#guy who is so so normal and a freak at the same time

[lucy90712]

Headcanon for all the boys you want to write this for :

He overhears reader talking to a family member/ friend about how *the boys* are the one for her and just talks about a longtime future with them

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Gavi: 

- you have a free day for once so Gavi begs you to come to his training session with him but he didn't need to do much to convince you as you haven't been to training with him in a while as you've been busy with school and work plus you haven't seen the rest of the guys in ages 

- as Gavi is still recovering from his injury his training sessions look a little different so he started his exercises after the rest of the team but kept training after everyone else finished so you watch him for a minute until the rest of the guys call you over 

- It's been a while since you last saw most of the guys so you catch up on what you've been up to which for you isn't a very interesting as you have the same routine almost every day with school during the week and work on the weekends 

- the conversation turned to your relationship pretty quickly and how things have been as Gavi has been able to do more and have more of his normal life back then the boys start talking about how sappy Gavi is and how he never shuts up about you 

- you tell them that you are the same way and you couldn't care less as you can't imagine being sappy with anyone other than Gavi as he is your past present and future 

- they tease you for saying that but you didn't care as it's the truth you love Gavi with every fibre of your being and you don't want to be with anyone else for the rest of your life he is the one for you 

- Gavi overhears you saying all of that which puts a big smile on his face for the rest of his training session and for the rest of the day it makes him so happy to hear as he feels the exact same way about you but he didn't want to just say it 

- he never tells you that he heard what you said but he thinks about it all the time whenever he has a bad day and he gets home and sees you it reminds him instantly of what you said and lifts his mood immediately 

- all it takes is for him to realise that as long as he has you all of the little meaningless things don't matter as in 5 days or 5 years you will still be by his side supporting him and those little thing won't even still be in his memory 

- that conversation you had without you knowing he could hear you will forever be his little pick me up and he never plans to tell you as he doesn't see the need to embarrass you by telling you what he heard 

Pedri:

- every summer Pedri takes you with him back to Tenerife with him to spend time with his family and to just relax but you didn't mind one bit as you love it there and you love his family 

- ever since Pedri introduced you to his family you have been really close with his mum she was glad to have female presence around and you were happy to spend time with her and create a bond with Pedri's family 

- seeing as you don't get to see each other too much Pedri's mum asks if you want to have a girls day when you are in Tenerife with Pedri and who would you be to say no to a girls day 

- the two of you go and get lunch and get your nails done together before going back to Pedri's house to sit outside by the pool in the sun with cocktails seeing as Pedri wasn't there when you got there 

- while you are sat outside you get to talking about your future and because you feel comfortable around his mum you tell her that you don't see yourself doing anything without Pedri by your side and how you never want to have to love your life with anyone else 

- as you are saying these things Pedri arrives home and starts to listen while standing at the back doors of the house he hears every word you say which just warms his heart as he knew you two were in love but to hear you put it that way really makes him happy 

- at some point you see a figure standing behind you out of the corner of your eye and you freak out until you realise it's Pedri but then you freak out even more thinking about what he heard as you didn't know if what you said would be too much for him 

- he quickly makes his way over to you and kisses your cheek and whispers in your ear that he wouldn't want to experience anything in life without you which makes you feel just as warm and fuzzy inside as Pedri did when he heard you say it 

- his mum hears what he said to you and it makes her smile knowing that her son has found someone special who he loves and who loves him back equally as much 

Jude: 

- being back in England for the summer means seeing family and this year as the summer break was shorter due to the euros and after spending the whole time in Germany with Jude when you fly back you go straight home to spend time with your family while Jude goes to see his 

- you spend a few weeks apart before you travel up to spend the last part of your time in England with Jude and his family as before you know it you will be back in Madrid and you want to make sure you see everyone before life takes over again 

- Jude is glad to have you back as he's missed you and Jobe is excited to see you too as you get on well with him and it's been a while since you've seen him 

- they had a sibling day planned for the day you arrived back as you came a bit early but they were quick to change their plans and invite you along and they both say that it will be more fun with you there anyway 

- you all spend the day together walking around town and going in all sorts of little stores on the high street most of which you only go in to get away from big groups of fans who want pictures with Jude and Jobe

- to end the day all three of you go for dinner and at some point Jude goes to the bathroom leaving you to talk with Jobe so he starts asking about how Madrid has been for you and you talk about how it was difficult to adjust at first but Jude helped you feel at home 

- that leads you on to saying how you could do anything if Jude was by your side as he just gets you and always knows how to help you through things or what you need at any moment which you don't think that anyone else could do 

- Jobe then asks if you think you'll be with Jude for the rest of your life and you say that you have no doubt that Jude is the one for you and you don't want to spend the rest of your life with anyone else 

- Jude heard all this as he walked back over and he can't help but smile knowing that you are so happy with him as all he really wants is for the both of you to be happy together and he tells you that as he sits back down which makes you blush as you know that he heard you

Ruben: 

- You and Ruben spent a few days away just the two of you after the euros but after that his friends invited him to join them for a few days on a boat so he asked you and you agreed so that's where you went 

- Ruben introduced you to his friends a long time ago but you don't get to see them very often so you hadn't met their girlfriends before but they were quick to introduce themselves and they all seemed really sweet

- you spend most of the few days on the boat talking to the girls and getting to know them so by the time the last day rolls all of you are so comfortable talking to each other about anything which is when they start to gush over your relationship with Ruben and how loving he is towards you 

- they keep insisting that you have the perfect relationship but you tell them that you are nowhere near perfect but because you know that you want this relationship to last forever you have learnt how to make compromises and nit fight about the little things that mean nothing 

- Ruben overhears you saying that which only solidifies in his mind that you are the one for him and it encourages him to take the initiative and take your relationship to the next step

- the day after your last day on the boat Ruben plans a whole day where it's just the two of you doing lots of fun little activities which ends with a trip to the beach for a picnic for dinner as the sun sets 

- just as the sun has gone down and the sky is all sorts of beautiful colours Ruben brings you closer to the waters edge where he suddenly gets down on one knee and asks you to marry him 

- he has a whole speech to tell you how much he loves you and why which he ends with mentioning what you said on the boat the day before which you had no idea he heard but it makes you happy that he resonated with what you said 

- if the girls didn't think your relationship was perfect before they definitely do after they hear the story of your engagement at a dinner Ruben organised to celebrate it 

[loves-77]

You Are My Honey

*TW* Yandere, obsessive tones, mates, Bear hybrid, NOT PROOFREAD (Tell me if you notice anymore)

THIS IS MY FIRST STORY I HAVE EVER WRITTEN SO IGNORE ANY MISTAKES, I AM STILL TRYING TO FIND MY PERFERED WRITING STYLE!

TELL ME IF YOU WANT A SMUT PART 2!!

*One part of my story is inspired by a scene in another story I read, don't remember the author*

*Not My Picture*

What had the world become? You sit alone on your couch in a small little apartment you could barely afford, for what? To get up in the morning go to your job at the floral shop and make a couple bucks a day?? All alone because you don't have time to invest in a romance that would probably end after a month, because who would want to be with a 'workaholic' who only has time to stay at their job. All your friends got some husband or boyfriend or...... mate.

The subject of 'mates' confused you, hybrids are just now being accepted into society and now are 'mating' on people. With how many hybrids are finding their mates the government is passing a law allowing them to be with said mates. The thought scared you, maybe because you didn't know enough about it. Imagine going about your normal day and some random person, with ears or a tail, starts talking about how you are destined to be together. Scary, or romantic??

Finally getting out of your daydreaming you look at the clock and realize you are gonna be late for work if you don't leave this second. Running out the door, almost forgetting your bag, you rush downstairs and run down the street. You lived pretty close to the floral shop so it was easy for you to get there fast. Barley making it on time your boss gives you a long list of orders you have to prepare. Your day has officially started..

*Time skip*

After work you make it back to the apartment, dropping your keys in your tray and making a bee line to the couch. Your phone rings and you realize your best friend was asking if you were free. Once you text them you are you start getting ready. They didn't give you a lot of details but told you to dress casual.

They text you to meet them outside your apartment in 30 min and they were gonna pick you up. Getting ready you finally make it down the stairs and wait outside for her. Seeing her car pull up and her getting out you both greet each other. "You are gonna love it" she said, "I got invited to some party on the nice side of town, supposedly there is going to be a lot of nice, respectable men there!!!" Winking at you she started the car and started driving. "You know I am not looking for anyone right now, no one is gonna wanna be with me when I can barely go out. I mean I got lucky today and my boss let me off early!" "You might find someone who doesn't mind.... Or someone who makes some money, so you don't have to work as much." Both of you start laughing.

Finally making it to the house you guys pull into the drive way and a bunch of people walking around, inside and outside. "Is the house made of just glass" you question. "I guess it is the new thing with rich people, let everyone see your business" You both get out of the car, after parking it, and walk toward the entrance. Suddenly the both of you tense, realizing there weren't just humans at this party. Now you both don't have a problem with hybrids going into public places or having the same rights you have, but never being near one before and seeing their sharp teeth or ears freaked you both out.

You were the first one to relax a little, realizing they were just there to have fun, like everyone else. "I didn't know they were gonna be here sorry" your friend apologized. "It's OK, they are here just like us, no problems." You both walk in together and browse around to see who and what exactly was here.

A loud booming voice can be heard across the room. Everyone's heads turn towards the owner of the voice. You freeze in fear, or maybe just shock, you aren't quite sure. But you know for sure that the owner of that voice is not someone you want to cross paths with ever again.

He was ginormous with arms that could pick you up and throw you a mile away.... maybe even more than that. His shaggy honey brown hair draped around his face almost majestically. He smiled and you noticed his canines are pointier that anyone you have ever seen before.... wait, wait, wait. You could hit yourself for not noticing the round brown ears on the top of his head. That is why he is so much bigger than everyone in the room.... he is a grizzly bear hybrid.

You look to your friend in panic and notice she had the same look on her face. Grizzly bear hybrids are rare and tend to be more aggressive than other predator hybrids. You have never seen one before in person, you considered yourself lucky until now.

Finally zoning back in from your panic you realize that some non-hybrids share the same look as you and your friend do. Looking back over to the owner of the voice you catch his stare. Freezing up once again you can't look away from those... black eyes? or maybe they are a dark brown, you can't tell from the distance. Snapping out of your shock you realize he stops to... sniff.... no he can't be sniffing the air... can he?

Then realization hits you when he starts heading your way. You heard that hybrids could smell who their mate is, but it couldn't be. You can't possibly be his mate. Panic sets in again and you couldn't tell if you were overreacting, it couldn't be you he was heading towards. But still, you grab your friend's arm and bolt away before he could get close enough to start a conversation.

"What- Where are we going??" Your friend asks "We need to leave right no-" "WAIT, YOU IN THE (F/C) SHIRT!!" You could have sworn the ground shook with how loud his voice was. You don't freeze, now that you know for sure he was looking for you. "Is that-" You cut your friend off "We need to leave." She doesn't hesitate to grab her car keys from her pocket and catch up with your fast steps.

Looking behind you see the hybrid trying to make his way through the crowd. "WAIT, WAIT!!" He sounded so desperate, you almost felt bad if you still didn't feel the pit in your stomach. Looking ahead of you again, you both make it to the front door, storming out of the house and to the car. While your friend was starting it you both hear the front door slam open, turning your head to the side you see the hybrid rushing out. Your friend gets the car started and hits the gas to go forward. Looking back, you see him chasing the car with.... were those tears in his eyes? No, it couldn't be, he didn't even know you. Finally relaxing in your chair, you lay back and look at your friend and say, "I don't think I am going to go to a party with you for a while." Making eye contact you both start giggling. "I understand completely" she says in between her giggling.

*Time Skip*

You wake up with a raging headache, barley remembering what happened yesterday you groan and sit up. Then you pause as you remember who you saw and ran away from yesterday. A chill goes down your spine and you remember his smile with those pointed teeth. But you snap yourself out of it and say, "He didn't do anything wrong; I shouldn't be scared for no reason." But you can't shake the feeling of fear you felt when you saw him.

Getting out of bed you get ready for work, which you are supposed to be there in an hour. Changing into a cute shirt and jeans you make yourself your (Favorite breakfast). Once you finish your food, you grab your keys and head for the door. Getting in your car you start heading over to the floral shop. Entering the store was a whole dream, all the beautiful flowers and the addicting smells you can't help but smile. Making it to the back your boss greets you and gives you the orders to start the day.

A couple hours later you hear the door open and close, looking up to greet the customer you freeze. "Welc-...." Standing before you was the (at least 6'3) huge hybrid from yesterday. "I have been looking all over for you! Since you left so abruptly yesterday, I tracked down your scent and found you here! I was going to go to your apartment, but I thought that might have been too far." The smile on his face not disappearing, even after you didn't respond and just stared at him.

"You found me by my..... scent??" The sheer surprise you had confused him, his eyebrows furrowing. "Well of course honey, how else would I find you?" ..... Honey?!?!? Why is he calling you that?? Shaking the shock off you respond "Excuse me? I don't know you sir and I don't appreciate being called honey." If it could even be possible his eyebrows furrowed even more, before it looked like he realized something. "Oh dear! I forgot to introduce myself!! My names is Caleb, and I realize this might seem weird for you but... how do I word this.... well you are my mate!" The smile on his face grew 10 times when he said 'mate'

Chills rushed down your spine, and not the good kind. "Did you just say mates? No that can't be, I am sorry, but you have the wrong person." You almost felt bad as his face dropped, but you reminded yourself he basically stalked you to work! "But -" You cut him off, "I am really sorry and I wish you the best of luck finding who you are looking for." Tears started welling in his eyes.

"(Y/N)!" Turning around you see your boss, "Yes, sir?" "Come here right now!" Looking back at Caleb you quickly turn and rush to the backroom. "Wha-" You were cut off, "You need to leave, and take the b-bear with you!" "What si-" "LEAVE! You are gonna make business go down, so take him with you!" "Bu-" You were being shoved out of the room towards a very hopeful looking bear.

"You kids have fun!" Turning around the store door was closed in your face. Turning around to look at Caleb, you turn and start walking towards your car, keeping silent. "Wait!" Your arm was yanked backwards. "LET GO!" "No." He growled with a snarl on his face. "You are going to come with me so we can talk. Don't argue because you aren't going anywhere." Shutting your mouth, you start to walk with him, not wanting to be on his bad side. But you can't stop the small tingle you feel in the spot he touched.

He led you to a black car, opened the door, and gently pushed you inside. Once he got in, he started the car and got on the road. "Where are we going?" you managed to get out in a calm voice. Smiling over at you he replied, "Home of course." You had the feeling that it wasn't your house he was talking about.

*Time Skip*

It seemed like you had been in his car for hours, but it was just 30 minutes. Glancing over at him he seemed very content with a light smile on his face. You realize this might be because he finally has what he has waited his whole life for, his mate. Thinking back, you feel bad you just ran away from him and didn't even give him a chance to talk. Looking at his face you think he is very handsome, and you are surprised you didn't notice before. His jawline sharp, light freckles dusting his face, his shapely nose, and he had longer lashes then you did. "I hope you are pleased with how I look." His deep voice scared you out of your daze. Quickly looking away from you stare at the road ahead of you. Out of the corner of your eye you see him look towards you and say "You are so beautiful. So much better than what I imagined my mate to look like." You felt your cheeks heat up as you take a quick glance at him, luckily, he was looking back at the road.

Now going through an internal debate, you realize you don't feel scared anymore. It was almost like your body was relaxing after being with him and not fighting it. Trying to fight off the feelings you can't help but look over at him and say "Why am I feeling like this?" He glanced at you before turning his eyes back on the road. Looking concerned he said "Feeling like what? Are you feeling ill?" Sighing you say "No I don't feel sick but why do I feel comfortable with you? You basically just kidnapped me." You see a small smile making its way on his face, "It is because we are mates, you don't feel it as intensely as I do, since I have better senses than a normal human. But we were destined to be together it's only natural your body is reacting to my pheromones while your brain might be denying it." He suddenly reached a hand over and grabbed your hand. Tingles exploded everywhere just from that touch. You didn't move your hand away, even though you probably should have. Staring at your intertwined hands you couldn't help it, it just felt.... right.

Not even paying attention to the time anymore it takes you a quick second to realize the car stopped. Looking up you make eye contact with Caled. The smile on his face was so sweet you practically felt yourself melting, those dang pheromones. He turned and got out of the car, gently dropping your hand. You can't help but want to hold his hand again, even after everything. He opened the door for you, gently taking your hand again as you got out. As he went to pull his hand back you held on, refusing to let you go. You could see a big smile formed on his face as he looked at your hands.

Looking up you realize how far you must be from the city; you look at the beautiful cabin house, the log details, and the wrap around porch. The forest surrounding you was just as beautiful. Looking to the side of the house there is a small gravel pathway leading into the forest.

"Welcome to my home, well I guess it's ours now."

Looking at him, the sentence and you lightly pull your hand away from his. There is no way you are going to move in with him after just meeting him.... mates or not. A big frown formed on his face when you pulled away and hurt flashed in his eyes.

"I am not moving in with you. We just met! I don't appreciate being pushed into things. I know nothing about you, and you don't know anything about me."

Stepping back from him just a little. You see a change in his eyes, anger, or frustration? You are not completely sure.

Completely ignoring what you said before he continues on.

"My grandparents built this cabin when hybrids were still outcasts. Then it passed to my parents and now me. My parents built their own house further into the forest and decided I could have this house for my mate when I found her. No one knows about it."

Something flashed in his eyes when he said the last sentence. A chill ran down your spine and not a good one. You didn't like the implication of that at all. Your instincts were screaming to run and you couldn't fight your instincts. Not even giving your brain a chance to think, you bolted.

Running straight into the forest you curse yourself for not wearing running shoes to work today. You heard Caleb behind you shouting something, he sounded desperate and wounded. He sounded far enough away you know you surprised him by running. But you knew he would catch up to you eventually and you could hit yourself for not thinking about it before just bolting. There was a pain that you felt in your chest, but your adrenaline stopped the pain. You jumped over rocks and logs not wanting to slow down or trip. You could hear behind you Caleb was gaining on you and fast. Your legs burning you suddenly change routes. You hear a loud curse behind you and knew you shook him off your tail for just a second. That small victory didn't last long as the back of your shirt was yanked. Your back hitting a soft but solid chest.

You were absolutely winded while it seemed like he didn't even break a sweat. Looking at his face you shrink into yourself seeing a furious look. He had a snarl on his face and his eyebrows were furrowed together. You can't help but whimper slightly and you see sadness flash in his eyes just for a second before going back to anger.

"Where do you think you are going." He growled and you couldn't help but flinch at his tone.

"I was being nice and showing you my home, the one you are going to live in with me. I was going be nice and give you a week to stay at your house before moving in but after that stunt you pulled aren't ever going back."

"I'm sorry!" you practically cry out, shaking with fear. Turning around and grappling onto him, crying into his chest.

You couldn't explain it but the moment you ran it felt like your heart got torn out. But now, next to Caleb, the pain stopped.

"Why do I feel like this?!?!" Tears streaming down your face.

"Why do I want to be next to you so bad? Why did it hurt when I ran away!?"

You feel his muscular arms wrap around you and start rubbing your back. He started cooing and telling you it was ok, and he would explain later. His anger completely dissolving as he realized you felt the same pain he felt when you ran. Like someone just stabbed his heart out. Feeling yourself get picked up, you wrap your legs around his waist, stuffing your face in his neck, and wrapping your arms around the back of his head. You felt yourself calm almost instantly after putting your head in his neck. But the tears didn't stop even if you felt better.

"Let's get you back home, then we can clean up and eat something." He spoke so softly you almost wouldn't believe the anger he held in his voice not even 10 minutes ago.

Relaxing into his body you think to yourself, maybe it wouldn't be to bad if you just stayed with him.

[nekovmancer]

Hello, I was wondering if you could make zenyatta and ramattra with Cyborg!Reader like genji, but their body glows if they have too much energy.

overwatch headcanons: cyborg!reader with Ramattra and Zenyatta

warnings: mentions of violence, trauma and such, a bit platonic and… ye, pretty much fine, nothing graphic

a/n: my love for Zen is 100% dear and platonic yet- well, you guys know. RAMATTRA!!! 

will do them separately in the present game timeline and then together back in the monastery and… it’s past midnight here, my eyelids are heavy, but there’s no sleep in between me and writing fanfiction so, sowy for the mistakes ahead, I will correct them tomorrow!! anxiety kept me awake and obligated me to post as soon as I’ve finished, you know

btw!! thanks for requesting. I love to write it and I hope you also enjoy. (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

OPEN FOR HEADCANON REQUESTS! Send yours here, but rules first

Ramattra

A Ravager was responsible for your body’s destruction, so it’s only natural you’re shaking on its presence

Back when it happened, omnics were still under Anubis’ control, so it’s not like you blame him or any other R-7000 for their doings

Still, you got these chills running down your spine now that you stand face to face to Null Sector’s infamous leader

But the thrill is even stronger when he proves all your believes to be wrong, being to one to extend a helping hand to prevent your body to overheat

As Genji, your parts were substituted with cybernetics: flesh, muscle and metal bounding into one thing to keep your alive

Though, you weren’t lucky to be shaped by doctor Ziegler’s careful hands, which lead to several problems, including the overheating itself, caused by your frenetic running while trying to escape Toronto during the Invasion

Ramattra saw you and couldn’t help but be… fascinated 

You were not an omnic, so his helmets were useless, still you’re shaped in metal, no sight of skin showing. A human, without humanity’s resemblance 

He caught your heartbeats, their rhythm more and more violent, growing exponentially as the glow from your cybernetics, a flashing red of warning

He’s so intrigued he founds himself kneeling in front of you, one hand reaching out while you press your back to the wall behind you; no way to run out of this

“Hush now. If I was to hurt you, why the ceremony?” 

His words had logic, true, but fear was devouring you

The last time you were this close to a Ravager was the last time you still had much of your organic body parts

“I may be of help, if you let me” 

What choice did you have anyway? If he didn’t kill you, your body would do the job alone 

 Ramattra escorts you to safety, and ironically it means the very ships vomiting killing robots a while ago

You stay in his workshop as it takes little time for him to figure out how to cool down your body, and the glow is long gone by the time he’s done

“Not an omnic, yet not fully human…  where do you find a place for one as yourself in this doomed world?”

Here’s the thing: you don’t

That’s why you accept his offer to stay, despite all of your fears

In the end, the hands who once destroyed you were the same who saved you from death

Zenyatta

Omnics and humans coexisting peacefully was a metaphor to your own state: both human and machine sharing the same body, trying to not repel one another

A heart of flesh habitating a chest of metal, you tiptoed the lines between the two worlds, but you didn’t felt as part of any of them

Still, you find solace in the words of a monk by the name of Mondatta. He spoke of hope and understandment, of peace above the conflict. Without even knowing, he brought balance to your turmoil; past and present

But hope was a dangerous thing for the ones like you, if there was anyone else sharing the burden of a dreadful existence as yours

And you’re quick out of reasons since Mondatta’s death

You weren’t welcome among the omnics, and humans saw you as a freak. Any chance of normality was eradicated 

As a last act of faith, you did Aurora’s peregrination to Shambali. You didn’t know what to expect, but surely the villagers near the monastery left a very bad impression

Along with the exhaustion, you entered the sacred halls with your cybernetics glowing red, a flash of the eminent chaos that would erupt if you’re not stabilized quickly enough

A monk comes to your aid, and by staring at his faceplate alone you can feel something different stirring within you. A long lost calmness tossing your circuits errors aside

You wouldn’t forget his name not even in a million lifetimes: Zenyatta, the one who offered you a place to rest after your journey, and the very first to be interest in you

His genuine interest, plus the care, was touching. No one ever did anything similar to you, not after Talon decided you could still be a soldier even without most of your body

Which led to you running away, not soon enough to prevent Doctor O'Deorain  from damaging your body though. Another monster carefully constructed to be Talon’s pawn, no matter how much pain came from it

But you’ve already paid the price for your mistakes, and one thing is for sure: you’re no monster

Among the monks, you could feel that familiar peaceful feeling lingering under your skin, resonating through the circuits of your cybernetics

For once, you did not felt cast aside, most thankful to Tekhartha Zenyatta

His harmony orbs helped to regain a balance you thought to be long lost, and not only: the chaos within you, something you tried to ignore, was embraced as it should be also cherished 

“No living being is completely pure, nor completely evil. We’re both our strengths and flaws: to deny one existence in detriment of other is to deny yourself.”

Even the worst of you was forgiven; by him first, and you last. Where you felt shame for your wrongdoings, Zenyatta pathed a lesson that erased your doubts

Through meditation, you found not only peace with your inner self, but with the world surrounding you

The balance of energy through your body presented you with a new glowing: not the crimson red of tiredness and rage, but a warm yellow that irradiates warm as a small sun; the energy of the Iris found you

“My dear friend, I bathe in the light of your soul. May it keep us sheltered during the dark times ahead of us.”

Ramattra & Zenyatta

When the brothers found you, they first thought you were an omnic

Judging by the people screaming around you, tossing stones, displaying the worst of their violence and, of course, the fact your whole constitution was pure metal

It’s only when they take you to the monastery that they knowledge the other side of your face, the one that’s still flesh 

No questions were asked, but none of them are naive. Being a cyborg meant something, and this something tiptoed around the lines of violence

And despite it all, cyborgs are quite rare. Especially ones glowing as you did, with your joints pulsating with energy

It was easy to distinguish your humor by the light radiating from your body: usually soft, it could be oversaturated when your humor reached peaks, transiting through a rainbow of colors depending on what you had in your mind

At first, a light tone of red flashed whenever they approached. Despite being your saviors, you still felt a bit of distrustfulness towards them

Humans saw you as an aberration, and you did not have too much time with sentient omnics to put their behavior to test. Not that you felt inclined to do so. To deal with humanity’s rejection was enough

Zenyatta was patient, but Ramattra… no metal in this world could undo the fact you were a human. And he also had his share with humanity to know how incredible terrible they can be 

That’s why, maybe, it’s easy for you to approach him 

Ramattra resented humanity, despite his best efforts to find harmony through his want for peace and his desire for revenge. Not that you had the guts to do anything but lament over your own dismay, but… you could relate

Zenyatta, on the other hand, touched your deepest cravings for being a better person, standing above those who abused you. You did not wished for violence, despite your rage: to be comprehended was your key 

And both of them did it, in their own way

Through your days in Shambali, you felt part of their brotherhood. Not exactly as such, but… cherished. Each of them bonded with you in their own unique way, understanding your pains, your dreams, your wants. Piece by piece, the three of you found a way together

Now, whenever you meditate with Ramattra, concentrating the energy flow in your body, a glowing purple flashed through your cybernetics. But with Zenyatta, a deep golden color showed itself

And that’s why you could never choose. Your love for them was measured equally: if cut in half, one part would still be of Ramattra, and the other would belong to Zenyatta

So when Ramattra leaves from Shambali, and both you and Zenyatta decline his offer to follow his path off the Monastery, there’s no way from you in the opposites side, but through the middle-term

You still dream of the day you three will meet again. For the good or for the bad, you missed them for a lifetime, and to be separated brings up this feeling all over again

Now, whenever you concentrate your energy, it’s grayish: devoid of color, deepness and light

[dullgecko]

Fabian’s gonna freak the F out when Sklonda shows them Riz baby pics “What do you mean the ball was ever an actual infant!”

He then explains about how he thought goblins were born fully formed or grown like plants or something (sorry I can’t remember what u said exactly in the ask) and Sklonda seriously and with actual concern ask Fabian if he knows where babies come from and if his parents ever gave him ‘the talk’.

Also I was thinking about baby goblins being irresistibly cute and how not a lot of people having seen them; while as their instincts told them to sklonda and pok did keep Riz mostly safely hidden away as a baby but there were times they had to for whatever reason take him out and Riz even then was a curious little guy constantly poking his head out to see the world out of whatever bundle he was in unlike most shy goblin kits.

Goblins are normally notwell liked by other species so sklonda and pok were pretty sure a baby goblin would receive the same treatment.

To their surprise it was the opposite problem, everyone found baby Riz adorable and often overstepped boundaries and personal space, treating him more like an exotic pet than an actual baby.

This all accumulates one day day when a complete stranger goes to grab and hold Riz but before they can either/both sklonda and pok are hissing and growling calling the person a number goblin swear words as they’ve backed up a safe distance away while shielding an overwhelmed stressed out Riz.

Honestly it’s lucky the stranger was noticed before they could actually touch Riz, otherwise they would have learnt from personal experience how much damage a goblins teeth and claws can actually do.

Xx

"What the fuck, he was an actual infant at some point? I thought they were grown like plants." Fabian muttered, squinting his eye at the array of pictures Sklonda had pulled from the photo album. The statement earning an amused snort from Fig who was also sitting at the table perusing the stack, occasionally snapping photos of the cuter ones to add to her personal collection. The rest of their party had left to go procure some lunch, given that they seemed to be staying there for the whole day while Riz tried to sleep off his fever.

He'd picked one of the photos up to look at it closer, flipping it over to see the date on the back since Riz was clearly eating birthday cake in the photo and making a mental note of it for later. Riz tended to be very cagey with personal details about himself so all they'd managed to work out so far was the month of his birthday, now they could actually nail down a specific day.

He jumped slightly when Sklonda put a concerned hand on his arm after the comment, lowering her voice and patting it in a way that was entirely too sincere for his likeing.

"Aw honey, did.... has no one told you were babies come from? I mean, I know your mom is a bit uhhhh-" She waved a hand near her head to indicate the general vagueness that Halarial tended to exist in "-but i thought you would have found out by now. If you have any questions just let me know okay?"

Fabian sputtered, face going red as he sat up straighter in his chair. "What? No of course I know where babies come from. Evidently not goblin babies but you know... the rest."

He waved his hand towards the window before pushing his chair back and standing, heading over to his schoolbag to dig out a book he'd clearly borrowed from the library. "I asked Riz and he said he was never an infant, and i mean the book corroborated his story so i believed him."

Fabian flipped through a few pages, finding one titled GOBLIN in all capital letters and placing it down on the table. "See, there. It says so right there."

Fig leaned across the table to read what Fabian was pointing at, wincing and lifting up the book so she could read the title on the front page. "Dude this is a monster encyclopedia.... from like, fifty years ago."

"Well, i mean, i couldnt find anything else talking about goblin children. This is the only thing that even mentioned them." Fabian floundered, going even redder when Sklonda laughed as she read through the wildly incorrect information before shutting the book and handing it back.

"Oh honey no. They're made like any other baby, more or less, our anatomy is a little different than humanoids but its still the same process. If you're that curious i'm sure i have a pamphlet around here somewhere." Sklonda had to wipe a tear from her eye from laughing so hard "Though I can understand the confusion. You've probably never even seen a kit before. They're so small we try to keep them indoors or hidden out of sight in public because a random seagull could snatch them up. Or people. Gods Riz was so cute as a toddler people were constantly trying to pick him up."

"I mean we still pick him up all the time." Fig snickered, Fabian having sat back down in his chair with a huff and crossed his arms over his chest to pout.

"Yes I'm aware. It was worse when he was little though. Despite my efforts to keep him hidden he just wanted to run around and look at everything." She dug through the album, finding a picture of Riz perched on top of one of the wooden horses on a spring down at the local park. Pok hovering nervously behind him with his hands outstretched just in case he fell.

"We also used to take him to the library a lot but got banned when one of the other parents in the reading room tried to pick Riz up. Pok made a bit of a mess of the floor when he grabbed their wrist to stop them and we got banned."

[makotonaegiunderstander]

going to tear my room apart thinking about how Makoto Naegi genuinely is a normal guy. Even more so in the games where he doesn’t quite have the same explosion he does in the anime adaption— he made up his mind before the trial even started that he wasn’t going to give up no matter what happened to him because his friends had given their last trying to live, and he had to survive for them. He didn’t see surviving but choosing despair as surviving, he wanted to do what they entered the room prepared to do, he wanted to fulfill the declaration he made when he survived his execution: as long as he was alive, as long as he was breathing, he wasn’t going to give up. He saw Junko, he saw everything she presented, and he’d already felt that utter despair. He had the chance to give in as early as Mukuro’s first trial, where he could have chosen to suspect Kirigiri. But he refused to be manipulated anymore, he refused to play the game, even if it meant everything he had, and that’s where he changed from hiding to fighting. When he made the decision to hide Kirigiri’s lie (he did NOT know he was going to die, actually!!! He thought they’d be able to work out the trap bc there was never a time limit before that trial!! That said it’s still incredible that he refused to break even when he realized it would cost him his life.) that was when he broke from his fear completely. That was when he officially bowed out of the game. He wouldn’t be subject to the game’s demands anymore, he was going to win no matter what. He chose to have reckless faith in his friends no matter what, he chose to pursue a truth that would end the game for good. It’s not entirely normal for anyone to do, for sure, but that doesn’t mean he was the only one capable. I’ve said that before in a previous post, that Makoto didn’t do anything that was impossible for any other person. Just like despair was innate in every person and everyone was capable of it, so was hope. That’s what Makoto brought out. But even he stumbled. Even he needed his friends there. And the other survivors are the ones that took Makoto’s prompt and used it to break free of Junko’s influence, Makoto didn’t force them to. He didn’t brainwash them or manipulate them or do anything to influence their thoughts any more than reminding them hope was still there for them, that it wasn’t over yet. They did the rest themselves.

And then they left, and the title Ultimate Hope got away from them all, into a world ideologically influenced by Junko’s despair, and in its absence after her death, it latched into the next powerful force one to replace what it has lost, but it needed a figurehead. So Makoto was chosen, as the one that refused to submit in the face of Junko. He was viewed as an ultimate, elevated, the world placed on his shoulders, and the same wave that brought about the Tragedy turned towards Makoto. People may have needed something to hold onto that felt as powerful as what they’d been facing, but Makoto wasn’t the only one that fought, and he wasn’t possessing some inhuman ability to always resist despair or anguish. Makoto is both exceptional in his determination and stubbornness to keep moving forward and being optimistic, and also not in the slightest, because it isn’t a talent. It isn’t an ultimate ability, it isn’t something no one else can measure up to. His uniqueness comes from his ability to choose that even if he’s standing alone. But, like I said, he’s not immune, he’s not incapable of falling. He will just do everything in his power to resist up until the end, because that’s the decision he made.

It’s weird how he’s Schrödinger’s normal. He’s the most normal guy in the world, but his view of himself as such is also flawed. He isn’t nothing. In fact one could say it’s abnormal that he’s so normal. And he DOES have something that is unique about him, even he can’t deny that fact despite trying to downplay it. He’s optimistic. He’s chosen to try and be positive or at the very least choose to keep going forward in life. That IS abnormal to an extent, despite not being some ultimate, or something no one else is capable of. It is abnormal to never entertain the idea of slowing down, getting bored, or giving up. But at the same time, Makoto DID have moments like that in the game. The only time he really stopped doing that was in the final chapter, when he was pushed to his absolute limit and those parts of him exaggerated themselves so that he could feel like he could survive. He’s the weirdest normal guy alive, I guess.

Anyway I’m rambling and this probably doesn’t make sense bc I pulled an all nighter for the final class trial but I’m losing my mind over Makoto Naegi all the time

[kisaraslover]

something something as evil as he is about owning and subjugating her for eternity shes twice as insane about being the only one for him

[nomairuins]

i like overthink everything now it makes me feel so dumb. i used 2 be able to just talk 2 ppl but nowadays every single thing im like Is that actually going to make them hate me. Yes probably. and then i just dont respond which makes ppl hate me. this is how it is

[unproduciblesmackdown]

omgg lol [guy who won't stop going "more like scapeGOATED" voice] now hold! on!! lmao [same guy just saw encanto voice] Hold on!!!

[starlooove]

And what if I was shipping holt and operetta…

[yuukei-yikes]

i like that it's canon haruka is really pretty. my proof is 1. konoha getting away with being a freak just cuz he looks good (pretty privilege) 2. jin says haruka would smell really good 3. is voiced by mamoru miyano

[get-more-bald]

the fuck do you mean I have to leave....

[szethsmom]

The more I work with raccoons, the more I am terrified of how intelligent and dexterous they are.

The more I work with possums, the more I start to think they’re just… not very bright, actually.

[otakusapien]

Unpopular opinion: I hate the Uglies book series

[ars-matron]

I really need to talk for a minute about this new mobile update and how much I as a legally blind person hate whatever the hell is going on with the photos and how it's making this app nearly impossible for me to use

I'm not sure the same thing is happening on the desktop version but for those who may not know in the app whenever you tap on a photo it used to just pop up and you could double tap to enlarge it and zoom in and scroll around and all was great.

A double tap now likes the photo and it must be pinched and pulled to zoom in and out. A mild annoyance, and nothing compared to the rest of the update. If you scroll up, which I do frequently when trying to navigate an enlarged photo, it will send you to ANOTHER photo based on the tags of the post.

That's right, a completely different photo!!! A feature no one asked for and no one wants!! This isn't facebook, or instagram, and maybe tiktok but I never had that so this is a guess. When I click on the photo I only want to see that photo (or in the case of multiple photos in a post I want to be able to easily scroll side to side for those). I do not want to be taken to another post!!! Also if you scroll too far to the left you are then sent to the profile of the person who reblogged the post. I do not know why. Who wants this feature? Is it a feature at all?

As someone who only taps on a photo because I cannot see it and I need to enlarge it, this is beyond a simple annoyance. I cannot navigate the photo like I need, there's a hair trigger on whether it sends you to a new post completely or if you are sent to the profile of the reblogger. Neither, again, are things I want. this leaves me having to back track a lot, re-zoom the photo as it reverts back to normal, and hope dearly that this time I can just read the damned text before it freaks out again.

I haven't seen anyone else talk about this outside of the tags, but really this is making the app unusable for me, and I'm sure for many others.

@staff I know you guys haven't cared about your disabled community much in the past (other photo updates that stopped allowing me to zoom into gifs is proof of that) but please don't make this app unusable for me. I would rather not have to leave.

[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.” 

[vanillakook]

THE BOY IS MINE ꔫ - JJK

synopsis: your big sister has a new boyfriend that you can’t wait to try

parings: jk x sister in law!reader

warnings: infidelity, reader is a heavy bitch, she doesn’t care at all, strained relationships, traumatic sibling rivalry, dom!jk, fat cock!jk, sneaking around, exhibitionism, voyeurism, penetrative sex, oral sex (m. and f. receiving), fingering, rough fucking, multiple positions, reader’s pussy is an OCEAN, all hyewon does is cry, reader is actually evil, jungkook is just as bad, if not worse

genre: smut, oneshot

word count: 5.4k

nothing could have prepared jungkook for the influx of strange events that would take place over the next month. his time starts as it usually does: hyewon, his girlfriend, freaking the fuck out about every interaction he’s had and will have with her family. however, something was different this time. hyewon’s usual dread of embarrassment had shifted into full blown panic and anxiety. he was utterly confused since she had never been this bad. did something happen? he was sure her parents liked him, no? why would they let them date for nearly a year if that was the case?

jungkook had come to know why on the three hour long drive to her parents lake house. after prying he had found out it was you, her baby sister who is supposedly the devil incarnate. “i’m sure this is just a normal sibling rivalry hye, baby, my brother and i are the same way.”

“jungkook,” she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “im telling you it’s not the same.”

she excused it when you were kids, but after a certain point of awareness she knew that this wasn’t a silly little rivalry, you hated her. despite you being younger by three years you had always went out of your way to make sure she was miserable. in your childhood years it started out as lying to your parents about her hitting you, or sneaking gum into her hair, breaking her dolls. these little things progressed to stealing her clothes and ruining her makeup products in middle school. once high school came around whatever she did you had to do it ten times better. clothes, shoes, sports, friends, boys. your parents had just seen it as a cute thing between a younger and older sister. little did your parents know that soon your behaviors turned cold with sinister intent, from ruining her friendships, straining her parental relationship, and fucking every single guy she’s ever bought home.

hyewon grew up with the same speech throughout her middle school and teenage years, even now in her 20s.

“she just admires you.”

“you’re her role model.”

“y/n has it all, have you ever thought that you’re the jealous one?”

bullshit.

your parents also weren’t shy about who was the favorite. although the two of you had done nearly every sport and form of hobby together, your awards were hung the highest, your interests were more funded, and you were taken more seriously. they insisted that it was just in her head for so many years, more like they were being heavily manipulated by you. now finally her boyfriend of 11 months was going go meet you in less than an hour to see for himself how fucked up you were.

the boyfriend that she so desperately has tried to keep away for so long. now her time was up.

hyewon was successful with that aspect for a while since you were dorming hours away at college. she successfully avoided holidays, family dinners, special occasions, all for almost a year. while she did limit how much she posted jungkook, she was never too sure with the extent you would go with things and has kept you blocked and hidden from all things him.

she could have avoided it for longer if this hadn’t been your first summer back from school in years and your parents were adamant on having the entire family together. usually you were able to make an excuse on why jungkook couldn’t come, work, family matters, etc. but everyone was to be at your family lake house for a full month, and that included jungkook.

“hye ill be there, all month. you have nothing to worry about.” he gave her thigh a soft squeeze and flashed his reassuring bunny smile.

“promise?”

“promise.”

jungkook couldn’t be more unaware about what exactly he was promising to. and as he rounded the corner and pulled into the hidden entrance and drove down the dirt road, hyewon grew more anxious and clammy. she felt her heart sink deeper as jungkook pulled into the driveway and parked. once she saw your sunglasses go up she knew she was fucked. skin tight red bikini, slurping on a melting strawberry popsicle, with her boyfriend ogling every curve of your body. she could have shot herself right there.

over the next month hyewon would watch her perfect relationship crumble to dust. if you were going to be trapped here all summer with your insufferable sister the least she could do was share her boyfriend. her first mistake was pulling you aside that night before bed for a talk. you followed her out to the patio and faced her, finally dropping the innocent facade you’re forced to have around others.

“what now hyewon?” you scoffed. “i haven’t seen you in a year and you’re already about to scold me about something?”

you were trying so hard not to laugh at her angry demeanor. “stay away from him. y/n i understand you can’t keep a man but that doesn’t mean you can help yourself to mine.“

you pouted at her, prying her folded arms open and taking her hands in yours. “but hyewonniee~ that’s not fair, we share everything, what would mommy and daddy say to you right now?” you tsked obnoxiously.

she snatched her hands away. “y/n, this isn’t the time to play your sick games. what the fuck don’t you get? i’m not asking you, im fucking telling your twisted ass to leave us alone.”

“come on sis live a little, i promise ill give him back,” she felt like she was going to throw up right into the lake beside you two.

“please y/n…” her voice cracked.

all you could do was give her that fuck ass smile as if you were clueless about every goddamn thing in the world. “i just wanna try him, no need to get fussy.”

that night at dinner she kept a close eye on you whenever you were near him. she allowed the small talk and conversations about his family and work, but was steadily getting annoyed when no one had been asking a single thing about what she’d been up to, obviously not you, not your parents, and not even jungkook, in fact her very far gone boyfriend was looking at you as if you had hung the stars and the moon with your bare hands. he hadn’t taken his eyes off of you as explained your college stories and travels. your sister on the other hand had her head down in her phone, earning a scowl from your parents and a few words from her own boyfriend.

“hyewon,” your father cleared his throat. “don’t you think it’s poor manners to not listen to what your sister has to say? she listens to you.”

“right, sorry.” she mumbled, putting her phone down to pick at her food.

“apologies jungkook, they’ve been this way since they were young. just a little squabble here and there.” your mother leaned over the table a squeezed his hand, to that he replied with a smile.

do little squabbles consist of fucking someone’s boyfriends and sending them the tapes of them doing so?

“trust me i understand, my older brother and i are sworn enemies but he’s my entire world.”

you decided to chimed in too. “hyewonnie doesn’t ever think i have anything interesting to say,” you pouted. “actually enough about me, sis how’s your desk job? still letting that old hag of a boss order you around?”

any normal boyfriend would take his girlfriends defense when a backhanded comment was made. instead jungkook, who was seated in between the both of you, pealed his eyes away from you for once and turned to his girlfriend. he was also waiting for her response to that. all eyes were now turned to her. you have her that knowing smirk, a smirk that knew since your lasting meeting a year ago, she had accomplished absolutely nothing but scoring a hot boyfriend. and even that was going to be ripped away from her shortly.

“i’m working on finding a new job.”

“work harder then hyewon, look at your sister.” ah here we go. your father was about to go on his comparison spiel. “y/n is set to graduate early after studying abroad and even has a job lined up for her after school, meanwhile you’ve been stuck at this little start up company for how long?”

“we love you honey, dearly. but it’s time to start being an adult.” your mom had delivered the final blow. hyewon stood up from her seat, fork clinging against the china plate.

“i need to use the restroom.”

no one tried to stop her, instead everyone fell back into a steady stream of conversation. jungkook however couldn’t even bring himself to have another thought other than you. he couldn’t have made his attraction to you more obvious. you were so fucking pretty, he hasn’t seen a being like you. sweet and delicate tone with hints of seduction. he wanted to feel bad for being more attracted to you than he was to your older sister, but fuck. your hair was pulled back into a neat bun and your dress had just reached below your ass. he tried his hardest to not stare for too long, but when you had suddenly dropped your fork and bent over to go get it he was in for quite the treat that couldn’t be passed up.

when you rose from your chair, slick trails followed behind. you hadn’t been wearing underwear and your pussy had been drooling all over the wooden chairs, leaving you with a pool of pussy juice in your seat. your cheeks burned, knowing his eyes were on you and your pretty pussy. he looked between you and your parents, hoping they weren’t seeing your antics so he could bask in it longer. luckily they were immersed in conversation.

“whoopsies, i’m so clumsy sometimes!” you sat down in your seat again, making sure he heard the wet plop! of your ass on the sticky chair. you flashed him flirty smile, once again starting small talk. “so you’re a personal trainer right?”

“mhm i am, you know anything about it?”

“enlighten me.”

“well it’s-“ his face dropped and went bright red at the feeling of your hands on him. your palm had sprawled out on his thigh, inching dangerously close to his hardening cock. “it’s um- it takes a while to um-“

“something the matter?” yes something was the fucking matter. your acrylic covered hand was now covering the growing tent in his pants. his girlfriends baby sister was palming his dick at the dining room table, in front of your fucking parents. “sounds like an easy job, maybe you could train me too, i’m a fast learner, and i haven’t worked out in ages…” your eyes narrowed, tone getting lower and heavier.

“hey we’re going to start cleaning up, you kiddos finished with your food?” your mom started confiscating the plates and dishes as you worked at jungkooks zipper, desperately wanting to get a look at the huge cock you were groping.

“we’re not kids mom, we’re in our early 20s.”

“oh fine fine, when your sister comes back from her mini temper tantrum tell her i put her food in the fridge if she wants to finish it.” once your parents were gone you could finally cut the small talk and get right to the point, except jungkook had halted your actions, removing your hand and holding it in his while you bit back a grin.

“what the fuck is wrong with you? do you know how much this would hurt your sister?”

“so?”

“so? are you out of your mind?”

you rolled your eyes. “oh now you wanna play moral police after you’ve been eye fucking me the entire night and almost came in your pants from my hand alone?” if he really didn’t want it you were going to back off. you pulled away completely and scooted your chair over.

jungkook leaned in closer, pining you against your chair. “you wanna feel up on my dick? go ahead sweetheart, but not at the same fucking table your parents are eating at. hyewon could walk in any second too, you really wanna risk her seeing this? risk her ending this before i get to ruin you?”

oh. oh.

“you wanna ruin me? your girlfriends little sister? you really don’t care about her do you?” your eyes lit up once again.

jungkook looked around, peering around the corners of the house to make sure it was clear before what he did next. lust was fully taken over, any thoughts of hyewon were gone, and it was only a few hours into knowing your little minx ass but he wanted to be consumed by you. his hand went around your neck, gripping it to the point where your circulation was almost severed. “i just wanna try you baby, see if i chose the wrong sister or not. and anyways, whatever hye doesn’t know won’t hurt her right? now c’mere pretty.”

the stars had aligned in that moment for you. you had jungkook right where you wanted him.

however she did. hyewon knew exactly what would happen once she left the table, it was her way of accepting defeat. as hyewon sobbed in the bathroom she knew her sister and boyfriend were exchanging more than holy words and touches. she knew how quick you worked. when it came to ruining everything she loved and desired you were always quick. luckily she couldn’t witness the vile things happening at that dining room table.

“gosh, this fucking pussy,” he landed a slap to your sopping cunt. poor baby was crying down there for some action, clenching that tight hole around nothing and pushing out more and more thick ropes of slick. “damn baby i knew you wanted this dick, but fucking hell.” he couldn’t believe how soaked you were, he knew he’d slip his cock in with ease, nothing like your sister.

“aw kook, you must be so bored with her if you feel this comfortable with playing in my pussy. look at you throwing a year down the drain.” and you couldn’t be happier about it.

“fucking tell me about it. love my baby to death but a man has needs you know?” he took another glance around before unzipping his pants fully this time and placing your hand over his fat cock once again. “hye never knows what to do with it, but i’m sure a slut like you will.”

he tugged his boxers down and you watched his angry member spring up, slapping against his stomach with a mean, red tip that was throbbing for attention. your mouth gaped open at the sight of the pretty thing. lengthy, girthy, veiny, and in need of a tight little pussy gripping around it. “make it quick and i’ll make sure to take good care of you later sweetheart.” he guided you to your knees, sat back, and enjoyed your mouth. all while hyewon sobbed her heart out a few feet away.

later that night after you were coming back from a late night jog, hyewon was ready in the living room for you. she needed to put her foot down for once. every other time was different, but this was her chance to salvage her relationship. once you stepped in the door she stood, to which you didn’t pay her a second glance. “the hell do you want? you’re stalking me now?”

“if you keep trying your luck with jungkook im telling mom and dad.”

you let out a mocking cackle as you made your way to grab a glass of water. “what are we? fucking five? maybe if you knew how to pleasure your boyfriend we wouldn’t be in this situation,”

her mouth went dry. “what?”

“oops… well cats out the bag. when you decided to go be dramatic and cry in the bathroom as if anyone cared, jungkook was very quick to say how much of a bad fuck you were.” you provoked her farther. you were younger, you were shorter, but still you loomed over her, in every aspect, in every way, of every day of your lives. “you always pick the easy ones. the ones who hate you more specifically.”

“jungkook loves me, something you’ll never experience.” she spat.

you grinned, leaning against the counter nonchalantly before breaking her heart in two. “and he’s gonna love this pussy even more. he already loves one of my holes. ask him about it.” you shot her a wink before leaving for bed.

there was still a month to go and as the weeks progressed she watched his eyes linger more as your clothes got tighter. she watched your touches get lower. she watched your hangouts go from the three of you to just you and her boyfriend. she watched how you two would talk for hours then get silent when she entered a room. she watched you press your ass up against him when squeezing around tight spaces. it was only a matter of time before she was phased out completely, but she still wouldn’t go down without a fight. jungkook was the greatest thing to ever happen to her, he was worth fighting for, she felt it, she knew it.

yet obviously he didn’t see her the same. he couldn’t care less about his relationship more than ever now since you had given him the best head of his life. now every night, just like this one, he was nose deep in your cunt, devouring you. jungkook waited until hyewon was sound asleep before he slipped himself into your room in the late hours of the night. thank goodness she picked the ones who were skilled with their tongue, because this was just the stress reliever you needed,

cumming down her boyfriends throat for the third time tonight.

“f-fffuck!” your back arched upwards from the feeling of his tongue dragging down your slit. he simply pushed you back down, using the weight of his hand to keep you there. “too much, ‘s too much koo!” you pulled at his hair roughly, making him groan deliciously. how the fuck did you taste like this? you were becoming his favorite flavor.

“oh yeah too much?” he took two fingers, plunging them inside of your cunt and watching the disappear deeper with every thrust. “so fucking wet for me doll, look at how you’re drenching my fingers.” he kept his voice low while your screams went wild. part of him even hoped your cries awoke your sister. he was so fucked up for wanting this, wanting her to see how good he fucked her pretty little sister. he wanted her to see how he fucked her sister in every way that he would never fuck her. he was sick as hell.

his fingers rammed against your g spot roughly. your mind fogged up, making your words start to come out in nothing but incoherent babbles. your body went limp from the amount of times he had dragged your nut out of you tonight. “c’mon princess, gimme one more, right on my fingers. be a good girl and cum baby, cum.”

“holy shiiiiii- awh fuck fuck, fuck i’m- jungkookk!” you whined with tears streaming down your face. with one more clench of your hole and a few more angry thrusts of his fingers you were soaking your sheets and his face. once jungkook removed his fingers you released everything he was keeping inside. he dove right back into you nose first to catch all of the creamy slick dripping from your hole. you couldn’t handle overstimulation, trying time and time again to get him away from your pussy before you came again.

“stop, stop stop- fucking hell stop!” trying to push him away was useless, you were starting to realize he did this shit for his own pleasure.

once he decided he was finished his meal he pulled back, looking up at your flustered and tear stained face. he smirked to himself when he saw your needy pussy still clenching around nothing. it took time for your body to shake off the after effects of your orgasm, but he stood by and waited for you to come back to earth. “better get back before your sister wakes up, you good mama?” he sucked your essence off of his fingers, making you lick your lips at the action.

“already? one more hour, please?”

“it’s starting to get harder to say no to you.” he laid between your legs, trying his hardest not to accidentally push against your sensitive clit. you admired him from this view, his soft features and the various piercings that graced his lip and ears. he was so goddamn handsome, you felt bad that he had to settle for your basic sister. “what are you thinking?” he chimed.

“nothing much, just about how glad i am hyewon bought you home, it’s like she just knew you were right for me.” fuck, you were twisted.

“you’re going to get me in so much trouble doll, what will your parents think of me if they find out?”

you shrugged. “they could care less. everyone knows she can’t keep a guy.”

“and i’m guessing that’s due to you?” he smirked.

you tried to fight your smile but it was useless. “i wouldn’t say that. it’s just that every guy reconsiders when they see she has a sister.”

that was exactly what was happening here now. jungkooks brain chemistry was being altered to only think of you, to only want you, and the month wasn’t even over yet. the way he had pulled away would be the reason for hyewon’s nagging every night after bed from now on. she garnered argument after argument every night in bed, trying desperately for jungkook to see where this behavior was wrong. he was too far gone by now, getting defensive when hyewon would state the obvious.

“you’re acting fucking crazy!” jungkook fumbled out of the bed angrily, snatching a pillow and extra blanket to take to the couch. “she’s your sister, do you hear yourself?” he yelled, as if you didn’t just have a face full of his cock for dessert under the dining room table two weeks ago, as if he wasn’t knuckles deep in you the night prior. he knew it was wrong, he knew it was disrespectful to do it while staying in the same house as your parents. but fucking hell.

he felt like needed you more after tasting you once. he felt sick for not even being attracted to his girlfriend anymore. he felt disappointed in himself for letting almost a year go down the drain. but you felt better than anything.

“jungkook she’s trying to steal you from me, she’s- do you not see? has she manipulated you that far already?” hyewon was on the verge of tears, lower limp trembling as she stared back at jungkook. he gave her an annoyed look and sighed, getting ready to pull out manipulative tactics of his own.

“i understand you might envy her, she’s younger, she gets along well with your parents, but when you start making shit up out of jealousy it doesn’t look good hye.” what the fuck could you have done to make him so far gone? what the fuck had you been spewing to him?

“do you fucking hear yourself? you’re defending a bitch you’ve known two weeks!” she was losing her mind, truly. “you’ve been so distant kook, you don’t hold me anymore, you barely kiss me, and it all started when we fucking got here! you told me you be on my side for this trip, mine, not hers.” her voice cracked but he still couldn’t find it in him to care.

“until you sort your hissy fit out, i’ll be on the couch.” he shut the door behind him and she could hear shuffling down the steps growing fainter. her head was pounding from all this nonsense. she hadn’t had one normal day since stepping in this lake house. her family was indifferent to her and now another boyfriend of hers was trying to convince her she was crazy. jungkook did a terrible job however, because once she heard your door creak open in the middle of the night, she knew exactly where you were going.

and she followed.

hyewon crept her way down the stairs, careful not to let anyone hear. she could hear jungkook’s raspy voice and your soft giggles, along with a very smacking noises followed after. even though she has witnessed you ruin her relationships time and time again, nothing could prepare her for what she was about to see. when she rounded the corner her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. there you were, on all fours in front of her boyfriend, with your pants pulled over your ass, and a big, heavy dick fucking you into the pillow cushions. her boyfriend, the love of her life, fucking you into the pillow cushions.

her hand flew over her mouth and she bit back tears, watching you and jungkook fuck her over in plain sight. it was over. everything she worked to salvage, it was gone. yet she couldn’t peel her eyes away from the sight. from seeing how much more intimate he was with you. she flinched when he smacked your ass harshly. she needed to stop this, but why couldn’t she? hyewon was frozen in place, forced to watch jungkook give himself to you.

“shiiiiitt- pussy squeezing me baby, control that cunt so i don’t cum quick.” he pulled out, pumping your slick up and down his shaft. you wiggled your ass around, smacking it against his pelvis in desperation. you needed your cunt filled again. “calm down mama, fuck.”

“can’tttt,” you dragged. “hmph. fuck me or i’ll do it myself.” you should have never said that. jungkook pulled you back by your hair, his hand gripping your jaw and forcing you to look at him. your back arched in a painful way and your pussy was leaking on he cushions.

“spoiled fucking brat, think i’m obligated to fill your holes? don’t get this twisted.” he removed his hand from around his cock to smack your tits around, mesmerized with how the perky mounds looked. “making me cheat on my girlfriend, making me fall in love with this pussy. all this is your fault, now get down and throw that shit back.” without warning he slid in. the stretch was painfully addicting.

“koo! you’re so fucking big- nnnnghhh shiitt,” once you were used to the stretch you started to move back on him, when he saw your hand moving to circle your clit he yanked it back. he held it behind your back to ensure you didn’t make the same mistake again. of course your bratty ass couldn’t resist pissing him off even more and tried again. now both of your arms were folded behind you with half your face being smothered in the couch.

“you know- hmph-“ he started saying in between strokes. “one thing about your sister? she knows how to listen. trained her well. guess you need the same don’t you?” you nodded with a bright smile on your face that would soon be wiped. hyewon sobbed softly around the corner, listening to the way jungkook carelessly spoke about her. “fuck, you’re perfect. i wanna see you baby c’mere.” you were flipped on your back now, switching from one position to the other.

when you didn’t think it could get any better, jungkook dragged your legs up to his broad shoulders and he was now face to face with you. you shook your head no repeatedly, something that just provoked him more. his big brown eyes narrowed as he slammed himself into you. “ohhhhh-“ you were so fucking done for. he hit your soft spot repeatedly, abusing your mushy walls with his heavy cock. you tried keeping your whines to a minimum but once jungkook saw a certain someone lurking he wanted to hear more.

jungkook had looked up and made direct eye contact with hyewon, unfaltering eyes burning holes into her skull. he picked up his pace, slamming his hips into you and knocking the breath out of you every time. what a dumb bitch was all he could think. did she really expect him not to indulge in her minx of a sister? she trusted him to keep his composure while you were walking around in little to no clothes? pathetic. jungkook kept stroking you mainly because he knew hyewon wouldn’t do a fucking thing. she would sit right there and take it, just how you were taking him. “look princess, got a visitor.”

your head whipped around, seeing your sister trembling. if you were normal this would hurt you just as much, betraying her in such a foul manner. however, you hated her. you’ve hated her ever since you figured you weren’t the only child. you had been ruining her life forever to guarantee she would get the hint and leave the family. that was why you started targeting her boyfriends, if she kept getting them taken then naturally she would stay away. but she didn’t, and now here we were again, you wished you could say you hated to do this, but she needed to learn. after this you were going to guarantee she’d be far from not only you and your parents, but jungkook too.

“hyewonnie!” a squeal sounded from you. jungkook slowed his pace down. “god he’s so good, i’m so fucking glad you found him big sis,” your hands went up and stroked his round cheeks, running your acrylics over his skin. “after he fills me up with some babies we’re gonna get married and have a nice big wedding that you’ll never set foot on.”

blow after blow. you knew how to make her hurt.

“baby…” he panted on top of you. he buried his face in the crook of your neck and pressed kisses to the sweet spot before mumbling into your skin. “no need to be so harsh, i think she gets it love.”

“i fucking hate you both. you’re nothing to me, this entire family is nothing to me.” she finally spoke.

“mhmm, right there koo, so fucking deep-“ your eyes rolled back and you tuned her out, focusing only on the sensual way you were being fucked. “want you to cum in me, fill my cunt up baby, make me a mama.” something feral snapped in jungkook. as his speed picked up his kisses became rougher, biting up and down your shoulders and your neck to mark you. hyewon watched as you two shared such an intimate moment, hating herself for wishing she was you.

“cum with me doll.” that was all it took for you to release all over his cock. plop! plop! plop! was all that could be heard once he emptied his balls inside of you. jungkook struggled to catch his breath. once he pulled out you both watched the waterfall of cum drip from your fucked out hole. he took his cock in his hand and with the tip, pushed it all back inside. “can’t let that get away now can we?”

that had sent hyewon over the edge truly. she stomped up the stairs and barged into her room, starting to repack her suitcase early. yet she was trapped. jungkook was her ride here. she could ask your parents but it was such a long drive back to where she lived. she was stuck here with the both of you for two more weeks. how was she supposed to explain this to her friends, her co workers, everyone who thought jungkook would be her final. this was the icing on the cake that made her despise you. any love she had was far gone now. she sobbed and sobbed while listening to yours and jungkooks shared giggles, hearing him run you a shower and talk the night away.

once jungkook was asleep in your bed, you stood in her door way, basking at how much of a wreck she was. she didn’t need to look up to feel your presence. “what now? what y/n? you’ve done enough and after this consider me gone from all of your lives.”

“you’re so dramatic oh god. you’re acting like i didn’t warn you.” you welcomed yourself into her room. “think i might keep him around, i actually like him. thank you sis.” your hands went over your heart.

she backed up farther onto her bed. “stay away from me you evil fuck.”

“hyewonnie, i told you from the moment i saw him, the boy is mine.”

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