#I'm not sure how I feel about the silver

[running-in-the-dark]

wax seals are so pretty I love them 💖

[little-pondhead]

Danny moved to Gotham.

Freakshow is touring in Gotham.

Freakshow knows Danny is in Gotham.

Danny knows Freakshow is still after him.

Danny's faith in heroes has been shattered.

Danny turns to the only person powerful enough to run Freakshow out of town, hopefully for good.

Danny turns to the Joker for help.

The Joker is looking for a new punching bag sidekick after Harley Quinn left him.

Danny is just the perfect person to be shaped by the Joker's hands.

Danny becomes the new Joker Junior.

[a-tale-of-legends]

( random conversation I thought of, not sure if it's something that I would consider canon. Might be ooc for characters)

Blue: Aaaaand that's everything that happened today! Which.... isn't a lot but whatever.

Red: ....

Blue: .....( Leans back) Sooooooooo. How's things for you? You haven't, ah, really said much since you came back down Mt. Silver...( Tries to perk up a bit,forcing a smile) You're usually such a chatter box, you know?! Gotta be something interesting for ya today, right?

Red: .....

Blue: ........( Grimaces slightly, still trying to keep smiling. His voices lowers, as if the whole world would hear if he goes any louder) Come on Red, you- throw me a bone here, something-

Red: ( his eyebrows furrow slightly) .....

Blue: ( immediately back pedals) O-only if you wanna, I don't - you don't - ( he sighs, exasperated) Green? H-have you at least talked to Green?

Red: ( he flinches at that. The punch to his face still fresh in his mind. It was a year ago. And even so-) .....

Blue: ( he should back off. He really should-) Your mom? Have you at least talked to your mom?

Red: ( that causes him to outright glare at his....friend? Rival? Babysitter? What are they now? He doesn't know. But he doesn't like this conversation.) . . . .

Blue: R-right! Right, of course you- ( he takes in a breath. Why does he feel so sweaty.) Sorry. Sorry, that was just- Let's just forget I said anything, yeah?

Red: ( his glare softens, looking at his....whatever they are to each other, with concern. He doesn't know if he'll get used to Blue Oak apologizing for anything ever. He raises his hand to sign-)

Blue: ( he raises his hand before Red does, eyes pleading) Let's just forget I said anything, okay? ( Please )

Red: ..... ( He lowers his hand. He hates the look blue is giving him. He blames himself for it, as always) ( Okay )

[chaikachi]

rosegarden is sooooooooo canon baby

[theirloveisgross]

.

[zhongrin]

i may have found a character i dislike most in zzz

[greatmuppetykruphix]

New year, new profile pic

[unopenablebox]

doing evil behaviors (looking up different methods of engagement ring sourcing to try to identify the most ethical one)

[tomwambsmilk]

really curious to see how people's finale opinions will develop once we get some distance.... personally I feel like I'm still reeling so hard from the gut-level emotional response that it's difficult to really assess or analyze it esp. within the framework of the whole show and I kind of wonder if others feel the same

[ukulele-mixtape]

Maple Scraps: The Siren's Call Chapters 12 + 13 (i don't feel like posting them separately lol)

context: angst scenes. tune got outed as the siren when eggman attacks restoration hq and basically destroys all of tune's hard work by making metal sonic install a vocal distortion collar on her, forcing the voices she's taken to retreat back to their owners and her own going to metal sonic, rendering her completely mute. silver and sonic confront her.

this was the last set of chapters i worked on bc then i realized i actually had to finish the fic properly, and even then the chapter's unfinished and ends completely abruptly (i have no desire to actually finish it) LMAO

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

CHAPTER 12:

“Twili…o quis,

..shu ento…vi.

Abed…so…on,

Qwe…olda..e...” 

A song. A voice, no, multiple voices chimed in like a prayer floating in the wind, faint and pure.

It was beautiful. It was quiet. It was eerie. It was haunting.

…Where…was this…?

The voices continued, but they were no longer beautiful. They were destructive. They were blinding. They were painful. It was agony. Static rang, filling the fabric of reality and mercilessly breaking it at the seams. The broken choir sounded as if they were being signaled off from a dying record player. There was nothing left in their wake. Nothing could stop them. Nothing at all. He felt the world shake around him, every corner of this endless void of nothingness was out to get him.

It was just pure noise! Noise filled the air! It wouldn’t shut up, it wouldn't stop no matter how hard he tried to scream, to yell anything! He wanted to scream, please, let him scream! Let him do anything!!

 “Mu…as on…se,

Aln…ov…luuv...

tWli vO eqUiS,

aln nIv wO OLDANCE–”

STATIC FILLED EVERYTHING. EVERY THOUGHT, EVERY BREATH. MORE AND MORE, UNTIL HE COULD NO LONGER HEAR THE CHOIRS HAUNTING MELODY. UNTIL THE STATIC WAS ALL THAT WAS LEFT. 

 IT WAS TORTURE! OVERSTIMULATING!! HE COULDN’T TAKE IT!!!

WHY WAS IT SO LOUD?!

W H A T  W A S  T H A T  M E L O D Y–?!

Sonic woke up with a heaving gasp. He struggled for oxygen. For anything he could grab onto as he jolted forward from his bed, head beaded with sweat. His breath was shallow, harsh, like if he had just gotten out of the deepest, darkest trenches of the ocean after struggling to surface for weeks. But just like he’d been dealing with for the past month and a half, his mouth uttered no sound. The echoes of his dream rang in his ears, clinging to his brain and bashing itself into his psyche. His head was pounding, the worst migraine he’d ever experienced in his life mangled his skull, and he couldn't think clearly at all. The warm light of the room was too much for him to bear, piercing into his eyes and causing him to squint harshly. He could see specks of color from the corners of his vision, floating around as if to mock his current suffering.

What the hell was this?

He couldn’t hear a thing. The ringing in his head became louder. And this time, he’d finally understand that he couldn’t ignore it, he couldn’t just think it’d eventually go away. Not this time.

Everything seemed to overwhelm him. He closed his eyes and plugged his ears, trying to get any sensory input to be as muffled as possible. But no matter what, it’d still hurt; the pain dreadfully persisted. He wouldn’t notice the periodic yelling of his name was getting more frantic, but he did feel every vibration it had to offer even from far away. He was sensitive to everything around him, and he hated it. He was completely, totally, debilitated. Just like in that void of endless harmony.

Finally, for what felt like an eternity, he felt firm grips on both his wrists that he clung close to his face as he clenched his hands into tight fists, and he had to forcefully pry his eyes open to take in Silver's overly distressed expression staring back widely at him.

“I’m right here,” Silver repeated over and over breathlessly. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise, I’m right here.”

But as soon as Sonic took notice, suddenly, like if it never happened, the noise just…completely stopped. The pain evaporated, the ringing silenced and he was finally able to take in his surroundings clearly, his body relaxing after a good long while of unconsciously being tense, a deep inaudible sigh exiting his mouth before he even had the ability to even process it.

“Hey, are you okay?” Silver brought Sonic back to reality, releasing the blue hedgehog’s wrists and cupping his face gently with his hands. Sonic felt Silver’s warmth even under his gloves, a soothing feeling washed over him. He closed his eyes, sleepily smiling and gave a small nod in response. He placed one of his hands atop one of Silver’s at his face, taking another deep breath and sighing, feeling the way Silver would rub his thumb against his soft muzzle.

“Y-you sure?” Silver questioned again, his tone quivering a bit. “You…you looked like you were in a lot of pain.”

Sonic took his hand off Silver’s, signaled for him to look down and began signing.

“I’m fine. It’s gone now.” his nimble hands spoke for him.

Silver, ever the worrier, shook his head with an elongated breathy sigh. “You really scared me. If I hadn’t come, I feel like you would have been like that for a lot longer.”

“I’m sorry, I promise, it’s over. I’m good.”

“Promise?”

Sonic warmly looked back at his partner, leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. Once Silver had that predictable blush festering on his cheeks, that soft grin he’d love to watch for eternity, he signed once more pointing one finger to his lips, before setting it down on his opposite hand balled into a fist.

“I promise.”

Reluctant, but deciding to trust him, Silver tightly embraced Sonic quietly, feeling the way Sonic’s body reflected his once frantically beating heart now starting to slow down into a soft, comfortable rhythm.

“It happened again, didn’t it?” Silver softly uttered. “That weird dream.”

Sonic gave him a small nod in return.

“That’s the first I've seen you get this bad before. I got up earlier than you did, so I just wanted to take a walk and get some air.” Silver rambled off, shuttering. “And when I came back you were holding your chest like you were having a heart attack! I tried nudging you at least a million times to wake you up, but nothing was working. You weren’t responding this time. And when you did wake up, you started convulsing and I didn’t know what to do, Sonic. I didn’t know, and you…” He trailed off. 

Sonic rubbed against Silver’s back quietly, patting him gently to urge him to finish his thought.

“...You looked like hell. You didn’t register anything. We’ve been here at least a few minutes now.”

Had it really been that long this time? Sonic grimaced at the thought, choosing to tighten his grip on Silver and feeling the edges of his tuft tickle his nose, sinking deeper. Years ago, he’d probably never be this touchy feely with anyone. But now, he’d make any excuse to cling onto Silver like he was the last man on earth when they were alone. Silver reciprocated in kind. 

“You shouldn’t have to go through this.” he mourned. “And I know you’re tough, I get it. We’ll get through this like we do everything else. But…I still can’t help but feel like I'm failing you right now because I don’t know what to do to help you. I should have been there with you the day you got your voice taken. I should have been there to protect you both.”

Sonic shook his head, rubbing soothing circles on Silver’s back, causing him to pull Sonic closer.

“I know…” Silver muttered affectionately. “What’s done is done. And I know we’ve got this. We’ve got this, and will fix this and we’ll do it together. Just like we always do.”

Sonic nodded once more, a smile gracing his features that Silver couldn’t see just yet. Silver could feel Sonic’s breathing become slower, more relaxed. But…he still couldn’t hear it. It made Silver’s heart ache. Sonic’s voice was truly gone. Silver couldn’t help but at least try to imagine what he remembered of it, goofy and cocky and full of life. His laughter was chirpy and quick, his tone lower in recent years yet still full of that same energy Silver knew and loved. Even if it had only been a short time, Silver felt like not hearing Sonic’s precious way of speaking was crushing him. Like he lost a part of what made him him. 

And every time he’d turn the corner, Silver could see Sonic reflexively try to sound anything he could while he mingled with his friends. And when Silver noticed how inevitably disappointed he’d be when nothing came out, taking out his phone and tapping away his desires to show whomever it was, when he had to start reteaching himself and reusing sign language, something he hadn’t wanted to use since he was little, it bore into Silver’s chest, reminding him of how much he’d scorn the person who had robbed Sonic of that freedom he so desperately wanted back.

Eventually, Silver was shifting forward for Sonic to lay back on the bed, resting his ear against Sonic’s chest and taking in the way his heartbeat thumped against his ribs, the closest he was ever going to get to any noise coming from his partner. He sighed, Sonic swiping a hand against Silver’s quills. And they just laid there for a while, just basking in each other's warmth. Sonic patted Silver’s head gently to get his attention soon, and slowly the psychic obliged, raising his head and placing his chin comfortably on Sonic’s chest, their noses just barely touching, sharing a loving gaze with each other, their minds confident and resolute.

They’d been through the worst of the worst in the past, fighting off time manipulating monsters and killer robots, doppelgangers and zombie hordes alike. There was nothing these two couldn’t handle; not just together, but with every ally they'd ever known, every friend they’d ever made. Regardless of the circumstances, Sonic knew they were in good hands and with a toothy grin and his playful tongue out, he would remind Silver of the same. Sonic may have lost his voice, but that alone wasn’t what made him who he was. He was everything, he was the world that Silver was desperate to protect.

The two leaned in for another good morning kiss, routine as usual…

And that’s when they heard the firing of something loud from above them, so loud the sound echoed for a few seconds into the atmosphere. Then, a deep booming crash, and the sound of yelling coming from just outside their room, the vibrations causing small pebbles from the ceiling to fall, startling the two out of their shared bed. 

“What the heck was that?!” Silver’s beading golden eyes flared, head jolting in every direction.

Sonic wasted no time, rising to his feet and throwing on his sneakers, snatching the door open and taking off, a powerful gust of wind trailing behind him as he sped past the hallways. Silver was right on his tail, flying to follow Sonic down to the main hall. People were scrambling to gather their bearings, yelling and running towards the closest emergency exits they could find, some of which were blocked off by heavy metal panels torn from the roof. There was a gaping circular hole in the center of the upper wall in the main hall, smashed and crawling with badniks making their way inside. Small fires were erupting, stone and metal paneled debris littered the floor, causing a few people to stumble.

Sonic waved in Silver’s face from above, signing quickly at him.

“Get that debris cleared from the exits, I'll help take out those badniks!”

“On it!” And with that, Silver was off, charging up a boost of energy to send him skyrocketing across the clamor, starting with the most crowded area of the headquarters, the main entrance. A large, looming boulder stood in the way, glass shards everywhere, most likely it was chucked at the window and landed square at the door. With a strong clench of his fingers, Silver took a deep breath and clawed his hands, performing a raising motion of his arms, a blue aura forming around the boulder. Slowly but surely, it was moving upward, rising from the sky almost like magic. The scrambling civilians would take off, some thanking Silver in scattered chirps as he held onto the boulder as best he could. Once a good amount of people were out of the way, Silver lowered the boulder to face right next to the entrance, unable to do anything more than that for the time being: there were still blockages to free up.

–

The robots may have not been all that tough, but they came in droves and were quick as can be, circling around the blue hedgehog in waves. Sonic blazed into the hordes of the badniks littering the floors. Flying Spina’s came from above, slicing into the air, but Sonic quickly dodged and attacked, utilizing an already destroyed Motobug as a weapon, sending at least a few Spinas into the nearest wall with a hard metallic SLAM! Then came the Buzzbomers and Egg Pawns. A cocky smile etched into his muzzle as Sonic quickly disposed of the trash, revving up a spin dash into the crowd of Egg Pawns, the robots barely having a moment to even swing at him with their pointed swords. 

Once they were taken care of, he’d homing attack into the Buzzbomers charging straight for him, bashing in their heads, small explosions raging behind him. And just as Sonic thought it was over, giving a flick to his nose in satisfaction and wiping his hands clean as he landed swiftly on the ground, a swing from a very familiar hammer came just beyond his peripheral vision, taking out a leftover Egg Pawn he’d neglected, leaving a large, heavy imprinted dent on the robot’s head. He watched as it fell motionless, and Amy casually swept in to meet his gaze, his posture showcasing how taken aback he was as she casually leaned her body against the weight of her Piko Piko Hammer. Nevertheless, he was thrilled to see her, giving her a big thumbs up.

“You missed one,” she mocked teasingly. Sonic sucked in his teeth playfully, crossing his arms mouthing a quick “Thanks, Ames”.

“The Diamond Cutters are with Silver; they’re helping out with the hordes invading just outside the main entrance, but there’s apparently still commotion coming from the shopping center. Let’s get down there!”

Sonic nodded in understanding, scooping up Amy in his arms bridal style, speeding towards the shopping center's direction. From the distance, they could see more badniks, larger and covered in tough armor, but strangely enough, entering the fray of the nearby shopping center were three mechanical Mobian-like beings, haunting distorted noises echoing from their caged mouths. They had smooth paneled heads with embedded over-ear headphones on the side and a faceplate with a colorful equalizer where their eyes should have been. They sported arms with mechanical drum hands, and their torsos were devoid of legs, a large disco ball-like base in place of them spinning around and allowing them to float.

The two didn’t hesitate, Amy taking a direct assault at any robot dumb enough to get close, effortlessly slamming her hammer against their hard metal frames. Sonic confidently allowed her to work her magic, zipping past and making sure to keep her protected, dodging all obstacles. The badniks were taken care of swiftly, but now it was time for the Robo-Mobian creatures. Determined, Amy called out to Sonic:

“Sonic! Croquette Bomber!” Oh yeah, this was so happening.

Sonic gently placed Amy down, excitedly getting into a ready position before revving up another spin dash, this time much faster, the speed taking off tiny bits of the floor as he rolled. Amy steadied her aim with a focused tongue to the side of her mouth, widening her stance and bending her knees, before swinging her hammer with the force of a thousand suns. Sonic went flying, but before he was able to even make a connection, the Robo-Mobians screeched a loud, high pitched noise, a sonar-like wavelength warping the area causing Sonic and Amy to groan out in pain. Sonic lost his balance, tumbling forward and reflexively covered his ears to muffle out the noise, but as soon as he did, he was viciously tackled by the neck to the wall of the clothing boutique by another one of the Robo-Mobians. Amy ran towards the blue hedgehog, readying another swing, but another screech from the other two Robo-Mobians decidedly ended her attempt to save Sonic, making her collapse in distress, her hammer falling close behind as she covered her ears.

“Amy!” Sonic mouthed out in alarm. Squirming in place, he managed to get a harsh kick to the chest on the Robo-Mobian in front of him, forcing it to crash into the other robot, freeing himself. He was on his feet in a flash, rushing towards Amy’s trembling side, placing a hand on her shoulder. Amy gave a quivering nod of assurance, looking shakily at the enemies before them.

“W-what are those things?” she whimpered. “They don’t look anything like the usual Eggman robots.”

Sonic shook his head in response. The Robo-Mobians quickly recovered, speeding towards their opponents and readying their drum hands, flying into the air preparing to go in for a smash. Sonic acted fast, snatching Amy away and hopping to the top of the boutiques shop, the latter grabbing her hammer as quickly as she could, before the robots broke through the tile, the floor violently crumbling away.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Amy called out. “We can’t take these things alone, they’ll just keep using that awful noise to down us again.”

She was interrupted by the Robo-Mobians charging their flight once more, ready to take off against the hedgehog duo, when suddenly…

“...You better step off!” A ear piercing roar followed by a massive energy blast came from just beyond, knocking the Robo-Mobians into the glass of the clothing store. Tune clumsily stepped into the limelight, heaving breaths as her eyes glowed a vicious yellow hue, her fashion glasses placed firmly on her head. Her demeanor said everything: she was overwhelmingly pissed. 

“Yo, any day today y’all!” She annoyingly called out. “Get your butts in gear and help me take care of these goons!”

It took a second, but Sonic recovered leaping into action, Amy following close behind and running up to a rising Robo-Mobian, giving a hearty punch in its direction, finishing the job Tune started. The robot was sent packing, exploding from out far, bits of its body scattering. As they did, colorful red, blue and green auras emanated from their cores, Tune’s eyes widened in horror as they scattered into the distance. 

Amy lept in for the other robot ready to ambush Tune from behind, slamming its head into the tile with her hammer hard, the mechanical pieces dripping when she lifted up the mallet, another purple aura materializing and floating away. The three were breathing hard, Tune much more so than the others, having a moment to finally recuperate. Once they were able to catch their breaths fully, Amy and Sonic both gave bright smiles to Tune, walking towards her carefully. But Tune was solely focused on the machine just in front of her, its body twitching weakly as a teal colored vapor seeped out of the wires of its chest cavity.

It couldn’t have been…

“Tune!” Amy cried, raising her arms in an attempt to give Tune a hug. “We didn’t know you could do something like that! Thanks for the save–”

“...This is...a Melodian.” Tune whimpered, halting them in their tracks, the duo taking note of her clawed hands balling into tight fists, so tight in fact they swore they could see her piercing herself. “I thought...what's with the robots? It's only supposed to be Alto's influence stretched out...”

The teal colored vapor circled around the robot's carcass weakly, Tune collapsing onto the floor in an attempt to cup it in her hands. A tiny voice was heard from its light, a song echoing into the wind faintly, as if it was slowly dying in Tune’s trembling hands.

“No! P-please don’t go!” the girl pleaded. “I just need more time! Please just give me more time to fix things!”

Despite her wishes, the materialized voice was fading, and fast. Tune cried out in horror, trying anything in her power to keep the tiny voice to herself, protecting it like a tortured mother. “I’m begging you! l can't fail you too!”

The hedgehog duo could only watch as the magical vapor slowly but surely drifted away into the atmosphere, and the world around them became morbidly quiet. Whatever had just happened, it wasn’t good, emphasized by Tune’s wailing exclamation, reaching into the air for nothing.

“Tune?” Amy worriedly stepped forward, reaching out her hand, but before she could she was stopped by Tune’s strikingly widened glare, her eyes still glowing that dangerous purple aura.

“Get away from me.” she spat, her body shuddering in her hysteria. “Do yourself a favor and leave me out of…whatever this is.”

“W-what?” Amy said exasperated. “But we could really use your help! Restoration HQ still has areas that need clearing out of Eggman’s robots. People need us to get them out–”

“Y’all should be thinking of a way to get yourselves out of here, not wasting your time helping people perfectly capable of handling themselves! Your friends already got most of the people evacuated anyway.” Tune gestured to the twitching robots on the ground with a sneer. “What, you think more of those things ain’t coming? They’re based on Melodist tech. There has to be at least hundreds, maybe even thousands of them wrecking havoc all over the place! That crazy doctor must’ve had a hand on this. He's obviously working with Alto to sabotage everything. They’ll destroy your ears before you even have the chance to look the other way.” The hedgehog duo tilted their heads in confusion.

“Wait, ‘Melodist’ tech? 'Alto'?” Amy chirped. “What are you talking about?”

“T-that’s–” Tune’s heart stopped in her chest, her big mouth opening against her better judgment. “...Not important. Look, just get the rest of your posse and get out of here, unless you want to end up like her.” She pointed towards the now still, lifeless carcass of the robot in front of her. “This place is done for. So much for that security you promised. ” Her last words seeped out like venom.

“Tune wait, we’re not leaving you like this after all that!” Amy pleaded, reaching out her hand.

“...Goodbye, Amy.” Tune muttered out, activating her skates and readying herself to take off. Her view of the exit was suddenly blocked off by Sonic’s body, who had been silently watching the whole conversation take place, taking the initiative to speed in front of her with his hands stretched out. He glared at her with those same knowing eyes she couldn’t stand to face. It was disapproving, he was staring right through her once again, almost as if to say “I thought you were better than this”. It was well deserved, and Tune soon found that pit in her stomach growing once more. Turning her head, she quietly uttered a tiny sound. “I promise to fix this…but I need to do it alone. I’m not allowing you to get involved in my mistakes anymore than you already are.”

Tune pushed Sonic aside roughly, causing him to stumble back a little. But before she could even take a step to skate off, there was a blue blur. Tune was tackled from the side right as she went to take her leave, familiar metal claws grabbed at her shoulders and sent her speeding off into the air with a scream, causing her to drop the blaster and her glasses falling off her head.

“W-what the hell?!” Tune cried out angrily, frantic eyes darting. “Get off me, you creep!”

Amy gasped as she pointed towards the two flying figures. “Sonic, that’s…!”

They recognized it immediately: Metal Sonic, exiting the gaping hole in the window and heading outside, Tune frantically thrashing against him, kicking and screaming the whole way. Eggman had to be there. They needed to catch up fast. With a shared nod of understanding, Sonic once more grabbed Amy and sped off, his pace allowing him to effortlessly climb the window and jump out of the hole, just in time to see Metal Sonic slam Tune down onto the ground mercilessly. 

From across the battlefield, Silver and the Diamond Cutters were locked and loaded in the fray against Eggman himself, in a gigantic towering battle mech. They had no time to react to Tune’s predicament, Silver launching Tangle, who in turn held a wispon welding Whisper wrapped around her stretchy tail, right atop the mech’s arm. Whisper went in for a disarming blow, utilizing her purple wisp in an attempt to saw off the forearm. Tangle whipped around the body, going straight for Eggman’s cockpit. Silver threw her a large rock, Tangle grabbing it by the tail before immediately smashing it into the glass.

“You pesky rodents just don’t know when to call it quits!” Eggman growled, his voice projected through an audio receiver on his mech. “My beautiful creations are too good for you; Now, get off my mech!” With a push of a button and a crank of a lever, the mech’s body started wildly spinning in place, Tangle and Whisper trying desperately to hold on, but ultimately were flung off, Silver just managing to grab a hold of the two and gently settling them down on the ground once more.

“Eggman, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Tune glared at the man piloting the mech, snarling. “I should have taken you down when I had the chance back in Melodia-!” Metal Sonic only tightened his grip as if in response to her threat, making her groan out in pain.

Eggman’s cackle echoed into the atmosphere, wicked and cocky. “My dear, you seem to have strayed a bit too far from home and caused quite the stir. Tell me, what was your plan here? To rid the entire world of voice in a pathetic attempt to spare people from Alto? How absolutely absurd. But no matter. So as long as you behave yourself, your pathetic life will be spared. After all, you have the highest honor of letting your voice be used for something greater than yourself, and I'd hate for you to miss it.” He grabbed onto his mic, calling out to his favorite creation from beyond. “Metal Sonic, get the Harmonic Distortion collar on the girl and get back to base. As much as I’d love to toy with these fools, we’ve no need to stick around.”

Everyone’s blood went cold, turning to face the chaos ensuing beyond. It felt like every bone on Tune’s body was breaking, her frame completely surrounded by larger badniks, tall and looming. Her hands interlaced with Metal Sonic’s harshly, her body struggling to hold on, Sonic and Amy fast approaching trying to burst through and help, Amy calling out her name in desperation as she and Sonic fought the onslaught of robots, Silver and the Diamond Cutters hot on their tails, rushing to their defense.

“ORDERS ACKNOWLEDGED: SUBJECT ‘FORMER MELODIST MAESTRO’ IDENTIFIED.” Metal Sonic’s low, threatening voice rumbled.  “INITIATING VOCAL SUPPRESSION PROTOCOL.”

Tune was losing consciousness and fast. She whimpered against Metal Sonic’s restraint, mentally forcing her arms to try and fight against his overwhelming strength. She could see the chaos ensuing around her from the corner of her eye, how everyone was desperately struggling to reach her, how Sonic and Silver raced against the clock, trashing every single robot in their wake just to attempt to get Metal Sonic off her, but were constantly being swarmed by more and more badniks. Silver would use his power to sweep them away, but more would just come, seemingly out of thin air. This was getting nowhere, they were losing. They were losing hard. She had no choice.

I need a way out, she thought to herself. I need this to end. For them.

Breathing in as deep as she could, she tried to attack, focusing all her energy into another sonar wave, much more powerful than her usual ones. Everyone’s eyes widened in shock as a faint glowing aura formed around her body, her eyes glowing in similar fashion. Her hair raised to the sky and a choir screamed out from Tune’s vocal chords, a lower register male voice added to the mix echoing a guttural, angered sound.

But even with all the voices combined, it wasn’t enough. Metal Sonic was fast, too fast for Tune to even manage to yell out for more than a millisecond, engaging Tune with a violent sucker punch to her cheek, her head shooting to the side with a yelp from the impact. She swore she could see one of her sharp canines being involuntarily spit out through her already blurry vision. Even despite everything, she struggled to try again, determined.

Another punch, more ferocious than the last, Tune saw stars. But she kept going, her aura quickly weakening, eyes glazed over.

Her aura melted away, Tune’s voice thoroughly silenced with another punch, this time directly onto her skull. The world was spinning. Metal Sonic’s chest cavity opened revealing a wired storage compartment with a thin collar embedded with a strange looking speaker, forcing it upon Tune’s neck, electricity zapping every nerve and muscle in her body. Her entire being was on fire, her muscles violently shook and contorted. Her eyes and mouth glowed sickly yellow as hundreds of lights aggressively materialized and scattered out, like she was vomiting a morbid rainbow of sound, screams heard throughout every corner. 

Finally, when the mesh of colors floated into the air, a single, solitary yellow aura slithered softly from Tune’s body. She desperately tried to reach for it aimlessly, her eyes widened in agony and fear. To her horror, it was placed directly into Metal Sonic’s chest cavity, morphing as a small, pulsing energy ball, a familiar melody singing in its hue, caged into a small capsule. The world was slowly going black. 

“N-no…Al…to….” Tune gave one last gurgle before her body finally gave out on her abruptly, rendering her completely unconscious in the middle of the field.

As the auras of screams scattered into the wind, a blue aura shot directly beyond the crowd of robots and straight to Sonic at inhuman speed, his body contorting as it entered his being. He grabbed at his throat instinctively, and for the first time in months, he could hear himself breath, gasping for air and falling to the ground, Amy barely managing to keep him from completely collapsing.

“Sonic!” Amy yelped, setting her hammer aside to grab onto his shoulders.

“Amy…” Sonic finally managed to get the words out raspily, hearing his own tone felt foreign to him.

“TARGET NEUTRALIZED.”

Eggman once more laughed maniacally, watching as Metal Sonic grabbed Tune’s limp body from the ground by her newly attached collar, throwing her to the side like if she was nothing more than garbage ready to be disposed of.

“Great work,” Eggman toothy grinned. “Let’s see this pesky little Melodist try to gather more voices now that Metal Sonic has claimed her power. The Dominion Hymn will be mine once I find the key to making Alto submit to me entirely. I'll come back for the rest of those voices soon enough. Now, all units: get back to the ship!”

Eggman began to take his exit, taking one last conniving look at Tune’s body, grinning devilishly. “Congratulations, my dear. You've just granted me the key to control much more than just Melodia.”

And with that, just as soon as they arrived, Eggman’s robots scattered, any who were being attacked would quickly evade and march onward. Soon enough, they would all clamor to Eggman’s humongous battleship above, ascending from multiple floating platforms awaiting their arrival. Eggman followed suit, and even when the Restoration members all tried their very best to knock him back down, it didn’t matter. He escaped confidently, his mocking laughter echoing in their faces, stretching across the atmosphere, a product of their failure…

It was eerily somber, a light wind all that sounded off as the battleship flew away. The fires had been dealt with, the citizen’s properly looked after, but the damage to Restoration HQ was massive. It would take several months for them to fix the ramifications of Eggman’s swift invasion. No one had any excuses, no explanation.

But Sonic? He could only stare back at Tune’s softly breathing frame as medics would arrive on the scene to drag her tarnished and unconscious body away to the nearest medical station. The world stood still around him, even as reinforcements and medic squads came to access the damage. He could only take in Eggman’s words. It was all that etched into his brain:

“Let’s see this pesky little Melodist try to gather more voices now.”

That’s what he said. But it couldn’t be…It just couldn’t. But his fragmented memories, the ones laid at his feet for months since his voice was taken, flickered in his brain, painfully playing out like racing film. The fight in Casinopolis, the electrifying kiss, 'Rhythm’s' mournful expression as she bowed to him as if he was her only audience member, and most importantly…that haunting, choir-like voice, echoing inside the dark walls of the venue; the same voice from Sonic’s nightmarish visions, the same one heard coming from her mouth. It all came back to him. Her attempt to stop Metal Sonic’s assault proved everything. He could no longer deny it.

Tune was the Siren they’d been searching for. She’d been hiding right under their noses the whole time just waiting for her opportunity to strike. And Sonic had unknowingly welcomed her into their lives with open arms.

When Tune was safely placed on the emergency stretcher, Sonic turned to the rest of his friends with a dazed shake of his head, trotting in their direction. His heart skipped a whole few beats when he noticed Silver’s contemplative, dark expression staring daggers at Tune being dragged away. It was almost like he was debating charging towards her and doing something Sonic knew he’d be more than capable of. He’d seen that look before, he had been on the other end of that look before in the past. And he knew exactly what it meant.

So with a swift movement, before Silver could even take that first step, Sonic grabbed onto his shoulder, squeezing it tight. Silver couldn’t help but glare at him, his tunnel vision shifting only slightly by the blue hedgehog.

“She’s the one who did it: She’s the Siren.” Silver all but growled. “She’s been stealing people’s voices away like they were tools.” His frustrated voice was getting louder with every passing sentence. “She’s been using us this whole time and we never questioned it for a second! She could have been plotting this whole time to steal the entire Restoration’s voices and we would have submitted to it immediately without ever even realizing it!”

“Calm down, Silver.” Amy’s voice chirped from behind. “We can’t just start assuming things we don’t know the full details of.”

“Amy’s right,” Tangle’s voice broke through. “I mean, she could have done it when she first arrived, but she didn’t. That’s gotta count for something, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t trust that she won’t try to, now that she’s been fully outed.” Whisper softly refuted. “We don’t know the full scope of her power. We don’t know her motive. But she’s a threat nonetheless. She needs to be put down.”

“We can’t do that to her!” Amy frustratedly argued. “If nothing else, we need to know the why before we can come up with a plan going forward.”

“Does it even matter at this point?!” Silver angrily retorted. “She stole the voices of countless other people who could potentially be suffering through the same thing, and she’s been lying to our faces about it the whole time. How can you defend that?!”

“I’m not,” Amy calmly stated, her palm raised to try and put an end to Silver’s line of thinking. “What I’m saying is that if we want to have any chance of fixing it, we need to get her to talk. And she can’t do that if she’s being beaten to a pulp while she’s still down.”

Silver went to argue once more, but Sonic’s firm grip brought him back to reality, his eyes darting towards his partner, who’s stern yet determined look made Silver stop in his tracks. Releasing Silver’s shoulders, Sonic spoke up:

“Silver...” He raspily said, noticing how Silver’s eyes widened at the sound of his voice. Silver latched onto Sonic’s cheeks, emotions layered in every corner of the psychic's expression.

“Y-you’re…” he trailed off.

“I’m here.” Sonic grinned, if only to try and ease the overwhelming tension. “I’m back.”

Silver grabbed onto Sonic like a lifeline, tightly embracing him as if he’d never see him again for as long as he lived.

When Tune was physically capable, when she would finally wake, they’d have much to discuss.

CHAPTER 13:

Silver was stationed firmly outside Tune’s room in the infirmary. He was never allowed in, and was told countless times by multiple staff members and friends alike to give it a rest. But he refused. For days while Tune recovered, still unconscious, he sat there just outside her door for hours at a time, only leaving when he needed to help out rebuilding and to check on his miraculously undamaged garden. 

He was awaiting her return. For anything. He was unbelievably angry, conflicted. He felt mournful and betrayed all at the same time. His mind went back to all the times he’d put himself out for Tune, how he’d chosen to make friends with the same person who’d stolen his beloved’s identity away. How she fought tooth and nail to retain that identity, only to be forcefully restrained and revoked of that privilege. 

Whatever Tune was plotting, Silver wanted to be the first to know. For all the fighting, the attempts to make her as comfortable as possible around the members of the Restoration, his overwhelming patience to watch her float around the bushes whenever they’d attempt to get her to talk about anything regarding herself that didn’t involve the bare minimum factoids, Silver wouldn’t allow her to escape from this. Because at this moment, the consequences of what she did now became a matter of personal vendetta. His future was once again at stake for the first time in years, and she was solely the one to blame. He’d get to the bottom of it, he’d enact justice for the people she’d taken the liberties from. 

And if she refuted at any point, he was ready to do whatever it took to get her to confess.

Despite his anger, Silver couldn’t help going back to the night on top of the greenhouse. Her foul attitude since that day had mended slightly, but her demeanor and insight about herself still lingered on in his brain:

“Don’t you think you should give this to someone who’d actually deserve it?”

“I don’t deserve y'all's kindness.”

“Y’all need to learn to put that energy towards people who need it more. People who deserve it.”

But the last conversation Silver would have with her, the day Sonic and him joined her on the sands on their trip to the beach, right before she planned to leave for New Mobotropolis, watching the waves go by and the world drift away, stuck to his angry, breaking heart.

“I can’t promise to spill my secrets right away. Frankly, I’m still of the mindset that y’all would hate me forever once I did. But I want to get better. It’ll be slow, but I’m willing to put in the work.”

And the daunting question still floating in the air, an unconscious plea for help.

“Can you guys be patient with me a little longer while I work my way towards that?”

Without Silver knowing, Tune had basically laid out the facts of her apparent turmoil with each conversation they’d have. And she had warned them directly: they’d hate her if she spoke about her past. He was reluctant to admit it, but there was a lot of truth to that statement. If not hatred, resentment felt more appropriate. Resentment and frustration for her selfish actions, even if she couldn’t have known how this would have affected him personally.

When the door to Tune’s medical room opened up for the third time that day, after about a week of empty updates on her condition, a nurse in a white lab coat was the first to acknowledge his presence.

“She’s awake.”

Silver suddenly felt his blood go cold. Would he have the heart to do it alone? To step inside and confront her dead on? Should he?

…He gave a small nod to the nurse, pulled out his phone, and gave a quick text to Sonic. It was quick, direct and to the point.

“Come down to the ward.”

It didn’t take long for Sonic to get the message, decidedly leaving Silver on ‘read’ before dashing towards the medical ward. When he got there, it was dim, the atmosphere stifling. The looming energy that Silver was exuding was so out of place for him, it was dreadfully painful watching him contemplate everything right then and there. Sonic joined him by the front door, taking his hand and giving it a tight squeeze. The nurse awaiting the speedster, opened her mouth to speak.

“Before you go in, there’s something you should know.” she began. The two hedgehogs looked at the nurse as she spoke, listening intently. “She’s stable, but she’s…she lacks focus. And whatever that collar that Metal Sonic put on her won’t come off no matter how hard we’ve tried. He took a direct assault towards her brain, and, well, due to the impacts and slight fractures she suffered through, she seems unwilling to speak a word since she’s woken up.”

Of course. It could never be that easy.

“Due to how fragile the situation is, it’s best not to stress her out too much.” the nurse continued, clasping her fingers together. “I know this is hard for the both of you, but if I can ask, please: Try to remain as calm as you can while you speak to her.”

Despite the nurse's insistence, the duo pressed on. With another firm squeeze of each other's hand and a nod to the nurse, from both of them this time, Sonic and Silver pushed the door open and entered the room. 

There, lying in a hospital bed with a full tray of food she was aimlessly pushing around, was the Siren. The two walked up to her quietly, Silver’s stoney expression hardened on his face. They both took the double seat farthest from her bed, unable (or rather, unwilling) to really get much closer. She barely acknowledged them, choosing to stare blankly at her tray. Frustrated, Silver used his power to steal away her spork and tray, placing it atop a nearby table next to the window. When she still didn’t bother raising her head, hands loosely placed atop her lap, he forced her to face them head on, using his power to gently lift it up. Her eyes still barely looked at the two, glazed over and undetermined. Her posture was limp, lifeless.

In essence, her very soul had given up. It was like she was barely hanging on, existing only because her body demanded it. But she herself was absent.

“I’ll get right to the point:” Sonic was the first to speak. “Why’d you do it?”

The Siren stood quiet, unbothered by his interrogation.

“It doesn’t help you any if you keep quiet.” Sonic continued, annoyed. “I think you at least owe us an explanation as to why I had to go months on end with my voice in your throat.”

Still nothing. It was like nothing was registering, or rather she chose to ignore it. Unrelenting, Sonic pressed on, trying a slightly different approach. “You’ve got nowhere else to go, y’know. The entire Restoration’s got your face down. Even if you try to run, we’ll catch you. So why not just fess up now? It’s not like you’ve got anything else to lose.”

Silver glared at the Siren’s glazed over expression, he felt his quills standing up with every passing second.

“You know, just for the sake of it, I decided it best to check on my timeline using a pair of Chaos Emeralds we have hidden away at headquarters. And do you know what I found?” Silver spat out harshly. “A freaking ghost town. People are aimlessly wandering around, and those freaky robots are marching the streets.”

His hands balled into fists, trying to keep calm like the nurse told him, but his emotions were quickly getting the better of him. Surprisingly, his words seemed to have struck…something in the Siren’s core. Her ears twitched at his words, eyelids raising if only ever so slightly.

“You ruined it,” he could barely stop himself. “Because of you, I have to start back from square one. I’m back where I started, like if all the hard work I put into protecting my timeline didn’t matter in the end. Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”

He saw the Siren gulp involuntarily, her expression softening and eyes glistening slightly as she watched Sonic place a hand on Silver’s back, rubbing circles, but choosing not to take his eyes off of her.

“Why won’t you answer me, damnit?!” Silver yelled out desperately, his eyes shooting out small tears he couldn’t feel himself cry out, a bit of saliva spitting out from his mouth. “Why can’t you just talk to us?!”

The walls of the room reverberated and echoed back at him tauntingly and empty, the Siren wincing slightly. A moment passed as the three locked eyes with each other silently. And then, after an agonizingly long beat, the Siren finally moved without a sound, raising a fist to her chest and circling it around. Sonic and Silver recognized it immediately.

“I’m sorry.” she signed, breathing harshly yet mutedly as she lowered her head once more. She repeatedly circled her fist over and over again as she sobbed, tears falling into her blanket soundlessly. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…” The duo sat dumbfounded. There was no way…

“You…can’t be serious.” Sonic muttered out, words escaping him.

The Siren just kept signing over and over, before grasping at her disheveled hair, the green she once wore was now faded almost entirely, revealing its natural black color. Her body mutedly heaved, shuddering as she continued to cry. She was like a child, rocking back and forth as she tried desperately to soothe herself and regain composure, to no avail. She tried signing as much as she could, her hands clumsily voicing what she could not speak.

“I didn’t wanted to hurt you.” she shivered, her errors in sign quite noticeable and movements expressly inexperienced. “I wanted my go home. I wanted to go my home. But my home is wrong. I can’t go home.”

The two hedgehogs didn’t know what to make of it. They had never seen this side of her before. Once she was a confident and brash loudmouth, now a mute, sobbing shell of her former self. It was like she was a completely different person. And it for some reason ached at the two deeply, watching her grovel atop her lone hospital bed, without any outlet but her hands to vocalize her pain, which were now once again occupied, grasping at her head.

Despite every part of himself telling him not to, Silver stood up and took a seat across from the girl. Despite his frustrations and every single part of him telling him it was wrong, there was still some tinge of sympathy watching the Siren pathetically mourn. He couldn’t understand it, but he felt deeply inclined, reaching his arms out to pluck the Siren’s clawed hands from out of her hair and onto his waist, placing both hands on her shoulders. She tried to resist his help instinctively, but he refused to let her. Once she understood, she aimlessly grasped at Silver’s body as she wailed uncontrollably. She kept mouthing out her apologies, despite no one able to hear. Sonic followed shortly afterward, taking a seat right next to the girl opposite of Silver and placing a hand on her back. He was unsure what to do for the first time, watching as her body heaved into his partner's stomach. He took a glance at Silver, who in turn worriedly stared back at him, his mouth thinning into a line. The two were on the same page: they were genuinely at a loss.

It took a while for the girl to recover. But once she was calmed somewhat, she released herself from Silver’s gentle grasp, Sonic removing his hand and resting it behind him, watching as the girl quietly signed off as best as she could.

“My home is in–dangered.” she hesitantly spelled out. “A-l-t-o took it from me. I do voice stealing because it…makes me strong. Makes me strong to chase away A-l-t-o.” 

“How does it make you strong?” Sonic asked.

“My voice…” The Siren, unsure of how to sign it, tapped the two hedgehog's chest with dual pointed fingers and gestured openly with her arms, clawing her hands like she was grasping at something on them before pretending to eat something massive. She gulped down, and then stretched an arm out into the distance, the other hand going for her chest like she was an opera singer. Then, she flexed her arms like she was proving something.

“I don’t get it…” Sonic scratched the inside of his ear. “You eat them or something?”

The Siren groaned out mutedly. She scanned the area for something to write on, eyes focused on a lone notepad and a small pen left behind by the nurse. She gestured to it, Silver using a single finger to bring it to her with his power. She scribbled quickly.

“THE MORE VOICES I STEAL, THE MORE POWERFUL MINE BECOMES. IT’S LIKE THEY BECOME PART OF ME. MY INCANTATIONS ARE STRONGER THAT WAY. THEY REACH FURTHER.”

“But that still doesn’t explain the why, Tune.” Silver spoke up. “Why are you doing this? What’s your end goal here?”

She hesitated at first, unsure of how to explain. Silver tried again, desperate for anything she could muster.

"Please, just let us help you. Talk to us, Tune."

There was no turning back. She was already in deep trouble, and it was pointless to try and lie anymore. The words she wrote next were simple and direct, full of the most honesty she forced herself to muster that day.

“I DID IT TO PROTECT YOU.”

‘Protect’? What did that mean? She continued swiftly.

“ALTO CAN STRETCH HIS VOICE TO OTHER PEOPLE AND CONTROL THEIR MINDS. HE LITERALLY FORCES HIMSELF ONTO YOU WITH HIS VOICE. BUT HE CAN’T DO IT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE WITHOUT A VOICE TO MANIPULATE.”

“So you steal other people’s voices so that Alto can’t get to them first?” Sonic asked, grasping at his throat instinctively. “So that day in Casinopolis…”

“I STOLE YOUR VOICE IN AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE SURE YOU DIDN’T FALL VICTIM TO HIS SPELL." The Siren scrawled out. "I WANTED TO DO IT FOR EVERYONE AT THAT VENUE. EVEN IF YOU CAN’T SPEAK, YOU CAN STILL LIVE YOUR LIVES. YOU STILL HAVE OTHER WAYS TO COMMUNICATE. BUT ALTO STRIPS THAT FREE WILL THE MOMENT HE GETS HIS HANDS ON YOU. I HAD TO MAKE THE HARD DECISION. EVEN IF IT MEANT BECOMING THE ENEMY, I CHOSE TO PROTECT.”

“But why not just say something, Tune?” Silver frustratedly reprimanded. “We could have helped you. We would have understood—” A harsh slap on his thigh with her two fingers was all he needed to shut up. She quickly flipped to the next page, already taken nearly half the notepad up in her writing and continued, her annoyance at Silver's comment proved by how her handwriting worsened.

“DO YOU HONESTLY THINK PEOPLE WOULD BE OKAY WITH ME JUST STEALING THEIR VOICE AWAY IF I JUST UP AND ASKED? EVEN IF I HAD THE TIME AND OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING? DO YOU HONESTLY THINK THEY’D BELIEVE ME? BE SO FOR REAL RIGHT NOW.” 

“I hate to admit it, but she has a point, Silv.” Sonic sighed.

YADA YADA PLOT DETAILS WRITING IS HARD I LIKE CAMP BETTER OKAY THAT'S THE END YEYYYYY

[buckyalpine]

40s Sergeant Barnes with a nurse and a Sergeant kink (and breeding and house wife kink, virginity loss). This was supposed to be a pure smutty drabble but then I got in my feelings and added some fluff and angst but I promise Bucky is still a dirty, nasty little fuck in this. Just with a sweeter ending. The one he deserves.

Listen just imagine what a cute, sexy menace Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes would be just waking up from an injury when his eyes flutter open to the pretty nurse he’s been eyeing from the day he started. You’re not a shy, dainty little thing, nope. Not at all.

You bark out orders like a drill Sergeant and one glare from you is all it takes to get everyone in line and on task without a second thought. Even his superiors are scared of you, biting their tongue when you stitch them up and send them on their way before running off to your next patient.

Bucky was in love.

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes” he rasps, throwing you a charming smirk while you roll your eyes in response, shaking your head. "How'd I get so lucky, got a my little angel tendin' to me"

“I see your injury hasn’t stopped hurt that mouth of yours Sergeant" You quirk an eyebrow while he playfully huffs as you change the dressing covering a gash on his abdomen. You swab the area clean and he doesn't flinch even though you know it must burn like hell, his muscles tensed while he continues to watch you with heart eyes. "Now you know I'm not your little angel, I got 20 other men to fix up, you better be out of this bed as soon as you're all healed up"

“C’mon sugar, you're breakin' my heart" Bucky gives you a little pout with those perfect lips and you catch the twinkle in his eye as he looks over your form with complete admiration. He loved your sassy, take no shit attitude and it's taking everything in him to calm himself down so he doesn't get a hard on right there in front of you.

"You'd tell that to a cat with three legs if it was in a nurses outfit" You try your best to not give into his flirty comments and puppy eyes, knowing damn well he's a heart breaker but he makes it so difficult when he continues to woo you with his boyish charm.

He can't help but chase after you; catching the way your eyes always dart around with anxiety when his group returns from an operation, relief flooding them when you finally spot him. He loves your indifferent attitude, patting him down to make sure he's uninjured but your furrowed brows and the tiny pout on your lips give away that you're worried.

How can he just let you go. Every time you check over him, he needs you closer.

So much closer.

-

"Ms. y/l/n, Sergeant Barnes is requesting you in his tent, he says it's urgent"

You shake your head looking over at the time, quietly making your way over to the tent he's stationed at, thankful that a number of troops were sleeping so you wouldn't be seen as you quickly slip inside.

“And what hurts now” you sass with your hands on your hips seeing the soldier in perfect health, doing your best to assess him without letting him know.

"Always checkin' over me" Bucky chuckles, seeing what you're doing; his words making your cheeks heat up, "Knew you cared about me sugar"

"Well what am I doin' here" You give him an unconvincing huff, struggling to keep your voice steady, refusing to meet his eyes, keeping your gaze on his silver dog tags instead. It doesn't help that he's handsome as hell with a light dusting of scruff covering his cheeks. Bucky's never seen you flustered before and it evokes something in him, all the blood in his body rushing south seeing your fingers twitch.

All he wanted to do was kiss you but now-

“Help your Sergeant out doll” He whispers, taking another step forward till his chest brushes against yours, his hand coming to tilt your chin up, "Will you?"

You gasp feeling his hardness press against your thigh, your heart fluttering wildly as his thumb traces your lips, any semblance of control you had slipping away feeling the warmth of his skin.

“Y-yes Sergeant Barnes”

His lips press against yours, soft and sweet, a stark contrast to the way his body was screaming for him to pick you up and toss you onto his cot.

"Sweet like sugar" He lets his hands fall to your waist, pulling you flush against his body while your arms drape on top of his shoulders. You stand on your toes chasing more of his lips and he chuckles at the needy whine you let out when he pulls away for air.

Now let's say your first night together was actually quite tame. He kisses you again and you swoon when he repeatedly checks in with you before going any further. His hand slips under your skirt, letting his fingers toy with places no on else has touched. With each night, he needs you more and more until he can't hold off any longer and neither can you.

-

You sneak into his tent and this time he doesn't hesitate to undress you completely, not when he needs you bare with nothing separating you both. You feel your heart race as he lies on top of you, draping a thin sheet over himself when you shiver at the chill night air. You feel his body heat instantly warm you up, his heavy cock resting between your soaked folds.

"Are you sure, sugar?" He asks, his hand cupping your cheek and stroking your skin.

"Please Sergeant" You whisper and the way you say his title makes his cock twitch. There's something so different about you when you're in his bed, a sweet little bunny giving herself to him completely. It drives him feral with a need to make you feel good, make you cry for his cock and his cock only, to keep you nice and full of him.

You don't look twice at anyone else and here you are completely naked in his tent with your tight little virgin cunt, your legs spread open so he can put his dick in you; there was no way he was ever going to let you go.

"You tell me if it's too much, alright?" His lips tickle your neck as kisses your skin while rubbing his heavy cock through your folds, coating it in your slick, "Breathe for me"

He slips his tags into your mouth as he starts to press in, the initial sting making you bite down hard onto the metal feeling a mix of pleasure and pain. You whine at the way he stretches you open, your thighs squeezing around his waist, nails digging into his shoulders.

"Shhh, that's it love, doin' so good for me so good for your Sergeant, look how you're takin' all of me baby" He looks down to where you're both connected as he continues to slowly push himself in till hes fully sheathed inside you. He gives you time to adjust, slipping his tags out of your lips and letting his tongue lace with yours instead, his balls already throbbing with how tightly you were squeezing his cock.

"Please-Sergeant" your heels press into his ass desperate for him to move, gasping when he starts to slowly roll his hips, barely pulling out.

"I got you love-don't worry" Bucky moves as slowly as he could not wanting to hurt you, taking just as much care of you as you had with him countless of times.

But he can only keep up at that pace for so long. Your muffled whines and moans don't help the way his mind is already spiraling. His pretty little nurse all spread out just for him, taking his raw, bare cock in her soaking pussy, squeezing him so tight, he was only a few strokes from cumming.

If it were up to him he would've proposed on the spot, thinking about making love to you on your wedding night, seeing you all shy and sweet wrapped up in soft white lace. If you were his wife, he'd take you apart every which way, not giving a fuck about traditions, taking you right on the dining room table.

You'd be the prettiest little thing for him to come home to, such a good wife all dirty just for her husband. Only he'd know the way your mouth would slobber all over his cock like your life depended on it. The way you'd moan at the taste of his cum. Bucky's eyes rolled back at the thought of you with nothing but some heels and a string of pearls he'd put around your neck while he stuffed you with cum and emptied his balls in you.

"S-Sergeant-I-oh god" You whimpered feeling his cock grow harder, your pussy pulling him right back in, feeling the coil low in your belly pull tighter and tighter as he hit that spot.

Meanwhile Bucky's jaw clenched as he felt his balls pull tight to his body, the tip leaking steadily in your pussy. His mind spiraled into places he didn't think would exist before he met you, rogue thoughts he only entertained when he had his dick in his hand. The harder he fucked you the more he thought about how gorgeous you'd look with a swollen belly.

Fuck, imagine if he got you pregnant right then and there. That nurses uniform would no longer fit you. Everyone would know he knocked you up, your perfectly round tummy carrying Sergeant James Barnes' baby, breasts heavy with milk, God, he wasn't going to last-

“Gonna let your Sergeant pump you full of cum?” He pants, letting his hands grip onto your hips like his life depends on it, the wiry hair at the base of his cock rubbing against your clit.

“Yes!!” You sob, biting down onto his shoulder to keep your cries down while he continues to fuck you into oblivion. You don't understand how such filth can spew from that pink, pouty little mouth of his. "Please-please-need-youI-I'm gonna-"

"M'yours sweet girl, m'all yours, go on, cum for me love, cum on my cock, it's all yours" He gazed into your eyes, cooing at your parted lips and sweat slicked skin. It didn't take long for you to shatter around him his lips smashing against yours to swallow your moans.

"Want your cum Sergeant" You beg , desperate to have him claim you from the inside.

"Oh fuck baby, y-you can't say that, m-gonna, oh fuckkk" Your words throw Bucky right off the edge as he lets out a deep groan stilling his hips and shooting endless ropes of his spend into you. You both lay in comfortable silence, your fingers playing with his hair; his usual kempt brown locks now disheveled .

“Y’know m’gonna marry you” his scruffy cheek nuzzles into your neck as he continues to stay deep inside you as his cock softens, “after all this is over. Gonna put a ring on that finger”

His words send a different wave of emotions over you, feeling more safe than ever, clinging onto him as tightly as possible. You let a whimper slip out and he pulls away from your neck with an expression of concern.

“What is it love” Bucky coos, wiping away the tears that slip you, stroking your cheek while you bite back a sniffle.

“Do you mean it? After this is all over?” You weren't sure what Bucky would want-there was still a war going on. Anything could happen. Perhaps this was just to keep his bed warm. Something to keep him calm, you were just someone to-

"Of course sugar" Bucky presses a firm kiss to your forehead, silencing the thoughts that tried to run wild. "You're mine"

-

And of course he gets his happy ending. Because when it's all over, he gets the ring for the girl he loves. He's on one knee, proposing to you with the sweetest words. He treats you like a princess on your wedding night, making love all night long until the sun is up.

There isn't a surface in the house he's left untouched. Nothing makes him more feral than moaning for his pretty wife, constantly taking her hand and wrapping it around his cock, watching that diamond glint with each stroke.

It doesn't take long for you to feel a little squeamish, knowing all the tell tale signs.

The day you tell him he's going to be a dad is one of the happiest days of his life. There isn't a single night that goes by where he isn't nuzzling his face into your tummy, talking to your little one.

Everything was perfecttt.

[gyuswhore]

Statistically Speaking...

part of the svt TA collab

kim mingyu x reader

word count: 21k

contains: TA! mingyu, fluff, smut [minors DNI], angst, statistics, ur honour they're stupid for one another, descriptions of stress exhaustion and burnout, academic burden, disagreements, mingyu is smart as hell, shitting on bad professors, smut but its a surprise [gyu gets his soul sucked while he's reciting statistical models I mean what]

words of conviction from @highvern: Kim Mingyu, total asshole , 1-800-HOT N DUMB , THEYRE IN LOVE MINGYU SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LOSER , sick fucking freak , i know when you wrote this you put your head in your hands , OHHHM YW GOD

synopsis: In all your years of academic endurance, you’ve never failed. A 100% success rate, despite you cutting it close at times. However, the line graph that is your life starts tanking somewhere around the time you began taking this hellsent Statistics in Psychological Research class. With a professor that wouldn’t know his ass from his head, and an overworked, overenthusiastic, and overcaptivating TA, it couldn't possibly get any worse than this. However, statistically speaking,…it could.

[a/n]: this fic is set in the same universe as @highvern's wonu fic endpoint [to be released], some insight for wonu's pov is included here as is some of Mingyu's pov in cam's fic if you'd like to see more about what happens in the gaps!!

I want to start by thanking everyone who chose to be part of this collab fic and for being the reason cam and I were able to open up @camandemstudios in the first place. everyone's been so kind and cooperative and I still cant believe we managed to convince such amazing writers to join us on this collab journey 🥹 I love u guys

Thanking my wife camothy @highvern for brainstorming with me since day one and for betaing for me. @seokgyuu and @miabebe for also looking over the doc and reassuring me. I'm for sure forgetting someone and I'm really sorry about that, know that I appreciate you just as much 🤍

on that note, I hope you guys enjoy this fic, im HELLA nervous for some reason so plsplspls remember to reblog and send me feedback on how you liked it, I will love you forever <333

masterlist

Monday

A normal person would’ve cried. Perhaps even sued the entire institution for all it was worth. Burn down the world, if it came to it. 

But as you stare at the tiny 37/100 on your screen, you feel…nothing. 

You could’ve said you saw it coming, which you did, but something about blaming someone else for an exam you took was beginning to feel a little manipulative. 

Clicking off the student portal, you huff loudly, five in the morning too early for you to begin breaking down over a grade that was completely unreflective of what you were taught. 

Or maybe it was, because as you count one, two, three hours till your dreaded Statistics in Psychological Research class, you can only hope you’ll hold back from spitting in your professor’s coffee. But alas, you can only shut your laptop harder than necessary for what it costs and push the grade out of your mind.

You were tired enough to sleep for a couple more hours, and you take it as an opportunity to spite the entire course by giving just as many fucks as your professor did.  

Which was little to none. 

That was a lie—on your part anyway. Because you continue to show up, and probably will until you can put this course and all of its trauma behind you. Even now as you feel the inclining beat of your pulse sitting in the white lecture hall, you know this is all but you versus the universe. 

Dr. Cho might as well have wheeled himself into the room on a skateboard with the way he struts into the room. 

He’s wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off and jeans of a matching finish that do not fit him properly. There’s pins in every last colour on this earth, littering the front of his jacket with sayings that toe the silver controversial lining. There was one that said Vote for John F. Kennedy, another plain black one with I Eat Kids, and of course, the blaring Cunt written in cursive, pink sparkly letters. 

This man that’s pushing into his 60s stands before his slightly wilted class in his crocs, hands on his hips as he heaves a long breath. 

“I have to say, not the turn out I was expecting on that last report.”

He’s talking about the report you coincidentally failed, the same one you were pushed into with little to no direction and a deadline tighter than any you’ve had to bully yourself through. 

“All I can say is to read through the feedback I’ve given and try a little harder next time.” His voice is somewhere bordering comical exasperation. Feedback that consisted of sparing ‘?’’s and ‘no’’s with zero further explanation. He could say more, but you’ve learned that he simply chooses to not. 

Besides the man that drones in the front of the room, there’s another person in the other corner of the lecture hall. He’s hunched over a giant pile of papers, sifting through each and every one with a pen in his other hand. 

The TA doing a mundane task is somehow more interesting than whatever seminars of disappointment your professor was giving. He’s crossing something out on every single leaf of paper that he flicks through, and you vaguely wonder if those were today’s worksheets. 

“...and post hoc tests last week, we can start on Bayesian today. Mingyu will be handing out the tutorial papers.”

The poor TA looks like he thought he’d have more time, snapping his head up to look at the professor with an expression of pure incredulousness. He staggers for a moment before he’s flicking past the pages even faster somehow, striking out what seems like the same instruction in the giant pile of papers meant for an entire lecture hall. There’s a rustle as about a hundred laptops are being pulled out and booted up, waiting for the worksheets to land on the desks. 

You hear the familiar warble of papers being passed out and you watch as the TA pulls chunks of sheets out of the giant stack in his arms to slam down onto the front tables. 

“Pass it down, please… pass it down, please…”

There’s a voice that calls from one of the front seats, “What formula is the sheet talking about?”

Mingyu looks startled as he snaps back to look at the blaring empty whiteboard. In the midst of passing papers, you watch him sprint to the rolling whiteboards, pulling one of the giant flats of white over to the other side, the mechanism slamming into place with a louder than comfortable slam. It reveals another whiteboard underneath with the detestably long formula already written (and the one you’d have to figure out yourself).

 The professor remains with his chin in his hands behind his laptop, unphased. 

By the time you’ve registered the foreign symbols on the board, one of the tutorial papers has made it into your hands.

Sure enough, there’s a quick line across one of the steps with a thick black marker. 

Blinking hard, you attempt to pull yourself into the zone, staring at the white sheet with words that are barely stringing themselves together. Nothing out of the ordinary, especially as you lift your head to find hunched shoulders and furrowed brows all around. 

There’s one person that’s zipping back and forth, just like there always is. 

You watch as Mingyu hunches over certain laptops and whispers in rapid explanation before moving on to the next, a looming sense of dizziness that trails behind him as he shoots up the stairs to the back rows to help someone else. 

There’s a brief consideration to raise your own hand to ask for help, but one look at his disoriented gaze and the amount of hands that shoot up by the second, you guess it wasn’t going to help.

Back you go, hunched over the same wretched paper as everyone else, and praying for some divine revelation. 

Tuesday

Divine revelation did not come to you, but the good sense to make use of office hours did. 

So here you are, a printed copy of your supposedly horrid assignment and a pack of multicolour pens in your tote, and determination in your stride, you make your way to the department building. 

You’ve double, triple, quadruple checked the times to ensure you don’t dip in at the wrong moment, swiping open your phone to re-check the room number yet again. 

Standing outside the door, you knock with mustered confidence, waiting for something akin to an affirmative from the other side of the door. 

Nothing. 

You knock again.

Silence. 

You glance around the empty hall before grasping onto the cool brass handle of the door, wrenching it open just a peep. Poking your head in, you find the room…empty.

The chairs and tables that usually buzz with discussing students lay barren as you step into the room. Moving to look at the front of the room, you inhale sharply as you realise the professor’s desk has been occupied this entire time. 

Except he’s asleep.

No, that’s not the professor. 

Moving closer, you watch the way his back rises and falls ever so slowly, head resting on his arm as his hand hangs limp off the table. Whipping your head around with more attention this time, you attempt to find an explanation written on the walls. But there’s none, even in the papers that litter the table he rests his head on.

You don’t need to see his face to know it’s the TA. But as you stand in the empty room, clutching the straps of your tote, you aren’t quite sure what to do. 

Another glance around the table and you realise his laptop remains on, the screen yet to sleep. Before the obvious issue of a blatant invasion of privacy can befall you, you take a step forward to take a peek. 

It’s his schedule, a million colours blaring on the screen in a colour coded regard with barely any white spaces. It doesn’t take long to find his time slot for right now, red with importance. 

Glancing down, the man remains fast asleep, pen still in hand as it inks a faint line on the page. You look around the room for the nth time, taking constant glances back at his laptop that tells you he’s actively missing something right now. Clearing your throat, you hunch over a tad bit. 

“Um, excuse me.” He hardly moves. So you try a little louder, hunching over his sleeping form even further. “Excuse me.”

You could’ve sworn you heard a snore. 

Out of instinct, you bring a hand forward to his shoulder, shaking ever so slightly as you call for him again. “Excuse me!”

There’s a sharp inhale and he shoots up quicker than you can back away, ensuring you get an entire back’s worth of force as he bumps into you, hard.

“Wh–ow!” The noise is collective, yelps and thuds as you both back away from each other. 

“W–what’re you doing here?” he asks, hair still ruffled and eyes barely open as he stands at the table. There’s a bright yellow sticky note on his right cheek, ink scribbled on in something you can’t decipher.

“Um, it’s office—”

His eyes land on the same screen you were peering into just before and it looks like his life flashes before his eyes, widening at the sight as he slams around the table looking for something. 

“I have to go,” he announces, gripping onto an unstrapped watch as he registers the time, his other hand shoving his laptop and a few papers into a dark messenger bag. 

“Wait, isn’t it still office hours?” you call out as he whizzes past you. 

He’s swinging his bag over his shoulder and half tripping to the door as he calls out, “Wednesdays and Thursdays.”

“But—”

“It’s on the portal.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it—” he pauses as he exhales loudly, closing his eyes and bringing a hand to rub across his tired face. “I’ll double check. But it’s Wednesdays and Thursdays from now on. You can wait till I get back if you really want help.”

“How—”

A loud slam! of the door. 

“—long…” 

You’re left draped in silence yet again, the echoes of the slammed door ringing in your startled ears. It all happened too fast for you to process, blinking rapidly as you registered that you were now alone in the room. 

He said he’d be back, but left you with no indication as to when. By the looks of his god awful schedule, it looked like he had something else to attend to right after whatever it was he buggered off to right now. 

Fingers clenched into a fist, you consider your options. You could wait, sit on one of the desks and try to get some work done until he gets back. 

The universe gives you your answer as the door opens with a loud creak in the empty lecture hall. It’s another professor who looks quite startled to find an overenthusiastic student already present for class. 

She stares before craning to look at the room number outside the door, “Am I in the right room?”

“Uh, yes! I was just leaving,” you buffer out, moving to shuffle out immediately. 

You’re halfway out the door when you hear another call of an “Excuse me!”

“Are these your papers?” The professor’s full arms are up as she gestures to the still littered table. 

The No is ready on your lips. Until it isn’t. 

Later on, you’d consider how you left that room with an armful of papers that did not belong to you. How you’d ducked under the table to ensure you’d gotten everything, down to the leather strap watch with the cracked clock face. 

But as you stare at the stack of files and sheets that lay on your desk at home, you only know of the decent act that you’d committed.

And nothing of the hourglass you’d just turned over. 

Wednesday

In your Sent box are three emails sent on three separate days, all asking the same recurring question, all responding with the same recurring reply.

I wanted to confirm the days and times for office hours. I’m aware it’s on the portal but I’d like to reconfirm. 

Regards, YN

Dear YN,

Wednesdays and Thursdays. 4 to 6 PM.

Kim Mingyu, T.A. 

So there you were on a Wednesday afternoon, 3:59 PM sharp, outside the lecture hall where office hours have always been. With the same tote hung on your shoulders, with the same printed assignment and pack of multicolour pens, and a separated stack of files and folders, you wrench the door open with bated breath. 

The blended murmur of the usual hustle and bustle of the appointment reassures you first, the sight of scattered students of familiar faces reassures you second. And most of all, a conscious TA that sits at the professor’s desk, speaking to another student over a laptop screen. 

The man does nothing to acknowledge your arrival, continuing above the babble of students that occupy the chairs and the discussion. It isn’t too full, but considerably busy nonetheless despite how early you’ve swooped in. 

There’s a brief consideration whether this was in the TA’s job description at all, craning your neck to take a full sweep of the room to find a sparing glimpse of the man who should be here. The professor and his loud fashion choices are nowhere to be found. 

The sigh you let out is heavy and full of an emotion you cannot possibly begin to unpack, taking a seat on one of the unoccupied chairs to slump against. Shoulders sagging, you feel every fibre of your being screaming against your better judgement to pull out some work and to be productive while you wait. Reading over your failed assignment for the nth time, the same one that seemed to be some sick form of rage bait. 

You pull a couple things out so as to not look awkward sitting and staring into nothing on an empty desk, uncapping your pen and pulling up your sleeves like there was business to be done. Which there was, but none of which you wished to entertain. 

People watching, you realise, is a lot easier when most of the room is preoccupied with whatever it is they’re doing, too busy to notice your blank stares. 

The faces are familiar, none of which are people you’ve interacted with before but classmates nonetheless. The room is full of shaking legs, spinning pens and hunched backs, not an un-scrunched brow in sight. There’s a particular gaggle of girls somewhere around the front, their tables suggesting a work environment but between the whispers, giggles and glances to the front of the room, you assume there’s one thing in common the both of you weren’t doing. 

Speaking of the front of the room, your matched glance finds you face to face with the student at the main table in the middle of pushing himself off his seat. Your reaction is immediate, hand coming over to slam against the flat of your bag to find the lost straps, moving out of your seat as you keep your eyes on the front of the room. 

Bad luck must be a lover, because you realise quickly that somebody’s already beat you to it. Before you even noticed the first’s intentions to. The student stands beside the chair ready to keep it warm as the previous occupant leaves. 

Slamming back down on your own seat, you realise very quickly that trying to get an audience with this TA was going to be harder than you anticipated. There’s multiple other sounds of frustration around the room, and you doubt the slowly increasing pool of students was going to help anyone’s time management. 

Realising you needed to be a little more tactical if you didn’t want to sit here for the next month and half, you find an empty spot near the gaggle of girls you’d noticed before. It was right up front, just enough for you to hear when the conversation would begin to conclude at the main table. 

Once again, the TA doesn’t seem to notice any of the hustle and bustle of the room as his mouth continues to move rapidly, eyes on the question as he invests himself in his explanation. 

It was unfortunate that the only remaining seat was right next to the louder than necessary group, but you take it as a blessing anyway. It’s then that the one right next to you turns to stage-whisper to you. 

“Are you here to see him?”

You don’t expect a conversation, ears straining to eavesdrop on the other conversation in front of you to find your cue. You snap to look at her in surprise. “Pardon?” 

“Are you here to see him? Mingyu?”

“Uh—” Wasn’t everybody? “Yeah, I had a couple things I wanted to clear out.”

The revelation makes her shoulders drop as she lets out a loud sigh, “God, I can never get anything this professor says. I've been here nearly every week trying to figure it all out.”

“Yeah he’s a bit…unorthodox.”

“He’s unorthodox too.” She looks over to the main table towards the TA, chin in her hands as she gazes. “A face like that is rare.”

It wasn’t that she was wrong, it didn’t take more than a glance to convince yourself that Mingyu was possibly one of the more attractive people you’d meet in your lifetime. But the appeal lasted for all of five minutes for you, flitting away when you noticed that he dragged along a very…overwrought… suggestion wherever he went. 

It was clear he was stressed seemingly all year round, nearly just as relaxed as your professor seemed to be. 

But Mingyu was attractive. And you realise how much of a fool you’d sound if you admitted to anything other than such. 

“It is. His willpower’s somehow even rarer,” you add. “Don’t know how he does it.”

“God, tell me about it. Forget getting his number, trying to have more than a three sentence exchange with him without some statistical nonsense involved is near impossible.” Her face has fallen, a tight little frown on her face as she irritates herself with some other memory. 

Taking a glance down at her notes, you find the printed sheet littered with glitter gel pen ink lining the edges, doodles of stars and hearts and small anime characters next to p values and z scores. 

There’s a distinct sound of a chair screeching, and it’s like a large GAME OVER sign is hanging above your head. 

You jerk in your seat, like you could jump over the table and land in the emptying seat with some god-given stroke of luck, like the person already standing next to the chair wouldn’t hold a lifelong grudge against the insane girl with an unnatural acclimation to statistics. 

Although, nothing was more unnatural than the way this TA seemed to know more than the professor. Or you were just really behind. 

Alas, you don’t tumble over the table or kick back your chair, merely making a forceful motion in your seat, palms itching terribly as you watch the girl with her open laptop balanced in her arms move to take a seat. 

You were preoccupied, hence you do not notice that the TA has also noticed you. 

Suddenly, the girl looks startled as she’s told to wait. 

“She’s been waiting nearly a week, I really hope you don’t mind,” you hear him say, voice strained as you turn to look at him. His hands are outstretched to motion towards you a few feet across from him. 

For whatever reason, you had no thought that he might’ve remembered you. Something about his half asleep state when he’d spoken to you, perhaps he might’ve thought he dreamt it. Or he’d just forgotten it altogether. 

The girl glances at you, and her shoulders sag a little as she nods in formality. 

“Thank you.”

It comes out of both of you, snapping to look at each other hardly a moment as you go back to smiling at the retreating student. 

“You can come right after her,” he reassures, his own upturned mouth tired and fading. 

Never have you felt more awkward trying to come around the elongated student tables. 

You pause at first, staring at the table in front of you like it was worth trying to climb over or even crawl under it to get to the desk. Another moment of eye contact as he stares at your unmoving form with a blank look, and the heat pools your skin. 

Staggering for a moment, you end up moving past your chair and walking the way round anyway, the screeching of the chairs only nurturing the existing budding humiliation for no apparent reason. 

It only gets worse when you sit across from him finally, backside barely touching the plastic before realising you’d forgotten your bag in your seat. 

Mid smile in a timid greeting when you make a sound resembling something of an “Oh!” as you spring back up immediately. It’s easier to reach for your bag over the table you were sitting on, reaching across to grab it off your vacated seat. 

The girl you were sitting next to just before makes a motion like she’s trying to help and you have to remind yourself to smile at her as you retreat. 

Mingyu has the very beginnings of an amused expression on his face once you’ve finally made yourself comfortable across from him, clearing your throat just for something to do. 

“Right. How can I help you?”

Pulling out your printed assignment, you bring out the sheets of stapled paper to the centre of the table, writing facing him. 

One look at the sparse format of the cover page, he blows a full mouth of air at the sight of recognition. Without you having to say a thing, he flicks to the very last page, finding the rubric printed on a separate page. 

“It’s a 37,” you inform him like he couldn’t see the bold 37/100 in the bottom Total cell. 

“Do you think you deserved a better grade?” he asks. It would have sounded direct, an accusation even. But he asks with an intonation of genuinity, like he actually wanted to know. 

It stumps you regardless.

“Well…I know I can do better, at least,” you decide to answer. 

“You’re here, which means you’re at least willing to try. That’s a start,” he murmurs. His eyes are laser focused on the sheet beneath him, holding it open as his eyes move faster across the page than you can keep up with. Somehow talking to you while taking in the words on the paper.

“I remember marking this,” he says, looking up to address you. “Your concepts are nearly there, but your structure and presentation was off.”

“You marked them?”

He raises his brow, “I hope that wasn’t an accusation. I need to stick to the rubric.”

“I thought the professor marked the lab reports.”

“He’s…supposed to.” There’s a forced reservedness in his voice. “I mark them and he puts in his comments if he has any. But I’m not sure you’d fare any better than this if it was him behind that pen either.”

Every question that floated in memorisation, from the form and structure, to the nitty gritties of the data presentation, all evaporate as you realise you’re at a loss for words. 

Even more embarrassingly, you feel tears prick the back of your eyes. You don’t have an explanation, but it’s somehow easier to feel helpless in front of the man that’s meant to help you. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“That’s alright,” he says as reassurance, though it sounds awfully rehearsed. Like he has to say it everyday. “We’ll work through it.”

He lets out a big sigh, adjusting in his chair and running a hand through his hair. The motion has you noticing the dishevelled nature of the mop on his head, un-uniformed and sticking out at certain places, yet still somehow cohesive with his look. His shoulders are straight and taut, fingers working as they fiddle and flick the pen in his hand. 

Despite it all, his shirt is ruffled and creased, unbuttoned at the first couple steps. The buttons are misaligned, one side of his collar higher on his neck than the other. It takes an effort to not reach over and fix it for him.

“Lab reports can be quite tricky if you aren’t sure what you’re doing. Did you refer to the tutorial?”

You mean the one that did nothing to help? “Yes.”

“You got those bits right, format and whatnot. But—”

“It was a lump of writing about subheadings and word counts,” you say plainly.

Mingyu lips are in a tight line. “Well, yes, but it helps—”

“I know the results are supposed to go in the results section. I don’t need a PDF to tell me that,” you cut him off. Your voice is reserved, and you hope it comes off as a point across and not a complaint. Although it was a complaint. “I want to know why the entire section was ruled off as incorrect when we were never properly taught how to write it in the first place.”

“Dr. Cho—”

“Is no help.”

“I understand—”

“He can’t even mark his own papers. I’m quite sure that’s not in your job description. It’s supposed to be him here. Not you.”

It’s silent. There was nothing in your voice that suggested you wished to pick a fight, on the contrary, quite calm and matter of fact. Mingyu’s fingernails are going white as his grip on his pen and paper grow stronger. 

“And yet, we continue to show up. Because we do what we must.” He raises his head in control, a small smile on his face, eyebrows unnaturally raised. “And, better that I’m here rather than no one at all. I can help you too.”

Help, he did. 

Mingyu had made it quite clear his time with you was limited, but by the end of the near 25 minute session, nearly every inch of your printed assignment was covered in a rainbow of notes and corrections, additional papers and post-it notes pasted on the back as you remain careful to not lose them as you slip the stack in your bag. 

You only remember when you spot the segregated file of papers in your bag.

“I almost forgot,” you say, slipping the files and tidbits out and in front of him. 

“Where did you find this?” he asks sharply, eyes widening as sees the familiar blue. 

“You left them at the desk of the lecture hall last week,” you say, before quickly adding, “There was a class right after you left. I took them off the professor’s hands before they got lost. Thought it might be important.”

“I’ve been looking all over for these,” he says as he goes through the pages and files. Random sticky tabs and highlighted regions across the pages. The leather strap watch with the broken clock face remains on top, and he picks it up. He looks up to you with wide, sparkling eyes and a smile that feels genuine. “Thank you.”

You flush for some reason, “O–of course, couldn’t just leave them there.”

Pausing, you wonder if you should make the next comment, the words tumbling out before you can make a decision. “Maybe don’t run out of rooms still half asleep.”

By the grace of God, he laughs, “No, you’re right. I should be careful.”

It isn’t till you’re pushing yourself out of your chair that he continues. “You can come in at 3:30 tomorrow.”

“Pardon?”

He’s stood up as well. “I have a free thirty minutes before office hours formally start. I can help you out a little more without the crowd.” 

Feet planted on the ground, there’s not much you can do but stare. “Um, sure. I can come in a little early.”

He nods casually, “Thanks again for the papers. And the watch.”

You smile, “No problem.”

Thursday

True to your punctual nature, you make yourself known at exactly 3:29 PM.

Mingyu is at the desk, conscious and on the phone, eyes closed as he rests his face on his fist.

“I don’t know if I can make time for that—no, I understand, sir,”

Another pause as the noise from his speakers fill his ears, his rubbing over his face a little harsher than you doubt he’s entirely comfortable with. 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

His phone hits the table with a heartbreaking thud, both hands covering his face as he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. 

“Light on your feet or something? I can never tell when you come in,” he startles when he notices you. 

Sheepish smile on your face, you move to sit down. “Sorry.”

You know it’s invasive, and you also know you might be asking him to break some unknown university code of conduct, but curiosity takes charge as you ask a casual question. “Important call?”

“Uh, yeah, um, just work stuff,” he states, shaking his head swiftly like he’s trying to shake the thought out of his mind. 

There’s a pause while you're slipping your papers and laptop out of your bag, during which he seems to have decided to divulge a little more. 

“It was Dr. Cho. More stuff for me to do,” he says. “As always.” 

“Does he do anything other than show up to class?” you ask through a snort. 

“Of course he does. He cusses out every article he doesn’t agree with, is anything but objective and…the occasional relay of blatant misinformation.” 

For the record, you’d never really heard Mingyu speak at all for the months he’d been TA-ing for the semester. It was small whispers of choice words in a vague voice, the distant murmur as he exchanged with the professor too far for you to hear. 

The voice of the seemingly quiet and diligent TA was never known to you, not until yesterday as he explained statistical models and the flaws of your data presentation. 

Passionately too. Incredulous for a discipline so dry and unapproachable. 

That being said, something about the grit in his voice as he positively sneered through his teeth, badmouthing his professor—it was something you couldn’t quite believe he was capable of. 

“I’m sorry you have to put up with him.”

Once again, by whatever stone of tolerance the universe bestowed in his heart, you watch him sigh and smile, “Anything for that recommendation. And the pay too, I suppose. Besides, he’s done a lot for the area, can’t discredit him entirely.”

With your eyebrows raised, he seems to catch your expression. He pants out a laugh, and your stomach lurches as you watch it reach his eyes, teeth on display, a lurch in his chest; a true laugh. 

Raising his hands in surrender, he responds, “I’m stuck.”

There’s nothing you can do to stop the smile that reaches your own face, turning your laptop screen towards him with the JASP software display. “I am too. Help.”

Help, he does.

Monday

Mingyu ended up giving you an entire hour on that Thursday. 

The thirty minutes before office hours began soared by like they were nothing, and you were ready to take your leave the minute students began to scatter in as the clock hit a swift four. Except he kept going, another 30 minutes in deep concentration as he retaught you nearly everything from scratch. 

Perhaps his proven determination to ensure you don’t tragically fail is what prompted you to do this, standing at the till of your regular coffee shop as you ask, “Make that two, please.”

It might also be important to mention the 7:30 AM on the dial on a bright Monday morning as you walked into your slightly less dreaded Statistics in Psychological Research class, knowing there would only be one other person insane enough to get to the lecture hall this early. 

Something isn’t right. 

Mingyu is in a position all too familiar to you and everyone else who shares this class, hunched over something or the other in deep focus. The sun pours in through the lifted blinds, the lights of the class turned off as natural light does more than enough of the job. 

It also shows you a blaring hot pink post-it note on his face, all too familiar to a previous interaction you’ve had with him. 

He notices you before you need to announce yourself, brows separating as he recognises you in the doorway. “‘Morning!” 

“...Morning.”

“You’re early,” he comments, straightening his back with a hand behind him for support as you approach. 

“Figured we both needed this,” you hand him a tray with his cup of coffee, eyes still trained on his lower cheek with the paper stuck to it. “It’s a latte with no sugar, but I added a couple packets on the side anyway. Just in case.”

“O–oh, thank you. And you’re right I did need this.”

Now that you’re closer, the scrawled writing on the post-it note is clearer. 

To Do:

Call mom

Shoot myself

“You, um—” It’s alarmingly difficult for you to say it, despite the words being so simple. Hey! You got a lil’ something on your face.

But all you do is dumbly point to your own cheek, eyes trained on the loud piece of paper that tells more than he might like the world to know. 

There’s a loud slap of his hand on his own cheek as he crumples the paper in his hands, bringing it forward to see. “For fuck’s sake.”

“It’s okay! I wanna…shoot myself too sometimes.” 

What the fuck?

“I mean!” you correct louder than you anticipated, before covering with a laugh. “It’s okay, it happens. Good thing I caught it before someone else did.”

It’s all the more petrifying when your voice echoes across the blatantly empty lecture hall, reverberating like it was a punishment for you and your horrid lack of volume control. Meeting his eyes feels like a sin right now, so you keep them downcast and pray he doesn’t try to sabotage your education. 

“Good thing it was just you. Yeah.”

Just you.

“Anyways, I think I’m done with prepping for class. Do you wanna squeeze in twenty minutes of ANOVA?” 

“Have you seen the time?” 

“Not a morning person?”

“Nope!”

“And yet it’s 7:40 on a Monday morning and you’re absurdly early.” His brows are raised as he pulls around the professor's chair to bring it to you. 

“Do you want the coffee or not?” you ask, watching as he drags another chair for himself. 

The both of you sit away from the professors table, coffees in hand as you watch Mingyu run a hand through his hair. 

He gives you a crooked grin,“I apologise.”

“To be fair,” he continues. “I’m not much of a morning person either.”

You narrow your eyes the slightest bit as Mingyu takes a sip of his unsweetened coffee, “I’m starting to think no money’s worth this job.”

Mingyu snorts, coffee suspended in his full cheeks. He swallows with much difficulty before answering, “You’re right. Not sure why I’m still here either. I could get an offer from another professor.”

“And that isn’t happening because…?”

Elbows on his knees, Mingyu swirls his capless coffee cup, the beige liquid moving in a growing tornado. “I like Dr. Cho.”

“You—”

“I know,” he laughs loud, a deep, echoing sound that shakes in your ears. “I know. I sound like a lunatic.”

“I don’t know about lunacy, but insanity can have its reasons.”

“Another would argue that insanity was the very absence of reason.” 

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Excuse me for doing my job.”

He takes another sip of his coffee, and you ask again, “No, but really. I can’t imagine this man having too many redeeming qualities as an educator.”

Mingyu lifts his chin as he presses his lips together. “When I was in my first year, there was this other class I had where we had to write a lab report for the first time.”

“PSYCH101?”

“That’s the one. I’d never written one before, but I liked statistics enough to do a little more digging than what the assignment called for. I ended up finding one of Dr. Cho’s studies, read the entire thing, word for word. I was up all night reading nearly everything he’d published, some of ‘em before any of us were even born.” 

“Oh. So you’re a fan.”

“Everyone tells you to never meet your idols,” he snickers. “He’s done amazing things, but I guess he pays for it with his flawed personality.”

“I’m sorry it had to be you,” you half joke. 

Mingyu looks at you sheepishly, “That might also be my own fault.” 

“Don’t tell me you offered.”

“I might as well have. All my assignments referenced his work the most. I was always talking to him about upcoming research after class, and it was like he was a different person. Forget differing opinions, some of what he was saying was just…plain incorrect. He welcomed the argument though, and I couldn’t—can’t—stand listening to someone spew nonsense when I know it’s not true. He was always emailing me extra resources which…I’m pretty sure he isn’t supposed to do. Only reason I did so well in his class was because I taught myself.” 

He sighs a loud sigh, straightening his back, “I guess he liked me more than I thought, because next thing I know I’m getting a call over the summer telling me I have a job.”

“Did he…have a TA when you were in his class?” 

“Four.”

“Four?!”

“Two at a time. All of ‘em quit at some point. Said they didn’t want the recommendation or the pay.”

“Would he…not give you a recommendation anyway? You said he liked you.”

Mingyu shakes his head solemnly, “He’s a tough cookie, everyone in the field knows that. If you’ve impressed him, you’ve impressed everyone.”

You take a moment to really absorb everything you’ve just learned. “That’s a sucky position you’re in.”

“Tell me about it. But it’s okay. Three—three and a half more months to go? This isn’t even the worst of it, I’m just dreading study week when I’m gonna have to handle all the crying.”

You wince as he mentions something even remotely close to exam season, still barely at a stage where you can accept you’d be alright with this class. 

“I know you’re not nearly as qualified or experienced as him, but I think you could take over his class.”

“Ever heard of barriers to entry? I’d be ruined if I wanted a career in this.”

You roll your eyes playfully, “All I’m saying is I’ve learned more from you in barely a couple hours combined than the last two months I’ve spent cursing this very lecture hall.”

If you weren’t lying to yourself, you could’ve sworn you saw a blush creep up his face, and paired with his shy laugh and hand at the back of his neck, you can’t help but bite back your own smile. 

“If I can help you then it’s worth losing myself.”

Your heart is in your fucking throat.

“I’m glad when students tell me that,” he continues, utterly oblivious to the landslide happening in your digestive tract. “Makes me feel like I’m doing something right.”

“You’re—” you swallow thickly because you sound like a toad. “You’re doing more than just something right. You’re saving us therapy and an extra semester.”

He laughs at that, and you wish he’d let you breathe. 

“Feels like I’m doing something wrong sometimes,” he huffs. “My friend’s a TA too and he’s got himself a girlfriend on top of everything else he’s got going on.” 

He goes on, “Do you know how many times I need to ask people to quit twirling their hair? To look at the page and not my face? Asking for my number, I have an email for a reason, for fuck’s sake—”

Mingyu is cut off because you’re laughing, hand to mouth as your shoulders shake through your sniggering. “W–what?”

“I’m sorry,” you hiccup. “It’s just…It sounds like you don’t know what you look like.”

“What’s wrong with how I look?” he frowns.

“Nothing!” you exclaim. “But that’s the problem isn’t it.”

Mingyu doesn’t seem to buy it, even through your coaxing as you attempt to explain to him that he is, in fact, desirable.

“Can’t possibly be enough to distract people,” he huffs in earnest, still hung up on the students he can’t get through to. 

“Majority of the class would beg to differ.”

There’s a pause as he registers what you imply. 

After a few moments, he drops his head, opening his mouth, “Would… you also—”

There’s a loud creak of the door as you hear the immediate noises of shuffling feet and chattering mouths, as low and tired as they sounded. Turning back to look at Mingyu, he’s already jumped out of his seat, wrist to face as he checks the time on the same leather strap watch you returned. 

“That’s our cue,” you breathe, pushing your chair back behind the professor’s desk as you manoeuvre around Mingyu who’s suddenly frantic. 

Of course you realise there’s people other than just the two of you in the room, heightened in seats that are designed to ensure they can absorb every detail that goes on right where you stand in the front of the room.

But you feel the soft of Mingyu’s shirt over his wrist as you give him a gentle squeeze despite it all, barely enough pressure. Half your index finger brushes the skin of his hand, just enough to register how cold your fingertips are and how warm his body is. 

“Relax,” you whisper. “You’ll be better off without all the panic.”

You don’t see his face as you brush past him and up to your seat, looking up to see him disappear somewhere in the corner hunched over another stack of papers. The next time you see Mingyu’s face is when the professor arrives and has begun his regularly scheduled tomfoolery, and realise all the age that can accumulate in the span of five minutes. 

Thursday

Midterm season is nothing you’ve ever really had to worry about. 

Something about the halfway point did make it obvious that the clock was ticking, but danger was far enough away to prevent the ultimate breakdowns reserved for the peak seasons. 

Except this class isn’t ordinary, and it’s all you’re able to worry about all semester. And as Dr. Cho in his Thrasher vest announces the date for the in class midterm, the glass once half empty, suddenly looks very half full. 

“I’m not ready.”

“You’re more ready than anyone else in class.”

“How do you know that?”

Mingyu stares at you blankly, “If I don’t know that, then who else does?”

You have tears in your eyes, which is embarrassing enough since this is the second time you’ve teared up in front of him, but also because you’re in a library following Mingyu around like a lost duck because he insists on putting the books he borrowed back onto the shelves himself after registering the return. 

“But I don’t feel like I’m ready,” you whine, turning the corner as he searches for the last spot to place his final book. 

“You’ll realise just how ready you are when all those hieroglyphs on the page start to make sense to you,” he grunts the last bit out as he reaches on his tippy toes to shove the book back up. 

Dusting his hands off, he adjusts his shirt before turning to you, “You only feel that way because I’ve been giving you harder problems to work on. You’re past the level you need to be at right now. Trust me, you’re more than prepared.”

“But—”

“Listen,” he waves to the librarian as you both leave the library, your eyes still glistening as you fiddle with your sleeves. “It’s only the midterm—”

“Only the—”

“If this goes wrong, I’m just gonna have to work you harder for the real thing. Even though I know it won’t go wrong because I said so.”

You fall into silence as he walks you towards the coffee shop across the courtyard. 

“I’m assuming…” you start. 

“Hm?” he looks over to you.

“I’m assuming you can’t hint at what’s on the paper.”

Mingyu barks out a laugh of disbelief, “You assume correct. I’m not going through hell with this job just to lose it because of a paper leak.”

“But it’s just the midterm,” you mumble, not even close to remotely audible. 

“What did you say?” Mingyu smirks. 

“Nothing,” you huff.

“You know, I’m a little offended you don’t trust me.”

“Who said I didn’t.”

“Well then, stop being such a worrywart.”

There must be something written on your face, because as you pass Mingyu standing at the door he keeps open for you, entering into the coffee shop with fallen shoulders, he seems to change his mind. 

He brings you a coffee, sits you down, and gives you something else you need. “I made the paper. Every question. And I taught you. Every concept. So I definitely know you’re gonna be fine.”

In that moment, with the large glass walls of the warm coffee shop, the afternoon sun comfortably resting on every last object of the room, you don’t see it illuminate anything other than the man before you. 

Perhaps you're being dramatic at the revelation, but you don’t take anything into account as you note Mingyu’s eyes and how they sparkle like they were gifted from the centre of a flaming volcano, brown and polished more than any jewel or stone you’d ever seen. Reaching out to touch him, you know you’d feel nothing but smooth stone, the indentations only possible by a being beyond what you could comprehend. 

He’d given you more than just reassurance, and at times, his timing makes it feel like he was sent from the heavens itself, just for you. 

You sniffle. 

His hands brush over yours as he hands you a napkin, and even more so, cover your own as he takes your freezing fingertips into his own palm, the contact burning you like hot coal. 

You know he’s real. And you don’t know why quite just yet, but that reassurance is enough to give you calm.

Monday

You were alright, but it seems that Mingyu seemed to disintegrate right after he was done reassuring you to the moon and Saturn and Jupiter and back.

It’s midterm day, and as always on every Monday morning, you enter the empty lecture hall with two warm coffees in your hand, ready for whatever shitshow you’d have to perform for today.

It seems Mingyu must defect from at least one regular string of behaviour to remain as Mingyu, who on this occasion, stands before you in a baby blue polo sweater. 

Except you only know that because you can see the unique collar, but it might also be important that his back is turned towards you. 

“Morning, champ,” he gruffs, nothing encouraging about his voice in the slightest. 

Your breath hitches when you finally see his face, eyes sunken in and face pale. His lips are chapped and peeling, eyes half closed. 

“Why’re you looking at me like that, why has everyone been looking at me like that?” he huffs in one long, rapid question. 

“Um, I mean,” you stare at his shirt that’s backwards. And inside out. “I can’t tell if that’s a choice or a mistake.”

Looking down at his front, he looks back up, “What?”

“Your collar is…not at your collar, Mingyu. And your shirt’s inside out.”

Hand at his nape, he reaches his fingers down and finds the unmistakable starched planes of his collar, eyes closing at the realisation. He’s immediately pulling his arms out of the shirt with his eyes still closed like it’d all disappear if he keeps them like that. 

“Wait!” you exclaim before he strips entirely, scrambling to put your coffees down to push him out of the room towards the restrooms. “Do you wanna strip for the CCTVs?”

You only hear him sigh as he moves out and into the hall, doors closed behind him. 

You’ve nearly forgotten about the midterm at this point, your concern now growing in a completely different direction. By the time Mingyu returns, he’s blabbing about wondering why everyone he ran into since he left home was giving him the strangest looks, and then something about you always swooping in to save him before the real bout of disaster strikes. 

It’s hard for you to listen to him when you’re more worried about him passing out, his face doing him no favours to reassure you that he wasn’t a breathing corpse. 

“Mingyu…did you sleep at all?”

“Hm?” His eyes are glazed over and unfocused. 

“Sleep? Rest?”

“Oh,” he frowns. “Not really. I had emails coming in all night.”

“And you were replying?”

“It's the midterm today,” he responds flatly, like it should’ve been enough explanation. 

You almost don’t believe him. “Doesn’t mean you stay up to answer something that should’ve been cleared out beforehand!”

“Couldn’t just leave them to fend for themselves,” he dramatises. 

“Yes, you could!” Your voice comes out louder than you expected, eyes wide as you realise what he’s doing to himself. “You barely look human and it’s only the midterm.”

“What’re you trying to say?”

“I don’t know if this job is really worth as much as you think it is.”

Mingyu’s jaw is clenched, fists tight as he releases them to grip paper weight on the desk, knuckles white. “I can’t get anywhere if I don’t—”

“Mingyu, please. This isn’t good for you.”

He says your name. Declarative, almost like a warning. “If you think this job isn’t worth it then you just don’t know.”

“Mingyu—”

“No, you don’t, because I’ve seen how good of a job I’ve been doing.”

“You have, you’ve been amazing but—”

Mingyu’s own voice is raised, a hard impenetrable floor to the words he spills. “Then what’s the problem?”

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You look like a corpse!”

And then he’s getting out of his chair with so much force it almost knocks it backwards, “Why on earth do you care so much? So what if I look like a corpse, if I‘m doing my job?” 

It might’ve been better if he knocked the chair right into you, your breath dissipating in your chest like it never existed. His face is morphed in an expression of exasperation your anxieties fear the most, every line on his face committed to irritation and anger. 

Why on earth do you care so much?

Right. Why do you? 

“Are you asking me that?”

“What?”

“Are you asking me why I care?” 

Mingyu only sighs, shoulders dropping and eyes closed. Like so many times before, you watch run a hand through his hair, except this time he yanks on the strands harder than ever before. 

His eyes are bloodshot. 

“I have to get the exam pack.”

Marching out the door in front of your own eyes, you’re left with a feeling that’s right in the back of your throat, curling and whirling into something you wish you could hack and gag out. Gripping the corner of the professor’s desk, you feel the peeling wood cut into your skin. 

There’s a draft, the delayed slam of the door has only hit its wind now, a delayed reaction. It’s like it registers in your mind as you feel strands of your hair shift, the clarity that comes with it.

Delusive. Chimeric. Cruel.

Everything you’d subjected upon yourself. A whimsical fantasy between pages of logic and numbers, a story that simply didn’t fit where the laws wouldn’t allow it. 

The null hypothesis of your most elaborate nightmares.

Monday

Your favourite commonplace box, where your mother once placed all her most prized jewels, had a finicky latch. 

It wasn’t broken, simply worn in from years of opening and closing. It took a few tries to get it shut. Simply pressing down with pressure didn’t work; you had to open it again, press down on the individual elements of the latch and then try again. 

You were never satisfied until you heard the distinct click of the latch fixing itself, the box closed and ready for you to hook your lock through.

Earlier on in your undergraduate career, you remember a professor talking about the effects of external factors on the mind, how they can sometimes cause it to ‘shut down’ when overwhelmed or stressed. 

It’s happened to you on many a occasion; like when you stayed up too late on a school night to watch a documentary about the Stanford prison experiment, or when you’d neglect food or water on busier days, or when you’d stop paying attention in class because you were too preoccupied thinking about Taco Tuesday. 

Regardless, you’d found a way to recognise when your brain would fall into some strange kahoots with daydreams, or whatever was bothering you, and learned ways to give yourself a reset. 

Pressuring and forcing the attention wouldn’t work, just like how the latch wouldn’t fit when you’d do the same with your beloved old box. So you’d take a walk, drink something cold, spray yourself with a garden hose, or even take a nap altogether. Opening yourself up, so the latch can finally click. 

On the morning of your midterm, when you’d ensured your brain was in optimal condition for the exam you knew would be one of the worse ones you’ll have to take, you were sure the only external force that could ruin your vibe was from God himself. 

Having been so preoccupied with your mind and its functions, you’d seemed to have forgotten where your heart had wandered off to. 

Somebody else might consider it a minor disagreement; an anxious squabble if you will. But your breakfast in your throat was enough reason to deem what happened that morning much more than that. At least for you. 

“Pass it on, please…pass it on, please.”

The sound of his voice is tectonic. Rattling in your head like a superior force had slammed into your skull like a padded hammer to a gong. 

You hated it. You hated everything. You hated yourself. And as the midterm paper reaches you with your pen in your clawed fingers, the first three questions already making perfect sense, you realise you hated Kim Mingyu the most. 

That was a lie. You were lying to yourself, yet again. 

Because it was quite the opposite. You couldn’t hate him. 

As you drift past every question of conditional experiments and screenshots of data and tables on a software, you hardly remember what you circle and what you don’t. Hardly remember what words you picked for the short answers and labels. You hardly remember taking the steps down from your seat to the front of the room, where the professor sat scrolling through his Skateboarders [!MEN ONLY!] facebook group, placing your paper down and leaving the classroom. 

Throughout your years of living, you’d learned what you needed to get your brain out of its clouded muffle, to refocus when you needed it. 

Everything. You tried everything. 

But on that day, when it mattered most, your latch never clicked.

It’s Wednesday. 

You order lunch from the Italian place a few streets down. Ravioli; it’s safe and you know you’ll like it. 

Savouring it is easy in front of another true crime show. You pull a lone soft drink from your fridge, one that your friend left weeks ago. It tastes just as bad as the last time you tasted it from someone else’s cup, but you drink it anyway, the empty can now in your trash. 

It’s 3:30 PM, and you sit at your desk. It’s strange. It feels like you’re missing something, which in ways, you are. But as you pull your laptop from your nightstand instead of out of your bag, you slow your movements. 

The papers are the same. But you read them anyway. 

Parameter estimation: Make inferences on characteristics of the population, including distributions of the variables and the effect of one variable over another. 

It’s accursed the way the universe won’t let you live. 

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue, estimation cannot be perfect. 

Estimation cannot be perfect. 

[_]

It’s Thursday

Class. Eat. Drink. Work.

Hypothesis testing: Determine whether null hypothesis is rejected or not after data observation. 

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue, no null hypothesis in bayesian approach!!

[_]

It’s Friday

Eat. Drink. Work.

Latent means to have meaning but is yet to be manifested. The greek letters are placeholder values for values yet unknown. 

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue; values that you will find out

[_]

It’s Saturday

Eat. Drink. Work.

P(A|B) = [P(B|A)P(A)

              ——————

                     P(B)

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue;

 it gets less complicated

 promise :/ 

[_]

It’s Sunday.

Eat. Drink. Work.

The page is blurry. Your eyes hurt. 

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue;

you’ve got this!!! < 3

You give up.

It’s Monday.

8:14 AM. 

You barely glance at the front of the room; swift turn to the left and right up the steps. Dr. Cho’s outfit almost goes unnoticed by you, tamer than most. Bright Barbie pink with large polka dots, untucked into too tight white jeans. His crocs are sparkly, at least that’s what the twinkle from up here looks like. 

He’s insulting another author, the man’s ProQuest journal article open for the world to see like a mediaeval scandal. 

There’s another person next to the whiteboards, back to the wall, hands clasped in front of him. His hair is messy, shooting lasers into the carpet as he rocks the slightest bit, listening to the professor rip this author to shreds. 

An hour later, you’re staring into the JASP software like it was written in a different language. 

Glancing next to you, the boy in the spongebob hoodie is playing sharkboy and lavagirl by himself. On your other side, the girl has the same thing as you open on her laptop, her pen occupied with drawing about a hundred tiny gojos on a bright pink sticky note. 

Bright pink sticky note. 

You snap your gaze back to your screen quickly after that. 

9:58 AM. You start packing up, shoving everything into your bag. 

Dr. Cho doesn’t even notice you slip out of the room, hardly a minute to the end of the lecture.

In the hallway, you take your first real breath in two hours. 

It’s Tuesday.

You’ve come down with something, head heavy as you feel yourself burn up. Skipping class is easy when you sleep through your alarm and every phone call from a friend asking where you are. 

They drop by, armed with medicine and soup. You almost feel better. 

It’s silent after they leave, and you realise in that moment how much you hate it. 

Opening your laptop for the first time in over 24 hours, you turn on a random podcast to play in the background, needing something to fill the air before you lose it entirely. 

The screen lands right where you left on the incredulous data presentation, unsolved tutorial paper crumpled between the screen and keyboard like a wilted leaf. 

Hot, scalding tears sting your eyeballs when you realise there was nowhere to turn to.

It’s Wednesday.

After a long day of doing nothing, still sick from whatever plagued your body, you go to bed earlier than usual.

It’s Thursday. 

Walking out of class, your mind is empty. You’re still sniffling, still achey, but better than you were. The shawl wrapped around you is warm, and your hood covers the cold tips of your ears. 

This other class makes you feel better about yourself, especially when the content is digestible and so is the professor. The TA feels like a mere accessory in the room, something you’ve learned to appreciate. 

With your gaze lowered, you only see midriffs as you walk out the classroom into the busy hallway. 

It happens in an instant, the flash of a clenched hand as the owner walks by in quick stride. An unmistakable leather strap watch with a broken clock face on the wrist.

You freeze like you’ve been caught. 

The hard bump of someone coming out the room behind you is welcomed, the annoyed “Hey!” knocking you back to earth before you could even exit the dimension. 

You’re off centre. But it’s fine. 

It’s Monday.

“Midterm results are out Tuesday morning. If you have any questions I’ll be sitting at office hours on Wednesday and Thursday, four to six in the evening. Or you could send me an email, either’s fine.”

Dr. Cho isn’t here. Something you only found out when the pitt sank in your stomach as Mingyu cleared his throat at the full hour. 

You want to leave, not caring about how strange it’d look if you did. Not caring about how he would definitely notice if you did. You want him to shut up, to stop talking, for anything to halt the way his voice infiltrates your entire being, talking about things you don’t understand but more familiar than anything else. 

Mingyu’s voice is hoarse, and you loathe the way you can tell the difference. 

It’s Tuesday.

Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.

—  92/100

It’s Wednesday. 

4:10 PM. It’s almost too much for you. Almost. 

The screech of the door is loud, the slam of the handle’s rebound even more so. The room doesn’t so much as glance at you at the door, the half full seats preoccupied with more important things. 

The front desk perks up immediately, eyes shooting towards the door for the nth time that day, like he was expecting someone that never seemed to show up. 

It’s ironic, you think, how Mingyu never seemed to notice you walk into the room for the many months you’ve walked in just for him. And now, as you walk in fists clenched and jaw set, eyes wild and burning, he’s breaking away from a student to look at the door before you even come into view. 

“Did you feel bad?” you spit.

“What?” he whispers. He seems to come around, glancing back before continuing, “Can we talk? Please.”

“Answer the question, Mingyu,” you snap. You don’t care there’s a confused student sitting right across from the both of you, his slot interrupted by your barge. “Did you feel so bad you had to give me something I didn’t earn?”

He’s stood up now, half confused. “Is this about the midterm—”

“I did not get a ninety two, I know I didn’t,” you grit. “Whatever happened before that stupid paper made sure I wouldn’t.”

Mingyu says your name and the sound makes you want to vomit. “What makes you think I’d do something like that?”

“I don’t know, maybe because I fucked up because of you?” you announce, louder than before. 

The world disappeared, your tunnel vision pointed at Mingyu’s face that wears an expression you cannot even begin to read. The unbecoming tears in your eyes are of a type of unadulterated rage you’ve felt only a few times before. Your heart is going about a million miles a breath, everything else only triggering an added bout of infuriated tremble in the forefront of your emotions. Nothing makes sense. 

Mingyu pushes back his chair in silence, stalking over to a large cupboard in the corner of the room. He shuffles around for a minute before returning. 

There’s a packet being thrust into your fists when he reaches you. He does not meet your eyes. 

A bright red 92/100 marks the front page.

“Here. It was all you, if you can’t believe me.”

It’s a careful mark, unmistakable lines and curves of the nine and the two. 

Reality is slow to sink in, but for some reason it’s only making you angrier. The paper curls under the pressure of your fingertips. You don’t open the packet. You refuse to flick through the pages. 

Because you know you’ve lost.

It’s Thursday. And it’s full of regret. 

There’s a sickness in you, from that dreaded day, something beyond what affects your body temperature and your energy. It’s in your mind, flooding the nerves that swim through every crevice and cave of your brain, a physical venom that does the opposite of kill but also the opposite of letting you live. 

There’s a feeling in you, that even if you were to open your mouth, unhinge your jaw, try to scream as loud as your throat would allow, there would be no sound. Something like a horrible dream, that you need to screw your eyes tight shut to fall out of. Except you aren’t waking up from this one. 

In a coffee shop, where Mingyu held your hand in a reassurance you now bleed for, you were sure he was real. Real like some deiform image; too good to be true. 

In your bed, dry tears on your face, midterm packet sifted through that showed you absolutely everything that you did right, thanks to him. He feels too real. Real like a cloud of obsidian that follows you everywhere, like the sad that’s been sleeping with you every night. 

If there was a way to hate someone more than a human limit, you’ve crossed it with the resentment you’ve now fostered for yourself. 

Barging into office hours like that, accusing him on a basis of nothing but your own dangerously stewed thoughts. If there was a hope of salvaged parts, you took a hammer to it in disregard; tearing it to ribbons that lay at your feet. 

It’s Friday.

At least it was. It bled into Saturday before you realised the 3:23 AM on the dial. 

Two weeks of no help and you already feel lightyears behind. The hour is getting to you, and you feel the frustration pool into tears, that turn into full fledged sobs. You’re crying over Bayesian inference and it’s somehow more pressing than any other emotion you’ve ever felt. 

Impossible numbers on your data sheets taunt you, not a single reference to if it was a button you clicked wrong or if you were playing a fool’s game altogether. 

Ding! You pick up your phone, the weight of it is enough gravity to pull you back to earth. 

[Mingyu]: switch to bF10 

[Mingyu]: you’ve been pulling numbers from bF01

It’s immediate the way your eyes dart towards your lit screen, clicking off tables to get to the drop down menu you need. And there on the left, two tiny buttons, one clicked on bF01. 

With shaking fingers, you move your cursor to hover over the tiny bF10, anticipating. You click. It takes a moment for the numbers to change, but they do. The nominal values turn into something you can actually work with. 

Something akin to a tut leaves you, hidden in the breath of another sob. It’s stupid, unreasonable, absurd. Your fingers hover over your phone, shaking as tears drop onto the screen, faster than before. 

Do you not miss me?

Do you not want me around?

Talk to me

I miss you

Please talk to me

“I couldn’t—can’t—stand listening to someone spew nonsense when I know it’s not true.”

Mingyu is a product of his personality. You can only imagine he’s helped because he saw you struggling in class, heard from someone else, or perhaps, he just knew the very thing you’d make blunders out of. 

The reasons come to you, that Mingyu is a product of his personality. Then why does it hurt? Why does it feel like the knife’s twisted a full 360, that despite the way you accused him of the thing that would strip him of everything he’s bruised himself for, he helps you. The very thing that caused this rift in the first place. 

There’s a reason for that, and it is again, that Mingyu is a product of his personality. 

It’s Saturday. 

Perhaps you relied on your olfactory senses to remain calm, because you always knew you could count on a coffee shop to forever and always smell the same. 

The universe seems to want to ruin that for you too. 

“Latte, please,” you voice. “Iced.”

“We have a one plus one for the week! Would you like to receive another latte?” The lady taking your order looks no older than 17, a pep in her voice. 

“Um, no thank you. Just one, please.”

She looks taken aback, a reasonable reaction to anyone turning down a free drink. But you couldn’t bring yourself to walk home with two cups in hand. 

You’re plucking a napkin from the pickup counter when you hear his name. 

“...that he manipulated her grade because they were hooking up.” 

“He has time to hook up?”

“I remember hearing about that! She barged in during office hours and asked why he fixed her grade or something.” 

“A ninety two? In that class? Oh, they were definitely fooling around with each other.”

“Whatever, at least we know he’ll entertain you if he likes you enough. I’m just glad those two are over so I can swoop in.”

There’s an eruption of giggles. You press your head down further. 

“Unless he flirts in variables.”

“All is forgiven when you’re born with a face like that.” 

Another explosion of giddy laughter, through which your drink is slid across the counter towards you, like it was waiting for you to hear the damning evidence before you could leave. You grab it anyway, grip tighter than usual. 

Turning around, your eyes search, finding a group of people that sit in smiles and in various states of trust-falls. 

There she is, the girl you sat with on the first day you attended office hours, the one with the glitter gel pen doodles on her notes and her blatant fawns over the TA you slipped under just as easily. 

She locks eyes with you and her face falls, eyes widening the slightest bit in recognition. 

Pressing your lips into a smile, you hope it doesn’t look as menacing as you feel. You don’t wait for a response before you walk out the large glass doors.

It’s Sunday.

It seems every sip of water you’ve taken during the week has been used up in all the tears you’ve seemed to be shedding. By the bucketload.

Alas, even blurry and puffy eyed, you pour over statistical formulas anyway, running on no energy and all antagonism. It’s another tutorial sheet left incomplete, a single question taking a pour that lasts in at least an hour of struggle. 

Reading the same question for the nth time, your palms press into your temples as you stare lasers into the paper, like the revelation would come to you if you stared it down hard enough. It doesn’t make sense, the commands you’ve toggled on and off identical to the instructions on the page. 

Hence the question begs why the data was coming out like someone pressed the ultimate on a number generator. 

With a heat of unreasonable embarrassment, you find yourself checking your selection in one of the drop down menus, switching to bF01 and back just to see the difference. It does nothing to help, and you can’t help but feel a little relieved it wasn’t that particular snag. 

The library is as silent as it could possibly be on a Sunday morning, near empty as you occupy the mostly vacant seats. The librarian is having her own day off, as you could swear she’s playing computer games behind the counter instead of actual work. 

The only noise in the room is your own breathing, and that seems to be enough to mess with your concentration. You’re going cross eyed staring at the page for so long, the words doubling and  disappearing before going back to normal. 

Bayesian inference…z scores…null hypothesis…

Wait. 

It’s like you can see it in front of your eyes right now, the scribble of someone else’s dark blue on your notes.

no null hypothesis in bayesian approach

Bayesian approaches don’t use null hypotheses. And z scores are in…

“Oh my god, this is a t test,” you whisper to yourself in disbelief. Immediately, you’re scrambling to shake your laptop out of its sleep, switching over to a t test to redo everything, following the instructions on the same data set. 

And there it was…a clear 0.067 under the p value. 

In a moment of questioning, you laugh out a breathy sound, the absurdity of it all becoming too real. T tests were the first thing you learned, the foundation to all your statistical knowledge. Coming so far, and it took you days to realise the instructions under a Bayesian approach were for a different realm entirely. 

It was stupid of you. But in this difficult aftermath you can’t help but feel victorious. Laughing to yourself quietly in this empty library. 

When the initial adrenaline fades and you’ve double, triple checked to ensure you were right, you can only stare at the tiny mail button in your shortcuts on the screen. It was clearly an error, one that was given out to nearly a hundred students. 

The first step was clicking, your inbox coming to life as you drift towards the big blue button with the readily available NEW MAIL. So you click. 

There’s an attached file in the email you draft. 

The tutorial paper has titled t test instructions as a Bayesian approach. Just wanted to point it out and ask if I could receive a corrected version. 

Regards, YN

It’s almost like you’re trying to remember how it feels like when you type an experimental m in the To bar. His name pops up immediately, email address typed out in full, full name clear on top as a regular contact. 

You don’t need a suggestion to remember, his email came easier to you than your own. 

But you don’t email him, backspacing till it’s empty once again. 

Dr. Cho’s email sits in that place instead, a first for you. 

SEND.

You don’t expect him to reply on a Sunday, in fact, you aren’t sure if he’s going to respond at all. You’ve already shut your laptop, half out of your seat in an attempt to pack up. You’re forced to consider. 

Would it be terrible to go back and cc him as well? 

A spiteful part of you might find joy in correcting him for a change. The rational part of you wants to actually finish the tutorial before tomorrow’s class when you’d have to tackle another beast for the rest of the week. 

Sitting back down, you move without thinking. Your mind is still cooking up possibilities as you swing your screen open once again, still weighing as you click back into your inbox. 

There’s a new email in your sent box after you’re done, a copy of the one you sent your professor, the same attachment and the same question; word for word. The only difference, a more familiar name in the address bar. 

Before you can chicken out, you slam your laptop shut for the actual last time, shoving everything into your bag before the speeding thoughts can infiltrate your mind's barrier. You’re out the door before you know it, ready to be done with this. 

You’re afraid if you put a hand to your stomach it’d be met with kicks and punches, especially with the way you feel the aggressive cartwheels slashing away at your insides. The butterflies are making it to the end of your food pipe, and you briefly wonder if you need to break into a sprint to make it to a safe throwing up zone. Your entire being jolts as you feel a buzz in your hands, a loud click that signifies a new email in your inbox. 

Right there, in the middle of the sidewalk, you stop. 

The grip you have on your phone is unyielding, your fingers beginning to hurt from the pressure. There’s no way to tell if you’re shaking or not, but you bring your phone to your face anyway. The screen flips on, a lone notification on the screen. 

RE: Tutorial Error from Kim Mingyu

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since you sent that email, the library still in sight from where you stand. At the same time, it’s almost funny you expected any different from him. 

The kicks and punches in your stomach halt, the cartwheels have calmed, the butterflies have fallen asleep. The grip on your phone has loosened, and it’s like every nerve in your body went from on fire to serenity in a whiplash inducing shift. 

Clicking on the notification, the email opens. 

Noted. I have another tutorial sheet for you if you want it. I’ll be in the room where office hours are held for the rest of the morning.

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

There was no way he didn’t have a softcopy he could send you in less than a minute, and you’re sure he knew you’d realise that too. You should scoff, be upset, roll your eyes. 

But instead, you find your feet making a 180, turning around to go right back to where you came from. You walk, eyes still half trained on the email, reading and rereading as you walk back onto campus, towards the building you’d once considered a second home. 

You walk, and walk and walk, in through the doors, up the stairs and then another set of them, you take a left and look up. The hallway is empty, the door on the right coming into view as you slow your steps significantly. 

Closer and closer, you realise the light surrounding it is brighter than usual. The door is open, and you can see the empty rows of tables and chairs, set neatly against one another. It’s strange, you’ve never seen it wide open before. 

Walking even closer, you can see the beginnings of the professor’s desk come into view, and it only takes you one more step forward. 

Standing in the doorway now, you find yourself in the direct path of the sun that pours in through the open windows. It’s warm, but just enough to combat the cooling weather. 

The desk up front is occupied, as it always is. 

Mingyu is only in a t-shirt and trousers, glasses perched on his nose as he scrawls away on the paper in front of him. His laptop is turned on, screen facing the door where you stand, his inbox open and available even on the weekend. 

It wasn’t that you were waiting for him to notice, but you found yourself inadvertently taking your time looking at him. Every other situation, you’d done your absolute best to avoid your eyes grazing over him at all costs, hardly drifting over his form before flitting away. You never did it on purpose, but it was more like you were unconsciously protecting yourself.

 Like looking at him would only make the ache in your heart worse.

If that was the case, you would’ve been right. There’s a tug in your chest, and in that moment, it all comes flooding in like a gate destroyed. 

Mingyu looks up and sees you in the doorway, standing immobile. He sets his pen down, taking his glasses off. There’s the smallest hint of a smile on his face as he greets you, “‘Morning.”

You take it as your cue to move forward, stepping foot into the patch of sun slowly. “‘Morning.”

You reach the desk, standing in front of him, the only thing blocking you being the littered table with files, papers and stationary; the trench between you both. 

It’s so silent it tears at your insides, gripping the strap of your bag to have something to do. 

“I, uh, double checked when I saw the email. You were right, nobody noticed in class either.” There’s an airiness in his voice, like he might be struggling just as much as you are right now. 

He clears his throat when you don’t respond, looking back down at his workspace like he was looking for something. He finds a paper from some stack, handing it over to you. 

“Thanks,” you hoarse. It’s the same tutorial you had, except the instructions had been crossed out, replaced by a list of handwritten instructions instead, detailed in their annotation. You recognise it, because of course you’d recognise his handwriting. 

“I didn’t have time to print one out right now. I’ll probably send a corrected copy to everyone tonight,” he explains. 

“That’s alright.” You look up, lips pressed together, eyebrows forced into a regular position on your face. Nodding, you thank him once again. “Thanks again. I’ll…get going.” 

Every fibre in your body screams at you to turn back around, hollering profanities at your inability to deal with this. You’re already halfway to the door though, and your pride’s already deemed it too late. 

Please stop me, please stop me, please stop me, please just say something and stop me—

There it is. Your name, from his mouth, in his beautiful voice. 

Turning back around is the easiest thing you’ve ever done. 

Mingyu has stood up from his seat, out from behind the desk. He looks like he wasn’t expecting you to turn back. “Can we talk?” 

And then he’s pulling out the chair he was sitting on, presenting it like a piece offering. If you heard correctly, you could’ve sworn you heard his voice break the slightest bit when he pressed, “Please?”

So there you were, in a position all too familiar as you sit across from the man that’s haunted you for the past weeks, trying to keep your chest from falling in. 

“I guess I should start with an apology,” he’s fidgeting with his own fingers. “I don’t need to give you excuses about stress or exhaustion because…”

He closes his eyes, trying to find the words. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you. You were only trying to help and I was too preoccupied with myself to notice. I’m sorry I spoke to you like that when you didn’t deserve it.” 

For about the millionth time, you realise you’re tearing up again. He continues. “And then…right before the midterm too. You were right, I did feel horrible. But I swear that grade was all you, I didn’t touch those numbers.”

He really didn’t, because the papers he had thrust into your hands on that fateful day in this very room proved that you earned that mark. You wince regardless.

“I thought I could apologise before the exam started but I couldn’t find you, and then you were gone right after. I didn’t text or call because I was sure I’d fucked it all up.” 

“I’m sorry too. For barging in in front of everyone and basically accusing you. I wasn’t thinking straight.” You look up from your lap, wet lashes and all. “I really hope you didn’t get into any trouble.” 

“I–no, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

“I promise I didn’t.” He locked eyes with you when he said that, hoping you’d believe him. You nod slowly. 

“It wasn’t even that bad, what you said,” you sniffled. 

He scoffs at that, “I’d beg to differ.”

“I would’ve gotten over it,” you continue, bracing yourself to admit to something you’ve had trouble admitting to yourself. “I should’ve gotten over it. I don’t know why it hurt so much, why watching you walk out felt so horrible. But I haven’t been acting like normal ever since, and I’m sorry for stretching this whole fiasco out into something that didn’t need to turn into…this!”

“You were hurt because I hurt you.”

“People have said worse things to me. And you were practically a zombie, I should’ve just left it for another time. It was a little bit my fault too. But…yeah.”

There’s a silence as you try to remind yourself to breathe. You speak up again. “I just want us to go back to normal. I’ve missed you. Alot.”

“Me too. The go back to normal bit. And the…missed you bit.”

Mingyu’s half smiling when you look up, biting your lip hard as you try to keep a smile of your own at bay. “I’d thought if I gave up and admitted I was struggling that day, that’d be admitting defeat. That you’d think I…couldn’t do it.” 

Why on earth do you care so much? It rings in your ears. 

You sound light when you say it though, knowing now it wasn’t what he meant.“Since when are we on caring terms?” 

Mingyu cringes. "We are. I am, at least, if you aren't anymore, which is fine. I care about you. A lot."

It’s hard to not let out a laugh. He looks half constipated as he tries to navigate his words. 

“Oh well I’d hope you’d care, since you’re my TA and all.”

“Not in a TA way.”

“Tutor way.”

“Um.”

“Friend way? A human way?” 

“No.”

You both know you’re being obtuse on purpose, and you aren’t sure why. Maybe you just like to watch him squirm. 

“You know what?” he rasps. 

“What?”

Your answer comes in the form of Mingyu lurching to grab the legs of your chair, pulling the wheels to crash into him where he sits. You’re not expecting it, the clashing legs causing you to swerve forward, hands on Mingyu’s lap. 

And then his hand is on the back of your neck, and his lips placed on your own. 

You’re stiff as a board, brain computing the fact that Mingyu is kissing you in a classroom. 

It’s short, hardly a few moments before he pulls away. “Does that clear things up?”

There’s nothing you can do but blink at him, the reality of it all settles in. “Hm.”

He laughs at your half dazed state. It’s a purely instinctual part of you that speaks after this. “Maybe one more time. To make sure.”

Mingyu doesn’t even wait to laugh again as he wastes no time, putting his mouth on yours properly this time. There’s more of a drive in you this time, moving your mouth against his and he keeps your head close. 

The ecstasy is slow but sure to build in your stomach. Mingyu is kissing you. Mingyu is sitting with you and kissing you so good you’re already half faint. 

His mouth tastes like coffee and remnants of berry, a combination you can’t believe you could enjoy this much. Licking into his mouth, you let your tongue drag over his, like the tactile would convince you this wasn’t some too vivid fever dream. 

He pulls away for a moment, but hardly so as his lips remain pressed onto yours. 

“For the record,” he pants. “I love that you care. And I hope you’ll keep caring. Because I don’t think I can handle it if you walk away after this.”

Mouth back on his own, you decide there’s only one way to convince him you weren’t going anywhere without dragging him with you. 

MINGYU'S APARTMENT IS CLEANER than you expected. You aren’t sure what you were expecting, perhaps more mad scientist than anything else. But the most you find is a mug and plate in the sink, and a moderately crowded study desk, which is to be expected. 

Mingyu decided to abandon his work for the day to spend it with you, to which you contest that it was Sunday anyway. His response is making you change into something comfortable of his so you could laze on his couch. 

Like you would run away if he didn’t, Mingyu keeps his arms around you in a tight hold, fingers curling around your shoulders as you lay on top of him. Your head rests directly over his heart, his cheek and lips taking turns to occupy the top of your head.  

You fill him in on everything, and realise the most eventful weeks you’ve spent were actually quite uneventful in hindsight. He feels up your cheek and forehead when you tell him you got sick at one point, to which you have to reassure him it was either something going around or stress that you subjected on yourself. 

“I went to a frat party,” Mingyu mumbles into your forehead. “For Halloween.”

The information has you shifting to look up at him in bewilderment, “You went to a frat party?”

He snorts, “Dressed up for it too.”

“Oh my god,” you voice in mild horror. “Do I wanna know?” 

“Wonwoo and I matched,” he hums as he pulls out his phone, scrolling his gallery to look for pictures. “I was Mario, he was Luigi.”

“How adorable.”

He only gives you a look and shoves the phone in your face. By some grace of god they aren’t wearing moustaches, but the distinct red and green outfits are enough to give you enough recognition. 

“Thing 1 and Thing 2 were also possible contenders,” he informs. 

“That might’ve been a little better.”

“What’s wrong with Mario?” he asks sharply.

“Nothing. But I do hope you weren’t sporting an Italian accent throughout that.” 

“I was,” he pushes. “A horrible one too.”

You give him the satisfaction of an eye roll. 

“You could’ve gone as Peach. We could’ve matched.” 

“I don’t know if I’d wanna wear any available Peach costumes during Halloween time.” You crinkle your nose as you think of all the racy costumes that unearth every October. 

“Maybe in private,” he says with an insufferable smile on his face. 

Placing your hands flat on his chest, you rest your chin and look up at him. “I’m not sure I want to interrupt whatever you two have going on.” 

“Who?”

“You and Wonwoo, you’re practically married.”

Mingyu laughs out loud, and you can feel the rumble in his chest against your hands, his body moving against your own that’s stuck to him. “Not with whatever he has going on with his girl.”

“Oh right,” you frown in remembrance. “What happened to not understanding how he does it?” 

“Hm?”

“He’s a TA too. Probably just as busy as you. You said you didn’t know how he could juggle a relationship and his job at the same time.”

His eyes spark in remembrance, pausing for a moment. “I may owe him an apology.”

“Do you?”

Mingyu frowns, “Actually no I don’t. I don’t think he and his lady are doing too well right now. He’s been insufferable lately.”

“Is it because of the TA-ing?”

“I never know with those two,” he sighs.

There’s silence once again, in the midst of which Mingyu leans over to kiss you a few times, soft and lingering. Like he’s trying to familiarise himself with the shape of your mouth, the tactile feeling of kissing you. 

“Do you…know about us?” There’s hesitancy in the way you ask. But you can’t help but ask anyway.

Mingyu thinks for a moment, and it has your heart beating out of your chest. “I know that I want us to be concrete. That I wanna work around whatever life throws at us. You can decide what to call it, but I know I’m in it for the long run.”

“I’m glad you’re smarter than your husband,” you smile.

He only rolls his eyes, “He’s only good at one kind of chemistry.” 

“D’you think they’ll be okay?”

“Oh yeah,” he assures. “They’re just going through a…rough patch.”

“Like we did?”

“If you’re asking me, I’d say they’re being a little more stupid about it.”

The snort that leaves you is unanimous with his own. He continues, “They’ll be okay though.”

“I hope so. I’d like to go on double dates with my boyfriend’s husband’s girlfriend.” You start giggling in the middle of your sentence, too ridiculous even for you to voice. 

“This is getting weird,” Mingyu breathes. 

You only hum against his mouth, “Do I have to take your husband's blessing before we can move forward?”

“For fuck’s sake.” 

You’re both laughing again, a sound that comes from your stomachs, true and uncontrollable. For a moment, you can’t help but be conscious of how light you feel, how happy you feel with his scent infiltrating your nostrils, his presence known where his fingertips touch you. 

“I did the sticky note thing again too,” Mingyu says into the silence, and there’s nothing you can do to stop the fit of giggles that erupt all over again. 

“Said something worse this time,” he continues as you laugh into his chest. “Accept that you’ll die alone or some other shit like that.” 

There’s comfort in this moment. In your giggles and in your tears, in his voice and in his affection. His lips are another sanctuary you’ve found, and perhaps even another way to make your dreaded latch click. 

Nose nuzzled in his cheek, the feeling of his skin so soft against yours, fingers at his chin where a slight stubble grows, you relax in ways you cannot comprehend. 

MINGYU'S LIPS BECOME A feeling you’ve grown dangerously accustomed to. 

It isn’t that he has them on you too much, regardless of what an outsider might suggest; to you they simply aren’t on you enough. 

The following Monday went as usual, for you anyway. You weren’t avoiding Mingyu this time, and you were grateful for it. It was two hours of following him with your eyes as he darted around the room. You could hardly constitute it as not paying attention when Dr. Cho was preoccupied with explaining every reason he hates JASP over SPSS, but also ultimately, hates them both. 

You don’t even notice his loud outfit (overalls and a neon green sweater underneath), happy to watch Mingyu flit about and whisper incoherent explanations to students. 

The tutorial paper is barely looked at by you, because you know your boyfriend will be happy to help you out later at his place. 

You’re barely through the door that night when he gets a hold of you, tight grip across your waist as you’re catapulted into his arms, door slammed shut behind you. 

Bag still on your shoulders and your shoes still on, Mingyu’s slammed his mouth onto yours before you can take a proper breath. You stumble, squealing through the kiss as you realise you aren’t escaping the iron grip he’s got on your face. 

Somehow between it all, you manage to slip your bag off to let it drop to the floor of his doorway, shoes kicked off one after the other as he leads you inside, littering the way. 

“You aren’t actually paying attention in class anyway,” he breathes against your mouth before kissing you again. “So why don’t you sit in the back where you don’t distract me.”

“Who says I’m not paying attention.” You open your as your back lands on the couch, looking at him as he looms overhead. 

“You’re paying attention to me.”

“It was in my job description when I signed up for the girlfriend position.”

He’s all over you now, hands at your sides, mouth underneath your earlobes as he husks, “Was letting me take you in front of the entire class also a clause? Because if this goes on I might have to take up on that.”

If you didn’t know any better you would’ve assumed he’d been possessed, everything about his behaviour screaming the opposite of the well behaved, restrained man you’ve been accustomed to. The fact that he’s whispering directly into your ears isn’t helping either, a conspicuous shiver dragging across your spine. 

It lands with precision, right at your core. You’re too hot to tell, but there isn’t a doubt you’ve begun to pool. 

There’s a ding in the background. 

He’s suckling underneath your ear, his hands roaming in ways that would smear your reputation altogether. 

Another ding. 

He’s reached your mouth once again, groping your right breast lightly. Like he’s testing the waters.

Ding. 

Mingyu makes a noise of annoyance, the other hand trailing underneath your shirt. 

His ringtone blares throughout the room, whoever the caller was having reached wit’s end. 

“Gyu…” you whisper. 

“Ignore it,” he growls. The ringing has stopped. 

He ducks underneath to kiss at your stomach, lifting your shirt oh so slowly. He goes higher, and higher and higher, leaving a trail of kisses at the skin, taking deep breaths as he drags his mouth over your torso. 

His phone begins to ring again. 

Your head is spinning, your senses overcome. If you weren’t sure before, the air of wetness between your legs is definitely obvious now. 

He brings a hand to your centre, pushing inwards at your jean clad core. You exhale sharply yet shakily. 

The ringing stops. 

Mingyu makes a gumbled sound that you can’t quite make out, too preoccupied with the way your shirt is now up past your bra, at which Mingyu has taken to leaving open mouthed kisses to your cleavage. 

There’s a ding. 

“Mingyu, I really think—”

His phone begins to ring again. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he curses, rearing his head like an interrupted animal, wet mouthed and bleary eyed. He looks at his buzzing phone on the floor in an accusatory glare, like he wants to chuck it out the window and go right back to burrowing into your chest. 

“You should answer.” 

He looks irritated as he takes his phone in his hands, and you find a flash of Dr. Cho’s name on the screen. “It’s eleven O’clock.” 

“It might be important.”

“The last time he did this he asked where his peacock feather pen was,” he grunts as he silences his phone. 

You laugh, running a soothing hand through Mingyu’s hair, a tiny attempt to calm him down. Pulling your shirt down, you attempt to sit up. 

Mingyu makes a noise of denial, attempting to stick his face into your now clothed chest, knocking you back down, “Nooooo, I’m gonna ignore him.”

“He’s not going to leave you alone,” you sing quietly, running your nails across his scalp lightly, holding his head to your chest. You place your cheek on his head, playing with his ear. 

As if to prove your point, Mingyu’s phone begins to ring again, and he groans at the prospect. 

“Go on.”

He swipes to answer it. A loud sigh and then a tired, “Hello?”

His volume is bumped up enough for you to make out what’s being said on the other line. “Where have you been?”

“It’s nearly eleven, sir. I was in bed.”

“My flash drive won’t open up on my computer.”

You have to stifle a snort. 

“Is it…plugged in?”

“Of course it is, I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it showing up on your files?”

“Disk…is not…formatted.”

“Erm, it might be corrupted.”

“How did that happen?”

“Did you download something off the internet onto it?”

“Hardly matters, I need the attendance sheet on it!”

Your fingers are massaging Mingyu’s temples as you feel him tense on top of you. 

“Your attendance sheet is on the teacher’s portal,” Mingyu grits before adding, “sir.”

“...I have other things on there too.”

Mingyu exhales ever so quietly and you tighten your hold on him a smidge. “This sounds like something tech support could help with.”

“Why can’t you help?” he asks sharply. 

“I…I don’t know how, sir.”

There’s a noise of indignation from the other end, and you can’t help but keep from laughing. 

Mingyu sighs into the phone, this time doing nothing to hide it. “I’ll take it to tech support for you tomorrow. And I’ll send you a direct link for the attendance sheet for Monday and Tuesday’s classes.”

The line beeps shut. Mingyu brings the phone for you both to see the professor’s hung up as soon as the words left Mingyu’s mouth. 

“Wow,” you whisper into the silence, the weight of Mingyu’s head heavier on your chest. “Not even a thank you.”

“Absent father behaviour,” Mingyu grumbles as he moves his face to burrow into your shirt. 

It’s a bad joke, but you laugh anyway. 

“Will I be an asshole if I say I’m not in the mood anymore?” he murmurs. 

“Absolutely not. Everything sucked right back in the minute I heard his voice on the line.”

“Gross,” he comments, but he’s laughing too. 

“Should we call it a night?” he asks, rearing his head. 

Nodding, you rise with him. By the time you’ve reached the bedroom, you’ve already begun taking off your accessories, fiddling with your bracelet as you voice. 

“I need a shower.”

Mingyu throws you a towel and a t-shirt, which you catch and move towards the bathroom. Halfway through the door, you sneak a look at him fiddling with his belt. 

“Do you wanna come in too?” 

Mingyu looks at you peering through the door frame. You’ve never seen anyone leap across the room as quickly as in that moment. 

THE FOLLOWING DAYS WERE just as eventful as that phone call, Mingyu running around as the midterm low passed and the line creeped up towards finals season. 

Perhaps it was better that you stopped attending office hours, because the room seems to become increasingly packed as the days progressed. 

You only ever saw Mingyu in the wee hours of the night at his place, where he begged you to camp out till the end of the semester so he “doesn’t move to insanity”. It might even be better for you, going about your day as usual, without the usual added distraction of a partner.

Coming home to him was easier, where he could clear up your doubts while in ratty pyjamas and starfished across the bed, where you could find solace in Mingyu’s chest without prying eyes when the information became like filling an already stuffed junk drawer. 

It was a Friday night, you’re alone at Mingyu’s place sitting cross legged on the floor. The table in front of you is pouring over the final question of this week’s tutorial paper, everything seemingly whizzing right past the top of your head. 

Despite that, as Mingyu stumbles inside past eleven, you know you shouldn’t ask him for a thing. 

Tired was a look on Mingyu you’d gotten quite used to, so you’ve learned to not comment and simply let him fall into the couch cushions with all his weight. 

His face is parallel to yours as he closes his eyes with a light groan in greeting. Moving forward, you kiss the flutter of his eyelids softly, down to the apple of his cheeks, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth. 

Your fingers run through his tangled and distressed hair as he mumbles against your mouth. “Did you finish the tutorial paper?”

You huff in mild annoyance, that despite his state he still thinks about work. “Not yet. One last question and I’m done.”

He hums and waits a moment before reopening his eyes. With a loud groan he’s pushing himself off the couch, sliding off of it to sit with you on the uncomfortable floor. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

“I can figure it out myself, Gyu.”

“You would’ve been done by now if you could,” he answers. It’s annoying that he says it but he’s also right. 

Mingyu holds the paper a mere inch from his eyes, the sight almost comical if he also didn’t look an inch from passing out. 

He mumbles the question as he reads, “It’s nothing, just worded weird. Toggle this off and move this to mixed factors and you’re done.”

The toggles are done for you, and Mingyu takes the liberty crossing he question off with a pen he finds on the table. 

“Did you get everything else?” he asks in earnest. 

“Hm? I think so.” 

“Good.” And then he’s throwing his head back to rest it on the couch cushions behind him, breathing slowly. 

He’s in a navy sweater, collar of his undershirt peeking through the top. Your gaze leads up further, to the exposed area of his throat—clean, tan and naked. You realise this might not be a good time, but it’s only natural your mind cooks up other ways to translate your helplessness as you watch your boyfriend push himself to the brink. Release is never a bad idea. 

Besides, it’s a Friday night. No reason to not. 

“Gyu,” you shuffle closer. 

Lolling his head to look over at you, he answers in a small voice, “Yeah?” 

You put on the guiltiest face you can muster, complete with darting eyes and fidgeting fingers. “D’you think…d’you think you can go over post hoc tests again?”

“Post hoc?” He furrowed his eyebrows. You bite the inside of your cheek, having blurted the first plausible model you could think of to ask him. It’s an older bit of the syllabus, something you should already be well versed in. 

Not that you care what he thinks right now, he’d figure out why you were asking anyway. 

“Post hoc, um,” he rubs a hand over his face as if to jog his memory. 

Shifting forward, you plaster you front onto his side. He thinks nothing of it. 

“Analysis tool after you’ve already run the data,” he begins. 

Placing your chin on his shoulder, you let your nose nuzzle against his cheek. Trailing up, your lips find the shell of his ear. 

“Results have to be…they have to be…” He falters when your hand reaches his front, running across the expanse of his clothes stomach, nails digging ever so slightly as you reach his abdomen. You continue to place open mouthed kisses at the space of neck you can reach. 

“Hm? Has to be what?”

“Statistically significant,” he breathes when your palms reach the tops of his thighs. “To run a post hoc test.”

His trousers are less barrier inducing than regular jeans, something you’re both grateful for as you begin to palm his clothed bulge. “Results of what, baby?”

“For the love of—”

“Go on,” you whisper in his ear. “Please.”

One flick and his trousers are unbutton, pulling them aside as the zipper pulls open. You're pushing down his boxers when he answers you. “ANOVA.” 

“What’s that again?”

“You little shit.”

You move your mouth forward to kiss him.

“Analysis of variance.” 

You hum against the column of his throat at that, his half hard member in your hands. Light touches, that’s all they are, running the pads of your fingers across the pulsing length, coaxing him into full length. 

“What’s it for though? We already got our results.” Bending forward, you stick your tongue to kitten lick at his tip. Mingyu hisses, hips shifting. Your tongue swirls around the tip, pushing into the skin on the head where he’s most sensitive. 

“Ugh, fuck, for um,” he falters as you begin to suck at his head, tongue running over each hollow of your cheeks. 

“For…for…” His chest is moving up and down in quick breathes, every sound from his mouth coming from a deep rumble in his stomach. 

Letting go of his cock, you continue to pump him with your hand as you gaze up at him from your position. “For? Keep talking, baby.”

“For…To identify groups,” he grunts out. He lets out a louder moan when you place your mouth back on him, going past his tip and taking as much as you can of him into your mouth. “Identify…the differences, shit, hmph.”

He takes a loud breath before speeding through it again, “Identify which groups actually differ, oh my god.”

The bit of him that you can’t fit on your mouth is being pumped by your hands, fingers pushing into him like you were trying to indent them on the base of his cock. A glance upwards and you find his head thrown back, hands coming to tangle in your hair. His thumb caresses the side of your cheek.

“How many groups?” you ask, before diving back in. 

“Three,” he chokes out. “Three or more, oh I’m gonna cum, fuck don’t stop, holy shit.”

Both of his hands are at your head, guiding you as you suck him harder, faster, more tongue digging into his slit. You hum against his dick on purpose, making sure it’s coarse enough to get the reaction you want. 

You succeed, because immediately after you hear Mingyu rip out the loudest moan you’ve ever heard, his grip on your strands harder than ever. He cums into your mouth, hips stuttering as you place your entire weight on him to keep him in place. 

You let some of it dribble out your mouth and back over his softening dick like a hot coating, sucking him through shooting spurts of cum that land on your tongue. 

When you emerge from underneath, Mingyu looks like he got the soul sucked out of him; eyes closed, stuttered breaths raking through his entire body, a light sheen of the beginnings of sweat that glisten in the low light of the room. 

Reaching for the tissue box and water bottle on the table, you soak the napkins and bring them to clean him up. He whines when the cold tissues touch him where he’s most sensitive right now, you want to kiss him but account for the cum that is actively stuck to the walls of your mouth. 

You leave for a few minutes, much to Mingyu’s hoarse protests. He’s almost on all fours, hands on the floors as you promise to be back. By the time you’ve hauled his tired ass into bed, you’re just as ready to knock out as the half asleep man beside you. 

Mingyu’s face is plastered into your neck, arms and legs thrown over your form as he hugs you close to him. 

“I might love you,” he says into the darkness. A secret, just for you and the walls to hear. 

You hide the way your heart absolutely leaps, conceal the way your hands tighten around his form into an affectionate caress, hold your breath to prevent the inevitable hitch. 

I might love you too. 

You hide that as well. For now. 

Smiling into the skin of his temples, you sigh.

“Feel free.”

[Mingyu]: class ended early 

[Mingyu]: be there in 5 

[You]: ???

[You]: wdym ended early

[You]: kim did u end class early to come home

Your response comes in the form of the front door lock jiggling loudly. You’d stayed the night at his place, knowing you didn’t have anything to do but study by yourself. Sickly as you were, you doubt you could sit through two hours of even more statistics. 

He’d left you in bed with a kiss, needing to be extra early since Dr. Cho decided to dump the last crucial few weeks leading up to finals season entirely on his TA. As much as there was on Mingyu’s already overflowing plate now, you couldn’t deny the elated feeling of your attendance being taken care of regardless of whether you show up to class or not. 

A very real violation, but no one truly notes one skipped student in the midst of hundreds. Besides, the bag under Mingyu’s pretty eyes might be enough for anyone to have mercy and let the supposed mistake slide.

As Mingyu walks into the room, shoes flying and back dumped on the floor, he finds you still half clothed with leftover sleep in your eyes, standing in the middle of the living space like you were lost. 

He drops his things to come and drown you in his arms, loud kisses all over your face as you talk. “You’re getting too comfortable with this job.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t possibly expect me to teach a bunch of half asleep idiots when my woman is all alone at home, sickly and cold without me.”

You grumble wordlessly as you feel him check your temperature with the back of his hand. “How’s the congestion?”

“Bad,” you respond nasally. “I can’t find my Afrin.”

“It’s on the bedside table, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

Still wrapped in his hold, Mingyu begins to take steps forward that lead towards the bed, pushing you to walk backwards.

“I’m not awake enough to navigate,” you sniff.

“I’ve got you,” he lowtones, pushing backwards slowly. 

The back of your knees hit the bed and you let yourself fall back into the unmade sheets. You crawl back under the covers as Mingyu navigates between used tissues, water bottles and pills on the bedside table. But no sign of your nasal spray. 

You have to breathe through your mouth and you hate it, but you send a remark his way anyway. “Told you.”

Mingyu bends down and emerges with a familiar red capped bottle. He stares at you while you stare at it, choosing to simply snatch it from his presenting hands and be done with it. 

“Good thing I came back early, hm?” 

“Shut up.”

He leaps over your form to claim the spot in bed right next to you, still fully clothed as he burrows under the covers next to you.

There’s nothing flattering about the way you stick the nozzle up your nostrils and sniff hard, but the gleam in your boyfriend’s eyes might as well suggest you were trying to get him to look at you like that. 

“Are you gonna keep doing this till finals?” you ask throatily, shifting under the covers. 

“Teaching during class time is just extended office hours, I’m gonna go insane if I keep going like this. Probably just today. Or…once more if I feel it.”

“Didn’t you say you were gonna extend office hours to Fridays too?” 

Mingyu moulded himself against you, giving warmth to your shivering body even under thick blankets. 

It seems throughout the course of your relationship, your time with Mingyu is either spent laying down or in the process of doing so. Not that you mind, you’ve found that remaining horizontal was what worked best for someone like Mingyu who seemed to want to fuse with your very being whenever you were together.

“Ugh, not this week. Do not have the patience.”

“I’m proud of you,” you say, eyes closed, already on the highway to dreamland. 

“Thank you, I do think I’ve been very brave.” Even while slipping into dreamland, you find the good sense to find his nipple through his sweater and give it a hard pinch. He jerks away in a yelp, clutching his chest. 

“What’s that for?!”

You ignore him and simply run your hand over the area you just attacked. “You’ve gotten better at knowing when to slow down. I’m proud of you.”

You’re too far gone to make out what he answers you with, but with the hot breath against your already warm forehead, you decide it's more than enough for you. 

MINGYU DOES IT FOR the fourth time, but this time round he’s smart enough to not tell you. 

It’s the Friday before finals week officially begins, and you remain in your own place for once to crack down on the last bits of syllabus you want to go over, away from your extremely distracting boyfriend. 

There’s a text when you check your phone after a couple hours of hyperfocus, and you narrow your eyes at the notification. 

It’s Wonwoo’s (actual) girlfriend, and she’s sent you nothing but a picture of both of your men on Wonwoo’s living room floor, thoroughly occupied with the floored expanse of sheets, pillows and cushions. 

It’s a pillow fort.

Your boyfriend is building a pillow fort in his not-husband’s living room mere days before the final exam for the most dreaded course of the semester. All while he’s actively meant to be available for office hours.

You want to laugh. The man that stayed up multiple nights to answer stupid questions in emails, is now less than concerned about the pandemonium that is probably ensuing in the department building. It isn’t that you’re upset, because this was what you wanted from him. To learn to take a break when it was needed. But you would also prefer he’d time them a little better. 

Inevitably, you text him, but not before sending an encouraging text to your girlfriend-in-law for putting up with the both of them all by herself. 

[You]: where are you

[Mingyu]: where im meant to be?

[You]: office hours?

[Mingyu]: mhm

[You]: are u and ur husband conducting them under a pillow fort in his house

You imagine him sending Wonwoo’s girlfriend a betrayed look. Perhaps even throw a frilled throw pillow in her unassuming direction. 

[Mingyu]: DONT KILL ME

You let him suffer in your silence, clicking your phone off and leaving it somewhere you won’t be tempted to look. 

Besides, it wasn’t long before there was an incessant banging at your door that you ended up needing to get up to open. He looks so timid, the face of an innocent perpetrator that waltzes into your space. 

“I’m sorry,” he begins, following you to your desk like a lost duckling. 

“Whatever for?”

“For lying.” 

You snort as you sift through tutorial sheets, “Might wanna take that up to the poor hopeless student that thought you were their last hope.”

Mingyu’s head sinks to your shoulder where you sit at your desk. “God.”

“Him too.”

In another few moments, his arms have come around to cage you into your desk where you’re sat, hands placed on the table as he towers over the top of your head, mouth to crown. 

“Rumour has it,” he starts. 

You make a face. “Now you’ve joined in on gossip? Maybe I have steered you wrong.”

He ignores you valiantly as his mouth drops lower, down to the beginnings of the tips of your ears. You can smell him. He smells good. 

“That a textbook recitation is all it takes to get you all bothered down there.”

Lifting your head from its craned position over your papers, you stare straight ahead. Blank and unassuming. 

“Take a hike, Kim.”

“...Sorry.”

NO MATTER HOW FAKE annoyed you were at your boyfriend, you cannot possibly credit anyone else for how smooth your finals had gone. 

Not a single tear, hack or whine. Your meals were on time, your sleep schedule the healthiest it’s been for months. You even managed a movie night break in the midst of it all. A record for you. 

The very first thing you do after walking out of the exam hall, stretching and sighing, you find Mingyu waiting with nervous eyes. 

“Well?” he asks, eyes wide and lips pulled into his teeth. 

You merely grab for his hand and pull him out of the crowded hall and past a few familiar turns. 

“For the record I didn’t want some of the questions on there,” he yaps as he follows behind your stalks. “Hard ones weren’t mine. I promise I’m not a sadist.”

Then, in an un-CCTV’d corner, marked by the broken, empty vending machine, you round up on him. In seconds you’ve pulled him down to meet your lips in an eager, full kiss. 

In the moments your lips remain intact, you can feel all the horrid statistical knowledge you’d gathered over the months slip out the cracks and crevices, relieving you. 

Mingyu is careful to let you pull away first, eyes sticky to open when you do. There’s a smile on your face. “It went great.”

A strong tug against your waist and you’re suddenly pressed into Mingyu’s all too familiar hold, so everloving tight you can hardly breathe. His lips are smacking and pressing into your skin, all over your face, neck and hands. Anywhere he could possibly reach. 

There wasn’t much he could do standing in a huddled corner at nine in the morning on a Tuesday, where anyone could pass by and question what in the high school was going on. But there was more than enough Mingyu could do behind closed doors. 

In true Mingyu fashion, he’s begun to grope in every way you love the minute the lock clicks shut of his apartment, every fibre of both of your beings giddy and jumpy, giggles erupting from your tired mouths. You haven’t been touched in ages, always too tired to do anything even when you would find the time. 

It isn’t remotely strange that you're wet from only a few kisses and hot breaths against your neck. Although Mingyu’s hands haven’t been modest either, already reaching your clothed cunt as you fall into bed. 

He says it was your reward, for doing so good, his illustrious mouth suctioned onto your naked core, moving and grinding in ways you can more than just appreciate.

His tongue is nothing below made for you, like he knows exactly when to flick his tongue, graze his teeth and all but suck the daylights out of you. It’s marvellous, even more so as you realise he won’t stop. One, two, three mind blowing orgasms later, your legs still shake around his head as you cry out for him to stop. 

Not that he was going to listen, as he did not the last fifteen times you tried, simply pushing a finger into your abused hole to chuck you into yet another climax. You’re sobbing, trembling, sweating; but also half hearted in your attempts to stop him. 

By the time he’s relented, you’re sure you won’t feel a thing down there for at least a week. If Mingyu will even let you go untouched for that long. 

But as you’re finally able to catch your long lost breath in bed, and Mingyu has curled up right beside you, like he always does, you let the finality of it all sink in. You were done. And so was he. And you could now begin to experience a Mingyu that wasn’t exhausted, stressed or tired. Even now, the long indented layers of fatigue begin to melt away, revealing a less strained man. 

Mingyu was beautiful either way. 

“Are you okay?” he asks you, his fingers tracing your features. 

The pads of his fingers glide across your eyelids, down the slope of your nose, tracing the outline of your lips. You kiss his fingers as they reach you there, hand coming up to hold his wrists. You kiss the tips of his fingers, down to the palm of his hand. Eyes closed, you keep your lips there. 

“More than okay,” you mumble. 

“Good. Thought I lost you there.”

Stretching unceremoniously, you drape yourself over his naked form, head on his shoulder. “You’re not losing me. Not after being the sole reason I pass this devil’s module.”

“Is that all it takes? Make sure you don’t fail?”

“And give head like that.” It’s a half joke. “But also be Kim Mingyu comma TA.”

He mimics you between a breathy laugh, “Comma TA. Not anymore, I guess.”

“How happy are you?”

“Still have to grade the last set of papers. But I got what I wanted.”

“The recommendation? You deserve it.”

“That, and not having to be in Dr. Cho’s presence every other day. And you.”

You kiss his shoulder. “Look at you. All grown up with your big boy grad school on the horizon.”

“Not just yet.”

“You’ll get there too. If you can power through this hellsent semester, you can power through anything grad school applications throw.”

Mingyu shifts where he lays, taking a turn to lie on his side to face you. The afternoon sun peeks from behind his form, his outline made of pure gold. His breath is in your face as he talks, and there’s comfort in the air it penetrates.

“I only powered through this because of you. I hope you know that.” He’s smiling. 

“Girlfriend duties,” you quote solemnly. 

“I mean it. I knew I was walking into disaster with how this stupid job was going, all that work was just a distraction. I didn’t wanna believe this was a bad idea. And then you walked in.”

You cup his face and pout, “Oh, my damsel in distress.”

“Hm, my knight in shining armour,” he giggles. “Galloped in and saved me from myself.”

“You saved me too. From the world and its horrible creations.” 

“I’ll start talking in formulas if this keeps up.” 

You can only grumble in mild annoyance. 

“I’m glad I asked you to come in early that day,” he says.

“I’m glad I was a good samaritan and gathered all your stuff that day.” You grin.

Mingyu leans in and kisses you. It’s soft, slow, and drips of the romance he’s trying to bring into the conversation. His lips are bliss, the feeling of him is bliss. 

It’s almost scary how easily you’ve been able to give yourself to him. How quickly he’s placed himself in every nook and cranny of your heart. With his tired eyes and stronger than himself smile, the hand he extended in ways beyond you could ever explain to him. It’s terrifying when you realise what remains on the tip of your tongue, ready and bursting. 

But it’s true, and you can only pray it remains that way. Because in that moment, naked and tangled between Mingyu’s limbs, his heart in your ears, your hands on his being, you just know. 

“I think I might love you too.” 

[flwrstqr]

⠀⠀⠀꒰⠀⠀ENHYPEN HYUNG LINE AND HOW THEY LET OTHERS KNOW YOU'RE TAKEN ୨୧　　𓈒

PREC𝓲S ✦ 엔하이픈 형선 x f!reader ‎ ୨୧ 783wc. ᰍ 𝅄 ׁ ˳ fluff, headcanons && cw. kissing, petnames, skinship.˙⠀⋆ ۟⠀｡♡

`. ( MY ARCHiVE ) iF ENJOYED PLEASE REBLOG !! — CLICK

HEESEUNG (이희승)

obviously giving you hickeys everywhere on your neck

making sure its very visible so people know that you're taken

he wraps his arm around your waist, pulling you close as he leans in to whisper sweet things in your ear. but it's the hickey on your neck that really does the talking, a bold mark he left last night, one he's not shy about showing off. every time someone glances at it, he just smirks, his fingers lightly brushing over the spot as if to say, "yeah, that's mine." 

rest of the members below !!

JAY (박종성)

giving you his clothes

ALWAYS making sure it has mens cologne scent on it

before you leave, jay always makes sure you’re wearing his oversized hoodie, the one that practically swallows you whole and smells like him. he ties the drawstrings into a neat bow and presses a soft kiss to your forehead, whispering, “stay safe, baby.” just before you step out the door, he pulls you back for one more kiss, this time deeper, leaving your lips tingling.

JAKE (심재윤)

makes you wear a ring on your ring finger

not only because he wants others to think you're married but also because it looks good on you (apparently he promises one day a real engagement ring is gonna be on that finger)

"baby, hold still," jake murmurs as he slips the ring onto your finger, his lips curling into a smirk. "there. perfect." his eyes flicker with pride as he admires how it gleams under the light, the cool metal snug on your ring finger. "everyone’s gonna know you’re mine now, and it looks good on you too," he adds, voice low and teasing. he kisses the top of your hand gently.

SUNGHOON (박성훈)

this man gets everything that "matching" and "couple related"

first from phone charms to tops that says "I LOVE MY GIRLFRIEND" + "I LOVE MY BOYFRIEND"

sunghoon grins as he slips a delicate necklace around your neck, the silver "S" pendant resting right against your collarbone. "now everyone will know you’re mine, baby," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your temple. you laugh, playfully nudging him, "aren't matching phone cases and keychains enough?" he shakes his head, pulling you closer, "nope, i want everyone to see it, even when i'm not around." you blush. "seriously?" you ask, grinning. "seriously," he nods, his voice softening, "i just want you to know how much i love showing you off." you feel your heart melt, leaning in to kiss him softly, "i love being yours."

[cheapshrimpysheep]

Yuu Needs a Hug 2

SUMMARY: What their comforting hugs are like when you're feeling sad or under the weather? And how would they behave if you started crying in their arms?

CHARACTERS: Scarabia (Kalim; Jamil); Pomefiore (Vil; Epel; Rook); Ignihyde (Idia; Ortho*) & Diasomnia (Malleus; Silver; Sebek; Lilia)

*Platonic

TAGS: Fluff; GN Reader; Comfort; Bullet Points; In a Relationship

WORD COUNT: An average of 370 words per character.

COMMENTS: When I feel a little sad and down, I often imagine these things to help me fall asleep. I thought you might like them too. 😘

(I don't know why I keep increasing the number of words as I go through the dorms.)

Yuu Needs a Hug 1 (Heartslabyul / Savanaclaw / Octavinelle)

CONTEXT: This is what they would do if they were already in a relationship with you. Except for Ortho, he's more like a cute little brother.

Of course Kalim already hugs you on a daily basis. And in public or private it is completely indifferent to him. His hugs range from casual (as if simply standing next to you wasn't an option) to loving and affectionate.

And it's more towards the latter that he tends to go for when you ask him for a hug. His arms completely wrapped around you, his cheek touching yours. His reassuring smile asking you what you need. "You can ask me for anything! You know that, right? Oh! I know! How about a carpet ride? Do you think that might help?"

Let's face it, he's not the type to cuddling with you while the two of you are lying on a couch resting (Jamil would love that, less work for him) No. He's the type to cuddling with you, yes, but lying on a flying carpet who knows how many meters from the ground. Or maybe lying in the Oasis if you show him that you're afraid of being that high without safety measures.

He will hug you like he never wants to let you go again. He will offer you fruits and other things to snack on, talk to you, etc.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, part of him will panic, but the big brother part of him will stop him from showing it so as not to worry you even more. He will hug you tighter and kiss your forehead and cheeks. “Don't worry, you can cry as much as you need. Everything will be fine in the end, you'll see.”

When your crying calms down or stops, he will take his magic pen and, with his water powers, make a rainbow appear over you. A way for him to try to make you smile again.

Jamil ONLY hugs you in private. He hates being the center of attention and/or showing his feelings in public, especially affection. BUT when he hugs you when the two of you are alone and he can finally rest, his hugs are charmingly peaceful.

He loves to lay with you, wrapping his arms restfully around you. He's always stressed, but with you, he can rest, and his cuddles show that.

He likes both having him lay on top of you with his head on your chest, letting you play with his hair, and having you lay on top of him and him being able to caress your head. He's also not at all shy about giving you kisses, quite the opposite, he likes to be himself with you, even if it means being naturally seductive.

But when you are sad, he will restrict himself to being sensitive and reassuring. He will probably prepare your favorite food or dessert to make you feel better. And, while hugging you, kiss your forehead.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, he will panic a little (as you are used to seeing when Kalim does something that puts himself at risk) You're the one who's going to have to calm him down first before he can calm you down. “*Sigh* Please don't do this to me.” he'll say with a subtle pout, which might make you smile a little too. He will hug you tighter, something that is extremely rare for him, and let you cry all you need.

When your crying calms down or stops, he'll use his magic pen to bring tissues to you, so he doesn't have to move away from you. And as you wipe your tears, he will pat your head and say: "Whatever is worrying you, I'm sure it will pass." in a reassuring, loving voice that only you know.

Vil just doesn't hug you in public because he's a public figure and he prefers not to be the target of gossip, much less involve you in it. He doesn't hide that you're in a relationship, but you know, the less people see about the two of you, the less headaches you'll have. If it weren't for this, he would have no problem showing his affection for you. So he just demonstrates it in private.

However, he is more of a kisser than a hugger. It's more characteristic of him to kiss your cheek, or hold your chin to kiss your lips, than to hug you. Which ends up making these comfort hugs even more special and exclusive.

He'll start hugging you standing up, but if you really want to sit down then he'll let you sit on his lap. This will probably wrinkle his clothes, but he knows his priorities, and you are at the top of his list right now.

Just like him, his hugs are delicate and elegant, but firm enough to convey the feeling of protection and care. One of the arms is always around your waist, while the other is always on the top of your back or on your head, to be close to your face. That way he can caress your cheeks. And he will always plant a kiss on your forehead here and there.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, you’ll probably have the reflex to move away so as not to stain his clothes, and apologize. But at that moment you will feel his hand, stopping you from moving away. “Don't be silly.” he will tell you “And honestly, it hurts me a little that you think I value my clothes, which can simply be washed, more than you.” And he will encourage you to cry on his shoulder, remaining calm and understanding.

When your crying calms down or stops, he'll get all the tissues he needs and start explaining all the steps of a facial cleansing routine for when you cry. If you ask him how he knows so much about it he will answer you with a smile: "My sweet potato, don't tell me you think I never cry."

In public, Epel likes to hug you as a way of showing off your relationship. But cute, comforting hugs? These are only for when you are alone.

This is one of those moments when you bring out his prideful side. You wanting him to be the person who comforts you when you're sad is a way of showing that you see strength and reliability in him, right? And it makes him proud of himself and happy that you can feel safe with him.

He will be extremely sweet and cute with you. He knows that this is what makes other people, especially you, more calm and comfortable.

He doesn't like hugging you standing up, especially if you're taller than him, even if it's just 1cm. But, the same, or worse, happens if he lets you sit on his lap, so it's most likely that he'll sit next to you. OR if you can and want, he prefers to lie with you with your head on his chest. If you're shorter than him, scratch everything, he'll hug you in any way.

After a while, he will probably get distracted by something else that doesn't stop the two of you from holding each other, like reading a book or studying a little.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, he'll panic a little, to the point of asking you what's going on in his dialect that you barely understand. What he needs to know most is if you're crying because of him. He'll be very relieved to know it wasn't him, and will hug you tighter.

When your crying calms down or stops, he will ask you how you are feeling and suggest that you two do something he used to do with his grandmother or his parents when he was also sad and needed to feel better.

Few things are as indifferent to Rook as showing his love for you in public as he does in private (with just a few reservations). So he will hug you whenever you ask, regardless of where you are, so be careful when and where you ask.

Despite everything, it's rare for him to kiss or hug you. It's not that he doesn't like it, quite the contrary, he likes doing these two things so exclusive and special that he ends up keeping them as a "reward" for the two of you.

But this case is an exception to his love game. After all, one of the players is injured.

His comforting hugs are full of love and care, yet gentle despite so much emotional intensity. He will gladly hug you however you wish, standing, sitting on his lap, lying under the shade of a tree or anything else, even if unusual, he will do it with pleasure.

And of course he will use his charming and flattering vocabulary to try to help with your emotional recovery.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, you will feel the surprise in his body, and he will hold your face with both hands to gently move you away from his chest and look at your face. If you try to hide your face he will say: “Oh non, trickster! Such a display of feelings is beautiful. Such a neglected and hidden beauty. Please allow me to appreciate it for a moment.” he will caress your cheeks with his thumbs “I promise this will only make me love you more and better.” and he will kiss your cheeks, also tasting the saltiness of your tears.*

He is extremely patient and will do nothing but hug and cuddle you until your crying stops completely and/or you are the one who breaks the hug when you feel better.

It's OBVIOUS that Idia doesn't hug you in public. He can barely SHOW UP in public. All your hugs, kisses, flirting, etc. are TOP SECRET!

He loves it when you sit on his lap while he is at the computer, especially when he is playing. You can sit however you want, but what he loves most is when you have your back to the computer, your chest against his, your legs behind the chair and your head lying on his shoulder. Or your chin on his shoulder while you play on your phone. The naturalness and relaxation with which he has you close to him like this is quite reassuring.

1000% chance he created a new chair with a design that both of you are comfortable in that position.

There's a good chance he'll simply respond "Same..." if you mention that you're sad or depressed. If you laugh, he might say "Hey, weren't we supposed to be sad together? Traitor! You literally just did the IRL version of sending a crying emoji while you were actually laughing behind the screen. Like, who does that? What is socially accepted is for you to pretend you are happy when you are sad.” And if this makes you laugh even harder: “Stop laughing! It's contagious! Hee hee hee.”

If you happen to be so depressed to the point where you suddenly start crying on his shoulder, he will PaNiC! He’ll immediately let go of the mouse and keyboard and hug you! “WHAT?! WHAT DID I DO?!” You'll have to calm him down first before he can "try" to calm you down.

He will completely understand, even if you don't even know why you're crying. But he won't know how to console you and he'll admit it. He will simply hug you, not tighter but more affectionately. And bury his face in your shoulder too, and whisper a muffled: "...Same...".

You'll probably laugh at the same time as you'll be frustrated with him. “It's true!” he’ll say “Why do you always laugh when I share my sadness with you?!” he says knowing it's not true “What do you mean the WAY I say it? ... Weirdo~” he says smiling.

Unfortunately Ortho cannot hug you. At least not how he would like. The flame in his chest can burn you, and the heat exhaust ports too.

The first time he saw you sad and in need of a hug, he was also sad for being unable to hug you and then he had an idea: "Let's ask my brother to make huggable gear!"

“What do you want me to do? A teddy bear gear or something?” Idia will say, but then he will realize that if he does it HE will also be able to hug Ortho. “I’m on it!”

If Idia starts working on it, but for some reason he runs out of motivation because he thinks it's boring or a useless gear, Ortho will choose one of the following 2 options: A) convince him to do it because he reeeeeally wants to hug you and his big brother. Or B) He will say that if Idia doesn't do it, whenever you are sad Ortho will force him to be the one to hug you.

"I wouldn't mind that much..." Idia whispers. "What?" Ortho asks. "NOTHING, Nothing... I’ll make the gear."

After Gear is ready, whenever you feel sad and need a hug, Ortho will be very happy. "YAY!!! HUG GEAR TIME!!!" and will take you to Ignihyde to change gear.

Your comfort hugs will end up being three-way hugs because Idia also wants to hug his little brother. And maybe after a while he'll start hugging you too?

Ortho will also suggest you play with him to cheer you up. That and he also loves playing with you. And suggest other ways to cheer someone up, which he found on the internet.

Malleus has no problem hugging you in public. He just doesn't do it because everyone who cares about him (especially Sebek) says that, in his position, it's better to keep these romantic gestures private. A way to prevent annoying gossip.

He doesn't initiate hugs, but he absolutely loves it when you ask him for them (And they are always the best solution for when he has his "tantrums") Your wish is his command. He's just sorry that he can't hug you with the same strength that he loves you. But with each passing day it seems that he gets better and better at measuring his strength for you.

He loves to hug you in anyway. Even if he has to use his magic to levitate you if you are both standing, due to the great difference in heights. But comfort hugs are special, and whenever you ask for them, he immediately stops whatever he might be doing and sits on a couch so you can sit on his lap and lay your head on his chest or shoulder.

Whatever you ask he will do. “What do you need to feel better? Would you like me to create a fireworks show? Make flowers grow and drawing your image in a garden? Order my attendants to create a show to entertain us, and a banquet? ... What? You just want my company?” he will laugh with joy, not only because you ask little of him, but because you simply want him.

All his attention will be on you. He will talk to you, suggest that you have tea together, and kiss your forehead and cheek from time to time.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, he will look at you on maximum alert! “What is wrong, my love? Did I make a mistake? Am I hurting you in some way?” He will loosen the hug out of fear that he might be hugging you too tightly without realizing it.

After you reassuring him by telling that it's not his fault that you're crying and that he's doing everything right, his questions will change to: “In that case... is it someone else's fault you're crying?” You will hear thunderstorms forming outside. “You can tell me the name. I will make sure they never disturb you again.” You will have to calm him down again and explain that it is no one's fault.

Only then will he relax a little, hug you again with care and affection and let you cry on his shoulder, while stroking your head. “And he will tell you that IF one day someone hurts you, no matter how small the damage may be, you can tell him, okay?”

"Or you can simply mention how close you are to Malleus Draconia and they will run away screaming for forgiveness and mercy." Lilia will say another time.

Malleus won't let go of you until he's completely and absolutely sure that you're okay again. Or not, the truth is that he likes having you like this in his arms. (Just five more minutes~)

Silver is not the type to initiate hugs because he's to oblivious for that. But he always hugs you when you ask, regardless of the reason. You may not even have a reason, you want a hug so it's a hug he delivers.

And he's also not the type to change his behavior towards you depending on whether you're in public or not. He gives you all the hugs you want anyway.

Normally what happens is that you'll ask him for a hug, he'll say "Sure, but is there a reason?" and if you answer that there is none in particular, he will simply smile (that rare smile that only those closest to him know exists) and accept your answer, opening his arms so you can hug him.

If you say you want a hug because you're feeling sad, he'll continue with his natural poker face, but anyone who knows him will know that he's worried, but calm so as not to worry you.

He will hug you any way you want. If you want the two of you to sit down so you can sit on his lap, he will do it. He might even pick you up to do it, and if you ask him why he's taking you to a bench or couch like that, he'll say something like, "Oh, I thought you wanted to sit down because you were feeling tired. Sorry." If you say it's no problem, he'll smile and continue carrying you in his arms until you both sit down.

He'll just hug you like he normally does. Despite his strong arms, he hugs you with care and affection. Having you like this in his arms puts him at ease, to the point of... zzz... where he fell asleep, with his arms without letting go of you.

But if you start crying on his shoulder, he'll sense it! He will wake up faster than any alarm could wake him up. And when he sees you crying, he will immediately ask what happened, and apologize for sleeping when you needed him.

Even if your answer is that you don't know, that will be enough for him. He will hug you again in a surprisingly sweet and delicate way, and somehow, he won't go back to sleep until you feel better. He is now on guard!

In the same way that he only hugs you when you ask, he only lets go of you when you tell him to let you go. If you tell him he "can" stop hugging you, he won't do it until you are absolutely sure that that is what you want.

If Sebek is dating you it's because he adores you as much as he adores Malleus and Lilia. In a different way of course, but if he got to the point of becoming your boyfriend it's because he went through the phase of seeing you as an "inferior human" and somehow you turned a switch in his head that made him start to adore you.

There are times when he still treats you the way he did before, but when you need him, like when you're sad and need a hug, he becomes your servant (practically).

He will treat you like royalty in much the same way he treats Malleus. The difference is that he sees you as someone "weaker" who is incapable of changing the fact that you need his protection and so he ends up being more caring.

He doesn't initiate hugs even if he wants to. First he will flatter you until you want a hug from him, even if it is just to thank you for your compliments. Basically, he only hugs you after you give him your consent.

Just as he has no shame in showing the respect and adoration he has for Malleus and Lilia, he also has no problem showing affection for you in public if you so desire. But there are still certain things he prefers to do when it's just the two of you, like these comforting hugs. He also lets you sit on his lap if you want, but it will take him a long time to get used to it.

Since he has always dedicated himself to his training as a soldier and guard, he is not very good at hugging. You will always feel that he is a little tense due to his lack of experience and you will have to be the one to relax him if you want better hugs.

Even if you suggest that he read a book while you're hugging on the couch, he'll decline it. If you're so sad that you, don't want, but need a hug, it's because you need him, and if you need him, he'll automatically enter his guard mode, which means all his attention will be on you.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, what was once the closest thing to a relaxed hug becomes tense again, and he will panic in his own way, controlling himself so as not to accidentally raise his voice. “What happened?! Is there something wrong?! Did I do something wrong!?” You'll have to calm him before he can calm you... or at least try.

If you say that you don't know why you're crying or don't have a specific reason, he'll sigh in frustration and say: “You can't just start crying out of nowhere! I mean... you can, but... I wasn't trained for this. I don't know what to do.” You explain to him that you don't need anything special, just him, but this may take longer than a simple explanation.

He will guard you in his arms until you are both absolutely sure that you are feeling better.

Of course Lilia already hugs you in public on a daily basis, out of nowhere, and often he is the one initiating the hugs, knowing of course that you also want to receive them.

And of course he knows very well how to give comforting hugs. After all, he’s a loving single father.

Many times you don't even need to ask, he will simply look at your face or posture and offer it. “Aw~ You are not using your usual smile. Are you feeling well?” and even if you barely answer he will understand “No? Does my little thorny flower need a hug~?”

But if you're the one asking for the hug, his eyes will widen in surprise and then he'll break into a huge smile. “Awwww~ But of course I'll give you all the hugs you want! Khe he he. You really can surpass me in cuteness sometimes. How could I say no to you~?”

Even though he likes to give you hugs in public, he knows that these types of hugs are better in private, so you feel more comfortable too.

He gives one of the best if not the best hugs. They are firmly affectionate. At the same time that you feel his arms comfortably wrapping around you with a light loving grip, you also feel that they are strong enough to protect you from anything.

He's more of a hugger than a kisser. At most, he can give you light kisses on the cheek from time to time.

If you happen to be so depressed to the point of crying, he won't panic at all. He will simply and calmly look at you, tilt your head up by placing his fingers on your chin and ask: “Aw~ What's wrong, my thorny flower?” as he wipes away one of your tears with his thumb. “Is this moment too cute to handle? Khe he.”

Regardless of your answer, he will say with a reassuring smile: “It's okay. You can cry on my shoulder all you need. As long as I can glimpse your wonderful smile again.”

After you feel better, he will suggest cooking one of your favorite dishes or desserts to make you feel better. SAVE YOURSELF!

*Don't look at me like that. We all know Rook is weird. I'm just trying to be true to the character.

If you would like to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX

[tasteleeknow]

handled.

minors dni. minho x fem!reader. hands on necks (not exactly choking but choking adjacent). dirty talk. slightly rough piv. soft!dom minho.

It's not what you expect, the first time someone reaches out to wrap their fingers around your throat. It's during a lesson in self-defence, part of a compulsory skill. You flinch away as their fingertips graze your skin, scrunching your shoulders at the unnatural feeling. It's not a neutral act, a simple experience of skin on skin.

There's something deep down, an instinct designed to make the feeling of another person's hands around your neck inherently discomforting.

It takes many attempts for you to build a tolerance to it, the anxious feeling never settling completely despite your ability to hold still.

It was hard to imagine how the act could ever elicit anything other than that deep, instinctual urge to squirm away.

Until him.

His fingers flex as he tugs the black glove down his wrist a little further. It's a vital part of his costume as far as your concerned, a last minute addition ties up his all-black theme perfectly.

"Are you having fun?" you question, back pressed against a wall in a dark corner of the room.

The New Year was around the corner, the costume party in full swing around you. It'd taken a doe eyed look and a soft kiss to his neck to convince your boyfriend to join you.

He offers you a small lopsided smile, the delicate lip ring balanced prettily on his lower lip. "Mm," he hums with a small nod.

You tug him a little closer, "You sure? I know it's a little more crowded than I—"

"I'm fine," he says, the bare fingers of his glove free hand stroking gently over your wrist. "I'm all good."

If you were being totally honest with yourself, a (not so small) part of you hope he'd ask to leave. Getting him dressed up like this was the best part of the entire night, you'd decided. Now, you'd very much rather be at home taking the costume off him than stand around in a crowd of drunk partygoers.

The lip ring presses into his plush lip a little as he nibbles at it for a moment. You could leave the accessories on him. The ring, the silver necklace hanging around his collar—just long enough to tickle your chin if he was above you... and then there was the glove. Your eyes drop involuntarily to the hand in question.

"What about you?" Minho asks, tugging your eyes back to his.

"Hm?"

"Having fun?"

You blink.

He smiles, keenly aware of your propensity to drift elsewhere. "What you thinking about?" he asks. You would have answered him. You were too far into your relationship to be timid about such things. But then... then he reaches up with that hand... the dark, smooth fabric cool against your skin as he tilts your chin up a little. "Talk to me," he encourages gently.

Oh, he knows. Of course, he knows.

"Do you like my costume?"

His eyes drop down your body quickly. "Mm," he hums. "Very pretty."

"I like yours too."

He fails to suppress an amused, knowing smile. "Yeah?" His hand drifts from your chin along your jaw, coming to rest just below your ear. It allows his gloved thumb to play with your lobe a little as he steps into you a little more. "What do you like about it?"

"Fishing for compliments?"

"You seem desperate to offer them."

You frown, "No."

"No?" he questions, stepping even closer. He's pressed against you now, warm and dark—a barrier between you and the rest of the room. "My sweet girl wouldn't lie to me." He leans over you, lips brushing your jawline. "Would she?" he adds with a whisper. His breath tickles, hot against your sensitive neck.

You realise your error then. It was too late. The time had passed for you to drag him home and tear the dark clothes from him in the privacy of your shared apartment.

It was happening here.

Your eyes flick quickly across the room before you're grabbing his wrist and tugging him along with you, dodging drunk friends and acquaintances as you beeline for the hallway door.

Minho chuckles behind you, letting you tug him along without resistance.

You'd let you of tomorrow contemplate the decisions you make next. When you find each room taken, occupied by a couple or a group of intoxicated friends, you tug open the laundry door and slam it behind you both. There's a small lock on the door handle. You twist it.

"You like it that much, then?" Minho says from behind you.

He's leaning against the washing machine when you turn, arms crossed—sleeves rolled to his elbows.

You take in a few shallow breaths before he's stepping towards you and lifting you off your feet. It shouldn't be as easy as it is for him to lift you on top of the dryer. He settles between your legs, hands gliding up and down your thighs a few times.

His dark hair has loosened a little over the evening, the hairspray you'd used to keep it in place off his forehead giving into the humidity and copious tousles by distracted fingers. There's a lock hanging just over one of his eyes.

You reach up to brush it aside delicately.

"I lied," Minho whispers, seemingly prompted out of silence by your action. "When I said it's pretty..." he thumbs at the hem of your dress where he's slipped it up your thigh. "...I lied." His fingers brush your skin on one thigh, the fabric of his glove is cold against the other. "Pretty isn't right," he continues. "It makes me want to hold you down... sink into you..." His gloved hand snakes up your side slowly, coming to rest at the base of your neck. His fingers are splayed out across your collarbones, just below the point that would normally make you itch to squirm away.

"Min?"

His eyes flick up from your neck. His fingers twitch against you. "Mm," he hums. It's a sweet sound, in total contrast to the way he looks at you. Like he wants to tear you apart. You find you like the idea. You also find... that you wish his fingers would inch up just a little.

It's not a thought you dwell on. Instead you reach up slowly, like he might spook, and wrap your fingers around his wrist.. then slowly... gently... you guide his hand up to your throat. His eyes stay fixed on yours; his fingers ghost light on your skin.

"Don't look at me like that," he says as your fingers squeeze his wrist. "All fucking sweet like you don't want me to—"

"Please," you interrupt.

He leans forward with a groan, lips pressing to the side of your neck. He squeezes slightly at the movement. It's enough to have you dropping your head back.

It's different. It's so different to how it'd been with a stranger, with someone other than him. This makes you want to crawl under his skin, beg him to hold you and consume you—to take you. His. His. His.

"Minho," you gasp as his lips part and suck at your neck, his wet tongue poking out to lave at the marks he leaves as he goes.

His hand stays at your neck as he works, a comforting and steady pressure. He's got you, it says.

A tiny clink breaks you from your trance. His lip ring is gone when he pulls back, fallen into the dark and bouncing off things around you as it goes. You could not care less. You tug him back towards you, hands at the back of his neck to guide him. His lips are wet and hot against yours, moving with a laziness that did not at all align with upbeat music and countdown starting outside.

His tongue slips out to meet yours, his body falling over you a little in a desperate attempt to get closer. 8...7...6... the partygoers chant. Your fingers grasp at his hair, tugging a little. He whines. 3...2... You could be anywhere... you ponder as the cheers start and the new year begins. You could be anywhere and anytime, and all that would matter would be whether he was there with you.

His breath comes out in deep gasps when you finally part. It's a brief reprieve. He's on you in the next second, tugging your hips towards his and burying himself inside you. It's your turn to attach yourself to his neck, kissing and biting your way through his sharp drives into you. The dryer bangs against the wall behind you with each one.

"This what you wanted?" he gasps as you fall back on your hands. His hands grasp your hips. One warm. One cold. "Hm?"

His lips glisten with spit, a mixture of each of you. You're about to reach towards him again, desperate to taste him, when he releases one hand from your hip.

It's the bare hand this time, that wraps around your neck. It's worse—better. His fingers twitch each time he pumps into you. Your pulse flutters against them. You can feel it.

Then he pauses, tugs you flush against him—buried deep. "My sweet girl," he says. He presses his fingers into your skin at each side of your neck. It doesn't cut off your breath, instead, your cunt clenches around him—your high taking you off guard. It's a rush, a heaviness in your head that seems to match perfectly with the heavy, fullness of his cock buried deep.

There's something deep down, an instinct designed to make the feeling of another person's hands around your neck inherently discomforting. And then... there's this.

[just-some-random-blogger]

Hatred & Love

"... burn in the same intensity," Gwayne laughs as I walk off. His expression softens but no one but him will ever know. He links his hands together, "or so I'm told, princess."

Gwayne Hightower x Targaryen!Reader | 700< | cw: fem!reader, enemies to lovers, fuck boy!gwayne, fluff ig, when daemon said hightower cunt he meant gwayne because he Serves™, typos, etc.

I saunter down the hall on my way back to my chambers. My ears perk at the sound of laughter from the distance. Immediately, my jaw tightens in recognition, and my feet quicken its pace. I squeeze my hands together, wanting nothing more than to avoid whom I knew I might encounter.

The gods fail me as I spot the aggravating Hightower, merrily loitering in the gardens with his company. Dare they drink in broad daylight? Clad in his sigil and armor, no less.

Tactless.

Apparently, he had won another silly tourney. How irritating of him to celebrate in my home. The Keep would surely benefit from his absence. Gods know the peace I feel when he is not around.

Gwayne's eyes drift. I can feel him looking at my handmaids, at me, as we pass. He laughs at whatever foolishness his friend tells him; the noise grates at me. I scoff under my breath, "barbarian."

Gwayne smirks and calls out, "blessed morn, princess!"

"How can it, when you are here, and it is midday?" I retort, sparing him no glance or pause.

He chuckles as he stands. My face twists as I hear his clanking armour. My heart races at the sound of footsteps accelerating towards me.

My arm is pulled back. I shoot a glare at Gwayne and his stupid face as he releases me. His lopsided smirk aggravates me further as he says, "is a congratulations not in order?"

I snort, "for whom," I raise a brow, "for you?"

"For you," he tilts his head back, placing his hands behind him, "the most temperate princess of all. So comely, so-" his dimples show, "sweet."

I feel my face begin to tighten.

He sticks out his lower lip, "they had no one to crown queen of love and beauty in your absence. Twas a shame."

My head cocks to the side. My brows knit, "you mean you?"

"What?"

"You had no one to crown Queen of Love and Beauty," I step forward.

He stays put as I impose into his personal space. His eyes dart up and down; the muscle on his jaw feathers.

"Were you so anguished by my absence that the victory left a bitter taste in your lips?" I pout and sigh as I bring my hands behind me, effectively mocking him.

Gwayne watches how my chest sinks. His expression chips away a fraction, but it is enough to make me smirk, and I do so happily.

That is, until he licks his lips.

"Tis victory enough that you know of it," his smirk grows. Mine fades as he continues, "my heart sings at the newfound knowledge that you gossip about me, princess."

I chuckle dryly, admittedly louder than necessary, "I need no gossip! Tis not hard to hear about you, when your blabbermouth is audible even in the dungeon's depths!"

His defenses slip. A giddy chuckle escapes his diaphragm, and the rich sound makes my stomach drop. His eyes crinkle and his hands relax to his side. He lets himself relish his amusement before he mutters, "how then would I gain your attention?"

My lips part.

His brows raise.

My breath hitches.

Wind blows my silver hair into my mouth and the sound of me spitting it out snaps him out of his trance. Gwayne shifts on his leg, "perhaps I should pull your hair."

My upper lip curls at his childish response, and he chortles at my look of disgust. "You are a hateful beast," I roll my eyes and turn about.

"Hatred and love burn in the same intensity," Gwayne laughs as I walk off. His expression softens but no one but him will ever know. He links his hands together, "or so I'm told, princess."