#but my laptop is being an ass and not cooperating with me

[achillean-knight]

Tried my hand at graphic design with this... Not the best but very happy with it nonetheless!!

[gyuswhore]

Statistically Speaking...

part of the svt TA collab

kim mingyu x reader

word count: 21k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

masterlist

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which was little to none. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

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

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

Nothing. 

You knock again.

Silence. 

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

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

Except he’s asleep.

No, that’s not the professor. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could’ve sworn you heard a snore. 

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

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

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

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

“Um, it’s office—”

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

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

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

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

“But—”

“It’s on the portal.”

“No it’s not.”

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

“How—”

A loud slam! of the door. 

“—long…” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday

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

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

Regards, YN

Dear YN,

Wednesdays and Thursdays. 4 to 6 PM.

Kim Mingyu, T.A. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you here to see him?”

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

“Are you here to see him? Mingyu?”

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

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

“Yeah he’s a bit…unorthodox.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right. How can I help you?”

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

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

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

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

It stumps you regardless.

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

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

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

“You marked them?”

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

“I thought the professor marked the lab reports.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dr. Cho—”

“Is no help.”

“I understand—”

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

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

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

Help, he did. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pardon?”

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

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

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

You smile, “No problem.”

Thursday

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

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

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

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

“I’ll see what I can do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help, he does.

Monday

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

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

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

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

Something isn’t right. 

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

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

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

“...Morning.”

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

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

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

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

To Do:

Call mom

Shoot myself

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

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

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

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

What the fuck?

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

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

“Good thing it was just you. Yeah.”

Just you.

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

“Have you seen the time?” 

“Not a morning person?”

“Nope!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And that isn’t happening because…?”

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

“You—”

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

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

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

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Excuse me for doing my job.”

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

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

“PSYCH101?”

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

“Oh. So you’re a fan.”

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

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

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

“Don’t tell me you offered.”

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

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

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

“Four.”

“Four?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart is in your fucking throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Majority of the class would beg to differ.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday

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

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

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

“I’m not ready.”

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

“How do you know that?”

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

“Only the—”

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

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

“I’m assuming…” you start. 

“Hm?” he looks over to you.

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

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

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

“What did you say?” Mingyu smirks. 

“Nothing,” you huff.

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

“Who said I didn’t.”

“Well then, stop being such a worrywart.”

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

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

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

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

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

You sniffle. 

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

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

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu…did you sleep at all?”

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

“Sleep? Rest?”

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

“And you were replying?”

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

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

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

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

“What’re you trying to say?”

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu—”

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

“You have, you’ve been amazing but—”

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

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

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

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

Why on earth do you care so much?

Right. Why do you? 

“Are you asking me that?”

“What?”

“Are you asking me why I care?” 

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

His eyes are bloodshot. 

“I have to get the exam pack.”

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

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

Delusive. Chimeric. Cruel.

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

The null hypothesis of your most elaborate nightmares.

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything. You tried everything. 

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

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Estimation cannot be perfect. 

[_]

It’s Thursday

Class. Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Friday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Saturday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

              ——————

                     P(B)

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

 it gets less complicated

 promise :/ 

[_]

It’s Sunday.

Eat. Drink. Work.

The page is blurry. Your eyes hurt. 

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

you’ve got this!!! < 3

You give up.

It’s Monday.

8:14 AM. 

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

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

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

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

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

Bright pink sticky note. 

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Wednesday.

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

It’s Thursday. 

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

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

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

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

You freeze like you’ve been caught. 

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

You’re off centre. But it’s fine. 

It’s Monday.

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.

—  92/100

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

“Did you feel bad?” you spit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bright red 92/100 marks the front page.

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

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

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

Because you know you’ve lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Friday.

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

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

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

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

[Mingyu]: switch to bF10 

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

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

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

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

Do you not miss me?

Do you not want me around?

Talk to me

I miss you

Please talk to me

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

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

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

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

It’s Saturday. 

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

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

“Latte, please,” you voice. “Iced.”

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

“Um, no thank you. Just one, please.”

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

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

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

“He has time to hook up?”

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

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

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

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

“Unless he flirts in variables.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bayesian inference…z scores…null hypothesis…

Wait. 

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

no null hypothesis in bayesian approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards, YN

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

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

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

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

SEND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RE: Tutorial Error from Kim Mingyu

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

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

Clicking on the notification, the email opens. 

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

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I–no, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

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

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

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

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

“You were hurt because I hurt you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not in a TA way.”

“Tutor way.”

“Um.”

“Friend way? A human way?” 

“No.”

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

“You know what?” he rasps. 

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He snorts, “Dressed up for it too.”

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

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

“How adorable.”

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

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

“That might’ve been a little better.”

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

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

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

You give him the satisfaction of an eye roll. 

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

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

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

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

“Who?”

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

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

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

“Hm?”

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

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

“Do you?”

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

“Is it because of the TA-ing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“D’you think they’ll be okay?”

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

“Like we did?”

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

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

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

“This is getting weird,” Mingyu breathes. 

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

“For fuck’s sake.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re paying attention to me.”

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

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

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

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

There’s a ding in the background. 

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

Another ding. 

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

Ding. 

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

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

“Gyu…” you whisper. 

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

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

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

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

The ringing stops. 

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

There’s a ding. 

“Mingyu, I really think—”

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

“You should answer.” 

He looks irritated as he takes his phone in his hands, and you find a flash of Dr. Cho’s name on the screen. “It’s eleven O’clock.” 

“It might be important.”

“The last time he did this he asked where his peacock feather pen was,” he grunts as he silences his phone. 

You laugh, running a soothing hand through Mingyu’s hair, a tiny attempt to calm him down. Pulling your shirt down, you attempt to sit up. 

Mingyu makes a noise of denial, attempting to stick his face into your now clothed chest, knocking you back down, “Nooooo, I’m gonna ignore him.”

“He’s not going to leave you alone,” you sing quietly, running your nails across his scalp lightly, holding his head to your chest. You place your cheek on his head, playing with his ear. 

As if to prove your point, Mingyu’s phone begins to ring again, and he groans at the prospect. 

“Go on.”

He swipes to answer it. A loud sigh and then a tired, “Hello?”

His volume is bumped up enough for you to make out what’s being said on the other line. “Where have you been?”

“It’s nearly eleven, sir. I was in bed.”

“My flash drive won’t open up on my computer.”

You have to stifle a snort. 

“Is it…plugged in?”

“Of course it is, I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it showing up on your files?”

“Disk…is not…formatted.”

“Erm, it might be corrupted.”

“How did that happen?”

“Did you download something off the internet onto it?”

“Hardly matters, I need the attendance sheet on it!”

Your fingers are massaging Mingyu’s temples as you feel him tense on top of you. 

“Your attendance sheet is on the teacher’s portal,” Mingyu grits before adding, “sir.”

“...I have other things on there too.”

Mingyu exhales ever so quietly and you tighten your hold on him a smidge. “This sounds like something tech support could help with.”

“Why can’t you help?” he asks sharply. 

“I…I don’t know how, sir.”

There’s a noise of indignation from the other end, and you can’t help but keep from laughing. 

Mingyu sighs into the phone, this time doing nothing to hide it. “I’ll take it to tech support for you tomorrow. And I’ll send you a direct link for the attendance sheet for Monday and Tuesday’s classes.”

The line beeps shut. Mingyu brings the phone for you both to see the professor’s hung up as soon as the words left Mingyu’s mouth. 

“Wow,” you whisper into the silence, the weight of Mingyu’s head heavier on your chest. “Not even a thank you.”

“Absent father behaviour,” Mingyu grumbles as he moves his face to burrow into your shirt. 

It’s a bad joke, but you laugh anyway. 

“Will I be an asshole if I say I’m not in the mood anymore?” he murmurs. 

“Absolutely not. Everything sucked right back in the minute I heard his voice on the line.”

“Gross,” he comments, but he’s laughing too. 

“Should we call it a night?” he asks, rearing his head. 

Nodding, you rise with him. By the time you’ve reached the bedroom, you’ve already begun taking off your accessories, fiddling with your bracelet as you voice. 

“I need a shower.”

Mingyu throws you a towel and a t-shirt, which you catch and move towards the bathroom. Halfway through the door, you sneak a look at him fiddling with his belt. 

“Do you wanna come in too?” 

Mingyu looks at you peering through the door frame. You’ve never seen anyone leap across the room as quickly as in that moment. 

THE FOLLOWING DAYS WERE just as eventful as that phone call, Mingyu running around as the midterm low passed and the line creeped up towards finals season. 

Perhaps it was better that you stopped attending office hours, because the room seems to become increasingly packed as the days progressed. 

You only ever saw Mingyu in the wee hours of the night at his place, where he begged you to camp out till the end of the semester so he “doesn’t move to insanity”. It might even be better for you, going about your day as usual, without the usual added distraction of a partner.

Coming home to him was easier, where he could clear up your doubts while in ratty pyjamas and starfished across the bed, where you could find solace in Mingyu’s chest without prying eyes when the information became like filling an already stuffed junk drawer. 

It was a Friday night, you’re alone at Mingyu’s place sitting cross legged on the floor. The table in front of you is pouring over the final question of this week’s tutorial paper, everything seemingly whizzing right past the top of your head. 

Despite that, as Mingyu stumbles inside past eleven, you know you shouldn’t ask him for a thing. 

Tired was a look on Mingyu you’d gotten quite used to, so you’ve learned to not comment and simply let him fall into the couch cushions with all his weight. 

His face is parallel to yours as he closes his eyes with a light groan in greeting. Moving forward, you kiss the flutter of his eyelids softly, down to the apple of his cheeks, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth. 

Your fingers run through his tangled and distressed hair as he mumbles against your mouth. “Did you finish the tutorial paper?”

You huff in mild annoyance, that despite his state he still thinks about work. “Not yet. One last question and I’m done.”

He hums and waits a moment before reopening his eyes. With a loud groan he’s pushing himself off the couch, sliding off of it to sit with you on the uncomfortable floor. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

“I can figure it out myself, Gyu.”

“You would’ve been done by now if you could,” he answers. It’s annoying that he says it but he’s also right. 

Mingyu holds the paper a mere inch from his eyes, the sight almost comical if he also didn’t look an inch from passing out. 

He mumbles the question as he reads, “It’s nothing, just worded weird. Toggle this off and move this to mixed factors and you’re done.”

The toggles are done for you, and Mingyu takes the liberty crossing he question off with a pen he finds on the table. 

“Did you get everything else?” he asks in earnest. 

“Hm? I think so.” 

“Good.” And then he’s throwing his head back to rest it on the couch cushions behind him, breathing slowly. 

He’s in a navy sweater, collar of his undershirt peeking through the top. Your gaze leads up further, to the exposed area of his throat—clean, tan and naked. You realise this might not be a good time, but it’s only natural your mind cooks up other ways to translate your helplessness as you watch your boyfriend push himself to the brink. Release is never a bad idea. 

Besides, it’s a Friday night. No reason to not. 

“Gyu,” you shuffle closer. 

Lolling his head to look over at you, he answers in a small voice, “Yeah?” 

You put on the guiltiest face you can muster, complete with darting eyes and fidgeting fingers. “D’you think…d’you think you can go over post hoc tests again?”

“Post hoc?” He furrowed his eyebrows. You bite the inside of your cheek, having blurted the first plausible model you could think of to ask him. It’s an older bit of the syllabus, something you should already be well versed in. 

Not that you care what he thinks right now, he’d figure out why you were asking anyway. 

“Post hoc, um,” he rubs a hand over his face as if to jog his memory. 

Shifting forward, you plaster you front onto his side. He thinks nothing of it. 

“Analysis tool after you’ve already run the data,” he begins. 

Placing your chin on his shoulder, you let your nose nuzzle against his cheek. Trailing up, your lips find the shell of his ear. 

“Results have to be…they have to be…” He falters when your hand reaches his front, running across the expanse of his clothes stomach, nails digging ever so slightly as you reach his abdomen. You continue to place open mouthed kisses at the space of neck you can reach. 

“Hm? Has to be what?”

“Statistically significant,” he breathes when your palms reach the tops of his thighs. “To run a post hoc test.”

His trousers are less barrier inducing than regular jeans, something you’re both grateful for as you begin to palm his clothed bulge. “Results of what, baby?”

“For the love of—”

“Go on,” you whisper in his ear. “Please.”

One flick and his trousers are unbutton, pulling them aside as the zipper pulls open. You're pushing down his boxers when he answers you. “ANOVA.” 

“What’s that again?”

“You little shit.”

You move your mouth forward to kiss him.

“Analysis of variance.” 

You hum against the column of his throat at that, his half hard member in your hands. Light touches, that’s all they are, running the pads of your fingers across the pulsing length, coaxing him into full length. 

“What’s it for though? We already got our results.” Bending forward, you stick your tongue to kitten lick at his tip. Mingyu hisses, hips shifting. Your tongue swirls around the tip, pushing into the skin on the head where he’s most sensitive. 

“Ugh, fuck, for um,” he falters as you begin to suck at his head, tongue running over each hollow of your cheeks. 

“For…for…” His chest is moving up and down in quick breathes, every sound from his mouth coming from a deep rumble in his stomach. 

Letting go of his cock, you continue to pump him with your hand as you gaze up at him from your position. “For? Keep talking, baby.”

“For…To identify groups,” he grunts out. He lets out a louder moan when you place your mouth back on him, going past his tip and taking as much as you can of him into your mouth. “Identify…the differences, shit, hmph.”

He takes a loud breath before speeding through it again, “Identify which groups actually differ, oh my god.”

The bit of him that you can’t fit on your mouth is being pumped by your hands, fingers pushing into him like you were trying to indent them on the base of his cock. A glance upwards and you find his head thrown back, hands coming to tangle in your hair. His thumb caresses the side of your cheek.

“How many groups?” you ask, before diving back in. 

“Three,” he chokes out. “Three or more, oh I’m gonna cum, fuck don’t stop, holy shit.”

Both of his hands are at your head, guiding you as you suck him harder, faster, more tongue digging into his slit. You hum against his dick on purpose, making sure it’s coarse enough to get the reaction you want. 

You succeed, because immediately after you hear Mingyu rip out the loudest moan you’ve ever heard, his grip on your strands harder than ever. He cums into your mouth, hips stuttering as you place your entire weight on him to keep him in place. 

You let some of it dribble out your mouth and back over his softening dick like a hot coating, sucking him through shooting spurts of cum that land on your tongue. 

When you emerge from underneath, Mingyu looks like he got the soul sucked out of him; eyes closed, stuttered breaths raking through his entire body, a light sheen of the beginnings of sweat that glisten in the low light of the room. 

Reaching for the tissue box and water bottle on the table, you soak the napkins and bring them to clean him up. He whines when the cold tissues touch him where he’s most sensitive right now, you want to kiss him but account for the cum that is actively stuck to the walls of your mouth. 

You leave for a few minutes, much to Mingyu’s hoarse protests. He’s almost on all fours, hands on the floors as you promise to be back. By the time you’ve hauled his tired ass into bed, you’re just as ready to knock out as the half asleep man beside you. 

Mingyu’s face is plastered into your neck, arms and legs thrown over your form as he hugs you close to him. 

“I might love you,” he says into the darkness. A secret, just for you and the walls to hear. 

You hide the way your heart absolutely leaps, conceal the way your hands tighten around his form into an affectionate caress, hold your breath to prevent the inevitable hitch. 

I might love you too. 

You hide that as well. For now. 

Smiling into the skin of his temples, you sigh.

“Feel free.”

[Mingyu]: class ended early 

[Mingyu]: be there in 5 

[You]: ???

[You]: wdym ended early

[You]: kim did u end class early to come home

Your response comes in the form of the front door lock jiggling loudly. You’d stayed the night at his place, knowing you didn’t have anything to do but study by yourself. Sickly as you were, you doubt you could sit through two hours of even more statistics. 

He’d left you in bed with a kiss, needing to be extra early since Dr. Cho decided to dump the last crucial few weeks leading up to finals season entirely on his TA. As much as there was on Mingyu’s already overflowing plate now, you couldn’t deny the elated feeling of your attendance being taken care of regardless of whether you show up to class or not. 

A very real violation, but no one truly notes one skipped student in the midst of hundreds. Besides, the bag under Mingyu’s pretty eyes might be enough for anyone to have mercy and let the supposed mistake slide.

As Mingyu walks into the room, shoes flying and back dumped on the floor, he finds you still half clothed with leftover sleep in your eyes, standing in the middle of the living space like you were lost. 

He drops his things to come and drown you in his arms, loud kisses all over your face as you talk. “You’re getting too comfortable with this job.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t possibly expect me to teach a bunch of half asleep idiots when my woman is all alone at home, sickly and cold without me.”

You grumble wordlessly as you feel him check your temperature with the back of his hand. “How’s the congestion?”

“Bad,” you respond nasally. “I can’t find my Afrin.”

“It’s on the bedside table, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

Still wrapped in his hold, Mingyu begins to take steps forward that lead towards the bed, pushing you to walk backwards.

“I’m not awake enough to navigate,” you sniff.

“I’ve got you,” he lowtones, pushing backwards slowly. 

The back of your knees hit the bed and you let yourself fall back into the unmade sheets. You crawl back under the covers as Mingyu navigates between used tissues, water bottles and pills on the bedside table. But no sign of your nasal spray. 

You have to breathe through your mouth and you hate it, but you send a remark his way anyway. “Told you.”

Mingyu bends down and emerges with a familiar red capped bottle. He stares at you while you stare at it, choosing to simply snatch it from his presenting hands and be done with it. 

“Good thing I came back early, hm?” 

“Shut up.”

He leaps over your form to claim the spot in bed right next to you, still fully clothed as he burrows under the covers next to you.

There’s nothing flattering about the way you stick the nozzle up your nostrils and sniff hard, but the gleam in your boyfriend’s eyes might as well suggest you were trying to get him to look at you like that. 

“Are you gonna keep doing this till finals?” you ask throatily, shifting under the covers. 

“Teaching during class time is just extended office hours, I’m gonna go insane if I keep going like this. Probably just today. Or…once more if I feel it.”

“Didn’t you say you were gonna extend office hours to Fridays too?” 

Mingyu moulded himself against you, giving warmth to your shivering body even under thick blankets. 

It seems throughout the course of your relationship, your time with Mingyu is either spent laying down or in the process of doing so. Not that you mind, you’ve found that remaining horizontal was what worked best for someone like Mingyu who seemed to want to fuse with your very being whenever you were together.

“Ugh, not this week. Do not have the patience.”

“I’m proud of you,” you say, eyes closed, already on the highway to dreamland. 

“Thank you, I do think I’ve been very brave.” Even while slipping into dreamland, you find the good sense to find his nipple through his sweater and give it a hard pinch. He jerks away in a yelp, clutching his chest. 

“What’s that for?!”

You ignore him and simply run your hand over the area you just attacked. “You’ve gotten better at knowing when to slow down. I’m proud of you.”

You’re too far gone to make out what he answers you with, but with the hot breath against your already warm forehead, you decide it's more than enough for you. 

MINGYU DOES IT FOR the fourth time, but this time round he’s smart enough to not tell you. 

It’s the Friday before finals week officially begins, and you remain in your own place for once to crack down on the last bits of syllabus you want to go over, away from your extremely distracting boyfriend. 

There’s a text when you check your phone after a couple hours of hyperfocus, and you narrow your eyes at the notification. 

It’s Wonwoo’s (actual) girlfriend, and she’s sent you nothing but a picture of both of your men on Wonwoo’s living room floor, thoroughly occupied with the floored expanse of sheets, pillows and cushions. 

It’s a pillow fort.

Your boyfriend is building a pillow fort in his not-husband’s living room mere days before the final exam for the most dreaded course of the semester. All while he’s actively meant to be available for office hours.

You want to laugh. The man that stayed up multiple nights to answer stupid questions in emails, is now less than concerned about the pandemonium that is probably ensuing in the department building. It isn’t that you’re upset, because this was what you wanted from him. To learn to take a break when it was needed. But you would also prefer he’d time them a little better. 

Inevitably, you text him, but not before sending an encouraging text to your girlfriend-in-law for putting up with the both of them all by herself. 

[You]: where are you

[Mingyu]: where im meant to be?

[You]: office hours?

[Mingyu]: mhm

[You]: are u and ur husband conducting them under a pillow fort in his house

You imagine him sending Wonwoo’s girlfriend a betrayed look. Perhaps even throw a frilled throw pillow in her unassuming direction. 

[Mingyu]: DONT KILL ME

You let him suffer in your silence, clicking your phone off and leaving it somewhere you won’t be tempted to look. 

Besides, it wasn’t long before there was an incessant banging at your door that you ended up needing to get up to open. He looks so timid, the face of an innocent perpetrator that waltzes into your space. 

“I’m sorry,” he begins, following you to your desk like a lost duckling. 

“Whatever for?”

“For lying.” 

You snort as you sift through tutorial sheets, “Might wanna take that up to the poor hopeless student that thought you were their last hope.”

Mingyu’s head sinks to your shoulder where you sit at your desk. “God.”

“Him too.”

In another few moments, his arms have come around to cage you into your desk where you’re sat, hands placed on the table as he towers over the top of your head, mouth to crown. 

“Rumour has it,” he starts. 

You make a face. “Now you’ve joined in on gossip? Maybe I have steered you wrong.”

He ignores you valiantly as his mouth drops lower, down to the beginnings of the tips of your ears. You can smell him. He smells good. 

“That a textbook recitation is all it takes to get you all bothered down there.”

Lifting your head from its craned position over your papers, you stare straight ahead. Blank and unassuming. 

“Take a hike, Kim.”

“...Sorry.”

NO MATTER HOW FAKE annoyed you were at your boyfriend, you cannot possibly credit anyone else for how smooth your finals had gone. 

Not a single tear, hack or whine. Your meals were on time, your sleep schedule the healthiest it’s been for months. You even managed a movie night break in the midst of it all. A record for you. 

The very first thing you do after walking out of the exam hall, stretching and sighing, you find Mingyu waiting with nervous eyes. 

“Well?” he asks, eyes wide and lips pulled into his teeth. 

You merely grab for his hand and pull him out of the crowded hall and past a few familiar turns. 

“For the record I didn’t want some of the questions on there,” he yaps as he follows behind your stalks. “Hard ones weren’t mine. I promise I’m not a sadist.”

Then, in an un-CCTV’d corner, marked by the broken, empty vending machine, you round up on him. In seconds you’ve pulled him down to meet your lips in an eager, full kiss. 

In the moments your lips remain intact, you can feel all the horrid statistical knowledge you’d gathered over the months slip out the cracks and crevices, relieving you. 

Mingyu is careful to let you pull away first, eyes sticky to open when you do. There’s a smile on your face. “It went great.”

A strong tug against your waist and you’re suddenly pressed into Mingyu’s all too familiar hold, so everloving tight you can hardly breathe. His lips are smacking and pressing into your skin, all over your face, neck and hands. Anywhere he could possibly reach. 

There wasn’t much he could do standing in a huddled corner at nine in the morning on a Tuesday, where anyone could pass by and question what in the high school was going on. But there was more than enough Mingyu could do behind closed doors. 

In true Mingyu fashion, he’s begun to grope in every way you love the minute the lock clicks shut of his apartment, every fibre of both of your beings giddy and jumpy, giggles erupting from your tired mouths. You haven’t been touched in ages, always too tired to do anything even when you would find the time. 

It isn’t remotely strange that you're wet from only a few kisses and hot breaths against your neck. Although Mingyu’s hands haven’t been modest either, already reaching your clothed cunt as you fall into bed. 

He says it was your reward, for doing so good, his illustrious mouth suctioned onto your naked core, moving and grinding in ways you can more than just appreciate.

His tongue is nothing below made for you, like he knows exactly when to flick his tongue, graze his teeth and all but suck the daylights out of you. It’s marvellous, even more so as you realise he won’t stop. One, two, three mind blowing orgasms later, your legs still shake around his head as you cry out for him to stop. 

Not that he was going to listen, as he did not the last fifteen times you tried, simply pushing a finger into your abused hole to chuck you into yet another climax. You’re sobbing, trembling, sweating; but also half hearted in your attempts to stop him. 

By the time he’s relented, you’re sure you won’t feel a thing down there for at least a week. If Mingyu will even let you go untouched for that long. 

But as you’re finally able to catch your long lost breath in bed, and Mingyu has curled up right beside you, like he always does, you let the finality of it all sink in. You were done. And so was he. And you could now begin to experience a Mingyu that wasn’t exhausted, stressed or tired. Even now, the long indented layers of fatigue begin to melt away, revealing a less strained man. 

Mingyu was beautiful either way. 

“Are you okay?” he asks you, his fingers tracing your features. 

The pads of his fingers glide across your eyelids, down the slope of your nose, tracing the outline of your lips. You kiss his fingers as they reach you there, hand coming up to hold his wrists. You kiss the tips of his fingers, down to the palm of his hand. Eyes closed, you keep your lips there. 

“More than okay,” you mumble. 

“Good. Thought I lost you there.”

Stretching unceremoniously, you drape yourself over his naked form, head on his shoulder. “You’re not losing me. Not after being the sole reason I pass this devil’s module.”

“Is that all it takes? Make sure you don’t fail?”

“And give head like that.” It’s a half joke. “But also be Kim Mingyu comma TA.”

He mimics you between a breathy laugh, “Comma TA. Not anymore, I guess.”

“How happy are you?”

“Still have to grade the last set of papers. But I got what I wanted.”

“The recommendation? You deserve it.”

“That, and not having to be in Dr. Cho’s presence every other day. And you.”

You kiss his shoulder. “Look at you. All grown up with your big boy grad school on the horizon.”

“Not just yet.”

“You’ll get there too. If you can power through this hellsent semester, you can power through anything grad school applications throw.”

Mingyu shifts where he lays, taking a turn to lie on his side to face you. The afternoon sun peeks from behind his form, his outline made of pure gold. His breath is in your face as he talks, and there’s comfort in the air it penetrates.

“I only powered through this because of you. I hope you know that.” He’s smiling. 

“Girlfriend duties,” you quote solemnly. 

“I mean it. I knew I was walking into disaster with how this stupid job was going, all that work was just a distraction. I didn’t wanna believe this was a bad idea. And then you walked in.”

You cup his face and pout, “Oh, my damsel in distress.”

“Hm, my knight in shining armour,” he giggles. “Galloped in and saved me from myself.”

“You saved me too. From the world and its horrible creations.” 

“I’ll start talking in formulas if this keeps up.” 

You can only grumble in mild annoyance. 

“I’m glad I asked you to come in early that day,” he says.

“I’m glad I was a good samaritan and gathered all your stuff that day.” You grin.

Mingyu leans in and kisses you. It’s soft, slow, and drips of the romance he’s trying to bring into the conversation. His lips are bliss, the feeling of him is bliss. 

It’s almost scary how easily you’ve been able to give yourself to him. How quickly he’s placed himself in every nook and cranny of your heart. With his tired eyes and stronger than himself smile, the hand he extended in ways beyond you could ever explain to him. It’s terrifying when you realise what remains on the tip of your tongue, ready and bursting. 

But it’s true, and you can only pray it remains that way. Because in that moment, naked and tangled between Mingyu’s limbs, his heart in your ears, your hands on his being, you just know. 

“I think I might love you too.” 

[cryobabyy]

sarah!! obsessed with sugar daddy cooper and wouldn’t be opposed to more…

Just clocked out of work which means I’m clocking in for my second job (being horny on main)

NSFW UNDER THE CUT

This entire arrangement is about control for him btw

He wants to know what you’re doing, where you’re going, who you’re with

And if you’re out and about your location better be ON

If you were to send him a picture of you and the girls out at the bar and there’s a man in the background prepare to be interrogated

“Who’s that?” “Do you know him?” “Be careful.”

Your friends are like “…girl what the fuck?🧍🏽‍♀️”

And you’re like “He’s just possessive he won’t do anything🤪”

Of course, he sends you money for you and your friends tab without you even asking lol

He shows up at your apartment unannounced with little presents

He’ll show up with a big ass bag from the Apple Store and be like “I wanted to surprise you, you kept talking about how you needed a new laptop for school.”

GUESS WHAT

HE INSTALLED SURVEILLANCE SOFTWARE ON IT WITHOUT YOU KNOWING 😍😍😍

He likes to check in randomly and watch you from his phone

He thinks the face you make when you’re studying is cute lol

You’re none the wiser because he’s such a gentleman

Seriously, just like a class act zaddy

He doesn’t want you to lift a finger because he wants to slowly control every aspect of your life without you noticing

He likes to fuck you in front of your mirror so you can see the kind of control he has over you

EYE CONTACT THROUGH THE MIRROR!!!

“Look at me, baby. Who takes care of you?”

“You do.”

“Who else fucks you like this?”

“Only you.”

“That’s fucking right, baby.”

[jamneuromain]

Distraction Drabble

Previously: You Had Me Before Hello

Smut implied drabble. Written in frustration that my groupwork ended poorly (and maybe inspired a little by this post: anika)

I pictured this: ↑, but naked.

“I can’t do it.” You announce as you dump your laptop on the bed, flustering, leaning yourself closer to him. “I can’t. I’ve got nothing.”

“What is it, buttercup?” Ari kisses the top of your head, when you scoot closer, sitting between his legs.

One of your classes requires you to give a presentation in mid-term.

Unfortunately, it’s group work.

Meaning, your teammates finally decided upon a topic about something you’ve never heard before (which also means there are few articles regarding the topic on the internet), without giving any research into it. A week before the presentation, your group tried asking the professor and consulting his opinion. The professor listened to your troubles, simply told you to look into more articles related to the media coverage, and “Good luck”.

Yeah. You need luck. Lots of luck. Because there’s no fucking media coverage other than discussing the relationship between this fucking topic and Meghan & Harry.

‘Cause that’s important.

That’s why you snuggle against him on the bed, back to chest, ass to crotch. You research frantically on your laptop while he reads a random book.

You tell him all about your failure trying to do decent research for presentation, and adding the cherry on top, “… that. And you are being a big distraction.”

Ari raises his eyebrows quizzically, “me?”

“Yes, your dick keeps getting harder.” You chew on your lip sheepishly.

“Buttercup, you are the one who keeps grinding on my dick.” He chuckles in amusement, “I’d say you earn that distraction yourself.”

Your tactic of pointing fingers laid bare in plain sight, having you whine and blush in his arms: “Can’t you be cooperative for once?”

Your fingers dance on his biceps. Ari prefers wearing only a boxer in his house, making him naked from the waist up. Although you enjoy cuddling with him skin-to-skin, his abs and arms slip a couple of unholy ideas into your mind.

And yes, you are grinding on his dick. Hoping he would save you from this misery of frustration.

Ari hums, “well I could go reading in the study…” His large hand runs over his long locks, how that looks even sexier to you, you have absolutely no clue.

“… or I could fuck the stress out of you.”

Stress-relieving.

That is a solid idea.

Plus, it's no different from what you have in mind in the first place.

You turn around eagerly to kiss his lips, nearly knocking the book out of his hand, “sounds really good to me.”

Like hell you are going to choose the first option and allow the sweet chance to slip away. You have completely forgotten the first part of his sentence by now. Who cares about the first option when you can have mind-blowing sex with Ari?

Ari places his book on the nightstand and takes hold of your chin, his lips quirking into a smirk, “who’s being the distraction now, buttercup?”

[thenerdywitchofthenorth]

For my first time ever drawing Donnie I think it turned out pretty good.( actually it's my first time drawing any of the turtles)

For the first time ever I think I'm happy with my first drafts.What I'm not happy is with is the coloring. My purple markers suddenly decided to go "No" which it's a problem considering that Donnie is such a purple kid.

(I criticize well I draw in my purple SketchBook in my purple room, looking up references on my purple laptop, thinking about dying my hair purple again)

So I decided not to go with a flower crown for Donnie. I don't feel like he would be the type like would still want a crown but I think he would go for a metal one instead of a flowery one that is still simple but still elaborate. It's silver with amethyst. I also didn't add as many small details as I did with Leo, I think Donnie would prefer a more comfortable but still very stylish outfit ( of course I'm not projecting my own sensory issues I don't know why you're accusing me of) also I think he would feel more secure with extra layers to cover up his softshell, when he's not wearing his battle shell.

Then we have the god of Madness himself. His goggles are more steampunk but still futuristic, he is the god of innovation so for him to have elements that are a little ahead of his time I think it's fitting. Also, you can't see them here but I think that battle shell would have some detail on the metal.

Can I just point out the color matching Donnie skin was a pain in my ass.

But I really did like this outfit, I feel like he would also want to have a second one that's a little bit more freeing, because just like he doesn't wear a jacket due to the fear of it getting stuck in a propeller. I don't think he would want to wear his whole-up when he's inventing or when he needs to be a little bit more hands-on, out of fear of getting caught in gear , on fire, or just dirty.

We also have S.H.E.L.D.O.N . I talked to Ree about this, to add to their idea where S.H.E.L.D.ON is the soul of a tortoise, but Donnie not only took that soul but also clouds and made S.H.E.L.D.O.N .

that's why I also made Sheldon a little bit more round and puffy because Cloud turtle.

Then we have the final mortal disguise. Like I said , my markers were not being cooperative with me, so I didn't get the faded out color that I wanted. But yeah I do think that these purples would be a little bit more faded than shown here when he's in the mortal world and doesn't want to expose himself, but I also threw in some glasses and of course his trusty bo staff.

I would love to hear you guys' ideas / feedback like always.

@annonniiiiieeeee

@fatalflawsy

@furiousjellifish

[guildtree]

EXCEPT IT'S WEDNESDAY BECAUSE I DO WHAT I WANT

Anyways, this is meant to be an opportunity for writers to do a "behind the scenes" look at one of their fanfics, something I've wanted to do for a while. I'm choosing Left Behind, my story about Taimi and Marjory becoming friends while recovering from Balthazar, because not only is it my first posted fanfic and one I still love, but because GOOD LORD does it have a story behind it.

So here's the tale: I wrote this thing in October of 2022, shortly after essentially dropping out of college. COVID had knocked me flat on my ass both mentally and physically, so I was still recovering from a pretty severe health crisis/depressive episode and had very little to do with my life. I'd started writing fiction again after a few years of not doing it at all. And then my uncle calls me up and says, "Hey, I'm going to Europe for three weeks, I know you're not busy, would you like to catsit my two kittens while I'm gone? I'll pay you." Obviously, I jumped at the chance to cuddle cute fluffy animals and earn money for it. Easy, right?

WRONG. First off, these kittens were not tiny fluffballs, they were five-month-old former-stray terrors that hadn't been fixed yet and still had tons of nervous energy. They caused chaos whenever I wasn't watching. Second, it took all of half a week for them both to somehow get sick with gonorrhea (honestly, they'd probably had it before and the symptoms just hadn't shown up yet). If you've never had to deal with two hyperactive, aggressively cuddly kittens with diarrhea ... be thankful. It was a disaster. Between taking them to the vet, giving them medicine regularly, cleaning up after them, and making sure they didn't break anything important, I wound up over at my uncle's house way more than I'd expected. Eventually, I just started dragging my laptop along so I could sit on the couch and write for hours while keeping the little fuzzy troublemakers in the corner of my eye.

I'd had the idea for Left Behind for a while - ever since I'd heard that little achievement line where Taimi mentions that Marjory's been calling her a lot and, "it seems like she's kinda lonely." (Which like, Marjory? Lonely? What? But then it clicked for me that she's not only alone, she's alone and injured, and she's probably feeling frustrated about not being able to do anything, much like Taimi has felt over several arcs, and ohhhhh... I can make them friends.) But I'd also be deluding myself if I said that nothing about my situation while writing bled into my work. I mean, I certainly had a good perspective on how much medicine sucks, and how hard being a caretaker can be, especially when the people (or cats) you're taking care of aren't cooperating! There are references to Taimi and Marjory being up at ungodly hours because I was up at ungodly hours trying to find the very small, pitch-black kitten who was hiding in the house somewhere because she really did not want to take her medicine. Some of the more out-there comedy is definitely influenced by that sleep deprivation as well.

But on a more serious note: I think the reason why my first posted story is at it's core about recovery and finding camaraderie in that recovery is because those were the things I needed at the time too. I mentioned that in October I was just starting to come out of a nasty depressive episode? I do mean just starting. I didn't feel good, I merely felt not terrible, which was a significant improvement but still didn't feel like enough. I think, consciously or not, I put a lot of my own hopes, wants, and frustrations into these characters. Hidden in Marjory's rage at feeling useless are a lot of my own frustrations about how my depressed brain simply wouldn't let me do things sometimes. In Taimi's fear of being forgotten are my own anxieties about how in taking a break from college I'd ruined my whole future. And their entire story of healing, growing closer, and finally moving on was what I wanted for myself most at that moment: a way out, a new start, and people who could understand and help me through all of that.

I wrote that entire fic over the three weeks I was catsitting, fending off kittens who wanted to step on my keyboard and chew my laptop wires the whole time. I finished a few days before my uncle was due to come home from Europe, and I was so exhausted and annoyed at that point, I was just like, "You know what, FINE, this is pretty good, why don't I post it." So I did, and then I went to go give the cats their meds and fall asleep, and when I woke up the next day there were 11 comments waiting for me, and I learned that people actually might like my writing and what I had to say. And now here we are 8 months later, I'm in a much better place, I've got a little community of friends and people who like my stuff, and writing has been a valuable hobby that brings me accomplishment and happiness. All because of my uncle's sick kittens xD

This got long, but it was a story I've wanted to tell for a while, so as always: thank you for reading.

[oraclechats]

I'M BACK. Life swept me away but I'm slowly listening to the eps I'm missing. Just finished the BorRap ep and I have some thoughts. First of all, I think that movie is terrible. It's bad. I saw it in theatre with my friends and I walked away thinking, eh-whatever. But I have to give the movie some merits because it did pull me in starting from the second act and I was very hyped when the First Aid scene came on. However, it's definitely super mid, verging toward terrible. So, secondly, imagine my fucking surprise when it was nominated for Best Picture. I was like, haha this is a prank, only to check the official website and see it there. HOLY shit, my jaw hit the floor. Did the US run out of movies that year for Best Picture???? Like, was there really no other movies that can take BorRaph's spot????? I had a moment just staring at the screen of my laptop and felt like I was in the Twillight Zone. (I can see Rami being nominated for Best Lead Actor tho, he was really good so I understand the nomination)

Thirdly, I caught wind of the BorRap fandom. I was taking a break from tumblr then, but it was kinda growing on twitter, that even tho I was in a very very different fandom space, I heard about it. Now hearing what I'm hearing from the podcast, quite eye-opening lmao. Like, when you discussed the fanfics... I was screaming in my head hahahahaha

Fourth, I have seen the 911 BoB/TP fic... and just not gonna click on it. Life's too short and all that.

it's especially egregious given the fact that that year was so stacked with movies that were Literally eons better than Bohemian Rhapsody. i was Literally just yelling about how that was supposed to be the year of BlacKkKlansman and instead it got double teamed by both Greenbook and BoRhap and it's truly the most disappointing shit in the world. like we can make the case rami Was the best performance in the category at the oscars but idek if I believe that anymore, given the fact that Vice was a movie i detested and Bale was still acting circles around Rami like staring wide-eyed at shit for two hours straight. not to Mention Bradley Cooper, who campaigned way too hard for Best Director when had he focused harder on trying to get Best Actor he would have been a shoo-in, and A Star is Born is Regrettably a movie that gets better every year in a way that BoRhap decidedly does not.

the globes are a joke at the best of times so the wins that night were pretty alright, but that Best Picture win and then subsequent oscar nom are just.....that chaps my ass my dudes. whole ass movie could have been written on a cocktail napkin like Showgirls (which is actually Way more fun to watch than BoRhap) 😘💃

and in regards to That 9/11 fic.....stay tuned lol

[lemmilemura]

Watching OOUIL

HEAVY SPOILER WARNING FOR LITERALLY THE ENTIRE SHOW I wrote down anytime I had important/sudden thoughts about stuff. Little warning, there is quite a lot of times I just simp over Simon, but what's new? There will be timestamps so you can go and look what happened to cause that reaction. Also since I was watching in one sitting and it was already past midnight and I was recovering from fever and tired and all that good stuff, towards the end and the last few episodes I didn't write down much. That is also the reason for the many, many typos xD I apologize

Episode 1

00:10 > literally just hearing Simon’s voice is already doing smth to me xD

00:22 > Simon honey I love you but that jacket was a CHOICE

00:50 > not the “I ship it” comment qwq

01:09 > god bronwyn's parents suck

01:26 > I only have my headphones on one ear and like Simon keeps talking and I never want him to stop xD

01:31 > Ah yes, the classic “ew our parents are kissing” teenager trope. just suck it up, Maeve

01:42 > i know, i know, i'm just being nitpicky, but Bronwyn’s phone says she had headphones connected? no she doesn’t

01:52 > if you ever see me smiling that wide while running, please assume I’ve been possessed, I probably have

02:02 > oh my god i can FEEL the sand in Copper’s shoes qwq

02:12 > Wildcats? isn't that like also a meme? like “What team? Wildcats!” idk I’ve only seen it a handful of times

02:46 > even if i hadnt read the book/had no idea what happens I’d still 100% know Cooper’s dad is gonna be an ass

03:21 > Addy is like, so naturally pretty qwq Girlie you don’t have to do all of this qwq I just wanna give her a hug man. And a gun so she can get rid of Jake. I’d help her hide the body too. Sorry, got a lil too into it there xD

03:28 > her outfit is soooo pretty tho I mean c’mon

03:44 > A bad love story? Like a… BAD ROMANCE?

03:47 > “Varsity skank squad” Damn Simon! Really going in on Addy, huh?

03:56 > the “well, you know” should NOT have affected me as much as it did xD

04:08 > Addy, remember that gun I talked about? Yeah, use it on your mom too while you’re at it

04:18 > god Jake is ugly. I’l sorry to any fans of his actor but damn. it really do be the basic white bois huh?

04:23 > you can see how uncomfy Addy is qwq

04:41 > “we’ll be quick” we get it, jake, you don’t last long

05:07 > TJ looks wise? no thanks. TJ being a dumbass? bonus points

05:10 > why does that chick look almost identical to Addy?

05:22 > Everyone wants to fuck a bad boy? Honey I want you. I mean if Simon isn’t a bad boy then what is he?

05:29 > “I’ve got so much dirt his probation officer is gonna bury him in it”? Simoooon, look at you with the metaphores

05:44 > Run bitch, ruuuuun! Or alternatively, “I’m fast as fuck boie!”

06:12 > God how I wish I was Janae right now……

06:17 > My god that shirt has a vneck… don’t be shy, take off the tshirt underneath…

06:39 > Lesbians?? In my tv show?? Fuuuck yeeeah!

06:45 > oh my god he’s wearing an earring… Quick, what’s the gay earring rule again? “Right ear means gay, eft means not gay but expressing feminine side” You heard it here first, folks, Simon is a secret Femboy xD

06:46 > these slowmo shottssssss I am living

07:16 > Simon, honey, that is such a bad idea to just have AboutThat open to anyone who flips open your laptop! C’mon, I thought you were smarter than this

07:21 > I would be looking at him the exact same way, Janae. 

07:27 > The smirk,??????? HELLO?????

07:42 > I’ve said it a lot and i will 100% say it again, but DAMN Simon is just so pretty qwq Perfect actor choice 10/10

07:44 > “She can’t prove it’s me” This school probably has security cameras, yes she’d know it’s you. But then again, if the school did have cameras, they’d have solved the mystery waaaay quicker.

07:49 > I am never going to emotionally recover from this

08:19 > he literally has “cold blue eyes” like in the book and that’s what made me immediately fall for him in the first place!!!!

08:23 > What the fuuuuuuuck :0

08:39 > “There is is… that damn smile”

08:45 > Love that she wrote Avengers but from what I can see they’re all DC. Great job, teach

09:17 > Just noticed Bronwyn’s necklace and damn is it ugly

10:02 > Bronwyn never did make it to Debate…

10:16 > no but why is that kinda cute? the way he’s tilting his body like a kid qwq

10:19 > :0 this is where the book starts!! THE COLD BLUE EYESSSSS

10:32 > Is Simon…. shorter than Bronwyn? Or is it just her shoes?? omg is he shmol qwq

11:02 > The way hes sitting, twiddling his fingers, I just, I’m dying

11:05 > then again, there’s probably a lot going through his head, isn’t there?

11:16 > Bronwyn please just stfu. Avery will not believe you. I know, cuz I’ve read the book

11:27 > Isn’t Bronwyn supposed to be the smart kid? Cuz that wasn’t that smart

11:40 > I love his personalityyyyy so sassy

12:25 > he knew she’d say that… he knew… 

12:33 > You can see it on his face qwq I hate this qwq

12:49 > Eggs instead of a carcrash? Weird choice but ok

13:17 > I mean he probably doesn’t have one so xD

13:18 > Nooooooo, he drank iiiitttt qwq

13:31 > It’s taking this long? How? Shouldn’t it happen immediately? Or is that cuz of the amount of water?

13:56 > Nooooooooooooooo qwq I can’t watch this, I’m just gonna start crying qwq

15:48 > I skipped ahead, I couldn’t watch that qwq Reading it is way easier than seeing it

15:54 > my god jake looks ridiculous xD

16:06 > Looked like he was dead? Honey he is!

16:27 > Keely is so pretty qwq

16:56 > They could 100% pass for a straight couple it’s wild

17:07 > Florence and the machine? Like FFXV Florence and the machine? :0000

17:17 > pffffff

17:41 > Bruh does she look okay? She just witnessed her classmate dying! She probably isn’t!

18:09 > He also has an earring?? dafuq

18:53 > Yeah it was!! Wait til you find out the backstory to it

19:00 > his side profile xDDD

19:15 > you can see the tension between hem, god damn

19:32 > Simon’s baaaaaag :0

20:28 > is he getting suspicious??

20:47 > how does her mother know? she a doctor or smth?

21:01 > god that “Bayview High School” could not look any faker xD

21:11 > Janaaaeeee qwq she needs a hug just as much as I do rn qwq

21:24 > The deathstareeeeeee :0 Janae

21:31 > Reading the book I never cared much for Janae, but actually seeing her so fucking sad and close to tears? It’s hitting

22:10 > QWQ I AM GOING TO CRY

23:32 > “Trauma bonding with Nate” I don’t even know this person’s name but I like their humor xD

26:41 > There is no way in hell they both look at eachother at the same time! That’s bull!

28:05 > That’s just creepy, man

28:40 > Sheetmusic? She plays an instrument besides piano? Huh

30:06 > Across the street you say?

30:24 > Okay, that was funny xD

31:13 > Nonnyyy, the icoonnn

31:49 > She iss!!

33:22 > STANLEYYYYYYY :DDDDD

33:38 > stanley is sooo judging him rn xD

33:44 > I forgot Stanley is his pfp xD

34:21 > she legit looks about 10 years older than him…

34:45 > Nuuuuuu Naaate :0

37:17 > Simon knows everything, Addy. Also TJ is such a sweetheart

39:31 > Ok, so, we watched the first 2 episodes in class a year ago and I fucking hate this part I get so much secondhand embarrassment so I’m sorry Janae but I’m gonna skip ahead

42:21 > Nooo, c’mon Nate! Don’t do this!

43:14 > oooooooooooh?

43:27 > Wait, so if Jake is in the pool he can’t have posted it, so it must have been Janae? If she had to write that my god poor girl qwq

44:43 > how tf did anyone get into the trunk? did she leave it unlocked? C’mon Bronwyn!

Total note count for episode 1: 96

Episode 2

00:37 > his hair is even more of a mess than usual xD

00:44 > Wait is this a flashback to when she cheated :000

00:49 > re really doesn’t

01:02 > please don’t fuck outside on the grass

01:07 > now THAT, is a view I really do not mind ;))))

01:5? > hair police? yours is literally the most basic hair ever, you have no right to talk

03:34 > shweeties

04:19 > is that a food truck right outside their school????

05:09 > yeowch

05:38 > the idea of Simon running a podcast, exposing ppl is actually a really fun concept xD

06:20 > not the contact name being “Asshole” xDDDD

06:55 > :00000000000000 Daaaaaaaaamn

07:36 > Nuuuu, Keely qwq babyyy

08:05 > i assume the teacher was turned around because that was so obvious addy!

08:20 > Bruh’s got a death note xDD he would be the type tho

08:56 > what was the notebook forrrrrrr Simoooonnn

10:00 > how tf did this random officer know that’s Addy?

11:58 > really? cmon now, thats so shitty xD

12:19 > more like Homiecide xD

13:42 > why tf is this mom reading AboutThat? xD

13:53 > HES THE MAYORS KID? Ooooh he got the moooooneeeeyyyy

15:02 > Addy……. qwq

16:09 > that was faaaaaast, coop xD

18:03 > :000000000000000

18:10 > Nooooooo, Coooooopppp qwq

20:52 > ok thats actuall kinda cute qwq can you imagine lil kid simon?

22:27 > Two late, two phone related detentions… interesting

24:07 > jis house is so prettyyyyy qwq I wanna live there!

24:16 > TINY SIMONNNNN OH MY GOD BABYYYYY QWQWQWQWQWQ

25:16 > Simon’s mom is fiiiiiiine, I see wher he get’s his good looks from xD

15:29 > Janaaaaaeeee qwq

26:26 > Simon in a suuuuiiittttt Lord have mercy!

26:38 > those fucking professionbal, model photographs xDDD

26:53 > How did she know where his room is? It’s a very very nice room tho, if I may

27:12 > wonder what that sign says…. also his bed looks nice! really comfy too :)

27:43 > look at that fucking setup man! daaaaaamn

27:50 > why is there fucking steps at the door??? xD

28:55 > can I just emphasize the fact his room looks so nice??

29:54 > yeeeeep he def got his looks from his mom, his dad is uglyy xD

30:11 > it would not, actually. not at all

31:25 > i dont think thats the best conversation starter, Maeve xD

32:08 > he did not go to hell! >:0

32:50 > A DRUMSET? AND A GUITAR????? HELLO WHERE IS THAT CONTENT?????

33:32 > Bronwyn can you stfuuuuuu you’re only making this worse

33:47 > atleast hes honest xD

35:07 > this house is so pretty qwq i am so jealous qwq

35:44 > “the incredible hair” pffff

37:56 > A, and I cannot stress this enough, WOOGA

38:59 > I’m gonna fucking scream he looks so goooooododdddd my lord i will not survive

41:22 > I am still not over that giant fucking picture of SImon in the background xD

42:46 > Girl the only thng you did was cheat ona  fucking test it’s not the end of the wrld!

46:48 > since when are full names used? wasnt it just initials in the book? now this is just evil, initials multiple ppl can have, but full names? C'mon dude!

47:25 > MAEVE??????? WhAT THE FUCK???

Total note count for episode 2: 53

Episode 3

00:17 > Keelyyyyy babyyy I love her qwq

00:47  > shes such a shweety qwq

00:59 > another PERFECT OUTFIT 10/10 MY GOD

01:04 > I don’t even know what to say at this point

01:38 > he diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid :)

02:14 > no you fucking dont!

02:55 > Addy is entering her girlboss ear and I love that for her

03:33 > bruh please just use a hairbrush xD

05:20 > its goin down!! hands are being thrown!!

06:39 > addy needs a hug qwq

07:42 > :0 escandalo!

09:10 > they kinda look like siblings wait i love it qwq

11:42 > the laptooooppppp :0

14:51 > okay Janae’s outfits are also really nice, i get why they were bffs xD

16:08 > :00000000000 MAEVEEEEEEEEE OH MY GOOOOOOOOOD

17:13 > why do literalyl all the parents in this suck?

17:39 > Addyyy what are you doing? 

17:53 > Addy! No!

19:21 > TJ looks like a kicked puppy qwq

21:14 > you didnt say it but your face sure did

22:26 > and another perfect outfit!

22:29 > he just keeps getting finer, huh?

22:47 > Daaaamn Simoooooon! :0

22:56 > he looks so ethereal, like an angel or god of some sort :0

23:15 > omg Simon is shmol qwq shmol bean

23:33 > the rings, the bracelets, the necklaces, LORD HAVE MERCY PLEASE

24:20 > NOT NATE :00000 NOOOOOO

29:17 > i love that Addy is dressing for herself now qwq

30:26 > Nooo, Coooperrrr qwq

31:18 > i know that was meant to be all angsty and stuff but it just looked so weird xD

33:56 > Awwwww, Janaaeee qwq

36:13 > WHAAAAAAAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUCK :000 I mean same, but still, I was NOT expecting that

36:53 > :0000000000000000000 my exact face rn

37:39 > oh yes we are bronwyn!

38:19 > DONT DO IT COOPER PLEASE QWQ

40:45 > There he is again, in that amazing outfit!

41:05 > his faaaaaaaaace oh my god cooper you have a death wish or something?

42:36 > out of all the 4 stories, bronwyns is the most boring to me xD

45:21 > “straight cosplay” pffffff

Total note count for episode 3: 39

Episode 4

00:31 > his outfits never miss! they’re always so good qwq

00:41 > I love that he’S smaller than atleast 3 of the 4 others xD

01:47 > STANLEY! :D 

03:20 > Janae with her hair down tho??????

13:33 > Stanley’s just listening in to all the drama xD

22:30 > how about Addy and Janae just get together? I would not complain xD

24:54 > “actual lizard” pffffff

26:13 > IT WAS JANAE???? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO QWQ

39:22 > Mf looks like a goddamn cryptid xD

41:32 > oh my god hes PISSED you can see it in his faceeee

44:19 > Maaaaaaaaaeve what are you doing????

44:50 > Its momther!

Total note count for epsiode 4: 12

Episode 5

02:00 > if I was sitting in Bronwyns spot I would not be able to focus at all xD

03:20 > Yes addy!!!! Looking good! rocking the short hair!

06:36 > where tf?

13:43 > wtf Cooper???

18:28 > Bronwyn can you not be an asshole for one episode please?

19:02 > MAEVE WAS WHAT???? TO SIMON??? IM SORRY????

21:29 > Bronwyyyyyyyyyyyn whyyyyyyyy oh my god! 

23:52 > they look like such lesbians and I am living for it

33:11 > and ANOTHER perfect fit from Simon, god damn!

39:52 > Please don’t leave Stan behind qwq

Total note count for episode 5: 10

Episode 6

01:07 > janaeeeeeeee that loooook I love itttt

4:31 > “then one summer he got abs” pfffff

04:52 > Janae gave him the idea?????

16:35 > Members of Simon’s what????

21:33 > Awwwww, wait, that’s so cute qwq I knew Janae couldn’t be straight when she dresses like that xD

22:03 > Their dynamic is just chefs kiss xD

22:26 > You can make a move on my anyday xD

33:10 > :0000000000000 NOW THAT IS NOT SOMETHING I EXPECTED TO SEE BUT I AM VERY MUCH WELCOMING IT

36:14 > why are they fucking burning the epi-pen?

37:16 > thats wierdly sweet qwq

37:29 > I know I’m just repeating myself at this point but Simon really does have the best outfits

37:48 > Ayooo? AYO???

38:37 > What if Janae, Maeve and Simon just get in a poly relationship? Problem solved xD

38:51 > His humourrrrr

40:00 > LESBIAAAAAAAAAAAAANSSSSSSSSSSS

40:25 > AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCK YEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH

Total note count for episode 6: 16

Episode 7

09:08 > The lighting in all of these flashback Simon scenes is just so good qwq

30:32 > i would also 100% be zooming in on that xD

31:43 > that’s boat racism xD

31:47 > again, his humourrrrr top tier

Total note count for episode 7: 4

Episode 8

00:17 > I don’t want it to be over yet qwq I want more Simon qwq

03:06 > that is such a simple signature are you kidding me?

11:29 > I seriously need to calm down xD I can’t keep reacting like this any time SImon is on screen xD

11:41 > THE LIGHTING AND WINDOWS AND FRAMING AND OMG

12:08 > pfff the sheer “what the fuck” on his face xD

15:30 > AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH one day I will just die because Simon keeps looking that good!!!!

16:40 > do I even have to say anything anymore? like at all?

17:19 > “the magic words”? are you for real xD

25:39 > so him having a lizard is a reason you like him?

27:48 > lookatem with his fucking headset xD you know he streams and just annihilates little kids on vc xD

28:16 > wait so… Simon… didnt even want to kill himself? so really Jake is the reason this all happened…

41:30 > WHAT THE FUCK IS GOJNG ON?????

42:28 > So Jake… killed… Simon? Jake is the reason he’s dead, Simon didn’t want to kill himself Jake killed him! Holy fuck this is different than the book…

42:52 > God Janae looks TERRIFYING

43:24 > YEEEEEES JANAEEEEEEEEE KILL HIIIMMMMMMMMMM GET REVENGEEEEE

44:11 > I’m not even remotely sad about this. I’m happy, really

44:21 > I still cannot believe that JAKE is the reason… welp, I know what headcanons I’m making next

44:29 > …

44:42 > YES AND HE SHOULD HAVE

45:05 > I AM ACTUALLY CRYING STOP HE LOOKS SO TERRIFIED NO

45:35 > now you will cuz YOURE OTH FUCKING DEAD

50:58 > Now what if Simon actually didn’t die? Like imagine that, Jake’s plan all going to waste!

Total note count for episode 8: 25

Total note count: 255

Welp, there you have it xD I put them all together because posting one post for every episode or a pair of episodes, eventhough I'd have to split episode 1 in half, would just be too many notifications xD

So here you go, I hope you enjoy my thoughts while watching OOUIL. :D

[purplesurveys]

1733

1 - When you wake up, do you get up straight away or do you lie around in bed for a while? Unless I overslept and am extremely late to something, I'm horrible at waking up. I'm definitely the type to take my time before getting up.

2 - Who was the last person you video-called with? Have you done this more often since COVID hit? I don't usually do video calls with anyone but the last people I did one with were Angela and Reena. COVID didn't affect my video-calling habits whatsoever – I hated it before the pandemic, during, and still do.

3 - How many times a week do you go out for food or drink? On average? Less than one. I only do so a few times a month because I try to watch how much I spend.

4 - Do you prefer getting takeaway or actually sitting in a restaurant and eating your meal there? I like being in restaurants. Delivery is fine too but it will sometimes affects the quality of the food once it gets to me – like a burger arriving smushed or rice already being cold. It's convenient but has its downsides.

5 - Where’s your favourite place to get takeaway coffee (or whatever your drink of choice is)? I like Starbucks or any place with a Spanish latte.

6 - Do you tend to keep your phone on silent, vibrate or loud? Silent. I have work calls all day long and I know how irritating it gets when someone's phone goes off during these meetings, so I keep my own quiet.

7 - If you have pets, when was the last time one of them annoyed you? What happened? Cooper caught a plastic bag earlier and ran away/went crazy with it. Happened this morning. Normally I would've chased him and thought of a trick to make him drop whatever's in his mouth, but I was already late for work so I just let him have his fun. I think my sister ultimately discarded the at-that-point-destroyed plastic once Cooper got bored from it.

8 - When was the last time you went into a bookshop? July – I had to pick up a book I pre-ordered.

9 - What was the last thing you ordered off Amazon? I have never even been on Amazon.

10 - When was the last time you took a dog out for a walk? Is this your own dog or did you borrow someone else’s? Couple of weeks ago. I only ever walk my own dogs.

11 - What jewellery do you have on at the moment? A necklace.

12 - Do you have any products in your hair right now? What are they? Nopes.

13 - Have you ever used a VPN to access foreign content online? No. I know I'm probably just being uneducated hahaha but the concept of a VPN just seems so sketchy to me. Like I feel like the moment I use one, the police will be at my ass. I've never used one before and not sure if I ever will.

14 - Who was the last artist you listened to? Is this someone you’re a fan of? That would be RM, and yes I'm a massive fan.

15 - What was the last thing you had to drink? Coffee.

16 - When was the last time you cooked something for the first time? Did it work out the way it was supposed to? I don't cook.

17 - Black cats are considered to be bad luck - is this a superstition that you’ve ever believed in? No. I don't believe in superstition.

18 - Would you ever eat blue cheese or do you find the idea of eating mould to be pretty repulsive? It's fine, but only in moderation. I also would not say it's my favorite.

19 - Do you visit the dentist every six months like you should? I visit every one or two months because braces.

20 - How old were you when you first used the internet? Was it dial-up or did you have access to proper broadband? We had initial access to the internet starting when I was 3, which was around the time my dad started to work abroad and email was the best way for my parents to regularly correspond. I didn't access the internet, though – there was not much a kid my age could do on the computer at the time.

I started using the interet regularly by the time I was 10, when my dad had a broadband set-up installed at home. The way it started wasn't even technically 'wi-fi' yet – we had to connect our laptop directly to the router if we wanted internet, so only one person could connect at a time. I don't remember when it changed but anyway, eventually, we started to get to enjoy wireless the same way we do now.

21 - Are you old enough to remember using floppy discs? I definitely am, but I never used one. I'm old enough to merely remember the concept.

22 - When was the last time you purchased an actual DVD or CD? I pre-ordered Layover last month.

23 - Do you shave? Which body parts and how often? Underarms and legs – once a week for both. I work from home and don't always schedule anything out, so there's no point in making it a daily routine. It was definitely different pre-pandemic though as I'd shave everyday.

24 - What’s your favourite season, and what are some of your favourite things about that season? I don't experience the four seasons so I've never had a favorite.

25 - When was the last time you burned yourself? I've had hot water droplets spill on me recently while making coffee, but I don't think I've ever burned myself any more badly than that.

26 - Have you ever been the victim of a theft or robbery? What was stolen? Did the police ever catch the person who did it? Never been.

27 - What was the last TV show you discovered that you really liked? What was it that got you to watch it in the first place? That would be DP! It's a K-drama that tackles bullying among many other issues within the country's mandatory military enlistment. I honestly first heard of it from Namjoon who had recommended it, but I found the plot in itself compelling so I didn't hesitate in starting.

28 - Have you seen any of the live-action Disney remakes? Which one is your favourite? What about your least favourite? I am not a fan of the concept at all. Maybe I'm jaded? maybe it's because I wasn't really raised on Disney as a kid? but the live-action thing never excited me and the hype has always felt...a tad bit inauthentic, like they're doing these remakes for the sole purpose of getting more money out of me. That said, I've never seen any of the remakes and don't really have plans to.

29 - Do you have any exciting plans for tomorrow? If not, how are you planning to spend your day? All I want to do is spend the entire day at home.

30 - Would you ever keep a working dog as a pet? Do you think it’s fair to keep dogs like huskies in flats when it’s so different to their natural environments? If I had a serious, valid need for one, I don't see why I wouldn't. As for the second question, I think adjusting your environment and providing stimulation for your dogs do go a long way. Huskies are very common in the Philippines – where our climate is humid and warm all-year long – but owners adjust by having them in air-conditioned rooms all day, making sure their water is iced, etc. Same nature of adjustments go for other breeds. It's only fair when you do your job as a pet owner.

[just-open-the-fridge-yo]

What Is It?

lees + lers (switches) Midoriya, Bakugou, & Iida

Summary: Bakugou and Iida are convinced they know Midoriya pretty well, but when they discover that Midoriya has a secret he’s unwisely failed to share with them this entire time…being the good friends they are, they must uncover the truth.

Words: 6k

A/N: Here’s a fic I thought of a while ago, and I’m just now posting it 😁 There should be more fics with these three because they're so chaotic FUN together!

——-

“Bakugou, that doesn’t make sense. Part of this slide's information clearly belongs on the second slide.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It does. It’s packed full of information, so we need to break it up a little. Keeping it on the first slide will overwhelm our classmates and discourage their attention.”

“Then the losers just won’t know how to deal with the situation if it comes. They’d better put in the effort to keep up.” Bakugou shrugged and kept typing. “And like I’m taking organizational orders from someone who keeps telling us to put the dishes in alphabetical order, whatever the hell that means.”

Iida glanced up from his laptop, looking a little less than pleased. “If you’d been listening before, you would’ve known that alphabetical order means dish size order. I wanted to make kitchen item terminology in the dorms more exciting. I mentioned that over ten times.”

“Whatever. That's the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Can’t believe Aizawa forced me into this lame-ass group with you nerds.”

“…If you're going to insist on being so rude, maybe Aizawa Sensei would be happy to remove you from the group,” Iida muttered.

“Tch. Of course you’d say that now, once I’ve already pulled most of this project’s load for you slackers.”

“Oh, you have not.”

Deku squinted harder at his laptop screen where he sat on his bed, trying to ignore Bakugou and Iida. They’d worked ahead of schedule, finished their project paper yesterday, and had been working on a very long slide presentation for nearly two hours. It was evening, they were getting irritable, and Deku felt a headache coming on. He peeked down at the two sitting across from each other on his All Might rug. “Uh…hey, guys, maybe we should—”

“ —to place the bullet points by - hey!” Iida gawked at their shared Google Slides presentation on his computer. “Will you - will you please stop changing my edits?”

“I’m the one who wrote the damn sentence. I worded it that way for a reason,” Bakugou growled. “Change it one more time and you’re dead.”

“But, the wording is awkward…” Iida sighed, rubbing his temples and lowering his voice. “I’m not trying to argue, Bakugou, I just want to make sure we get a good grade. And spending all this time learning about the potential constipation woes of eating quirk-enhancing cabbage for our project is draining enough as it is. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner we‘ll be done,” he said firmly.

Bakugou couldn’t have looked more bored. “Yeeep. I’ll cooperate soon as you stop giving shitty suggestions that keep screwing up the presentation’s flow.”

“My suggestions enhance the flow! You agree, right, Midoriya?”

“Oh yeah! They do… But…I also think the slide info placement for the first two slides could go on the first or second slide, either way…just as long as the stuff on the third slide stays in the same spot, I guess,” Deku said with a tired smile. “But we’ve been working really hard so far and still have a few days before presenting. I say we take a break for now, maybe regroup after dinner - yeah, sounds like a good idea to me, hah-hah…” He started slowly closing his laptop.

Bakugou rolled his eyes. “Translation: Iida, I don’t wanna hurt your feelings. But all your suggestions suck, you’re pissing me off, Kacchan’s right again, and you're, for the seventy-third time, wrong.”

“Nonsense! Midoriya is always honest with me! If he were thinking that, he’d just tell me!”

“How would you know that, huh? You carry around a lie detector?”

“A lie detector?!”

“You heard me! The nerd has a field day beating around the bush, so of course he’s not just gonna—”

“O-Okay, guys, please stop fighting—”

“Shut up, Deku!”

“Don’t tell him to be quiet! And no, I don’t have a lie detector, but now you’re questioning Midoriya’s integrity?” Iida crossed his arms, exasperated. “You clearly don’t know him as well as I thought you did.”

“Please. I grew up with the idiot. Not that I’d call it a great experience.” Bakugou’s glower intensified. “And what? You think you know him any better?”

“Well, I certainly don’t know everything, but perhaps I know the more recent version of him better than you, considering you often seem to avoid him like the plague.”

“Psh. Sure.” Bakugou kept his stare on his screen as he googled an image for a slide. “Bet you don’t even know the basics, like his birthday.”

“I don't? I would say it’s July 15th, but maybe I’m wrong.”

The blond slowed his browsing, then scoffed. “Like I'm impressed. Everyone knows that. I was just testing you. If you’d missed that one, it woulda been beyond pathetic. But no one knows his favorite col-”

“Pardon my interruption, but I believe it’s purple.”

Bakugou paused but recovered with a snarl at the little smirk that crept onto Iida’s face.

“That’s…true,” Deku mumbled, flattered. “Wow, Iida. I didn’t think you’d actually remember that.”

Iida looked shocked. “You really think I'd be that forgetful? You wound me, Midoriya.”

“Well, none of you extras, not even you, knows his favorite food.”

“Food? Isn’t it katsudon-”

“What I meant was-” Bakugou said through clenched teeth. “-none of you know his favorite song - from when he was a kid.”

“Um...” Iida put the tip of a pencil to his chin. “Is it ‘Pull Me to the Sun’ by Tatsuo Mi-”

“SHUT UP, FOUR EYES! JUST - JUST SHUT YOUR DAMN SMUG MOUTH, YA GOT THAT?!” Bakugou exploded. “HOW’D YOU EVEN KNOW THAT?!”

“Oh. Well, that…really was just a lucky guess,” Iida admitted a bit sheepishly. “Midoriya told me it’s currently his favorite song. I had no idea it was his favorite childhood song as well.”

Bakugou whirled on Deku. “AND WHY THE HELL DO YOU STILL LIKE THAT CRINGEY SONG ANYWAY, DEKU?! IT’S TRASH!”

“Kacchan, calm down, okay? I-I don’t know, it’s just a great song.” Deku hesitated. “But wait…you actually remembered it, too…?”

“‘Course I did. And only cuz you’d never shut up about it. Sang it so much, I’m scarred for life.”

Deku nodded as Bakugou resumed his aggressive typing with a scowl stuck on his face.

“Like I care. Everyone knows everything about Deku anyway, so you’re not special, four eyes. He’s an open book. A stupid rock could know everything about him.”

Deku was a little offended by that. “Hey…that’s not completely true, Kacchan. You don’t know everything about me,” he said quietly.

“Oh, really,” Bakugou said sarcastically. “Like what?”

Deku’s gaze slid to his ceiling. Well, now that he asked. “Uhh...something like…oh! When it comes to ice cream flavors—”

“What, your favorite?” Bakugou’s eyes narrowed. “Yup. Know that, too.”

“…You do?”

“Vanilla.”

“Nuh-uh...” Deku shook his head with a little chuckle. “Actually…it’s not.”

“The hell do you mean it’s not? Yeah, it is. You told me one time.”

“Huh? I don’t remember that. I’ve actually never liked vanilla ice cream. Maybe that was someone else?”

Iida glanced up from his laptop again when Bakugou remained silent. “So, is it…chocolate, then? Everyone likes chocolate ice cream to some degree,” he said.

“Chocolate’s okay, but nope! I could take it or leave it.”

There was more silence.

And more.

“Quit playing games, Deku. What is it?”

Deku blinked. “Wait. You...seriously wanna know?”

“Hell no, but since you brought it up, might as well say it!” Bakugou sneered.

The green-haired hero noticed Iida was also watching him so attentively, it was a little comical, and he found their curiosity amusing as he tried to look serious. “Wellll, if I told you two everything about me, I wouldn’t be that interesting anymore, right? Guess I’m not as much of an open book as you thought, Kacchan.”

“Dammit, you nerd, stop acting so high and mighty! What, you think you’re better than me just cuz I don’t know your fuckin’ favorite ice cream flavor? Hah?!”

“Wait! I-I never said that—”

“Nnnnrrr! I don’t care what you said, just say it!”

Deku pressed his lips together, unable to help the faint surge of annoyance he felt at his rival’s tone. “Okay, Kacchan, well, you know, maybe some things I might just wanna keep a see-wahaaiiiEEE-!”

Bakugou shot up and launched at his rival with such force, they toppled from his bed to the floor, the momentum rolling them to the other side of the room. “Well, it’s too bad this isn’t a secret, huh?! Too bad I know—” His fingers sank into his sides and tummy. “— how ridiculously ticklish you are. And it’s all I need to know for you to spill everything!”

“Whahat - Kahahaha!” Midoriya burst out laughing with flailing limbs. “Ahahahaha! Kacchahahan!”

“Spit it out, or suffer the consequences.”

Iida recovered from the shock of the crash with wide eyes. “Bakugou, no! I-If he really doesn’t want to tell us the flavor, then-” he trailed off as he registered the scene and realized. He’s not really… He’s just…

“I’ll nehehever tell yohohohou!”

“You must wanna die then.”

Oh, Iida thought. Witnessing the two being playful together was new to him, so he felt slightly hesitant about what to do. But he found that Deku’s melodic laughter that lit up the room was actually starting to brighten his own darkened mood a little, and a fond smile slowly grew on his face as he stood and approached.

“Y’know, Bakugou…if you’re trying to take on the role of a villainous interrogator, your technique is…well, honestly, terrible.”

“What?” Bakugou continued his tickling and glared up at Iida. “Not like you could do it any better.”

“Really? Well, I know that for someone with such a strong resolve like Midoriya, you’ll need a more…effective and drastic strategy,” Iida said solemnly while pushing up his glasses.

“…Oh yeah?” Now Bakugou slowed his attack, a sinister smirk appearing. “Drastic strategy, huh?”

Iida nodded. “That is if the hero is up for such a daunting challenge.”

“Dohoho your wohorst!” Deku declared, continuing to roll around.

Iida smirked and knelt down above Deku’s head, pulled out his phone to set a timer, and cleared his throat. “All right, then. Five minutes!” he announced in a villainous, melodramatic tone. “Five before backup arriv—”

“You’re joking.” And just like that, Bakugou’s amusement was gone. “We’re doing twenty at least.”

“T-Twenty?” Iida broke character. “Absolutely not! That’s far too long.”

“It’s not. Five minutes is a joke. Not enough time.”

“But, twenty is unnecessary.” Iida paused. Thought for a second. “Very well, we'll settle this with a compromise.”

“Tch.”

“Six minutes.”

“You even know what a compromise is, moron?!”

“Six is… Yeah, six is…that’s cool with me,” Deku tried to mumble nonchalantly while hoping it wasn’t obvious he was filled with childlike excitement.

Iida nodded at Deku with a small smile. “Okay. If you’re alright with it. Besides, with my strategy, this won’t take long.”

“Hmph. It’d better not.” Bakugou moved to straddle Deku’s waist.

Iida slipped into character again. “So! Six minutes before backup arrives to rescue you, hero! But until then, I’m afraid you’re at the mercy of my accomplice, Bakugou and I as we are forced to take on the personification of evil since—”

“We’re not villains, dammit.”

“Right! As we’re forced to take on the personification of…of extremely nosy friends since you—”

“I’m not his friend.”

“—are so foolishly willing to endure. So, I have a question for you. Do you like spiders?”

Deku looked up at Iida. “Uh, yea- I-I mean…no…?”

“Oh, really? It's strange that you don't, because the infamous tickle spider says he’s been dying to pay you a visit,” Iida said as he took Deku’s wrists in one hand, pulled them over his head, and used the other to start spidering from his wrists slowly down his arm. “He really likes you! Or more like, it seems he likes your giggles more than anything else!”

“Hhhmmph-!” Deku clamped his mouth shut as Iida’s crawling spider switched randomly from one arm to the other every couple seconds in its descent, feeling like ghost tickles. Light, gentle, and ticklishly maddening. His cheeks grew warmer with the effort to stay silent, but less than seven seconds passed before unstoppable giggles began bubbling out. “Pfffaheehehaha! W-Wahahait! Okahaheheeha - okahahay, thahat reheheheally tihihickles, Iihiidahaha!”

Iida raised his eyebrows. “It does? It’d be wise of you to tell us the flavor then, hero!”

“Nahahahe - nehehever!”

“Hm. You do know where the spider's going, don’t you?” Iida asked quietly.

The spider kept up its attack down his arms, tickling more the closer it got to his underarms, and Deku giggled more frantically with widening eyes. “Nohoho, plehehease, nohohot thehere!”

“THEN SPILL IT, HERO!” Iida bellowed so dramatically, it lowkey made Bakugou jump a little. “Here, I’ll even help you out a bit. Is it banana ice cream?”

“N-Nohoho!”

“Chocolate chip?”

The spider was passing the crook of his elbow. “Nahahaho!”

“Green tea? Or it must be cookie dough, then.”

“Iidahaha!” The spider was mere inches from one of his armpits now, and Deku squeezed his eyes shut. “Nahahaha! Nohohone o-of thohohossse!”

“Wrong answer!”

“EEAHHahahaha!” Deku squealed and jerked when the spider sprang to his neck instead, creating ticklish shockwaves that caused hysterical giggles while he scrunched his shoulders. “AHAhahaha! IIHIHIdahaha - cohohome ohohon - nahahat the neheheck - i-it tickles so bahad!” he pleaded. “Ehehehe! P-PLEEhehehease!”

“Oh? Didn’t think it would tickle this much?” Iida questioned. “Looks like you underestimated your sensitivity! Should’ve considered that before daring to hide such invaluable info from us! Now, I’ll give you another chance. Is it chicken-flavored?”

“Hahahahuh?!” Deku squeaked, grinning wider through his bubbly giggles. “Thahat’s grohohohohoss!”

Iida gasped. “You fiend of a hero! That just so happens to be my favorite ice cream flavor, yet you judge it so harshly? Have you even tried it?”

“Whahahaha? Why wohould-? N-Nohoho wahahahahay!”

“How dare you!” Iida threw both hands down over Deku’s head to lightly scribble and dig into his tummy, but he was so ticklish that even that triggered a wild shrieky giggle fit as he grabbed onto Iida’s arms with his legs flying all over the place.

“HAHAHehehe! IihihiYAHAHahahaha!”

“HEY, FOUR EYES! Quit messing around and take this seriously!!” Bakugou shouted with a twitching eye as Iida snapped his head up to look at him, almost as if he forgot the blond was even there, watching. “You call any of your crap an effective, drastic strategy?!?! The nerd’s not supposed to be having fun, he’s supposed to be crying!”

“Oh. I’m just finding it a bit difficult because…well, I’m tickling him!” Iida chuckled, no longer withholding his playful smile as he tickled around Deku’s neck again. “Besides, my strategy is working. It’s called slowly breaking the hero down. If you were to tire him out too quickly in true interrogation, he’d lose consciousness and be of no use to us. He’ll tell soon enough.”

Bakugou’s frown deepened. “Yeah, right. That’s the most cliché and ineffective strategy I’ve ever seen in my life, if you can even call it that. Thanks for wasting my time. Just don’t get in my — stop kneeing me in the back, Deku!!” Bakugou got off Deku’s waist to sit on his shins, and scratch into both his feet. “This is what you get for trying to give me back problems.”

“KACCHAHahahahan! I trihihied not to! I’m sohohorry!” The mix of harder and softer tickles from them both at once was surprisingly impactful, and Deku became unaware of how much or how little time was passing. Still, he held on.

“Ready to talk, hero?” Iida asked eventually over Deku’s laughter, and the boy just shook his head.

“Sadly, I’ve got several more questions for you, then. Does it tickle more when I do this, this, this, or this, oh, or this?” Iida took his wrists again while the fingers of his other hand poked and wiggled into random spots, under his arms, along his ribs and sides, each poke’s location unpredictable. “What tickles more, hmm? What tickles more?”

“It ahahall tihihickles! Iihihi - staHAHA - stahahahap ahahasking the sahahahame quehehehestion!” Deku cried as Iida started poking along his collarbone, and Bakugou more harshly squeezed his knees and thighs, making him laugh harder as his face grew rosier. “Iihihida - Kahahacchan, plehehehease - kahahahaha-! NooohoHOHO!”

“No? Why are you laughing so much? Poor hero! We’re barely doing anything!”

“Hah. Right. Deku’s too ticklish for his own good.”

Iida smiled at Bakugou. “Yes, yes, devastatingly ticklish! You’re no match for us. I admire your strong will, hero, but I’m afraid that barely two minutes have passed, and you still have plenty more minutes left… Oh, right, unless you tell the truth, of course! Muahahaha!” Iida erupted with melodramatically maniacal laughter, emphasizing the sound with each poke and tickle he gave to Deku who only laughed more hysterically as a result. “Muahahaha - hah-hah!”

“Iiiihiidahahahaha!”

“Kn-Knock it off, you-!” Deku quieted down a little since Bakugou stopped tickling; a hand was sealed over the blond’s mouth as he trembled. Finally, after several moments, he removed his hand with a growl. “That’s it, I’ve just about had it! You’re acting like a complete dumbass, and it’s pissing me off!!”

Iida stopped his tickling as well with furrowed brows. “What are you talking about?”

Bakugou shot his accomplice the most dangerous death glare. “Don’t you dare play dumb. Don’t expect me to take you seriously. You can’t expect Deku to take us seriously when you frickin’- you—”

“Oh, you mean when I laugh like - muahahahaha - haa?” Iida grinned when Bakugou violently slapped both hands over his mouth this time and muffled giggles slipped from behind them as he shook. “Bakugou, how mean! And here I thought I was menacing!”

It wasn’t long before Midoriya’s laughter joined Bakugou’s, and instantly Bakugou tried his best to look murderous again. “And what’re you laughing about, Deku?”

“Nohohothing! It’s...just that I haven’t heard you laugh like that in a while.” Deku smiled warmly. “I just forgot how contagious it is.”

Light red tinged Bakugou’s cheeks and ears.

Silence.

“SHUT UP! So, you’re making fun of me now?!”

“I doubt it. It’s quite a sound,” Iida said.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?! You got a death wish?”

“What? No! I’m just saying it’s a wonderful sound! All laughter is, unless it’s truly maniacal, of course,” Iida insisted while gesturing with an arm.

If looks could kill... “Don’t lie to me! And stop looking at me like that, Deku! You’re still making fun of me in your mind - I can tell by the gleam in your eye!”

“H-Huh? A glea - no, I promise I don’t have a GLEEHAHHEHE!” Deku shrieked as Bakugou clawed ruthlessly into his tummy.

“Yep, definitely making fun of me. Pathetic. Don’t even have the decency to stop laughing,” Bakugou said, smirking.

“Hey - hold on, wait, wait, Bakugou- y-you- wait- you’re ruining my strategy!” Iida protested.

“I told you your strategy sucks, and we’ve only got—” Bakugou’s eyes could‘ve popped out of their sockets when he saw the phone showed they had a little over two minutes left. “Four eyes, look how much time you wasted!”

“Me? You’re the one that stopped tickling him first! And my strategy was working fi—”

“KahahaNaH- WAIIHAHAHAHAHA!” Deku screeched as Bakugou wildly tickled his ribs then dug under his arms that Iida forgot he was still holding up.

“Forget that. This strategy makes him cry with laughter if you do it right. That’s all the strategy we need. Tell us the flavor, Deku, or you won’t survive these last two minutes!”

Less than two minutes, Deku thought through the tickly haze. It was doable. He couldn’t help but feel a bit proud of himself despite—

“AhahaHAHAHA! WAHAHAIT, KACCHAHAHAN! Nohot -THEHERE!”

“Yes, here. You knew it was only a matter of time. Pff…calling myself being nice before…shoulda done this a long time ago.” Bakugou’s thumbs kneaded warningly into his hip bones, and even that tickled so much that already Deku fell into stronger hysterics.

“NOHOHOHO, PLEHEASE, KAHACCHAHAN!”

“Talk.”

“I CAHAHAHAN’T!”

Bakugou sped up his fingers. “Of course you can’t, you will!”

Deku bumped his shaking head against the floor. “I - EHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Bakugou, I’m telling you that isn’t going to work! Even with the remaining time, we’ve got to be a bit more patient, or else we won’t—”

“OKAHAHAHAHAY! KAHAHA - STAAHAHAHAHAHAHAP! S-STRAHAHAWBERRY!”

The green-haired teen panted as Bakugou ceased the interrogation. Fifty-two seconds to spare. He looked at Iida triumphantly. “Sorry, what was that?”

The class rep was speechless. “Ah. Strawberry,” he finally murmured, astonished. He looked away with a sigh. “Well…I suppose your strategy—”

“St…strawberry...ihihi…is actually myyhehee…least favorite flavor.”

Iida’s expression contorted into one of horror when he looked up from Deku’s bright, dopey grin to meet Bakugou’s eyes and…disturbingly calm face.

“M-Midoriya! Why on earth would you dare to—”

“AHHHAAHAAAH! NAHAHAHAHEHEE! STAAHAHAHAP KAAACCHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“You like that?” Bakugou drilled and squeezed his hips like no tomorrow. “This’ll teach you to make a fool of your interrogators, nerd. Should’ve known, his stupid endurance is way too damn high to just give in so fast—”

Iida let go of his friend’s wrists, and Deku held onto Bakugou’s and tossed his head back with shrill laughter. “Midoriya, you’ve got to think rationally! A-A villain would likely end you immediately for such poorly timed wit!”

“Poorly timed?! That was a thousand percent intentional - now he’s gonna pay for it! You think it’s a game? You think it’s funny, hah? You think you can make a game of your interrogators?! Answer me, Deku!”

“KAHACCHAHAN - BAHA IT IHIHIS A GAHAHAEEE! AHAHAHA- PPFF -! A GAHAHAHAHAHAHE!”

“None of this is a game! None of it!” There was a little under thirty seconds left and Bakugou roared to the high heavens. “I’m through being nice, dammit! Tell us, Deku! Tell us!!”

“NAAHAHAHANAHAHA WAHAHEHEHEEHEHEEY Y-YAHAHAHEHEHEEE!”

“Bakugou, careful! It isn’t our job to kill the hero!”

“He’s still breathing, isn’t he?!”

“Um…” Iida watched cautiously as Deku’s laughter went silent momentarily before more pierced their ears. “Yes, but…”

“Chill, rep. You’re too nice to him sometimes. I’ve done this a bajillion times, so back off, all right? Trust me. He’s not gonna die,” Bakugou said with an eye roll before tickling harder. “NOW DIE, YOU STUPID EXTRA! DIIEE!”

“I-IIHIDA, IHIHI’M OKAHAHAYHEHEE!” Deku assured, sounding like he was on some bumpy tickle roller coaster. The electric tickly feelings shooting through him were exhilarating but as the long seconds ticked on, he knew he wouldn’t be able to take much more as tears of mirth started welling in his eyes. “OKAHA- OKAHAY, IHIT’S AHAHAHAHAHA! IHIHIT’S-!”

“SHUT UP AND TELL ME THE FLAVOR, DEKU!”

“I-IHIHIHIHIT’S-”

“I WON’T LOSE TO YOU, YOU HEAR ME?! I WON’T LOSE TO YOU, YOU PATHETIC LOSER!”

“DAHAHAHAHAHEHE! SHEEHEHEHEHEHEEZZ!”

“Cheese…?”

“AAAHHRRGHH, DAMMIT!!” Bakugou screeched like an animal. “THAT’S IT!!” Nearly in a blind rage, he caught sight of the time on the phone that was under less than five seconds and grabbed it.

“Bakugou?!!”

“You stupid, stubborn little-!” He pushed the time back and watched the seconds shoot up until the phone was out of his reach in Iida’s hand, and he whipped his head up, frothing at the mouth. “The hell?! Give it here, four eyes!”

“Sorry, but I won’t allow it! Now you’re just cheating!”

“Cheating my ass! Your shitty interrogation technique wasted time, plus, there’s no way anyone would be there to save him in six minutes! Give it!”

“No!” Iida said sternly. “And besides, I think he was about to—”

“Whose side are you on, anyway? Wait - you’ve been on his side all along, haven’t you?!”

“On his side-?”

“That explains everything! You - hoho - hnnggrrr!”

“Baku - what do you think you’re - dah!” Iida was too slow for the fired up boy who jumped over Deku to tackle him, grabbing for the phone as they rolled around, grunting, and Iida pushed Bakugou’s chest with his free hand. “Cut it out!”

“Hand it over!”

“We’re supposed to be a team! How dare you attack your own teammate!”

“I’m not attacking a teammate, I’m attacking a traitor!” Bakugou thundered. “Gimme the phone or die!”

“I’m not a traitor! And it’s my phone - ow- watch it-! S-Stop being so childish - listen!” Iida yelled, trying to be heard over Bakugou's painfully loud snarling and quickly losing patience as he further lifted the phone and Bakugou swung after it. “AS ASPIRING PRO HEROES, WE MUST STRIVE TO HANDLE INEVITABLE DISAPPOINTMENTS IN A FAR MORE MATURE MANNER - BEING SLOW TO LOSE PATIENCE WHILE REMAINING CALM, COOL, AND COLLECTED WITH QUIET VOICES AND AN OPTIMISTIC ATTITUDE! AT LEAST ACCEPT THAT WE LOST WITH SOME LEVEL OF HONOR!”

“LIKE HELL I’M JUST GONNA LET—HNnhhnmnrrrgh!” Bakugou was enveloped in a side hug that knocked him far to the side and he landed on his stomach with a knee in his back. “Agh - hey! Get offa me! Deheku-!” He clamped his mouth shut when pressure squeezed up and down the backs of his ribs, and he struggled fiercely, but the awkward way he was pinned made it hard. “You’re not suppohohosed to get f-freehee! Gehehet the hehell ohohoff, y-you idiot!”

“Buhut, you really were just acting like a villain, Kacchan, and you let your guard dohohohown! I had to!” Deku was still a little red-faced and loopy from the tickles. “And now I have to take you down! Surrender!”

“Pfft - surrender? In your dreams!”

“Okay!”

“Hold it - I swear - don’t you dahaHAHAHARE YOU- STAahaHACK DEHEHEHEHEHEHEKUU!” Bakugou roared with laughter when his rival targeted the top of his left set of ribs. When he reached up to try blindly shoving the hand away from behind, it just allowed Deku to take his arm and lift it further with more access to the spot, and his laughter doubled as he slammed his free fist on the floor. “GAHAHA! YOHOHOU ARE SOHOHOHOHO DEHEHEAD!”

“Yeah? I still feel alive right now!” Deku teased and wiggled harder as Bakugou screeched curses and death threats between peals of wild laughter. But the freckled boy faltered when he noticed Iida sitting up, slowly readjusting his glasses and straightening his wrinkled shirt. Then Deku smirked. “Don't think about it. Stay back, Ii- I mean interrogator!”

“Normally I’d be distressed that my accomplice has been taken down, but my allegiance belongs to those who help me out.” Iida was also smirking. “It seems a certain someone’s brought this upon himself, so, it looks like you do have the right to admit defeat, traitor!”

“I’M NAHAHahaha!” Bakugou giggled when Deku switched to skittering his nails along a sensitive spot at the back of his neck. “I’m nohohot the trahaitor, you are! It wahas in your plahan a-all alohohohong to have Deku attahahack me, wahahasn’t it!”

Iida stared wide eyed at the horrid accusation before a playful smirk returned. “Well, I don’t mean to brag, but maybe I do consider myself a crafty mastermind! Muahahahaha!”

“Noho, shuhuuhut - I w-wihIHILL dehehestroy yohohou!” Bakugou warned, trying desperately to hold in his building laughter because of Iida. “Dohohohon’t you fuhuckin’ stahahahahart!”

Iida’s smile grew. “Hm? Don't start what? Don't start the muahahaha-”

“SeheheHEE YOU IN THE AFTERLIFE, YOU BASTARD!”

Iida couldn’t contain his burst of laughter to save his life as he shot up just as Bakugou bucked Deku off his back and went after him.

“C’mon, Kacchan, nooo! Iida, better stop laughing - quick!” Deku chuckled, just lying there cheesing like an idiot.

“I-I’m trying- ahall right - forgive me, Bakugou - I cohouldn’t help it!”

“You can help a lot of things! You think you're just so funny, huh?”

“I wouldn't consider myself funny, b-but apparently you think I am!”

“No, an annoying smartass is what you are! And just real mature.” Bakugou couldn’t force away his grin, but it was murderous. “Oho, now you're really gonna get it!”

It was amazing they could move around so freely since the room was small, yet Bakugou kept going after Iida who moved like lightning and expertly dodged things as always. Iida dove over Deku’s bed, almost smacked violently into a wall, nearly knocked over Deku’s trash can, barely missed stubbing his toe on the desk chair, crouched behind a dresser, sprang up again—

“AaaAAHH! Okay, please - w-watch out - don’t run into myyyeee! Guys, this room is way too small to - t-that’s got-! My All Might picture frame— maybe we should take this outside - i-it’s a beautiful niiigHEEE! Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease look out!” Deku cried with frantically waving arms.

Both Deku and Iida yelped when the latter slipped on Deku’s All Might laptop bag strewn on the floor and crashed. Bakugou leapt at him.

“GAH! Bak - nohoho!” Iida struggled under Bakugou and made sloppy grabs for his flying hands while trying to stifle his laughter that was lessening his strength and speed, but the way Bakugou’s arms swung all over the place to evade each grab just heightened his amusement. “Wait! Dohohon't! Stop mohoving your ahaharms like - l-lihike-!”

“I’m not even doing anything, idiot, so get that dumb smile off your face!” Bakugou smirked and repeatedly tickle tased his sides, making Iida shriek a little with his arms jolting as his head fell back and he laughed between giddily panicked apologies.

“BAHAHAkugohou! I sahahaid I’m sohoHOHORRY!”

“You're gonna pay for that liE - eheHEHEHEHEY!” Suddenly their positions were reversed, and Bakugou was on the floor, twitching and flailing from the ticklish jolts that shot to his hips.

“Did you think a mastermind would go down without a fight?” Iida laughed and reached back to squeeze Bakugou’s knees, causing him to nearly squeal as he kicked. “Not so loud!” Iida teased.

“Whahahahy you-!” Bakugou found the strength to fight back, and they were rolling around yet again, attacking each other with tickles as Deku watched, both terrified and amused. But soon Bakugou, with one hand attacking under Iida’s arm, got the upper hand again.

“Thahat’s it! Quihihit trying to kihihill me, lohoser!” Bakugou snickered and finally caught his opponent’s wrists, managing to wrestle and pin part of Iida’s arms under his knees before he attacked his defenseless torso like crazy with merciless tickles, determined not to give him a chance at retaliation. “It’s your turn to die, not mine. Just accept it.”

“I cahahan’t accehept - haHAHEhehey, Bahakugahaha - ahahaHA! Stahahahahap! Ohoho nohohoho! N-No fahaihihehe-!” Iida tugged at his arms with a widening, helpless grin, and his choked giggles soon became boisterous laughter from the unhindered attack. “WaHAHAHAIT! Nohohot fahahahair!”

Bakugou chuckled victoriously. “Yes, fair. Can't laugh like a maniacal moron now when you’re laughing like this, huh? Can you? Huh? Huh?” he asked with ruthless pokes and prods all over his tummy each time.

“Pffft - NOHOHOhohahaHAHaha!”

“That’s what I thought.”

Iida shook his head. “M-Mihihidorihihiya, hehehehelp mehehe! Bakugou i-is tihickling mehehehEHE!”

“He is? I didn’t notice!” Deku had grabbed one of Iida’s ankles to lightly scribble at his foot. “Sorry, Iida, I was gonna help, but then I realized doing that would mean helping an evil mastermind, which I can’t do! I mean, I didn’t even know I was being manipulated to attack Kacchan! I also didn’t know your feet were ticklish! You’ve been hiding a lot of things, huh, mastermind?”

“Yeah, what was that mastermind thing about anyway? You wanna explain?” Bakugou asked suspiciously.

Iida had a nervous smile. “Ohohoho, that? I thihink an ehehexplanation is confidential!”

Bakugou raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“It is?” Deku asked. Iida’s quiet giggles and squirming, his playful mood in general, warmed Deku’s heart, and he was more than happy to keep playing along as he shifted to sit on Iida’s shins and positioned his fingers at his heel, slowly crawling up his foot. “Okay, then would it still be confidential if the tickle spider comes out to climb and climb and go and goooo all the way up to your-”

“Wahahait! No, stahahahap, Mihidoriyaha! N-Nohot the spider!”

“Not the spider?” Deku froze.

“No!” Iida yelled, already giggling more.

Deku grinned cheekily. “Okay, then what about the…tickle ladybug? What if she climbs and climbs and goes and goooes aaall the way up to your-”

“Th-That’s the sahame thihihing! I knohow where yohohou’re gohoing - plehehe plehehehease! Nohohot the tohoes! Nohohot the - NahAHO NOHOHOT THE TOHOHOES, MIHIHIDORIYAHAHA!” Iida burst into cackles.

“Haha! The ladybug’s not tickling your toes, silly, shehehe’s under them!” Deku emphasized by digging and wiggling more under Iida’s toes, delighted by the renewed stream of rich laughter it pulled from his friend as he pulled his toes back so he could gently scratch there better. “Try not to move so much, okay? I know you’re really ticklish here, but she really needs to settle down into her new home! Try to be more welcoming, Iida!”

Iida was losing it. “GAHAHAHAHA! MihiHIDAHAHAHA - I-I cahahan’t wehehelcome-! Shehehe cahaHAHAN’T STAAHAHAHAHAHAHAY! NAHHAHAHAHAHAHO!” The boy was blushing and laughing so much from the teasing, he started snorting. “I-IHIHIT’S WOHOhohorse, ahahall rihihight?! I sahaid uhunder the TOHOES IS WOHOHORSE, Y-YOU TRAHAHAITOR!”

“Worse? How could it be? Look at how much it makes you - oops!” Deku’s fingers fell away when he let Iida’s foot wiggle from his grasp. “Looks like you just kicked the ladybug out. Her feelings are kind of hurt, but maybe she can try the other home?” Deku giggled and caught Iida’s other foot, fingers slowly tickling their way back up. “Hang tight, she’ll be there sooooon!”

“Mi - d-dohohon’t start ohohover! Bakugou, hehehelp! Plehehease stahahap hihim! Mihihi - h-hehehe’s gohohahaha-! G-Going fohor theheheheha - HAAhahahaa!” Iida playfully protested, further blushing and giggling maddly with his eyes shut tight, and Bakugou rolled his eyes. So cringey, Deku. But he hadn’t even realized that he was smiling a little and had stopped tickling at some point because he was so amused by the two’s silliness.

The silliness was contagious, actually, and Bakugou found himself glowering playfully at Iida. “Sorry, can’t hear you. You said he’s going for the what?”

Iida pried one of his eyes open. “The t-tohohoes ahahagain!”

Bakugou snorted. “Tch! It should be my ants you're worried about.” His “ants” crawled up to knead lightly into his ribs, which actually gave a strong reaction. Bakugou wasn’t usually one to give lighter tickles, but it looked like they worked on Iida. “Or maybe these butterflies are better,” he said as his fingers flew up to tickle Iida’s neck, then fluttered over his ears, causing the boy to sputter with a short shriek of laughter through his giggles, and Bakugou couldn’t help laughing a little himself. “Jeez, looks like you're super damn ticklish with any insect.”

“I think you’re right, Kacchan! But mine tickles more, right, mastermind?”

“Yohohou bohohoth are rihihidiculous! I dohon’t - knaHAHAHAHA! MIHIHIHIHIDORIYA! PLEHEHEHEASE!” The ladybug had reached under his toes again, scribbling there and along the arch of his foot.

“See? I think he agrees!” Deku beamed at Bakugou who looked over his shoulder to smirk at him.

“Bull. Your stupid ladybug’s no match for my worms!” Bakugou managed to worm his fingers up under Iida’s arms, wiggling them just as wildly and grinning at his booming laughter. “Right, four eyes? Don’t worry about hurting Deku’s feelings. You can tell the truth.”

“I DOHOHAHA DOHOHON’T KNOHOHOW! IHIHIT’S AHALL M-MAHADDENING, YOHOHAHAHA - NAHAHAHAHA! YOHOHOU WIHIHILL BOHOHOTH PAHAHAY, YOU M-MEHEHERCILEHEHESS VIHIHILLAINS!” Deku and Bakugou kept up their little competition of whose “insects” are more effective, the tickling sensations just as maddening to Iida as they were fun.

Eventually, Iida admitted he could explain his mastermind role, and the boys stopped, all for the blue-haired teen to trip over his words through his subsiding laughter while he gave a purposefully terrible explanation that made no sense, resulting in more tickles. They continued their fun of being goofy together a little longer until Iida truly had enough, and they relented.

But once they all settled down around the room, it wasn’t long before they fully acknowledged how noisy they’d been, and they were surprised they’d received no noise complaints. Every dorm room was designed somewhat soundproof so students in neighboring rooms wouldn’t be disturbed when sleeping or doing homework, but still, the possibility that their commotion had gone completely unheard by others was pretty amusing.

“Wehehell…it’s interesting to know no one outside this room cared about my well-being enough to rush to my aid, even though I was suffering such a near-fatal attack,” Iida said jokingly, still catching his breath a little as he smoothed his messy hair down.

“Whatever, Mr. Dramatic.”

“Mr. Dramatic?” Deku’s nose crinkled. “Kacchan…what kind of name is that?”

“What?” Bakugou smirked faintly. “It fits him perfectly.”

“Well, I beg to differ!” Iida said dramatically with the corners of his lips twitching upwards.

Deku smiled slowly. “Wait, but..” You’re…also kind of dramatic, Kac—

“I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING, YOU DAMN NERD - I’M NEVER DRAMATIC! And even in the unlikely case I was, you got a problem with it?”

“No, nope! Not at all, I promise!”

“Yeah. Thought so.”

A few more seconds ticked by, and Deku tried to suppress them, but trying to just caused his string of giggles to sound so funny when they flew out that it made Iida snort quietly…which made Deku giggle again, and Iida chuckled. Which made Deku giggle yet again. And soon the two just fed off each other’s laughter until they were both laughing hard, Iida hugging his stomach where he sat leaning against a wall while Deku rolled around, banging his fist on the floor as he mirthfully cried, “Oh man, what did we just do??!”

Bakugou just watched them incredulously.

“You both can’t be serious right now. Total dorks.”

“Shh, Mihihidoriya!”

“Ahahand!” Deku’s joy was fueled by his memories. “And - and, and - you should’ve seen how you two were ping-ponging all around the room, and you both almost broke my picture frame an - ahhhahaha!”

“Midoriya, I was running for my life back then, and ahahall you were concerned about was your All Might merchandise!” Iida exclaimed. “What a friend!”

“But Iida, that picture frame’s a limited edition!”

“Oh, I don’t want to hear it!”

“Running for your life? Give me a break. Could’ve fooled me since you ran past the door like five times,” Bakugou grumbled.

“F-Fihihive times!” Deku howled at the fact Bakugou had been counting.

Iida blushed slightly. “W- how irresponsible would it have been for me to bring such chaos out into the halls and common area at this study hour? And besides, maybe I—”

“Yeah, yeah, save it.”

Deku suddenly quieted down.

“…Midoriya?” Iida started to calm down also, his smile slowly fading with the silence. “Is something the matter?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really… But…oh, man…so…” The lighthearted atmosphere shifted further. Finally Deku spoke again a bit timidly. “Please don’t be mad, okay?” He couldn’t meet either of his friends’ curious gazes as guilt crept over him. He twiddled his thumbs. “I um…”

Six seconds later.

“…So… I kind of…”

Ten seconds later.

“I - uh - well, I mean, I…sort of...”

“Deku! What is it?!” Bakugou boomed and then grated his teeth together at Iida’s subtle, disapproving look. “Don’t look at me like that! We’ll be ninety-two before he says anything!”

“Okay.” Deku let out a slow breath. “I don’t have a favorite ice cream flavor at all.”

“Wait. What?” said Bakugou.

“I never said I had a favorite ice cream flavor - you sort of just assumed, Kacchan, s-so I thought it was fun not to stop you,” Deku said in a rush, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’d mentioned I didn’t have a favorite flavor back when we were little, remember? J-Just because I've never cared for any kind of ice cream much. But…but I do really like cherry sherbert,” he added weakly.

“Pff.” Bakugou was...actually calm. Maybe it had to do with all the playful exertion, but he couldn’t bring himself to be angry or bothered at all, really. He stood up and walked towards the door. “Who cares.”

Deku sat there a little surprised before he finally found his voice again. “Where you going?” he asked quietly.

Bakugou looked over his shoulder. “You coming for dinner or what? Can’t expect to finish crushing this project with you nerds holding me back cuz you’re starving.”

“Ah, that’s right, we’re almost late!” Iida checked the time and stood as well, Deku following suit, and the faint smell of Aizawa’s cooking became more evident as they approached the door. “Everyone’s probably already there. Good looking out, Bakugou.”

“Don’t sound so impressed. You know I always keep track of time,” Bakugou said.

“…Right.” Iida didn’t sound convinced by the statement, but actually, he didn’t seem fully present, either. He looked lost in thought.

Deku tilted his head. “Iida, what’s up?”

“Nothing. Well, it's just...perhaps I should already know this. But, sherbert is a form of ice cream, isn’t it?” the class rep wondered, looking curious beyond compare. Bakugou and Deku stopped, looked at him, then glanced at each other. Their mouths opened briefly and then closed again, unable to answer.

Maybe they would never know.

[ysljoon]

Personal Business|CEO!Jeon Jungkook x Assistant Reader

This fanfic is mature so please avoid if you are not 18+ this is also a yandere fic so there are sensitive topics. 

Warnings: Yandere themes, noncon sex, public sex, crying, fingering (f receiving), dirty talk (jungkook has a filthy mouth christ), creampie, assault?

Being the personal assistant to Jeon Jungkook definitely has been a rollercoaster of experiences, but after working with him for about 2 years now you’ve gotten used to his erratic behavior such as mood swings and unreasonable demands. Everyone in the workplace has admired how long you’ve stuck around, but the paycheck you receive every two weeks is too pretty to pass up. You saw the listing for the job on a job search website and the pay per hour almost had you pass out, but once you came into the office you realized you were getting paid so generously almost as a test to see if the money could keep you around and it sure has.

Today Jungkook was in an extra gruff mood for the day because he had plenty of meetings to go through and not enough time for proper breaks and that’s the least ideal day for him. He loves breaks as much as any other person, but just tenfold. Everyone in the office is allowed a 45 minute lunch break, but since Jungkook is the CEO he will disappear on 2 hour breaks and not a single person knows where he goes. Not even you and people don’t understand how since you’re practically his right hand. You pay no mind to his whereabouts since it doesn’t affect and busy yourself with whatever tasks Jungkook left for you to do. Today he left no tasks for you since he’s been cooped up in his office occupied with other business officials. You haven’t been able to meet with him to get a briefing for the day so now you’re talking with Taehyung at his cubicle while you share a small pizza he ordered for lunch.

“Taehyung, I’m telling you right now there is no way that Joon and the receptionist don’t have something going on! They’re always eyeing each other up and Namjoon is always requesting for her to come to his office. It’s highly suspect.” You explained your reasoning to Taehyung exasperated and took another bite of your crust.

“Listen Y/N, all I’m saying is that it’s way too obvious for it to actually have any worth. Anyways you know how Mr. Jeon feels about workplace romance; he absolutely abhors the thought and would probably fire people on the spot if he ever found out.”

You continued to have your disagreement with Taehyung for a little while more, but what you didn’t realize was that Jungkook was done with his meeting a while ago and was watching you on his laptop through the camera system and was frowning deeply watching you fraternize with your coworker. He was tired of watching you practically throw yourself at Taehyung when you were his and only his. Jungkook got up from his desk and strode to Taehyung’s cubicle to stop this foolishness immediately.

“Mr. Kim, is there a reason why you are holding up my assistant from her work and why the expense report I asked you to do isn’t done?” Jungkook had a look on his face that he wanted to wring Taehyung’s neck and he was very close to, but he didn’t want to scare you off. He had to have you in his possession before he got rid of anybody that even tried to look in your direction so for right now this was his version of playing it cool.

“I-I’m very sorry sir it won’t happen again and I’ll get right to it!” Taehyung quickly turned to his computer and fervently typed in his password to get to work immediately. Jungkook then turned to you and grabbed you by the arm to drag you to his office. You were shocked and stunned by this action because sure he had talked to you roughly, but had never put his hands on you. He swiftly pulled you into his office and slammed the door. He even fully shut his blinds. This started to have you scared. He had this look in his eyes that made your body start to tremble. “S-sir I’m sorry for not working! I just wasn’t able to get the daily briefing for today so I tried my best to get work done. I had a lot of free time so I thought to spend it with Taehyung. I’m sorry if that was wasting company time you can deduct it from my pay!” You were heavily breathing by the time you were done with your panicked spiel. Jungkook chuckled at your anxiety and strode towards you till you were backed up into the wall and at this point you thought he could feel how fast your heart was beating in your chest.

“Darling, if you really want to make it up to me you can kiss me.” He purred in your ear and it sent sickening shivers up your spine. Your head started to spin when you felt him plant his lips on the column of your neck and work his way up to your jaw. You tried to shove him off, but naturally he was able to overpower you and he used his leg and chest to trap you between him and the wall.

“My dear Y/N, I hope you cooperate with me if you know what’s good for you.” He slyly grinned against your skin and started to passionately kiss you. To really show he was in charge he bit down on your bottom lip with force you have never felt before. It had you cry out in pain, but you were quickly silenced when you felt your boss reach under your skirt and start to trace circles against your cunt. He placed a hand against your mouth and gave you a threatening look you have never seen. It was so sinister it had you squirming away from his touch. You thought you could have gotten away but by the time you were able to slide past his body he was grabbing your wrist and slamming you down against his desk which sent things tumbling down to the floor.

“Jungkook, please stop, I'm so sorry!” You didn’t even realize you were bawling at this point, but he ignored your pleas and sobs and continued with his sinister acts. He grasped your wrists in one hand and with his other he slid your panties off and inserted a single long finger into your cunt. “Fuck baby, you’re so tight and wet for me.” He kept pumping his finger into you until he felt like he could insert another one into you. Once the second finger was deep in your hole Jungkook started to pick up the pace and you couldn’t even cry out to what he was doing to you. You felt numb and helpless and wanted him to stop, but your efforts were useless.

“Kitten, I want to hear you. I want to hear how good I make you fucking feel. I want to see you get dumb on my fucking fingers and cock that you don’t even know what to do with yourself. I want you to beg to have your dirty cunt stretched out.” Hearing your boss talk to you like this makes you speechless, but you listen to him because you don’t know what other worse things he can do to you. You let your body succumb to what he’s doing and you let out small moans and whimpers and this makes him let out his own grunts and groans in response. Before you can assess what’s happening when you feel his fingers slip out of your soaked pussy, Jungkook is shoving his cock balls deep into you and you gasp for air feeling the heavy pressure between your legs. He doesn’t give you any time to adjust and starts to pound into you. You cry out in both pain and pleasure from hearing skin slap against skin. You feel close to an orgasm and tears are rolling down your cheeks from desperation. “Sir please let me cum! I need to cum so bad! Please let me cum all over your cock.” You can’t even process the words you’re saying, you just want to have your release so badly. Jungkook slaps your ass and groans a ‘fuck yes baby’ and just seconds after that action you’re creaming on his thick cock. You feel your walls pulse around your boss and this brings him close to the edge and he’s losing control over himself. He starts to wild slam into your cunt and after a few more pumps he’s spilling his cum into you and you feel delirious from everything that had just happened. You hear him adjusting himself behind you, but you can’t bring yourself to even move at the moment. You hear his steps come close to you and you just lie there motionless while you wait for him to speak. “I can’t wait to bring you home with me princess.” After that sentence all you can recall is a blunt object coming in contact with your skull and nothing else.

Notes: thank you so much for reading I’ve been on a pretty solid hiatus and will crosspost what I have written on AO3 on to here too because I have some fics there that I haven’t posted on to Tumblr! If you enjoyed please like and reblog it really helps and you can also give me a Kofi.

[yourtamaki]

the broken melody of us

matsukawa x f!reader

word count: 4k

request: mattsun hurt/comfort + neglect?

warnings: hurt/comfort, neglect, body worship, praise kink, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, creampie, cockwarming

it was a song and dance at this point. a well rehearsed play with a blinding spotlight on the exhausted actors onstage. both of you go through the motions, no life behind the words you’ve spoken so many times they held no meaning anymore. you don’t know why you keep up the charade. you never expect a different result yet still you pick up the phone everyday and call your boyfriend. 

“you think you’ll be home in time for dinner?” 

sometimes you get a different, automated message. “maybe. might have to stay late,” or “can’t, i’ve gotta finish something up,” or your least favourite. a simple, clipped, “no.” 

“don’t stay out too late.” you should cut this part from the script, he never listens. 

“i’ll try.” 

“i love you.” this line is always to be spoken quietly, followed by holding your breath while you wait for his response. it’s the only reason you make these calls. this is your only chance to hear him say it and pretend he means it as much as he once did.

“love you too.” the line goes dead, the lights dim and he’s gone. you’re alone on an empty stage staring out at a bored audience. bored of the foolish protagonist who keeps them locked in the theatre, playing the same ending over and over and expecting something to give, to change. they watch on, silent and judging while you barter away what little dignity you have left. 

let them watch. 

the rejection doesn’t sting as badly as it used to. you’ve learned to bear it, swallow down the hurt that sits like a stone in your gut and go about your day, filling it with any meaningless errand that would stop your mind from wandering back to him. 

mattsun was subtle, you could give him that much. the way he slowly pulled away from your arms until you could hardly remember how he felt beneath your palms. the realization that you don’t really know your boyfriend anymore was slow to hit you but it knocked the air out of your lungs when it did. it crashed down on you when you woke in the middle of the night and turned to stare at his back gently rising and falling with every breath. his hair is longer then you remember and you don’t know why the thought has a lump forming in your throat. you focus instead on the broad expanse of his back. he’s tense, even in sleep, shoulders rigid and you’re sure if you could see his face, his brows would be furrowed. subtle changes that are enough for you to realize you’ve been shut out of his life.

you used to know him. when you were university kids who thought the future would never catch up to them and spent countless days in each other’s company. it wasn’t so much you knew him, it felt like you were him. and he was you. less attached to the hip and more intertwined with one another. you two were of one mind, to the point where you knew what the other needed before they’d even say it. 

your mattsun who was always just a text away. 

your mattsun who would indulge your late night drives, who would look at you with a permanent crooked smile on his face and love in his eyes. 

“you think we’ll always be like this?” you said one night, straddling him in panties and a baggy hoodie in the backseat and lazily kissing beneath the stars. and because he was yours and understood every little anxious thought that crossed your mind, he didn’t question why you were asking, didn’t make you explain what you meant, didn’t try to make a half assed joke about it. 

his hands trailed up your sides as he contemplated his answer, sending shivers up your spine. “probably not. things always change. we’ll change with them.” 

“what if things get worse?” 

“they might. but what if they get better? just cause it’s different doesn’t mean it's scary, angel.” 

“i know. but i hate thinking about it cause things are so good right now. i want it to last forever.” 

“we got time. let’s make the most of it, yeah?” he gripped your hips, slowly grinding you against his growing bulge and pulling you back into a kiss, sighing as your lips slotted together. you took control of the pace and grinned against him when a groan spilled into your mouth. 

“is that your way of saying we should hurry up and fuck?” 

“it’s working, isn’t it?” before you could pull your sweater up over your head, he cupped your face and brought your forehead to his, sincerity shining through his dark eyes. “i’ll always love you. that’ll never change. got it?”

“got it.” you managed to push the words out despite the lump that formed in your throat. he kept his eyes locked on yours as he slid your panties to the side and sank inside you, the familiar stretch a welcome one. 

it was nothing special, one night of many spent panting into each other’s mouths with an unspoken promise still hanging from your lips. but it was a memory you circled back to often, so often you could hear the echo of his vow ring through your head. 

your fears came to pass not long after that. life caught up and tore him from you, leaving you a shattered mess in the aftermath. you tried to fit jagged pieces of yourself back together in an attempt to remake the person you used to be but what stared back at you only left you keenly aware of the empty space he used to reside. 

these days, you like going to the roof of your apartment and letting the wind blow through those countless gaps in your soul. you feel whole for a short while as it whistles through you, the air filled with the broken melody of you, of the relationship that slips past your grasp more everyday. it’s shrill and ear piercing and leaves goosebumps littered on your skin. 

you can’t stop listening to it. 

it’s where you were now, staring out as the sun dipped below the horizon and listening to the haunting sound that’s been your only company in recent memory. later, you’ll go home and crawl into bed desperate for any warmth and no time to miss the heat of a body next to yours. your phone lights up bright in contrast to the darkening sky and it takes you a few moments of staring blankly at the screen for it to sink in that mattsun is trying to call you. 

this isn’t part of the script. 

you don’t know your lines. 

and yet you find yourself answering anyway, hitting the green button before the call drops and you raise your phone to your ear silently. 

“are you okay?” his voice comes out rushed and strung together almost before your phone is pressed to your ear. 

“why’re you asking?” 

“remember that time you failed that essay? i think it was third year and you hid in your room all day and wouldn’t answer the phone?” you did remember. how you couldn’t bear to face the world that day with the crushing weight of failure hanging over you and how shocked you were to see mattsun standing at the front door. “did i ever tell you why i checked up on you?” 

“no.” 

“the whole day i felt, in my gut, like i needed to see you. i can’t describe it, it was like a stab that just dug deeper until i went to your place. would you believe me if i said i have that feeling right now?” 

“i- i would.” you say quietly, wondering if he could even hear you over the roar of the wind. 

“are you okay?” he repeats. there’s a weight behind his words that has tears springing to your eyes. 

“no, issei ‘m not.” 

“i’m almost home, i’m parking right now. i’ll be up in a few minutes, okay? wait for me, angel.” 

you were always waiting for him, weren’t you? what's a couple more minutes? you hang up and try in vain push down the wave of anxiousness that hits you. it’s just mattsun, you try to remind yourself. even if it’s been awhile since you’ve really felt like a part of his life, he’s still the person you fell in love with. right?

even if the issei from the past would never have made you feel so alone. the issei that was free from the hardships of real life, of 9-5s and bills due and rent to pay. you miss that issei, mourn for him on empty rooftops everyday. maybe he’s still alive somewhere within this new issei but it’s not like you would know. 

you head off the roof, shivering slightly as you make your way home. the days were only getting colder, you should’ve known not to stay out for so long. you were trying to get your shaky hands to cooperate and unlock the door when you hear the elevator dings open and your name being called out. 

“you weren’t home?” he asks, gently prying your keys from your grasp and opening the door for you both. as soon as he locks it behind you, his hands are covering yours once more. “baby you’re freezing.” 

words. where were your words? you couldn’t call up any as he brought your joined hands to his mouth, blowing hot air on them and rubbing them between his to warm them up. this is the closest you’ve been to him in who knows how long and you couldn’t summon up a single sentence. it’s not your fault. his attention has always stunned you into silence. 

he thought you were painfully shy the first time you met and though that was half true, you mostly found yourself silently panicking about the handsome man that suddenly sat beside you. the professor had paired the class off to discuss the readings for that lecture and your interest had only come to life when you saw the dark haired man make his way to you. 

“i’m gonna be honest.” he said as he plopped down beside you and showed you the blank document open on his laptop. “i have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing right now. do you?” 

it was his eyes, you decided much later, hugging your pillow and staring at the text you just received from a new number. you came alive under his gaze like you could finally catch your breath, everything dull until his eyes landed on you. you don’t believe in love at first sight, this was something different. it was the dust of collapsing stars finding each other once more. it was strings of fate being braided together. it was more profound, more important than love and it all happened in a moment. 

you nodded in response to his earlier question though it was clear neither of you were paying any attention to what was going on in class, too caught up in the small bubble that surrounded you and drowned out the rest of the world. 

“matsukawa. i’m- my name’s matsukawa.” you must’ve given your name in return judging by the smile he gave you in return. “so what’re we doing, partner?”

this time, you forced a proper response, intensely aware of how you held yourself in a way you’ve never been before. “yeah, she just wants us to talk about today’s reading.” 

matsukawa watched you pull up your notes, resting his head in his hand while you began explaining the general concepts. you paused when you noticed he was still looking at you and not at the notes you had angled towards him. 

“am i explaining it okay?” 

“we’re a month into the semester, how have i not noticed you before?” 

“guess you don’t notice something you’re not looking for.” 

just then the professor grabbed everyone’s attention, the student’s quietly migrating back to their seats but matsukawa stayed where he was. instead, you could just hear him speak under his breath, more to himself then to you but you still managed to pick it up, your face going hot as it echoed in your head. “trust me, i’m looking now.” 

the memory leaves you more vulnerable than you expected, soft in his arms as the numbness finally fades and the shaking stops.

“where were you?” he says.

“the roof.” his brows furrow, lips pulled down in a frown. it’s strange feeling yourself falling back into reading him so easily, not needing him to ask to know he wanted you to explain why. “i like going up there. this place is too quiet with just me in it.” 

the longer you watch him, the more you pick up from his body language. the confusion then understanding that flits across his face, the underlying care you’re so familiar with as he smooths his thumb over the back of your hand. but more than anything you start to see his guilt. his muscles are rigid with it, it swims in his eyes that never quite seem to meet yours. 

“i’ve fucked up, haven't i?” he finally says when he realizes you won’t be the one to breach the subject. 

“issei…”

“no, i have. things have been so endless, i feel like i’m half awake and i’ve hurt you because of it.” 

you squeeze his hands, trying to reassure him. “just talk to me. please.” 

“i hate it. work is nonstop, everyday is the same shit over and over. it’s just a wave that keeps knocking me down and i can barely get my footing before it pushes me down again. and every day i think about quitting just to get ready the next morning. 

“if i was alone, if… if i didn’t have you i would’ve quit so long ago but i want to give you the life you deserve and i can’t do that if i’m broke. and it all might be for nothing cause i might’ve lost you already.” 

the confession ends with mattsun clearing his throat, blinking fast and concentrating solely on your laced hands. you can’t seem to catch your breath, struggling under the weight he had carried silently until now as he finally shares the burden with you. 

“you haven’t lost me, issei. look at me.” you wait until his eyes meet yours before dropping your voice to a whisper. “you haven’t lost me.”

“i don’t deserve you.” 

“it’s not about deserving, i chose you. i chose to love you, i chose to stay when things got bad. yeah, you hurt me.” it’s impossible to miss the full body flinch at your words, “and i’m not ready to forgive you just yet. but that doesn’t mean i’m giving up on us. i don’t want you working yourself to death for me. i don’t care where we live or how much money you spend on me. i don’t need all of that, i just need you. got it?” 

“got it.” you see his adam’s apple bob as he swallows down whatever feeling overcomes him, “i’m sorry.”

“i know.”

“tell me what you need, please. i need- i need to make this right.” 

you answer by leaning forward and mattsun meets you halfway. the kiss is soft in contrast to the way you bundle the front of his shirt in your fists, afraid the moment might end before it’s even begun but mattsun takes his time cherishing you. there’s regret and gratitude and love that dances across your tongue and the taste has pressure building behind your eyes. 

it isn’t enough. you need him closer, need him to line the cracks of your soul with his touch. you pull just far back enough to break the kiss and mumble against his lips, “more, ‘sei please. i’m so cold.” 

“anything you want, pretty baby. let me make you feel good, yeah?” 

his lips crash back down on yours with renewed eagerness. there’s a desperation that wasn’t there a moment ago fuelling you both and urging you to stumble blind into the bedroom, barely letting your mouths detach as you fumble and undress each other. 

it’s not until you’re naked before him that your head clears a bit and shyness comes creeping in. he cups your face as though he could sense you curling into yourself and simply says, “beautiful.” 

the utter conviction in his voice is enough to dispel any insecurities before they have a chance to latch on and you turn your head to kiss the center of his palm, silently telling him you were all right. together you land in a tangled heap in bed, his half hard cock resting on your thigh. mattsun kisses his way down your neck, licking and sucking at every sensitive spot he had mapped out over the years. 

“issei…” you say, impatience tinging your voice as you feel your core throb with need. 

“i’ll get you there, angel, you know i will. let me take my time, i missed you.” 

true to his word, he began kissing every inch of skin he could reach. your tits, your stomach, your thighs all the way down to your ankles, he made sure to shower with affection. it’s nearly overwhelming. you knew you were starved for his attention but it feels like something breaks loose inside you the longer his mouth trails over your body, whispering declarations into your skin that left you tingling in his wake. by the time his fingers dip between your legs, your thighs are sticky with arousal, clit thrumming and begging to be touched. 

“look at my pretty baby’s pussy. all wet just for me?” 

“mhmm ‘s all for you, issei.” 

he hums, swirling his middle finger around your entrance and pressing the thick digit inside with ease. it’s only a few pumps later he adds another, stretching out your gummy walls. his other hand drifts over your mound, his thumb finally giving your clit some attention as his fingers graze over a spot inside you that has your hips rising off the bed. 

“stay still. you want to be my good girl, right?” the quiet authority that radiates from mattsun has you clenching around him, doing your best to do as he asks and keep your legs spread for him. “there you go. you’re taking me so well, baby. you’re close, aren’t you? i can feel it” 

mattsun loves showing off how well he knew your body, how it never took long for you to crumble beneath him. a few more idle circles with the pad of his thumb and your orgasm washes over you, rising gently and leaving you relaxed in its wake. 

that state didn’t last long as he replaces his thumb with his mouth, sucking at your clit that twitches against his tongue, still sensitive from your high. “issei! w-wait please give me a sec-” 

his glare is enough to cut through your babbling, his fingers never slowing in their strokes against that sweet spot. you let out a low moan as he adds yet another finger, the stretch just shy of uncomfortable but it’s quick to fade into pleasure once again. the flame in your gut is far more intense this time and you can’t stop the whimpers he pulls from you. you thread your fingers through his dark curls, tugging on them and pulling him deeper into your folds.

“that’s it, princess. cum on my tongue and i’ll stuff you full, i promise. you can do it, c’mon baby.” 

the encouragement has the coil in your gut tightening once more and the lewd sounds of mattsun lapping up every drop that escapes you is enough to snap it. when the blood stops ringing in your ears, you realize he’s shifted your positions. he’s sat cross-legged on the bed with you pulled into his lap, legs locked around his waist. his cock is pinned between your stomachs, smearing precum on your skin and your mouth waters as you catch sight of the blushing tip. 

he whispers your name to grab your attention, naked devotion plain on his face when you gaze up at him. “i love you.” 

this. this was your breaking point. the words you longed to hear every time you picked up the phone for those dreaded calls. your vision blurs with tears that well up and spill down your cheeks before you could blink them away. “you do?” 

“i do, baby, with everything i’ve got. i-“ he falters for a moments, visibly steeling himself for what he wanted to say. “i want to spend the rest of my life with you. there’s not a future i can picture that doesn’t include you. you’re it for me.” 

“i want that too ‘sei.” you hiccup, more tears trickle out faster than you can wipe them clear. 

you feel his whole body relax, hands rubbing at your sides to soothe you. “don’t cry, angel. wait till i’m inside you at least.” 

“shut up.” your laugh comes out watery but it feels good to smile. “how do you go from sweet to nasty so fast?” 

“just wanted to see you smile.” you try and fail to suppress another grin that only widens when mattsun peppers your cheeks with loud kisses. “so pretty and all mine.”

“all yours.” you repeat, grinding your soaked folds along the underside of his cock. “and you’re mine, right?” 

“that’s right, princess. go on, take what’s yours.” 

sinking down on mattsun feels like coming home, the empty ache finally gone as he fills you and you both moan when he bottoms out. there’s no way for you to bounce in this position but you find that you don’t mind. you feel closer to him like this, what little space there is between you vibrating with how vulnerable you both were. 

it’s relaxing, slowly rolling your hips against each other, not building towards anything and indulging in the other’s touch. your hands roam across his broad back, sucking dark marks into his neck while he grabs at your ass, kneading and groping so possessively you clench around him. 

“fuck.” he groans next to your ear. “keeping squeezing me with that princess cunt, you feel so fucking good. just like that, good girl.” 

“issei…” you whimper, pressure gradually building in your gut as your grinding gets sloppy and legs grow weak. 

“what is it, baby? use your words.” 

“want more, ‘sei i want your cum.” 

“yeah? want me to fill up this greedy pussy and keep you warm with my cum?” he leans forward, keeping you cradled in his arms as your back hits the mattress, your legs still crossed around his waist keeping him as close to you as possible. 

you nod, half delirious with need and mattsun begins thrusting in earnest. his cock is so thick he nudges against every sensitive spot along your walls, his tip battering just below your cervix and hitting so deep you swear you can feel it in your throat. his hands pry yours open from where you had been gripping the sheets and laces his fingers with yours. a swell of love rises in you and has you gasping for air as he fucks you into the mattress. you can’t even hear your own moans over the squelch as you grow wetter and wetter and the smack of his heavy balls against your ass.

your orgasm takes both of you by surprise, ripping through you so violently you’re left a shaking mess. mattsun’s hips stutter, bucking wildly into you as he nears his own high and you stare in awe as he reaches it. it’s a sight you’ll never get enough of, how beautiful he looks as he spills endlessly inside you, mindlessly grinding it deeper with his softening cock. 

“you okay, angel?” he asks, pulling you in for a sweet, lingering kiss. 

“mhmm. can we stay like this?” you weren’t ready to put any space between you, not so soon after reconnecting.

“‘course we can.” he settles over you, knowing exactly what you need. his weight a reassurance that grounds you in a way words never could. it’s a conversation in its own right, one that could only pass between two people who knew each other as well as you knew each other. in the quiet afterglow he tells you that he’s here with you. that you were going to work on being okay again. that he wouldn’t let you feel that lonely ever again. and you believe him with every fibre of your being. 

dedicated to: @honeykeigo @ohno-otome @keigobaby @saintdabi @toshidou @sawam0chi

[writersblockended]

Hawks Masturbating Drabble:

NSFW 18+ Minors DNI

CW// nsfw, swearing, slight vouyerism/ Pervy hawks

- fem bodied reader & Hawks POV

———————————————————————

Keigo plopped down on his office chair and turned his head to look outside his window. He sighed knowing he was gonna stay in his office for a couple more hours doing paperwork. It’s already almost evening and he’s still got tons of work due this Friday night, so he decided to do the right thing and stay up later than usual so he could enjoy his weekend off. He’s used to this routine of staying up late in his office but he just wishes he had some more time to himself.

He sighs again and turns back to face his desk, turning on his work laptop and types away at his case reports.

After an hour and a half of progress he decided he was gonna take a break, so he went down to the main floor to pick up something to eat from the food court. He was just gonna grab a water and an apple to keep his energy up.

When he reached the elevator he pushed down the button to the main floor and leaned back on the steel wall. If only he could get take out right now...nah I’ve got to keep in shape I can’t go around eating junk all the time...

He shrugged his head and let himself close his eyes as he felt the elevator do its job. He then heard the ding of the elevator and opened his eyes again expecting to be in the first floor, but instead his eyes met a short figure.

He saw you

He raked his eyes from bottom to top. Starting with your heels to your legs, and then those thighs, keeping his eyes at the level of your short and tight , black skirt that shaped your hips perfectly. Keigo looked up and realized you had your eyes fixed right on him so he cleared his throat awkwardly and looked away. He knew his face was red with how hot he was feeling.

Well that was embarrassing...

He observed the way you moved when you press on the button for the first floor and heard the elevator doors close. He tried his best to not look in your general direction but your figure had him in such a trance, he felt like your prescense could swallow him whole. He peaked from behind his wings to look at you once again and unbeknownst to him, his left wing bumped into you.

You let out a yelp followed with an “oh my” as you stumbled back, but Keigo was there to catch you before you fell. Wrapping his arm around you, he felt his chest press up against your forehead. “I’m so sorry I can be so clumsy sometimes” Keigo grinned, he had a clear view of your face and neck from this angle. You had to crane your neck up to make eye contact with him. You nodded and gave his explanation an acknowledgment, “it’s okay, it was an accident”

You turned back around to face the elevator door and right then, the doors clicked open to reveal the first floor. You stepped out and Keigo couldn’t help but admire the view from behind, those calves flexed nicely with the weight of your body and the heels that you wore. That tight, pencil mini skirt made your ass look even rounder than he would have expected. You seemed to have quite the sway in your walk that didn’t fit the serious look on your face that made you look like a top-level official from the hero commission.

He took a step forward realizing, he’d once again, stood there staring at you like an idiot. He couldn’t help it, you were seductive. And to be less creative with his words, you were hot. Out of respect he did not approach you, it was quite late anyway. He mentally shrugged and got his water and food as quickly as he could. He did not need any distractions right now. He had work, and lots of it, now wasn’t the time.

He went back to his office and scurried to his desk. He just needed to finish his work and go home, that’s it. As simple as it sounded his concentration kept faltering. He knew spring was right around the corner and his brain wasn’t cooperating like it usually would. It didn’t help that he had just run in with a really hot employee who he’d hadn’t even known the name of. If he was honest, he just felt horny and tired.

Keigo felt himself slowly lose motivation to finish up his work because his mind kept drifting to those wonderful well-shaped legs of yours oh and that itty bitty waist....no you gotta finish your work Keigo! You’re a hero not a perv

He groaned and closed his laptop. His useless attempt to keep his composure Wasn’t working and he had no other choice than to rub one in. So he closed his eyes and leaned back on his wings and began to caress his body up and down, slowly. Just enough to imagine your perfectly manicured nails trailing up his chest and down his abdomen. He felt himself grow hard at the thought of you being on your knees with a sultry look on your face, all just for him. Keigo palmed himself and slowly began rubbing himself through his pants, the friction making him slightly flustered. He wanted more, he needed more.

He unbuckled his belt and reached over his desk’s drawer for his secret stash of lube he always kept in his office. He’d never used it before but now just might be the perfect time. He pulled his boxers down and pumped his dick with his lubed up hand. Starting at the base to tease himself as he pretended his hand was yours instead. His cock was aching hard, the leaking tip already an angry red shade.

He began to stroke himself faster and held onto himself tighter. He started moaning softly, gasping and using his other hand to claw at his chair. The view was almost intoxicating for anyone who might catch him. The winged hero was sprawled all over his chair, head leaning back, with his legs fully spread apart. He was fucking his fist harshly now. His wrist straining at how quick his movements were, but he was too fucked out, horny, and lonely to care.

Stroking himself while the image of you present in his mind drew him over the edge, just enough to make him almost cum way too early. He couldn’t get you out of his head, all he could think of is what he would do to those thighs. Or what those thighs could do for him. He groaned once again and gave himself a couple more strokes until he felt himself get closer to an orgasm. He felt himself tense up and gave out a loud whimper before he finished. Thick, long ropes of cum coating his hand as he continued to stroke himself languidly. Quick pants leave his mouth as he struggles to gain composure after his orgasm. Suddenly the feeling of embarrassment overwhelmed his body.

I can’t believe I just jacked off at the thought of a one of my employees. Fuck. All because I couldn’t keep my hormones in check.

———————————————————————

YALL this was my first Drabble LMFAO idk it’s probably so bad ksosnwlslsls rip

Also follow me and send me asks!! They’re open !!!!

[keisurou]

build it up

(ft. koutarou bokuto)

minors dni. 

wc: 3.2k

Warnings: semi-public sex (in the locker room?), doggy style, mirror sex, mutual masturbation, blowjob, atsumu x kiyoomi ship, atsumu being a lil’ shit and drilling ideas into bo’s head, not edited. 

So my friends and I were fangirling discussing and apparently personality-wise, I’m basically a mix of Akaashi and Kenma, and it kinda makes sense because my top two comfort characters are Kuroo and Bokuto. Anyways, this is just a lil’ thing I wanted to try out, and again, this is not edited (i did edit it, and then my laptop just DIED so now its all gone. *sobs*) - does anyone want to be a beta-reader?? Because I literally went on a road trip with my family and just typed this in the car the entire time while my brothers screamed nonsense bs next to me. Hmu if you’re actually interested :) 

“Babe,” Bokuto murmurs into your neck, drawing out the word, his hair still damp and smoothed down from his shower not too long ago. You’re trying to focus on the pile of research assignments in front of you, but the way your fiance is rubbing circles on your back has you rereading the same sentence multiple times. “I heard something I wanna try,” 

“Hmm?” You hum noncommittally, encouraging him to continue, but you don’t look away from the papers. He frowns, frustration clawing at his belly and lets out a small grunt as he paws at your thighs exposed by your silk pyjamas. When he doesn’t speak, you turn to him and run your fingers through his damp locks before ruffling them slightly. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you tired? You have practice tomorrow morning, don’t you?” 

He doesn’t respond, his gaze locked on your lips and the way your tongue peeks out ever so slightly to wet your bottom lip only for a second. Bokuto has been strung tight lately; he had just returned from a training camp after being away from you for an entire week. He had been so excited to come home to you; he missed your smiles, your soft agreements, the way you came apart and lost yourself under his touch. But instead, he came home to you fully decked out in your ‘no sex’ gear. That’s right, from the ten piles of papers you had to mark, and a brand new box of red felt tips, you were ready for five days of no sleep, no fun, and absolutely nothing frisky with Bokuto. Needless to say, he almost cried when he first stepped into the apartment. 

But now, with only ten research papers left, you were practically finished. “Babe, let’s cuddle tonight,” You give him a look, and he deflates only a little before quickly adding, “I’ll be good, I swear,” 

“Kou-kun,” you lean in and give him a soft peck on the cheek, and he’s so touch starved that he sits motionless, absorbing the way your lips brush against his skin for as long as he can. “You’re always good.” You move away, and he quickly grabs your hands, intertwining your fingers together. “But if I finish up here today, I won’t be able to see you play tomorrow,” 

He’s silent as he contemplates this and then promptly hooks a hand around your waist and pulls you to him. His lips slant over yours, and it only takes you a second to melt into the kiss, hands flying to the hem of his t-shirt to drag him closer. Your lips are warm, and he can taste the sweetness of cherries from the dizzying brush of your tongue. He leans back against the sofa, and you clamber onto his lap, your softness meeting the hard planes of his body as you kiss along the smooth column of his neck. There is nothing sexier than the way you press a kiss before nibbling along his jaw, and his hands automatically find their way under your sleep shirt to squeeze at a naked breast. 

You let out a strangled moan and immediately press your body to his chest, halting his movements. Bokuto’s eyes widen as he tentatively brushes a thumb on the underside of your breast, only for you to shudder. “Koutarou, wait,” you pant softly, grabbing at his arm to pull it from your chest. “I’m really sensitive today, and it hurts if you squeeze too roughly,” 

“Why?”

“I’m on my period,” you say simply, and he blurts out the first thing that pops into his head. 

“So, no sex?” 

You shake your head, and his erection throbs painfully in his shorts as it strains against the material, somehow understanding the situation but not exactly cooperating. You get up to clear the table, and when you stretch, he can clearly see the way your nipples poke through the flimsy fabric, almost as if begging for his attention. He’s up, wrapping his arms around your waist and breathing in the scent of your hair. “Can I massage them?” 

You pause, and when you don’t respond for a few seconds, he cups one breast through the shirt, palming it softly until you melt under his touch. “O-Okay, but no sex,” 

He murmurs out a thank you, his golden eyes sparkling, and he’s glad you don’t question his enthusiasm. Once in the shared bedroom, he strips your shirt off your body watches with hooded eyes as you crawl over to join him at the centre of the bed. 

His fingers brush against a peaked nipple before slowly pushing down on the nub, and you let out a soft whine before cupping your other breast yourself, rotating the flesh in small circles. 

Bokuto briefly wonders how long it could take to make you cum just from your tits, and he turns it into a personal mission for tonight. He pulls at the free nipple, and you gasp sharply. Your reaction brings a lazy grin on his face, and he brings you to sit on top of him, the outline of his erection pressing against your ass so he can feel at least some sort of friction. He swats your hand away and pulls a nipple into the heat of his mouth, suckling the flesh softly as your thighs tremble around his waist. The first contact of his teeth against your sensitive nipple has your breath hitching deliciously as you chant his name, and he does it again, wanting to commit the sound to memory. 

“K-Koutarou, please. I’m going to-”

He switches to the other breast and bites down on the nipple without warning. Your hands fly to the back of his head, pushing him closer to your chest as he soothes the abused skin with long strokes of his tongue. The way you pull at his hair sends sharp jolts of pain, and you realise that each time you tug at his locks, he puts his teeth to work. 

You tug at his hair again, and he smiles as he bites down for a second. He takes satisfaction in the way you tremble and grind against him when he tugs at a hardened bud with his fingers, twisting and rolling the nub until it borders on pain and pleasure. He’s going to make you come like this even if he doesn’t get any sleep.  

Minutes later, you tremble, your hands feebly pushing at Bokuto, and he leans back only slightly. He watches with wide eyes as you roll your hips, the movements unstable and shaky, almost frenzied. Your fingers squeeze at a breast and pull at the tip of the other, and you let out a breathy moan at the sharp streak of pain that quickly turns into pleasure. “K-Kou-kun. I’m s-so close. So close.” You whine out in both pleasure and frustration and reach for his hands so he can help you finish the job. “Please,” 

You don’t notice the way Bokuto’s erection grows bigger from under you. He loves it when you beg for him like this, eyes glazed with lust without a care in the world except for how quickly you’ll come. It’s so intoxicating, and you look so desperate that he can’t help but want to tease you until you’re ruined.  But tonight, there was no way; you wouldn’t be getting any help from him until he gets off on the image of you sobbing for his fingers and his tongue. 

He watches as your eyes widen when you see him take out his cock and grip himself at the base. The tip is red and weeping, and when he smears the fluid all over the head, he’s delighted to see the way you lick your lips and lean forward, entranced. “What is it, puppy?” He purrs and grips himself at the base before moving up to the tip and coming back down again. The way your eyes follow the movement is incredibly sexy, but it’s the tremble in your lower lip that has him growing harder. “F-Fuck. Shit, you want my cock? I thought you said no sex.” 

There’s a whine of frustration, and at this point, he can’t tell if it’s from you or him, but the way you rub your thighs together and tug at your nipples has him lifting his hips, craving the friction he can’t have. There are now tears in your eyes as you sniffle.  For a fleeting moment, Bokuto considers sliding your underwear to the side; your period be damned, and fucking you into the mattress until the bedsheet is soaked with your tears. His cock twitches in agreement at the mental image, and a shudder goes down his spine. 

Instead, he gives himself a few more rough strokes and closes his eyes, listening to your moans echo in the room before he groans, loud and low, as his release lands messily on the bedsheets. 

Bokuto is restless at practice the morning after, and everyone knows this because his performance was downright terrible. On the rare occasions when he did score a point, there was no hey, hey, hey, no burst of confidence, no nothing. 

There had been days on end where the team would have done anything short of murder to shut Bokuto up, but now that he had, they had no idea what to do. Well, except Atsumu, of course. The setter sauntered over, his lips stretched into a cocky smirk. “Bokkun, what are ya mopin’ about for? Did yer girlfriend leave ya all needy?”

Bokuto grumbled sourly at the blonde before promptly turning away. “I’m not moping.” And when Atsumu raises an eyebrow, encouraging him to continue, Bokuto only sighs and leans back on his elbows. Surprisingly, that’s all the setter needs to understand the situation and begins to laugh. 

The entire situation is infuriatingly unfair, especially since it was, in fact, Atsumu who had drilled in the idea of having sex in semi-public places. Bokuto usually didn’t care to listen to the gossip of others much, unless it was related to volleyball or you. During the training camp, the blond setter had been describing how hot it was to do it in a semi-public place where there was a high chance of getting caught, much to Kiyoomi’s chagrin. Bokuto genuinely cannot bring himself to care because obviously sex feels good all the time, so why would doing it outside make it any different? Atsumu had just tutted when Bokuto explained this to him before asking him about you, and that definitely got his attention. 

“Bokkun, do ya know what kinks yer girlfriend has?” 

“She doesn’t have any,” Bokuto’s response had been immediate, and Atsumu just stared, wondering if the hyperactive male was just pulling his leg. But he wasn’t - Bokuto genuinely knew you didn’t have any because of course you would tell him as soon as you discovered one, right? 

“She seriously never told ya?” 

“Maybe she just doesn’t know.” 

Atsumu had spluttered indignantly to his excuse, equal parts horrified and insulted that Bokuto could even think about suggesting such a thing. 

Needless to say, ever since then, Bokuto has been trying to find out more of the things that make you tick in bed. He’d already found two last night, and his body was already tense, eager to find out more today. Especially since you said you’d be visiting after handing back all the papers to your students. They all wrapped up practice, with Meian giving Bokuto extra laps around the gym. By the time he had finished the required amount, Hinata and Meian were about to leave but had stopped to greet you for a few minutes. The sight of you leaning against the door, your lips pulled up into a soft smile filled him with restless energy and he took a swig of his water before making his way to you. 

“Hey, hey, hey!” His voice booms, echoing off the walls and you swivel around to grin at him. There is a collective sigh of relief from the other members as they leave the court gym and he sees the way your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He practically sprints to you and pulls you into a bear hug. He knows he’s sweating and that he probably stinks, but that all takes a back seat as your arms come around to wrap around his waist as you breathe in the feel of him. “Are you feeling better?”

You nod and lean up, puckering your lips to give him a short kiss, and his heart squeezes before he leans down to meet your lips halfway. When you pull back, your face is flushed, and you lean forward to whisper in his ear. “I’m sorry about last night. I’m all better today, we can go wherever you want and do whatever you feel like,”

His golden eyes glint dangerously under the low lighting of the hall, and you immediately know that you’re in trouble. “Now?”

He can see the way your breath hitches and throat constricts as you let out a little whimper. Your voice reaches a higher octave as you whisper out a “Now?” and he suddenly wishes that he could drag you to the locker room in front of everyone. He realises with a start that Atsumu had been right all along and expects the fact to rub him the wrong way, but the thought is pushed to the back as you let out a timid nod. 

That’s all he needs. He drags you into the locker room, too impatient to bother with the intricacies of the lock. Everyone had gone home anyway, so what did it even matter? As soon as he sits down, you push his thighs apart and situation yourself between them. Your hands fly to the hem of his gym shorts as you gaze up at him, and the whisper of friction that your fingers provide already has his cock swelling in his boxers. 

The first contact your tongue made with his cock has him hardening even further as he sinks his fingers into your hair. He can’t take his eyes off the way your hot tongue glides up the curve of his dick before swirling around the tip and- 

“Fuck. Fuck. Wait, baby-Don’t-”

You take him into your mouth, one hand softly massaging his balls, and all the protests die in his throat almost instantly. He chokes at the sight of you on your knees and your pretty, pretty mouth stretched around his fat cock. There are tears forming at the corner of your eyes as you struggle to take him in any further, and there’s nothing in the word that could make him look away. He thrusts his hips up only slightly, taking you off guard and forcing more of his length into your mouth as you gag around his size. 

You make a sound at the back of your throat as you drool around his cock, and it sends waves of vibrations throughout his length. Bokuto eases out of your mouth, and the stark coldness that hits the sensitive skin has him hardening even further. “You did so good, puppy,” he pants out his praise and comes up behind you before he pushes you forward so that you’re on your hands and knees. You’re such a pretty sight that he has to stop himself from entering you straight away. “Are you comfortable, babe? Think you can take it like this?” 

You nod vigorously and hold his gaze through the mirror. The head of his cock is leaking and angry, and he’s half tempted to bury himself balls deep inside you without warning. But the moment he pushes the tip inside your wet heat, you arch your back, and his hips jerked forward, craving the way your slick walls spammed around his length. 

“S-Shit—” Bokuto grits out, relishing the way the unmistakable sound of your arousal squelching around his cock echoes in the locker room. “God, you’re so fucking messy- baby, I can’t—” his words end on a whine and tries to push himself further inside you, his hands going to grip your hair to wrap it around his fingers. 

There’s a low guttural moan from you, and when he looks up, his gut clenches at the sight of your thoroughly fucked face. He wants to commit it all to memory - the way your tongue lolls out while your eyes roll to the back of your head as you cry out for him because he’s the only one who can make you feel like this. He pulls at your hair slightly and immediately feels you clench around him. 

He does it again, harder. 

Your whimpers thunder in his ears, and he leans forward until he has you completely underneath him, chest grazing the back of your shoulders as he braces his entire weight on his arm. His tongue and teeth are relentless on the flushed tips of your ear, laving the sensitive skin before nipping it harshly as he thrusts into you. “You’re such a pretty puppy, aren’t you? Fucked dumb and drooling on my cock,”

You sob at this, your words slurring. “K-Kou, s’close—” His thrusts become short and fast, reaching deeper as your walls dragging along his cock deliciously. The way you’re needy heat is sucking him in leaves him breathless, his hips stuttering with effort as he struggles to go faster and faster and— 

Your walls flutter around his girth, clenching down and squeezing so tightly that he can’t help but arch his back, hands gripping your hips to bring you closer, the curve of your ass flush against his abs. He ruts into you harshly, trying to fuck you through your orgasm, and it’s the loud slapping of skin on skin that mixes perfectly with your lewd keens that have his dick spasming and finally sends him over the edge. 

For a moment, all he can hear are the heavy breathing as you both try to catch your breaths, skin slick and glistening with sweat, but then his ears perk up at the telltale whisper of footsteps shuffling. Somewhere, right outside the door, a broomstick topples over something, and he swears he can hear the hushed bickering of Atsumu and Kiyoomi. 

Thank you for reading :) 

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[leviiattacks]

Boxer Levi & Coach Reader

author note :: i lost the ask for this, but this is not good at all. quite literally the worst thing i have ever written /srs anyways,,,,, anon said they wanted me to post it no matter what so i hope you do enjoy whatever this is,,, the pacing is non-existent and it has not been edited 👍🏼

requests are always open :-) i promise i am usually better than this,, anyway i may just use this as a rough outline for a fic 🤔

word count :: 5.4k....... yeah......

you and levi become acquainted with each other in university. it’s all very cliche if you do say so yourself. he steps in playing the role of good samaritan heroically saving your wallet and wordlessly he hands it to you even after running for the thief. the man doesn’t do as much as pant in exhaustion.

his stamina is…never mind that, his reflexes are out of this world

he expects a thank you because anyone else would expect at least a token of gratitude shown via words but the sentence you want to ask only ends up trapping itself in your throat

it comes to the point where he nods understanding maybe you have a sore throat or just don’t want to thank him at all

eyes flicking to his hands you immediately lunge forward taking your chance.

almost immediately you feel regret for holding onto the wrist of a complete and utter stranger without permission

“your stamina it’s great!” the man turns to you, he isn’t smiling but he’s definitely intrigued by the sudden change in behavior

and that’s where it all begins

levi’s horrible at getting to know strangers, even worse at forming bonds and connections. maybe that’s why he doesn’t warm up to the idea of having to deal with new people and new settings all at once

“i hope you’ve met your coach this is aman-” introductions are cut short by levi stubbornly interjecting in the middle of your sentence 

“i have, but is she you?”

pursing your lips an awkward chuckle leaves your mouth, you look around uncomfortably wondering what he means.

“well, no?”

“then i won’t box.”

?????

you don’t even know what to say??? here you were thinking maybe he would be a little more cooperative than this.

his index finger points right at you and he takes a step forwards. his shoes come into contact with yours and you find yourself holding your breath apprehensively.

“i won’t box unless it’s you in charge.”

that is when you and levi formally meet for the first time. you are but an inexperienced coach and he, an inexperienced boxer.

“i’m getting drinks you want anything?”

“oh no don’t worry i’m good!!” you smile at levi and he nods his head venturing off to buy himself a bottle of sparkling water

levi has had you coaching him for a few years now

really he doesn’t think he’s ever felt more than respect for you. respect for the way you stay back late with him to train, respect for the schedules you make him and he’s most definitely respectful of your boxing knowledge

sure out of the two of you he’s more physically capable but it doesn’t change the fact that he becomes frustrated when he’s told he has to spend a day without you.

it’s not like you think that levi cares or anything, nothing sappy like that.

he just probably hates, no, despises having to listen to anyone else’s instructions. he finds that they somehow sound demeaning or less sincere.

every instruction you give him has a reason behind it. you don’t beat around the bush and he’s stated before that he enjoys that he knows he’s developing his skill set and progressing when he’s with you.

the olympus ring - one of the largest boxing competitions known to man is approaching soon and if levi manages to place in the top two his career is set to sky rocket in no time at all

that thought makes you feel unusually nervous

worry gnaws at your mind and you wonder about whether or not he’ll replace you after the competition concludes. after all who wants a coach with little fighting experience? all you really know is from your family. your brother and father had been professional boxers years prior.

you have no doubt at all that levi will place number one that’s for sure but you really hope he doesn’t find a replacement for you.

you’ve never had much faith in your coaching and to be left behind in the dust hurts you a tiny bit but you never bring it up because you know what? levi progressing in his career will make him happy :-)

levi’s happiness over yours and it’s not good to be selfish you suppose >:(

“y/n.” he’s waving a hand in front of your face, you’re uncharacteristically quiet today and he’s caught on

“you awake?” he asks again.

upon receiving no response levi’s now waving his hand with more tenacity

“wake. up.” he flicks at your forehead and you stir a little finally coming to your senses once you see him leaning up above you.

he looks taller than normal from this angle and your cheeks blaze, he has a habit of walking around shirtless whilst training and doesn’t realise the effect it has on you

“i- yeah good totally good. just thinking.”

“thinking about?” levi kneels to the floor looking you in the eyes and your mind falters wondering when it was he began to sit so close to you. it feels like it was just yesterday when the two of you used to eat lunch separately out of embarrassment.

the silence stretches for a second too long and his eyes narrow suspiciously leaving you to think on your feet

“i well, you have a press conference soon and i have to think of transportation and-”

“coach. i can deal with that.”

you’re a little stunned when he says that because he’s never tried to take away from your responsibilities in the past. is this a hint that he no longer wants you around?

“but it’s my job?” you reply back feeling threatened

“but you’re always doing it. i can figure it out this once.”

without even hearing the rest of what you have to say he stalks back towards his punching bag leaving your chest empty

he’s definitely thinking of replacing you is what you think

really this should not be getting you worked up.

you’ve known levi for years, you should have faith in the fact he trusts you but you find yourself indulging in self doubt more often than you intend to

guilt fills you as you scroll through the multiple job listings in front of you but you have a justification. this is your lifeline, you can’t afford to lose your source of income and it’s best to be prepared

however there’s no real amount of preparation that can get you used to the prospect of not seeing levi every day

he’s sort of just made a space for himself in your daily routine

chewing at your bottom lip you can’t get through one job listing without thinking about him and you shut your laptop down thinking tomorrow will be a better day and you’ll check back in then

why does levi even matter?? he’ll officially be an ass when he dumps you of your position?? who cares about him???

but that doesn’t stop you from caring and now you’re hunched over your closed laptop trying to understand what it is that’s making you feel this way

maybe it’s the whole attachment you have with him??

he is the very first person you’ve ever coached that’s true

he’s made you proud and allowed for your name to get out there in the boxing world

maybe that’s what’s holding you back from looking into other jobs

but that reason doesn’t make much sense

you should still be frustrated with him.

AND

you most definitely should not care about how he’s doing OR worry about who’ll patch him up when he ends up stupidly injuring himself during practice (he does that a lot)

“why do i care so much for him?” you type into google thinking there’s no person on this earth that can help you with this predicament now

honestly at this point asking AI is probably going to have to be your only reliable option

tapping on one of the first links you hope to find your answer

“what happened? yeah, you had sex?” pops onto your screen and you tap off as quick as possible.

no. you did not have sex. oh god, you haven’t even touched levi much. the most you’ve done is lace your fingers with his and offer him a hug

are you meant to have… had sex???

is it wrong for you to feel that way withou-

okay enough. this has got nothing to do with sex and your feelings are still valid. maybe you are right and you’re attached to him that’s it!!! right?

scrolling further down you nearly give up until you reach another link titled “the science of caring for those who don’t care for you.”

rolling your eyes you still hesitantly tap praying you find some sort of answer

and an answer is what you find that’s for sure

staring you right in the face in bold letters

1. you feel responsible for that person

not really, he’s very independent.

2. the person is a family member

absolutely not

3. you could be romantically attracted to the person in question

…….

romantically interested?? no. that’s wrong. not true. incorrect. not right. just not real. you are not romantically attracted to levi

,,,or are you?

that does explain why he makes you feel jittery, it explains why you shivered the one time he engulfed you in a hug at his first championship

it also explains why you feel burning jealousy when a celebrity shoves their number into your hands asking you to pass it onto levi. they don’t even look at you like you’re a human being. you’re just a messenger pigeon

they’re worlds away from you. you forever stuck in your tracksuit and them - those beautiful models in skintight dresses and heels to match are stuck in a world where everything they want is handed to them. that includes men

you know it’s not their fault and you’d kill to be like them too but you guess the whole sweaty tracksuits and boxing daily has just become your niche

nonetheless levi is a man. a popular man.

and he sure as hell has no romantic interest in his clumsy, uncoordinated coach

sighing you huddle yourself into a ball choosing not to think about it anymore

but you know you’ve already come to your conclusion

you like levi ackerman more than a coach should

and it’s taken you years to take notice of it

when you became a coach you never really thought people would talk about you much

you were clearly very wrong about that. you and levi are both hot topics on discussion forums and boxing panels. luckily for you levi finds no entertainment in such forms of boxing and so never glances at them

he’s completely unaware of all the online comments. to be honest you’re happy he’s oblivious to it all. he doesn’t deserve to deal with spiteful, mean spirited jabs

you’re less like levi and find yourself aimlessly scrolling through news articles and boxing q&a pages. it’s interesting to see what people have to say on social media

but these days all the searches for your name are filled with “replaced soon?” and “not good enough to coach ackerman?”

the headlines are cruel jokes but again you’re willing to handle taking the brunt of the press’ force instead of levi. yes, even if it hurts you.

“what you reading?” levi peers over your shoulder and you nearly throw your phone away to the other side of the room but instead you choose to grip at it tightly and shove it into your chest

you grin hiding the screen away. “something private.”

levi doesn’t look like he believes you, he wants to ask if you’re okay and if you need anything because frankly you do look slightly distraught but he decides against interrogating you

“oh okay. i’ll be back. you want anything from starbucks?” he asks.

at that moment you wish he asked you if you wanted to talk about what had been bothering you

but you know even if he did ask you’d deny his help

the olympus ring’s official press conference is one in which many rivalries will be established

levi has always had an issue with zeke jaeger one of the top contenders in his division.

it’s a long story......

one which includes the purposeful injury of a mutual friend in order to sabotage his career

you remember it all, the way you had to physically hold levi back from pouncing at the man. it had been one of the most difficult things you had to do

erwin was your friend too and you wanted him to receive justice. part of you wanted to let go and allow for levi to attack zeke with his all but you chose to be levi’s coach before you were erwin’s friends

if he wasn’t going to make good decisions for himself you would do it for him

if you had let him go through with that rash choice he could have risked suspension and suspension could completely halt some careers. suspension almost always led to shorter longevity and motivation

and so that’s why you always shift to levi’s side when he walks past zeke. there’s no way you’re taking a chance. knowing levi he could lose his cool and completely pummel him with an upper cut

so that’s what you’re doing right now. trying to edge levi to the other side of the hall but he does no such thing.

“coach, do you have to be so cautious with zeke?” he finally asks with a bland look on his face

you wince a little when he doesn’t use your name and it looks like he notices the reaction. he makes no commentary on it

“this is my job. let me do it properly.” you explain nudging him to the side so your path doesn’t coincide with zeke’s

levi looks at you poking a tongue in his cheek clearly not amused nor happy

“i’ll do what i want.” and with that said and done he walks on ahead. you take note of the fact that despite saying he’ll do what he wants he does in fact comply with your instructions and walks in the opposite direction and into a nearby convenience store

sighing you rummage through your backpack trying to find your meds

your head has been pounding since you’ve arrived and you hope to fit in at least one nap

looking up to survey the area the street is clear and there is no sight of zeke. you feel at ease at that discovery, not only does he cause you discomfort but he’s a general displeasure to interact with

his tuft of dirty blonde hair irks you to no end and you’re up for no conversation with the man who who ended erwin’s career

he’s the last person you want to ever initiate small talk with.

but fate is a weird thing is it not? because as soon as you’re sure you’ve escaped the clutches of zeke jaeger you hear a chuckle behind you

“well if it isn’t levi’s side piece?”

a hand lands on your shoulder but you shake it away immediately

jaw clenching you try to ignore zeke as best you can but he continues to taunt you

“imagine if levi got an actual coach and not a whore to fuck in the gym?”

turning to face him you see him midway through shrugging his shoulders

believe it or not there had been a time where you and zeke were good friends. a time where he hadn’t let fame get to his head.

so for him to refer to you like that does make your heart sting a little

“cat got your tong-”

and there it is

the long overdue punch

it hits him right in the jaw without warning and you’re tripping trying to stop levi - who might you add has shown up from NOWHERE.

you thought he was shopping?????

“you know if i needed to swing at him i could have?!?” you whisper shout at him completely infuriated that he’s possibly thrown away his chance of competing

“you weren’t going to though.” he says plainly and you can’t deny it.

you don’t have it in you to swing at zeke.

levi doesn’t choose to inflict more pain on his opponent and instead kneels beside him leaning by his ear

you don’t know what he whispers - you’re completely out of ear shot but it’s not even thirty seconds later till levi rises and saunters away seeming content

shooting zeke an apologetic look for the over the top beating you’re surprised to see him look...regretful?

whatever levi said you wonder what it was

it’s been a solid fifteen minutes of you walking behind levi

his back is all you’ve seen so you have no idea about his mood and it’s not that you’re intimidated or anything but peering in just to look at his face is a little odd so you choose to stay a suitable distance away

“y/n.” he says finally when he reaches his hotel room.

fishing through your backpack for his keys you’re surprised when he holds your wrist to stop you

“listen to me.” he sounds calm but slightly on edge

“has zeke always said those things?”

twiddling your thumbs you awkwardly laugh

“well no, we used to be friends. remember how i told you ages ago? he was so cool back then and yeah i miss that zeke :-) but i don’t know what’s up with him.”

you’ve never really told anyone about how you feel about zeke’s hostility so you’re getting KINDA emotional right now thinking about the friend you miss

“i mean to ask, since you started coaching me has he always said that?”

“it was a bit before that but yeah. it’s no big deal at all. people change, zeke changed. i can’t do anything about it.”

moving to find his room keys again you don’t expect for him to hold his grasp

looking up at him there’s a look of simmering anger on his face

“why did you never tell me he said that about you?”

running a hand through your hair you’re only getting anxious having to deal with this in the middle of a hotel hallway

“levi. everyone says that about me. me and you are always together, all sorts of stupid rumours spread.”

“so why do you have to deal with all the malicious comments?? it’s unfa-”

“levi, the world has never been fair.”

handing him his keys he looks between you and them. he’s deciding if he wants to continue with his questioning

ultimately he decides he’s heard enough

a few hours have passed since the incident. neither you or levi have had the courage to come out of your separate rooms to discuss anything

you know you’re going to have to break the quiet and go through his possible press conference questions with him. even if you don’t want to this is your job after all.

so that’s how you end up sitting cross legged on his bed in your pyjamas. levi’s still in the shower so you’ve welcomed your self in. it’s common practice between the two of you to do so

after the one time he walked in on you naked…there’s practically nothing to hide from each other

scribbling a few ideas down onto your notepad you’re curious of what the press have in store for him this time

“yes exactly my thoughts” the sound of levi’s voice is coming from the bathroom, you suppose he’s had to take a business call and think nothing of it

“y/n?” he scoffs and you assume at first he’s calling out for you but then things take a turn for the worst

“sometimes i think about not having y/n coach me that’s all… there’s nothing wrong with that?”

oh.

so your suspicions were correct.

glancing down at the interview questions in your lap you jot down a note at the bottom

hey couldn’t stay for long but try to review the press conference questions on your own if you have the time! :-) much lov good luck, y/n !!!!

and then you retreat.

you don’t know if you make it up but you swear you hear knocking at your door during the night. you aren’t too sure but whatever it is disturbs your sleep.

stretching outside of your room the next morning you’re drowsy and beyond exhausted. you don’t even notice levi come outside.

one of his knuckles is rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. has he not slept well?

“i tried to wake you up but i guess you were asleep?” his statement comes out as a question. you’re not used to levi exhibiting much emotion at all and right now he seems unusually inquisitive.

“i was sleeping.” not even sparing him a second of your time you give him a rehearsed smile and walk off towards the hotel cafe

you can’t find the energy to even look at him

the hall is lined up with barricades to prevent possible assault or injury and you’re behind the stage with levi

the two of you have yet to say another word to each other since this morning. levi’s buttoning his shirt up and you’re looking around for his necktie. the least he can do after yesterday’s confrontation with zeke is to look presentable

“tie?” he asks over his shoulder

throwing it at him you hear a grunt of annoyance. he must have disliked that.

“can you help me with my cuff links?”

breathing out of your nose you feel anxious. you’ll have to get really close to him to do that.

but again you have to.

you take them from his hands and stand in front of him. you don’t really know how to go about this, what way is there for you to appropriately position yourself?

he’s sat on a backstage bench and checks the time on his phone “we’ve only got a few minutes left.” he’s clearly requesting that you hurry this up but you can’t seem to do it you’re completely frozen in place

“y/n, what’s wrong?” he asks

“nothing.”

he doesn’t have to know you know

“something’s wrong.”

“we’re in a hurry it doesn’t matter.” yanking him by his right sleeve you slot one of the cuff links through the slits in his shirt.

levi silently observes you fiddling with his sleeves, you can feel his stare burn into you. even as you’re moving onto the opposite side you can see from the corner of your eye that he hasn’t stopped staring

“was it something i said to you?” he asks again

a silence drags between the both of you and you debate on whether or not you’d like to enlighten levi with the information you obtained yesterday night

“more like something you didn’t say.” you finally respond.

thrusting his arm back at him his hand lands onto his lap and he opens his mouth to respond only to be cut off by an announcer

“THIS YEARS OLYMPUS RING CONTESTANTS MAY ENTER.”

crowds can be heard cheering outside but levi still hasn’t ripped his eyes off of you

“go on, maybe you’ll find a new coach after the press conference.” your bitter smile tells him all he has to know and his face visibly drops realizing what has happened

“i–”

“mr ackerman to the stage. i repeat mr ackerman to the stage!!”

he’s torn between staying behind and explaining himself or leaving to head towards one of the most important press conferences of his life

his teeth tug at his bottom lip as he looks between you and the entrance to the stage

“go levi.”

and he does.

levi’s sat on one of many chairs on the panel, he gulps taking a sip of water to calm his nerves. he’s not even nervous about the press conference, that can wait. he doesn’t know how much you’ve heard and how much you’ve misinterpreted what he’s said

he finds it weird at first that he’s even worried because you and him have a professional relationship

but then he has to stop himself from smacking the back of his own head. he knows that much isn’t true, hell if it was a strictly professional relationship he wouldn’t be walking around shirtless to get your attention

he wouldn’t lace his fingers with yours when he was nervous either 

he wouldn’t let you tend to his injuries and scold him if this was about being professional, he doesn’t tolerate being scolded by anyone but if it’s you he’ll take it

when it’s you scolding him for fucking up one of his fists it feels okay, it feels right. he feels warm inside knowing that you have to care for him if you get that angry 

he sighs feeling exasperated waiting for the last person to join the panel and get this question and answers segment over and done with

zeke makes his obnoxiously late appearance but levi doesn’t have it in him to roll his eyes. evidently he’s still stuck on you and thinking about apologizing as soon as this is finished

zeke sits right next to levi and some members of the crowd whisper amongst themselves

“have they made up?”

“think there’s gonna be another brawl??”

“i hope not they’re both my favourites…”

one of the reporters right in front of the stage but behind the barricades is the first to speak

“as we all know there has been an unmistakable sense of tension between two of the most promising contenders this year. mr ackerman and mr yaeger. would you like to put the rumours at rest?”

the question makes levi clench his jaw, zeke rolls his hands into two fists feeling just as frustrated. this is boxing not a reality tv show who cares what the terms of their long broken friendship are?

zeke nudges levi’s knee with his and levi returns the movement.

for now they’ll call a truce. it seems that both he and zeke have more pressing matters to attend to

“me and levi are bros. i’m frankly upset such a rumour started in the first place!” the crowd is mumbling again and the reporter himself is stunned by the unexpected response

“i admit that a fight which some may have saw yesterday was my fault. i had made some inappropriate comments towards his coach to get at him. it was a malicious move on my part and i hope people don’t think him and i are mortal enemies because of this bump in the road.”

zeke is so well spoken when he wants to be that levi feels self conscious sitting there having said nothing.

“mr ackerman? would you like to comment or?”

levi’s eyes light up, this is an opportunity to have you hear him. he doesn’t have to wait to explain when he can throw hints right now. you may be giving him the silent treatment but you wouldn’t miss this press conference for the world

sitting up in his chair and clearing his throat levi looks directly into one of the cameras pointed at him. he’s sure you’ll be able to see him from backstage.

“me and zeke have no other disputes apart from that i assure you. i simply value my coach greatly and so i acted rashly yesterday.”

the reporter nods along feeling pleased with the answer.

a few more questions are thrown around to the other contestants, levi sits there bored out of his mind until at the last minute before everything is just about to wrap up he’s asked a question once again

“regarding your coach, have you thought of a replacement if you win the championship?”

levi presses his lips together not understanding the question

“why would i replace my current coach?” where on earth has this question even come from??

“rumours have been flying around regarding lack of experience and the fact you’re outgrowing each other now. it’s all over boxing discussion forums.”

your hands are embarrassingly shoved into your pockets as people pass behind you backstage offering you pitiful looks. maybe wearing your bright pink team ackerman tracksuit wasn’t the best choice because everyone can hear what’s going on up front

levi’s memory flashes back to the number of times you hid your phone behind your back and awkwardly chuckled saying nothing was bothering you. he understands what you were hiding now

his mouth twists into a scowl, he knows you’re a few meters away listening to all of this and hearing it coming out of a stranger’s mouth is probably upsetting you

“i plan to stick with my coach till the day i die.”

you sit up not believing what you heard, it entirely contradicts what you heard last night

some journalists are jotting down notes, members of the audience are leaning forward listening intently

“well, why is that?” the reporter presses on

levi twirls a pen around in his hands staring off into the crowd.

“i don’t think anyone else could tolerate me.

you bite back a laugh because you know that’s true :-)

“they’re a person who saw potential in me when no one else did.”

he chuckles to himself.  “your stamina it’s great!” his witty imitation of you is rather accurate

“that was the first thing coach ever said to me.” he pauses allowing himself to reminisce.

“but i did want to drop my coach the other day.” he admits.

hearing him confess to it should make you mad, you should be pissed off right now but you can’t manage to feel that way at all

“i said it because i wanted them to relax. i never really understood the magnitude of the criticism they were receiving until recently.”

levi’s staring directly at the camera and his eyes pierce into yours, it’s as if he’s actually looking right at you

“i’d be lost without them, so i want to say to the one person rooting for me backstage, thank you for everything you do for me :-)”

you’re covering your face with your hands feeling the blush creep up your cheeks now. GOD what is he doing??? you may as well be the same colour as your tracksuit, you’ve never heard him be this sentimental in his entire life

“so no, i won’t be replacing my coach any time soon. if anything i should worry about my coach replacing me.”

levi ackerman...

he’s a HUGE idiot if he thinks you’ve ever thought of seriously replacing him

levi presses his arms against your sides when you’re both alone and in the solitude of his hotel room.

“i’m sorry for thinking you wanted to fire me.“ you mumble it into his chest feeling much too embarrassed to look up at him and say it

“also i may as well say this now but i have a fat, massive, huge crush on you “

after that you awkwardly laugh to yourself. you both kinda stare at each other and you’re meant to regret telling him how you feel right now but you don’t. having that weight lifted off your shoulders feels amazing.

"you don’t have to like me back or anything and i know you don’t like me back obviously you probably like that one actress- what was her name?? the one with the long black hair she gave you her number at a fundraiser dinner. you’d both look cute together, have i said that??”

levi gives you a blank look

“i threw her number away.”

you’re open mouthed feeling completely shocked, she’s gorgeous??

“HUH?? HELLO WHY? LEVI ACKERMAN, HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN HER??”

“i have but is she you?”

the all too familiar words from years ago ring in your ears 

nostalgia hits the both of you in waves and levi takes you in for another hug. your heart hammers in your chest and with your face pressed against him once again you can feel the irregular beat of his heart too. 

that is when you and levi formally meet for the second time. this time you are but an experienced coach and he, an experienced boxer.

:-)

[btsmosphere]

Crossing Paths - drabble from the Crossfire universe

request from @excusemyuwus -

I remember Tae said he had a crush on her while working on that project so now I kinda want to see his pov of that time and how he was holding being around his crush lol, not gonna lie gangster Tae all nervous bc he like someone is something want to see (also imagine how much the guys would tease him uwu)

tumblr ate your ask when I tried to answer it, sorry! this is the only part I had copied, but if it ever resurfaces, I shall answer there. for now it is still refusing to cooperate so I am posting like this! (update: the ask just returned, it is here)

~pairing: taehyung x reader ~word count: 1.4k ~pre-relationship, fluff, angst, slice of life, mafia au, college au ~rating: g ~warnings: vague mention of gang activity, this is a gang au after all, but it’s not particularly prominent

~a/n: thank you for your great request! this was so nice to come back to, I am so sentimental about this series as my first bts fic🥰takes me back to when I was just getting into bts… it felt hard to do it justice! because of this, sorry it took me a while to write, but I wanted to do it well, and again I kept the theme of making my ‘drabbles’ wayyy longer😅final big thanks to the site being frustrating and eating drafts and such🙃🙃but here it is, finally seeing the light of day! I hope you enjoy it x

“I can tell something’s on your mind, Tae.”

Jimin stared coolly at his friend. Looking over his shoulder guiltily as he unlocked the door, Tae found the other boy with his hands in his pockets, looking expectant.

All Tae could do was shrug as he elbowed the door open, heading to ditch his bag.

“Hey, Jimin’s right.”

A light flick on Tae’s forehead made him startle, looking up to find Hobi grinning, though his head was tilted to one side in question.

“What is it?”

Jimin’s shoulder nudged his own as they sunk into the sofa.

Tae checked his phone.

“It’s just a project for class, don’t worry about it,” he pocketed his phone, ignoring their gazes, “I gotta meet with my partner in an hour.”

“It’s okay, I wasn’t staying that long anyway,” Hobi slumped down too, having helped himself to a drink from the fridge, “I’m on watch with Yoongi across town.”

As the discussion turned to this week’s jobs and deals, Taehyung rested his head back against the sofa. The sounds of his friends’ conversation was like static. Instead, he was picturing the scene in class earlier, as the slideshow was flipped to show the project partners on the screen.

Tae hadn’t been too fussed, idly playing with his pen lid as he searched for his name. But when his eyes fell on it, he sat up straight.

Having only bumped into you a few times in class, he had never expected his heart to be hammering quite so hard as he quickly scanned the room for you. Sliding his things away, he had walked towards you as everyone began to file out, meeting you halfway as you did the same.

Leaning against a desk to keep his jittery hands occupied, he grinned at you.

Your returning smile, he noticed, was much more nervous, only flickering into existence for a wavering second. The two of you had only a brief conversation to sort out when you would meet, before you had practically scurried away.

His eyes had lingered on you as his smile slowly sank.

Unconsciously poking his tongue against his cheek, Tae wondered if you were afraid of him.

“Hey!”

A finger clicked sharply in front of his face. He blinked back at Hobi’s grin, Jimin bursting into laughter at his side.

“Just a project, my ass,” Hobi shook his head, dumping an empty bottle on the coffee table, “don’t wanna be late, do you?”

A radiant smile was tossed over his shoulder as Hobi left the room, front door clicking soon after.

Sending his best friend a knowing look, Jimin also gathered himself to stand.

“Have fun tonight, yeah?”

He winked. Tae protested, shooting up from the sofa with an affronted look.

“So it is a special someone?” Jimin giggled.

“You’re impossible,” Tae grumbled, trailing after him to the door, “it’s just a project, I told you.”

Jimin hummed in a way which made it very clear he didn’t believe him.

“Don’t scare them off, tiger,” he remarked, stepping outside.

Tae’s shoulders slumped. He was certain that was just what he had already done.

“I’m busy tonight. And my house isn’t free, so I can’t have anyone showing up here.”

Namjoon chuckled across the line.

“All this for a college project?” Clearly he had heard about this from the others. “If you could lend Kook some of your commitment to school, that would be great,” he teased.

Sighing, Tae spun around to survey the road outside his window, ruffling his own hair.

“You’re very funny, but I need to go. See you tomorrow.”

Tae was certain he would never hear the end of this from the others. It was true that he had firmly set aside time for your meeting today, even if it was only for a minor college presentation. But it was important to him.

He knew that this was the only time he would get together with you, and though it would end as soon as the presentation was given, he couldn’t help but want to make the most of it. At your last meeting, he had been largely distracted by the dizzying height of your apartment, leaving him shying back from any windows.

So this left you with his house today instead.

Arriving soon after Tae’s phone call, you were both soon seated on his floor. Though you mostly worked in quiet with occasional, quick conversation, it was not awkward. Your legs lay close together under the coffee table as you scribbled away diligently on its surface.

Glancing over the lid of his laptop as his fingers hung idly, Tae sighed. Watching as your pen swirled across your notebook, he let his eyes drift across your focussed features.

He swallowed as he did so, teeth tugging his lip. A light frown came over your features. He couldn’t take his eyes away from your lips as your pen lifted to your mouth, resting between your teeth as you mulled the work over, eyes flitting about the page.

Eventually, the lack of tapping at his keyboard must have got through to you. You raised your head.

Too late to divert his gaze, Taehyung cleared his throat and muttered a proposal for a break. Eager as well to put your work aside, you clambered from the floor to join him at his offer of a drink.

Moving through to the kitchen, he made casual conversation, asking after your dad. Last time there had only been a brief meeting, as he met Tae at the door before you hurried him away.

Picking up on his offer to chat, you teased Tae for his fear of heights, giggling over how he had screwed his eyes shut whenever he had come within sight of the view from your windows.

Of course, Tae tried his best to roll his eyes at you, but the smile dragging the corners of his mouth refused to be suppressed.

He poured your drinks. When he turned away to put the cartons back in the fridge, he took a breath, trying to settle himself. Why did he feel so flustered?

Squaring his shoulders a little more, he turned back, only for his hand to catch one of the glasses. It clattered against the surface, barely leaving time for him to jump back and avoid being splattered with its contents.

You hopped from your seat, ready to help.

Swallowing down his shock, Tae scratched at the back of his neck to hide his slightly trembling hand.

“Don’t worry,” he quickly muttered, flashing a nervous smile as he gathered towels and set to cleaning up.

Soft laughter followed from you. Still, you reached across to help.

Righting the glass and taking one of the cloths to clear up, your hand came concerningly close to Tae’s own. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the countertop, his cheeks warm even as you finished and he was rooting in the fridge again for a refill.

You seemed miraculously unfazed by his flailing, though, he noticed as you finally settled beside each other sipping your drinks.

“So it went well?”

Jimin nudged a reluctant Tae, eyebrows wiggling all the time.

“Yes, fine,” Tae groaned, trying to shrug him off.

Jimin did stop, but only in favour of staring at his friend with doleful eyes.

“Don’t be like that. You’ll see her again. You literally share a class!”

“It’s nothing like that,” Tae refuted.

He even halfway believed it.

You had got on well together, but surely not more than could be expected of most classmates? He sighed a little as he thought of it. It had been fun, but there was no excuse to spend any more time with you.

Besides, sparing one night to work on a project was a little different to becoming friends, or even more…

There was a reason the bangtan boys stuck to themselves.

But as he reminisced, he knew he had a soft spot for you, even if it should come to nothing. The project was over, the presentation given, but he still remembered the way you bounced with excited relief after you had finished talking to the class. Your face was glowing as you high-fived him with a grin, the work having paid off.

There was still a hint of nervousness though, and you had only given a timid smile and a small ‘see you later’ before heading out of class.

And that was the end of it.

But Tae smiled to himself. It had been fun, and he knew he wouldn’t be sorry if you ever crossed paths again.

Thank you for reading! Reblogs and comments super appreciated always!!

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