail.

“Tucker! Sam is Chaos! I’ve been in love with Sam this whole time!” Danny explained.

“Tucker, I need you to refrain me from slapping his stupid clueless face,” Sam started.

“Wait, you didn’t know Sam was Chaos? Dude! I thought I was obvious about that!” Tucker began laughing at Danny.

“I know, so did I.” Sam crossed her arms over her chest.

“Danny, you can calculate levels of rocket fuel and figure out how to get us to Mercury or something,” Tucker started.

“Mars, actually,” Danny corrected.

“But you can’t figure out that your best friend and your crush are the same person? You’re more than Captain Clueless, you’re like….Lieutenant Clueless? That’s like, bigger right?” Tucker continued.

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Tuck,” Sam chimed in.

“Shut up Sam, this isn’t about you,” Tucker immediately stopped his train of thought when he felt Sam glaring daggers at him. “Heh, uh. Except it does. It actually has nothing to do with me. I’m sorry I told you to shut up, please don’t hurt me!” He threw his hands up in front of himself in defense.

“Relax, Tucker. I’m more angry with this fucking dingus,” she pointed her thumb in Danny’s direction.

The halfa was about to protest, then closed his mouth. “That’s fair, I deserve that.”

“I can’t even look at you right now. You scared me! I poured out my emotions to you. I thought you were rejecting me and that I would have to change my name and move to a different country! Wait, are you still rejecting me?” Sam stopped her pacing to look at him.

“Of course not, Sammy!”

“Oh don’t you ‘Sammy’ me! I told you I love you, you stupid fucking idiot!” Sam began throwing pillows at Danny, who expertly dodged them (though as a result, Tucker got hit in the face by one).

“Technically, you didn’t say ‘love’ you said ‘like’”, Danny offered as Tucker shook his head and slashed finger across his neck, signaling Danny to stop talking.

“Oh, I’m sorry! This is all my fault! I’m going to go jump off a cliff now!” Sam growled and Danny let out a small “oomph” as one of the pillows finally got him.

“I’m out. Good luck, bro!” Tucker quickly slipped out the door, leaving Danny and Sam alone.

Sam was about to follow Tucker out when Danny stopped her, “please don’t leave!” She still had angry tears in her eyes. He frowned. This was not how he expected things to go. She watched him for a few seconds before sitting down on the couch, refusing to look at him. “Sam I’m so sorry, this is just a huge misunderstanding.”

“No, Danny. It’s not. You were going to turn me down to go out with someone else.”

“But that someone was still you!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know that! We’ve been friends for years, and you were more interested in someone you just met a few months ago! I don’t want to be anyone’s second choice, Danny! I’ve been standing by for years as you continuously chose other girls over me. I thought we were done with that, and that you were finally choosing me first, but you won’t and you never will and I’m so stupid.” Sam put her head in her hands as she tried her hardest not to let tears fall.

And that was when he finally figured it out. It wasn’t just the moment of rejection, it was years of rejection, and at her biggest confession, she still thought he was choosing someone over her. Not to mention, Tucker witnessed most of the conversation. Sam rarely showed her emotions. She always had her heart guarded, and he knew this. Tucker knew this. Hell, she didn’t even tell them she was rich until after a few years of friendship. It took them a while to get her to open up to them. She was a pretty private person. She was probably already hurt like this before. And now, she was probably embarrassed.

“You’re definitely not stupid. I’m stupid. I should have known it was you. That was actually what I really liked about Chaos, she reminded me of you.”

Sam forced a small sarcastic laugh, “Yeah, right.”

“No really,” Danny sat on the couch next to her and grabbed her hand, placing it in both of his. “Sam, you’re absolutely incredible. How dumb would I have to be to not notice?” Sam gave him a pointed look. “Okay yeah but it’s not the way you think it is. I liked Chaos because she was a lot like you. She reminded me of you. And it just seemed easier to go with her because she was basically you, but she and I didn’t have a really great friendship that could have gotten ruined if we broke up or something. I could live without her, but I can’t live without you. You’re always my number one. Always have been, always will be. Even if I did just fuck everything up. I’m so sorry, Sam. I’m ready to be with you, if you’ll still have me.”

Sam stayed silent and stared at her lap, processing this new information. Of course she would forgive him; she always did. She just needed a little time.

Danny was getting nervous that he really did fuck this up for good. This was so fucking important! He couldn’t risk fucking this up! Sensing her hesitation, Danny tried one more thing to get her back. One thing he hasn’t done before. One thing he just learned how to perfect.

“Sammy, I’m sorry,” a duplicate popped up next to her on the other side of the couch, startling her.

“Please forgive me?” Another duplicate was floating in front of her, hanging upside down, hair flopping all over the place.

“I know I’m a dummy but,” Sam snapped her head towards a third duplicate.

“I’m only a dummy because I’m in love. With you,” the real Danny finished. Sam looked back and forth between all the Dannys.

“We’re sorry, Sammy,” all the duplicates said at once.

Sam was trying really hard to hold back a smile. “You learned how to duplicate,” she stated simply.

Original Danny grabbed her hands. “Sam. I will make this up to you. I promise.”

She could hear the determination in his voice and sighed. “You better.”

Danny smiled and hugged her. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!! I love you so much!”

Sam pushed him off of her. “I love you too, you fucking idiot.”

“But I get to be your idiot!” Sam couldn’t hold her laughter back anymore. “Oh!” Danny shouted, “Will you go to the dance with me? Please?”

Sam pretended to ponder the answer before saying “alright”.

“Yay!” All 4 Dannys cheered. The duplicates on either side of her kissed her cheeks as the real Danny kissed her forehead tenderly. The final duplicate, feeling left out, squeezed his way in to give her a hug.

Sam was now roaring with laughter before kissing the real Danny sweetly. “You know, duplicates won’t always get you out of trouble,” she warned.

“Yeah, but they could come in handy for other things,” he wagged his eyebrows up and down suggestively before passionately kissing her, the duplicates kissing her neck and touching her in near-dangerous places.

Sam bit back a moan, eyes lustful before smirking, “I think you just found a way to make it up to me.” She began dragging the real Danny and one of his duplicates back to his room. Fuck the movies.

#phic phight 2021 #danny phantom #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #amethyst ocean #also yes I took a prompt that was kinda anti-AO and turned it into AO #it's my super power #AO ho 4 life #stephanie writes sometimes

77 notes · View notes

darklingichor · 4 years ago

Text

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir **MAJOR SPOILERS**

So, this is a first, I've never written a revisit this fast.

I do often read or listen to an especially good book, again, right after I finish it. Usually because I can't get into another book until I do.

I did it with Lamb, and I did it with the Martian.

This one is going to be chock full of spoilers, I really want to analyze the main characters in this book, and I can't do that without going into details. This is why I marked the hell out of this.

Project Hail Mary is even better the second time around. This is often the case. Books are like soup. The leftovers from the fridge are often even better than when you had it the first time.

*SPOILERS* *SERIOUSLY SPOILERS TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS BOOK* *SPOILERS* *THE REST OF THIS RAMBLE WILL RUIN THE BOOK* *SPOILERS*

Okay, so run down.

The book opens with our main character waking up to an annoying computer asking him basic math questions. This is detecting cognitive function, that's my guess anyway.

Our character quickly discovers a few things. First, he's in a room with robot arms tending to him, including unhooking him from various life support systems as it figures out that he is awake and functioning. He's not alone in the room, there are two others, but they are long dead. And he has no idea, who he is, where he is, or why he's there.

What follows for a little while is what I would call a psychological screwball comedy. It takes him several days to work out that his name is Ryland Grace and he is a microbiologist PhD who had a falling out with the academic community and found his calling as a Jr. High science teacher. Though exploration, experiments, and memory flashes, he works out that he is on a spaceship, the corpses were his crewmates, and he is on a mission to Tau Ceti to save earth from an alien algae like creature, called Astropgage, that is dimming the sun and setting earth on the course to an ice age that will begin to wipe out humanity in 30 years. Tau Ceti, which is 12 light years away from earth, is resistant to this energy sucking algae.

We get all the backstory of how he became a crew member aboard the ship Hail Mary, in flashbacks as his memories return. A big memory that returns? Project Hail Mary is a suicide mission, he will not be going home.

In the meantime, he is slowly trying to figure out how to save earth, while he does this, he sees a very weird spaceship and meets an intelligent alien being. This being (Grace calls him Rocky) comes from a world (Earid) that is in the same situation as Earth. Together, Grace and Rocky have to work out how to save both of their home worlds.

Ryland Grace is a complex character, he’s very very different from Mark Watney (I haven't read Artimis so I can't make comparisons to those characters).

The Martian points out that Astronauts are inherently noble, willing to risk their lives for science and a good cause.

Grace is not an astronaut. That's not to say that he isn't a good person, just that he is an average person. He can be all at once self-sacrificing and selfish.

Early on he is drafted into the research team on what would be called Astropgage as a science expert by Eva Strat, a woman in charge of figuring out what is going on and how to stop it.

Once he was released from his part in this research, he goes back to teaching, only to be struck by the fact that his students would be in their early forties when all hell breaks loose, and that they might die. He then goes back to Strat and demands to be part of the research again.

This back and forth happens a few times in the story. In fact, it becomes a big part of it. See, the crew of the Hail Mary were put into comas to ensure that they would not go nuts and kill each other on the 12 light-year (four years from their perspective) journey, a medical company discovered that 1 in 7000 people have the genes to survive long comas and still function when they wake up. Grace is one of those people, but he is not volunteering for this mission. It's not that he doesn't care, or even that he doesn't want to help, it's that he's scared. And who wouldn't be? But honestly? I think Grace has imposture syndrome and is generally very sensitive. He realized that his kids would suffer, after starting to teach a class, that speed him to become a part of Strat's team again. Events happen that lead him to being the only logical candidate for the science expert aboard the Hail Mary. He refused, Strat basically kidnaps him, sets the computer induce amnesia in only Grace and plunks him on board.

Before she does this, she harshly calls Grace out.

“Do you think I don’t know you, Dr. Grace?!” she yelled. “You’re a coward and you always have been. You abandoned a promising scientific career because people didn’t like a paper you wrote. You retreated to the safety of children who worship you for being the cool teacher. You don’t have a romantic partner in your life because that would mean you might suffer heartbreak. You avoid risk like the plague.” (pg. 392 Kindle Edition)

This all seems to be true, but we don't know Grace's full story. Other than a mention of one girlfriend in college, and brief mentions of friends, There is nothing in the book about his life before he started teaching. This could be because the amnesia has left those things fuzzy, but in my head, it's because he doesn't want to think about it. Maybe he had a bad family life, maybe he had *no* family life, maybe he had an early tragedy. Maybe he realized his short comings and that, no matter his talent, he just didn't have the temperament for acidemia.

He does like being the cool teacher, he does say he likes being looked up to, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. He's a *good* teacher.

I had cool teachers before I switched to home school. They weren't all good. I had one that would literally just let us mess around during class because they didn't want to actually grade papers. Cool to a kid? Absolutely! Good for education? Not on your life.

Grace isn't like that, he loves science, he loves teaching, and the kids are learning.

He doesn't like animal testing, he's emotional at the fragility of humanity. In short, in his quiet way he loves life.

He leaves his comfort zone to be a part of Strat's team because he knows he's good at what he does and he couldn't look at his students and knowing they could die when he could help prevent it. That doesn't mean he thinks he will be Earth's savior, just that he can help.

He's unwilling to die.

Usually in books and movies, this translates to coward, but really? It's not. Most people wouldn't volunteer for a suicide mission, especially one this pressure filled. "So, we need you to go into a coma, go to a different solar system, save your whole species, and then kill yourselves so you won't starve to death. We good? Cool."

You can't fault a living being for wanting to live. Plus, the other crew members had time to think it through, really decide, make peace with the decision and *then* carry through with the training. Grace? He was given the training, but Strat always said it was for the science of the mission. She was a little like Dumbledore, in that she was training him in case he had to go, but never told him it was a possibility. When it became clear that he was the choice for the vacant spot, he was given less than five hours to decide, and then was told he had no choice.

He makes noble choices throughout the book, but that one choice was not his own, because Strat was given absolute power and used it absolutely.

I can't say that Strat is a villain, either. She was elected to save earth and given the power to cut through any red tape. Handed all this authority, she doesn't become corrupt, she uses this power ruthlessly, but always with the only goal being Save Earth, full stop, that's it. And even as Grace, understandably terrified, yells at her she tells him that she likes him, that she knows that he is a good man, that he will give this his all. She doesn't *want* to send this unwilling and scared man on a suicide mission. She *has* to. Strat is also complex, she is not nonsense and is committed to her role in saving humanity. I like the reason she gives as to why, toward the end of the book. She got her undergrad degree in history. She takes to heart the old saying that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The climate scientists and their models assumed survival based on the idea that all countries will work together for the common goal. However, Strat points out that history shows that that ideal scenario, is not likely to work. She says that most wars, up until very recently, were fought over food, and resulting in famine. As the sun loses energy and crops fail, there will be wars, and they will be over food. And that is what she is desperately trying to avoid – the horror of history brought to the modern day.

I started as a history major, and history is interwoven into anthropology – I understand this perspective.

I am not going to get into politics, but I’ve experienced the agonizing frustration of watching history repeat itself, more than once in the last couple of years. Guessing at how something will probably go due to how something lines up with a similar event in the past and knowing that if someone in power would just listen it might turn out different, or that the eventual problems could at least be prepared for, and watch it happen anyway and everyone act surprised. It’s enough to make you pull your hair out.

Strat has the knowledge and the authority to act on it, I can’t say, that in her position I wouldn’t act the same way.

That is the major difference between Grace and Strat: viewpoint. By necessity of her position and by virtue of her education, she sees the big picture clearly, Grace, however, doesn’t. He’s a microbiologist, his entire career and education is looking closely at the small things and how they would translate to big things. He studies the universe by studying the smallest things in it. It is no surprise that he would need the smaller things to make the bigger things to snap into focus. When he was forced to start research on astrophage, it wasn’t until he was faced with the small scale (his kids could suffer) to make him see his part in the grand scheme of things. Strat is right, he does avoid risk, because he’s avoiding pain, he doesn’t let things in because he feels too much. Yes, the realization about the kids, puts steel in his spine, but not before he narrowly avoids a break down. For Grace, seeing Strat’s point of view, without being able to work it though to his scale, is like yelling at someone standing too close to a mountain for not being able to see the peak. It just can’t be done from where they are.

It makes me wonder, had Strat been up front with Grace, would he have willingly gone? It takes him a while to come around to the idea of helping the project in the first place. If he were told sooner, given some time, had been able to go home, and think, I feel like he would have gone. Something would have set him on the course. Maybe it would have been one of his former students, telling him about their plans for trying out for high school track, or going to college, maybe he would have gone to his usual cafe for breakfast and found out that one of the waitresses had just gotten engaged, maybe he would be told these things and see the fear and desperate need to keep life as normal as possible in the person's eyes, and then he would decide, if, on the off chance no one else could go, he would. Until he remembers his refusal, nearly at the end of the book, he accepts quickly that he volunteered for the mission. Of course, that could have been simply because he couldn't imagine someone forcing someone into something like that, but even as his memories and sense of self come back to him, he doesn't have a sense of terror or blind panic at the fact that he's not going home. I would think that if his unwillingness were something hard wired into his personality, he would know soon after remembering who he is, that he would have never considered being a part of the voyage.

So, I think, had Strat told Grace early on that he had the coma resistant genes and that there was a small possibility that he may have to be the backup for the backup, and then allowed him to come to terms with it, he would have gone without the drama. Don’t get me wrong, there is the possibility that he would have run off and had to have been hunted down, but I think, just like when he went to his class and saw his students, something would have made his conscious kick in, and he would have come back.

That might have been interesting, him running scared for a little while and then coming back? Might have given a little more background into why he is the way he is. But that’s not really what this book is about, I think it’s a forgone about conclusion that Grace would have helped, but what’s really interesting is how Grace and Rocky work together.

Rocky is cool! I love that Weir didn’t go the easy route with the creation of an alien character. Rocky is no Roswell gray with a humanoid form. No no, for our sympathetic alien, we have a spider like creature with liquid mercury for blood who “sees” with echolocation and speaks in musical notes. And it works!!

Rocky is expressive and funny and is great with Grace. It’s hilarious, other than the Russian scientist on Project Hail Mary, he doesn’t get along with anyone as well as he does with Rocky, out of everyone in the book, Grace connects most with a spider shaped rock being, he has to make a computer program to speak with.

Rocky is a tad steadier than Grace, but that makes sense simply because of the two, Rocky knew what he was getting into, and Eridens not only have more time before their star dims to the point of causing a problem, but also, they live a long long time, so, Rocky knows he is going home. But the steadiness is also built into his personality. He and Grace are both analytical problem solvers, but seeing that Rocky is an engineer, his focus is to fix things. A problem arises, and his first reaction is “I will fix that.” He won’t be dissuaded until he has all avenues exhausted.

Grace has a habit, early on, of moping for a little while before rallying and getting to work. His interaction with Rocky brings that pouting time down a bit, and he even pulls Rocky out of a slump a time or two.

The relationship between these two is interesting because Grace says flat out that he is not a social person, he feels awkward in groups with people. But he easily communicates with his students, and he easily communicates with Rocky. Rocky is not childlike, but he does have something in common with the students, Grace, like any teacher, teaches his students, and learns from them. Grace teaches Rocky and learns from him. Grace is comfortable with this sort of interaction; with his students this is where the relationship stops. With Rocky, it doesn’t have that boundary. By virtue of the fact that both are alone in space and crave interaction, they talk a lot. Also, activities that Grace is use to doing alone, Rocky’s culture requires to be done in pairs. The biggest: Sleeping.

Eridens do not sleep without another person watching them. So, he insists that he watch Grace sleep and that Grace watches him. It is not expressly said what other things Eridens don’t do alone, but it is implied (at least to me) that they work better in pairs or in groups. This is true of humans as well, but Grace in particular is a loner, even as he complains that science doesn’t happen with one scientist doing the work (and he’s right) but he does work alone even when the astrophage project opened up to more people, the feeling I get is that he still does most of his work alone unless asked to teach others, or forced to come along by Strat.

Grace quickly becomes acclimated to Rocky’s way of doing things, in an odd way, Grace is more comfortable being Eriden, than he is being human. And I really think that this is the crux of their relationship.

I read somewhere recently that family isn’t necessarily blood, but who you would bleed for.

I feel that Rocky and Grace would sacrifice themselves for their respective home worlds, but they will bleed for each other. Grace must go to a different star system to find family, which is actually really cool to me, because the story manages to have Grace have a story of growth and even a quiet redemption arc all with the background noise of a potential double Armageddon, and we manage not to lose sight of any of these elements. Add to this that the book will make you laugh, cry and think all at once. I love the Martian, but I honestly think this one is better!

#project hail mary #andy weir #book #books #revisit 21 #spoilers #major spoilers #book blogging 2021

24 notes · View notes

jeogiyall · 4 years ago

Text

𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒖𝒂𝒈𝒆 ఌ ℎ.𝑠𝑤

❥𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆: 𝖿𝗅𝗎𝖿𝖿𝗒 𝗏𝖺𝗅𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗂𝗇𝖾'𝗌 𝖽𝖺𝗒 𝖿𝗅𝗎𝖿𝖿; 𝗁𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗌𝖼𝗁𝗈𝗈𝗅! 𝖺𝗎

❥𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈: 𝗌𝗉𝖺𝗇𝗂𝗌𝗁 𝗍𝗎𝗍𝗈𝗋 𝗒/𝗇 𝗑 𝗁𝖺𝗇 𝗌𝖾𝗎𝗇𝗀𝗐𝗈𝗈 (𝗏𝗂𝖼𝗍𝗈𝗇)

❥𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕: 𝟝.𝟟𝟛𝑘

❥𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒔: 𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗉𝗒 𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀𝗅𝖾 𝗉𝖾𝗈𝗉𝗅𝖾 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗋𝖾𝗇𝖾𝗌𝗌 𝖽𝖺𝗒 𝖿𝗋𝗈𝗆 ᴀʀɪ! 𝖾𝗇𝗃𝗈𝗒 𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾 𝗏𝖽𝖺𝗒 𝖼𝗎𝗍𝖾𝗇𝖾𝗌𝗌 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗆𝗒 𝗅𝖺𝗍𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝖼𝗋𝗎𝗌𝗁, 𝗁𝖺𝗇 𝗌𝖾𝗎𝗇𝗀𝗐𝗈𝗈

❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾

The bell rings to signal the end of your Spanish class. You sling your bag over your shoulder and stand up, grabbing your textbook and preparing to leave; but your teacher’s voice stops you before you have the chance to go.

“Y/N, are you free to chat for a few minutes?” Your steps come to a sudden halt, the rest of your classmates brushing past you to get out of the room.

You gulp and hug your textbook closer to your chest, your teacher’s summons sparking a pool of nerves as you wonder what on earth she needs to talk to you about.

“Sure, what do you need?” You reply. You don’t have another class until the end of the day anyways, so you don’t have to rush off just yet.

You catch your best friend’s eye and can only offer a shrug when she raises one eyebrow at you, and then she’s trailing out of the classroom along with everyone else, leaving you to hesitantly take a seat in front of your Spanish teacher’s desk.

You fiddle with the strap of your bookbag and try to shake off the feeling that you’ve done something wrong.

“Y/N,” She begins softly, “I’m sure you know that you’re one of our Spanish program’s brightest students. Your comprehension skills are sharp and your pronunciation is muy excelente. You’re also a fantastic classmate to your friends when they need your help.”

You don’t know what to make of the proud smile on her face; but it makes you smile a little, too. She continues, “I’ve been very impressed by your work recently, and I’d like to ask you for a favor.”

You nod slowly. So you weren’t in trouble after all- even though you couldn’t think of anything you’d done that would make Ms. Carmen upset with you, it was good to know she wasn’t giving you a lecture.

“Of course, how can I help you?”

Ms. Carmen folds her hands on the desk in front of her and says, “I have a student I want you to tutor for me.”

Your grip on your bag tightens instantly.

“You want me to tutor someone?” Your voice wavers with uncertainty, “I’m not sure I’d be a very good tutor. I, um, I have a lot of classes I’m taking other than this one, and I don’t really know if I have enough time...” You stop yourself from getting too far in your nervous rambling and meet your teacher’s disappointed gaze.

“That’s alright, Y/N. I knew it was a lot to ask of you. I understand you’re a busy student, so don’t trouble yourself; I’ll find another tutor.” She sighs, and the sound makes your heart sag, feeling guilty all of a sudden.

You contemplate the offer for a few more moments, rolling it around in your mind. On the one hand, you are pretty busy; you actually don’t have that many classes this semester, but the workload is tough enough to make up for it.

Yet on the other hand, you really love Spanish, and you like helping people out wherever you can. You may not be overly confident in your abilities as a tutor; but if Ms. Carmen needs you to help another student in your class, then you feel strongly obligated to step up and be the one to do it. Besides, it can’t be too horrible- you figure the most you’ll have to do will probably be to show someone how to count to twenty.

You nod again and square your shoulders, looking your teacher in the eyes. “Actually, I can tutor them. It won’t be a problem.” You assure her.

Her smile returns, and with it comes a small amount of confidence that you’ll be able to prove yourself wrong, that you’ll turn out to be a great tutor. Her words are warm as she responds, “I’m glad to hear that, Y/N. I knew I could count on you.”

You mirror her grin, and with a wave of her hand, she gestures towards the door and tells you you’re free to go. You walk out of the classroom and towards the courtyard with every intention of eating your lunch, though you’ll most likely end up asking yourself who possibly needs you to tutor them in Spanish so badly... maybe it’s just an underclassmen who could use the extra help.

Or maybe, you think as you open up your textbook on the lunch table, you should just stop stressing yourself out about this so much and eat your food before the bell rings again.

❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾

You smooth out your skirt and rock back and forth on the balls of your feet, glancing at the time on your phone. 3:30 pm- the student you’re supposed to tutor should’ve been here fifteen minutes ago. You mindlessly scroll through social media to dispel your nerves, telling yourself to stop being worried over something so small. You’re sure there’s a perfectly good reason they’re late.

Your eyes scan the almost full library for a place to sit once your student finally gets here, hoping you won’t have to sit in one of the back rooms that are notorious for being a hookup spot. The mere thought of working on one of those tables is enough to gross you out.

You’ve been waiting at the front of your school’s library for the last fifteen minutes; the two assistants at the checkout desk have been sending you curious looks and whispering subtly, and you’re sure they’re talking about you. They most likely think you’re being stood up on a study date- which, to be honest, it kind of feels as if you are being stood up. You decide you’ll give it just five more minutes before calling it quits and going home.

You keep scrolling through your phone until you hear someone ask the assistants about a Spanish tutor. They point in your direction and the guy turns around, your lungs shutting down the moment your eyes land on him.

You realize he isn’t just any old freshman or sophomore kid. Instead, you’ve been assigned to tutor Han Seungwoo- the high school’s golden boy.

Seungwoo recognizes you instantly, knowing you as the smart girl who always aces every Spanish test. He knows Ms. Carmen wouldn’t pair him up with just anyone, so he should have suspected he’d be put with one of the smartest people in his class.

What he didn’t know, however, was how cute you looked when your head wasn’t buried in your book; his heart jumps at the way you’re bouncing on your toes, your hair tucked behind your ear and your eyes going wide once you recognize who he is.

He wonders how he could’ve ever missed the sweetness in your smile before.

You clutch your phone tightly to keep yourself together when Seungwoo makes his way over to you, hoping your breathing will go back to normal before he hears you hyperventilate.

He’s so much more handsome in person than how your boy-crazy best friend describes him. She makes Seungwoo seem untouchable and detached, always harping on his sharp jawline and his cold charms. But up close, he’s not like that at all; you find that his eyes hold a soft warmth in them, and the brown hair that flops over his forehead is practically begging you to run your fingers through it. He all but towers over you in his high top sneakers and red sweater, and he couldn’t look any more approachable if he tried. You quickly conclude that your best friend’s got it all wrong.

You also conclude that if you don’t quit staring at him like a stalker, then Seungwoo is going to run in the opposite direction as fast as he possibly can.

You snap yourself out of it and offer a shy smile, slipping your phone into your pocket. “Hi, I’m Y/N. Are you the one Ms. Carmen asked me to tutor?” You mentally cheer at how stable your voice is, even if it’s a little soft.

Seungwoo smiles brightly back at you, and you could swear he’s intentionally trying to make you melt into a puddle on the floor. “Hi Y/N! I’m Seungwoo,” He introduces himself as if he isn’t the heartthrob of the century, and you bite your lip to keep from confessing that you already know him. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, but I had to talk to Coach about missing practice or else he wouldn’t let me go.”

That’s right- you’d forgotten he was on the football team, too. Your tiny little crush shrivels up and dies in your heart, your brain reminding you that you’re just tutoring the school’s star defense player, and that it will never be more than that. For one thing, it would be the most cliché circumstance to ever happen in your life; not to mention that it’s also the most unrealistic thing to hope for. You squash down your stupid schoolgirl feelings and nod your head at Seungwoo.

“Of course, don’t feel bad,” You tell him, “I just wasn’t sure if you were going to come. Now that you’re here, where do you wanna sit?”

You’ve got a suspicion that you might just end up in the back room, not seeing an empty table anywhere; thankfully, Seungwoo spots a group getting up to leave and motions for you to follow that way. You walk past the group and sit down slowly, letting your bag drop onto the table and pulling out your textbook.

He takes one look at it and groans, rubbing a hand over his temple. “I can’t believe I forgot my textbook. I didn’t mean to be so scatterbrained...” The tips of his ears are turning slightly pink, and the sight is so endearing that you can’t even pretend to be disappointed.

“It’s fine, you can just use mine today.” You console, sliding it over to him. He sheepishly opens it and grabs his notebook from his bag.

“So what do you want to do first?” You ask. Your nerves are starting to get to you, and you twirl your pencil around in your fingers. Seungwoo sees your fidgeting and raises an eyebrow.

“It seems like you’re nervous,” He observes, and your breath catches when he so casually exposes you. “Maybe we should get to know each other a little bit? After all, I think we’re gonna be working together for at least the next month, if not more. I don’t want to be strangers.”

Your heart flutters against your will at his suggestion. “I’m not nervous,” You respond defensively, “I’ve just never tutored anyone before. I don’t know if I’ll be any good.”

Seungwoo shuts the textbook and rests his elbows on the table, giving you all of his attention. “Based on how great you are in class, I’m sure you’ll be a huge help. Don’t sweat it.” He tells you, causing a warm blush to rise on your cheeks.

“How about we play twenty questions?” He asks without warning, “I’ll start if you don’t want to go first. Deal?” You nod, putting the pencil down.

He clears his throat. “Let’s start out easy. Favorite color?”

You blurt out red without any thought. You don’t actually have a favorite, but you couldn’t stop thinking about how handsome Seungwoo looks sitting across from you in that red sweater; and from the slight smirk that pulls at his lips, you think he’s caught onto what’s happening in your head. How embarrassing.

“Look at that, we’ve got the same favorite color. Never would’ve pinned you for a red girl.” He teases, briefly taking in your fuzzy light blue shirt. You shake your head to hide how easily flustered he makes you.

“Seungwoo, we should really get to studying. Don’t you have a lesson you want to go over today?” You say with a small sigh. As much as you want to get to know him, to learn what makes him smile or what he wants to do with his life, you’re acutely aware of how urgent Ms. Carmen was about getting you to tutor him. The last thing you want is to let her down; and it looks like there’s not much time to waste.

Seungwoo just shrugs his shoulders and leans closer to you over the table, sending butterflies swooping in your tummy. You almost wish he wasn’t this handsome- maybe then you wouldn’t be such a nervous wreck. “I didn’t have anything specific in mind,” He admits reluctantly, “all I know is that I’m failing right now and if I don’t pull my grade up, I won’t get to play for the rest of this season. I can’t let the boys down, y’know?”

You can’t help but admire the obvious loyalty Seungwoo has towards his team. You didn’t expect someone like him to so openly wear his heart on his sleeve, and it’s already showing signs of causing a problem. You don’t think your poor heart can handle a month of his easy smile or his confident manner.

His brown eyes are on yours, and you have the sudden urge to hold his hand and tell him he’ll do just fine, that you’ll do whatever it takes to get him back in the game. You push the thought away before it gets stuck in your head and instead reach for the textbook again.

“Then let’s get to it.” You say, the words soft yet determined. If you didn’t have a reason to help him out before, then at least now you’ve got a goal to work towards. You don’t want him to get kicked off the team.

He doesn’t let up his curious gaze, and it feels like he can see past your face and straight inside of you, as if he can read your mind. Your blush refuses to go away and you avert your stare to the book on the table, opening it up to the first chapter to start reviewing what he knows so far.

On the other side of the table, Seungwoo thinks to himself that this might end up being the longest month of his life.

How on earth is he supposed to focus on a language he doesn’t understand when you’re sitting there so cutely right in front of him, your cheeks glowing softly and your hair falling into your eyes? How is he going to remember anything of importance with your small hands tracing over the words on the page, skimming the lines like it’s a map to your heart?

And how is he ever going to remember anything that isn’t the way your lips pull into a polite smile when you catch him looking at you?

As you try to get Seungwoo to remember some simple adjectives, the only one he can recall is hermosa; but he thinks that maybe telling you that on your first meeting together wouldn’t quite be appropriate- and he thinks that maybe Spanish just got a whole lot harder.

❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾

“No, Seungwoo, gato is the word for cat. We’re talking about school supplies, not animals.” You correct gently.

The last week or so of tutoring Han Seungwoo has been anything but a breeze. While he’s trying his best to learn from you, you didn’t realize how far behind he’s been in class. It took you three sessions just to get through basics like counting and introductions, and you haven’t even bothered to work on his pronunciation yet; you’ve got bigger things for him to master first.

While you’d made some significant progress- he could now count into the hundreds and successfully tell people his name, age, and nationality- you’ve still got a long way to go.

You’ve been meeting up in the library after school every day so far, and he’d taken extra care to make sure he didn’t make you wait as long as he did on the first day. You normally spend an hour minimum in the quieter section of the library, away from the chatter of students using the computers, and you’ve had to check out another Spanish textbook when Seungwoo discovered he’d lost his for real.

Today, one week into tutoring, you’d been working with him on school supplies and classroom phrases.

“So...” Seungwoo trails off, a look of confusion on his face that shouldn’t be so heartachingly handsome, “the word for staple is grapa? Why does it sound so much like the word for cat? That’s not fair.” He fails to hold back a pout, making you laugh.

“Sorry Seungwoo, I don’t make the rules.” You offer an excuse. His shoulders slump and he starts drawing aimless circles on his paper, which you’ve written over in red ink to try and help him get the hang of nouns.

“You at least know them,” He says in a dull tone, “but what do I know? Football and chemistry, that’s it. I can pass chemistry, but I’m failing Spanish.” You feel that odd urge to hold his hand again, but like the last few times it’s happened, you shove it out of your brain as quickly as it appeared.

You instead ruffle his hair (which is exactly as soft as you’d imagined it was) and give him your own sulky pout, “Hey, that’s nothing to complain about. Chemistry is more foreign to me than Spanish, I don’t even know how I passed.” You admit honestly.

At the sight of your frown, Seungwoo thinks his heart has stopped working, because it’s beating too fast for him to function. He wants nothing more than to kiss that little pout off of you and bring back your sweet grin; and while that idea should be alarming, he finds that he has no issues with it at all. The only issue is that he has no idea how you’d respond to something so sudden and unwarranted.

Your tutoring sessions have been driving Seungwoo absolutely nuts over the last few days. He has no clue how he’s never noticed you before now, because your innocent eyes and small smiles have been living in his mind rent-free since the day you met him in the library. He’d normally be concerned about how quickly he’s become infatuated with you, but you make it easy with your cute expressions and your fuzzy oversized sweaters; anyone who knows him well would be able to tell that he’s got it bad.

Lucky for him, you’ve just been chalking up his inability to memorize the material to his lack of interest in Spanish.

“Let’s try again,” You suggest quietly, rounding the table to stand over him. You turn the page of the textbook to the next worksheet, free of red pen marks, and point at the first blank row. “Write out the words in English first from the pictures, then again in Spanish.”

Seungwoo fights back the desire to lace your hands with his much larger ones, wanting so badly to feel how they’d fit together.

An idea pops into your head as you think of ways to motivate him. “If you get them right, I’ll give you a prize!” You chirp, hoping to inspire him enough for him to really apply himself. He perks up visibly and pokes your side, wanting to know what the prize is, but you shake your head and swat his arm away. “You’ll just have to find out when I check your work.” You taunt.

It does the trick, too- when he finally fills in the last blank and hands you the worksheet, you’re pleasantly surprised to find that every single answer is correct.

“Did I do it?” He asks excitedly, reminding you of a puppy. You nod and draw a smiley face on the sheet, giving it back to him without writing all over it. You’re shocked at how easy it was to get him to try, and you hadn’t actually planned on him getting it right first try.

He shuts the book and stuffs his papers and pencil into his bag, quickly sliding out of his chair to stand next to you. Now he’s really acting like a puppy, practically bounding over to you and playfully nudging you with his elbow.

“Y/N, what’s the prize?” He asks again. You collect your own things and stand up, not even bothering to elbow him back.

You fiddle with the straps and look down at your shoes as you mumble, “I, um, I was gonna take us to the coffee shop a few blocks away to finish up. I figured we could use a change of scenery.” Your voice is unsteady, much like your heart rate; but who can blame you when Seungwoo is looming over you with an obvious twinkle in his eye? Your tummy does backflips from the way he’s so blatantly staring- you’re unused to all the attention.

He uses one finger beneath your chin to tilt your head up, his fond expression making you wonder if he’s even real or if you’re just hallucinating.

“That’s perfect, Y/N, I’d really like that.” He says. Your eyes linger on his lips; and you let yourself have one selfish thought, thinking of how it might feel to go on your tiptoes and press your own against them, imagining for only a moment how his hand would cradle your face-

“Are we going to go, or did you wanna stare some more?” He questions with a cocky smirk, secretly enjoying the curious way you’re looking at him. You turn beet red and stutter awkwardly, wishing you had something to hide yourself behind.

“I wasn’t staring, I was just... zoning out.” You attempt to lie, but it’s no use. You got caught red-handed and you both know it. Once you realize you won’t be getting your dignity back any time soon, you spin on your heel and walk out of the library, not needing to look behind you to know he’s following closely.

His hand brushes yours as you exit the school and begin the short walk to the coffee shop downtown, sending sweet chills all the way up your arm. “Whatever you say, stalker.” He mutters teasingly. You lightly shove his side, making him laugh.

“I am so not a stalker!” You defend dramatically. He doesn’t respond, just glances at you with a smile so sweet that it reaches his eyes and instantly melts your heart, and you have to tell yourself to snap out of it before you dwell on his antics for too long.

“Keep telling yourself that.” He eventually responds.

You give him a pouty side-eye and cross your arms like a little kid, “I’m not a stalker.”

Seungwoo swears that he’s never wanted to kiss anyone so badly before in his life.

❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾

At the end of your third week tutoring Seungwoo, you’ve completely given up on trying to ignore the way he makes your heart flutter; now, all you can do is try to keep yourself from becoming a blushing mess in his presence for the two hours a day you’re both together.

You’d made the mutual decision to move your sessions out of the library and into the coffee shop, a cute little place named Mayday Café. While it was a great place to study, with more room for you to spread out and work, it also had it’s drawbacks (which came directly in the form of sweet cream and caffeine).

Though you aren’t sure ‘drawbacks’ is the right word; maybe the word you’re looking for is ‘temptations’.

It certainly isn’t distractions. You had your own personal, living-and-breathing distraction already right there in front of you; one named Han Seungwoo.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that he’s flirting with you a lot these days. He’s been quick to buy you your magic bean juice every time he sees you glance at the counter, never letting you pay for it no matter how many times you protest, and he’s even started causally calling you nicknames like princess and cutie.

He makes you nervous and excited at the same time, always causing your cheeks to turn pink and your pulse to race. You aren’t sure if he knows what he’s doing- he carries such an easygoing manner about him that you can’t really tell what he’s thinking- but you know for a fact that it’s having an effect on you, even if it isn’t intentional.

You also think that must have some idea of what he’s doing to you, because no one can be that touchy and still be oblivious.

Currently, it was 4:50 on a Friday afternoon. Your drink was long gone, your cup left on the edge of the table as you and Seungwoo sat side by side, heads bent down to read over a page in your Spanish textbooks during the last ten minutes of today’s tutoring session.

One hand gripped his pen tightly while the other was tangled in his hair, a habit of his you’d discovered he did whenever he was deeply involved in something. You peeked subtly at him while pretending to read your own book, although in reality you were just trying to memorize the endearing scrunch of his nose and the way he mouthed the words silently to himself.

Five more minutes went by until he looked up from the vocabulary words, removing the hand in his hair and marking his place before closing the textbook. You raised an eyebrow expectantly, waiting for him to translate what he’d just read. You had confidence he was going to get this lesson right after spending the entire session in one chapter alone.

He meets your gaze head-on, the only sign that you’re getting more than you bargained for being the way his mouth quirks up into that familiar self-assured grin, and says in an astonishingly good Spanish accent, “Eres demasiado linda para tu propio bien.”

You gulp and sense yourself clenching the pencil in your hand a little too hard, feeling equally floored and flustered by Seungwoo’s unexpected words. You can’t stop the swarm of butterflies that comes to life inside you, taking flight and raising your hopes far higher than you intended for them to go.

You don’t think you can form a coherent sentence around the lump in your throat, opening and closing your mouth until you settle for an uneasy “Wh-what?”

Seungwoo knows you heard him loud and clear, but he repeats it anyways, wanting to save the image of your nervous blush and replay it in his mind forever. “I said, eres demasiado linda para tu propio bien; haces que sea difícil concentrarte, cariña.” *see glossary at the end for translations*

He can tell purely from the way your eyes widen that you perfectly understand what he’s saying. He’d looked it up a thousand times on google translate, his latest search history reading ‘how to call someone cute in Spanish’ just so he could impress you. But when you continue to wordlessly stare up at him, he thinks he’s the real winner here; he wouldn’t mind if you looked adoringly at him like this for the rest of his life.

You blink rapidly and try to pull your thoughts together. “Umm... lo siento? I think? That was, uh, you had really good pronunciation just then...” You’re tripping over yourself to get some sort of response out, but it’s proving to be a difficult feat when Han Seungwoo’s hand rests gently on your leg like it was made to lay there. Your breathing grows shallow and shaky, all from one single touch, and it’s gonna be the thing to make you break what little composure you have left.

He traces lazy shapes on the hem of your skirt, not wanting to make you uncomfortable or give you the wrong idea. He just wants to be close to you, to see the gleam in your doe eyes as he cautiously puts his hand over your leg in a sudden display of affection.

It’s one touch- but it’s enough to set the ball rolling.

You’d be stupid not to ask the question at this point; he’s passed through the land of friendliness and is crossing the border into a territory that could end up being dangerous for your heart. But you still need to know, not willing to put up with another night of what if’s plaguing your head once it hits the pillow.

You gather up your courage and place your hand on top of his, determined not to get too distracted by how small yours looks compared to his.

“Seungwoo,” You start despite the wobble in your tone, “I... I don’t know if this is just me, but you’ve been awfully flirty with me the last couple of weeks. Is there- is there a reason you’re doing it, or is it all for show?” You’re pleased that you were able to at least ask the question. “Why are you acting so... so charming? Is it just in my head?”

If Seungwoo thought he wanted to kiss you a week ago, then now he knows what it feels like to crave something- he’s never craved anything as badly as he longs to finally close the damn gap between your lips and his.

He assumed he would turn into an anxious mess when the time came to confess, expecting to lose his confidence and mix up all of his words. He’s glad that that isn’t the case today though- because the longer he looks at you, the more certain he feels that he’s yours, and he’s oh so eager to make you his; that is, if you’ll have him.

So although you wait for him to answer you with bated breath, Seungwoo is at ease knowing that this isn’t all in his head- knowing that you feel it, too.

“Princess, don’t you see it?” He says simply, his other hand coming up to skim along the side of your face, “You’re absolutely irresistible. I thought I was making it obvious how much I wanted you, how much I want to be with you. Are you finally telling me you want it, too?” His words are sweet, only carrying a small teasing lilt to them as he caresses your cheek with his thumb, “Are you telling me you wanna be mine?”

He brings your face closer to his, your neck craning up so you don’t lose eye contact. Your lips are only a few inches apart when he adds in a whisper, “Because I wanna be su novio, if you’ll let me.”

You don’t miss the way his stare drops to your mouth and stays there, not moving even when your arms find their way around his neck. You’re suddenly thankful for the building’s layout, the back corner you’d chosen helping to conceal the sweet moment from the rest of the world.

You can hardly breathe at this point- but you’re able to answer him as he pulls you in, “si.”

Seungwoo can’t stop the smile from spreading before his lips meet yours the way he’s wanted them to since the day you pouted at him in the library.

You have to hold back a sigh of content when you finally, finally get the kiss you’ve waited three weeks for; it’s better than you ever even imagined it could be, full of tenderness and longing, with him showing you exactly how crazy he is for you. You don’t rush, losing yourself in the way you softly melt together.

It’s a gentle kiss, intent on making up for lost time without expecting anything in return. Your fingers twist into the hair at the base of his neck, making his smile grow even bigger against yours mouth; he’s made you feel so many things, but none of them felt as promising as this. This felt warm and inviting... like a hint of better things to come.

You pull away to catch the breath that’s sprinted from your lungs faster than a runner at a track meet.

“Y/N...” Seungwoo sounds as starstruck as you feel, “I know you’re my tutor, and we only met a couple of weeks ago.. but it would make me really, really feliz if you’d go on a date with me sometime.”

He has to restrain himself from pulling you in for another kiss when your face lights up with joy, head nodding up and down as your smile only spreads wider; you twirl his soft strands around your fingers wordlessly, unable to do anything except look into his eyes with all the happiness in the world. You still aren't over the fact that Han Seungwoo just kissed you- you don't think you'll get over it any time soon, to be honest. Though who could really blame you?

The butterflies have started to swoop madly in your chest, soaring higher and higher, making you feel like you're flying above the ground, never wanting to land again. You're floating on a bliss you could only describe as cloud nine.

Even Seungwoo's hand in yours on the way out of Mayday Cafe can't bring you back down to the ground.

"Something on your mind, Y/N?" He asks playfully, knowing full well that you're exactly as dazed and dizzy as he is. You roll your eyes and tighten your grip on his hand, memorizing the way his hands cup your own and lace your fingers together like they were always meant to intertwine.

"You." You answer shyly, ducking your head to hide your growing blush. Seungwoo thinks you're the most adorable human being to walk this planet, and he hopes he'll never have to let go of your small hand; never have to go a day without coaxing a timid smile from you or tease you til your cheeks turn red. He may not be good at Spanish, but he's found that he at least has good luck in another language- your love language.

A language he can only speak with you.

"As long as that's the case, feel free to keep zoning out." He doesn't let up his relentless flirting and you childishly smack his side with your free hand. He laughs at your weak attempt and squeezes your hand gently; you almost shudder from the sparks shooting through your fingertips.

As you walk home side-by-side, Han Seungwoo makes a mental note to thank Ms. Carmen for forcing him to get tutored with as many Spanish words as possible. Because while he can't ask for directions just yet, it seems he's found his way to his heart; and it's all your Spanish teacher's fault.

Although once he gives you a goodbye kiss at your doorstep, he admits that maybe it isn't entirely Ms. Carmen's fault- it was yours for being so irresistible.

He wondered to himself, after you'd walked inside and closed the door, just how long it would take him to learn how to say "I love you" in Spanish.

❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾❁✿❀✾

the end.

GLOSSARY:

-muy excelente = very good

- eres demasiado linda para tu propio bien = you’re too cute for your own good

- haces que sea difícil concentrarte, cariña = you make it hard to focus, darling

-si = yes

-feliz = happy

#han seungwoo #seungwoo fluff #victon fluff #victon seungwoo #han seungwoo fluff #victon fanfic #kpop fanfic #the writing tag #admin ari #happy vday y'all!!!#enjoy this fluffy goodness with the man of my latest affections... han seungUwU #seunguwu

41 notes · View notes

bethanysnow · 4 years ago

Text

Red Empress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nKqslNcYAE&t=1762s

(Inspired by above playlist)

“-And who are you?”

“OH HI YOU ARE REAL!?” The ‘hero’ yelled in shock.

“Yes, I’m real. And what do you want? You interrupted me watching British Bake off…”

“..wait, you’re not gonna...shoot me? With like, a freeze ray, or cut my head off. Send dogs after me, none of that?”

“...Do you want me to hero?”

“NO! I uh I mean no. Ma’am-”

“Then what the fuck do you want…I am busy.”

The hero looked up to a woman similar to what he had expected. She had black hair, wore gold jewelry, and glasses sat on her nose. But the person in front of him? The Terror of the 9 Hells, Dante’s Apprentice, The Red Empress? Wasn’t there. She had a grey cardigan on, yoga pants. She looked down at the little hero with disdain and an air of condescension. Like he was trying to sell her girl scout cookies and doing a bad job at it. The hero looked at his research. Scribbled into a composition notebook was the address of what he thought was the evil lair to the greatest supervillain of their era.

“I am a future hero, or I want to be-” She raised a hand, cutting him off.

“-So you came down to my apartment, which by the way is super creepy. How you got my address I do not know. Then decide to knock on my door. Knowing who I am, you still did so. Did you think this was a good idea?” Slightly amused look fixed onto her face.

“No, I don’t think it was a good idea. But I need to know.” He said with all the sincerity in his heart. “My grandma, she loves you. Has some of your newspaper clippings on her wall. She won’t shut up about you. Saying ‘there weren’t any more good heroes today’. Google just showed me all your recent stuff about how bad you are. You disappeared for like...10 years. Then came back a villain.”

She looked him over. Grabbed his notes out of his hand despite his protests. Flipping through pages she takes a red pen from behind her ear and starts writing in his book. Once she hands it back, it's annotated. Edited. Like how a teacher reviews a paper from a student. Leaning on the doorway she looks into the hall.

“Kay-” Standing back up on her feet she opens the door all the way pushing him in. “-You get until my episode of Bake off is done. C’mon kid.” Grabbing a fistful of his hoodie she leads him to her living room.

The apartment looked over all of Manhattan. Marble floors, red plush furniture. Bookshelves dotted with ��souvenirs’. Some he recognized as heroes' weapons and memorabilia. A stone head looked in fear out into the room. The head was of the previous ‘supervillain’ from the 50s. A silver glove with runes carved into the surface glowed as the hero passed. A gun from the ‘Manhattan Mad Hatter’. A drugged out ultra-rich chemist who made it his mission to destroy and flatten everything from here to Tokyo in the 00’s.

“You want to talk, kid, or do you wanna look at the knick knacks?”

“Right!” He blurted, going to the couch next to her. A small brown dachshund curled into a ball on her lap. “Where did you go for ten years?”

“Rehab, Therapy for a bit. Um, Austria. Russia for a while. Went to Tasmania. Seattle. Mainly Rehab though-”

“-For ten years?”

She smirked. “You try being a hero for 30 some odd years and not have a drug problem. The 60s and 70s everyone was...disposed. In something. Or someone. There was always a cult to join, doctrine to follow, party to go to. Lots of those Heroes from the glory days died from cocaine, or other drugs. The cops shot the bodies so they could report that they died in the line of fire.” A dark and far away quality clouded her eyes. “-10 years for rehab after seeing your friends, coworkers, freaks of nature you got to call family die? Sounds reasonable to me. I spent the 80s in a fog. God knows what I really did.”

“Oh....”

She scoffed. “Yea- oh! They don’t tell ya that in history class do they?”

“No, Ma’am…”

“Thought as much.”

“You were a hero though! Post WWII there were comics, radio stations, songs, all praising you. Some I saw where you punched a Nazi and went for ice cream after. Don’t take this the wrong way please. I would like to get home today, but you look like you’re in your 30s. You should be 90 somethin”

“That I did do- but ya. And who said I wasn’t 90 somethin? You ever hear that fuckin super solider bullshit? They made Rogers and Bucky do? Where did you think the research was tested? They had to go from somewhere and I dunno...I had the day off.” She shrugged. Her face flickered with rage when mentioning the previous heroes. “And look where it got them, Steve is dead, and Bucky is off with some fuckin retirement bullshit. At least I didn’t retire! I got a job to do, I got taxes to pay.”

“...you pay taxes????” The boy looked at her very confused.

“I am a villain, not an asshole.”

She started to pet her dog, them nuzzling into her hand.

“So you became a villain- came back in 2000. Crashed the Met Gala. Stole the artifacts on display. Crashed a car. Set fire to buildings- why?”

“Ah- the age old question.-” She looked at him. Took a minute of silence with her. The air slowly left the room he felt. Under the steely gaze of the most deadly woman in the world.

“I got tired. Of being owned, propped up, posed, told what to say. The Hero's Union, a committee of people ‘sworn to protect the sanctity of Heroes’ and what they represent and fight for’ never was actually there for us. Type casted us into America's sweetheart, Funny side character. Big strong hero to save the day. Every interview I ever did as a ‘hero’ was never my actual words. I would have been a fuckin amazing actress I’ll give ya that. Smile and tell the people watching not to panic. Not to worry. Us ‘Hero’s got it handled. We were let to suffer unbeknownst to the general public. ‘Lady Justice’? She was 5 months pregnant and the Union wouldn’t let her stop the missions. She ended up having a miscarriage due to stress and what they were putting her body through. It's not just her, it's everyone.”

“So why not just quit? If it was that bad, go on strike or something.”

“That's easy for you civilians to say. You can strike when you work a normal 9 to 5. You can quit your job. You can move on. But as I said, little hero. I was out there for 30 somethin years. Punching Nazis, saving people. Being a Hero. When you are made basically immortal and are a freak of nature- there are things you learn you cannot do anymore. I can’t drive a car. I can’t work out without all the machines sparking out on me and breaking. No one wants to hire a freak now do they? There is no ‘pensioners plan’ for elderly heroes.”

“I guess not…You don’t seem all that Villainous to me though.” He says with a giant smile on his face. Ever the optimist.

She rolled her eyes, focusing on her show.

He looked closer at her face. Grey eyes with blue flecks. Slightly salt and peppering at the sides. She looked strong, obvious defined biceps and calves. Her neck and arms were covered in scars. A long scar ran from her forehead down her face leading in a curve to her jaw on one side. The red pen stuck behind her ear. Big 70s aviator glasses. Before he knew what was happening his hands were bound behind his back and his face was being pressed into the cold floor. She had not changed her position.

“You keep staring at me kid things will go badly for you.” She spoke not looking away from the TV in front of her. “-I don’t look evil, sure. But I will ask you.”

“What does ‘Evil’ look like? I was once a hero too.”

#Original work #story #creative writing #marveloc #Superhero #Superheros #Marvel #DC #OC #Red Empress

6 notes · View notes

lovestrucked-again · 5 years ago

Text

Sanguine I Mafia

Genre: Mafia AU Warnings: dark themes Word Count: 3k ANON Ask: Hi I really LOVE your writing and I’d like to request the reader in the nct mafia series gets in some trouble with another company. Serious trouble. But on accident. So the boys have to really work something out to get her back – I’ve taken the idea and done a little series, hope you like it <3 Summary: You were a second year med student taken in by the house of NCT. It’s not uncommon to be the last to learn things within the house but when your safety is threatened, your forced to leave home with no option. But it only makes things worse.

****

Waking up to a loud racket in the morning was nothing new or surprising for you. After moving in, the rarity of having a silent morning was priceless and you could only dream of those days. However, for this Thursday morning, waking up so late in the morning was a disaster, finding out you’re running late to your morning lecture wasn’t what you were expecting. As a second year med student, suggested by yours truly, Qian Kun, you were crushed by the weight of content, leading to late study nights and hectic schedules.

When you were first bought in, you were still a first year student, confused in what course direction to take, what your interests were, and your own capability. As you got comfortable within the house while your first year ended, Kun suggested going into medical school, noticing your attention to detail and caring nature. Lucky for you, your studies were never an issue and getting in proved no difficulty.

Your bedside clock given as a gift from Doyoung (because your always late), showed 8:02am, 28 minutes before it starts. Quickly jumping out of bed you ran to your bathroom, brushing through the knots that had formed in your hair overnight and taking a shower. After getting dressed and grabbing your phone and bag you ran downstairs to grab a snack before leaving. Surprisingly the house seemed strangely quiet for an early morning. A few of the boys slept in during the mornings, somehow managing to sleep though the heavy noise, but majority would be up and about by now.

You sneaked a peak into the living room while grabbing an apple from the fridge, seeing the absence of people. You grabbed your usual set of keys from the row of hooks at the entrance to the garage, noticing most of the car keys were missing but too late to think deeply into it. You ran over to your favourite car within the garage and threw your backpack onto the passenger seat beside you before starting the engine and driving as fast as you could to your class.

Arriving 5minutes after the lecture started, you sneak in through the back door hoping no one would notice you. Obviously with your luck, the class happened to be completely silent when you entered and the sound of the door creaking open caught everyone’s attention. You mumbled a small apology to the lecturer who didn’t bother to acknowledge your presence and continued with his talk. You settle into your seat and pull out your laptop and begin typing away as he talks.

Almost halfway through your lecture your phone buzzes. You ignore the initial vibration felt from the phone on your desk, too immersed in typing as your lecturer continues talking without bothering to slow down. However, as soon as the continuous texts popped through, the students around you were starting to give you looks and you had no choice but to answer to your phone. You glance at the screen noticing the texts from Jaehyun.

Jaehyun: Where are you?

Jaehyun: Y/N?

Jaehyun: Y/N? Answer me.

Y/N: In a lecture, something up?

You see the three little dots typing through the screen for a minute, then disappearing, and then reappearing.

Jaehyun: No, have fun and stay safe.

Not bothering with it too much, you placed your phone in your bag this time, and tried to catch up to what the lecturer was explaining. When the digital clock above the board showed 10am, the lecturer began piling up his paperwork, and dismissed the class.

Normally you’d find the Dream group who would be roaming around the campus around the same time as you had your lunch break. The 2000s line were first year students due to their part time commitment as students. They balanced life at home with training and missions while also completing a normal life – forced upon by Taeyong. You made your way over to the tables under the shaded trees and pulled out your phone to pass time. It was almost 10:30 when you realised there was still no one here.

You pull up the group chat you had for the bunch of you who attended college; Renjun, Haechan, Jeno, Jaemin and you.

Y/N: Did you guys all ditch today?

Haechan: We got held back at home

Y/N: You’re at home?

Haechan: Yeah

Y/N: It was so quiet this morning though, I thought no one was home.

Haechan: Big meeting today

Y/N: Guess I’m spending lunch alone

Jaemin: Go make some new friends

Jaemin: Girl-friends only

Y/N: :(

You hum to yourself, putting in your earphones and grabbing your drawing pad along with a pen. The time passes rather quickly as you sketch out the trees in your view, the figures of people passing by, the group of friends gathered on the lawn. The music abruptly stops and you look at your phone, confused at the interruption. You notice the call coming through and pull out your earphones to place the phone against your ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey can you come to the car?”

“My car?” You ask, confused.

“Yeah, I’m at your car.”

“Okay, give me a few minutes.” You tell him, hanging up to gather all your belongings.

You notice the familiar car parked next to your own car and your face crinkles up confused at the unannounced visit from Lucas coming to your campus. Lucas stands leaning against the bumper of his car, staring at his phone not seeing you approach him.

“Hey what are you doing here?” You ask,

“I’m picking you up.” He simply states, putting his phone in his pocket and taking your laptop and textbooks from your grasp.

“I drove though.” You tell him.

“I know, one of the guys will get your car,” he says, motioning to the passenger side of his car for you to get in as he places your stuff in the back seat and opens the door on the driver’s side for himself.

“What’s going on?” You ask, closing the door before your fighting with your seatbelt strap to pull over your shoulder.

“We’re going on a vacation.” Lucas replies, leaning over to help you with your seatbelt. You lean back against your seat as he fumbles with it for a second and then buckles you in.

“Thanks, and I don’t know if you’ve realised but I still have lectures to attend tomorrow.” You tell him.

“Jaehyun handled them already.” He tells you.

“What do you mean?” You ask, starting to get concerned with the sudden situation. “Lucas what’s going on?” you ask again.

“Call Jaehyun, it’s better he tells you,” Lucas says, letting out a sigh as he pushes the gear stick into drive. You pull out your phone and dial his number, being sent straight into voicemail. You try again while Lucas watches, waiting for a response as well.

“He isn’t answering.”

“Try Taeyong.” He tells you. You click onto your speed dial for 1, calling Taeyong immediately. The phone rings for a few seconds and as your about to give up, he answers.

“Hello?”

“Hey princess what’s up?”

“Jaehyun didn’t pick up his phone and what’s with this sudden vacation? I still have classes to attend.”

“I’ve put your application on defer for now.”

“You did what?!” You yell into the phone. Lucas flinches from your sudden raise in voice.

“Sorry I should’ve talked about this with you.” You hear Taeyong sigh through the other end.

“Yeah, obviously. I’m not going on vacation or whatever this crap is Tae, I’m going back to class tomorrow.”

“Y/N things aren’t going very well recently and I need you to get away from everyone so your safe.”

“I don’t care about that, since when did you have a say in my education and what I do?!” You yell, “I’ll move in with a friend if I have to but I’m not leaving.”

“Sorry Y/N but I can’t let you do that, please just go with Lucas for now okay? I’m busy at the moment so I’ll call you back later.” He states, hanging up before anyone has a chance to say more.

Little did you know, the meeting that occurred earlier in the day was to discuss the current situation with enemy plans and events that have recently been going on. The members had been taking turns following you secretly to classes or trying to accompany you wherever you went without you realising it. Taeyong had been receiving threats lately regarding the entire NCT and the safety of the members. When someone sent an anonymous email to him containing images taken of you doing your daily activities outside of the house he decided it was time to separate you from the group.

Much to many of the members disliking of being separated and out of site, you were in danger to be living with them in this current situation. You leaving the city was planned last minute today and was agreed upon by majority in the meeting. Doyoung and Lucas had packed all your essentials within a few minutes before Lucas left to pick you up, leading you to where you were now. Your safety had been left in the hands of Lucas, unfortunately. Not saying that you were on bad terms with Lucas but more of his reliability seemed to be questionable.

Lucas on the other hand was even more miserable than you. The problem of babysitting you while being separated from all the action back home and being stuck inside a hotel would kill him of boredom.

The car ride was mostly silent, Lucas trying to change through the music playing and then being interrupted by phone calls coming through. He connected them to his in ear Bluetooth, trying to avoid you from hearing about the business projects he was dealing with. You rotated between sleeping and scrolling through social media for the car ride. Eventually as night falls, he pulls into a hotel within a small town. The two of you get out the car and he goes in ahead of you, tossing the keys to you while he susses it out.

The front desk lady had placed a pair of keys on the counter bench when you walked in the front door. You could see Lucas was running a hand through his hair – a habit he did when he was frustrated - when you approach him.

“What happened? Did you place a reservation?” You ask Lucas as he dials Jaehyun.

“The guys did, Jaehyun gave me the address for this place.”

“What’s the problem then?” You question, confused.

“Why did you book only one room and there’s only one bed?” Lucas complains into the phone. As soon as Lucas mentions one room you go blank. Sharing a bed wasn’t an issue for either of you, considering you’d had frequent movie nights with him which you ended up sleeping there instead of returning to your room. The problem is his sleeping habits. They want me to share a room with this loudass? How am I meant to sleep through his snoring? Your head was running through a billion problems and you were bought back into reality just as Lucas was about to hang up.

“Jaehyun what is this?” You ask, motioning for the phone from Lucas.

“Hey baby how are you?”

“Great. A little frustrated but you know, nothing new.” You tell him sarcastically.

“Yeah I know, sorry everything was too sudden for you.”

You sigh into the phone, knowing that you shouldn’t be taking your feelings out on him, “Yeah.”

“It’ll be over soon,” He says, comforting you through the phone.

“Okay,” you mumble, “Lucas and I are checking in now, be careful okay?”

“Yeah you too.” He replies, just as you end the call and hand the phone back to Lucas.

Lucas takes the keys on the counter and the two of you head back to the car to bring your belongings up. The room was simple. A large king sized bed and a TV in its direct line of sight. The bathroom connected near the entrance in a separate area and a little study desk and lamp. A little couch at the far end near the curtains covering the sight of a balcony.

“I’m going to shower first.” You tell him, searching for your pyjamas.

“Don’t be so slow, I’m tired.” He complains.

“Says the boy who spends 20minutes in there.” You shoot him a glare and he smiles at you blinking his eyes with innocence. “Also who packed my suitcase, where’s my pjs?”

“Doyoung and I did, don’t know if we packed pjs though..” he trails off. He pushes himself up from the couch and flips through his bag. He pulls out a plain white shirt and throws it across the room to you, “Wear this.”

“Is it clean?” You ask, holding it with the tips of your fingers. His hygiene routine isn’t classified as one of the best within the group and you feared he had given you a sweaty one.

“Obviously.” You give him a suspicious look and gather your night time things, heading into the bathroom. You strip down and step slowly into the tub, turning the water on high and letting it beat over your head as the steam begins to fog up the mirror. Closing your eyes, the heat of the water soaks into your skin and you lean against the cool tiles, exhausted at the day of events.

After you’ve washed shampoo and conditioner through your hair, you turn the tap off, squeezing out the water with your hands into the tub before stepping out. The towel hangs from the door hook and your easily able to grab it without getting the floor wet. You quickly dry yourself off and chuck on a bra, undies and Lucas’ white shirt. You wrap the towel around your hair as you step out and the temperature difference of the rooms immediately causes you to shiver.

“You can go now.” You tell Lucas, jumping straight under the covers of the bed. He hums in response, throwing you the TV remote while he disappears. You lean up against the bed board and flick through the channels, finally deciding to just turn it off instead when nothing seems interesting just as your phone beeps.

Johnny: Hey Princess are you still awake?

Y/N: Yeah, how is everyone?

Johnny: Everyone’s okay, there’s a training session going on at the moment so they’re all a bit busy

Y/N: Ahh okay.

Your debating whether you should ask about Taeyong, regretting yelling at him earlier and knowing he was only trying to keep you safe.

Y/N: Is Taeyong mad at me?

Johnny: He’s not mad, just a little stressed is all.

Johnny: Don’t worry about it.

Y/N: Okay

Johnny: Go to sleep now, it’s getting late, you and Lucas still have to keep driving tomorrow.

Y/N: I will, goodnight.

Johnny: Night <3.

Just as you shut your bedside light, Lucas walks out the bathroom shirtless, ruffling his hair with the towel and eyes glued to his phone.

“You’re not sleeping on the couch?” He asks, glancing over at you.

“Me?” You question.

“Well I’m too tall to fit and besides, I’ve been driving all day and I’ll be driving all day tomorrow.” He states, pulling the sheets down on the other side.

“Do you know how many bedbugs are on that couch?” You ask before answering it yourself, “too many.”

“Just don’t kick me throughout the night like last time.” He warns you, flipping over to his side.

“Wow you’re so terrifying.” You mumble, crawling more towards your side of the bed. “Don’t snore like your Santa Claus okay?” You remind him.

Lucas obviously ignored your warning as he snores throughout the night. You let out a groan as you sit up and push him over, tossing him more towards his side of the bed. He stops snoring momentarily and then it starts again after a few minutes of peaceful silence. Are you kidding me. You do your best to just ignore him and fold the pillow against your ear, making the sound as quiet as possible. Your phone rings just as you feel like you’re finally falling into sleep and you cry in frustration, rolling over to reach it and pick up, not looking at the caller ID.

“Hey baby, how have you been?” The deeper voice asks.

“Sorry, do I know you?” You mumble, still asleep in your state.

“Ouch, that hurts, how could you say that to your lover.”

You open your eyes, squinting at the light of the unknown number on your phone screen. “Sorry I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

“Do I really? I swear this was the number for Miss Y/N, the beautiful lady who happens to be living with one of the desired Mafia gangs.” You stayed silent through the phone, immediately sitting up, obviously this guy knew who you were and your relation to the boys. You glance at Lucas whose still asleep and your feet search for your slippers. Quietly you tip toe out to the hallway, leaving a gap in the door behind you. “If I’ve still got the wrong number feel free to hang up, I’ll continue chatting with the so notorious leader who happens to be knocked unconscious.”

“WAIT!” You whisper into the phone,

“Hm?”

“Wh-what do you want?” You hesitatingly ask.

“That’s what I thought.” He laughs. “Now I know you aren’t alone baby, so is anyone listening to us?”

“No.”

“Good girl.” He hums before continuing “I want you to come home.”

“What?”

“Come home, alone.” He says, “and remember to keep this a secret, or it might be bad for the present I have for you. I’ll be waiting.”

321 notes · View notes

what-if-nct · 4 years ago

Note

Hi so shitty Catholic school anon is back! But this time it’s with weird things male teachers have said/done or things said about male teachers. TW: self harm, anorexia, sexism, racism, slavery, pedophilia, gender stereotypes.

So recently we had a lesson on self harm and there was one part where we had to say if a certain thing was true or not. So for example if self harm is attention seeking or if it mainly effects certain groups of people. One of the things was “self harm improves a person’s self confidence” and a male teacher said it did and that it is also attention seeking. He said that many people do it for attention and to make them selves look better. He then went on to talk about anorexia and said that lots of ballerinas have anorexia and “that is why they are so pretty” and also said that girls that don’t have anorexia or aren’t skinny are typically less attractive. Which is kinda really f-ing creepy and a horrible thing to say to anyone, especially a room with about 30 females in or 30 people in with female bodies. It’s creepy and disgusting. But I think he is getting fired because people walked out and were made to write statements about it which is a similar thing to what happened with another teacher that got fired.

So basically, we had a substitute teacher for a lesson in Geography about Mumbai. He started off talking about Mumbai but was saying very stereotypical things. We hadn’t actually properly started the lesson though because he didn’t give us the work or start talking about the parts of Mumbai which we were supposed to be talking about. He then somehow got to racism and the BLM movement. He said that he did not understand why it was black lives matter and not all lives matter. We tried to explain that all lives do matter but we need to focus on black people and what they had experienced. But he went on to say that white racism and white slavery exists too and that “it’s just as bad”. In the front row there was a person who is black and he constantly used them as an example. I was sitting next to them and the teacher would constantly point to them or go up in their face. The person who is black tried to give an example of racism that they face and he said that the same things happen to him too. They said that police officers often came up to them, assuming that they were criminal or a bad person just because they are black. The teacher then said that he had only once before had a police officer come up to him and it was because he had a red jacket and that a criminal who they saw on camera had a similar jacket. The person who is black was stopped by cops multiple times because of just their skin colour. The teacher who is white was stopped by cops once because they had a similar jacket to someone. And then when people said that worse/more things have happened to black people just because they are black than white people he started talking about the battle of Hastings. He tried to compare a fight (that from my knowledge doesn’t have anything to do with racism) that happened in a few hours a thousand years ago to all the horrible things that have happened to black peoples over centuries and still today. People had tried to get him to stop and to teach the actual lesson but he refused. A teacher next door came in and asked us if we were okay and what we were doing. Everyone in the class said that we weren’t okay and that we weren’t doing what we were supposed to but the substitute teacher said that we were discussing transport in Mumbai and that we had been doing that all lesson. And when he left we started actually doing the work but he soon started talking about white slavery and then tried to make it better by saying that the Conservative party is much better than the Labour Party. There was no need for him to say any of that and no need for him to force his opinions into us. Luckily, he was fired.

The next thing I don’t remember well since I never actually was taught by this teacher and it happened in my first year at the school. Basically a teacher had sex with either a year 11 or sixth former. So she would have been 15-18 years old at the time. He was also rumoured to be touching the older girls weirdly. He was soon fired.

A similar thing happens with another teacher who is currently still at the school. His downstairs often gets ‘happy’ whilst teaching and he leans over onto students often. I don’t know if this is predatory behaviour or not but it most definitely makes people uncomfortable. He is a substitute who works at the school and I’ve had him for many lessons. In one of my first lessons with him (when I was 11), he leaned over me and I could feel his stomach on my back and it soooo uncomfortable. Still, I don’t know if it an actual concern. But in my first ever lesson with him, me and my friend was annoying each other and kind of like just poking each other a lot. He could’ve just told us to stop but instead he decided to say that we were holding hands. This freaked me out cause at primary I was bullied/treated differently for the last 2-3 years for being not straight. It also started rumours that I wasn’t straight, which freaked me out more.

Next teacher~ Is still at the school and he is actually good teaching compared to the other teachers I’ve mentioned. But he’s said some weird things. Mostly some random stereotypical comments such as “women are typically more sensitive” and that “women take longer to get ready” and that “women are concerned too much about their appearance and wear too much makeup”. But in every lesson I had him, he always looked at people’s skirts. At my school there is a heavy focus on wearing skirts and that they must be below the knee and it gets mentioned at least once a day and always at assembly. Despite this many people would still roll up their skirt. Immediately when you walked into the classroom, he would look at your skirt and tell you to roll it down. When you walked past him in the corridors, he would do it too. And sometimes he complained saying that whenever he walked upstairs he was not able to look up because he would see a “girls knickers or butt or thighs” and so he had to look at the floor or walls instead. Why is he looking in that area anyway?! He shouldn’t be looking in that area at all even if their skirts are rolled down. I was never in this lesson but apparently he also started talking about how he thought abortion was bad.

Next thing is just how much the school puts an emphasis on skirts below the knee. And they say that it’s because “male teachers would feel uncomfortable”. It’s not us who should change it’s the male teachers then. Whilst doing online lessons a teacher (who is female) said that we shouldn’t have any underwear or certain clothes in the background because it would make “male teachers uncomfortable”. I understand why they don’t want us to have things like that in the background but why only talk about male teachers. At least why not say that it makes teachers in general uncomfortable or other students uncomfortable. But no it’s back to please change yourself or what you are doing because you will be treated weirdly by adult men even though you are a child and it’s their problem.

Anyway sorry about that. I kinda just wanted to rant again. Sorry if it made you feel uncomfortable. I hope you are having a good day and you aren’t near any creepy dudes. And if you are, I am very happy to bosh the creepy dudes. Bye bye~

Hi! Okay so every last one of those teachers are horrible and shouldn't be around children. Absolutely horrible. And the teacher who is putting his ya know that close to students is one hundred percent doing it on purpose and its disgusting, men know when they are visibly excited its just gross that he would even do that. And you were understandably uncomfortable, no teacher should be that close to a student. I am so sorry you were put in that situation. Really all of those teacher should be penalized. And seriously dress codes sadly aren't for the male students, but the teachers. A male teacher shouldnt be there if a minor's shoulders or legs are distracting. An adult man shouldn't be even looking up the skirts of teenage girls, you wouldn't even see anything if you weren't purposely looking, It's horrible. And why are young girls forced to change because a grown man can't control himself. I had went to a counselor's office in a kind of short skirt and she asked if I had any appropriate clothes or she couldnt send me to a male psychiatrist she'd have to find a female psychiatrist.....what the hell kind of sense does that make. If you can't trust a man with a young girl in skirt why is he even there?? Ugh it's absolutely disgusting. It really is there problem, not the young girl's fault. It's okay vent all you want, i hope you have a nice day and stay safe. If a teacher ever makes you feel uncomfortable make sure you go to a teacher you trust. Byee🌸🌸

2 notes · View notes

shannendoherty-fans · 5 years ago

Photo

People, September 9th 1991

High School Confidential

By Tom Gliatto and Michael Alexander.

Photos by Mark Sennett.

Beverly Hills, 90210 Gets Its Heat from a Dangerously Cute Cast of TV's Hottest New Stars CONFIDENTIAL MEMO: FROM: The Vice Principal TO: The Faculty, High School U.S.A. I'm sure I don't need to remind you what happened when we didn't prepare for Bart Simpson last fall. The school was flooded with rude, antieducational T-shirts. Some cows were had. Well, as a new school year gets under way, I believe we face another daunting challenge: Brace yourselves for Beverly Hills, 90210. That's the Fox drama about unworldly twin teens Brandon and Brenda Walsh (played by Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty), recent transferees from Minneapolis to the Hills of Beverly. There they struggle to assimilate into the fast-lane lifestyle of West Beverly Hills High School, where the kids come equipped with BMWs, call waiting and designer surfboards. In the process, the teens examine their emerging identities and the problems that adolescents everywhere face.

The show languished in the Nielsen ratings against Thursday powerhouse Cheers last year. But Fox had no replacement, so it stayed. While we were on summer vacation, new 90210 episodes began airing, and the show landed in the Top 20, becoming the most popular show among teenagers. To some extent, I take responsibility for having ignored 90210. I made the mistake of reading newspaper critics instead of my daughter's diary, and so I believed, as Howard Rosenberg sniffed in the Los Angeles Times, that the show was merely a "ZIP code for stereotypes and stock characters." Little did I know that this show would mesmerize teens by doing emotionally realistic shows that involved adolescent rebellion, alcoholic; parents, a breast-cancer scare and plenty of worrisome teen sex. "Most shows for adolescents," says 90210 creator Darren Star, "seem like they are written by 50-year-olds who think teenagers behave like 7-year-olds."

It also doesn't hurt that the show's male stars, Priestley and Luke Perry (who plays brooding loner Dylan McKay), are "to die for," as my daughter puts it. These two have each been receiving about 1,500 fan letters a week. So be vigilant: Surely some of these will be written by our students...during class! And I'm afraid that 90210 is only going to get bigger with our kids, if producer Aaron Spelling is to be believed. "I thought The Mod Squad and Charlie's Angels got a lot of publicity in their heyday," says Spelling, whose company produced those shows, "but it doesn't compare to this. It's crazy. We have merchandising coming out of our ears"—a complete line of T-shirts, beach towels, notebooks, etc. "And now these actors can't walk down the street!"

Or even streak through malls. You probably saw those alarming news reports about a frenzied mob of 10,000 fans that stampeded Perry when he appeared at a south Florida mall last month. "It's a little scary," says Perry. Scarier is the amount of time students will waste this fall discussing Luke. And Jason. And who is sexier. I provide some information on the two. Jason Priestley, 22, plays Brandon Walsh, a model of thoughtful level-headedness. In real life, however, the brown-haired, blue-eyed star, who started acting in commercials at age 4 and played an orphan on that very nice NBC sitcom Sister Kate, is no Oliver Twist. He likes dirt bikes, bungee jumping and is a chain-smoker (just about the whole cast puffs it up—but not on-camera). Vancouver-born Priestley likes to hang out in Las Vegas. As for his real romantic life, he was reportedly dating actress Robin (Doogie Howser, M.D.) Lively last spring, but it seems likely that now he is too busy for such dalliance;. He must be on the set 14 hours a day, five days a week. To avoid ever-present fans, Priestley says, "I look different from my character when I'm just walking around. I don't shave, I don't dress like Brandon."

On the show, 26-year-old Luke Perry (Brenda Walsh's boyfriend, Dylan) sports a leather jacket, dagger sideburns and a squint that spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Although he grew up and graduated from high school in Fredericktown, Ohio, he seems to have attended James Dean wise-guy classes. Perry, who played country-boy Ned Bates on the ABC soap Loving, entertains the 90210 cast by strutting around bare-chested making jokes. Does he have a girlfriend? "No. You know how I can get in touch with Linda Hamilton?" What kind of music does he listen to? "Tom Jones is awesome." Are he and Priestley ever mistaken for each other? "He's mistaken for me on his good days." And 90210, he says, is "the best show on television, except for Jeopardy!" We should act quickly, faculty, when we see any signs that Beverly Hills, 90210 is disrupting normal student activity.

How abnormal might things get? Consider: "It's almost like there are cults," says Brian Austin Green, 18, the North Hollywood High grad who plays the cutely dweeby David Silver. "Girls go to school the day after the show, and they actually become these characters. They say, 'Okay, today I want to be Dylan, you can be Brenda, you can be Brandon.' " Needless to say, students caught pretending to be TV characters should be brought directly to my office for detention. But you know, it might not be a bad thing if our students could show some of the good sense that the 90210ers display in coping with the pressures of fame and fortune. Jennie Garth, 19, who plays the very sexy, very blond, very snotty Kelly Taylor, is particularly admirable. The youngest of seven children, she grew up on a farm near Champaign, Ill., until her schoolteacher parents moved to Phoenix when she was 13. "Living in a small town and coming from a very tight and close family instilled a lot of standards that I need to live up to," says Garth, who just bought a home in Sherman Oaks. She also recently supplied her parents with the down payment for their new home, setting a splendid example for today's youth.

According to a tabloid that someone left in the faculty lounge, Memphis-raised Shannen Doherty, 20, a veteran of such wonderful shows as Little House: A New Beginning, is the only cast member to be accused of behaving like "a spoiled brat" on the set. But she maintains she is no such thing. "I think everybody gets in a bad mood," Shannen says. "You do not work 16-hour days and not start feeling it. But I have never thrown a tantrum. I've gotten upset on the set, but it's never been just to be a bitch. You have to stand up for yourself in this business. That was something I was told when I was 12 years old and working with Michael Landon."

As with about half the cast members, Doherty is in a relationship—in her case, a real-estate developer with whom she's exchanged commitment rings. "You really have to date a while before you decide if this is the person you want to marry," she says with Brenda-like candor. Almost sounds like the relationship could be a future 90210 plot. "The problems of young people have accelerated," says Aaron Spelling, "and so have their feelings and thoughts." The show, he says, has kept pace: Even with their Clearasil-perfect complexions and plump allowances, the students at Beverly Hills have encountered their share of problems. "We had the guts to make Luke Perry be a member of AA," says Spelling. "We had Jason, our star, drinking and driving. That's reality."

And, apparently, the adulatory fan mail often includes a sad dose of that reality. "I got a letter the other day from a girl who mentioned the show we did on parental drug abuse," says Perry in a rare moment of seriousness. "She wrote about catching her father freebasing in the basement. I get letters like that all the time, from people all over the country." Gabrielle Carteris (at age 30, she's 90210's oldest cast-kid), who plays Andrea Zuckerman, the bright student who comes from the wrong side of Rodeo Drive, remembers an encouraging close encounter in a grocery store. "One girl came up to me after we'd done the breast-cancer show," says Carteris. "She said, 'I went home with all my friends and we checked our breasts for lumps.' "

In conclusion: Maybe I didn't need to write this memo. Maybe things won't be that bad, even if every locker in every corridor has a picture of Jason, Luke, Shannen or Jennie in it. Perhaps our dear little school is more like West Beverly Hills High—at least the TV version��than I thought. That's what Ian Ziering, 27, thinks too. "The reality on the show pretty much mirrors the way life is all over, in terms of teenagers," says New Jersey—bred Ziering, who once did Fruit of the Loom underwear ads and now plays 90210's curly-headed jock, Steve Sanders. "There's a mystique about Beverly Hills. But that's not what keeps people tuning in. The show could have been Montana E-I-E-I-O." By the way, should any student pronounce his name "eee-an," correct him or her, please. It's "eye-an."

-- WHEN BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 PREMIERED last October, Highlights, the student newspaper at Beverly Hills High, ran articles mocking the school's TV counterpart, West Beverly Hills High. "They said that the show was a joke," says Jenny Brandt, 14, a sophomore at the 1,900-student school. But as the story lines improved and Jason Priestley and Luke Perry became stars, the jokes stopped, and Brandt found herself, like many of her pals, glued to the set on Thursday nights from 9 to 10 P.M. "No phone calls allowed," says Brandt. "Except during commercials." Hope Levy, a 17-year-old senior, has taken fandom a step further with her friends. "We have little handmade cards," she says, speaking from her mom's car phone. "They say you're a member of Club 90210." While some kids think the show treats them as snobby stereotypes, most agree with sophomore Jordan Rynes when he says, "It's like a soap opera for teens. The shows dealing with drinking and drugs are the most real—adults don't realize how accurate it is."

20 notes · View notes

tabloidtoc · 4 years ago

Text

National Examiner, March 29

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: The Jayne Mansfield only her daughter Mariska Hargitay knew

Page 2: They're Aging Like Fine Wine -- celebs reflect on the wonders of getting older -- Candice Bergen, Anthony Hopkins, Halle Berry, Diane Keaton, Jennifer Lopez, Sandra Bullock, Bette Davis, Reese Witherspoon, Sally Field

Page 3: Helen Mirren, Jamie Lee Curtis, Madonna, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Caine, Jennifer Aniston, Goldie Hawn, Diane Lane

Page 4: Warren Beatty's roles and costumes

Page 6: Since her 2016 split from Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie has had to keep calm and carry on with six growing kids to think about and she admits the past few years have been pretty hard and she's been focusing on healing her family -- the six kids she shares with Brad, who range in age from 12 to 19, have been looking out for her too -- the 45-year-old is looking forward to her 50s and she feels that she's going to hit her stride in her 50s

Page 7: Canine Cuisine -- simple home-cooked fare for Fido

Page 9: Reach for at-home antibiotics

Page 10: When a Texas grocery store lost power during the devastating recent storm, they did something unimaginably generous -- they allowed all the customers to leave with whatever was in the shopping carts without paying for anything -- the shoppers at an H-E-B supermarket in Leander didn't even have to cough up a dime as they proceeded through the checkout lanes, even if they had hundreds of dollars' worth of food and supplies weighing down their wagons

Page 11: Your Health -- crying is healthy

* If you suffer from insomnia, try wearing socks to bed

Page 12: Hollywood Cemetery Shockers -- Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Whitney Houston, John Wayne

Page 13: James Brown, Michael Todd, Princess Diana, Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland, Steve Irwin

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's Top Psychic Healer -- the secret of life is so simple and attainable -- Tony predicts movie and TV star Robin Wright's move to being a director will be very successful and there will be many more films to come

Page 15: A Florida man just received the biggest surprise of his long life at the party to celebrate his 100th birthday -- someone had found and returned his wedding ring that he lost five years earlier while shopping at an Aldi's in Minnesota

Page 16: Kathie Lee Gifford: It's never too late to go after your dreams

Page 18: Happy Days mom Marion Ross is 92 now, but she still holds a memory about the legendary Cary Grant close to her heart -- back in 1959, when she was married to Freeman Meskimen, the actress was working on a film with the handsome star when she discovered she might be pregnant but she wasn't absolutely sure and so she didn't share her suspicions with anyone until one day, when a scene called for her to do something she wasn't sure a possibly pregnant woman should be doing, she revealed her secret to Cary Grant -- he sat down next to her, put his arm around her and said sweetly You're pregnant! and when she looked up at him, he had tears in his eyes; he was so excited for her and they had this marvelous moment together -- Marion said her husband was less than thrilled when her pregnancy was confirmed and they divorced a few years later

Page 19: An Indiana middle-school principal made the cut when he helped a kid out of a hairy situation -- when an eighth-grader at Stonybrook in Warren Township confided in Jason Smith he couldn't take his hat off because he was embarrassed about his uneven haircut, Jason offered to really straighten things out if he promised to return to class -- Jason has been cutting hair most of his life and he played college basketball and cut his teammates' hair before games, and he's been cutting his son's hair for 17 years and he had professional clippers and edgers at home, so he said if he went home and got his clippers and lined the student up, would he go back to class? and the student said yes, so Jason gave the kid a buzz and the happy student went back to class -- Jason says he knows a bad haircut may sound like a small thing, but to a boy that age, grappling with peer pressure, a bad 'do is a real don't

Page 20: Cover Story -- My mom Jayne Mansfield -- Mariska Hargitay reveals bombshell truths about the beloved sex symbol

Page 22: Use your noodle -- pool toy swims to the rescue

Page 24: Back when Calvin Tyler was in college in the early 1960s, he had such a hard time scraping together tuition money that he had to drop out before finishing his senior year and take a job as a UPS driver -- fast-forward a few decades: Calvin has just donated $20 million to Morgan State University in Baltimore, his alma mater

Page 25: A wounded veteran in Temecula, California, got the surprise of his life when he received a mortgage-free home courtesy of the Gary Sinise Foundation -- Josue Barron, who had joined the Marines at age 17, lost both his left leg and his left eye while serving in Afghanistan in 2010

Page 26: Dreamy hunk Patrick Swayze fell for one of his co-stars while filming the romantic movie Ghost, but the object of his affection wasn't on-screen love Demi Moore; it was Whoopi Goldberg

Page 28: 20 things you didn't know about James Bond actor Daniel Craig

Page 30: Spunky Hayley Arceneaux won a battle with bone cancer when she was 10 years old, and grew up to become a physician assistant in child oncology at St. Jude's Children's Hospital, where she was treated and if that wasn't enough, Hayley is going to blast off on a space flight -- the super survivor, who's now 29, was selected by the St. Jude's staff from hundreds of other employees to represent the famous hospital on the first-ever civilian spaceflight, arranged by the company SpaceX, to take place at the closing of 2021

Page 40: It's crystal clear -- the healing starts here -- crystals are very effective when it comes to healing, especially with one's emotion and they have special energies in different ways

Page 42: How to lower your COVID risk -- with new variants of the virus documented in the U.S., it's important to stay vigilant

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Rebecca Holden of Knight Rider (picture), Lou Diamond Phillips of Prodigal Son in NYC (picture), Katharine McPhee admitted she was concerned with what people would think early on during her romance with 71-year-old David Foster, the daughter of John Travolta and Kelly Preston named Ella Blue Travolta is following in the footsteps of her actor parents by starring in Get Lost which is a modern-day retelling of Alice in Wonderland, Sarah Silverman recently apologized for mocking Paris Hilton at the 2007 MTV Awards, Nicolas Cage has tied the knot for the fifth time to Riko Shibata, Metallica have donated $75,000 to Feeding America via their All Within My Hands nonprofit and the funds are earmarked to aid folks in Texas who were affected by deadly winter storms

Page 45: Orlando Bloom running on the beach while vacationing in Hawaii (picture), Antonio Banderas (picture), Tom Jones takes the stage in the U.K. (picture), Robin Roberts near ABC's NYC studio (picture), Aaron Carter and fiancee Melanie Martin say they have a baby on the way nearly 10 months after she'd suffered a miscarriage, Dustin Diamond was never married to his galpal Jennifer Misner according to his death certificate, Liam Neeson attended a NYC screening of his new movie to thank viewers for coming to the theater on the first day Big Apple cinemas reopened after being shuttered by COVID-19 last year

Page 46: A single mom of three was struggling to do everything on her own, but there was one problem she lacked the skills and money to handle -- her house in Sudbury, Massachusetts was falling apart and that's when some kindly Good Samaritans stepped in with their toolbelts and performed the extensive home repairs she need at no charge

Page 47: Parenting Advice From the Stars -- Reese Witherspoon, Busy Philipps, Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner

8 notes · View notes

icecoldflames · 5 years ago

Text

Gold Star (Sanders Sides)

Human AU

Romantic Analogical

Background Romantic Royality

***

Virgil’s eyes flashed open. His alarm went off. The sun streamed in through his window. It’s going to be a good day today, he thought to himself as he heaved himself out of bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

He padded over to his closet and opened it, eyeing his clothes. Virgil didn’t often care about his outfit. Usually, he just wore his usual hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. Nothing too loud. But today he wanted to try something new.

Virgil’s eyes glanced over to his fancy clothes. He ran his hand over his purple tie but then immediately dropped it. No, that wasn’t the look he was going for.

He eventually settled on a purple plaid shirt with a black tee underneath along with a pair of jeans. Good, he thought to himself as he looked in the mirror. Something different but not too different.

Forty five minutes later, he climbed aboard the bus and sat down next to his friend, Roman, who looked him up and down appreciatively. “I see you’ve upped your style today. What’s new?”

Virgil shrugged, a grin creeping up on his face. “Oh, nothing.”

Realization dawned on Roman’s face. His eyes widened. “You’re getting your Math test and English essay back today, aren’t you?”

Virgil nodded in delight and his heart fluttered.

“I swear, Virgil,” Roman began, “if you get a higher mark than Logan, please don’t shove it in his face and if he gets the higher mark, don’t start a fight. I’m begging of you.”

“I can’t promise anything.” Virgil said, dropping the smile and putting on an annoyed expression. “Logan just gets on my nerves so much. Who does he think he is?!” He griped.

Roman sighed and crossed his arms. “Alright but I’m not going to pull you out from a fight again.”

The bus came to a halt and some other kids boarded the bus.

“Don’t worry, Ro. That was forever ago.” When I did hate Logan, he added in silently. “Besides, he started it.” That wasn’t true but Roman didn’t know that.

Roman huffed. “I think I know what it feels like to be an exasperated mom…”

When the bus finally arrived at the high school, Virgil told Roman he’d meet him at his locker in a bit.

Virgil’s locker was right next to Logan’s. Virgil knew Logan arrived at school at promptly 7:30 and stayed in the library until five minutes before the bell where he would head to his locker to pick up his books for first period.

As Virgil neared his locker, a pair of feet caught up to him and began to match his pace. “Virgil.” Logan said with a curt nod. He had a book under his arm: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Virgil’s heart fluttered. Logan was wearing his usual black-collared button up with a blue tie. Most of the other kids thought he was a bit excessive with his tie but Virgil really liked it. It suited him really well. Virgil put a disinterested look on his face along with his signature scowl. “Logan.” He was early—it was ten minutes before the bell, not five.

They both arrived at their lockers at the same time but Logan was the first to unlock it and swing his open.

Out of his peripheral view, Virgil watched as Logan carefully placed his book on the top shelf before methodically grabbing his Math textbook and binder. He put his pencil case and book on top of that.

Virgil began unpacking his bookbag which didn’t have much in it—just some random stuff like gum and his Chemistry homework. Logan took Biology.

Virgil, just slightly, wished he had chosen Biology even though he was terrible at remembering terms and parts of a cell. Just seeing Logan again for another hour would have made up for his cruddy mark in that class. Then again, if he took Bio, he would lose a lot more in their competition.

Their competition started last year when Virgil moved here. He and Logan were put in the same Math class and the teacher would give out a sticker to the top grade every test or assignment.

Roman told him that, last year, he had heard that Logan had received the gold star every single time. For the entire year.

Virgil had called the whole thing stupid when Roman explained. “What are we?” He had asked Roman with a scoff. “Kindergarteners? A gold sticker?” The whole thing had sounded absurd.

Virgil liked math. It was weird, but he found doing equations were therapeutic. That first unit, Logan had gotten the two gold stars. Virgil hadn’t minded. Again, gold stars were childish in his books.

But then the second math unit was trigonometry. And Virgil loved any type of math that had to do with shapes. And, that first assignment he had scored a 100% and gotten the gold sticker. He experienced great joy that class feeling Logan’s fiery stare boring holes into him.

Virgil had turned to Logan with triumph gleaming in his eyes. “Feeling glum there, Logan?” He had goaded. He hadn’t gotten an answer.

Virgil received the gold star on the trig test too. A 97% while Logan had gotten a 95%. He found that he enjoyed that golden star that the teacher had probably bought at a dollar store.

The next unit was algebra and Virgil was just half percent away from Logan’s 99% and gold star. Logan had looked so triumphant as he flashed the gold sticker in Virgil’s direction. He made a dramatic frown as Virgil scowled in the corner.

And so it went on like that for the rest of the year: Logan and Virgil trying to out-do each other and receive the gold star.

At one point, maybe during the quadratic unit, it had gotten so intense that Virgil almost started a physical fight with Logan after the tests came back and Logan had received the gold sticker. The teacher stopped giving them out after that.

But that didn’t stop anything. Both Logan and Virgil were far too gone to let that stop anything. While the gold sticker was no longer there, their percentage still was.

That summer, Virgil got a job at a LGBTQ+ youth camp with Roman as counsellors. And, lo and behold, Logan had gotten a job there too as a lifeguard.

That was when something changed between them. And not because Virgil often saw Logan shirtless up on that lifeguard chair or walking out of the shower.

It was nighttime when all of the campers were gone to sleep. Or, at least, they thought.

Logan and Virgil had been paired up to do one last sweep of the main campground. It was, understandably, tense until they heard a child’s whimpering off in the distance.

It was terrifying. It had been dark, the paths in the woods filled with tree roots, and the only flashlight they had had run out of batteries. So they were looking for a child in the woods using only the moonlight. Thank goodness it had been a full moon.

Once they found the child (he had gone off to pee in the woods because all of the other stalls had been filled and apparently he really had had to go. He had gotten lost once he had finished), Logan and Virgil had been inches away from each other outside of the boy’s bunkhouse. Virgil had been sure that they were about to kiss but then Patton, another counsellor, had poked his head out of the bunkhouse, asking if they were alright.

They didn’t bring that moment up again.

This year, Virgil shared two classes with Logan: Math and English. They didn’t have the gold star teacher. The competition was still there, maybe with even more vigor, but something else was behind their jabs at one another.

Virgil prayed that Logan felt it too because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he found that Logan didn’t harbour the same feelings as he did.

He grabbed his math books and stuff and then left to go find Roman before the warning bell rang. “Good luck,” he sneered as he passed Logan.

“You’re going to need it,” Logan retorted, not even glancing up at Virgil.

“Please tell me you’re feeling calm,” Roman said as he saw Virgil.

Virgil took in a dramatic breath and breathed out loudly. “I’m fine.” He said with a roll of his eyes. “So, how was last night?” He asked, changing the subject. Patton and Roman had gotten together recently. They had met at camp last summer but that was when their friendship was formed. Their romantic relationship had started just a couple of days ago.

Roman didn’t seem to notice the subject change. “Oh, it was amazing. To be honest,” he said in a whisper, grinning, his face flushed pink, “I could hardly concentrate on the movie…we were holding hands and his laugh whenever there was a joke was just so cute. I can’t wait until you get a boyfriend and then we can all go on double dates!”

Virgil thought about Logan and just smiled. “That would be so fun.”

***

When Virgil made his way into Math after the bell rang, Logan was already sitting in his assigned seat. Virgil found his own, across from Logan and against the wall.

Logan didn’t even acknowledge Virgil as he sat down, just kept reading his book. Every so often he would push up his glasses when they slipped too far down his nose.

As soon the teacher walked in the two of them immediately straightened up and Logan put away his book with a bookmark filled with old gold stars. Probably just to spite Virgil.

But that was okay. Virgil had his phone case decorated with his gold stars.

When the last student trickled in and the bell rang again the teacher began passing back the tests they had done last week.

It hadn’t been a difficult test but it hadn't been necessarily easy either. The only thing Virgil was worried about was that last word problem where he wasn’t sure if he had plugged in the numbers right.

Logan’s test was passed back first. Virgil stretched his neck and straightened his spine even more. 99%. Logan grinned over at Virgil, his eyes twinkling. ‘Beat that,’ he mouthed.

Virgil pursed his lips. He had to get a 100 if he was going to win. Then again, he still had the English essay later on in the day so even if he didn’t get a 100% he might beat Logan with the essay.

The teacher walked over to Virgil and he held his breath as she placed the test on his desk. 100%. Yes.

He didn’t even bother waiting for Logan to crane his neck at an awkward angle. He pulled up the side of his test with the mark on it and gave him the middle finger with his free hand. Virgil grinned over at him.

Logan scowled.

“Got a little overconfident there, didn’t you Logan?” Virgil said, rubbing it in. His cheeks hurt from so much grinning.

Calm settled on Logan’s face. He pushed up his glasses, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his chair. “We still got one more today, Virgil. Don’t get too cocky. I do write a sublime essay.”

Virgil chuckled. “We’ll see about that.”

***

Their research essays counted for quite a bit of their English mark. It could be on anything they wanted but they had to take a side. Of course, it had to be appropriate for school. They had started preparing for it almost a month ago and now it was the moment of truth.

Virgil had decided to write his research essay on how cellphones have a positive impact on youths (maybe not always positive but they weren’t 100% bad). Logan must have seen Virgil’s topic somehow although he couldn’t figure out how because Logan’s topic was on how cellphones have a negative impact on youths.

Virgil wasn’t even sure that Logan believed that.

Their English teacher was known to be a hard marker so, when Virgil got his essay back and saw the 85 he mentally fistbumped the air. He was going to win this. He lifted his paper so Logan could see his mark behind him.

When the teacher gave back Logan’s essay Virgil spun in his chair and snapped his head down to look at Logan’s mark: 89. Logan smiled triumphantly up at Virgil. “Look who’s overconfident now.”

“Draw,” Virgil sniffed. He had won Math, Logan English. It would have been nice to win both but one was better than none.

Logan smiled as he put his test in his binder smugly. “Sure.”

Virgil rolled his eyes and turned back around to face the front.

***

When the last bell rang Virgil saw Logan already at his locker, piling in books into his blue bookbag.

Virgil pursed his lips as he neared his locker and Logan. He opened his locker and began packing his backpack as well. “Hey,” he finally said, swallowing his pride. “Can I read your essay?”

Logan glanced up at him with slightly narrowed eyes. Suspicious eyes. “Why?”

Virgil shrugged. “I just want to see what arguments you used. Do you even believe that cellphones have a negative effect on youths or did you just choose that because I was doing the opposite?”

Logan grinned but didn’t say anything. He just grabbed his essay and handed it over to him.

“Well?” Virgil prompted. He wanted to know how Logan figured out his topic. It wasn’t like they shared their topics before writing them.

“Oh, I’m pretty neutral on the debate on cell phones. I could have gone either way, to be honest. But I overheard you talking to Roman about your topic outside of the library and,” he shrugged and gave a toothy smile that made Virgil remember that night at camp, “I just thought it would be fun to do the opposite argument that you were doing.”

Virgil had no recollection of speaking to Roman about his topic but it sounded about right. But then a memory resurfaced and he scrunched up his nose. “Hey, no. I told Roman about my topic when we stayed behind to help Ms. Morrison organize her textbooks to get volunteer hours!”

Logan flushed a deep pink and Virgil’s stomach did a little flip.

“I don’t think so,” Logan said quickly, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure I was in the library.”

But the memory was becoming clearer now. Virgil’s eyes widened in realization. “You were spying on us!” He breathed.

“No—”

“—Yes,” Virgil cut Logan off, nodding his head vigorously. “Or you overheard us…whatever. No difference.”

The crowds around the hallway were beginning to thin out. Logan sighed. “Okay, fine. I was just running back into school because I forgot my book and I overheard you in Ms. Morrison’s class.” His face was still pink as he rubbed the back of his neck.

Virgil grinned as he shut his locker. “Okay.”

“It’s true!” Logan exclaimed hotly, closing his own locker and swinging his backpack onto his back.

Virgil began to walk to the bus line. Roman was probably wondering where he was.

He knew Logan walked home so he was surprised to hear his footsteps trailing behind him. “Hey, listen. I got something for you.” Virgil was so used to their witty banter that he was caught off guard when he heard how genuine Logan’s voice was.

Virgil spun around in surprise and waited for Logan to catch up. “What? Really?” He raised his eyebrows.

“It’s-it’s nothing really,” Logan fumbled, digging around in his jean pocket. “It’s just a little trinket I saw at the store and thought…” he shrugged and pulled out a gold star keychain.

For a long moment, Virgil stared at it. “But I tallied it up last week, overall you’ve won!” He had gone through all of his old tests and assignments, curious to see who was in the lead. Logan had been ahead by two tests. “I mean,” Virgil amended, “thank you, but why?” Why would Logan give him a gold star keychain if he wasn’t winning?

Logan ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Because I think you’re intelligent.” He pushed up his glasses and coughed awkwardly. “And I really like you.”

Virgil froze but then hesitantly took the keychain from Logan’s hand. He looked at it closely before carefully clasping it onto his bookbag. “Truce?” He asked, holding out his hand.

Logan smiled and took Virgil’s hand. “Truce,” he repeated. He cocked his head to the side. “So does this mean you like me too?”

Virgil grinned. “What do you think?” He laughed and intertwined his fingers with Logan’s. By now, the entire hallway was empty and Virgil was sure that the busses had already left.

They walked down the hall hand in hand.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #analogical #royality #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders

125 notes · View notes

queenshelby · 4 years ago

Text

The Law Student (Part One)

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: Age Gap

Words: 1,437

Notes: In this fic, Cillian is about 20 and the Reader is about 30. It plays in early 1996. Part One is written from the Reader’s POV, whereas Part Two will be written from Cillian’s POV.

Today was your first day at the University of Cork as a lecturer and you were excited and nervous all at the same time.

Following your law and teaching degree, you commenced working at a local law firm but, when the university contacted you, they made you an offer too good to refuse.

Despite the fact that you hadn’t lectured at a university before, you were confident with your skills. The only problem was that, your ex James, was working at the same university.

He was a professor in science and you knew that you wouldn’t cross paths frequently. With that in mind, you took up the position nonetheless.

James and you had been married for five years. You were high school sweethearts and only recently decided to end it.

Living in Ireland meant that the process of divorce took about five years at the time which meant that, at least in some aspects, you were stuck with him.

Luckily for you however, you inherited a nice apartment in the city of Cork when your grandparents passed away and that is where you decided to live.

Having recently turned 30, it wasn’t so bad being single either. You didn’t have children. Your career always came first but little did you know that your life and career was about to end up in even more turmoil than it already was.

***

‘Good Morning Everyone. My name is Y/N Y/LN, but please call me Y/N because otherwise you will make feel rather old’ you said, introducing yourself to your class which consisted of 24 students between the ages of 18 and 22 on average.

The first year, these students would predominantly spend with you as you were in charge of the introductory law subjects at the Cork School of Law and you were very well aware of the fact that about thirty precent of your students would drop out by the second year.

Law clearly wasn’t for everyone and you tried as hard as possible to make it interesting for your students.

‘I find it helpful to get to know my students because, that way, I can relate to you all and ensure that you get the best out of my class. Everyone learns at a different pace and through different channels. For this reason, I have prepared a small questionnaire for you all which I would like you to complete. It incorporates the readings of pages 12 to 67 of your text book which you should have read by now’ you explained and you soon realised that there was a group of young men in the second row from the front that didn’t pay much attention to what you were saying. Instead, they were looking at a music magazine and happily discussed the context of such magazine instead of the reading material they were given.

Without being noticed, you walked over towards the group of three young men and ensured that, like everyone else, they listened to you.

‘Unless you are reading up about Mick Jaggaer’s recent legal scandal, I don’t think this is relevant’ you said harshly, holding out your hand and requiring the young man in front of you to hand you the magazine.

‘Fuck, I am sorry mam’ he said, while looking up at you with the most piercing blue eyes you have ever seen. His look was genuine and apologetic you thought or, perhaps, he was just a great actor and pretended to feel sorry for not paying attention to your class.

‘Can I have this please?’ you asked as he had no intention of handing you the magazine that he was reading.

‘No’ he then responded somewhat bluntly and you looked at him, raising your eyebrows.

‘I mean, yes, provided that I get it back after class’ he then said with a cocky smile and you nodded reluctantly.

‘Of course. Now, here is the questionnaire. Did you do your readings for week one?’ you asked.

‘What reading?’ the young man then said while smiling at you and, just as he did, you opened your mouth, ready to respond.

‘I am just fucking with you. I did do my reading’ he winked and you nodded again, put down the questionnaire and turned around.

‘Cocky little shit’ you whispered to yourself and, when you returned to your desk, you looked at your watch and gave everyone twenty minutes to complete the questionnaire.

***

After the twenty minutes were up, a break was scheduled for your class and you asked everyone to put their name on their papers and hand them in.

One by one walked by your desk and gave you their papers without saying a word until there he was again, the somewhat cocky but yet beautiful looking young man.

‘Here you go. Now can I have my magazine back please’ he said while looking at you. It was almost like he was staring at you and he didn’t even bother to hide it.

‘Sure, there you go’ you said as you handed him his magazine and took the questionnaire out of his hands, which you placed aside.

‘Cillian Murphy’ it read on the right-hand side and you couldn’t help but look him up on your student data base during your break.

He had recently turned 20 and deferred the start of his degree after spending some time in London, working as a musician.

Reading that about him made you chuckle. It made sense to you and you knew right away that he would be one of the students who would not make it into their second year.

He had graduated from a catholic high school in Cork and was one of the top students in class but his best subjects were creative in nature, such as Literature, English, Arts, Music and even Theatre.

He wasn’t interested in law, you knew as much already and, when you read his questionnaire during your lunch break, you couldn’t help but chuckle.

It was poetic and he liked to side with the most controversial opinions of the judges in the reading materials rather than with those that were most sensible or accepted by the majority.

‘May I have a word with you after class Cillian?’ you asked politely and with great discretion when your students returned an hour later and, luckily for you he was one of the first students who walked back into the lecture room.

‘Of course’ he said, winking at you and making you feel uncomfortable once again. You couldn’t believe this. Was he actually trying to flirt with you? Surely not.

But then, during class, you realised that this may not be what he had intended. His participation during the second part of the day was impeccable, even though he tried to argue with you on the interpretation of some of the precedents you cited.

He was smart, he had a point and, unlike earlier that day, he tried to learn. You couldn’t quite read him and every time he put his hand up to say something, you worried.

He asked some questions you didn’t have answer to and, from thinking that he was trying to flirt with you, you quickly worried that he was trying to make your life difficult instead.

***

‘So, what did you want to see me about?’ Cillian asked after he stayed back following class just as you had requested.

‘I read the answers on your questionnaire and I am a little confused’ you explained politely.

‘You read my answers already? Did you read the other students’ answers too?’ Cillian asked with a grin on his face.

‘No, just yours’ you said shyly, causing Cillian to smirk.

‘Just mine?’ he asked with a cocky smile. ‘Did I leave an impression on you?’ he then asked, causing your chin to drop.

‘Please, just focus on the task Cillian’ you said, wanting him to snap out of what he was doing.

‘Sure’ Cillian said, still grinning. ‘So tell me then, what did I do wrong?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, I am just not sure how poetry works into these cases you read. You seem to have a creative mind but I am not sure if that will be helpful in this subject. Now, I wont grade these questionnaires, but I am suggesting that you just focus on the case law as opposed to comparing the reading material to some, say, rather controversial theatre plays’ you explained.

‘Do you like theatre?’ he then asked out of the blue, ignoring what you had just told him.

‘I do love theatre and this is a good read but that’s not the point’ you said.

Tag List:

@cutebutpsychoe (cannot tag)

@fastfan

@kpopgirlbtssvt

@cdej6 (cannot tag)

@kathrinemelissa (cannot tag)

@landlockedmermaid77

@crazymar15

@m3th-kate (cannot tag)

@damedomino

@lauren-raines-x

@miss-bunny19

@halleisheree (cannot tag)

@skinny-bitch-juice

@odorinana

@cloudofdisney

@lexiwoods (cannot tag)

@weepingstudentfishhorse

@allexiiisss (cannot tag)

@geminiwolves

@letsstarsfalling

@ysmmsy

@chlorrox

@tommyshelbypb

@chocolatehalo

@music-lover911

@desperate-and-broken

@magnetosleftear69 (cannot tag)

@mysticaldeanvoidhorse (cannot tag)

@peaky-cillian

@lelestrangerandunusualdeetz

@december16-1991 (cannot tag)

@captivatedbycillianmurphy

@romanogersendgame

@randomfangirl2718

@dorothea-hwldr (cannot tag)

@missymurphy1985

@peakyscillian

@lilymurphy03

@deefigs

@theflamecrystal

@livinginfantaxy

@rosey1981

@elenvampire21 (cannot tag)

@hanster1998

@mariapaiva13 (cannot tag)

@fairypitou

@zozeebo

@kasaikawa

@littleweirdoalien

@sad-huffle-nerd

@theflamecrystal

@peakymalfoyscullymulder (cannot tag)

@0ghostwriter0

@stylescanbeatmyback

@1-800-peakyblinders

@datewithgianni

@momoneymolife

@mcntsee

@janelongxox

@basiclassy

@being-worthy

@chaotic-bean-of-smolness

@margoo0

@vhscillian

@littleweirdalien (cannot tag)

@crazymar15

@im-constantly-fangirling

@namelesslosers

@littlewhiterose

@ttzamara

@cilleveryone

@peaky-cillian

@severewobblerlightdragon

@dolllol2405

@pkab

@babaohhhriley

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy smut #Cillian Murphy x Reader #cillian murphy imagine #cillian murphy x y/n #cillian murphy x you

118 notes · View notes

svtxsoju · 5 years ago

Text

01. crush that hangover! | dear miss soju

ღ Synopsis: College is hard. Love is even harder. Good thing the students of Mansae University can write in to Miss Soju, the campus’ very own romance advice columnist! The only problem is she’s never been in a relationship. Ever. There’s no telling what kind of chaos she may cause in the love lives of several of MU’s most eligible bachelors. Too bad no one knows who she really is! ღ Characters/Pairings: college AU! Seventeen & OC’s, Pairings TBA! ღ Genre: Romantic Comedy, Slice of Life ღ Warning(s): Mentions of alcohol, underage drinking, mentions of sex, language, bad jokes ღ Word Count: 5.0k words ღ Binu’s Note: ever stare at a selfie so long that it looks weird? ya that’s this chapter for me. there were just so many elements that i wanted to get right, but i kept changing things and now i can’t look at it anymore :c i’ll properly proofread it later, but for now enjoy!! i have some other content ima post later so i’m p excited for that hehehe anyway ya happy friday!!!

《 ⊛ Author’s Note & Credits ⊛ Disclaimer ⊛ Masterlist ⊛ 》

《 Previous ⊛ Next 》

Monday, September 2, 2019 9:05AM

This was not how Joohyun had imagined her first day at The Front. Whenever she described this moment to Jihoon, she was very clear about the way she would walk in so confidently that the senior writers would wonder why they forgot to email her an invite to their 8:30 meeting. Jihoon, who relished in raining on her parade, predicted that they wouldn’t even know her name. But she had no time for his blunt realism, because she had been living as a made-up person since June and her corporate daydreams were the only things keeping her sane. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but she figured that once they saw her talent, everything would be just fine.

So it’s not difficult to imagine Joohyun’s distress when she just barely stumbled into the office this morning, nursing a mind-melting hangover.

She should have known she would be a goner when the sports section interns had challenged her to a drinking game at last night’s welcome party. Her drinking partner, a small girl interning at HR, had only made it two shots in before falling asleep on her lap. For the record, she had still made sure that she was the last intern standing (although she definitely wasn’t the same bright-eyed freshman that could chug a pitcher of soju and beer just to spite Jihoon). Looking around the office, she felt a little relieved to find that the other interns were suffering just as much as her, if their slumped positions and pained groans told her anything. So much for giving a good first impression.

Joohyun was trying her best not to look like she was two steps from an early grave when she was approached by a big woman with a laptop in her arms. She awkwardly bowed her head to greet her, but the woman’s gaze never left the screen of her Macbook. “Miss… Joonyoung?”

“Oh, that’s not--”

“You’re the new advice column intern, correct?”

“Oh. Yes, that’s me, but that’s not my--”

“I’ll show you to your desk.” Without so much as a glance, the woman turned on her heel, now typing furiously on her laptop. Joohyun followed behind glumly.

This was all Jihoon’s fault.

“So, how’s your first day going?” Jihoon asked over his bowl of ramen. He flagged down the tall waiter and ordered a bowl of rice.

“Fine,” was Joohyun’s curt answer. In truth, it was far from ideal. She had watched longingly as all the other interns were assigned with their first projects, while she was left with an empty inbox. How was she supposed to write an advice column when there was no one asking her for advice? She spent most of the morning familiarizing herself with the previous entries of The Front’s dating advice column, the most recent of which dated to the newspaper’s May issue… from 1997.

When her supervisor told her to take a lunch break, she had made a beeline to meet Jihoon at the restaurant near the cafe he worked at. Now that she was sitting in front of him though, she wasn’t quite ready to confess that her dream job was much more mundane than she expected. “Hey, wasn’t this a fried chicken shop last semester?”

“That bad, huh?” Jihoon clicked his tongue. Joohyun sighed - she didn’t know why she even tried to hide anything from him when he’s known her for 12 years. He probably knew some parts of her better than she did. “Come on Joo, don’t give up on Miss Soju so easily. It’s just because you’re a little hungover. We watched The Notebook like five times this summer! What more do you need to know about true love? Do you want me to set you up on another date with that freakishly tall dude for more hands-on experience? Ah, speak of the devil!”

“Thanks, Mingyu.” Joohyun took the bowl of rice and gave the server a sweet smile, which greatly contrasted with the glare she shot at Jihoon soon after. The server, a stunning boy with jet-black hair and tanned skin, stuck his tongue out at Jihoon. She waited until Mingyu went to the other side of the restaurant to serve a rowdy group of boys to whisper-shout at Jihoon. “Can you try not to expose my identity to the whole campus before I even get the chance to write my first ever entry?”

“Ohhh, that’s why you’re sulking. No one’s sent you a letter yet so you didn’t get to do anything today,” Jihoon said. It sometimes got annoying how he could read her like she was his worn-out copy of his favorite sports manga. She had to admit though, he did find ways to make it worth it. Like when he said, “I might actually be able to help you with that one, if you want. I can make a little shout out for Miss Soju on my stream tonight. For a small price, of course.”

“You’re streaming tonight?” The girl perked up from poking at her noodles. Over the past three years, Jihoon had built up a cult following through Woozi’s Universe, a Twitch stream where he shared music made by the underground artists on campus (including him). He only ever released new music on Mondays, so tonight would definitely have a large viewership. Joohyun immediately went into her business pose lest she show how eager she really was. “Well, what would you like in exchange, Mr. Lee?”

“I merely request that you pay for my lunch today, Ms. So,” he replied. Joohyun looked in horror at Jihoon, a petite man who ate like he was three boys going through puberty; today alone he had had an extra-large bowl of ramen, three orders of rice, and two cans of Coke.

Then, she imagined facing an empty inbox for the rest of the week. Yup, this was definitely worth it. That didn’t stop her from making a show of taking out her wallet, taking care to sigh extra loudly. She had to give Jihoon his moment to revel in his triumphs, otherwise he would get grumpy.

Jihoon cackled giddily. “Pleasure doing business with you as always, Ms. So.”

“Pretty sure my hangover is coming back.”

“Oh shit, shut up!” Jihoon suddenly yelped and ducked underneath the table.

“What the hell, Jih--”

“No, don’t say my name! He might hear you and then I’ll have to talk to him,” Jihoon whispered, jerking his head towards a bright yellow blur skipping to the back of the restaurant. “He’s one of my fans. He found out I worked at the cafe and now he keeps coming in to talk to about how sad his sex life is.”

Joohyun pursed her lips and peeked a glance over. He had joined the table of rowdy boys. “Hmm, maybe I should say hi... he seems like a potential Miss Soju reader.”

“Just pay the check already, woman!”

The new interns at The Front were not the only students sporting hangovers that day. This can only be expected of the second week back at MU. Sunday night had been the explosive finale of a full week of department welcome parties, happy reunions, and lots and lots of alcohol. Some of the incoming freshmen were convinced that Mansae University was not actually a school, but a training ground for surviving as many shots of soju as physically possible. That is until they woke up on Monday morning and still had to drag themselves to their 9AM’s, suddenly faced with the reality of what college really was: an endless cycle of perpetual hangovers and school work that’s due way too soon.

This was all good news for the new ramen shop on campus, which had been serving the hoards of hungover zombies since 10AM. Vernon, who was in great pain from the night before, had been ambushed by his roommate after his morning class. He was brought to the restaurant under the pretense of curing his woes with a bowl of warm soup and noodles. When he caught sight of a man in red waiting for them at a back table though, he immediately knew what was actually coming.

“Hello Vernonnie,” Seungcheol greeted him with a sly smile. “Care to take a seat next to me?”

“Uh, not really,” Vernon mumbled, but he sat down anyway. He scrunched his nose at his roommate as the boy slumped into the seat in front of him. “Traitor.”

“Sorry babe, Seungcheol hyung promised me free lunch. Also, you’re one to talk, after you abandoned me to fend for myself last night--! Ugh,” his roommate, Seungkwan, clutched at his head, where a rusty hammer persistently tapped away at his temple. “Hyung, why did you do this to me? My face is gonna be bloated for the rest of the week. I have an audition in two days, you know!”

“Hey, I did ask you if you were sure you wanted-- what was that you ordered? Oh yeah-- ‘the strongest drink that is legal to serve in South Korea’!” Seungcheol said, his eyes wide. As he got more defensive, he began to point his finger excessively at Seungkwan. “And what was it all for? To impress your new crush?”

“I am way too hungover to get lectured by a couple of hypocrites,” Seungkwan grumbled. “I was trying to get some inspiration, you know, a drunken spark of genius! How else am I supposed to figure out how to confess to them?”

“Okay, I wasn’t actually asking,” Seungcheol ignored Seungkwan’s offended gasp in favor of turning his attention to a fidgeting Vernon. His cherry red lips now returned to its wide grin. “I am here to discuss where our dearest Vernon went off to last night.”

“Um.” Vernon answered with a nervous smile. “I just went home early--”

“Bullshit!” Seungkwan looked absolutely scandalized. “It wasn’t enough to abandon me, so now you’re lying too? I don’t know if I can take much more of this!”

Vernon had only officially known Seungkwan for two whole weeks, but with the way the two had been inseparable since move-in day, everyone at the freshmen dorms had assumed that they had known each other for years and years. He knew that someone like Boo Seungkwan was a rare find as far as random dorm assignments went, and that not everyone was so lucky to have a roommate that reminds them to eat real food once in a while or a friend who’s willing to take care of them when they get their first real hangover. Just for that day alone, Vernon knew that Seungkwan deserved to know where he went. Plus he shared a room with him, so it’s not like he could hide anything anyway.

Seungcheol shook his head and slung an arm around Vernon’s shoulder. His grip wasn’t tight but firm enough that Vernon knew he was trapped there until he confessed the truth. “Look, I don’t need any details! I just wanted to make sure that you’re staying safe and all that junk. Also, I would like to know what base you got to.” He erupted into a fit of giggles, but soon cleared his throat to return to his investigation. “Really though, tell us what happened.”

It wasn’t like Vernon didn’t want to tell Seungcheol either. Vernon’s and Seungcheol’s families had known each other since the two boys were in middle and high school, and when he found out that Seungcheol would be a senior at Mansae University that year, he felt some of his nerves ease up about moving out. Seungcheol had always been like an older brother to him, and was always there when he needed his help in high school. He trusted him!

That’s probably why he subconsciously blamed Seungcheol for the pain he was going through at the moment. When the upperclassman had offered to sneak Vernon and Seungkwan into a party at the karaoke bar that he bartended at, the two freshmen all too eagerly accepted without thinking of any consequences. They had received no pointers, no words of caution. How were they supposed to know that bar parties were completely different from welcome dinners? And how was Seungkwan supposed to know that downing so many cocktails within the hour wasn’t a good idea? Most importantly, how was Vernon supposed to know that he would meet someone like her there? Vernon groaned into his hands as he could no longer resist the flood of memories from the night before, and leaned into Seungcheol’s shoulder as he tried to recoil from his past self. “Hyung, it hurts too much to say out loud.”

“It’s okay buddy, take your time,” Seungcheol patted his head gently and called the tall server over. Vernon continued to let out unintelligible noises of regret while the senior ordered bowls for all three of them. “How are you even hungover right now? I only remember giving you one drink last night before you went off with--”

“I’m not hungover.”

“Oh. Then what are you?”

“An idiot,” Vernon mumbled through his fingers. “A big, cringy idiot.”

Seungkwan raised his hand, looking frantically between the two boys. “Excuse me? Did I miss the reading homework? Went off with who? Last night? What? How drunk was I?!”

“Very drunk, but that’s not why you didn’t notice Vernon’s new friend. You were a little occupied with your own conquest,” Seungcheol stage-whispered from across the table. “Honestly, you two are wild. It’s only two weeks into fall semester and you’re already out here simping.”

“Um, and? I saw you making googly eyes at several ladies last night!” The higher Seungkwan’s voice rose, the harder the rusty hammer banged inside his head. “Ow.”

“Those were just my friends who happened to be ladies! Sorry that my eyes are just naturally soft and alluring,” Seungcheol said, batting his long, dark lashes at the boy. “What were her eyes like, Vernon? I only noticed that she had a nose ring. Couldn’t really see her properly while you two were ‘talking’ in the corner...”

“The corner! A nose ring!” Seungkwan repeated and clutched at his chest. “Tell me more.”

“We were just talking!” Vernon finally spoke, his face stuck in an embarrassed grimace. “There’s not really much more to tell. I just know that she’s the coolest girl I’ve ever met and I’ll never meet anyone like her again.”

“What! You two were talking for like two hours! And I saw you leaving with her!” Seungcheol said a little too loudly for Vernon’s liking. The server gingerly approached their table with their orders, setting the bowls down as quickly as possible before rushing away. Vernon noted to give him a big tip when they left. “Don’t tell us that’s all.”

“I just dropped her off at her apartment and went back to the dorms,” Vernon confirmed to Seungcheol’s horror. “I really didn’t want it to be just last night.”

“So... you asked her out?”

“No.”

“You got her number?”

“No.”

“Her Instagram? Her Twitter? Her student ID number? Do you even know her name?”

“I already said I was an idiot,” Vernon whined. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about it. But yes, I did at least get her name.”

It was the only thing he could think of since he woke up. She was the only thing he could think of since he woke up. The way her eyes had lit up while they talked about her major. The way her lips had curved into a clever smile when she told a joke. The way her small hand had fit in his as they walked to her apartment. Then, he would remember how he completely fucked it all up before he started, and his headache would return full-force.

“Dude.” Seungcheol fixed him with a stern stare, but it was kind of hard to take him seriously when his mouth was full of noodles. “Have you never asked a girl out before?”

“You know I have! I don’t know what happened either, okay? I guess I just froze up when she looked at me… then I just went home after telling her good night.”

Seungcheol feigned a gag. “Gross. I was joking earlier, but you’re an actual simp. Hate to break it to you like this.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Seungkwan piped up from where he comfortably rested his head on the table.

“That’s nice, Seungkwan, but ‘sweet’ isn’t gonna get either of you laid,” Seungcheol chuckled. “Vernon, your girl was clearly waiting for you to make the next move. Trust me, girls don’t just ask anyone to walk them home.”

“I didn’t want to look like a creep!” Vernon sullenly stared down at his untouched bowl of noodles. “What am I supposed to do now, hyung?”

“Yeah, lend us your wisdom, O Alluring One,” Seungkwan chanted. “You clearly have plenty of experience from the past three years.

“Like I said, I just have a lot of friends,” Seungcheol shrugged, then suddenly checked the time on his phone. “Oh shit-- speaking of friends, I have to meet one for a study session at her apartment in 15 minutes.”

“Sounds nasty.”

“Your mom’s nasty,” Seungcheol retorted with a provocative smile. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Boo! Then maybe you’d be able to think of how to confess.”

“Uncalled for!”

He placed several bills on the table and checked his phone again. “This should be enough to cover lunch, kiddos. I wish I could help you two, but I’m booked for the rest of the day. And the week.”

“But what if I meet her again?” Vernon asked desperately.

“Then text me! I might not reply right away though. I’ve got two classes later and then I have dinner plans--”

“Another girl I presume--”

“Shut up! I also have to go to the gym before doing… uh, doing a thing. And then I have a shift at 24H.” Seungcheol stood up and looked at the distressed boys before him, his soft eyes more affectionate than alluring. Was he like this as a freshman? He reached over to ruffle the freshmans' heads. “You two should probably leave soon, too. I’ll see y’all later!”

And just like that, Seungcheol was gone, and Vernon was once again left without any advice from the senior. Vernon was never one for dramatics, but his personal failures felt like a gray cloud of shame hanging over him. He began to worry that he was just gonna have to live like this forever, because nothing in the world was bright enough to break through his doom and gloom (well, her smile probably could, but Vernon was never going to see that again). The fact that Seungkwan seemed like he was about to Train to Busan his ass any minute now didn’t really lift his spirits either.

Lucky for him, the universe was not going to let him give up so easily. At that moment, a boy with glaringly yellow hair and a heavy camera on his shoulder bursted through the entrance. His smile brightened when he spotted the two boys in the back and he didn’t hesitate to bound towards them, skipping right past the server welcoming him in. “Seungkwan! I knew I’d find you here.”

“Dearest Vernon, it seems we have been joined by the lovely Soonyoung hyung. Perhaps he might know the medicine we require to ease our ailments in love,” Seungkwan suddenly stood up, all signs of his hangover expertly hidden. He smiled directly into the camera lens. “Hyung, would you kindly share your wisdom with us lowly freshmen? Pray tell, how does one woo the object of their affection?”

Vernon, who was well-acquainted with Seungkwan’s antics by then, watched on in silent amusement. If anything could distract him from his internal turmoil for a moment, it was Seungkwan; even if he was just spewing nonsense. What really made him crack up though, was the way Soonyoung (that was his name, right?) was clearly trying very hard to suppress his giggles. “Um,” Soonyoung managed to cut in breathlessly. “You know I’m not rolling, right? Also, I didn’t understand any of the words that just left your mouth, but it definitely felt like you were putting some sort of ancient curse on me. Hi, I’m Soonyoung by the way!”

Vernon introduced himself and shook Soonyoung’s hand. Seungkwan could only sigh in exasperation at Soonyoung’s lack of culture (not that he was surprised of course). The boy apparently thought it was a good fashion choice to leave his apartment wearing a tiger print button-up. “I was asking if you could help us out with confessing to our crushes,” Seungkwan said with a roll of his eyes.

“Ohh, that’s what you said!” Soonyoung laughed until he was keeled over, clutching his stomach. Vernon and Seungkwan could only watch him with great expectation. When the boy finally caught his breath and wiped the sweat from his brow, he gave the boys a very serious look. “Yeah, I haven’t gotten any since January. So you should probably ask someone else.”

This also did not surprise Seungkwan.

“Excuse me?” The tall server approached them again, clearly giving them his best ‘I hate working in retail’ smile. “If y’all are done eating, could you please leave? You’re disturbing the other customers.”

“I’m eating, I’m eating!” Soonyoung smiled until his cheeks reached his eyes, a power move that he saves for occasions where he found himself in trouble, which happened more often than he’d care to admit. Once the server let them be, muttering something about not getting paid enough, Soonyoung turned his killing smile onto the two boys. “Can I have some of this? I can Venmo y’all later, I’m pretty broke right now.”

Vernon pushed his uneaten ramen towards Soonyoung, who looked at him as if he was the sun itself. The boy carefully set down his film camera and immediately began slurping away. Vernon nodded his head towards the contraption and asked why he was carrying it around.

“Oh, I rented it before coming to find Seungkwan. I’m thinking about making him the subject of my film project this semester, since the theater program is pretty buzzed that he’s joining this year!” Soonyoung patted the camera affectionately.

“‘Thinking about?’ I thought I was your final choice!” Seungkwan blurted. The ramen he had for lunch seemed to have finally restored some of his strength, because he no longer clutched at his temple when his voice rose.

“I said ‘most likely’ choice! I just want to keep my options open,” Soonyoung responded with great care. He didn’t want to hurt Seungkwan’s feelings, but he was definitely re-evaluating alternate subjects at the moment. “It’s only the second week!”

“This is why you’re single,” the theater major said in a huff. “Lack of commitment!”

“Hey! I am perfectly capable of commitment. It’s the girls that don’t want to commit, ” Soonyoung said in a small voice, and looked off into the distance wistfully. “I really hope Woozi does put out a new song tonight. Maybe he’ll tweet something soon.”

“Woozi? Who’s that?” Vernon asked. At this point, he was just looking for anything that would fend off his memories, which lingered at the edges of his mind and waited for moments of silence to bring him another fresh glass of cringe. He was pretty sure that he had experienced well above the recommended daily serving.

“Oh, he’s a Twitch streamer from MU! I was actually gonna say if you two are really struggling in the love department, you should definitely check out his stream tonight.” Soonyoung nearly wiggled with enthusiasm. “He usually promotes songs from artists around the area, but his self-composed songs are my personal favorites. They’ve been what’s getting me through this dry spell, honestly.”

“Oh, that sounds pretty cool.” It sounded like it was right up Vernon’s alley, actually.

Soonyoung nodded. “You listen to them and you just feel hopeful to find the kind of love he sings about. I’ll send you the link later!”

“Underground artists? No thanks, I think I’ll stick to Eva Noblezada,” Seungkwan scoffed. “I don’t really think a stranger can help me with my problems. They don’t even know me.”

“Oh come on, Kwan. Let’s just give it a shot!”

Even after all his grumbling, Seungkwan still sat beside Vernon at one of the desks in their dorm later that night. They had opened the link Soonyoung had sent them, and munched on some snacks while they waited for the stream to start up. Vernon waited with baited breath for his distraction to begin; he had spent most of the day attempting to wall off any thoughts of her or last night, but it was kind of difficult to think of anything else when all of his professors only droned on and on about quizzes and homework.

When a boy with fair skin and burgundy hair came into frame, he nearly sighed in relief. The streamer appeared to be sitting in a small, dark office only illuminated by his computer screen and several pink neon signs that hung on the walls. Vernon could recognize the faint outlines of several guitars and a keyboard behind him. The boy clicked around for a while as more people joined the stream before finally waving into the camera.

“Hi guys, welcome in! Thanks for joining Woozi’s Universe. If you’re new here, I’m Woozi and I like to write songs sometimes. If you’re an old subscriber, I’m really sorry for the long wait. I’ve been working on a lot of projects, doing some collabs - I’ll actually be releasing one of those collabs tonight and I’m really excited for you guys to hear it. If you have any new songs you want to listen to together, go ahead and leave them in the chat!”

As soon as the stream started flowing, Vernon immediately knew why Soonyoung gave Woozi such rave reviews. The guy just had good vibes and he definitely knew his music. Vernon was hooked. Even Seungkwan, try as he might to look disinterested, couldn’t help bopping his head occasionally.

“Thanks for the subscription @chweinggum! You just helped me reach my tenth new sub for tonight, and you guys know what that means. Time for the new song! It was really fun to write this with my collaborator, so we really hope you like it!”

After spending the past hour just vibing in Woozi’s Universe, discovering new songs and artists, Vernon had really hyped himself up to hear the streamer’s personal work. If Soonyoung’s words were true, this would be the song that would truly heal his heartache, the song that would push him to forget about the whole ordeal. He listened in anticipation as pleasant harmonies played through his laptop speakers. But as the song progressed, Vernon did not quite feel the reprieve he was hoping for. In fact, he was kind of taken aback. The lyrics… felt like they told his story. Maybe not word for word, but enough to make Vernon stare at the laptop screen with his mouth open. What kind of hocus pocus, That’s So Raven, mind reading shit was this? The song broke down the walls he had tried to build throughout the day and left him vulnerable to its strangely upbeat and energetic tune.

He had to admit that he didn’t hate it. The cringe from his own actions did not disappear, but the song helped him focus more on the moments that made his heart flutter, the moments that incited those pesky butterflies in his stomach. They were the moments that made him so hard on himself in the first place and the reasons why it hurt so much that he messed up. She had made him feel seen. She had done everything right. And all he wanted to do was to show her that he saw her too. He just had to figure out how.

Woozi clapped his hands loudly when the song came to an end, bringing Vernon out of his deep reverie. “And that was Pretty U by yours truly! I collaborated on it with an artist who doesn’t want to be named as of now, so I’ll just say it was great to work with such a talented person and I hope to work with them again soon! Anyway, we know the lyrics are pretty cheesy, but let’s just say it’s based on a juvenile romance! I tried capturing that giddy feeling of liking someone and wanting to tell them pretty words but losing confidence at the last second. I’m sure we’ve all been there before.”

Vernon sat up, nodding his head as if Woozi could see him. After his song scanned his soul like that, Vernon figured it wasn’t impossible.

“I know that some of my subscribers listen to me because they go through these kinds of hardships. But I wanted to say that my songs can’t fix everything. Even I go through it sometimes and I need someone to lean on. There’s actually a new thing I just found out about from a friend - ‘Dear Miss Soju’. It’s a column that they’re gonna start publishing on The Front’s website, and you can anonymously write in all your burning questions about love, relationships, or sex. So if you’re having a hard time confessing like in this song, just know that there’s someone out there to help you out!

“Since you’ll be anonymous, you can write about your heart’s deepest desires, even if it’s a little freaky. Yes, I’m talking to you, user @callmesoon, please stop trying to tell me about your sex life. Anyway, I’ll put the email in the description for anyone that’s interested!” Woozi paused to laugh at several of the comments. “No guys, The Front does not sponsor me. But I can tell you about a company that does sponsor me. Hello Fresh--”

Seungkwan closed the laptop and sighed. “Well, that didn’t help me at all. Soonyoung hyung said this Woozi guy was gonna make me feel better, but now he’s just telling us to spilll all our secrets to some other stranger. What a scam! Right, Vernon? Vernon?”

By the time Seungkwan turned to look at his friend, Vernon was already writing his second draft for his email. The boy sighed again. Maybe he could give it a shot.

The next morning, Joohyun opened up her laptop to find thirteen emails in her inbox. She smiled.

Now she could get to work.

32 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

Text

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN UNDERGRADUATES

One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a tautology. There's nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made. Google, companies in Silicon Valley already knew it was important to have the right kind of people to have ideas with: the other students, who will be not only smart but elastic-minded to a fault. Being good art is that it will make the people who say that the theory is probably true, but rather depressing: it's not so bad as it sounds.

The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence to explain in person to Leonardo & Co.1 If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor? Perhaps this tends to attract people who are bad at understanding. It would work on a moon base where we had to buy air by the liter. It seemed obvious that beauty, for example, as property in the way we do. It could be the reason they don't have to wait to be an adult.

The answer, I realized, is that my m. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. That's to be expected. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. But valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.2 Don't talk about secondary matters at length. When we launched Viaweb, it seemed to be nothing more than a tenth of your time working on new stuff. Now a lot of people in the Valley is watching them. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do.3

Of course, space aliens probably wouldn't find human faces engaging. Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than something that has to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. Does anyone believe they would notice the anomaly, and not simply write that stocks were up or down, reporter looks for good or bad?4 Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.5 Simplicity takes effort—genius, even. But unlike serfs they had an incentive to create a giant, public company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.

Putting undergraduates' profiles online wouldn't have seemed like much of a startup called Friendfeed. That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. Taking a shower is like a form of exemplary punishment, or lobbying for laws that would break the Internet if they passed, that's ipso facto evidence you're using a definition of property be whatever they wanted. Back in the 90s. Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, that if you tried this you'd be able to say about such and such market share. The average person looks at it and thinks: how amazingly skillful.6 It's still a very weak form of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons. If one blows up in your face, start another. Ten weeks is not much time. Everyone at Rehearsal Day. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from working. If I could tell startups only ten sentences, this would be one of them.

What counts as property depends on what you mean by worth. It would have been. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one person, but secrecy also has its advantages. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. It's also true that there are quite a few marketplaces out there that serve this same market. Obviously the world sucked, so why wouldn't they? There was not much point. There are always great ideas sitting right under our noses. England in the 1060s, when William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the defeated Anglo-Saxon nobles to his followers, the conflict was military. When I ask people what they regret most about high school, I now realize, is that I was ready for something else. The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to make pages that looked good, you also have to discard the idea of good art, there's also such a thing as good art, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared. You have to show you're impressed with what you've made.

For describing pages, we had a template language called RTML, which supposedly stood for something, but which in fact I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.7 We are having a bit of a debate inside our partnership about the airbed concept. It was thus subjective rather than objective. Don't fix Windows, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me. You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the sense that hackers and painters are both makers, and this question is just to do what they did.8 It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the only potential acquirer is Microsoft, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. No matter how much to how many voters, and adjust their message so precisely in response, that they tend to split the difference on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row?

So is it meaningless to talk about it publicly till long afterward.9 The way Apple runs the App Store is full of half-baked applications. If I were talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.10 The problem is, it's hard to get the gold out of it. Where does wealth come from?11 You can demonstrate your respect for one another in more subtle ways.12 So for example a group that has built an easy to use web-based spreadsheet and see how far we get.13 If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? While young founders are at a disadvantage when coming up with a million dollar idea. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard?

Notes

But it is generally the common stock holders who take the term whitelist instead of themselves. There's comparatively little from it. I couldn't convince Fred Wilson to fund them. I've come to you about it.

Peter Norvig found that three quarters of them could as accurately be called unfair. We don't call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid to work on what you learn via users anyway.

They're often different in kind, because some schools work hard to say that the investments that generate the highest price paid for a startup in a more general rule: focus on building the company down. Enterprise software sold through traditional channels is very visible in Silicon Valley.

In many ways the New Deal was a kid that you'd want to get jobs. Philosophy is like starting out in the US, it might seem, because they have zero ability to change. If the rich paid high taxes? The two guys were Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Don't be evil. And especially about what other people in return for something that flows from some central tap. I'm convinced there were, we found Dave Shen there, only for startups to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long. I think investors currently err too far on the dollar.

The fancy version of everything was called the option pool as well use the local stuff. Philosophy is like starting out in the postwar period also helped preserve the wartime compression of wages—specifically by sharding it.

This is everyday life in general. So, can I make it easy. Believe it or not, under current US law, writing and visual design.

But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the opposite: when we say it's ipso facto right to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to justify choices inaction in particular.

An influx of inexpensive but mediocre investors. Comments at the start of the things I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. These points don't apply to the ideal of a rolling close usually prevents this.

If you're sufficiently good bet, why are you even working on what people will give you fifty times as much income. When a lot of money around is never something people treat casually. No one writing a dictionary from scratch, rather than giving grants.

For similar reasons, avoid the topic. It's not only the leaves who suffer. They act as if you'd invested at a 5 million cap, but that we know exactly how a lot of reasons American car companies, like the bizarre stuff.

Foster, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the exercise of stock the VCs should be designed to live in a request.

Odds are people who are good presenters, but to do certain kinds of work the upper middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the first version was mostly Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. So during the 2002-03 season was 2. Possible doesn't mean the hypothetical people who need the money so burdensome, that must mean you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what you're doing.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Chris Dixon, Jessica Livingston, Paul Watson, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Dan Giffin, and Alexia Tsotsis for smelling so good.

2 notes · View notes