#and it’s calc 2 ;u; what a way to start ;u;

[stepintothelimelight]

▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄ HASN’T EVERY LITTLE CHRISTMAS WISH BEEN SENT?

┊┊┊✧ ⁺ ⁺ 　° I hope the holiday

will find you well… ✧ ⁺

PART 2 of the Spitfire Saga

TRAILER: A blue Christmas in Monaco

(Charles Leclerc x fem!driver!reader (platonic), Sebastian Vettel x fem!driver!reader (platonic), 2017!f1 grid x fem!driver!reader)(SMAU + written work)

For more Spitfire content go to my account and it’s my pinned post since tumblr hates me and won’t let me link anything :)

WARNINGS: ANGST, family issues, mentions of death/ mourning, language maybe? fluff (a little), google translate french, sexism, slut shaming, complicated family relationships

fc: pinterest girls

Aaaaannnnd ACTION!

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yourusername just shared a story!

Caption: [skiing w my favs 🩶]

Replies:

yourbestfriend1: With the boys? yourusername: with the team!! 😜😜 yourbestfriend1: Oh right I forgot you’re a pro driver now and go on free ski trips with LEWIS HAMILTON yourusername: Lewis isn’t here ☹️ yourusername: i think he’s a little salty about merc replacing Bottas so soon yourbestfriend1: did he expect them to race a driver down? yourusername: 🤷‍♀️

charles_leclerc: Why no invite for me? yourusername: sorry i don’t associate with rookies charles_leclerc: you’re a rookie as well Chérie. yourusername: sorry i don’t associate with non race winners charles_leclerc: f1 changed you 😞 yourusername: i don’t mean it charlie 🫶 yourusername: next time me n u n artie can go 👍 charles_leclerc: liked a message

lewishamilton: Sorry I couldn’t make it. Hope you had fun! yourusername: I did! See you in Feb for preseason! 🩶

yourmominsta: A little jealous! yourusername: liked a message

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You cradle your phone in both hands and stare down at the little red heart. Double tapping your own mother’s message should not make you feel this gross and torn apart inside.

You stare at your instagram chat with her for a few more minutes than you’d like to admit, then shut off the phone altogether and lay it facedown on the bed next to you. 

You’re somewhere in the Swiss alps with your performance team, taking a few days to ski before the holidays. You, luckily, have your own room in the little hotel that is somehow associated with Mercedes as a whole. 

There’s a gnawing in your chest. Should you have responded to you mom with actual words? 

Things at home have been rocky lately. 

It started the week of Abu Dhabi. Since you were already F2 world champion, you had planned to pay the fine and skip the final race of the season, since it was thanksgiving.

In all honesty, you didn’t decide that. Your mother and father did, then held an hour long screaming match with you, which ended with your mother storming out and you in tears. 

“Don’t you love us? Don’t you want to be with your family?”

“No, of course not. To her, we’re nothing.”

They’re not nothing. You wish they were nothing, that what they thought didn’t mean anything to you.

But they aren’t nothing, and you still would move heaven and earth for your family’s approval, so you had decided to stay home for Thanksgiving, whether it jeopardized your career in motorsport or not. 

Until you got the call, they had won. You were going to miss the last race of the season, possibly the last race of your career for a family dinner. 

And then Toto called and you sprinted out of Calc, turned your car on and sped to the nearest airport, shooting a text to your mom on the way.

She had not been pleased.

A voice in your head that sounds suspiciously like Seb’s tells you that there shouldn’t be a world in which you make yourself sick worrying about what you mother is going to scream at you when you get home. 

You wish you could text him. Call him, tell him what’s wrong, but you can’t, or you won’t.

You don’t want to bother him, and you already have one set of parents that hate you, you don’t need him and Hanna to get fed up with you, too. 

You can’t, however, stomach yet another family dinner when your mother, father, aunt and uncle are all ragging on you for following you dream and being a little too busy. You know they all wish you were normal.

It’s not worth it, you decide. Going home is not worth it.

So you pick up your phone and tap on Charles’s contact, realizing only belatedly that your presence at their home would be an intrusion on their mourning.

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Christmas in Monaco is … everything you remember your childhood christmas to be. Unconditional love, laughter, light.

There are times, of course, that you all feel the lingering hole that is the absence of Herve, who was the patriarch of the family. 

Pascale, bless her soul, she does her best, and seems genuinely glad that you’ve come to celebrate with them. 

“Y/n, mon amor!” she exclaims as you walk through the door, Mercedes duffel bag thrown over your shoulder. “I was so happy when Charles told me that you were spending Christmas with us!”

She wraps you in a hug and you freeze up, willing the tears that are stinging your eyes away and easing into the embrace. There is t a time in your recent memory that your own mother hugged you like this.

Pascale snaps her fingers at Charles. 

“Charles, monte son sac dans la chambre.”

He sighs and takes your duffel over one shoulder, ascending the stairs to the bedroom you will be sharing with him.

“Come,” Pascale orders you in English. “You must be starving!”

it’s a flush of hugs and chatter and drinks flowing, sitting around this table with the Leclercs. Enzo and Arthur don’t question your presence. You assume that Charles has told them you are constantly having issues with your family. 

Charles sits to your right. Pascale heads the table and Lorenzo sits across from Charles with Arthur to his right. Lorenzo asks you and Charles about the upcoming season, congratulates you in your win. 

“Charles will not stop talking about it!”

“It’s impressive!” Charles defends, his ears pinking. “She’s the youngest to ever win!”

You pat Charles’s shoulder. 

“It’s ok, Charlie. I know I’m just so amazing.”

He mutters something in French that you don’t catch, but Pascale slaps his shoulder.

“Do not use those words at my table!”

The entire table erupts in laughter and you look around. This is the first time in a long time that a family dinner has actually felt like family.

There is a mattress in Charles’s closet that you’ve slept on for hundreds of nights throughout your lifetime. It’s a little lumpy, but the trick is to lay down a comforter under the bottom sheet and that smooths out all the bumps. 

You’ve showered and changed into your pajamas while Charles makes up the makeshift bed at the foot of his own. 

He casts a dirty look at your black Mercedes t-shirt. 

“This is a Ferrari-only household,” he scolds you with no actual bite. 

“I don’t see you driving for Ferrari.”

He rolls his eyes at you and takes one of his pillows and sets it at the head of your bed. He’s pulled the sheets tight, just like he always used to.

“When was the last time you slept here?” He asks you, breaking the weird silence you’ve fallen into. 

“Um,” You set your clothes next to your duffel. “2015? I came and stayed to watch your first home F3 race?”

He was seventeen, you fifteen, and you’d been in the height of your awkwardness, and to make matter worse, he still hadn’t discovered deodorant. Altogether, not a fond experience.

He makes an affirming noise and lays down on his bed. 

You pull back your covers and he shuts off the light, and for a while it’s just the two of you breathing. He always tries to match your inhales and exhales.

“Your family,” he blurts into the dark. “Why aren’t you with them?”

Your heart squeezes. 

“I think they think I think I’m too good for them.”

He pauses.

“Repeat? slower?”

You laugh softly. Sometimes you forget his English isn’t the greatest. 

“They think that I think that I’m better than them. My mom, especially. When she was growing up I think she idolized her parents and I don’t idolize her in the same way. She’s really scared that she can’t control me like they controlled her.”

Charles mulls that over,

“And your father? “

You sigh into the darkness. 

“I don’t know. He’s always working and he doesn’t like that I have my own opinions and stuff, because he’s very … he needs to be right. 

“And then my brother, we get along when our parents are being crazy, but it’s not like we’re close. I was gone for most of our childhood and now he’s in school.”

There’s a shifting in Charles’s bed, the you hear his feet pattering on the floor. The mattress beside you dips, then he’s laying next to you, his shoulder touching yours.

“This is very uncomfortable.”

You scoff out a laugh.

“It’s not that bad.”

“It is. My bed is much more comfortable.”

“Then go back and sleep there!” 

He shifts next to you, rolling on his side then back to his back. Lying here, next to him, it’s hot. You scoot over an inch so you can still feel him but you’re not touching. 

His breaths become slower and deeper.

“I’m sorry,” He tells you just as you’re drifting off to sleep. “That you feel like your family doesn’t want you, but… “

His hand pats yours three times. 

“I’m glad you’re here. Makes it more bearable.”

You fall asleep then, and wake up with you back to him. You sit up as the cold light streams through the blinds and look over at him. His face is smushed and a bead of drool pools on his pillow. 

“Charlie,” You whisper. “Charlie, wake up.”

He sits up like you just ran an electric shock through him. His hair is smashed to the side and he used the back of his hand to wipe the drool.

You giggle.

“C’mon, I smell breakfast.”

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twitter:

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charles_leclerc

charles_leclerc: A bittersweet Christmas celebration. Will be missing you forever, Papa. x

tagged: arthur_leclerc, yourusername, lorenzotl

liked by max33verstappen and 56370 others 

view 72891 comments:

user1: Merry christmas, charles! 

user2: Repose en paix, Herve ❤️❤️

user3: The fact that Y/n spend Christmas with the Leclercs is 🤨🤨

↳ user4: fr i knew she and charles were close but … girl… he has a gf …

↳user5: Oh I bet his GF HATES her

↳user77: Yeah, AND it’s the Christmas right after they lost his father, like intruder who?

yourusername: ❤️❤️❤️

♡ by creator

↳ user65: HOMEWRECKER

↳user66: She’s actually such a skank. I don’t know why people put up with her.

user6: I know it’s been debunked a bunch of times but CharY/n would be so 😍😍

↳user7: he has a girlfriend and she’s always said he’s like a brother to her

↳ user6: if my bf had a friend as close as her I would end it

↳user7: the thing is that she has been seen out and about with Giada. They’re good friends 😳

user8: Doesn’t Y/n have her own family to spend Xmas with?

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As soon as you say ‘It’s fine’ you know you’re done for. ‘Fine’ is never fine.

He calls you, you try to avoid the question, but then he hits you with -

“Y/n.” In his disappointed/worried voice. And it works like it always does. You tell him everything - from when it started when you were in F3 to now, how you’ve driven your family away. He listens. He’s a good listener when he wants to be.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asks at the end. You take a shaking breath.

Because I didn’t want you to realize I’m no good. Because you would leave me, too. Because I can’t not love them and I don’t know why.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going home for the new year?”

You’ve been waiting on a text from your mom. That’s how it goes. Fight, spend a week in the silent treatment, one of you reaches out, you make up, then you fight again. You promised yourself that you’re not going to be the one to reach out this time.

“I don’t know.”

“If not, come to my house. We’re having a party.”

Your words catch in your throat.

“I don’t want to intrude-“

“You’re never intruding,” he assures you. “I’m your mentor, remember? I have to look out for you.”

My parents are supposed to look out for me.

“Okay,” you breathe out. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Seb.”

“Merry Christmas, Spitfire.”

Your mom texts you. She grovels. You get on a plane an hour later and go back home.

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yourusername

yourusername: gettin ready 💪💪

F1 2018 and last semester of hs here i come

liked by mercedesamgf1, yourbestfriend1 and 817279 others 

view 5389 comments

yourbestfriend1: okay miss influencer 😍

♡ by creator

user10: Y/n on twt: 😃👹🤡😼🧌 Y/n on insta: 🩵🌃🎹🫧⭐️🪞

↳yourusername: it’s called duality babes 💋

↳user10: OMG

↳user16: her addiction to memes though 🤣 she can’t even do an aesthetic post without one

gg_giada_gianni: jolie fille

↳yourusername: c’est tout toi ❤️

↳user80: Y/n and giada saw the romance rumors and said hold my beer

user20: Why didn’t you spend Christmas with your family??

leclerc_pascale: Wonderful to spend Christmas with you, darling

↳yourusername: awwww thanks for letting me crash your xmas 🫶🫶

↳arthur_leclerc: Don’t worry, she likes you more than she likes any of her actual children

↳ charles_leclerc: Sadly true

user11: Still can’t get over the fact that she’s still in school

user12: U don’t deserve that seat

susie_wolff: Such an inspiring young woman, Y/n!

↳yourusername: Hi susie 😚

yourmominsta: So proud of you, ladybug!

↳ yourusername: ❤️

user13: why would they let a woman in the car?

↳ user14: she’s already driven it

↳ user15: and won her debut race ?

max33verstappen: Merry Christmas! I wouldn’t train too hard, since you’ll never beat me again! 😸

↳yourusername: 😺😺😾🔪

user17: I didn’t know she played piano?

↳user18: she plays off and on. Her youtube has a few videos of songs she’s covered and written

↳ user17: multitalented queen 👑

user19: Oh, to be eighteen and already signed to a top F1 team

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✧ ⁺ ⁺ oh, noel

oh, noel ┊┊┊✧ ⁺ ⁺ 　°

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Aaannnnnnddd scene!

DIRECTOR’S CUT: a little short and bittersweet holiday special (in august 👻)

Want to join the taglist? drop a comment below or message my inbox

🏷️: @octavikravecell218

[my-own-walker]

hi hi can u plz do an imagine of what aftercare is like with pre-death kyle spencer?? THANK U SM

+ "could u do some pre death kyle smut fem. like obv hes a sub before he died so some cute like first time in the relationship smut. YERP TY FOR READING 😎" - anon

Superposition

note: well of course, lovelies! i could do that for ya. giving you all a twofer with this!

warnings: (unprotected) sm*t, disgusting amounts of fluff, kyle's weird music taste (toto, really?) fem!reader

+++

I met Kyle in calc. I don't know what I was thinking when I signed up for a class of that caliber.

To be fair, calculus is easy for some. For me, an English major, not so much. I struggled horrendously in class. My mind was not oriented in the realm of math. With dozens of papers and other writing assignments due in my other classes, it was no wonder I couldn't wrap my head around derivatives and complex analysis.

You know how college is. No assigned seats. Just vibes. On the first day of class everyone sorta just...decides where they're gonna sit for the rest of the semester.

I chose my typical seat in the back of the room. I always sat in the back row nearest to the door in every class. It was a surefire way to make sure I could escape at the end of the lesson without having to interact with anyone.

Kyle Spencer, notorious campus fratboy, was in my class. The only reason I even knew of him was because of a stunt his fraternity pulled during a party I was at. I went for the alcohol and stayed for the insane blonde boy doing pushups in the corner the whole night as part of some dumbass hazing.

He was one who was willing to do anything to impress his frat brothers. He had apparently been a human coat rack at one party, and at another, he got so belligerently drunk that he ended up asleep in the fountain outside the library -- 2 miles from the party.

I wasn't one to engage in the school's Greek activities. I went to parties to get drunk and would be home by midnight. I wasn't particularly interested in paying to have friends, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Kyle picked the seat next to me on the first day of the semester. Well actually, he didn't pick it. It was forced upon him by his tendency to be extremely late to class. The seat next to mine was literally the only one open when he arrived.

As it turns out, Kyle was impressively good at calculus. Like inhuman. Thank god he sat next to me because during tests I could just cheat off of him.

Well, that was until he caught me one day.

+

We'd had a quiz that I was hopelessly clueless on. I did my usual cheating routine, the stretch and look. But this time, Kyle's head snapped in my direction. He let out a laugh and covered his quiz with his hand.

Oh, so we're the perfect little suck-up now, are we, Spencer? I thought.

I struggled through the rest of the quiz, leaving about half of it blank before time was called. I shot a glare in Kyle's direction as I walked to the front to hand the damn thing in.

I slumped back in my seat with a huff and began to pack up my things. The class started to file out so I rushed to get out ahead of the crowd.

'Wait, wait,' Kyle called to me. I whipped around and stared him dead in the eyes, trying to set him on fire with my mind. Not only for making me fail the quiz but also now for making me late. 'If you need help on the quizzes I'll help you.'

'Yeah?' I said, attitude obvious in my tone.

'Yes. But you can't cheat,' he smirked. 'Let me tutor you.'

'What, as community service hours for your fraternity obligations?' I challenged.

'Well, yes. But also because I want to! I love math,' he grinned.

'Okay, what's my name, then? If you know it, you can tutor me,' I said, proud of myself for my attempt to stump him. There was no way he knew a nobody like me.

'Y/N,' he replied, still grinning. 'I know you.'

+

Begrudgingly I decided to meet him at the library that night to go over what I was confused about on the quiz. We went over everything and he actually broke it all down in such a helpful way. I don't think I had ever understood math clearly until Kyle explained it.

When he finished going over everything I started to pack up my things to leave.

'Whoa Y/N hold on, do you wanna go get coffee or something?' Kyle asserted, flashing his five-star smile.

'At...9 pm?' replied.

'Just, I mean like-' he stammered.

'No sure, I mean that's fine. I'll take a coffee,' I smiled.

He walked close to me through campus to the only little coffee shop that would be open at that hour. It was aptly called 'Sleepwalker Coffee Co.' They knew their audience well. College students need caffeine at all hours of the day, as we all know.

He bought. I swooned. A man who buys me coffee? A dream.

We nestled into a small booth in the corner of the place. It was unsurprisingly packed in there. Tons of students getting work done while fraying their nerves with cups of liquid energy. It was dark and plush in there. Velvet seating, dark looming bookshelves, royal purple drapes on the windows. It was my kind of place.

We talked for a while about people in our class. Just the oddballs who stood out to us. Like Turtleneck Guy, who without fail, even on the hottest days, wore a turtleneck sweater. Or Test Girl, the girl that was always first to finish any test and made a large point of running up to the front to hand it in.

'So Kyle,' I started, resolving to change the subject a bit. He looked up from his drink inquisitively. 'I have a question.'

'Go on,' he said, laughing nervously.

'You said you knew me. How?' It was the question that had been nagging at my mind all day. Ever since he made a point of saying that. I thought I was a mysterious unknown, just trying to get through college unscathed.

'Oh, damn, I don't know what I expected you to ask but it was not that. You scared me,' he laughed. 'I've known you since Freshman year. The dorms?'

'The dorms?' I asked, needing further clarification.

'Yeah, Clarence Hall? You lived on a different floor than me but I remember you. I'd always see you on Tuesdays. You'd walk in as I walked out at like...3 pm? I'd always wave,' he explained.

'I have to be so honest with you Kyle, I do not remember that,' I replied, laughing as I spoke. 'You have a really solid memory.'

'Nah, I just thought you were prett- uh- cool. Pretty cool, ya know? Made me take note of you in my mind,' he quipped, pointing to his temple.

'Oh, really?' I blushed. I was at a loss for something to say. As he looked at me with those dark brown puppy dog eyes I couldn't help but feel something I'd never felt toward him before.

+

It wasn't long before our study dates became a regular thing. Kyle helped me get a B on the next quiz, all on my own. No cheating involved. He was so proud of me, he wrapped me in a bear hug, picked me up, and spun me around.

Then, our study dates became actual dates not long after. Our first real date was at his fraternity's date party. I felt so stupid showing up in my dark makeup and knee-high Doc Martens to an event where all the girls had fake tans and tight body-con dresses. Nonetheless, he showed me off like a proud fisherman shows off his biggest catch. We danced all night long and afterward, he asked me to be his girlfriend. It was also the night of our first kiss.

Kyle kept things slow with me. I wasn't used to that in a partner. He never pressured me into anything. In fact, I was the one initiating intimate contact half the time. I didn't mind. We were happy.

+

We had just taken the final for our calc class. For once, I felt confident about the work I handed in. Kyle gave me a kiss on the cheek as I got back from handing it in. It was a good feeling. I was finally free of math. I only needed one math class for my degree and bam, I finished it. And I got a boyfriend out of it. Not too shabby, Y/N.

'We need to celebrate!' Kyle declared as we walked out of the classroom into the sunlight. 'You, my dear, are a calc class success story! My crowning achievement.' He pulled me into his side and kissed me on the head as we walked.

'Thank you, Spencer. I owe ya a million,' I replied.

'Thanks for sayin' yes to my tutoring offer,' he quipped back. 'Best idea I ever had.'

We walked back to my apartment, sharing headphones and listening to Stevie Wonder songs. One of his favorite artists. My apartment was the only place he and I could get any privacy. I had a flatmate, but our rooms were on opposite ends of the place.

Kyle, upon entering my room, immediately plugged his phone into the speaker I had on my dresser. He paused for a second to select his playlist and turned around to me dramatically as the beginning of ‘Hold The Line’ by Toto played.

'You are such a dork,' I giggled, sitting on my bed.

'Baby, it's a good song and you know it,' he said, dancing toward me. He was very corny, but I needed that in a partner.

He flopped down onto the bed next to me, crossing his legs at his ankles and resting his hands on his chest. He stared up at the ceiling as he hummed along to the song.

I locked my phone and threw it onto the windowsill next to me and looked down at my boyfriend. His beautiful eyes stared blankly into space. I couldn’t help but attack him with kisses.

He leaned into them, humming in content as we made out. I swung my leg over his torso, straddling his hips as the kissing got hotter. My hands moved up to the top of his plaid button-up shirt. I hovered over the buttons and separated myself from his mouth to ask ‘okay?’

He nodded and pulled me by the back of my neck back into kissing him. I unbuttoned his top, leaving his chest exposed. I kissed him down his neck and chest, leaving hickeys as I went. Marking my property, if you will.

He moaned with each new spot that I kissed. It was delicious. A moment I never wanted to end.

The song ended. ‘Hello It’s Me’ by Todd Rundgren began to play. Our song. It was as if the universe understood what was about to happen.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked, looking at him. He opened his eyes and nodded.

‘Yeah, Y/N, I’m great,’ he sighed blissfully.

‘Is this about to happen?’ I replied. I really wanted to make sure before I started to tear more of his clothes off.

‘Yeah, I think I’m ready,’ he breathed, a look I couldn’t quite read on his face.

I started at his jeans, struggling to pull them off. We both laughed awkwardly. Once they were off, I really drank in his appearance. His nearly naked form.

I started to take off my own clothes, once again straddling Kyles hips. Except this time with a prominent bulge underneath me. Something stirred inside of me.

Before I tugged off his underwear I stopped again.

‘Okay?’ I asked, fingers under the waistband of his boxers.

‘Mhm,’ he grunted. 

He was completely naked. And so was I. A form we had never seen each other in before. He was…bigger…than I expected. Excitedly, I guided his cock into me.

‘Fuck,’ he moaned and gripped the sheets.

Gently, very gently, I began to ride him. His length seemed to go so far into me that it reached my limit. I moaned gutterally at the feeling of him. My hips moved instinctively. His hips bucked at the motion. He bit his bottom lip and grabbed my bare thighs tightly.

‘Can I?’ he breathed, beginning to sit up to switch positions.

‘Of course,’ I replied.

Still inside of me, Kyle took my place on top. He thrust even deeper into me. I almost couldn’t take it. I screwed my eyes shut and stifled a yelp. He pulled out at the sight of my discomfort, placing a hand on my cheek.

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I panted.

‘I don’t wanna hurt you,’ he replied.

‘You won’t, I promise,’ I assured him.

He thrust into me again, with such force that I couldn’t help but yell out a bit. He kissed me as he fucked me senseless. I grabbed his shoulders to anchor myself, but accidentally raked down his back, leaving scratches with my nails.

He pulled out, panting loudly.

‘I think I’m gonna come,’ he said.

‘It’s okay, you can do it in me,’ I whispered, nodding assuringly.

He took a deep breath and entered me again. I was soaking wet. With a few more strokes he came, spilling his hot load into my cunt. He moaned loudly, throwing his head back in ecstasy.

Kyle fell back onto the bed next to me, breathing heavily. I moved my hair from my face, sweat making it stick to my forehead.

‘That- that was my first time,’ Kyle huffed. I shot up to a sitting position.

‘Wait, that was?!’ I exclaimed.

‘Yeah, oh my god,’ he sighed. ‘And it was so good.’

‘Kyle I’m sorry, I had no idea!’ I cried out, smacking his chest softly. ‘You should have told me!’

‘No I didn’t want to tell you,’ he laughed, ‘you worry too much. It wouldn’t be natural.’

‘My god Kyle, you were so good,’ I groaned, falling back onto my pillow.

‘You don’t have to say that to be nice, Y/N,’ he breathed.

‘No, I’m so serious Kyle.’

He sat up and drank me in, looking me up and down.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he said. He wrapped me up in a hug and pulled me into his chest. We intertwined our legs and he started stroking my hair. ‘Dear Prudence’ by The Beatles was playing. He starting singing along softly.

‘The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you,’ he sang, rocking me gently in his arms. ‘That’s really how I feel about you. You’re as beautiful as the bluest sky.’

My heart swelled. He was so forthright with his feelings. It was refreshing.

‘Do you wanna shower with me?’ he asked, breaking the silence. ‘I think we both need it now.’

‘Uh yeah, sure baby,’ I replied, giggling a bit. He got up and stood at the edge of the bed, holding out a hand to help me up. He followed me to the bathroom connected to my room, peppering kisses all over my shoulders as we walked. I started the water and we got in, embracing in the warmth of the water.

‘Lemme wash you,’ he mumbled, still kissing my neck and shoulders.

He massaged body wash into my skin as he continued to hum tunes to me. I looked up at him in awe. I had never been with someone so loving and caring.

We got out and changed into pajamas, nestling into my bed for the night.

‘I love you, Kyle,’ I murmured.

‘I love you more,’ he replied.

+++

I hope this was okay! I feel like I’m getting the hang of writing like this but I still need practice. Thank you both for your requests!

[tearsofcalamity]

wriofucker's fine by me lol unless u have another nickname that'd be both as accurate & funny!

i wasn't too clear earlier; i think our mandatory education goes up to 9th grade, and then it's like a minimum of 4(ish) years for a uni degree. so it's not all that different lol

nahh im telling you i had one macroeconomics class once and it fried my fuckin brain. only reason i could stand it was because the professor was too right-brained for his own good (he'd start his lectures with a song he liked. i wrote a bunch of barely-relevant shit abt environmental pollution on the exam—he was super passionate abt it—and he just let me pass<3 loved that guy). ik i said it before but good luck on ur studies!! im sure you'll absolutely kill it out there. and, thank sm! i actually finished the short story assignment last night but im too scared to submit it jdhdj

im so glad you've got more kaveh brewing omg he's so<33 bit of a shame you're not into kavetham (they make me bite & scream) but that's just fine; more kaveh/reader for the world! except the world is me and nobody else<3 can u imagine teasing kaveh in public, maybe he's even all nice & plugged up, and you're warning him not to let a single person figure out what's going on bc he's for your eyes only<3 but it's so difficult and you're relentless and it feels so, so good... he doesn't even care about people finding out anymore, but he wants to be a good boy for you... phew. lord have mercy

HAHA WRIOFUCKER IT IS THEN!! happy to have a named anon :D

ohhhh I see I see! okay yeah so it's pretty similar just a few differences! I think the only reason I'm surviving my business/econ work is cause I've got a math-wired brain lmfao. I've got autism ("high functioning" but I don't really like that term for it, I think the more acceptable one is "low support needs") and I got the "math autism" as my friends put it so that's probably a bigger part of it. I like making spreadsheets and working out equations HAHA, also thank you for the well wishes I actually just found out I passed calc 2 with an 82% so I'm very happy about that!! I'm glad to hear you got your short story done as well, sounds like you're moving through it all good <3!!

HONESTLY I don't hate the ships (like either kavetham or haikaveh I think they're different? like some shippers put the top's name first or something?? I'm not 100% sure) like I TOTALLY see the chemistry don't get me wrong, I think it's mainly just that I get so sad seeing like nearly 0 kaveh content without alhaitham included. I love both of them but kaveh's got such a unique and deep story too, yet people often just kinda treat him like an accessory to alhaitham likely cause he's 4 star and haitham is 5 star so it turns me off of the ships a bit </3 still though that's so true MORE KAVEH/READER!!!!

oh don't even get me started on teasing kaveh in public there's so many ways you could do it and each one would make him squirm more than the last... shove a nice little vibrator deep inside of him, remote controlled of course, and enjoy watching his knees practically buckle every time you up the intensity. ooh, maybe he's giving a one-time academic seminar for some kshahrewar students and you just stand in the corner, grinning at him all the while while he shakes and tries his best to keep his voice level, praying his face isn't as red as it feels...

or play around with him in the tavern, sit right next to him and brush your hand along his inner thigh while he squirms, not sure whether he wants to move closer or further way from you... this one's easier to hide since his flushed cheeks could easily be attributed to a bit too much to drink, but once he's grabbing at your wrist to push your hand into his bulge at last, he knows by your stare that he's messed up. I mean, he hadn't kept his promise to be good, had he? guess you'll just have to rail him over his workbench back at home when he least expects it! (totally ignore his needs/pretend he's not acting super horny when you get back at first, though, he'll be so good for you when you finally do bend him over)

[seokch4n]

lesbian roommates with benefits hyuckle

inspired by big boss, touch me, and dive by victoria monét :)

PREVIEW

a/n: this is gonna be a real long one and the first one i’ve wrote this long, here’s a little peek since i don’t know when i’ll really finish😭 also i def need to edit this but here’s a peekkkk not much hyuckle here YET but

-

chenle

I don’t really remember how I felt about her before what had happened. I did see the way her gaze would linger at my chest everytime I’d wear crop tops around the house. She’d also listen to my breakfast rants like it was an episode of her favorite podcast. And she lovesss herself some emergency intercom.

hyuck

She’s the prettiest girl in the world, no one else can compare. On move-in day I had knocked on the door and the girl who opened it looked out of this world. We shook hands, “Hi, I’m Chenle but everyone calls me le for short, i’m a business major, you?” She flashes me the cutest eye smile, wow.

Chenle had just got out of the locker room after dance practice, her and renjun donning matching two piece sets contemplating going to Johnny’s awaited start-of-the-semester party.

Jun looks her friend in her right eye, “You know we already have a 8 minute routine and calc hw for days, are u sure about this?” Le gives the other girl a “we are wearing THEE party fits rn you can not be asking me that dumb ass question!” look and the shorter rolls her eyes and looks away from the fellow chinese girl. “Jisung better be there” Chenle almost rolls her eyes to the back of her head. Jisung n Renjun have been fwb for 3 years now. THREE YEARS. Both always talk about the other when they’re not there and look at the other as if they have given birth to their child(ren). Le’s waiting for them to announce their marriage already, she’s sick of this fwb bull. “Pls ask her out before Sungchan does.” Renjun breaks her neck to look back at her. “JUNG???” she asks with wide eyes. “Yeah, the tall girl that we went to high school with.” Chenle looks at the other and her head is in her hands. She mumbles “I should’ve known since that day she basically sat in his lap.” Le stops walking to yank the other into a side hug and pats her head. “It’s alright sungie is CRAZY abt you like I want you to be the mother to my offspring crazy.” This puts a smile on her face u thought hurt her jaw. “Thank you love, you always know what to say and when to say it.” Jun hugs the other with both arms then lets go after 2 seconds to walk up to the uber Chenle bought.

At the Suh Residence

Renjun opens the door and is bombarded with the skunk smell of marijuana mixed with alcohol. Chenle almost plugs her nose but is pulled into a hug by Kun. She says something shortly after but all Le heard was “BITCHHHHH” so she just smiled and hugged the girl tightly back.

“D-“ someone bumps into her. Someone she’s sure she knows but the absence of light isn’t helping. “I’m soooo sorry” the girl says then basically runs over to a group of 5 other girls. All Chenle could focus on was her recoil as she ran away. That ass looked way too familiar.

Kun is saying something else but you here her this time. “Babe did you hear me?” Le looks back at her quickly “Nope, what’d you say?” Kun almost rolls her eyes “That was Hyuck, you know your roommate?” Le almost facepalms how could she not notice that was her? “Fucc, it was? She didn’t even say hi.” Le pouts a little and Kun drags her onto the dance floor to put a smile back on her face. As soon as they get there touch me by victoria monét starts playing.

went from hands on the wheel, to hands on my thigh, to hands on my body in the back of the porsche

Le has Kun pressed to her front and they’re swaying to the beat. Kun runs her hands up her torso and atop her c cups giving them a little squeeze. A breathy exhale comes out Le���s glossed lips, she throws her head back and covers the other girl’s hands.

touch me, feel me

The younger turns her head to the other’s and kisses her slowly. She feels someone burning holes into her skull but this feels so good right now. Kun pokes the others bottom lip with her tongue and eases it into her mouth. Le sucks on it real slow, still feeling the stare. She smiles and pulls away.

“You wanna get out of here?” Kun’s left hand is now full of her right asscheek. It takes a second for Le to decline “I’m so sry Kunnie but I told Hyuck I’d help with her hangover. Maybe next time?” The older girl nods and kisses her cheek goodbye. Le walks off to find some water, if there is any and then plans to leave after she finds Renjun to hug her goodbye. Someone taps her shoulder, could it be? Le looks back and it’s her roommate. Hyuck wastes no time in asking to leave “Wanna go back to the dorm, I feel like ima throw up any second now.” You smile at her and help her stand up, you forget about the water and make your way to renjun who is sat with jisung and a few other friends. You help Hyuck sit nearby and go hug the shorter girl. “See ya tomorrow pretty, remember what I told uuu” Le breaks the hug, helps Hyuck up and waves the other ladies goodbye.

a/n: a lott of kunle but trust this is a hyuckle ficccc

[xi-off]

did i ttell yyall bout that time i accidentally took a quantum physics class . u should hear it. it says more abt me than my mbti ever will

my first deadly yet obvious mistake was letting my cousin* help me put my schedule together. in my defense it was my first semester ever at uni and i was taking any and all help i could get. "ur doin premed u might as well take this chem class in case u need it for ur major later" he says. "ok" i say.

*this is the one notorious for building bombs in his kitchen sink. yes he was 2 semesters from getting his bachelors in chemical engineering b4 deciding it was boring and then swapping to computer science for funsies. why do you ask

so yeah the class is named some benign thing like "intro to chemistry principles" with a large footnote that its only required for a handful of STEM degrees, but it therefore covers any and every intro chem credit u will ever need. so im like awesomesauce. might as well since this uni is notorious for idiot credit transfer policies 👍

first week or two is also fairly benign. prof mentions the class is gonna b pretty intense due to the material itself being pretty intense, this isnt really an intro course so hopefully u took ap chem, and im like sure its a 4 credit class. i didnt take ap chem in high school bc our chem teacher Sucked (2/15 ap chem kids my year got a 3 and everyone else failed) so im a little nervous but prepared to hate myself the rest of the semester. pretty cool. chugging along. i dont actually have to teach myself as much basic chem as i thought bc most of its pretty intuitive but im waiting for the other shoe to drop

add/drop deadline passes. my schedule is now set in stone

everything was still fine for a bit. but as per The Rules, somewhere around the 2nd of 4 midterms stuff starts going off the rails and im like. bestie WHAT is happening.u want me modeling WHAT in this janky software from the 90s that responds if and only if it feels like it? wtf is a pi orbital? wtf is hilbert space??? (pause) ARE WE DOING QUANTUM MECHANICS in my INTRO TO CHEM CLASS

(also side note im taking 17 credit hours this semester. the other classes included calc 2 which sucks fat nuts despite the fact im taking it for the second time…its been like 2 years bc i took it in high school… and japanese 101 which ended up being worse than the ACCIDENTAL QUANTUM PHYSICS class in many ways)

so yeah i cried a lot. i got like a 60 on my final and scraped out with a B-. somehow even with Also A B- in my calc class my gpa didnt drop below my scholarship minimum of 3.5 until i failed illustration 101 later. and then i got really disabled. and then covid happened. and now ive been on academic probation for like . hang on doing math. 3 years. and also havent been able to get that resolved to take classes that entire time. and i need to go get that figured out so i can apply to another school UUUUUUGGGHHHHHHH f my gay baka life

tldr: stay in school to draw yuri on ur notes or jesus from bible will put u on academic probation for 3 years

[wynterrolls]

HSR FAQ 𖡻 How much CRIT RATE is enough for your DPS?

Answer

High Investment:

Single-hit DPS or low-hit count DPS = at least 80% to 85% crit rate (achievable if you have lightcone that has crit passive or you have good crit rolls in your relic substats); [more than 85% would be on whale territory or hardcore minmax territory already]

Multi-hit count DPS = 70% crit rate

Good enough Investment:

Single-hit DPS or low-hit DPS = 70% crit rate

Multi-hit count DPS = 60% crit rate

Low Investment:

Single-hit DPS or low-hit DPS = 60% crit rate

Multi-hit count DPS = 50% crit rate

Explanation

To start off, I've always wondered why are the results of my damage calculations tend to be low values when compared to the damage calcs done by other people. As you can see from my previous attempts on rubbing my 2 braincells together and dealing with numbers in my Yukong and Pela TLDR builds, the values are pretty low.

I know I've followed the process done in the sample damage calculations provided in the sources, but I simply can't replicate the same big dmg numbers you see in other calcs.

Then one day, while I'm scrolling around in Dr. Ratio Mains subreddit, I've come across a post asking about the ideal crit% for E0S1 Dr. Ratio, and one of the answers there caught my eye. The answer of u/Bajuu mentioned that Dr. Ratio is a low hit count DPS like Seele so that he should be built with at least 80% crit rate.

However, I don't know what "low hit count DPS" means, so I went ahead and searched around in Google and the official HSR subreddit what it means but to no avail, it didn't gave me any answer nor clue, so as a last resort, I asked in a help channel in official HSR Discord server, in which two people (viasvias and skylow1112) have answered my question at last.

They mentioned that low hit means low attack tick per attack. An example for this is that when it comes to Seele ultimate, it only has 1 attack tick, while Jing Yuan's Lightning Lord deals multiple attack ticks.

(Sample images below showing Seele ult showcase from u/solidus_snake256 and Jing Yuan's LL showcase from Nerf1352.)

I asked as well if the number of attack ticks are specified in the trace multipliers or kit of the character, however, they answered that it wasn't mentioned and that it could only be seen in actual gameplay.

This means there's no way for me to know how many attack ticks each unit have by just reading their kit in the game. I have to use them in trial battle first to know how many attack ticks does their kit have when they deal damage.

-

On the day of writing this post, I saw a similar post asking what is the minimum crit rate for Dr. Ratio, and upon checking the comments, the answer made by u/Minute_Fig_3979 also has similar answer above.

They mentioned that there are two types of damage dealers - single hit or low hit count DPS and multi-hit count DPS. However, their answer mentioned more about the recommended crit rate for each type. Low hit count DPS needs higher crit rate in order to make up for their lack of multi-hit, while multi-hit count DPS could settle with lesser crit rate and further invest more into other stats due to their multi-hit nature.

Think of this scenario.

When dealing damage against a single enemy, if your DPS only deals 1 hit count like Seele, you'd want them to at least deal crit hit on this one chance so that all the efforts of setting up the buffs on them and debuffs applied to enemies won't go to waste. By building higher crit rate, this gives you higher chance so that your low hit count DPS could at least crit.

However, when it comes to multi-hit count DPS like Jing Yuan, even if you have lesser crit rate than the low hit count DPS, his Lightning Lord would have more chances of dealing crit hits at the enemy. So instead of hyper-investing crit rate on your Jing Yuan, that you'd need to do with your Seele, you could allocate the relic substat rolls into getting more ATK% and crit dmg for him.

-

Example of low-hit count:

Seele's Ultimate (1 tick)

Dr. Ratio's Skill, Follow-up Attack (FuA), and Ultimate (1 tick each)

4* Danheng Ultimate (1 tick)

Blade's Ultimate (1 tick)

Jingliu's Ultimate (1 tick)

Blade's Talent (3 ticks)

-

Example of multi-hit count:

Jing Yuan's Lightning Lord

Dan Heng - Imbibitor Lunae's 3EBA and Ultimate

Topaz's Skill and FuA Talent

Jingliu's Enhanced Basic Attack

-

The recommended crit rate varies a lot according to who is answering the question. So I'll just create some kind of simplified categorization for the variety of recommendations.

High Investment:

Single-hit DPS or low-hit count DPS = at least 80% to 85% crit rate, achievable if you have lightcone that has crit passive or you have good crit rolls in your relic substats (more than 85% would be on whale territory or hardcore minmax territory already)

Multi-hit count DPS = 70% crit rate

Good enough Investment:

Single-hit DPS or low-hit DPS = 70% crit rate

Multi-hit count DPS = 60% crit rate

Low Investment:

Single-hit DPS or low-hit DPS = 60% crit rate

Multi-hit count DPS = 50% crit rate

-

With the two sources of answer above, I think I now have an idea as to why my earlier dilemma has those small value results.

Calcs made by other people have considered multiple factors affecting their calculations.

having team mates in the calc

calculating the team dmg output in rotation-based setup

having considered the speed and action value of teammates that would affect the SPD and AV of the character you are calculating

(probably, not sure) considering the number of attack ticks of units in actual gameplay in the calculations.

These are just some of the reasons as to why my calcs from before are on the lower side, but it doesn't mean that my calcs are wrong. I just happened to consider only the most basic dmg conditions compared to them using complex dmg conditions in their theorycrafting, hence the results I got are low values only.

Source

Minimum Crit Rate Question by u/EthansFin

Seele 100k Damage - Simulated Universe by u/solidus_snake256

Jing Yuan Everyday Damage Showcase by Nerf1352

Ideal Crit% for E0S1 Question by u/HaakMilk

2.6m Blade Ultimate DMG Showcase by Kan~

Jingliu Build 4 Set Quantum vs 4 Set Ice Damage Comparison by Areha

Topaz 4pc Grand Duke vs 2P Fire 2P ATK Damage Comparison by Areha

Dan Heng DMG Progress by ☆rui☆

DHIL + 1870% Crit Damage | Swam Disaster by fatty flip

Blade Wind DMG% vs HP% Planar Sphere Damage Comparison by Areha

Dr. Ratio Trial Gameplay by Mr.Nothing Gaming

Uploaded on Patch 1.6

➥ Back to my HSR masterlist.

Update Log

01/15/2024 - Uploaded this post

01/16/2024 - Added a scenario that describes the difference between low-hit count DPS and multi-hit count DPS

[sri-rachaa]

.

[sinswithpleasure]

The Playgirl (ft. LOONA's Yves) [Part 2] [Female Reader]

---------------

Hello! I'm back with part 2!

Futa!Yves x Fem Reader, just in case ya forgot.

If you prefer, this is also on AO3 and AFF!

---------------

Yves shows up on time for tutoring, to your surprise.

"Hey baby."

"Don't 'baby' me."

"Sure. Let's start."

"Alright. Open up the textbook. We're starting from the basics. I've printed out some of the prerequisites for this topic, since what you did last time wasn't up to standard due to lack of practice of the basics. Now…"

Yves listens attentively. In fact, things go a bit too smoothly for the both of you. Yves doesn't make any cheeky quip, pull out any pet names, or flirt with anyone that passes by. The womanizing playgirl you knew disappears, and in its place is a focused, dedicated young woman. Sometimes, you even find yourself staring at her work on the problems in front of her. The change is… welcome, to say the least.

Your eyes roam Yves's styled hair, swiped back to expose her forehead, down to her beautiful large eyes, button nose, and full lips.

God, you're gay. Sure, you're literally admiring the beauty of the most insufferable bane of the universe, but you're just so fucking gay and hot people are hot, no matter how irritating they are, so...

When your eyes shift back up, you're met with Yves's smirk.

"See something you like, babe?"

Fuck.

"N-no."

"Liar."

"Fuck off." You rush to change the subject. "How're you doing?"

"I've been done for a while. You would know if you weren't spending the time looking at me."

You refuse to dignify her with a response, checking through the solved problems. With your coaching, Yves manages to get two more questions correct as compared to last time, but she still makes some simple mistakes.

"Okay, here's the issue. In question two…"

---------------

Yves continues to show up for every tutoring session. Somehow, a week passes by, and it is now Friday.

"Good afternoon, babygirl."

"Don't 'babygirl' me. How many times do I have to say it?"

"Mm, whatever. How're you doing?"

"Why do you care?"

Yves pulls out the chair next to you, leaning back on it, resting her legs on the table. She turns to you, grinning.

"Of course I'd care! You're my tutor, and if you don't feel good, you won't be able to teach me properly. If I don't get taught, I won't learn, then I'll fail, and I don't get to win. You know that I always win."

"I'm not sleeping with you."

"That's what you say, but not what you mean."

"Fuck you."

"That's what you'll be doing in five months' time."

"No I won't. Bring out the Calc textbook. We're going through Chapter 4 today."

"Alright, babygirl."

----------------

The change in Yves becomes apparent when she somehow is present earlier than you on Monday morning.

"Yves?"

"Oh, hey babe."

You sigh at the pet name, but having heard her call you that for quite some time now, it doesn't grind your gears as much anymore.

"Don't 'babe' me."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

Yves returns her attention to the papers she is working on, and the familiar math problems catch your eye.

"Calc?"

"Yeah. I promised I'll be the best student. Here I am."

"We'll see about that."

"You're looking at it right now." Yves rises from her chair, and in a flash, she has her arm around your waist, her face inches from yours. "I'm going to win, babygirl."

"G-Get off me!" Your face reddens instantly at the close proximity of your lips to hers. Memories of the chaste kiss Yves planted take front and center stage, and you can't help but look away from Yves.

"You're so pretty."

Yves has her gaze locked on your lips, then to your eyes. She is so close, too close, even. Heat flashes all over your body—every touch Yves leaves on you seems to burn.

"I mean it. You're gorgeous."

"T-Thank you."

The smug smirk never leaves Yves's face. She releases you from her smoldering gaze and grip, but she leaves you with a rapidly beating heart and a large distraction for the day to come.

When class begins, Yves tries to take the time to listen to the professor. However, she is soon back to her old ways, flicking paper balls at classmates and being on her phone more than she listens.

"Yves."

"Yeah, baby?" She meets your gaze, her tongue darting out to moisten her dry lips. Her hands carry on working on moulding another tiny paper ball.

"You're not listening."

"I am!"

"What was the last thing the prof said?"

"Um…"

You roll your eyes.

"Best student, my ass."

"I made that promise to you, not to him."

"You won't learn if you don't listen to him either. How're you going to be the best if you can't even do that?"

"Oh, so that's how it is?"

"That's right." You think hard about the words you want to say next, but maybe… maybe it is worth the risk. After all, Yves is still the bane of your existence, but she could be less of that if she keeps up her effort in trying to learn.

"You don't get to fuck me if you're not the best."

You watch as Yves freezes. She stares at you, her jaw hanging, before she steels her gaze to your eyes, staring deep into your soul.

"So this is how you wanna play, babygirl?"

"Yeah." You can feel your bravado slowly disappearing.

"Fine. I'll listen. I'll play by your rules."

Yves leans to your ear, her breath sending shivers down your spine. Her deep whisper makes you shudder.

"You will be mine at the end of the year, baby. I promise you: I'll ace my exams, and you'll love me for it."

Perhaps provoking your seatmate wasn't the best idea. Now you have to deal with the deep flush on your face and neck, as well as the heat between your legs.

---------------

A month passes.

Every week, the same things go by—tutoring, classes, more tutoring, more classes. However, what changes is how close you and Yves get with each other. By no means were the both of you friends, but she isn't as much of a thorn in your side anymore.

[yves💘 sent a message:]

Baby

I need a bit more help with the math from the last chapter.

Can I see you this weekend?

Saturday, 10am, Seoul U entrance?

[You sent a message:]

Sure.

I'll see you.

[yves💘 sent a message:]

Good.

Dress nicely, baby. It's a date.

[You sent a message:]

Fuck off.

You groan when Yves manages to charm you through text. Outfit ideas are already flowing through your head, and you sink your face into the comfort of your palms. Why do you even care about looking pretty for Yves?⁶

Well… that genuine grin she flashed after a muffled gasp of surprise when you wore a dress once in the past month was gorgeous on her. That was why.

You remember Yves actually having the slightest hint of a blush when looking at you, and she seemed to be a little less flirty that day, opting to take short glances at you when she thought you weren't watching. This newfound attention was… welcome. You couldn't deny feeling shy having Yves check you out. After all, you were just the nerd girl in class, and having this attention from a hot girl you could consider a crush not as much of a pain in your ass felt so good.

-----

Saturday arrives, and here you are, waiting outside Seoul University.

You choose to keep things simple: just a simple button-down dress with daisies printed on the fabric. Your hair is tied up in a cute bun. The pink backpack you carry completes the look, with a nice pair of flats.

The sun isn't too bright, and a cool breeze keeps you comfortable while waiting. You can't help but get nervous, though you know it is irrational to feel so. After all, this is just another study session. However, Yves's text to you earlier in the week keeps flashing across your eyes.

'Dress nicely, baby. It's a date.'

You know this is just a study session. However, a part of you dimly wishes that it isn't, before you hurriedly bash those thoughts with a hammer and then set them on fire.

The revving of a motorbike catches your attention before it zooms down the road. You can see the bike move across the lanes, then slowing to a stop in front of you. The rider, clad in all black leather, complete with jacket and boots, seems to freeze in front of you, before slowly drawing the helmet off their head.

"Hey, babygirl."

Yves grins at you, her eyes sweeping over your body. Her gaze lands on your legs, moving up to your torso, your chest, and then to your eyes and hair.

The next words she mutters are meant to be kept to herself, but you hear her anyway.

"Fuck, you're gorgeous."

Your heart takes off, pounding against your chest. You try to hide the flush on your face by staring at the ground, but you field a gaze to Yves, who looks a bit like a deer caught in headlights. She looks so handsome, so cool, and downright fucking hot at the same time.

Hmm… What would it feel like being pinned under her again?

The intrusive thought you have gets stamped out instantly, but the effect lingers—you can't help but check Yves out, feeling a rush of heat deep within your loins.

Her agreement with you was starting to look more and more appealing. Maybe you do have to teach her well.

"Get on."

"What?"

"Let's go. I gotta park the bike, and the cafe isn't close by. Get on."

Yves hands you a spare black helmet, and you hesitantly take it.

"Don't kill me."

"I won't." She grins. "I like you too much to think about doing that."

Your breath catches in your throat. It's not uncharacteristic of her to say things like that so easily, but maybe… just maybe… you want her to mean it.

You get onto the bike as Yves holds it steady. You don't know where to put your hands, but Yves grabs your arms, pulling them to wrap around her waist.

"Hold on tight, babygirl."

"Okay." You can't believe what's happening right now.

"I'm gonna go."

The engine revs.

-----

Yves trails behind you as both of you make your way to the cafe. Yves is quiet along the way, unlike her usual flirting if she caught you staring at her. When you glance back to her, you see her eyes dart away from you, staring at the floor as she swipes her hair back.

Weird.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Never been better, baby." Her reply is unconvincing, especially with a forced grin, but you don't want to really push her for a reply.

"Er… Okay. Sure."

Both of you make your way into the cafe, stopping by the counter to grab the menu. When you sit down at a table, Yves sits across you, her eyes locked onto you as you peruse your options.

"You're staring a lot today, Yves."

"Oh, um, er…" She looks away, her voice soft. This is very unlike her.

"Are you really okay?"

"Yeah, baby. I'm feelin' great, ready to learn, and get good." She leans back, resting her hands on the armrests of her chair.

Oh.

She has a crop top on.

Oh my fucking God, she has abs.

You short circuit.

Two columns of defined muscle greet your eyes, as if to mock you. It wasn't like she was someone you didn't find hot. Now, you have to find out that she also has abs?!

Your mouth dries instantly, and you grab your bottle, taking a swig. The cool liquid quenches your physical thirst, but your mental thirst…

"Don't look too much, babygirl. You might get hypnotized."

Yves tilts your chin up with a finger, moving to lean close to your face.

"My eyes are up here."

Holy fucking shit, she's so fucking hot.

You wonder how you didn't notice them when she had that fishnet and crop top combo. Maybe her pants covered them, maybe you were blinded in your dislike for her. Whatever, you've seen them now. No reason to stop… respectfully staring, especially when you can.

"Look at me."

You meet Yves's smoldering gaze.

"Keep your eyes up here, babygirl." Her warm breath against your lips makes you yearn to lean in and close the gap. "I don't want them anywhere else when they're so beautiful."

You whimper involuntarily, and Yves chuckles.

"You're so fucking pretty, you know that?"

The shame that burns when you squeak and break your gaze to hide in the pretense of reading the menu is something you don't want to admit that you feel coursing through your veins, but it's there. When you lower the menu, Yves has her chin in her palm, her head tilted to the left, a satisfied grin on her features.

"I mean it, baby. You look really pretty today."

"T-Thank you."

"You're welcome. Let's order, I'm starving."

"Okay."

"Oh." Yves leans towards you, lowering the menu to stare into your eyes once more. "You'll get to see what you want to see when I ace the exams. Be patient, babe."

You groan.

-----

That night, you toss and turn on the bed incessantly. Every time you close your eyes, you can feel hot breath across your lips, smell the scent emanating off Yves, and sense her burning gaze on you. Yves's handsome features are burnt deep into your head, and just the thought of her sends your heart pounding and temperature rising.

You think of her abs under her clothes, the defined muscle jumping out to your eyes. She already looks so good, so delicious, and yet, things only go up from here.

The rush of heat between your legs doesn't help things.

You turn again, ignoring your basest desires. Bedtime it is.

[burnedbyshoto]

disconnected

— Kirishima answers a phone call that wasn’t intended for him, and of course he can’t help but be interested in the beautiful voice and soul that angrily began to rant about their day. —

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pairing: kirishima eijirou x fem!reader

warnings: fluff, lil angst (lol sorry), cursing

word count: 7,786

a/n: this was a stupid thought that slammed into my mind, and here it is!!!! now I have a calc midterm tomorrow that I did not look at because why think about double derivatives and integrals when I can think about kirishima????

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It was eleven at night when Kirishima strolled out of his bathroom, ready to go to bed. After a rather long day, he was looking forward to sleeping and not having to wake up at the crack of dawn. Tomorrow for the very first day in a very long time, he wouldn’t have to work at the local coffee shop he was hired at. It was a job he had acquired with his good friends on the promise of it being a manageable job on top of his college work, and of course, the pretty girls who would go in.

From what Kirishima had gathered from the four months working there was that there were a lot of pretty girls who entered the coffee shop — most of which were focused on the angry ash-blond friend of his — and that it was so unnecessarily stressful. 

Some days he was up at four in the morning to open at six for the morning regulars, then he’d go to his afternoon classes, only to return for a two-hour shift in the middle of rush hour, and would leave while trying to keep the peace between a certain ash-blond and two new hires. To say the least, it was hell on Earth at times. 

Regardless, he didn’t have to open tomorrow morning, so he was content! On top of not having classes tomorrow, Kirishima was excited to sleep in.

Falling on his bed with a massive sigh, Kirishima snuggled his face into his pillow, rejoicing in the way that the laundry detergent still clung to the fabric and relaxed.

Sleep sounded so—

RIIING.

RIIING.

Kirishima’s eyes slammed open, his head snapping to see his illuminating phone on his nightstand. He had no idea who the hell was calling this late. There was no way it was Bakugou; he was asleep already at this point. Sero had broken his phone two days ago during a failed stunt and wouldn’t be able to get a new phone until the weekend. Kaminari only called him when there was a bug in his apartment, but he was currently closing… maybe it was Mina? Kirishima shook his head, no, he hadn’t spoken to Mina in ages.

Grabbing the phone, he didn’t bother to look at the caller ID and answered.

“Hello—?”

“Oh my god, I am fucking raging! You can’t believe what kind of fuckery I just went through tonight!” a voice shouted into the receiver, and Kirishima flinched a bit at the loud and angry voice. “So you know how I wasn’t supposed to work today, right? Because my coworker had sex with her ex-boyfriend like an idiot, and I owed her for covering my shift three months ago, but anyways irrelevant. I’m taking the order of this one group of adults. That’s right, A-D-U-L-T-S, adults! They are completely staring at my tits the entire time, and not my face. At first, I thought maybe you know, I had spilled something on my tits earlier, no. No! NOTHING! So I call them out on it, and they say something along the lines of ‘you could be a camgirl with that body, but like not in a sex sort of way’ I’m sorry, WHAT?! Like yes, continue sexually harassing your server who is a college student and therefore has no will to live, so will gladly beat your Gucci belt wearing ass into a bloody pulp! What they gonna do? Sue me? I have one dollar to my name, fucking take it, I don’t care, I’ll find another dollar in the sewer after I beat their asses up!

“But you know, I’m saying all this in my head because I’m broke and can’t afford to be fired from this place because the tips are hella good here. But they continue saying dumb shit, and then the obvious ringleader — I know he was the ring leader because his beard looks like it was the first picture printed on a new ink cartridge and his manspread was ten times wider than all of theirs — have the fucking audacity to slip his number while only tipping TEN DOLLARS ON A TWO HUNDRED DOLLAR TAB!!!!” Kirishima doesn’t know what to say, his jaw on his mattress, breathing having stopped while your voice wheezes from your lack of air. He makes a croaking noise, wanting to speak up and apologize for what had happened and for not being the person you thought it was, but it seemed that you weren’t over. “AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON THAT FUCKING KAREN!!! ‘I didn’t like the way you looked at me so I won’t be tipping you tonight!’ yeah, well maybe if you didn’t order enough FOOD TO FEED AN ARMY AND KEPT SENDING IT BACK I WOULDN’T BE LOOKING AT YOU LIKE THAT!!!”

There was a pause, and Kirishima, while feeling entirely sorry for you, finally spoke, “Fuck, that sounds... horrible.”

“Damn right, it was horri— wait, who the fuck is this?” your voice squeaked, and Kirishima almost started to laugh at the difference in the tone your voice took. Once so loud, angry, and entirely ‘fuck the world,’ had changed into a meek and embarrassed voice.

“Um, this is Kirishima. Kirishima Eijiriou?”

“This isn’t Hagakure?” you moaned into the phone. “03-9082-2395? That isn’t this number?”

“2-2-9-5,” Kirishima repeated his own number back, a small smile overcame his features knowing that you had accidentally misdialed a number.

“Fuck my fat fingers,” you cursed, and Kirishima chuckled lightly at the mutterings that were poorly picked up. “Well, um, I am so sorry for calling you and dumping that unnecessary bullshit on you—”

“No, no,” Kirishima interrupted, rolling onto his back, staring up at the dimly lit ceiling. “It’s totally okay! You seem less stressed out now too, and it really isn’t a big deal!”

“You are very kind, Kirishima Eijirou,” you laugh, and Kirishima can’t help but imagine a figure curled up on a couch.

“Thank you!” he beamed, a hand threading through his hair, “um, but what happened with the Karen? And why were you typing in your friend’s phone number?”

“Do you really want to know?” you ask after a fit of bubbling laughter; it seemed that you were not at all convinced.

“I work at a coffee shop for one, so I totally understand the Karen situations! Secondly, all my contacts are on my phone, I don’t have a single one of them memorized!”

“Okay, okay, okay, I do not have this number memorized! Hagakure is my roommate, and she has a new number that she left posted on our fridge and because Mr. Sprinkles left in the middle of my rant, I called her to finish it!” you explain in what Kirishima could only consider being childlike glee. “And a coffee shop? Oof, Kirishima, you might have it just as bad as I do then.”

“Ever had a boiling cup of coffee thrown back at your face?”

“Shut. Up.”

“I wish I was joking!”

“The nastiest thing I’ve ever been put through is a highschool couple breaking up in the middle of the restaurant, and a bowl of cold soup and milkshake were thrown at me! And I had to work for another five hours!”

“That… that beat mine by a long shot…”

“Okay, but like, it was cold. If you hadn’t dodged, you’d be dead!”

As time passed Kirishima soon found himself sitting up on his bed, his back pressed against the headboard, a lamp on so that he wasn’t in the dark while he talked to you. Somehow conversation flowed so perfectly between the two of you, so smoothly, so naturally. You had extremely compelling energy and a pretty bright one at that as well. Your stories were exceedingly extravagant, most derailing into hundreds of side stories before making its way back to the main point, but he didn’t mind. Though there was no proof, he imagined that your arms were swinging around while you talked, a bright smile on your face, and lights shining in your eyes.

“So anyway, I had to beg my professor to let me remake this exam because, for some reason, my brain would not switch back to Japanese. I almost cried because I was only speaking in English, and I think because I am an amazing person, my professor let me do that!” you laughed after explaining an issue with being fluent in a third language. 

“My English skills deteriorated after leaving high school, I’m rather jealous you can speak three languages,” Kirishima admitted, his head falling back onto the cold wall. “My Japanese professors probably think my Japanese sucks too.”

“Just because I am amazing and can speak three languages doesn’t mean I’m perfect at it,” you laugh, obviously trying to make him feel better about himself.

“Mm, I don’t know, you’re painting yourself as a pretty perfect person,” Kirishima sighed. “Or you have an enormous ego…”

A loud scoff came from your end of the phone, and Kirishima waited for your verbal retaliation but was met with a moment of silence.

“Oh! Welcome home!” you called out, and Kirishima quickly put together that your roommate Hagakure was home. “Yeah, no, I’m talking to someone right now! ...who? Oh, um, a friend! ...no, I tried to call you when I got home but misdialed your number and got him instead! NO! You’re not going to get a pic of him! Wait, it’s what time?!”

Kirishima’s eyes fell over to his alarm clock and saw in the dim red light that it was 04:57. 

His jaw dropped.

“Well, um, Kirishima, it seems that our call is going to end,” you whisper into the phone, and Kirishima lets out a breathless chuckle, sudden sleepiness creeping into him. “It was pretty fun chatting with you stranger, thanks for putting up with that ranting in the beginning! Most normal people wouldn’t have picked up or let me rant like that!”

“It’s no problem,” Kirishima smiled softly, his fingers stretching out to turn off the light. He licked his lips, five hours on a phone call with an absolute stranger, and he didn’t have your name, and better yet, a part of him wanted to ask if it was okay to be friends. You were magnetic to him, and he wanted to know more about you, even if this was this weird modern and accidental penpal thing. “I didn’t have anything to do today, and you were fun talking to!”

“Aww, thank you!”

Silence.

Ask, he thought, his teeth biting down onto his bottom lip. Ask!

“Um, I know this is weird and all, but do you think I can keep your number?” you ask, your voice almost timid and meek.

Kirishima’s heart rate spikes at those words, he very much wanted that, but his mouth had a mind of its own it seemed. “Why?”

“Wha— well, I just had a lot of fun talking with you! It was fun, and I don’t know, you seem like a pretty chill guy!”

His fingers gripped his phone, a warmth spreading through him when he relaxed under his sheets. “On one condition.”

“Oof, if you’re going to ask to decide between Crimson Riot or All Might you’re going to be—”

“No, no,” Kirishima lets out a snort, his shoulders rolling while he imagines the curious look coming over your face. “I would like to know your name?”

“My name? Why would you want— HOLY SHIT! I never gave you—” there was a loud noise on your end of the call, and Kirishima heard you apologize profusely before returning in a hushed whisper. “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t give you my name?!”

“No,” he laughed loudly, one that was pushed from his belly, spreading warmth through his body. “You never did, but I did learn every name of every person you’ve ever talked with!”

“God,” you groan, a small whine emitted from you. “I’m an idiot, I’m so sorry! Y/l/n y/n at your service!”

Y/l/n y/n, that’s a pretty name, he thought while imagining just what you could look like. 

“Well, goodnight y/l/n, I’ll save your number, and we’ll see if you still would like to be friends when you wake up?”

There was a small noise of agreement, “I’m like a drug, Kirishima, you’ll be back for more.”

“Okay, okay, goodnight…”

“Goodnight, sweet dreams!”

“Sweet dreams.”

Kirishima listened to the line ending, and he pulled his phone away from his ear and no sooner did he do that, a text came in at what he believed to be your number:

don’t let the bed bugs bite! 🕷😱‼️

He snorted and replied back before eventually letting sleep consume him.

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“You’ll never believe what just happened!” you squealed into the phone, and Kirishima laughed while wiping his sweaty face with a white towel. You had called thirty minutes earlier than usual and had caught him leaving the gym.

It had been a bit over two months since your misdial, and things with you had been going pretty well for strangers. The two of you didn’t talk every day, most weeks going by with just a single call, but they were always delightful talks. You worked most nights, and he most mornings, the two of you discovered. So most calls took place the night he didn’t have to work the following morning. 

“You got a customer who complained that there was too much salt in their meal that had no salt in it?” he asked, pulling a random story of something that had happened at his own coffee shop today. You let out an amused snort, a clear indicator that he was wrong, but found his guess to be amusing at the very least.

“No, but oddly enough, someone did ask for an insane amount of salt on their food and hated it!” you sang, clearly happy with how you found their distress to be funny.

“Close enough!” Kirishima laughed, but he was straight out of guesses, so he stopped. “So, what happened?”

“I tried coffee for the first time ever today!” you squealed loudly, and Kirishima cheered happily.

Through these two months, there were some hard facts that Kirishima had learned about you. One, you were living in the same city as him. Two, you worked at a semi-classy restaurant. Three, you had two roommates named Hagakure and Jirou. Four, you were twenty, just like him. And five, you were a child who only drank hot chocolate and tea because you were afraid of coffee.

~

“Caffeine is a drug you know,” you had snarkily teased him one night when he said he was going to make a cup of coffee. “Nice to know I’m friends with an addict!”

“If drugs were as amazing as coffee, I’d be an addict!”

“You know…” your voice whispered, your voice suddenly taking a guilty approach. “I’ve never actually tried coffee…”

“WHAT?!”

~

“Wow, look at you, becoming an old woman in front of my own eyes!” Kirishima chuckled, starting his walk back home. 

His fingers pushed the headphones to be more secure over his ears, hopeful that there it wouldn’t pick up too heavily on the wind of the outside world. 

“To be honest, it wasn’t that good, your taste buds are just tarnished from drinking that bitter crap all day!” you huff and he half imagined you turning your nose up.

“Okay, okay,” Kirishima laughed, a warmth flooding in his chest at the sounds of your muffled laughter. A visible indicator that you were also amused at this. “I hated coffee until I started working at a coffee shop, and that was because I needed to know my shit.”

“Wow, you only got that job while not being a coffee addict?” you tease. “Seems like a fake barista to me.”

“It’s pretty hard to believe, I know,” Kirishima stated his tone one of fake melancholy. “I’m so sorry for deceiving you, and honestly, I am a shit barista.”

“Aww, don’t say that!” you exclaim, and it seems like you’re ready to fight him. “I bet you put all those fancy TikTok baristas to shame!”

“TikTok?” he laughed, his pace speeding up just a bit so he would get home faster. “Wow, I am honored you think that!”

The light conversation continued, nothing too deep or too intense, just chatter about today's shifts and classes. Eventually, Kirishima made it back into his apartment complex, and stumbled into his room, collapsing onto his bed. 

“Can I ask something?” you ask suddenly, and Kirishima lets out a small hum.

“Yeah, of course, what’s up?”

“What do you look like?” you asked softly as if you were curled up in bed, seconds from letting sleep consume you. “I haven’t come up with a mental image that I like, and well, I want some hints.”

“I can just send you a picture of me,” Kirishima smiles, his eyes closing. “It would be much easier than me trying to explain to you what I look like.”

“No!” you disagree, and there's a long sigh from your end of the phone. “I’m not ready for that kind of information yet, Kiri. I just… I can’t accept a pic of you without sending one back, and I’m not mentally ready for that yet…”

“Don’t tell me the big fat Gucci bougie you is shy?!” Kirishima exclaimed, humor drowning his words as he referenced you to something you had called yourself one drunken night weeks ago.

“Not shy!” you bemoan, your voice muffling out at the end of it. “I’m more scared you’ll find me ugly and ghost me…”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Kirishima interjected, his voice stable and confident.

“Which part?”

“Both parts.”

“How do you know that? You don’t know what I look like…”

“...call it… Kirishima’s intuition,” Kirishima slowly stated, his eyebrows furrowing. “I find your voice and your personality to be attractive on their own, so I would never ghost you. And of course, appearance isn’t anything; plus, there’s no way you’re not gorgeous.”

He says these words with honest truth, and a part of him fears he overstepped and made you wildly uncomfortable with the amount of silence that is heard from your end of the line. But finally, as Kirishima is ready to apologize to you, a soft exhale is heard.

“You’re a dork,” you whisper, and a soft grin spreads on his own face. “Anyways, I’ll ask questions, you answer them first, and then I’ll do the same.”

“Sounds good!”

“Hair color?”

“Black, but I dye it red.”

“Mm, edgy teenager, I like it, and also knew that because you complained about your stained sheets! Eye color?”

“Red.”

“Oh, am I sensing a theme? How tall are you?”

“I’m… a bit over six feet?”

The list went on, most questions becoming more of a joke than anything else, but he was glad that you were asking these things because now he had an insight on how you looked too. You had told him your eye color, your hair color, how tall you were, and a whole bunch of trivial things he would have never thought to ask about to begin with.

“Okay, last question!” you cheered, happy to have finally included Kirishima into your inside joke that revolved around your eyebrows. “Do you have any distinguishing features?”

“Well, I don’t actually...” Kirishima admitted, his fingers brushing against the scar on his eye, and then it hit him. That was one! “Oh, wait—” CRASH. A loud crashing noise emitted from your side of the call.

“Shit, hold on!” you curse and Kirishima can only remain silent while he hears you yelling in the background, it was too far away for him to quite understand, but it was enough to know that it didn’t sound okay. 

Kirishima sat on his side of the call, the phone pressed to his ear while he tried to strip his gross and sweaty shirt from his body. His teeth bit into his lip, his canine pressing into the permanent indent of his lip, an indicator of how anxious he used to be. 

“Fuck, Kiri?” your voice suddenly snapped back onto the call, your tone frantic and quick.

“Everything okay?”

“No, Hagakure showed up drunker than… a drunken drunk, I don’t know expressions, ANYWAYS I know tonight is our unofficial official call night, but anyway I can get a rain check?”

There was guilt that swallowed your voice, a pang of guilt that made Kirishima warm a bit because it showed that you valued these calls, just like him. 

“Of course, I don’t have class or work Friday morning this time around, so Thursday night?”

“That works perfectly,” you sigh, gratitude. “I owe you, text you later if you don’t fall asleep! Goodnight, sweet dreams, love ya!”

Kirishima couldn’t repeat the whole statement before you hastily hung up, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face the entire time he showered. The shower didn’t take too long, and by the time he emerged from the shower, towel around his neck and his waist, he had a text message. 

sero - hey bro!!! i can’t pick up my morning shift tomorrow i know you have tonight to speak w y/n but todoroki and bakugou can’t cover it!

Kirishima sighed, he definitely didn’t have anything tomorrow anyways, he could manage with going in for an extra shift to help a friend.

kirishima - yeah sure what time?

sero - youre a life saver T-T im covering 8 am - 3 pm!!!

Kirishima sent a simple affirmative emoji before finishing up his nightly routine. 

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Kirishima looked at his apron while he was assembling himself in the backroom. The aroma of roasted coffee beans and pastries was almost pungent in the back, and he was eager to get out of there. As per employee regulations, he was to wear a black apron, a name tag, and something to hold his hair because it was a bit too long, for that, he wore a white bandana around his forehead.

“Wait, where’s my name tag?” Kirishima called out, his eyebrows furrowing when he turned out to Kaminari, who was currently in the back with him.

The blond froze and scratched the back of his neck, laughing awkwardly, “About that…”

So Kirishima was in the front of the store with a shiny silver name tag that read Hanta Sero. Because Kaminari was the best barista they had on hand currently, he was busy teaching Midoriya — their newest hire — around the bar. For now, Todoroki was nowhere to be found, and Kirishima was handling the cash register. 

Today was a slow morning, most people had their day off today, so morning coffee rush wasn’t in existence. Sure, there were a few outliers, but it was never chaotic. 

The gentle bell of the front door rang, and Kirishima automatically called out.

“Welcome!”

You had walked into the store, your eyebrows furrowed while you prayed that this was the coffee shop your roommates had been raving about. You’d never been here before, but it was the closest coffee shop available that wasn’t something generic and basic like Starbucks. You looked up from your phone at the voice, a thank you automatically being repeated while you neared the register.

You froze when you saw the red hair and the red eyes of the handsome man at the register. A careless thought entered your mind, Kirishima said he had red hair and red eyes… but he said he didn’t work today… 

A kind smile sat on his face, his eyes taking you in, waiting for you to approach him. 

This couldn’t be him, right?

The last time you had assumed a redhead working in a coffee shop was Kirishima, it had ended embarrassingly. 

“Um, hi,” you drawled out, your eyes reading the board to figure out your own order. 

Kirishima couldn’t keep his eyes off of you, you were exactly what you had described to him, but he wouldn’t ask until he was sure. He would ask you for your name after collecting your order for either tea or hot chocolate, and if it was you, he’d reveal that he was Kirishima. But he didn’t want to be wrong; he didn’t want to pin any other person as you, after all.

“I’ve never been here before,” you confess, your hand rubbing the back of your head. You were transfixed on the caramel macchiato that was spelled in the prettiest font, though, plus Hagakure promised all their coffee was good. 

“Oh, well, welcome! If you need any recommendations or have anything else to order, I can put those through while you look?”

His smile was kind, and you felt blood rush to your face, something you desperately tried to fight off by thinking of anything you didn’t like. 

“Oh! I do have two orders, though! There’s going to be one chai tea latte with three pumps of vanilla, and a lavender tea with a splash of oat milk.”

Kirishima nodded his head, “Will this be for here, or to go?��

His voice sounds so similar to Kirishima, you hoped, studying his face. While you answered that it was to go, you saw a distinctive scar on his right eye. Kirishima had said he didn’t have any distinguishing features… 

“What are your favorites here?” you ask, your eyebrows scrunched in confusion, your thoughts very evident in your face.

Kirishima couldn’t help but find hope bubbling up in his chest, there was always the possibility that you two lived in the same city-based off the same area code, and with what seemed like an incomplete knowledge in coffee, maybe…

Kirishima rambled off about the different seasonal drinks right now, his recommendations leaning towards the teas and non-coffee things primarily after his general and basic list. You seemed to take every word out of his lip like gospel, agreeing and nodding when appropriate, and his lips stretched into a grin when you bluntly exclaimed your ill knowledge of this all.

“To be honest, I only step into coffee shops to take a cute pic and then leave,” you laugh, pressing your hands against your lips and screaming a bit in your throat. 

Kirishima laughed, more confidence blooming through his body over the hope that this was you. It had to be you.

Your eyes then found the nametag on his apron, and like a sinking ship, you read Sero.

Not Kirishima.

“And for you?”

“I’ll have the caramel macchiato,” you decide, a grateful smile on your face while he looks down and writes the orders.

“A name?”

“Penny,” came your automatic response.

You never used your real name in coffee shops.

Kirishima suppressed the way that his mouth wanted to drop into a sad smile, and like two rejected teenagers, the money was exchanged. Before Kirishima could attempt to calm his disappointed soul, you walked out of the shop with the coffees and tea in hand.

“What was that about?” Kaminari asked, his eyes wide. “There was so much flirting and then poof, gone from both sides. Come on, dude, it’s my job to fail at flirting, not yours!”

Kirishima laughed, ignoring the way that his three friends looked at him with concern and curiosity. “Nothing, I just… the customer looked like how y/n described herself to be…”

“Oh… sorry, bro.”

“Nah, it’s all good,” Kirishima waved it off, and without so much as another slap on the back, he went back to work.

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“What the hell are you doing?”

Kirishima looked up from his phone, his fingers mid-type pausing only for a millisecond before continuing to text blindly. 

“Oh, hey, Bakubro, what’s up?” he cheerfully spoke, ignorant to the controller in the ash blond’s hand. 

“It’s your turn, shitty hair, pay fucking attention!” Bakugou barked, tossing the plastic controller into his chest. Kirishima grunted, the feeling of the plastic slamming against his chest was less than ideal, but the smile on his face didn’t waiver while he offered his best friend the controller back.

“It’s all good, you can have another turn, I can handle being out this round!”

“Kiri, that’s six rounds in a row,” Kaminari spoke up, his face in a teasing smirk.

It was then that Kirishima’s face turned approximately the same color as his hair. “I didn’t—”

“Awww, Eijirou has a little crush on y/n!!!” Kaminari sang, resulting in agreeing with noises from Sero and Midoriya. Only Bakugou and Todoroki remained silent. 

Kirishima only laughed, he knew he couldn’t deny that fact, but he wouldn’t say it aloud — especially because Bakugou seemed to hate you. It had been now four months since the two of you had ‘meet,’ and while he still had no face to imagine you with, things had taken a slightly flirty route between the two of you.

Calls were much more frequent, nearly all nights the two of you would speak, even if it was just a measly summary of the day and a ‘sweet dreams’ and a ‘goodnight’ and an ‘I love you.’ It always happened nowadays.

Tonight was an exception, of course, because he was out with his friends, and apparently, you were doing the same. 

“You can’t be fucking serious?” Bakugou spat, a laugh spluttering from his lips, but it was cold and held no humor. “You caught feelings for a person who’s too much of a fucking coward to reveal a picture of themselves?”

“That’s not fair; besides, it's not about physical appearance!” Kirishima waved him off, pressing send to his text message.

have fun tonight! text me when u get back home if ur able to!

“Just how naive can you be?” Bakugou sneered, his hand taking the phone from Kirishima's side. “Six months of talking every week, texting every day, and this y/n still hasn’t trusted you with a single picture of them? I know you said that she told you how she looked, and all that shit, but let's be real, it’s so easy to lie about how you look like when you don’t have to provide a picture. What y/n say? Big tits? Big ass? Small waist? What about her did she say that made you so fucking insane over her?”

“N-Nothing! We didn’t talk about our body types!” Kirishima’s eyes widened significantly, the once comfortable atmosphere of the room wholly gone while Bakugou’s vermillion eyes seethed silently. “None of that matters! I told you the truth! I like y/n because of her personality, she’s manly, and I like that a lot! It’s not about her appearance, how pessimistic can you get, bro! I promise you, she’s trustworthy!”

“Is she really?”

“What?”

“How can you be in love with someone who you trust entirely, but doesn’t trust you at all? You said that y/n won’t show you a picture of herself because she’s scared you won’t like her? How is that trusting you? How is that fucking fair? To me, that sounds like some fucked up catfishing thing.”

“We talk on the phone, dude,” Kirishima said softly, but those thoughts were invading his mind. Did you not trust him? He knew he wasn’t the best option in the world, and he had accepted that in time and by improving on what he thought he was best at. But did you, after all this time, really not believe him when he claimed nothing would change when he saw you? “Catfishes don’t even do that… besides, the first call was by accident, why would someone—”

“Dunce face, what’s that one fucking idiotic thing you do for fun?” Bakugou snapped at the blond, not even bothering to look at him.

“Well, there’s a lot of things I do that you—” Kaminari laughed awkwardly, his smile tight and awkward.

“Kaminari.”

“I call… random numbers… pretending to have a big issue to see how they react…” he admitted, and Kirishima’s stomach clenched.

“And?” Bakugou snarled.

“I pretend to be a girl…”

“Don’t be stupid, Bakugou, this is more than one time!” Kirishima groaned.

“It's a voice that you can’t attach a face to, who knows if this is a person you can trust! People with voice acting exist in this world, how the hell do you possibly know that they’re not one of them?! Be fucking real, if ‘y/n’ trusted you, if that’s even their name, they wouldn’t be hiding their face from you.”

Kirishima didn’t say anything else, the acid piling in his throat was too much for him to even look at his friend. The night didn’t really recover from that conversation, and Kirishima eventually found himself back home.

He sat at the edge of his bed, his phone in his hands, waiting for a message from you. He couldn’t sleep, and even though he had work tomorrow morning, he found himself wide awake, unable to let sleep consume.

It was three in the morning when you sent a text, his eyes still wide awake, and with shaky fingers, he read the message.

i just got home can you believe that i drank three cups of wine and didnt get tipsy??????? thats on being a raging alcoholic ;D

Kirishima wanted to laugh; on god, he would’ve found this beyond delightful to read because he knew you couldn’t handle your liquor, but that bitter stream of acid destroyed the humor in his thoughts.

Were you really telling the truth? Was this all a lie?

He didn’t text back; instead, his finger pressed the call button, and he held his breath.

“Helloooo?” a voice picked up on the second ring, but it wasn’t your voice. It was a voice he didn’t recognize at all.

‘Voice actors,’ Bakugou’s voice reentered his thoughts, and the phone in his hand nearly dropped.

“Sorry, hello?” the voice he knew as you finally came through, and Kirishima let out a shallow breath, one so small, so mediocrely weak it burned his lungs.

“Do you trust me?” he asked softly, maybe too softly because you asked with a strained laugh for him to repeat his words. “Do you trust me, y/n?”

There was a pause on your end, too long a beat for Kirishima to be comfortable with.

“Of course I trust you, Ei, are you okay?”

“Do you actually trust me, or are you lying?”

“Woah there,” you said a small laugh on your tongue, but there was only confusion in it, not your contagious sound. “Did you drink? It’s a work night, you never do that!”

“Answer the question,” Kirishima spoke with finality, his shoulders tense, tears pushing past his eyes while he struggled to maintain composure.

Prove Bakugou wrong, please, prove Bakugou wrong.

“Of course I do,” you spoke with genuine clarity, but still, Kirishima was rattled, his confidence blown. “What’s going on?”

Did he want to confess to his insecurities? Was it worth it? His breathing became frantic, almost as if he was going insane just thinking about where his thoughts were. But Kirishima was never good at hiding things, no he was as open as a book.

“Why won’t you let me see you… we’ve been friends for six months, and the only thing I know about you is your eye color and your hair color. It’s so insanely generic that I can’t… I can’t do this.”

“What are you trying to say?” you ask, your voice small, almost a whisper of all the energy one could have at this time of night.

“I can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t trust me, who’s using me,” he spoke with perfect clarity that hid away his insecurities about this all. “For all, I know nothing about you is real, that this is all just some ploy to hurt me in the end. Six months and you can’t trust me with a single meet up or even a picture? I just… has this been a game for you, y/n? Or is that even your name.”

The call ended and a single message held on his screen, this call has been dropped, but you didn’t seem to want to call him back.

Kirishima didn’t sleep a wink that night, his words coming back to bite him in the throat each and every time he thought he was close enough to sleep. Insecurities riled up in him, consuming him entirely.

⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆⋄⋆⊹⋄⋆

He tried to call back.

For fourteen straight days, Kirishima attempted to call you back.

Every time he called you, he would always hang up before he could take back his words. But each call, after he had prematurely hung up, he would recant his mean words to the unresponsive phone. He did trust you, he was weak, he was unmanly to assume those things. You could take, however long it took to finally trust him again because he would wait for you no matter what. He apologized again and again until the very last one he broke down into silent tears, a single message of ‘I hope one day you’ll forgive me’ hung weakly on his voice and put his phone away. 

It was sixteen days since he had spoken those cruel words to you, and in that time, he didn’t regret finally talking about his ill feelings towards wanting to reveal yourself to him. But he did regret the way it came out; instead of it being a deep and personal conversation, it came out as bitter and one-sided. The two of you were disconnected, and he felt empty.

But he couldn’t focus on it, not today, after all, it was Bakugou’s birthday, and everyone was gathering at the local fancy restaurant to celebrate. 

Kirishima dressed up presentable, wearing a navy blue button-up, and dark slacks. He walked towards the entrance of the restaurant where Kaminari, Sero, and Midoriya were eagerly leading the group of them into the building. Typically Kirishima would’ve been with them in terms of spirit, but he felt energyless at the moment.

With the moon high in the sky, Kirishima stilled when Bakugou called out his name.

He stared at his best friend, the ash blond’s lip curled into a sneer while he huffed, “Listen, Kirishima, I’m sorry for what I said that night.”

“What? Oh, no, it’s okay, Bakugou!” Kirishima laughed, his hand slapping to the back of his neck. “You weren’t wrong.”

“I never said I was wrong,” Bakugou grunted, his eyes locked on Kirishima’s while he shoved his hands into his pockets. Kirishima stilled, unsure as to where this would be leading. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. I know that Mina hurt you badly, and you’re too big of an idiot to not see when things arise. Maybe y/n is genuine, but if you aren’t fucking honest with her about your own feelings about how she’s so secretive, it’s not going to work.”

Kirishima smiled softly, a weak shrug moving through him, “I know, thanks, man.”

Bakugou nodded, and without a word, he continued on ahead where Midoriya was yelling at them to hurry up and come so they could be seated. 

Kirishima sighed, rolling out his shoulders before following afterward.

Kirishima followed after the hostess, smiling at her gratefully when she sat the group into their own private room and left. 

“Bakugou’s paying, right?” Kaminari stage whispered to Midoriya while staring at the prices on the menu.

“Eat shit, dunce face, learn how to save up your fucking money the next time you offer to come to this fucking place!” Bakugou roared, hearing the whisper.

“I’ll be covering the bill,” Todoroki informed with a smirk on his face. Kirishima laughed, looking at the prices and indeed agreeing with Kaminari’s statement. Having a wealthy friend was very convenient at times like this.

“Hi, welcome to Eiko, I’ll be your waitress today!” a voice chirped from the entrance of the room, and Kirishima froze, he recognized that voice and face.

It was the person he had mistaken for you all those months ago.

By the smile on your face, it seemed that you recognized them all too.

“And what is your name,” Sero winked, his eyes captivated by you.

“Oh, haha, sorry, my name is y/n,” you smiled, moving the menus you held in your hand to show the silver nametag on your uniform.

“Oh, like Kirishima’s y/n,” Kaminari laughed, pointing a finger at Kirishima, not at all being as quiet as he probably thought himself to be. But it seemed that he wasn’t the only one who thought that because while Kirishima was staring at your face, embarrassingly taking you in, you followed Kaminari’s finger.

Your sight sat on the redhead in the middle whose name was Kirishima, and you straightened up in what felt like panic. 

“You’re Kirishima?” you asked quietly, your finger grasping the menus so tightly, your knuckles turned white. “Kirishima Eijirou.”

“The one and only,” Kaminari voiced for him, his arm thrown over Kirishima’s shoulder while he nodded like a scholar. “And why do you ask?”

“Shut the fuck up, dunce face.” Bakugou hissed.

Kirishima continued to stare at you, a million words running through his head, yet not a single one being translated on his tongue. You were beautiful.

What should he say?

What could he say?

Your lips pursed, and you shook your head, a smile of disbelief spreading across your face, “Unbelievable.”

“Y/n—”

“Be quiet,” you snap, your tone angry, but your eyes beyond hurt. “What can I get you guys to drink?”

Dinner wasn’t exactly a pleasant time, you came in and left faster than anyone could blink, and yet none of their drinks went empty, nor did they really have a problem. Much quicker than Kirishima would’ve liked, they were done and were soon piling out of the restaurant after Kirishima decided to leave a very, very generous tip.

“I’m going to stay until I can speak to y/n,” Kirishima said, waving off his friends who were expecting him to follow. But he couldn’t, not when he felt like the world's biggest ass for what he did to you.

“Good luck,” they all wished him well before eventually leaving, knowing better than to stick around.

So there at the outside bench, Kirishima waited.

Two hours he sat there until you emerged from the front door, your hair was no longer put back, you held your apron in your hand, and your purse on your shoulder.

“Y/n!” he called out, his feet no longer cemented into place; he strode after you.

You didn’t seem to pick up the pace, nor did you slow down. You were focused on your car that sat at the edge of the parking lot, and you ignored his calls.

It wasn’t until his hand touched your shoulder, and he appeared before you did Kirishima freeze again. Angry hot tears slid down your face, your face screwed up, your shoulders stiff.

“What do you want, Kirishima?” you spat, but there was only exhaustion in your voice, nothing bitter, nothing at all what Kirishima deserved from you.

“I want to apologize,” Kirishima whispered, his hands struggling to reach out and wipe your tears away. You were crying because of him, he did this to you. “I was a dick, I was… beyond unmanly to you, and I’m so sorry! I just let Bakugou get into my head, and I’ve never been a secure person because, well, I’m just… fuck, I don’t even know, but all I know is that you didn’t deserve this. And I like you so much, but I didn’t — I don’t know what to do?!”

Your eyes stared up at him, they were bright with tears, wounded beyond anything Kirishima could hope to fix.

“That night, you said if I didn’t trust you, but I did trust you! I’ve always trusted you—” your finger jabbed his chest— “but it was you who didn’t trust me! I get that it’s hard to not have a picture of someone you care about after a long length of time, but we were always fine for a while! It was going to happen, but while I trusted you, I didn’t trust myself, okay?! I couldn’t trust myself to see that if you were so much more handsome than me that I couldn’t be confident enough to let myself be friends with you! I constantly fuck up relationships when I have crushes on people because… I don’t know, I just do! But you were someone with no risk and the highest risk, and I wanted to be sure in my own feelings before giving you a picture of me! But… fuck, Kirishima, you didn’t trust me!”

Kirishima’s throat tightened, the tears on your face a guilty reminder that this was because of him. But how could he fix this?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hands grabbing onto your arms just above the elbow, and his head hung by your forehead, not quite touching you, but just enough that his spiked hair teased the atoms between you. You were taller than he expected, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t deal with, no, not at all. “You’re right, I didn’t trust you, and you didn’t deserve that. I don’t think there’s anything that I can say, or do for that matter, to change your mind, and I’m sorry. I just panicked because who gets into this type of situation, how do I tell my phone friend that I have feelings for her? I was weak, and I am so fucking pathetic, and I just want to make things better. If you’ll let me be your friend again…”

He slowly looked back up at you, and you were frozen in your place, tears falling down your face still.

“I don’t think we can be friends,” you confessed, and Kirishima’s heart broke in two, his hands dropping from your arms in his embarrassment and humiliation.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry still, um… maybe I’ll see you again?” Kirishima smiled despite it all, he kept smiling despite the crack in his chest and his soul.

“You will,” you murmured, and before Kirishima could blink, your fists wrapped in his collar, and you brought him down for an ardent kiss that he was not quick to respond to. It took three seconds for him to wrap his arms around your waist and pull you in, kissing you again and again and again.

It didn’t seem to matter to either one of you that you were both now kissing without a care in the world in the middle of a parking lot, because you both had your emotions exposed to the other, and you didn’t want to be friends. At least not when the man who held your heart confessed that you held his in yours. 

The two of you weren’t truly disconnected, it was just a little lost moment in your call.

[wonderlustlucas]

jack pot ; part 1 - hwang hyunjin

⇢ prompt You know it’s bad when you’re high as a kite and he’s still on your mind. ⇢ pairing hwang hyunjin x female reader, seo changbin x female reader for like 2 minutes ⇢ word count 7.5k ⇢ genre fluff, angst (not heavy, just in a slow burn kind of way), slight smut ⇢ warnings drug use!!! & lots of it (marijuana), grinding, implied smut ⇢ summary College is a matter of working hard and playing hard. It’s an opportunity to start fresh, to grow as an individual and to blossom with those you befriend. People come and people go, leaving their mark on your life and showing you all the parts of becoming an adult. Some, however, do more than leave their mark. Some take just as much as they give. Things become complicated once they take the entirety of your love because you outright offered it to them.—college!au ; stoner!au ; friends to lovers!au ⇢ a/n yo!!! disclaimer: this initially was going to just be a long one shot but i decided to split it up into 3 parts, so just to let u all know part 1 & 2 does not have a ton of hyunjin interaction, they’re more character/plot building. part 3 is when things will get spicy ♥︎ i hope u enjoy! if u rb make sure to let me know what u thought in the tags mwah also i finally switched from ___ to yn are u guys proud of me :)

prelude.

Sometimes you really, truly, honestly think you could go right ahead and kill Han Jisung.

You say it all the time. Sometimes it’s a simple, “I will literally kill you,” or when you are feeling extra spicy, “Sleep with one eye open tonight.” He, of course, laughs it off like you aren’t vibrating with the urge to kick his kneecaps in. You seriously have lost count of all the times he has brought you to the brink of insanity.

And honestly, you have watched enough murder documentaries on Netflix that you probably could do it, but, you know, spending the rest of your life in prison does not sound that appealing. Plus, there’s the ever-troubling detail that Han Jisung is the closest thing you have to a best friend. So, it sort of goes against your basic human morals to backstab—literally—the most important human in your life.

But he really makes you crazy. Why you agreed to share an apartment with him in the first place is a mystery, but the fact that you leased it again for junior year is what really makes you lose sleep at night. Because, while he may be your best friend, Jisung is the epitome of a little shit. If such a compound word was in the dictionary, it simply would say ‘Han Jisung.’ Somehow, though, it makes you love him even more. Maybe it’s true that ‘opposites attract,’ or, perhaps, maybe it’s because no matter how much embarrassment and general self-loathing he may have caused you in the past, it has benefitted you in the end.

For example, his constant teasing about your lack of friends eventually led to you befriending a group of girls you always admired from afar. His snarky comments concerning your nonexistent social life finally got to you and now you can proudly wear the title of one of the best beer pong players in your class. His presence in general has taught you to stand up for yourself and what you believe in, whether it’s against him, your parents, a toxic friend, hell, even a professor. Proving people wrong, especially Jisung, is your favorite pastime.

Sometimes, though, it’s not that easy.

There’s one area in your life where you have accepted defeat. One area in your life where Jisung has his most fun. One area, or, perhaps one person, where you simply cannot step beyond your comfort zone.

Hwang Hyunjin is your Achilles tendon and Jisung is the arrow. There are times, along with all the times you’ve considered strangling Jisung in his sleep, where you have sat and actually prayed to the gods to send someone else. Someone not nearly as perfect as Hyunjin and someone not nearly as unattainable. Alas, these prayers, hook-ups, Tinder dates, anything to get him off your mind has proved futile; because here you are three years later, stuck with this stupid, absolutely infuriating crush on the only boy who has ever owned your heart because you outright gave it to him.

one.

You are beginning to think the two bubbly junior girls who led the campus tour you attended last year lied about the dining hall.

Correction: they one hundred percent lied.

Because even though the newly renovated food court looks nice—unscratched linoleum floors, shiny marble countertops and all sorts of seating to choose from—there must be something fishy going on with the cooks. Literally. Just last week, an upperclassman had a breakdown when she forked into her tuna (why anyone would want college seafood is another story) to find a worm right there in the middle of it. You have found little shards of glass in the yogurt and bugs even at You-Cook, but that’s all a part of the college experience, right?

“Are you sure there’s no spiders or anything? Did you check?” Beside you, Maddie watches with furrowed brows as you spoon a hefty serving of scrambled eggs onto your plate. Chuckling, you move down to grab a few sausages and a chocolate chip muffin before they are gone for the rest of the day; Lord knows, you are only a month in and carbohydrates have quickly become your emotional support, just like everyone else. “Yes, I checked,” you assure her, hiding a laugh with your hand as she leans over to further scrutinize the eggs, “I didn’t see any arachnids.”

“Good,” she hums, satisfied with your answer, “can you grab a banana muffin for me? They’re usually at the bottom.”

Nodding, you turn back to the blessed muffin basket, pushing away blueberry, corn, double chocolate, all because Maddie has to be different and go for the macadamia nut banana.

“Are those the dinosaur socks they were selling on move-in day?” In front of you, someone asks, and your first instinct is to look down at your feet just to confirm. 8:30 calculus simply turns your brain to mush and remembering how you dressed for the day is near impossible. “Yes!” Laughing, you lift your leg to get a closer look at the cute green t-rexes on skates. “I was sold once I heard they were a dollar.”

Tearing your gaze away from said socks, you look up and suddenly feel as if you have bumped into an angel. Maybe there were spiders in the eggs, deadly poisonous spiders that crawled up the spoon while you weren’t paying attention and bit your hand and now you are dead and this is the angel leading you to the heavens. That, or this simply is the most beautiful human you have ever seen up close and your brain does not know how to process it. Well, maybe that’s a little extreme, but you definitely have never been so starstruck in your life.

The boy in front of you says something but you don’t hear it, senses and thoughts momentarily Off™ as you gawk at him. Aside from the deep undereye bags you all have claimed the past few weeks, this stranger is as close to perfect as you can get. Sure, Seungmin and his roommates are pretty cute—but what the fuck?

Something tells you that you have been silently staring at him, wide-eyed and mouth hanging open for far too long when his brows raise in a mix of confusion and expectation. Shit. What did he say? Synapses suddenly shooting like fireworks in your brain, you desperately try to remember his reply but instead, all you had focused on was the plumpness of his lips as he spoke and not the words themselves.

Clearing your throat, you blink once, twice, hoping you were hallucinating the whole time and the boy in front of you is not Hercules incarnate.

Lucky for you or him, you can’t tell, but he is still as attractive as he was two seconds ago. “Sorry, what?” You blurt, loud, too loud, flinching at the sound of your own voice. Instead of recognizing that you are totally off your rocker, he smiles, a soft, toothy smile that has your muscles turning to goo.

“I said I bought them, too,” cutest-boy-in-the-universe repeats, looking down and you follow his gaze, “my roommates were making fun of me, so I’m glad I finally found someone who bought them.” Alas, as he tugs at the fabric of his jeans to slightly lift the cuff you see that he, too, wears the same socks. You think you’re in love.

“Well, your roommates clearly have no taste,” you deadpan, shakily meeting his eyes once he looks back up. He laughs softly, eyes scrunching at the action and you positively swoon until silence settles over you and he takes the opportunity to regard you, gaze sweeping down your frame and up again. You hold your breath because, 1) holy shit, you would get on your knees for him right now and 2) you suddenly wish you were wearing more than the ‘just-woke-up-to-get-pegged-by-calc’ fit.

“I’m Hyunjin,” he finally says and you release all the air trapped in your lungs. “YN,” you return, grasping his outreached hand and thanking the heavens it is as sweaty as yours. “Well, it was nice to meet you, YN,” Hyunjin proceeds, releasing your hand and offering a gentle smile.

“You too, Mr. Sock Man,” you grin, rocking on your heels and realizing with a pang of disappointment that your breakfast has probably gone cold. Well, that’s okay, because right now you are totally content standing here in the middle of the dining hall, silently staring at this Hyunjin with a stupid smile plastered on your face. And the best part? He apparently is just fine doing that, too.

“YN!” Somewhere behind you, Maddie calls your name and it thrusts you head-first back into reality. “Did you find a banana muffin? I can’t find— oh. Who’s this?” Appearing beside you, visibly shocked having found you in a staring contest with a very tall, very cute boy. “Oh, uh,” you huff out a laugh, scrambling to get yourself together, “Hyunjin, this is Maddie, my roommate. Maddie, this is Hyunjin. We have the same socks.”

Brows shooting up at the puzzling introduction, Maddie bites back a laugh and looks back and forth between you and Hyunjin. “Well, you don’t hear that every day,” smiling to hide her confusion, she offers him a small wave with her hand full of muffin packs, “nice to meet you.”

Hyunjin smiles in return, gaze quickly returning to you. “I’ll be off, then. Gotta get the waffles while they’re still warm. I’ll see you around.”

And before you know it, he’s off toward the other end of the breakfast counter.

“Um, what the fuck?” Maddie whispers excitedly as you make your way toward your usual table, elbow repeatedly jabbing into your side. “I have no idea what just happened. I think I’m dreaming,” you sigh blissfully, relieved to find that Jisung and Seungmin were able to claim your favorite booth. “No, definitely not dreaming. He’s totally into you. You have to hang out.”

“What?” You sputter, nearly tripping over your own two feet. Then, lowering your voice as you near the two boys, “I – no, he isn’t. How can you tell? That was like, the cutest guy I’ve ever talked to, and you think he’s into me?”

“Who’s the cutest guy ever?” Jisung pipes up, eyes lighting up and you curse him and his fucking bat hearing.

“No one,” you grumble, smiling softly at Seungmin when he gets up so you don’t have to sit on the end, leaving Maddie to sit next to the other one. “Is it me?” Jisung grins with a flutter of his eyelashes. He’s convinced the only reason you dislike him is because you’ve actually fallen in love with him, but that’s far from the truth. You don’t even dislike him—he’s just one of the first guys you’ve met who meets your sarcasm with as much ferocity, and that is a hard pill to swallow.

“In your dreams, Han,” you sneer, gracing him with a dramatic eye roll before tearing open the bag of your muffin. Comfortable conversation quickly falls into place as you eat, complaints about your classes, Seungmin trying to convince you to join them at the first party they will be attending while Jisung mocks you for wanting to stay home, Maddie asking where Felix is and Seungmin explaining that he got so high last night he ended up staying up past four playing Overwatch and is currently sleeping past all his classes.

Then, in the midst of guzzling your apple juice, Jisung leans out of his seat to call down the aisle. “Hwang! Come pull a chair over!”

Curiosity peaked, you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and crane your neck to see over Seungmin’s fat head for who this ‘Hwang’ could be until, like the universe is really trying to kill you, the Hyunjin you met not even ten minutes ago has reached your table. “Hey,” he grins brightly, dabbing up the two boys before he glances to you, mouth promptly falling open. Certain you mirror the same expression, you struggle to find your words as Jisung and Seungmin look between you in shared confusion. “First we share socks, now it’s these dumpheads?”

Ignoring the way they scowl, Hyunjin giggles shamelessly and grabs a chair from an adjacent table to sit at the head of your booth. “It would seem that way.”

“Woah, woah, woah. Slow down. You guys know each other?” Jisung scoffs in disbelief, pointedly looking at you as if you’ve gone and disproved everything he pegged of you. “We just met,” Hyunjin replies with a shy smile, sparing you a quick glance before cutting into his waffle. Jisung looks to you and you offer an affirmative nod.

“And how are you guys friends?” Maddie asks, sensing your panic. “He’s Changbin and Minho’s roommate,” Seungmin answers.

You choke on a mouthful of juice.

“Christ, you good?” Seungmin snickers, offering a few slaps to your back. With a muffled yes, you look to Hyunjin with pleading eyes. “Please don’t tell them I said they have no taste.”

He laughs, arching a brow at you. “No way. They’ll get a kick out of that.”

“Oh, Christ,” faking a cry, you bury your face into your palms, “so much for making friends.”

“It’s okay, YN,” Jisung soothes with faux sympathy, “no one wants to be your friend anyway.”

Scoffing, the table quickly falls silent when you look up with rage in your eyes. “I bet when someone asks your parents about you, they change the subject,” you spit, shooting daggers at him before stabbing your fork into an innocent chunk of egg. To your utmost surprise but total delight, the other three burst into a fit of laughter, leaving you smirking smugly and Jisung sulking.

“Anyway,” Maddie promptly changes the subject back to her chemistry professor who has started every class playing Britney Spears. Tucked away in your corner finishing the last of your sausage and stifling the urge to get up for more, it isn’t until Hyunjin begins to speak do you realize that you have been quietly watching him the entire time. You would blame the soft morning sunshine shining through the windows and illuminating the right side of his face for making him look so ethereal, but you know that isn’t the case; from short, messy black hair, silver hoop earrings, thick, defined brows, the soft curves of his nose and the pouty fullness of his lips, you are totally, completely mesmerized.

And then, the sole of a sneaker is slammed right into your shin. “OW!” You yelp, loud, and for a moment you forget the pain in favor of the embarrassment that comes with the number of heads that turn to look at you. “Sorry. Bit my tongue,” you lie, earning an unconvinced look from Maddie. “Go on,” you nod toward Hyunjin to continue whatever he was saying before directing a furious glare to Jisung, who fails to hide his triumphant smirk as he enthusiastically types on his phone.

Just as you have bent down to rub at your throbbing leg, your phone vibrates twice against the table.

han jisung [now] stop staring, ur lucky hwang is as dense as a rock or he would have left a long time ago bc of you

han jisung [now] so THAT’S the ‘cutest guy ever’ huh? so ur straight after all

Squeezing your hands into fists, you prepare to fire back a reply that will have him crying. But he has different plans.

“Oh, Hyunjin, did YN tell you she’s a dancer, too?” He exaggerates your previous mention of dancing and has the audacity to wink at you. Thanks, Mr. Match Maker.

“Really?” Hyunjin gasps excitedly, eyes lighting up and totally missing the flabbergasted what? that sputters from your lips.

“I – well, no,” you hiss, scowling at Jisung, “I used to do ballet when I was younger but that’s it. Why, though? Do you dance?”

“He’s here on a scholarship,” Seungmin explains, “and minors in creative writing.”

“Oh,” you squeak, glancing to Hyunjin who is all but smiling like a cherub, completely oblivious, “that’s amazing. You must have a crazy schedule.” Chewing the last of his waffle, he hums in agreement. “Yeah, it gets really stressful at times. But it’s worth it,” Hyunjin chuckles. Then fucking winks.

Unable to hold his gaze, you whip your head back around in a panic and reach for the mere sip left of your juice. “Speaking of crazy schedules,” he hums, slapping both Jisung and Seungmin on the shoulders, “I must head out. This was fun. I may start crashing the party more now.” Rising from his seat, Hyunjin swings his bag over a shoulder and grins brightly. Realizing it would be rude to not say goodbye, you force yourself to look back to him and offer a feeble wave.

“And YN, don’t bite your tongue when you eat, yeah?”

You’re going to pass out.

two.

Felix likes to think of you as his corrupted child when it comes to smoking weed.

A few weeks before you would all be returning home for winter break, he came knocking on your door with a proposition. “No one wants to smoke with me. Do you want to?”

This, for sure, was not what you were expecting on a cold Tuesday night in December. Despite the general curiosity and always wanting to ‘try it’ simply to feel like a teenager breaking the rules, you told him you never smoked before. “I know,” he said with a smile, “that’s why I’m asking.”

So, you agreed. Reaching for your hand, Felix snuck you out the window and led you halfway across campus to the junior parking lot, giving you ample opportunities to back out when he felt how badly you were shaking. “Whose car is this?” You laughed in disbelief when he unlocked a beaten-up Nissan near the outskirts of the lot.

“Kim Woojin. The junior?” He replied once you settled in the passenger seat next to him. “Oh.” You blinked, confused. “He lets you smoke in his car?”

“He gets me weed, too,” Felix giggled, reaching into the pockets of his sweatshirt and coming out with two tightly wrapped blunts, each about two inches long, “I’ll turn the heat on a little so we don’t freeze but we have to keep the windows open. I’m not going to have you hotbox for your first time.” You had no idea what that meant, but you agreed nonetheless.

With a brief lesson on what to do that truly made no sense until you tried it for yourself, Felix lit the blunt, took a few small hits to get it started, and then passed it to you. Holding it gingerly between your thumb and index finger, you brought the unlit end to your lips and sucked as he instructed ‘like a straw,’ breathing it into your lungs and ignoring the faint taste of smoke. Unsure of when to stop, it wasn’t until your throat felt as if it was on fire did you realize just how much you had inhaled.

“Shit,” you wheezed, coughing and choking and watching with wide eyes at the amount of cloudy white smoke that left your mouth and nostrils. Passing it back to Felix, you scrambled for the cold water bottle he brought along, downing half of it in one go to soothe the burn. “Good?” He asked, blowing out the window and turning back to you with eyes full of concern.

“Yeah,” you huffed, “give me a few, though.”

Humming in agreement, Felix connected his phone to the car’s Bluetooth and began playing what he calls his ‘getting high playlist,’ and before long, you fell in love with the feeling.

When break was over, you were dying to try it again. Felix was more than happy to be of service.

For all of March, it turned into a daily thing.

Now, you try to smoke only once a week for the sake of not dying, or something.

australian felix kjellberg❤️ [now] come hang at 201?

When the text notification pops up in the corner of your laptop screen amid your YouTube binge, your bones jitter with a mix of dread and excitement.

Dread, because that’s Hyunjin’s room. Excitement, because that’s Hyunjin’s room.

Maddie must hear your sigh. “What’s wrong?” She asks from her cozied position in bed, hand deep in a bag of popcorn.

“It’s Felix,” you start, “but he said to go to Hyunjin’s room.”

She blinks, unfazed. “And? I don’t see the problem here.”

“Well, I don’t know,” you count on your fingers, “first, I don’t know how to act around Hyunjin sober. Second, I don’t know how to act around Hyunjin high. Third, I am very touchy when high. Fourth, Hyunjin is always touchy.”

Maddie scoffs. “That’s a pretty lame argument, YN,” she laughs, “isn’t that what you want to happen?”

“Well,” she’s got a point, “yes, but it still makes me nervous. He makes me nervous.” Closing your laptop, you shimmy out of bed and debate changing out of your cotton shorts and tee shirt. Nah. You’ll probably end up going back to Felix’s and sleeping there. You put a sports bra and deodorant on and call it a day.

Maddie finds this hilarious. “You know what should make you nervous? The fact that you’re usually the only girl getting high with, what? Six guys? You know they all want to fuck you.”

“I try not to think about that, actually,” cringing, you try to erase Felix’s voice when he’s high as a kite or Changbin’s arms from your mind, “and you don’t know that. Sometimes Ryujin and Lia are there. Or, you know, you could always come. You don’t have to smoke, just come hang out. I know you want to give Minho a fat smooch.”

Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “I love you, and I appreciate the invite, but I don’t feel like babysitting a bunch of stoners, even if Minho is there.”

Laughing, all you can offer her is a shrug. “I don’t blame you,” grabbing your phone, wallet, and charger, you make your way over to her and bend over to press a goodnight kiss to her forehead, “if you need me, don’t. I’ll probably be dead.”

“Oh Lord,” Maddie cackles, watching you struggle to open the window, “don’t die. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“I’ll try,” you grin, military saluting once you’ve managed to flop over the ledge. With one last wave, you close the window behind you and thank admissions for giving you a room on the first floor.

[9:34 PM] YN: omw now, gather your forces to help me in :)

Nights in 201 are always interesting. First, their room is on the second floor, so climbing through the window is an experience. Things would be a hell of a lot easier if you could just walk in and out of residence halls as you please, but with the officer at the front desk documenting who comes in and who goes out, there would be a knock at the door at midnight asking you to leave. Second: as Maddie said, 201 means the whole squad is showing up. And when the whole squad shows up, you’re bound to feel a mix of anxiety and desire deep within your bones no matter how hard set you are on Mr. Hwang. And third: you know you’re in for one fucked up night.

[9:42 PM] YN: hereee

Standing awkwardly behind their building, you try and calm the nerves that always come when you know you will be with Hyunjin. Considering how close the two of you have become over the past few months, one would think you would have gotten a grip on those pesky feelings.

Yet again, it’s kind of hard to do that when he looks and acts like that all the time.

When the window slides open, you are expecting Changbin to hang halfway out for you to grab on to with the rest of them holding onto his legs. Instead, a tall, metal ladder of sorts is pushed out until it lands with a thud! at your feet, granting you a perfect staircase into the room.

Well, you certainly don’t see that every day.

Blinking in confusion, you do not know whether to focus on the crowd of boys waving at you from above or this abomination of a stepstool that was practically thrown out a window for you. Accepting the chain of events as just another fever dream of an experience in 201, you shake your head and begin to ascend on shaky legs, graciously taking Jisung’s hand and clinging to both him and Seungmin as they help you into the room. “Thanks,” you huff, giving them both a hug in return to their chivalry. And they dare say it’s dead!

Behind you, Changbin and Hyunjin lift the ladder-stepstool mutation back into the room and it isn’t until they have folded it into a more compact piece and set it against the wall do you speak up.

“Did you… buy a ladder?”

“Yes!” Minho bellows, thrilled by your successful entrance. “Isn’t it great?” After pulling back from a hug, he keeps his hands on your shoulders just to shake you like a bobble-head.

“Yes,” you grunt once he’s released you, head swimming, “a lot easier than hauling both me and Changbin through the window, right?” Looking to said boy, you can’t help but melt into his side when he pulls you close. “No worries,” Changbin beams, rubbing your arm, “at least we have some funny memories now.” When he moves to flop onto his bed, you realize with a shudder that you are alone with Hyunjin.

Well, technically not alone since they are all right there, but alone in the sense that they are not paying attention to you nor him.

“Hey, YN. I missed you,” he singsongs, engulfing you in one of his monster bear hugs. Disregarding the heart palpitations they may cause, Hyunjin’s hugs are truly the best and you wish you would initiate them more if it didn’t seem like such a big deal in that smooth brain of yours. “I missed you, too,” you mutter into his chest, squeezing your arms around him as if to engrave this feeling into your mind forever. “We saw each other, like, five hours ago,” he reminds you, finally pulling back and taking your will to live with him. God, he has no idea.

“And? You’re the only one here who doesn’t make me suicidal,” you lie because, in reality, he actually does. Just in a different way. “Aw,” he coos, large hand squeezing your side and you think you could orgasm on command, “good thing we have tonight, then, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you squeak, finally remembering to breathe when he steps away to sit beside Seungmin on his bed. Suddenly, you are feeling incredibly grateful no one is next to Changbin because, well, 1) he is closer to Felix and 2), you need a distraction.

“Hello, Felix,” you greet the boy sunk deep in a bean bag chair, busy grinding leaves and packing them into the bowl of a bong. “How are you this fine evening, YN?” He asks once you have settled beside Changbin, brows knitting together when the older boy drapes his arm around your waist.

“Good. Tired, though. How ‘bout you?”

“You didn’t have to come if you’re tired! We all know you work your ass off, no one’s gonna judge if you chose to stay home and sleep,” Felix expresses, giving you a look that screams ‘mom.’

“No! I’m not that tired,” you assure him, reaching for his hand and squeezing for extra effect, “you know I wouldn’t miss this. You’ve made me a pothead.”

With a proud smile, he returns to his designated job and begins working on the second, smaller bong. “So,” stretching to set your things on the desk beside Changbin’s bed, you turn to him with a knowing smile, “how’s the album coming?”

“Great!” He beams, eyes lighting up at the topic. “Jisung is a great addition. Did I tell you we started meeting with someone else, too?”

“No, who?”

“He’s a sophomore, Bang Chan?” Somewhere behind you, Felix passes a bong to Jisung for the first hit. “Bang Chan? Holy shit, Binnie,” repeatedly punching his arm to express your excitement, “that’s amazing! I didn’t know he was into music production. Not that I’ve ever talked to him, but.”

“No, I get you,” he hums, giving your side a firm squeeze, “he’s really awesome making beats. I hope we’re successful.” Then, reaching past you, he takes the second bong and a lighter from Felix. When he resituates himself, he’s considerably closer than before. You don’t mind.

“Ladies first?” Changbin offers with a crooked grin, handing them to you. Then, on second thought, he holds onto the lighter to do the honors. “Sure. Thanks,” you laugh, glancing across the room to find everyone arguing over which color to set the lights to as they wait for their high. Bringing the tube to your lips, you offer a miniscule nod to him and then he is setting flame to the bowl. Sucking strong enough to generate bubbles, you unplug the bowl once he stops and breathe in as much as your lungs can handle in one go. Then, once you have exhaled, you quickly finish what’s left in the tube before passing it to Changbin with a pleased smile.

“That was a lot,” he points out once you have handed the bong back to him. “Hey, you’re the one who kept lighting it for thirty seconds. Mother would be proud,” you joke, reciprocating the same service and lighting the bowl until he glares at you beneath his bangs.

The best part about being high is the fact that you are constantly laughing. Things won’t even be that funny, but once someone starts laughing—you’re done for. You laugh so hard it hurts, and then once it’s all over, you realize it wasn’t funny at all. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like a squirrel?” Minho asks Jisung at some point. You absolutely loose it. It quite possibly is the funniest thing you have ever heard.

Pouting, Squirrel Boy leaves Minho alone on his bed to come crash beside you. “How are you, my tender oozing blossom?”

Squinting at him past the way your eyes burn, you make grabby hands and pull him close to wrap your arms around his teeny waist. Changbin grumbles in protest, but he’s too transfixed on the light’s soft in and out fade of different colors to say anything else. “Please, don’t ever call me that again,” you mumble into Jisung’s mop of brown hair.

“What?” He gasps, tilting to look up at you with puppy eyes. “You didn’t like it?”

“Nope,” smiling lazily, you rest your head atop his, “I love you, but I’m not ready for pet names yet.” His face morphs from a frown to one lit with excitement. “Holy shit, did you just say you love me? Do my eyes deceive me?”

“That would be your ‘ears,’ but yes,” you hum, brain simply not capable of denying it the way your sober self would. “More than Changbin?” Jisung whispers.

“Yes, but don’t tell him,” you return quietly, biting back a laugh.

“More than Hyunjin?” He counters. At this, you look up to find said boy sat with his legs to his chest across the room. Next to Seungmin, he looks like a giant; but a happy, pouty giant that keeps talking about how much he could go for a winter melon tea right now.

“Never.”

One and a half (half because it was just the rest of Minho’s terribly big hit that left tears streaming down his cheeks) and an unfinished game of Cards Against Humanity later, you find yourself in a blissful headspace. The song playing quietly through Felix’s speaker makes it feel like you are bouncing down stairs and then going up again, and the lights are oh so pretty, pink fading to red, yellow to green, blue to purple and so on. Things are fuzzy but crystal clear at the same time, the popcorn you’ve been shoveling into your mouth tastes heavenly, and your body feels like it is engulfed in a warm, comforting hug.

Or, that could just be Changbin.

Somewhere in between trying to get more comfortable and him yanking you to stay next to him when you attempted to get up and hug Seungmin for something sweet he said, you now find yourself on your back with a clinging Changbin on your side. You are so comfortable, but also insanely hot, and as you begin to slowly come down from your high as the hours tick by, you begin to realize it’s for another reason.

What started as an innocent hand on your side turned into his thumb rubbing meaningless patterns against your shirt, which then turned into his hand slipping beneath to splay against the warmth of your skin. Growing increasingly needy as the minutes go by, you turn to look at everyone around you. Jisung, who found himself returning to Minho, appears to be passed out with him on the far end of the room. Seungmin, curled up on the floor with a pillow and a heap of blankets. Felix, who finished off the rest of his weed, scrolls aimlessly on his phone still at the peak of his high.

And Hyunjin, who you assume has been fast asleep on his bed for a while now if the arm flung over his face tells you anything. For a moment, you feel sick with sadness. So close, but so far he lies, always a step out of reach. But you can’t deny how Changbin makes you feel—for right now, at least. And it would be a shame to miss out on an opportunity with someone else because the one you want is unattainable.

Right?

Changbin must sense the way your breathing increases, must feel the way your body reacts to the slightest of touches, yet he takes his time. He is soft in the way his hand travels up your arm, rough fingertips grazing over your collarbones before smoothing down over your chest and abdomen. It isn’t until you are about to burst at the seams does he give your ass a strong squeeze and urge your leg over his hips.

“Changbin,” you sigh, biting your lip to keep from whimpering when he begins pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses down the length of your throat. “Please touch me.”

He only makes a sound of agreement, savoring the way you squirm and grip onto his arm for dear life. When he offers an experimental roll of his hips to grind against you, you practically go feral. The last time you were touched in such a way was at a party in the beginning of the semester Jisung and co. physically forced you to go to, and Changbin has barely even touched you and it’s already better than the rushed sex you had that night.

“Wait,” he huffs, pausing his ministrations no matter how difficult it is to do so, “we can’t.”

“What?” You hiss, trying to keep your voice quiet, “why?”

“Because you’re high, and I’m high, and I’m not going to do anything unless you really want me to,” Changbin explains, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips when you frown in response. “But I do want you to,” you huff, chasing his mouth for another, “I trust you one hundred percent.”

“Are you sure, YN?” What about Hyunjin? is what he really means and you know he’s right. You should have never told Felix.

Trying to ignore the wetness of your underwear, you turn to lie on your back. “Whatever. Never mind,” you mumble, and when you glance back to him, you can’t help the way your heart soars with him still pressed closely to your side, blinking tiredly at you. But like he said, it’s not Hyunjin. “Just get some sleep, Binnie. Forget it happened,” smiling past the tears that threaten to spill, you ruffle his hair and press a softer kiss to his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Changbin whispers, returning the affection with a kiss to your shoulder. In minutes, he is snoring softly beside you.

You can’t fall asleep to save your life.

Reaching for your phone to check the time, you grit your teeth once you realize it’s almost four and you definitely have been staring at the ceiling for more than an hour. For starters, you are freezing now; unlike these passed out hooligans, you are showing a lot more skin and not being under the blankets is not doing you well. And secondly, it’s hard to fall asleep when your thoughts are flying miles a minute.

Is this how it’s going to be, then? Whenever you see someone, will the little guy on your shoulder whisper in your ear that it’s not Hyunjin? Or will people deem you off limits because they know of your infatuation? People who know, at least—Changbin is the first, apparently.

Just need to get comfy, you decide, trying to ignore such thoughts and turning to lie on your stomach. Bless Felix for leaving the lights on, too—you may be coming down from your high, but the vibe is simply immaculate. Tucking a hand under your cheek and following the ropes of light on the ceiling and up the walls, you find this to be enough to calm your nerves. Enough to make your eyelids heavy. Finally.

Someone lets out a monster train snore. Seungmin, you think, biting your lip to keep from laughing. Or, it could be Hyunjin. The thought is so amusing you can’t help but squint at the boy across from you to better see his outline, hoping he will do it again just to confirm.

No, not Hyunjin.

Because he’s facing you, eyes open, a soft smile plastered on his face. Well, fuck.

No reason to panic, you console yourself, returning a gentle smile in the assumption he can even see you. And you stay like that for a while, simply watching one another for an infinite amount of time. It’s not much, but it means something, you think, lost in the way the contours and highlights of his face change with each color the lights fade to. Just as you remember the whole point of getting on your stomach was to fall asleep, Hyunjin moves. Reaching for his phone, you watch in confusion as he brings it close to his face and starts typing.

hwang hyunjin👁👄👁 [now] Come sleep w me?

You almost throw up in your mouth. You must be dreaming. Surely.

Blinking against the harsh light of your phone, you cannot help your smile as you reread the text.

[4:02 am] YN: wont that b a little sus for bin

[4:02 am] hwang hyunjin👁👄👁: If anyone asks just say he kept kicking u or something

You don’t need to be told twice. Now that he has turned onto his side facing the other direction, Changbin does not stir once you slowly move to sit up and stand, nor when you reach for the quilt crumbled at the foot of the bed to pull over him. It’s not much, but hopefully it will keep him from waking in a few hours freezing to death. Then, as you tiptoe your way over to Hyunjin’s bed, avoiding Felix now that he’s sprawled half way off the bean bag, you cannot tell if you are still shivering from the cold or if the fact you are going to be sleepingwith Hyunjin in one, tiny single bed is finally clicking in your brain. Like Maddie said, this is something you want, right?

As you draw closer, Hyunjin shifts to make room and lifts the covers for you to quietly slip beneath. “Thank you,” you whisper, pulling the blanket up to your chin and trying to ignore the feeling of being so close to him. “Of course. You looked real cold over there,” he smiles tiredly. Then, his arm cautiously curls around you to rest by your head, fingers swiping stray hairs away from your face.

“I was,” you admit. Eyes level to his lips, you strain to look him in the eyes to resist the temptation now that he’s pulled you so close. “Changbin fell asleep and I felt bad waking him.”

Hyunjin doesn’t reply. He seems momentarily lost in thought, brows slightly furrowed as he chews on the inside of his lip.

“Do you like him?” He finally asks, voice shaky with hesitation.

“What?” You sputter, shocked at such a presumption. Yet again…

“No, no I don’t. I mean—as a friend, yes, but, you know,” you trail off, squeezing your eyes shut. You desperately wish you were not having this conversation right now. “He was touching you, though. And it looked like you liked it,” Hyunjin whispers, thumb swiping against your cheekbone.

“I mean, well yeah, I did. But I’m not close enough to like him like that. It’s just a physical attraction,” realizing you are discussing what went down with Changbin to Hyunjin, you suddenly pull back and lean up on an elbow to get a better look at him, heat now spreading up your limbs like fire. “Were you watching us, Hwang?”

“Yes,” he admits, “it’s kind of hard not to.” Your heart stops beating.

“I – what?” You manage once you have remembered how to breathe. “I didn’t know you were awake, we wouldn’t have… what do you mean, ‘it’s kind of hard not to?’”

“You know what I mean, YN,” Hyunjin mutters, arm slipping around your waist and pulling you to lie down with him again, this time, your chest pressed to his. “I like looking at you. You’re very pretty.”

You definitely must still be high, because you are seriously having a hard time wrapping your mind around Hyunjin calling you pretty, as well as being so close, and somewhere deep in your mind wonders if he knows. If he knows how your heart is on the line here. Knows that with him moving closer, you are taking a huge risk.

When Hyunjin kisses you, you forget that this could be the worst mistake you’ve made in a long time. Wrapped around his fingers, you pray this is his way of saying he feels the same.

“YN!” You wake to Seungmin gently shaking your shoulder. “YN, wake up. Your phone has been vibrating for twenty minutes now. It’s Maddie.”

The wave of panic washing over you dispels the grogginess you feel from suddenly being yanked from sleep, as well as the recognition of where you are and who you’re with. Frantic, you sit up and nod in thanks to him before taking the call. “Hello?”

“Oh, thank God you answered,” Maddie cries, voice choked, “I’m sorry, I know you’re still out, but I just threw up and I feel so terrible and when I get up I feel so nauseous. Can you come home?”

“Shit, Maddie, don’t apologize,” you whisper, rushing to grab your things as Seungmin unfolds The Ladder as quietly as possible, “I’m leaving now. Don’t move, you don’t want it to get worse. I’ll be there as fast as I can, okay?”

“Okay,” she whimpers before hanging up.

“Thank you, Minnie,” pressing a kiss to his cheek, you begin to climb down. “Is everything okay?” He asks, watching as you go with a worried frown. “Yes, it’s fine. Just a little emergency, don’t worry,” praying no one is out and about watching as you climb from the back of their building, you rush back to help Maddie as fast as you can.

You stay back in your dorm with Maddie for the rest of the weekend, fetching her water and ginger ale and food she can handle, helping her to the restroom, and binging all sorts of shows and movies with her. Seungmin, Jisung, and Minho visit Sunday evening, joining you for a few hours to watch Pokémon. You think it’s just because Minho knew it would be a good opportunity to snuggle with Maddie.

You can’t help but feel disappointed when Hyunjin isn’t with them. You refrained from telling Maddie what happened in 201, too caught up wanting to make sure she was alright, and by now you are starting to feel as if it wasn’t even real. Maybe you made the whole night up in your marijuana-infused brain. And snuggled up with Jisung, you can’t help but wish it was this annoying shit you were falling in love with.

On Monday morning, Hyunjin doesn’t show up for breakfast. On Tuesday, you find out he has been hanging out with a girl he met at his favorite boba joint and apparently won’t shut up about. First, you run back to your dorm to cry to Maddie, having to explain all of Friday night to her. When she leaves for her lab, you call Felix for an emergency smoke session. When Maddie texts that she is going to be out late working on a project, you call Changbin to tell him that you really do want him to.

Like you said, it’s just a physical attraction, right?

⇢ part 2

[boomjohnny]

i like you. a lot. can you please stop ignoring me now?

*this was originally intended as a blurb, but it became kinda long sooo yeah. if u want a part 2 to know what happens after, let me know

**part 2 is out now  !

[ 10:16 A.M ] a huff of annoyance escapes your lips as yet another crumpled ball hits the back of your head. you don’t even have to turn around to know who it is anymore. jock!jaehyun seemed to have a certain knack and satisfaction at getting you in trouble.

Decked in his signature varsity jacket and ripped Japanese denim, “Jeffrey” (as they called him) Jung Jaehyun was undoubtedly the star of the basketball team, and the school really. He was the typical jock: handsome, athletic, popular… but with the unfortunate exception of an affinity with dragging you into trouble whenever you were near him. This was evident in the fact that most of the catastrophic events from your childhood involved or worse, were caused by him. 

Whether it was your first nosebleed when he kicked a football straight into your face in first grade phys ed, or when he got your favourite white party dress muddy at a family dinner when he played catch with your pug, you were certain that he was doing this kind of thing on purpose. Though it’s practically impossible with your parents being both neighbours and best friends, you made it your mission to stay away from him as much as possible. 

“He’s really trying, you know,” A voice of sympathy says, not from your head but your deskmate, Doyoung. “Poor guy got sent to detention in Calc for throwing paper planes out of the window. With the purpose of throwing it into the window of YOUR Lit class from across the hall.”

“Paper planes? Is he five? Either way, it was probably to Johnny since he sits by the window.” You reach down and grab the crumpled ball, afraid that the teacher would tell you off for littering. “They’re both in that stupid basketball team.”

“And who sits next to Johnny?” He snatches the crumpled ball and opens it so its contents face you. “Your dumb ass.”

The writing is slightly chunky(seems to be marker) and all over the place, but it clearly spells out, “look i’m not trying to get you in trouble. i like you. a lot. can you please stop ignoring me now? - J”

You whip around to the back, eyes slightly widened in surprise. As if he knew that you would turn at that moment, Jaehyun slowly pries his eyes from the pack of seagulls outside of the window and back to the front at you. His gaze falls on the opened piece of paper in your hands. 

A coy smile creeps on his lips. “I like,” He mouths, dimples on display. “you.” 

For a moment, your heart stops. And then it starts pounding against your chest like a bitch. You feign a cough, feeling your cheeks burn. “W-What the…” You turn back around swiftly. For the first time in your life, you’re speechless. 

You try but fail multiple attempts to pay attention to what your teacher is saying because the only thing running through your mind is the stupid, smirking boy in the varsity jacket burning holes into your back. 

“…and that is why the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Are you quite alright, Y/N?” The teacher, Mr Seo suddenly says, causing Doyoung to chuckle silently from beside you. “You look incredibly red, and you’ve been staring into space for the past five minutes. Perhaps you should go to the nurse.”

“Sorry about that sir, but I’m fine-”

A rich baritone voice quips in from the back.

“I’ll take Y/N to the nurse, Mr. Seo.” 

This earned several gasps across the room and slaps to Jaehyun’s back as his friends wooed at him. You could feel the glare of several of his admirers on the back of your head. 

Mr Seo also took visible surprise to this, as his left eyebrow twitched upwards almost immediately, “Well! I didn’t consider you such a gentleman, Jaehyun,” You sighed deeply at this. “Go on then. Take your bags with you too, the rest of this period is self-study and I assume you won’t be back in 20 minutes anyway.”

This earned another round of gasps and additional woos in the background. Including an “oh my gawd” from Mark and Lucas respectively, who sat next to Jaehyun. However, the class was soon hushed again, with the introduction of more homework sheets on mitochondria, each received with a groan as Mr Seo went around the room.

“’and i assume you won’t be back in 20 minutes anyway’, he says-” Doyoung whispers, still chuckling. “-even Mr Seo knows. You better get that D.”

‘Doyoung!” 

“D for discussion, young lady, discussion.” He tut-tutted, shaking his head slightly. “What were you thinking? How LEWD.”

“YOU LITTLE-” 

“Shall we go,” The same baritone voice sounded in your ear just as you try to whack your best friend’s head with an eraser. “Y/N?”

You turn towards him, hoping dearly that your face stopped looking like a tomato.

“Alright, Jaehyun.”

[caiuscassiuss]

Bandages (Skater Boy AU! NCT Jisung)

y o u n g  v e r.

Description: You swore to god, that attractive boy who kept on coming to the nurse’s office was going to kill himself at this rate. (featuring nurse assistant! you and rebellious skater boy! jisung)

Genre:  fluff | romance | comedy WC: 5.3k Warnings: swearing and some serious roasts

masterlist | requests | updates

(A/N: I hope you enjoy! Please like and reblog~)

______________________________________________________________________

The silence of the nurse’s office was a great contrast to your loud, bustling high school outside. You were glad you got this moment of respite for 2 hours everyday, away from gossiping teenagers and the general chaos of high school.

The nurse was out for a quick break, so you were left to your own accord for a short period of time. You were her assistant of sorts for a few days of the week, selected out of many, so she trusted you in the office. You hummed to yourself as you stocked the cabinets above the sink, a little tune you heard on the radio. You put the antiseptic there, the cotton buds in a jar, and so on. Your thoughts drifted to the never-ending stress as you did your menial task; you had a biology paper due in a few days that you haven’t even started despite being assigned weeks ago, a Calc test coming up, and an anatomy extra credit assignment due that would really boost your grade. It seemed all your time was being claimed by school, school and more school, to be honest. You sighed and wiped a few stray hairs that came loose from your ponytail. All this to become a doctor.

The door creaking and loud chatter from outside broke your anxious thoughts. You told whomever that had entered you would be would with them in a minute as you quickly put back all the stuff and washed your hands. The person hummed in acknowledgement and sat down on own of the beds of the office. You turned around with a smile, only for it to be replaced with a frown.

Park Jisung.

Rebellious Skater Boy extraordinaire.

His dyed blonde hair created a messy halo above his face as he looked up at you with a sheepish smile. His eyes were sparkling and he toyed with the metal chain hanging on his neck.

“Hey Y/N, how’s it going?”

“You’re here again?”

Jisung put on a mock hurt expression and grasped his chest like you had stabbed him.

“Oof! You don’t want to see my handsome face anymore?” he grinned.

You sighed and put your hands on your hips. “What kind of injury have you afflicted upon yourself this time, Jisung?”

Jisung sheepishly held up his bleeding hand and you gasped.

“Jesus Christ! Have I not told you to be more careful?” you nagged as you got out your recently stockpiled antiseptic and swabs.

He leaned back and shrugged. “No pain, no gain, I guess.”

“Gain? Landing that front flip thingy?” you scoffed, taking out the gauze from the closet.

“It’s called a frontside Y/N,” Jisung said, exasperated.

“Front flip, front side, whatever; same thing. Either way, you come into my office looking like you just lost a fight with the concrete!” you shook your head as you bent down beside him to soak the cotton in the antiseptic. So focused were you in this task, you didn’t notice Jisung look at your visage admiringly, appreciating your beautiful features and liking the way your hair fell in front of your eyes.

“Lowkey kinda did— ah, fuck! What was that for!” Jisung exclaimed as he snatched his injured hand away from yours.

You rolled yours eyes and grabbed back his hand. His hands were warm and slightly calloused, however, marred by the many scars he had gotten from skateboarding. You ignored the little spark you got from touching his hand and went back to what you were doing.

“You big baby. A little antiseptic never hurt.”

“Well yeah of course it doesn’t, but when you just press it on my hand without warning, it stings like hell!” the teen whined as your dotted the cotton swab around the wound, cleaning the blood up and the cut.

Your rolled your eyes for the nth time and a comfortable silence fell between the two of you. When you finished cleaning his hand, you reached for the gauze and Jisung broke the silence.

“Did you finish that bio assignment Mr. Allen assigned yet?” he muttered, blushing from the prolonged contact (not that you could see).

Despite fully fitting the rebellious skater kid stereotype, Jisung was actually pretty decent at school. He took some of the same honors classes as you, and mostly got B’s while you strived for A+’s. He was always unfocused in class, unfortunately, and when he got randomly called on by the teacher and he didn’t know the answer, you shook your head disappointedly at your front seat.

“Um… kinda?” you fibbed while you carefully placed the gauze on his hand.

Jisung scoffed. “You haven’t even started it, have you?”

“Well you haven’t either!” you defended.

“Y/N, Miss A+, the greatest and most examplenary student in this school,—” he exaggerated, while you pouted, “—procrastinating? Wow, the world must be ending!”

You hit him playfully on his shoulder, momentarily letting his hand go. He laughed.

“Shut up!” you said, unable to respond to him wittily while you both blushed.

______________________________________________________________________

“You, sir, are whipped as hell,” Jeno squinted at Jisung, pointing a ketchup-covered fry in his direction.

Jisung was shaken out of his thoughts by his best friend and looked away from some point in the distant he was staring at.

“Huh?”

“This proves my point, idiot.” Jeno said, as he took a sip of his coke.

“No really, what?” Jisung asked confusedly.

“We were just stating some facts. I like EXO, Haerim is totally cheating on Yoonsung, and you have the biggest crush in the world on Y/N, you love-struck fool,” Haechan jumped into the conversation savagely, all in a matter-a-fact tone.

“Holy shit, Haerim is cheating on Yoonsung? With who?” Jaemin put his bag down at the table and sat down.

“Whom, Jaemin. Not who. With Eunhyung, actually, but that’s not the point,” Haechan narrowed his eyes at Jaemin, who rolled his eyes and dug into his pizza.

“Shut up Haechan.” Jisung pouted, while discreetly checking you out.

“I mean look at you! Everytime we go to lunch, you have to sit at this spot so you can gawk at Y/N for a solid 30 minutes. You look like a fucking creep,” Jeno exclaimed.

“I-I just can’t help but notice! Y/N’s really pretty and nice and smart and—”

“The reason you purposely slam yourself into an extension when we’re at the skatepark?” Chenle slyly added as he looked up from his book.

The whole group laughed uproariously, drawing many gazes to the notorious Skater Boys’ table. Jisung covered his red face with his hands, his embarrassment keeping him from making his usual savage comebacks. When it came to Y/N, Jisung turned into mochi mush.

“T-That’s because my wheel popped out!”

“Oh? What happened when you couldn’t stick the landing after the flatrail?” Haechan crossed his arms and raised his pierced eyebrow.

“I—”

“You’re one of the best people on the flatrail I know, bro. The one time my skateboard came out from under me you kicked me while I was down, so don’t give us that bullshit.” Renjun accused.

“Well, it’s not like it’s purposeful or anything, but, uh, like—”

“Shut up Jisung. Work up your courage to confess to her, it’s not that hard!” Jaemin offered, while sending a wink to the group of girls passing by their table.

“Says the boy who gets, like, a gazillion confessions a day. Bro, she’s out of my league! Ugh.” Jisung exclaimed and slumped dejectedly to the lunch table.

______________________________________________________________________

“What is it now?” you asked, not even looking up from your desk.

“Uh, my leg?”

You sighed and swiveled around on your comfy office chair, one of the perks of being a nurse assistant.

Jisung was wearing a neon yellow track jacket and some black skinny jeans today, some blue checkered vans adorning his feet. Your eyes zoomed in on one of the rips of the jean, placed on the knee, and it was bloody and bruised.

“Christ,” you muttered.

Again, you took out the cotton swabs and the antiseptic and the gauze while he sat down on one of the medical beds. You put the materials on the bedside table and he lifted his knee up to his attention.

Luckily was the wound was superficial and not that deep, so it would be easy to heal, but it sure as hell would probably hurt for a long time.

“So… how’s the, uh, campaign trail going?” he asked awkwardly after a moment of silence.

“You know about it? Ah, well, it’s going pretty okay, actually. We’ve drummed up alot support from the arts kids, but not as much with the athletes,” you murmured, surprised he knew that you were running for student body president. You wiped the antiseptic over his knee and his leg gave an involuntary jerk, and he gave a sheepish smile.

“Yeah, your posters all over the school.”

“Oh yeah, that,” you blushed, slightly embarrassed you didn’t notice that glaring fact in front of your slight crush. He looked so handsome today, unlike your usual clean-guy type. He looked wild and rebellious and fun all wrapped up into an attractive package.

“Well, I’m really busy nowadays. I never have time to do anything that’s mildly entertaining, like reading a good book or drawing,” you lamented.

“You call that fun?” Jisung snorted. You pouted and slapped him on his shoulder.

“Hey!”

“No no no I don’t mean it like that! It’s pretty admirable that your straightedge and everything. But… is that, like, all you do?” he frowned shifting closer to your scent.

You nervously put ointment over the wound, unnerved by his proximity.

“Well… yeah?”

“That sounds… yeah. Hey, erm, do you wanna go out with our group, one time?” he nervously twiddled his thumb as you momentarily paused.

“Why? Because I’m so boring?” it was said aggressively, but the twinkle in your eye and the slight smile gave away your mischievous intentions.

Because Jisung was Jisung and he became the living embodiment of mush around you, he didn’t notice your signs and inwardly panicked.

“No! Uh, I just thought you’d like to try something different I guess,” Jisung stuttered, flailing for some grounding around his crush.

You stared at him, hard and direct. Jisung didn’t look like he had ulterior motives. He looked back at you in the eyes, a blush still on his cheeks because of his embarrassment.

“Sure. When and where?” you smiled brightly at him, and he sighed in relief.

“I’ll text you.”

______________________________________________________________________

Honestly, you never expected you find yourself in this situation.

It was 10 at night, you weren’t studying, and you were somewhere, in the city, in a near deserted skatepark.

Your parents were going to kill you.

Well, if they found out.

“FUCK YOU, YOU THOT!” you heard a voice shouting.

You look over to see Haechan yelling at Mark, who was laughing and speeding away on his neon green skateboard. Haechan quickly sets down his orange skateboard and runs after Mark, arms and limbs flapping wildly.

On the other hand, Renjun and Chenle were playing tag around the skatepark, completely ignoring the skateboards they had brought with them. Their skateboards seemed to lie pitifully on the ground, unused while Chenle was screaming loudly. Someone was going to trip over that shit.

Jeno and Jaemin, however, were leant up against a streetlight and drinking… capri-suns? You did a double-take and looked closer. Yes, indeed they were drinking silver Capri-Sun juice packets; Jeno holding a grape-flavored one while Jaemin was slurping on a strawberry kiwi one.

Update: Someone did trip over the skateboard. RIP Haechan.

Haechan starts screaming at Renjun and Chenle, who start laughing at his disheveled appearance. Not gonna lie, you jumped a little when Haechan suddenly put them in a headlock, and the Chinese boys were looking like they were about to choke.

You hear a big sigh to your left and you turn to see Jisung facepalming in the fluorescent lamplight. He held a neon blue skateboard with green glow-in-the-dark lines etched onto the deck, still vibrant and colorful despite it’s wear-and-tear.

“Why are they like this?” Jisung sighs again.

Jaemin hears Jisung’s complaint and raises an eyebrow.

“Why do you have to be so emo, Jisung?” Jaemin taunts, the silver of his juice packet flashing as he takes a long sip.

Jeno snorts and in turn spits out some of his grape juice. The rest of the group notice the flying liquid out of Jeno’s face and start laughing at him.

Jisung, after chuckling at Jeno’s mishap, turns back towards you.

“Welp, these idiots happen to be my friends, and they’re fun... I guess.”

You chuckle softly and hug your cardigan closer to you. It was getting chillier as the night progressed, and you were admittedly, totally unprepared. You had come straight here after school clubs instead of going home, so you had nothing but your light brown cardigan to keep you warm.

Jisung sees you slightly shivering, and frowns.

“Hey, are you alright?”

You smile slightly at him.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

Jisung tilted his head and pursed his lips. “No you’re not.”

Before you could do anything, Jisung sets his skateboard down roughly and shakes off his windbreaker. You opened your mouth to protest, but the blond-haired youth just threw it at your head

“Just take it, Y/N,” he huffs.

Because of your blocked line of vision, you don’t see Jisung blush heavily and then pout cutely. You carefully take it off your head and clutch the fabric in your hand, confused why he was doing this.

“Just… just think of this as payback for all the times you treated me at the clinic, o-okay?” Jisung stuttered, raising his now-bare arms and scratching the back of his head. His head was turned slightly away from you, so only some parts of his face you could see.

“I… thank you, Jisung.” You grin widely up at the tall boy and slip on his neon windbreaker. It was, of course, quite large and hit you mid thigh, and the sleeves gave you very extended sweater-paws. However, you could smell his deodorant faintly from the fabric and you wanted to die in a hole.

The neon yellow of the jacket reflecting in the lamplights attracted the attention of the other boys, and they start jeering loudly.

“Damn, Jisung, it’s only the first date and you’re already giving her clothes to wear?” Mark shouts at the two of you, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“FUCK OFF!” Jisung took off running towards Mark while you covered your red face in your hands.

______________________________________________________________________

It was currently… 12 AM right now and you were confused as fuck.

The group were still energetic and high even after 2 hrs at the park, frequently exchanging high fives while passing each other on their skateboards. They all performed dazzling tricks in the artificial light and it had turned into some competition on who could impress you more. Chenle did a cool grabby thing with his board, while Jeno did a stellar flip on his and they all looked to you to see who you were impressed by.

Except, you eyes were captivated by one.

You were staring dumbfounded at the blond-haired boy who seemed like he was flying on his skateboard. JIsung looked like some character in a 90’s teenage movie, rebellious and unrestrained fun written all over his neon clothes and his gleeful face. He seemed much more in his element here, at the skateboard park, unlike school where the walls couldn’t contain his thirst for life; Jisung was so much more free.

However, you couldn’t ignore the glaring fact that Jisung was much better at skateboarding than you thought.

Okay, so you knew he wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t very good either. He comes into your office like… what, 2-3 times a week? By those statistics, Jisung should’ve been tripping over his board and currently in the hospital by now, but no, Jisung was nimbly doing tricks and runs on his skateboard. He slid down the flatrail with ease and landed perfectly before rolling to the bowl, in which he jumped and flipped his skateboard. This, clearly, was not the skating of a untrained and clumsy newbie; this was the skating of someone experienced and who doesn’t get hurt all the time.

You looked at the time on the dim screen of your phone, of which was at 19%. Despite it being the weekend, you wanted to get home quickly.

“Jisung!”

The boy’s head snapped towards you and he quickly halted his lap around the park.

“Y/N are you alright?” Jisung asked concernedly while the other boys in the group paused in their tricks.

“Yeah I’m all good! It’s just it’s getting a bit late now, I’m gonna go home!” you shouted, still clutching his windbreaker around your body.

“Wait, let me accompany you!” Jisung picked up his board and walked towards the bench you were occupying.

“Hey, morons! I’m gonna get Y/N back home, okay?” Jisung turned back to the rest of the boys.

“OOOoooOOOooOOhhHHHh sPicY!” Haechan laughed at Jisung.

“Yeah yeah we’ll follow you up as soon… as soon as we get Chenle out of this bush,” Jaemin stared, desperately trying to contain his laughter at Renjun and Jeno trying and failing to get the poor Chinese student out of the bush after his board had slipped out from under him.

“BYE THOT!” Jisung put the skateboard under his arm.

“BYE, ROMEO!”

The pair of you walked in a semi-awkward silence back to your house, the usual noises of a suburban neighborhood surrounding you.

“Uh… you got through the primaries for pres position?” Jisung asked, breaking the silence.

“Yup… after completely crushing those underclassman,” you grinned up at him, the streetlights casting shadows upon his face.

“Eyyyy nice.”

You two easily lapsed into light-hearted conversation, discussing the teachers that you hated and the gossip around the school.

There was a pause in conversation, and you took that opportunity to ask Jisung something that had been on your mind all night.

“Hey, uh, if you don’t mind me asking… how are you so good at skateboarding?”

A momentary flash of panic struck across his face, which quickly settled itself into to feigned confusion.

“Huh?”

“Like… erm, you know how you always go to my office a lot for your injuries? I just thought…” you floundered, trying to get information without somehow insulting the skater boy.

“Oh, I’m usually much worse than today,” he waved it off.

“I guess today was my lucky day, probably. I think I just perform, uh, much better in front of company?” Jisung eyes roved, searching everywhere but you.

“Ah.” It fell silent before you broke it.

“Jisung… I had a really fun time tonight. And I wanted to thank you for that,” you said, lucky that your blushing cheeks were covered by the darkness of nights.

“No problemo Y/N! I think everyone had a bit more fun with you here… you can always go out with us, if you want, you know… yeah.”

“Sure, I’ll hit you up,” you fingered with the buttons of your cardigan in nervous because of Jisung’s close proximity to you.

Pretty soon the two of you stopped near your house and you looked at each other awkwardly.

“Yeah… again, thank you for taking me out,” you stuttered, wondering whether you should hug him or not.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all good.”

Fuck it. Let’s carpe diem this shit.

You extended your arms to the boy and a brief look of shock and panic crossed his face before he, too, extended his arms to your waist and pulled you closer. He had to bend down a little to your height, and you too held each other for a few seconds. In this brief few seconds or so, you buried your face into the crook of his neck, while he settled his head on your shoulder. Jisung was warm and comfy, and while you were initially tense, you relaxed in his hold.

You released each other and you ran to your doorstep.

“Bye Jisung! I’ll see you Monday!”

“Yeah, uh, bye!”

You entered your house quietly, before tip-toeing to your room. As soon as you sat down on your chair, you realized you had forgotten to give back Jisung’s jacket.

Shit.

______________________________________________________________________

Jisung stared at your door for a few seconds, trying to figure out whether the last few minutes was a dream or not. His body still felt warm from the time you had touched him. He must of looked like a straight idiot or a stalker, staying and staring in one position for an extended amount of time.

However, he was in a daze of confusion and happiness. Holy shit, had he just hugged his crush of the past 2 years? And… she initiated it? Holy fucking shit. Alsfskfhaslfdjsjfs.

Jisung turned to walk back to his crew and it was only a few steps until he suddenly fist pumped and jumped in the air in joy. He was getting closer.

______________________________________________________________________

“Thank you!” you had thanked the bus driver, a old sweet lady, and she smiled a red-cheeked smile at you in return. You stepped off the bus and made your way to your classroom, kind of nervous of what you were about to do. You were going to give back Jisung’s jacket.

Many people greeted you in the hallway with hello’s or good morning’s because of your popularity as soon-to-be class president, and you waved back or acknowledged them. You entered your classroom to set down your bookbag, the early morning light nearly blinding you from the windows.

“Hey Y/N!” your classmate Soora greeted you from her perch atop her desk, in the midst of talking to her friends.

“Hi Soora! How are you?” you smiled at her as you pulled the neon windbreaker from your bag.

“I’m fine! You?”

“All good!” you sent her a thumbs up.

“Say, whaddya got there?” she jumped off her desk and leaned closer to the neon object hanging of your arm.

“Oh, yeah, um, it’s someone’s jacket. I need to give it back to him,” you waved off, knowing Soora was nosy as hell.

“Hold the phone; HIM? As in the singular pronoun of the male gender? XY chromosomes? H-I-M?” she gasped loudly and as a result, several people turned their heads towards the disturbance.

“Shhhhh! Soora!” you softly scolded, looking suspiciously around and smiling at everybody so they could get their attention off of you.

“Well who is it?” Soora crossed her arms across her chest, a small pout on her tinted lips.

“No one you know,” you replied, walking out of the classroom. Unfortunately, the gossipy brunette followed you out, cutting herself out of her group’s conversation.

You took a quick pace, sneakers tapping across the floor loudly, in hope you could lose her or she would give up. No good; Soora just upped her pace to keep in line with you.

“Y/N! Tell me something!” she whined to you.

You rolled your eyes.

“You’ll find out soon anyway,” you replied as you turned a corner to Class 5275; Jisung’s Lit classroom.

The door was open, thankfully, and you quietly went in, however, people saw you as soon as you entered.

A chorus of hey’s and hello’s were given to you and you acknowledged them. You looked around the classroom to see a mop of blonde hair; aha! You could see Jisung by the window talking to a few friends, his face contorted in a laugh as Jeno cracked a joke. The sun was shining on his face and reflecting off his hair, so he looked hella handsome today.

“Jisung!” you called out. Jisung’s head snapped to you, as did many other’s.

“Y/N?” Jisung said confusedly as he got out of his seat.

“Hey Jeno! Hi Chenle!” you waved to the group of boys near him.

“Hey Y/N!” they called out and snickered as Jisung neared you. Jisung turned to glare at them.

“Uh, hi?” he greeted you as he stood in front of you.

“Jisung! I’m so sorry I totally forgot it on Saturday; here’s your jacket!” you smile as you hand him the neon windbreaker on your hand.

His eyes widened in recognition as he took it out of your hands.

“Ah! So you’re the reason I was freezing all weekend!” he smirked at you.

“Shut up! You offered!”

“And you forgot.” You slapped his bicep in retaliation, a mock-hurt expression on your face and you both laughed.

“Well anyway, thanks. I’ll see you later, I guess?” Jisung looked down at you.

“Yeah, yeah. Bye!” you patted his forearm and turned towards the doorway.

“Oh wait; don’t forget to vote for me!” you looked back at him.

“I will!” he waved back at you.

As you stepped through the doorway, you realized how semi-quiet the classroom had gotten. Most conversations had died down and all of Class 5275’s attention were on you and Jisung, eyes wide at the unexpected interaction.

Soora was waiting for you at the doorway, her mouth open in shock.

“Park Jisung? You were giving a jacket back to Park Jisung, the low-key emo skater kid who happens to be hella hot????” Soora loudly said.

“Uh, yeah? I forgot to give it back to him,” you leaned away from the eager girl.

“Wait wait wait, hold up, I’m so shook right now. First, how did you get the jacket? Where did you get the jacket? Second, how do you know Park Jisung? And his group of friends? Do you know how many people are crushing on him—”

“Calm down Soora! I was hanging out with them and I was cold so Jisung gave me his jacket, that’s all-”

“PARK JISUNG GAVE YOU HIS JACKET?!” Soora burst out in the middle of the hallway. Suprised faces turned to you, growing even more shocked when recognizing who you were. Loud whispers and conversations started up as you facepalmed at the girl’s idioticness.

______________________________________________________________________

For the next few weeks, you were bombarded in questions about your friendship with Jisung. It was a bit unexpected, you supposed; the skater kid is friends with a preppy smartass. However, the gossip surrounding you and him made you more popular, so it was beneficial to your campaign at least.

You, Jisung, and the rest of the kids hung out more as time progressed. You got together during the weekends at the skatepark, you sat next to each other in class, and shared inside jokes and memes on the groupchat you were added into. You got closer to all of them, but you were just naturally more attached to Jisung.

As the two of you hung out more, Jisung and you had become very close. He was now not some annoying skater kid who went your office nearly every other day to get his injuries treated; Jisung was a friend who you could confide in one moment, and roast in another. He was amazing and scarily, you found him more and more attractive.

Park Jisung was giving you feelings you’d never experienced before. You got butterflies in your stomach when you spoke to him, you sometimes stuttered when you were close to him, and your face was always red when you hugged him. He was funny, he was charming, and really, really fun. You couldn’t believe you never noticed him before when you were in his chem class a few years ago.

Jisung still visited your office with suspiciously less injuries since you got closer. You would chat with him while helping other patients. You asked him if he was skipping class, but he always denied it and said it was his free period so “he might as well hang out with someone he could tolerate”.

Because of your close friendship, many people asked both you if you were dating, which made it worse. You both always denied it, unaware of the longing gazes you two would send each other.

It all came to a point a few days later, when the presidential elections were announced. You had won (by a landslide it was rumoured) the position of student council president for the next school year and were in the midst of a flurry of congratulations when you felt a hand on your shoulder.

“Y/N?” Jisung’s voice rang out.

You turned towards him and an immediate smile crept up your face.

“Jisung! It’s nice to see you!” you greeted, turning your attention away from your other classmates.

“Congratulations on your election!” he held his arms out, and you stepped into them so you could hug each other.

“Thank you!”

Jisung suddenly grew a bit nervous, and he scratched the back of his head.

“Uh, could you come with me for a moment? In private?” he asked.

Needless to say, you were a bit confused.

“Sure!” you waved goodbye to your friends and walked with him.

His long-legged gait led you both to the courtyard. It was sunny today, and as a result, Jisung just wore some skinny jeans and a Supreme t-shirt while you were in a floral sundress.

During the walk there, you had an inward debate with yourself. These feelings had been going on for quite sometime, and since it was nearing the end of the school year, you might as well let it out. You decided, uncharacteristically impulsively, that you were going to to confess to Jisung.

He took you under a tree and paused there.

“I have something to say,” he intoned seriously.

You took a deep breath.

“I do to.”

“Huh?” Jisung frowned.

You could do this. It was the perfect time to do it, anyway.

“Park Jisung… I like you. Like, as in more than a friend kind of like,” you let out, looking down.

It was silent for a few seconds, the only sound was the leaves rustling in the breeze.

“Well shit. Holy shit.” he breathed out in amazement.

“What?” you asked, your heart pumping from the nervousness of your confession.

“I… I like you alot too. In fact, I was going to confess to you before you said it. Wow, this is great, like, holy fuck I can’t believe this is happening.” he ran his hands through his hair.

“Really?” You jumped up and circled your arms around his neck and giggled. He hugged you back tightly.

“If we’re on the subject of confessions, I have something else to confess.” Jisung whispered in your ear.

You leaned back from him for a moment, high off the joy that your crush liked you back.

“Y/N, I have liked you since our chem class 2 years ago”— your eyes widened—” and… um…” he mumbled the last part.

“Sorry, what?”

“I may have... went to the nurse office alot so I could see you.”

Your brows came together, until your mind worked out what he was implying.

“Wait a fucking minute! Did you deliberately get injured so you could… so you could…” you sputtered, bewildered from this new information.

“Yeah?”

“Your confession is rejected, you little shit! Do you know how much supplies you took up? Also, did you keep in mind what you could’ve to your body?!” you nagged and slapped his chest and he laughed.

You two settled into comfortable silence, luxuriating in each other’s presence.

You reached up and pecked his cheek.

“Just kidding, I like you a lot, you idiot,” you smiled up at him.

Your blissful moments were interrupted by loud cheering from the bushes. You both turned to see the squad cheering, Chenle fake-sobbing into Renjun’s arm dramatically as Jeno and Jaemin spun each other around, giggling.

“My son… my son has grown up from a skateboarding little shit into a skateboarding little shit who has a girlfriend!” Haechan wiped a fake tear as he stood in front of you.

“EVERYONE! PARK JISUNG AND Y/N ARE DATING NOW!” Mark shouted to the rest of the school.

“MARK!” Jisung shouted.

Many people shouted their congratlations and cheered, while you buried your face into Jisung’s chest.

In the midst of Jisung threatening to break Mark’s board in half, he hugged you tighter.

[gelo-p]

What trying for T10 ~kinda~ looks like

My friend said that the last thing I wrote was all over the place so I decided to rewrite all of it. >_>

So what’s this about?

This is just my own experience (and in a way, method) about tiering in Bandori; most of these, you’ve probably already read somewhere else. To be frank, tiering in Bandori can be summarized as “get the best team you can, prepare lots of flames, pick meta songs, and go like hell”. However, I think it’s important to visualize and plan out what “going like hell” really means.

Most of these will be written as if you’re trying to get into T10 as a solo player.

First things first - Bestdori is your friend.

Bestdori is a website that lets you determine exactly how strong your team really is. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do so; it’s invaluable in making estimates. Set up an account (you don’t have to, but it’s convenient later on), enter your cards and area items, and then use Bestdori’s team builder feature to determine what the best team to use is for a specific event. This post assumes you won’t need help in using Bestdori; I might write a separate post for that later.

(huge thanks to u/NonSpicyBurrito over at reddit and the rest of the Bestdori team for making an excellent tool ^^)

Table of Contents

“Estimate how much EP you’ll need”: A Fallacy

There are no guarantees, so prepare to lose efficiently

Automating the Guesswork: The T10 Calc

Input: Active Hours Per Day

Input: Multi-Live Score (includes VS Live)

Input: Multi-Live Duration

Input: Challenge Live Score

Input: Challenge Live Duration

Input: Final Hours Sprint

Planning your daily Multi-Live Progress

Planning your daily Challenge Live Progress

Hold on - what’s a “set” ???

Tracking your Flames (and CL’s) per day

Miscellaneous Tips

Final words

I. “Estimate how much EP you’ll need”: A Fallacy

Getting into your desired tier (T1, T2, T3, T10, T100, T1000...) is all about getting enough event points (EP) before the event ends, and nothing else. If only 99 people have higher EP than you, then congrats, you make it to the top 100! And if your EP is so high that only 9 people have it higher, then you make it to the Top 10.

However, there is no good way to estimate how much EP you’ll need to ensure getting into the desired tier. The moment you think you’ve figured it out, the other players start upping the ante and all of a sudden you’re left in the dust.

For example: when I first started estimating the EP I’ll need for Cycling Seasons, I figured 16M would be enough for T10, based on some foolish assumption using data from the last Challenge Live (which was My Ideal). Having read other posts by the other T10′s (post-event), they wondered if 18M would be enough. Surprise, the cutoff turned out to be 18.5M - and I personally did 19.2M.

Where did 18.5M come from? Nowhere. Nobody decided before the event to just “stop” at 18.5M and call it a day. And that’s why you can never actually estimate how much EP you’ll need. As long as there’s someone crazier than you out there, that cutoff is going to be pushed higher and higher.

II. There are no guarantees, so prepare to lose efficiently

Read that header again and again until it sinks in. There are no guarantees. I can tell from personal experience: during the Cycling Seasons event, the player who finished at T11 had a better team than I did (I know from periodically tracking their score), but I was able to put in more effort.

All you can do is put in as much effort as you can, using the best team you can get your hands on; however, should this not work out, you should also learn how to lose efficiently.

There will come a point where the amount of effort you’ve done will almost always** guarantee you a spot in T100. You have to decide at that point - usually after 2 days of playing at T10 pace - if keeping up with T10 is worth it or not. If you decide not to, then congratulations on an early T100.

** In the absolutely rare-as-hell event (never happened before AFAIK because seriously this is crazy AF) that 100 people fight for T10, then you’re going to have to put more effort to stay in T100. Otherwise, just play defensively, and keep yourself above T50. It’ll be easy at that point.

III. Automating the Guesswork: The T10 Calc

If you’re still willing to take the risk, then let’s start talking numbers. This was the first step in planning for me: making sure I know the numbers behind what I’m about to do.

First, grab a copy of the T10 Calc spreadsheet, since this pretty much streamlines the entire estimation process.

T10 Calc over at Google Sheets

Note: I know it’s ironic how it’s called the T10 Calc when I said there are no guarantees, but that’s what I call it, so... ^^;

Go to the EP Estimator Sheet and fill up the inputs.

Num Full Days - An event is always N Days + 6 hours long, so enter the number of full days here. It’s officially announced a day before the actual event, but sometimes Bestdori already has that info as early as a week before. Some events are just 6 days long (lucky~) while others can reach up to 12 (fuck me ugh). Typically it’s 8 or 9.

Num Hours Last Day - An even is always N Days + 6 hours long, so usually keep this at 6. There is a special case where you might want to change this though, discussed later.

Active Hours per Day - The number of hours per day you’ll be playing. This doesn’t include breaks, i.e. Active Hours + Sleep + Breaks = 24

ML Score - Compute using Bestdori. This is your score when playing in Multi-Live / VS Live using 3 flames.

ML Duration  - The average duration of a Multi-Live. This is different from the average duration of a song.

CP required per CL: This pretty much stays at 800, since this is the most efficient, time-wise. (There are 200/400-CP CL’s, we won’t use those)

CL score - Compute using Bestdori. This is your score when playing a Challenge Live. If the event isn’t a Challenge Live, please set this to 0 or leave blank.

CL duration - The average duration of a Challenge Live. This is different from the average duration of the challenge song.

Final hours sprint - Specific to Challenge Live events, it’s possible to hold back your CP’s, and instead use them during the final 6 hours of the event.

IV. Input: Active Hours Per Day

The average person can do 14 active hours per day. Which means 14 hours of staring at your phone, and 10 hours left for eating / having a life / sleeping. I found this the hard way; you’re free to make your own estimate. You can bump this up to something higher (I did 14.3), but make sure you don’t lose too much sleep / time for other activities. The higher you can push this, the better.

Have you ever wondered how T1 / T2 / T3′s always get crazy-high scores? Well, they can set this to 24 by sharing their account with teammates using the Data Transfer feature. By having teammates who can take over your account while you rest, your account can do 24 hours a day of gaming. I personally don’t do it (I’m a soloist all the way~), but it doesn’t seem to be a banned practice, so get your own team if you want those titles.

Thankfully, there are only 1-to-3 of these accounts per event, leaving some space for solo players to actually get to T10. WARNING THOUGH! If after a couple of days, you can’t get into T10 because they all have crazy high scores, give up and settle for T100. You can’t fight a 24/7 account.

V. Input: Multi-Live Score (includes VS Lives)

Note: For VS Live Events, you’re obviously expected to play VS Lives instead of Multi-Lives, but for the purpose of naming variables I stuck to the “ML” naming scheme.

No matter the event type, you’re going to have to compute an ML score using Bestdori.

Always use 3 flames for your computation, and because Bestdori gives you the maximum points achievable, dial it down for safety. In my case, I used 4275 instead of 4380. Initially it was 4200; however, after 2 days, I realized that it’s too safe (my actual score was waaaay above my calc sheet’s estimate) so I bumped it up to 4275.

Please note that different event types will give you different scores for the same team; Multi-Lives during Challenge Live events give you a lower EP compared to, say, a VS Live event, because during a Challenge Live, you’re expected to get some of your scores from the Challenge Lives. VS Lives give just a bit more EP than Challenge Lives; however, there won’t actually be any Challenge Lives, so the final EP is smaller. Normal events (where you’re expected to farm using ML’s alone) give the highest EP per ML.

ML Score is directly tied to the room score, and there are four ways to bump it up:

Increase your band’s power. Max out all your area items, and follow Bestdori’s recommended band. If you can afford it, buy your way into better members. Prioritize maxing out items that match the Characters / Attribute of the event.

Choose a Leader with a 90/100/110/115% score boost, and max out their level. Bestdori would have already done this for you. For VS Live, increase everyone’s skill levels.

Join private rooms (where the members are high-level). Joining the Grand Room is okay (that’s what I did), but if you have high-level friends who can help you out with their high-level bands, then it’s better. Conversely, during VS Lives, you want to join a private room where everyone is weaker than you are.

Pick meta songs. Meta songs score higher in general compared to non-meta songs, so try to pick them as much as you can. These include Jumpin’, Unite from A to Z, Home Street, KIZUNA MUSIC, etc... You probably recognize this list.

VI. Input: Multi-Live Duration (includes VS Lives)

This is the amount it takes to complete an entire Multi-Live / VS Live, from the moment you press the “Live” button to the next time you’re able to press it again.

There are two ways to dial down ML duration:

Join private rooms. On average, ML duration is 3.5 minutes in the Grand Room; if someone disconnects, or takes a reeeeally long time to pick, it can take up to 4, even 5 minutes. A good game in a public room is 2 mins and 45 secs long, but those are far and few in between. By joining a private room and agreeing beforehand which songs and difficulties to pick, you can keep the average ML duration down.

Pick meta songs, again. Meta songs are shorter in general compared to non-meta songs, that’s why they’re really good for farming event points. You will keep running into these songs once you start tiering.

SPECIAL NOTE FOR VS LIVES: During VS Lives, there’s an Event Song room, which might prove to be faster than the Free Song room, since there’s no need to select the song. This is especially the case if the event song is a meta song; case in point, the Roselia vs Afterglow event, where the event song was Passionate Anthem. I suggest checking out the Event Room (and song) during the first day, and see if the ML Score and ML Duration will give you a better final EP compared to taking your chances over at the Free Song room.

VII. Input: Challenge Live Score

Note: If you’re not playing a Challenge Live event, set this to 0!

Specific to Challenge Live Events, you also have to compute your CL score. A Challenge Live event will have a list of featured songs (you can look this up in advance using Bestdori). Take for example the Cycling Seasons event:

Songs higher up in the list are better for your score, but I find that the first Hard song in the list is less tiring to play, giving me more consistent scores (in this case, Brand New Days level 18).

If you can genuinely manage playing the EX / SP songs multiple times consistently, then please do so.

Once you’ve settled into a song, calculate your CL score. Always use 800 CP.

Again, better to have a safety net, so instead of using 26,380 I used 25000. You’ll get a good feel for this value once you’ve actually started playing the CL songs. Just update the estimate later on.

You can bump this up by getting all members of your team as strong as you can. Area items, max skill levels.

VIII. Input: Challenge Live Duration

Like ML Duration, this is the amount it takes to complete an entire Challenge Live, from the moment you press the “Live” button to the next time you’re able to press it again. There’s no way to bring this down, since you’ll be playing the same song over and over again (to get a consistent CL score, see above).

Use an external timer to get the exact time this takes. Add a few seconds for safety, because the phone slows down after some time. For example, Brand New Days takes 2 mins 12 seconds long, but it can slow down up to 2 mins 22 secs long (according to my timing) once you’ve played enough.

IX. Input: Final Hours Sprint

This is unique to Challenge Lives, because it’s possible to stock up on CP’s and use them all up during the last hours of the event.

When this is set to > 0 (but capped at 6, for the number of hours in the last day), the estimator will calculate how much CP you should save up to perform the sprint during the last day.

A sprint is simply a period where you start using your CP’s. If you save up your CP’s until the very last hours, it’s possible to catch a few people off guard who thought you’ve ran out of CP already. Sprints let you earn a really high amount of EP in a short time, letting you overtake other people. There are still daily sprints, but not as much as the final day sprint. (You will still play Challenge Lives every day, you’re just not going to use them all up)

This will not affect your final score; this is just so your opponents could be tricked into not giving too much effort, thinking you use up your CP everyday. Please note however that most T10′s will also hold back their daily CP usage, but from what I gathered, most of them will sprint during the last full day, and not during the final 6 hours.

This won’t have any advantage if everyone else decides to hold back their sprints until the final 6 hours.

X. Planning your daily Multi-Live Progress

Now that you know how much effort you’ll be putting into tiering, you can now determine your Final EP and the number of Flames you’ll need to get there.

If you’re lacking in Flames, better start buying stars early. The premium boxes are the most economic; however, you have to buy them months in advance, because it takes 25 days to reap the full benefits.

If you’re not satisfied with your estimated Final EP, then you have to start finding ways to bring up your live scores, bring down your live durations, or increase how much time you can play for in a day.

Use Bestdori to simulate past events and see how you’ll fare. ^_^

Now, assuming you’re already satisfied with your target EP (again, no guarantees...), the next step is to ensure you’re on track getting there. This is where Flames used per full day comes in. If you want to evenly distribute the load over the duration of the entire event, then you must use at least this much flames per day. It’s easy to think you’ll just catch up, but might prove difficult (remember, you barely have enough time for sleep and other activities). On the other hand, if after reaching your quota you have enough strength to keep going, then please do so.

Of course, the final 6 hours isn’t a full day, so for that, please refer to Flames used during final hours.

XI. Planning your daily Challenge Live Progress

Note: The Challenge Live section should become empty if CL score is set to 0; conversely, the Normal / VS / Live Goals / Mission section should be empty if CL score is set to > 0. Also, a lot of these are just stats used in computing more important stats.

For Challenge Lives, the idea is the same: you have a quota of Flames to use per day, but now you also have a quota of Challenge Lives played per day. Both of these already take your Final Hours Sprint into account. The longer you plan to sprint, the more flames you have to consume per day, and the less CL’s you have to play per day (because you’re concentrating a lot of the CL’s in the final 6 hours). You’re still going to play the exact number of ML’s and CL’s, you’re just rearranging them.

If you don’t plan on sprinting (Final Hours Sprint = 0), then the final hours is just like any other day: the same amount of Flames and CL’s per hour, except for just 6 hours.

Should you decide to split the final 6 hours (Final Hours Sprint > 0, < 6), then you’ll have a few hours where you’re playing normally (mixed ML’s and CL’s), and then the final hours will be for CL’s only.

If you plan on using the full 6 hours for a final sprint (Final Hours Sprint = 6), then that’s all you need to do: play CL’s one after another for 6 hours straight. Please start at least half an hour earlier to account for possible interruptions. You need to consume all your Challenge Points before the event ends.

If you want to dedicate the final 6 hours to a sprint, but only want to do it for 4 hours (as an example), then please do the following:

Note your current total active hours.

Set num hours last day to 4.

Set final hours sprint to 4.

At this point, your total active hours should drop.

Slowly increase your active hours per day until you’re back to your original total active hours.

Since you’re “forfeiting” 2 hours of the final 6 hours, you have to make up for this by playing a bit more per day.

XII. Hold on - what’s a “set” ???

You need 800 CP to perform a Challenge Live, and in order to get 800 CP you need to play (in my example) 3.74 games on average. A “set” is the set of these 3.74 ML games + the CL it activates. That’s how you get set duration: 3.74 ML x 3.5 mins / ML + 2.37 mins of the CL = ~15.45 mins (it’s 15.46 when computed manually; Excel just rounded off 3.74 differently).

I just refer to it as a “set” for the purposes of calculation. Since you won’t actually be playing ML’s and CL’s one after the other (it’s more time-efficient to play a bunch of ML’s and then a bunch of ML’s, especially if you need to switch teams), you can just ignore the idea that you have to play in terms of “sets”.

XIII. Tracking your Flames (and CL’s) per day

Now that you know your daily quotas, it’s time to visualize them. Using the Excel file, head over to the Tracker Meta sheet:

Enter the current full day of the event, and it will automatically compute how many Flames and CL’s you should have used by the end of the current day.

Please keep playing until both “Remaining” fields are 0. ^_^ (they will of course increase once you move to the next day)

There is an Estimated Current Score��based on the number of games you’ve played. If your actual score is below this estimated score after a day, then you overestimated your scores, and should immediately bring them down. Conversely, if your actual score is above the estimated score, then you made too safe estimates. You can probably increase your average ML score / CL score when that happens (I personally did this, from 4200 ML score to 4275).

To actually enter how many flames and CL’s you’ve consumed, head to the Tracker sheet.

Every time you finish a song (while the fireworks are exploding, to make better use of that time), enter a “3″ under the Flames column, or a “1″ under the Challenge column (if playing a CL). The timestamp should automatically be filled up (instructions inside the Excel file); if it doesn’t work, just delete the timestamp column, it’s not important anyway.

Note: The timestamp column has since been deleted, after migrating the document to Google Sheets. It’s not relevant anymore, but other functions should still work as intended.

Based on your current iteration (which day you’re in) and the number of games you’ve already played, you’ll know conveniently what time your misery would actually end for the day ^o^

(If you rest for one hour, you’ll find that the hours left won’t change, and that the estimated end time would also be pushed back one hour.)

It’s also possible to enter 0.25 / 0.5 under the Challenge column, if you somehow decide to play 200 / 400-CP CL’s. I don’t recommend it, but at least when starting out and just trying out the songs, you can still plot accurately.

One thing I personally do is enter a “2″ under the Flames section when I finish an ML with a score that’s significantly lower than my estimate. This lets me ensure that my estimated score won’t be higher than my actual score. However, I have to use one extra flame to catch up - and that means in the end, I’ll end up using more flames than what was actually planned.

Note: The tracker is only meant to be used until the last full day. I don’t think tracking the final 6 hours is necessarily useful; better to focus on just playing at that point, and give your best! ^o^

XIV. Miscellaneous Tips

During the first day, obviously, you’ll be playing CL’s after the ML’s (since you don’t have CP’s yet).

Starting the 3rd day, however, I found it easier to play all the CL’s before the all ML’s. This also lets me avoid a long-ass sprint (imagine finishing the last full day with a sprint... only to follow it up with a 5-hour sprint). This is only applicable if you plan to do a final sprint, since you’ll have reserved CP’s by this time. Your mileage may vary, just something you might want to consider.

Now, I didn’t discover this by accident - I actually woke up one morning and found there was no internet. Yes, that did happen. Thankfully, because I had enough CP to spare, I was able to stay productive and “passed” the time burning through my CP’s instead (mobile data proved to be stable enough for CL’s). That’s one advantage of not immediately consuming all your CP’s - it lets you stay productive (assuming you have mobile data) when the internet fails.

If you do lose internet and the only way to earn event points is via playing ML’s, then you’re fucked. Go to sleep, and make up for it once the internet is back. You have to hit your quotas, and if you aren’t playing, then you should be resting. Same thing when there’s an emergency maintenance.

When playing in a public room, if another player is taking too long to load, you might want to disconnect - especially when their progress bar resets. This is admittedly a dick move, but in my experience, 50% of the time, that player is going to lose connection in the middle of the game, and your room score is going to suffer. It’s still up to you. That said, don’t disconnect while loading a VS Live.

When you’re already tired, and you think there’s a chance you’ll fail the chosen song in Expert, just pick Hard. The billion times Jumpin’ was chosen, I played it in Hard. No shame in that.

You might want to start tracking the scores of other T10 contenders at some point. For non-Challenge Lives, this lets you know how many hours a day they’re actually playing (since EP gain is proportional to time played); for Challenge Lives, this can give you some idea if they’ve already sprinted or not (if they gained waaay more points than usual, you know they’ve expended some, maybe all, of their CP). Now, this info might not matter, since you already have a planned amount of effort anyway, but if you see that you’re severely lagging behind, start considering stepping up, or backing down.

If you do make it into the T10 at some point, make sure to set stupid profile comments. It’s your time under the spotlight, have fun with it XD (don’t put offensive comments please) ... just don’t take 30 minutes to decide.

Prime examples. 😎

XV. Final words

Whew! I don’t know how much of these is new information to any of you, but I hope at the very least that the Spreadsheet helps. >///< If you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask me!

Most people who try for T10 will have friends to help them. I cannot, in good faith, recommend doing this alone like I did, especially during a major event.

However, that being said, I can understand the feeling of wanting to do it anyway.

SO! Good luck, have fun, 7000+ go like hell, and hey-hey-hoh~! ^o^

[kotlc-oneshots]

Blind!keefe au

Hey all!!! Sorry I’ve been dead, but writings block kills lol. Anyways I got this idea off of some lame discord convos and uhhh I hope it’s good. Also it’s late and lmao I have no motivation to edit my own writing uhhh here u go. Some mild swearing. Will be Kam if I keep going w it. Lov yall.

*~*~*

Pt.

one

Keefe

I’m lying in bed, of course, when the shrieking of my alarm goes off about four feet away from me. I blink my eyes open until they don��t feel sticky and gross, then grab my alarm clock. It’s a simple thing, a brick with about 5 buttons total on it, probably.

I pushed the button on the bottom left corner, and the loud wail finally ends. I groan and rub my head, wishing the colors and blobs that cloud the center of my milky vision would just come into focus.

However after years of hoping for that, every morning, I know nothing is going to happen. With a small sigh, I go into my ultra-specifically organized dresser.

Today is the first day of my senior year. Even if I wont be able to see myself, I want to know that others will appreciate the way that I look- or, at least, am dressed. There’s not a lot I can do if there’s anything wrong with my face or hair. I wish I could, though- even though I’ve been blind since birth, I still always want to look presentable. In order to do that, my friends help me once every other week to organize my outfits for the upcoming 14 days. It started in sophmore year, when Sophie got the wonderful idea, and it's been a tradition since. And thanks to my ‘photographic (ha) memory’, I always know what clothes I’m wearing. Always.

I’m about halfway dressed when hear a beep from the direction of my bed.

“New message from Fitz.” The automated, robotic voice of Siri tells me.

“Hey siri- read message from Fitz.” I respond, then finish putting on the rest of my clothes.

“Ready for your first day as a senior?” she reads back to me. I automatically change the sound to Fitz’s deeper, more human voice in my head. It’s pointless, but necessary.

“Hey siri- text Fitz ‘hell yeah brother.’” After a quick confirmation of what I’m sending, I go into the bathroom next to my bedroom. I carefully feel my way around for my toothbrush and brush my teeth, then proceed to run my hand through my hair. For a short moment, I wish I could see myself as more than a blob of milky, too bright color, but it fades quickly. I’d rather not think about it. So I finish up in the bathroom, then return to my room for my bag. With a quick ‘hey siri’, I manage to find my phone as well.

After a few more voice commands, I receive the news that Fitz will be here to pick me up at 7:30, which gives me about 20 minutes. I hop over to the kitchen and make myself a quick, hearty bowl of cereal. Being me, I choose the healthiest kind- Lucky Charms. When finished, I smile to myself and set the bowl near the sink- I know my dads at work by now, so I don’t have to worry about him. Sometimes there’s good things about waking up early. As I slip my bag on and go to the door to wait, I remember how lucky I am to have such a good memory, and such a constantly cleanly household. Otherwise, I’d be as clumsy in my house as Sophie is. I grab my cane and walk outside, chiding myself for thinking so much about the little things.

Fitz is there, honking his horn, about 5 ish minutes after I get outside. Sophie yells at him for being annoying, and I chuckle a bit. A window rolls down, and Biana’s voice comes through hollering to go to the back passengers side. I use my cane to help me a little bit, then grab onto the ledge made by the open window. I proceed to find the door handle, then carefully step into the car.

“If any freshman gives you crap today, you have full right to hit them with your cane.” Dex, who must be on on the other side of Biana, says.

“Thank you. I’ll definitely do that,” I respond with a laugh, and I can practically feel the worry in the air as Sophie warns me not to.

“We really don’t want you to get suspended on the first day. So just wait until tomorrow, and give them an extra hard whap on kneecap.” Biana adds cheerily.

“This is why you’re my favorite.” I awkwardly try to wrap my arm

around her head, but fail miserably. My peripherals are even worse than the center of my vision- there’s almost no light visible towards the edges. So I end up hitting her on the head, and play it off by messing her hair up. This, of course, causes her to whack my arm and call me a jerk.

“Alright, dumbasses, knock it off,” Fitz, my best friend of the

past 6 years, yells. “By the way, Keefe, we’re pulling in now.” A knot forms in my stomach. Man. First day of senior year at Foxfire. I can’t believe its so close to being over. The beginning of the end.

We pull into the parking lot and step out of Fitz’s Volvo. I turn towards the building, and take a deep inhale of the crisp morning air. My friends and family always like to comment on how pretty the building looks. Foxfire is a really prestigious private high school, and I know that they put a lot of money into the architecture

and the grounds. It's a pity that all I see is a building shaped blob of its beige color, and the faint blobs of green and other colors that I know are trees.

I try not to let myself think about it.

We walk into the building, and Fitz automatically splits off. He's supposed to help some teacher set up the presentation that the Freshman go to. I love him, but it's the first day of school and that man is already busy. This year is gonna be rough if we wanna keep up our hangout sessions- although, we both did take the same 6 AP classes. We’ll probably study together, when he’s not with his million other commitments.

After a few hugs and highfives, and a few debate friends greeting me, I go to my first class. I’m /not/ getting caught in that crowd, especially with the idiotic freshman pretending that they own the place. Off to AP music theory it is. C118 is easy enough- no stairs, and it's a pretty straight shot to the classroom. Again,

I thank my perfect memory to get me around. I may not know what the building looks like, but I basically have the blueprint downloaded in my head. Good times, man.

First period doesn’t result in much. We all get a copy of the syllabus, and a short introductory reading. I can feel a tinge of annoyance when the teacher acknowledges my inability to.. Uh, read it, but a girl named Linh volunteers to help me out with it. She seemed nice enough. She had a bit of a Canadian accent, and when I asked about it she confirmed that she was from… Minnesota. She was really sweet, and I’m genuinely hoping that’ll become a friendship.

The next couple periods go uneventfully. Fitz is in one of them, and Dex the other so I don’t have to worry about another situation like in first period. And the teachers always let me go about 2-3 minutes early, so I can avoid the crowds- that is, until lunch. I’m on my way down to the cafeteria when I run into… someone. They must have been very quiet- I didn’t realize they were that close to me and coming around the bend. So when they did, we kinda collided. I hear a soft curse when they thud to the ground, and from the shape and sound I know its a guy. I put the cane in my left hand and offer to help him up. I’m not sure what it is, but he doesn’t accept it.

“You good man? I didn’t see ya there.” I laugh a little, because

duh. He doesn’t. I can’t really make out any of him- his hair is /probably/ black- and this agitates me, because he doesn’t respond. And then he practically runs away.

I have no way to identify him- probably a dumb freshman that didn’t want his ass kicked by the blind senior. Trying to shake off the interaction, I roll my eyes and start on my way to lunch again.

//

“Honestly, today was AWFUL. The second half, at least.” I’m now at Fitz’s house, along with Dex. “I already told Dex about that one guy that ran into me, but Stats teacher was awful. She probably heard something from Michaels about last year- just because I rarely showed up doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing! I got along in that class fine.”

“Keefe, I taught you like half of that course.” Fitz replies, laughing.

“Because you actually know how to do math! Michaels is an awful excuse for a pre calc teacher. Dex, be glad that you got Hex.” I retort. It’s not wrong- Mr. Michaels had been very incompetent. If not for Fitz, I would have gotten the worst grade I ever had in my high school career.

“You know I am.” Dex agrees. “Even Hex hates Michaels, but she won’t admit it. Outright, at least.”

“Ok, enough about horrible teachers. Tell me about the guy who ran into you.” Fitz pipes up, not wanting to be apart of a conversation dissing his soccer coach. I let him divert the conversation, even though I really wanna rag Michaels to the ground most of the time.

“Well, that's the thing. There’s nothing to tell- I ran into him and he fell. Then he ran away, without saying a word,” I say. “I wanna know just as much as you do.”

“That’s cute.” Dex comments, and I shake my head.

“You know what I mean.”

“Suuuuureee.” The tone of his voice makes me hit him, which starts a wrestle between the three of us that lasts for about half an hour. By the end of it, I’m sure I have multiple bruises from falling, kicking something wrong, and getting hit, but I don’t care much. We fall into a panting heap on Fitz bed, and we through half hearted punches at each other that hold no intention. Needless to say, I’m sweaty and gross, and when Fitz informs me that it's almost 8, I ask to go home. A man's gotta shower- and get his beauty sleep.

So Fitz drives me and Dex home, the three of us having pointless conversation about classes and plans we should make. I get dropped off first, and they wait as I carefully make my way to door of my house, not leaving until I get inside. I hear the thrum of his engine as Fitz drives off, then make my way to the bathroom.

After a quick shower, I brush my teeth and head off to bed.

I drift off, and my thoughts are filled with a mysterious blob with probably black hair and evil math equations.

[marystudies]

A LONG ASS LIST OF TIPS FOR HIGH SCHOOL: FRESHMAN TO SENIOR YEAR LETS GO

Disclaimer: This is just from my experience, so these might not all apply to you! 

Freshman Year

ok, ok, freshman year can be scary but don’t let that get to you

dont worry about upperclassmen being rude/teasing you 

it’ll most likely happen, but I’ve never seen an upperclassman tease a freshman with the intention to really hurt them

one day you’ll be them so dw

on the topic of upperclassmen, make some older friends!!! (through classes, sports, etc.) it’s so nice to have someone give you tips and help you through high school

dont expect your friend group to stay the same lol

BUT ITS A GOOD THING I PROMISE YOU

I was scared of changing my friend group, so even though I wasn’t being treated too well, it wasn’t until senior year when I really made a change and I wish I did it earlier

be open to meeting new people, everyone is scared just like you and looking for more friends

I don’t think its neccessary for freshman to become sUPER involved in clubs and all that but at least get a feel for whats out there

try out for a sport if you play one!

this goes for all of high school, not just freshman year, but I regret not being as involved as I could’ve been 

Go to school events like football games and dances! School spirit is considered weird in middle school but its cool in high school

take your classes seriously, your teachers are right - high school is much harder than middle school (but it’s not too bad if you stay organized!)

my freshman year GPA was my lowest like english really caught me off guard (properly formatted, 5 paragraph essays being 50% of your grade??? a concept.)

so my cumulative GPA was brought down

I think most freshman don’t have access to AP classes to boost your GPA or anything, but if you’re looking to push yourself take an honors class or 2! (if available)

Sophomore Year

wooohooo ur no longer a freshman

I’d take at least 1 AP class if you can

my sophomore year I took AP Human Geo - which I really loved, and it also wasn’t too hard

a lot of sophomores take AP World which is a BITCH of a class

BUT I wouldn’t recommend taking Honors World because you don’t get the GPA boost, you don’t get college credits (unless you take the AP Euro test or something), and it’s almost just as hard 

this is a bit random - but when you’re taking Algebra 2 (which was my sophomore year) PLS PAY ATTENTION math builds on itself don’t fuck yourself over

take the PSAT if you want (I honestly don’t remember if I took it freshman year too but eh), but seriously its not required

start thinking about college (I know it’s the last thing you want to do)

just little things like

when do I want to take the SAT/ACT?

would I like a small school or a big school?

What will I be able to put on my college applications?

like if you do community service through a club/church/etc then great!!! sports? YEs

can’t think of anything? Join a club! Try out for a sport (it’s not too late) Find something that interests you

you’re probably pretty situated socially now but never be afraid to get to know those classmates/”school friends” better! 

Junior Year

so junior year is commonly thought of as the hardest year of highschool

which is partially true (we’ll get there later)

but anyways, seriously buckle your seatbelt and get ready to work your ass off because THIS YEAR COUNTS, LADIES AND GENTS

Take AP classes if available

I took AP Psych (WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND) and Honors PreCalc (coming from regular Algebra 2)

Psych gave me college credit and a GPA boost

HPC gave me a GPA boost for UCs 

It was a bitCH of a class but it made AP calc a breeze 

If you haven’t started already, start prepping for SAT/ACT and then take them

tutoring is very helpful, but it can be expensive

I’ve seen studyblrs post about free prep through Kahn Academy and other stuff, so you might have to do a bit of digging but there are tons of resources out there

TAKE PRACTICE TESTS

take one of each first - then focus on the test you did better on 

one of my biggest regrets is taking SAT prep instead of ACT prep because my ACT (which I didn’t do specialized prep for) ended up equivalent to my SAT (which I did prep for)

the more you take em the better you get

Studyblr is gr8 for finding test taking tips

If you’re not happy with your score, just take it again! I only took each one once but most people improve their scores if they take it again

I recommend visiting a few universities when you’re on break! Get a feel for what you like and what you don’t like (size, location, public/private, etc) and what kind of school you could get accepted to

you don’t want to end up applying to a billion schools that you wouldn’t even want to go to

private schools like it when you express interest by visiting

so if you’re visiting, make sure you check in so you can be in their system 

END OF JUNIOR YEAR - ASK FOR LETTERS OF REC NOW! BY THE FIRST WEEK OF SENIOR YEAR A LOT OF TEACHERS ARE ALREADY TAKING ON TOO MANY LETTERS!

Senior Year (buckle up this section is the longest)

but YAY UR A SENIOR 

DO FUN SENIOR YEAR THINGS like my school has all kinds of events for seniors and it’s so great 

Remember when I said junior year is the hardest? Yeah well no... 1st semester senior year is SO MUCH WORSE ur in for a lot of fun

Ok seriously - don’t let senioritis get to you first semester

Still take challenging classes! Schools are looking for progression in difficulty

Those mid year transcripts REALLY DO MATTER! 

College apps, man

Make sure you’re communicating with your counselor to make sure you have everything ready and on track 

like file the FAFSA and CSS (used for lots of privates)

tbh I didn’t think it would help me a lot but it (the CSS) actually did so just do it even if you think you’ll get nothing

Ok so hopefully at this point you have a feel for what schools you are interested in

Things to consider: location, price, size, public/private, difficulty of the application, ranking, program/major you are applying to, campus, overall vibe

I didn’t do any interviews but maybe look into it

Don’t get too comfortable and set reasonable goals - apply to several safety schools, a few good options/could go either way schools, but also a few “reaches”

ESSAYS

I’m no college counselor, but don’t just wing your essays without having an adult/professional look over them

I got lucky - my mom is a professional writer so my family didn’t pay for a counselor

Do your research - you can find so much information about what schools are looking for in essays

If an essay is “optional” DO IT it’s really not optional lol

Keep in mind - these essays are nothing like what you’ve been taught. You don’t have to (and often SHOULDNT) write a 5 paragraph essay with topic sentences relating back to the thesis and evidence, etc. its much more free

think “What is the story I am going to tell?”

get creative - this is hard and takes some time

Think: How am I going to separate myself from thousands of applicants? What is a story that ONLY I can tell?

DO EARLY ACTION FOR AS MANY SCHOOLS AS POSSIBLE!!! 

such a relief to knowing you got in somewhere in like,,,, november

acceptance rates are higher for EA 

the order from highest to lowest is ED > EA > RD

Early Decision scares me (schools will say they give equal scholarship consideration but lol thats a lie) 

but if you have your heart set on a school go ahead

apply to other school just in case, you don’t want to get stuck starting all your apps when a lot of students have already turned them all in

Now that you’re done with applications (whew), the acceptances (and rejection) will start coming!! yay!

ok first for acceptances

those first acceptances are so cool like YAY YOU GOT INTO COLLEGE IM PROUD OF U

as soon as you get your first acceptances really start researching the school more and deciding if you’d REALLY want to go there or not

i know this is hard bc you haven't heard back from all your schools but it’ll make choosing a school so much easier

sadly, not all acceptances are happy tho

like I got accepted to my #1 school but they gave me no money so it was impossible to go

I was so emo for a couple days there

BUT! If you’re serious about it, try appealing for financial aid but keep your expectations low

ok now waitlists

these can be a bit nerve wracking

PLEASE apply for the waitlist right away

at some schools if you dont within a couple days, your application might get thrown out

aaaaand rejections

i dont have a lot to say about this but please dont be too hard on yourself

sometimes its just not meant to be and thats ok!

NOW PICKING A COLLEGE

def the most difficult and mentally draining part for me lol

make sure you really map out everything to consider

net cost (tuition, room & board, books, travel, personal expenses, etc.), size, location, etc.

I personally had this idea that I’d end up at a big school far from home but I’m going to a small school close to home and I’m still super excited!!! So make sure you give every school a second look 

APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIPS!

the essays aren’t usually too bad and sometimes you can just rework your college app essays

you can find them online, your school might have some (like PTA scholarships, band scholarships, etc.)

ok this is the time everyone really gets senioritis

i almost didn’t get senioritis at all lol just because slacking off stressed me out

but please be smart about it dont get rescinded 

and lastly have fun! high school really does fly by, it’ll be over before you know it

[calummwhatchasay]

x² + (3y/2 - √|x|)² = 1 (A.I.)