#su fic fluff

[tetsuslove]

It’s canon that the scary and cold soldier “Ghost” can get all weak and a puddle of love when he makes love to you, his pretty little wife, outside in the shiny star night <3

Imagine how he slowly makes love to you on a mattress outside somewhere on a beautiful field as your eyes are shining like the stars above you. Laying all pretty and beautiful underneath him:(

This man just falls in love with you all over again and just gets emotional as he hears your moans and whimpers as he makes you feel good and only he can do this to you, your husband.

Promising himself to the stars that he will be always a good husband for you. Never stoping, even if both of you also turn one day into stars like the one which are glowing in the beautiful night sky of love<3

I don’t know about you guys but I need this because RAWWRRrrrrrggg >:(

[luvsae]

Listen im a huge simp for Cha Hyun-su (sweet home) I even tried shifting there (im still trying)

And I wanna request for like were dating Hyun-su and were also infected so uh yeah

Idk but if you can try to do something with that

ask and you shall receive <3

(wasn't sure whether or not to do headcanons or a fic but... an actual fic is more interesting!!)

also,,, sorry if it's a bit short!! i was sleep deprived when i wrote this </3

infected love | cha hyunsu

pairing; hyunsu x gn!reader

- you and hyunsu are both infected but that doesn't get in the way of your love <3

Ever since the strange days of the apocalypse started, you and Hyunsu made sure to be safe - that's why you stayed in your shared apartment at first.

That was until Hyunsu was infected.

Hyunsu was worried that he would infect you, but you told him that it didn't matter and you would love him no matter what.

Eventually, you did get infected, but you felt perfectly fine - especially with Hyunsu by your side.

When people found out that you were both infected, Eunhyuk decided to lock you two together in one of the rooms in the apartment.

Hyunsu begged for you to not be locked up but you didn't mind it, but Eunhyuk also declined his request.

Now, you and Hyunsu were starting to be let out more and socialize with other people. (Although it was awkward).

"That sweater looks cute on you," you cooed. "I think you should get more like that."

Hyunsu wore a blue sweater - it was from one of the bins located in the main lobby for anyone, and he decided to wear it, but you loved it more than he did. "Really?"

"Of course," you stood on your tip-toes and gave him a peck on the cheek. "You look cute in anything."

Hyunsu laughed, scratching the back of his neck as he was flustered. "You look cute in anything too."

"Thank you." You smiled.

Your moment was interrupted by Eunhyuk who called you to dinner. Dinner time was always difficult as people judged you - mostly Seok-hyun and any of the people were scared.

You took your hand in Hyunsu's, giving it a tight squeeze to prepare not just him but also you for whatever insults would be thrown at you.

Both of you followed Eun-hyuk into the room where everyone ate. You two already gained most of the looks in the room which gave you a little bit of anxiety.

"Hey, hey, Eun-hyuk. What are those monsters doing here?" Seok-hyun snarled, "I don't want my food to be contaminated."

"Seok-hyun," Eun-hyuk started, "not now."

"No," Seok-hyun started, "get out of here, both of you!"

You laughed as the man looked up at you, it was funny. "If you don't want to be infected then don't eat here, simple."

"What did you say?" Seok-hyun mocked your laughing. "You're being smart with me now? I've got to-"

Seok-hyun raised a hand to you but was stopped when Hyunsu held him by the arm tightly. "I know you don't have any manners or human decency, but I would stop if I were you."

You had never heard Hyunsu so serious and defensive. Of course, he defended you, but this was a new side of him.

"I-" Seok-hyun was flustered and embarrassed, he didn't know what to do in the moment. "Eun-hyuk, do something!"

"Just let them eat," Eun-hyuk said before walking out of the room.

────────────

After eating, you and Hyunsu decided to sit elsewhere in the building. Your backs against the wall as Hyunsu held your hand in his lap.

You had your head rested on his shoulder as a sigh escaped you. He noticed immediately and squeezed your hand. "What's wrong?"

"It's hard being like this," you started. "I don't mind being infected, of course it isn't ideal, but I just wish people wouldn't be so quick to judge."

"Hey," Hyunsu rubbed his thumb across the back of your hand comfortingly. "Who cares what people think? Especially Seok-hyun, he's an asshole."

You laughed. "You can say that again."

"Besides, I won't judge you," he told you. "Even if I wasn't infected."

"You're too sweet," you kissed his covered shoulder and smiled. "The best boyfriend I could've asked for."

"I love you," he blurted out. "So much."

"I love you more." You replied back.

"What should we do tonight?" Hyunsu asked, a smile still remaining on his face. "Do you have any ideas?"

"I wish there were more options," you sighed. "I think we should just be with each other. I want us to have a nice sleep."

"That sounds nice to me," Hyunsu smiled. "I'm sorry about what happened today, by the way. You didn't deserve that."

"It's okay," you told him. "Thank you for defending me. I appreciate it and I meant to thank you before."

"I'll always be here to defend you, I promise."

"And I will do the same for you." You smiled, leaning in the peck his cheek.

────────────

It started to get late as you and Hyunsu went into your room to get some sleep, or at least attempt to.

You two were the only ones locked up in the 'infected room' but it was nice, just being away from everyone and not have anyone complaining about being near them.

Eun-hyuk was nice enough to give you two a mattress from one of the rooms downstairs. It was slightly comfortable but being next to Hyunsu was the only thing that mattered to you.

You lay down on the bed, a sigh of relief escaping you lips as the tiredness dawned over you. Being infected could be hard - you were often tired and needed your rest.

Sometimes when you were in bed, the thoughts about what could happen after the apocalypse appeared in your head. What would happen if everything went back to normal yet you and Hyunsu were the only infected people? Would they take you in? Would they-

"Hey," Hyunsu snapped you out of your thoughts, "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay. Just tired," you told him, smiling. "Are you?"

"'I'm also tired." Hyunsu smiled back.

"Let's sleep." You turned on your side, Hyunsu shifted closer and wrapped an arm around you, pulling you even closer to him.

"I love you," he said, kissing you one last time - this time on your arm. "Infected, whatever, I love you no matter what."

"I love you no matter what either," you told him. "I'll love you forever."

[wangxianficrecs]

💙 divulgences by ataraxistence

💙 divulgences

by ataraxistence

Not rated, 2k, Wangxian

Summary: In the midst of an embrace with Wei Wuxian on the floor of the Library Pavilion, Lan Wangji senses that someone's spying on them. In the ensuing confrontation, both he and Wei Wuxian (shockingly enough) use their words. Canon divergence, in which they basically realise their affection for each other way early on, while Wei Wuxian is still studying at the Cloud Recesses.

Kay's comments: Hehe, this one is so much fun! In which Wangxian get together during the Cloud Recesses study arc and are in the middle of a heated make-out session when they realize someone is spying on them.

Excerpt: The sash had fallen to the ground and Lan Wangji was bent over, nosing at the skin of his chest. Wei Wuxian could barely hold back the shiver of delight that went through him. “So I said that you were fun to tease, and Nie Huaisang, he said I teased you like a boy pulling a little girl’s braids, because he likes her. “And you know, Lan Zhan, I laughed at the time, but he was right,” Wei Wuxian finished breathlessly, his eyes crinkling up as he smiled. “I like you, Lan Zhan, I like you so much, you’re so good and handsome and you make me feel wonderful, Lan-er-gege-” his words cut off again as Lan Wangji cradled the back of his head and bore him to the floor of the Library Pavillion, kissing him again as Wei Wuxian spread his legs to let Lan Wangji lie between them.

canon divergence, pov wei wuxian, cloud recesses study arc, getting together, love confessions, making out, non-consensual voyeurism, happy ending, su she, fluff and humor

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

[thesandsofelsweyr]

Trick or treat! Happy Halloween! 🎃🖤

reaches into her treat bowl and grabs...

An Idea for a Sequel

I shouldn't even be thinking about a sequel when I still haven't finished the original damn fic 😅 but a lot of people requested more from The Sus Boy Next Door (ao3) so I've kinda-sorta brainstormed some epilogue ideas involving AK Jay showing up on Reader's doorstep with a cheesy thank you gift, blushing red cheeks, and the cutest sheepish smile Reader's ever seen 🥰

[diamond-in-the-rough-au]

A Poly-Gem Mini Fic

Steven finally fell asleep, wrapped tightly and comfortably in a bundle of blankets he was insisted he wanted to share but ended up keeping for himself when the gems refused. Rose carefully and slowly picked him up to carry him to bed. Much to her amusement, he had curled up into a ball, a habit he’s had since he was a baby and clearly never left. She tucked him in, patted his hair and adjusted his pillow next to him so he’d still feel something snuggled up close to him.

For whatever reason, she felt compelled to lay back down on the blanket of Steven’s floor next to the others. She knew better then to wake them up, especially when she was already getting on everyone’s nerves. Yet again, she was surprised when she felt sleepy, warm arms warp around her as the gems made room for her. Even after a huge argument they still—literally—welcomed her with open arms.

She sighed heavily and turned to her side as she closed her eyes. Garnet’s arm wrapped around her side as she pressed up closely to her back. Amethyst lying in-between her and Rose, curled up most closely to Garnet but her leg draped over Rose’s waist. Pearl snuggled up in Rose’s arms, facing away from her but smiling softly as she snored, her gem pressed against Rose’s forearm. They still loved her, even after everything.

Stars I don’t deserved any of you..

[twistedappletree]

TYPE: One-shot

JURISDICTION: It’s fluffy, your honor.

PAIRING: Lan Sizhui/Jin Ling

SIDE CHARACTERS: Lan Jingyi, Fairy

ELEMENTS: Humor, junior banter, Gusu setting, canon universe, crush/light romance, wholesome interaction, helpless Jin Ling in an embarrassing situation because we love to see it~

{ AO3 }

•

In which Jin Ling is terrified of spiders, Lan Jingyi is a mischievous chaos gremlin and Lan Sizhui comes to the rescue on a night hunt gone hilariously wrong.

Requested by a friend. 🖤🕷️🕸️

The frigid night air whipped through Jin Ling’s hair as he leapt from branch to branch in pursuit of a straggling corpse. This was his first night hunt in Gusu without his uncle nearby to supervise. The feeling was both terrifying and liberating but he also knew his uncle’s expectations of him were much higher.

He had to hunt something big.

He launched himself into the air with the toe of his boot, readied an arrow in his bow and released it into the corpse’s head. It stumbled forward and collapsed to the ground with a pathetic groan.

Jin Ling landed beside its limp body and kicked it in the side for good measure.

A sudden whirlwind of white and sky blue descended from above along with the silver glint of a sword. The sword pierced through the corpse’s neck as its wielder landed gracefully beside Jin Ling.

Jin Ling clenched his fists and stomped one foot into the dirt. “Lan Jingyi, will you quit it already?!”

The young Lan disciple next to him wiped the blade of his sword and smirked, tossing his long black bangs to the side. “Why would I quit when it makes you so mad?”

“It was already dead!”

“It twitched.”

Jin Ling grumbled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you even following me around? Can’t find your own prey or what?”

“You don’t know? I’ve been asked to keep an eye on Young Mistress Jin.”

Jin Ling’s eyes narrowed at the nickname. “And who’s keeping an eye on you and your annoying mouth?”

Lan Jingyi sheathed his sword and placed his hands on his hips with a triumphant grin. “No one! So you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”

A strange breeze wove between them, directing their gaze to a darker section of the forest heavy with mist.

Seeing this, Lan Jingyi really did shut his mouth as the air around them turned glacial and sinister. Jin Ling took a step forward and squinted into the rapidly forming fog. “Corpses?”

Lan Jingyi shook his head. “I don’t think so. They would’ve attacked us by now. This mist, though…” He stepped forward with Jin Ling and outstretched his hand toward the growing cloud. “It feels natural but intentional. Like it’s camouflaging something.”

Jin Ling’s brows narrowed and a mischievous grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Then what are we standing here for? Let’s go see!”

In a blur of yellow robes and blind enthusiasm, Jin Ling flew into the mist as fast as he’d spoken. Lan Jingyi tensed and called, “Hey, wait!” as he reluctantly chased after him.

Though it was hard to see through the mist, a flash of yellow pierced his murky sight. He instinctively reached out, grabbed and pulled what he thought was Jin Ling’s clothes but when he yanked his hand back, a pained cry escaped from the young Jin disciple. Lan Jingyi looked down to see that he’d grabbed his hair instead.

Before he could let go and apologize, Jin Ling twirled around and thwacked him upside the ribs with his sheathed sword. Lan Jingyi wailed pitifully and buckled over. He held his side and hissed in pain. “The hell was that for?!”

Jin Ling shoved his peeved face through the mist and glared down at him. “What do you mean what was it for?! You almost ripped my hair out, idiot!”

Lan Jingyi whined and rubbed his sore ribs. “You really do have the temper of a young mistress.”

“Shut up!”

“Point proven.”

Just when Jin Ling was about to hit him again, a curious skittering noise came from the towering trees above them. Lan Jingyi winced as he rose to his feet. “Shit… I knew it.”

Jin Ling gave him a look of confusion and annoyance, still bitter about having his hair yanked like a horse with no reigns. He worked on fixing his loosened ponytail and asked, “Knew what?”

“This place, this fog—I knew it seemed familiar. There’s tales about mist covered nests deep in Gusu’s woods that belong to giant man-eating spiders.”

Jin Ling froze at the mention of spiders. Though he kept this fact to himself, he hated spiders and the thought of a gargantuan blood-thirsty spider speeding towards him on its abnormally large, spindly legs made his skin crawl. “I’ve… I’ve never heard of such a thing. Ridiculous! Probably just a lame rumor meant to scare kids and keep them out of the woods.”

“Maybe,” Lan Jingyi shrugged, “But I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the old man talking about it with HanGuang-Jun back at the Cloud Recesses.”

Jin Ling swallowed at the thought of Lan Qiren and Hanguang-Jun seriously discussing something like this. “Whatever,” he dismissed. “I see no webs and no spiders, so I’m going to go check out that noise and catch something. Stay here and keep scaring yourself with pointless stories if you wanna be a baby.”

Jin Ling did his best to hide his anxiety and whipped around before jumping up into the trees. Lan Jingyi scowled and scrambled after him. “Young Mistress Jin!” he shouted, hoping to anger him enough that he’d come back. However, Jin Ling ignored him and pressed on.

Irritated, Lan Jingyi closely followed the sound of rustling leaves and groaning wood as Jin Ling pounced from branch to branch above him. Finally, he heard a sudden ‘oof!’ as the noises in the trees stopped.

“Jin Ling?” Lan Jingyi called, unable to see anything through the dense fog.

“Wha… what is this?!” Jin Ling said, his tone strained and full of confusion.

Lan Jingyi heard the small twinge of panic in the other’s voice and followed it to a modest clearing where the mist was significantly thinner. He waved away the remaining milky haze until he was greeted by a sight so comically bewildering that he blinked several times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

In front of him was a giant spiderweb woven between the trunks of two strong trees and caught in the center was a struggling Jin Ling with all four limbs splayed like a flying squirrel hovering a mere four feet off the ground.

Lan Jingyi stared blankly for a moment before erupting with laughter. The vision before him was so hilariously satisfying that he almost fell over. Jin Ling’s rage was bubbling up again but he opted to ignore Lan Jingyi’s cackles and focused on trying to tear his hands and legs free. He punched and kicked and rocked forward but the web was surprisingly strong, as though it was specifically woven to catch human prey.

“This is too good, it’s too good!” Lan Jingyi chanted, practically rolling on the ground with wild amusement.

“Will you shut up already?” Jin Ling snapped. “I can’t focus with all your screeching!”

Lan Jingyi tried to catch his breath in between laughs. “If you didn’t storm off like a moody mistress, you wouldn’t have to focus on this.”

Jin Ling tried to lunge forward but it was no use. The web had him locked in place from head to toe. He exhaled and stopped trying for a moment. “Then how about you make yourself useful for once and get me out of here?”

Lan Jingyi pretended to contemplate while an impish idea surfaced in his mind. I’ll just leave him here for a bit to scare him, then come back to help, he thought. He choked back his laughter and composed himself before staring up at Jin Ling with a feigned serious expression.

“No way,” Lan Jingyi barked, his tone sharp but still laced with amusement. “It’s your own fault for barging into this situation, so get out of there yourself!”

Jin Ling fumed and flailed as much as his trapped limbs would allow. “Seriously?! If my uncle finds out you left me here, he’ll… h-he’ll…!”

Laughter bubbled out of Lan Jingyi. “He’ll what? Scold you for getting caught instead of doing the catching? He’d probably leave you here too!”

Jin Ling’s face burned with anger and embarrassment. “Then get me down so we can finish the hunt and actually catch something!”

Lan Jingyi crossed his arms and puffed out his chest like a cocky pigeon. “Nope. Think of this as a cultivation trial. If you can free yourself from that web before the spider comes back, you’ll be ready to face the deepest, darkest depths of Gusu’s wilderness.”

This was the second time he’d mentioned the spider. Jin Ling’s face paled at the thought of whatever mammoth eight-legged beast owned the web he was trapped in. He could barely handle normal sized spiders, though he’d never dream of revealing his fear to Lan Jingyi.

While Jin Ling manically tore through hypothetical scenarios and outcomes if the spider showed up, Lan Jingyi turned around and started walking away. “H-Hey!” Jin Ling shouted. “Where are you going?!”

“Hunting!” Lan Jingyi called back before disappearing into the trees.

Jin Ling huffed with frustration and wiggled around. “What a loser.”

He quickly realized that struggling only made the web’s grip on him stronger since the more he flailed, the more heavy strands of sticky silk wound themselves around his wrists and ankles. Burning the web away was out of the question since he couldn’t reach his talismans and calling his uncle for help was far too embarrassing.

He wouldn’t be surprised if his uncle really did just leave him there like Lan Jingyi predicted. Regardless, he couldn’t reach his flares either.

Jin Ling furrowed his brow and pouted angrily as he brainstormed. “I can’t believe I’m asking myself this,” he mumbled, “but what would Wei Wuxian do?”

Suddenly, he had a flashback to the last time Wei Wuxian ‘handled’ a difficult situation: by running around like a chicken with no head and shrieking for HanGuang-Jun to come save him.

“Useless!” he spat.

He didn’t know how Wei Wuxian could be so shameless, so ridiculous. The last thing he needed right now was another Lan showing up and gloating at his predicament.

Just then, a rustling noise came from the bushes to his right. He froze, remembering the spider but whatever was in the bushes was far too small to create such a large web. Jin Ling watched carefully as the fluffy head of a well-groomed dog popped out of the leaves accompanied by the gentle chime of a round bell around its collar.

“Fairy!” Jin Ling exclaimed. “Where have you been?! Quick, go get help from—“

Jin Ling grew quiet as more rustling came from the bushes and a tall, handsome boy dressed in the white robes of the Lan sect stepped out. He brushed a generous amount of twigs and leaves out of his raven bangs that had accumulated from following Fairy through the forest.

Jin Ling’s face blanched. “…Lan Sizhui…?!”

Lan Sizhui looked up at him with a pair of wide, doe-like eyes that sparkled quite brilliantly in the moonlight. His mouth fell open at the sight of Jin Ling in the web, not entirely sure how to respond to the situation.

“Young Master Jin! There you are,” said Lan Sizhui, a wave of relief in his pleasant voice. “Are you alright?”

Jin Ling glowered at him and turned up his nose. “Tch. How about you ask your annoying Lan twin? He’s the one who left me here!”

Lan Sizhui blinked. “Lan Jingyi…?” He sighed and walked closer to Jin Ling, Fairy trotting triumphantly at his side as though she’d brought her master his knight in shining armor.

Lan Sizhui studied both the web and Jin Ling for a moment and suppressed a chuckle. He looked up at him with a sympathetic smile. “You’re stuck?”

Jin Ling turned beet red and snapped, “I’m not!!!” I-I’m just thinking…!”

Lan Sizhui smiled again, amused by his unwavering pride and reached for a small hunting knife that was strapped to his upper thigh. While Jin Ling was trying his best not to look at him, Lan Sizhui began carefully cutting away the web around his wrists.

Jin Ling’s face was burning with humiliation. Out of all the people Fairy could’ve brought, it just had to be Lan Sizhui—the last person he’d ever want to see him like this. Not to mention, Lan Sizhui was almost a carbon copy of HanGuang-Jun, albeit much more talkative and expressive. Jin Ling mentally prepared himself for receiving a long-winded, boring lecture once he was saved.

After a few minutes of meticulously sawing through the web, Jin Ling’s right hand was freed. He thought about grabbing one of his talismans and burning the rest of the web but his thoughts were instantly scrambled by the tender way Lan Sizhui held his hand to help him balance.

Shocked speechless, he ripped his hand away and immediately fell forward at an awkward angle, crashing directly into Lan Sizhui’s shoulder. He went from holding his hand to hooking his one free arm around Lan Sizhui’s neck and he couldn’t decide which of the two positions were more embarrassing.

His paranoia told him that Lan Jingyi was hiding somewhere in the bushes watching, snickering and memorizing every detail for blackmail purposes. Jin Ling sneered at the thought.

He stared down at Fairy who was sitting obediently in front of the web, wagging her tail and watching with keen interest as Lan Sizhui worked on freeing Jin Ling’s other wrist. However, he wasn’t prepared for the offset of balance that came with both of his hands being freed. For a moment, he felt as if he was actually going to fall and all of his anger melted into a potent jolt of fear.

Jin Ling yelped as he quickly clasped his other hand around Lan Sizhui’s neck and trembled with nerves. “Wah—! Don’t drop me!”

Lan Sizhui blushed from seeing Jin Ling so worried. The way he was hugging his neck made his cheeks flush a few shades darker. He gently but cautiously patted Jin Ling on the back in an attempt to reassure him. “I won’t drop you. I’m not Lan Jingyi, you know.”

Jin Ling grumbled at the mention and plopped his chin onto Lan Sizhui’s shoulder, glaring into the distance like a perturbed cat.

“I’m doing your ankles next,” Lan Sizhui warned. “You can use my back for support, okay?”

Just as Jin Ling was about to protest, Lan Sizhui crouched down. Jin Ling’s torso propelled forward and he hastily propped himself up with his forearms, using Lan Sizhui’s back as a platform. If the positions before were embarrassing, this was simply mortifying. His eyes darted around his eerily quiet surroundings as he tried to think about anything other than Lan Sizhui’s selfless chivalry, the way his lean muscles moved beneath Jin Ling’s body as he cut the web, and the warm scent of orange blossom and cedar wood clinging to Lan Sizhui’s clothes.

But the only unrelated thought that came to mind was the spider. Suddenly, Jin Ling wished he’d kept thinking about Lan Sizhui and stealthily inhaled the clean scent of the Lan boy’s robes for comfort.

“Um… Sizhui?”

Hearing Jin Ling say his name without ‘Lan’ was a rare occurrence and usually meant he had something serious to say. Lan Sizhui glanced to his side in acknowledgment. “Yes, Young Master Jin?”

Jin Ling swallowed. “Are there really giant spiders in Gusu’s forests? And do they really eat people?”

Lan Sizhui smiled. “Lan Jingyi’s been telling his horror stories, I assume?”

Jin Ling deflated onto Lan Sizhui’s back with an exasperated huff. “So he lied to me.”

“Not entirely,” Lan Sizhui revealed. “There’s giant spiders in the forest but they rarely eat people since nobody ever ventures that far in. I’m actually surprised you managed to find a web so close to the Cloud Recesses.”

Jin Ling furrowed his brow. “I really have rotten luck, then.”

Lan Sizhui laughed and shook his head, his hands still working dexterously at the webs around Jin Ling’s ankles. “For this situation, I’d say you lucked out. Take this web, for example—it’s still sticky enough to catch things but it’s fairly old and probably abandoned. Even if I’d showed up later than I did, the worst that could’ve happened is you being stuck here for a bit longer.”

Jin Ling slapped a fist down onto the small of Lan Sizhui’s back, causing the taller boy to rock forward from the shock. “That’s still a ‘what if’ scenario! I swear I’m gonna sic Fairy on Lan Jingyi the moment I see him next!” His voice fell quiet as he crossed his arms and looked off to the side. “I really could’ve died out here.”

A caring softness spread across Lan Sizhui’s face and his voice came in a barely audible whisper. “I’d never let that happen.”

“Huh?”

“Hm?” Lan Sizhui replied, pretending as if he didn’t say anything. “Ah, nothing.”

Finally, both of Jin Ling’s ankles were freed and he scrambled up Lan Sizhui’s back until his arms were hooked around his neck again. Lan Sizhui held him at the waist and carefully lowered him to the ground, letting him tap the toe of his boot on the dirt to make sure it was safe before planting his feet.

Jin Ling slumped his shoulders and sighed with relief, glad to be out of the web. Lan Sizhui expected him to go back to his fiery, combative self but to his surprise, Jin Ling frowned up at him with a bashful, apologetic expression.

“I… t-thank you for helping me.”

The words seemed incredibly difficult for him to say but they were earnest. He could tell by the way Jin Ling’s amber eyes burned with gratitude like a storm of autumn foliage. The sight was rather breathtaking, though he didn’t dare admit this out loud. Lan Sizhui blinked in disbelief before settling into a friendly smile. “Of course. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Jin Ling blushed again and quickly looked at the ground, the sincerity of Lan Sizhui’s words setting his nerves alight.

“Oh,” Lan Sizhui said, eyes trained on Jin Ling’s wrists. “Let me see your hands.”

Jin Ling snapped his head back up. “H-Huh? Why?” Even as he asked the question, he subconsciously lifted his hands as if Lan Sizhui’s melodic voice possessed him to do so.

“The webs,” Lan Sizhui said. When he smiled, his eyes smiled too and Jin Ling paused to study the way his irises shifted from indigo grey to deep azure to cold amethyst in the moonlight—so strikingly opposite to Jin Ling’s wildfire gaze. He couldn’t look away even if he tried.

With his hands hovering in the air, Lan Sizhui began untangling the remainder of the webs from Jin Ling’s wrists and discarded the thick silk strands onto the ground.

Fairy immediately took notice of this and trotted over to Jin Ling’s ankles. She bit and gnawed at the webs on his boots and ripped them away quite efficiently. Lan Sizhui grinned at her efforts. “Good girl! Your master is lucky to have you.”

Normally, Jin Ling would’ve retaliated by now but Lan Sizhui glanced back up at him only to find he was frozen in place with a look of bewilderment as if he’d realized something important and didn’t know how to process it.

Lan Sizhui’s fingers lingered on his wrists for a moment. He frowned and tilted his head. “Young Master Jin? Are you feeling alright?”

Jin Ling finally looked down at where Lan Sizhui’s slender fingers grazed his skin and blushed so furiously he thought his head might explode. He felt dizzy and warm and unable to function. When Lan Sizhui suddenly reached up to brush a strand of spider’s silk from his hair, his chest buzzed like a hive of bees.

“Sorry,” Lan Sizhui said sheepishly. “I just noticed it now.”

For whatever reason, a million thoughts were running through Jin Ling’s mind that he would’ve slapped himself for earlier. Maybe it was the air or the time of night or some strange delirium from being trapped in the web—he couldn’t be sure. He just knew that right now, in this moment, he really liked Lan Sizhui.

He liked his tranquil eyes and gentle smiles. He liked the way his soft raven bangs swept over his headband and tempted his fingers to brush them to the side. He liked that he had to look up at him because of their height difference. He liked how his quiet, soothing voice washed over him in clement waves.

But most of all, he liked the way he touched him. Cautious but daring, soft yet protective. Jin Ling realized that from the moment Lan Sizhui showed up, he felt safe regardless of how many fits he threw.

“Sizhui,” Jin Ling said, trying his best to regain himself. “Can we…”

There was a significant pause between them but Lan Sizhui waited, afraid he might scare Jin Ling into saying ‘never mind’ if he interrupted. He didn’t even know what he expected him to say but he felt anxious with anticipation.

“Can we stay together? For the rest of the hunt?” Jin Ling immediately tore his gaze away from Lan Sizhui, shocked at how such simple words could be so humiliating to say.

Lan Sizhui’s lips parted and his eyes glistened with surprise. He lightly squeezed Jin Ling’s wrists and beamed at the request. “Of course.”

Jin Ling looked back at him with a shining expression, drinking up every detail of Lan Sizhui’s smiling face. When Lan Sizhui released his wrists, he suddenly felt cold so he sidled up beside him as close as he could without causing suspicion.

Their shoulders brushed together as they left the now mangled web and walked back into the forest, Fairy trotting happily behind.

“I’m still gonna kill Lan Jingyi,” Jin Ling muttered.

“Let’s just work on killing corpses for now,” said Lan Sizhui, laughing nervously.

“I’ll turn him into a corpse first, then!”

Lan Sizhui sighed. Senior Wei, what have you been teaching my a-Ling?

{ 🖤 }

[suckinitup]

gets up on my little stage with my secret little four followers blog and turns off reblogs. i think that a lot of current mcyt/mcyt fandom rn would be defending anne rice literally suing fanfic writers who shipped her characters. creators do not have a say in fan works or fan spaces for a REASON. they dont get to say what we make just like we dont get to say what they make. if we dont like their work we can avoid it just like if they dont like ours they can avoid it- UNLESS. someone else. decides to shove it in their face. can you fucking imagine. youve got this one story trope that you absolutely hate or that makes you really uncomfortable and this one jackass keeps showing it off to you. and that is somehow the norm for some of these fandoms??? i have seen elder fans cringe away in HORROR at the concept of how involved mcyt creators are in their fanbases. i grew up writing fics plastered with "I DONT OWN THIS" disclaimers on a website that, straight up, Did Not Allow You to post about certain works by certain authors. if an author didn't want you to create any fanwork, you Were Not Allowed. Doesn't that sound familiar. stories are built on top of other stories on top of other stories on top of other stories. it doesn't matter if someone creates something that grosses you out- all those authors who were disgusted by the queer shipping of their characters were ABSOLUTELY grossed out. the point isn't protecting the creators from others' creations the point is to take inspiration from something you love and to MAKE !!

[dem0nguy]

Christmas was in full swing at La Résistance headquarters; halls decked with garland, windows adorned with festive curtains, Christmas tree garnished with homemade ornaments.

And all eight of La Résistance’s members, finishing up the decor in the rec room.

Well, all eight of them were in the rec room, but not all eight were decorating.

It was really just Vegan-Su doing all the work, Apocalipsis helping to reach the high places whenever needed.

Brutux and Dr. White sat on the couch, in front of the fireplace/TV playing a video of a crackling fire, listening to Christmas music.

BP and Katani had taken mistletoe, stuck it to a stick with fishing line, and gone around holding it above peoples heads trying to get them to kiss.

Shooter would be lying if he said it wasn’t hilarious

Sheriff was goofing off, per usual. Wandering from person to person, cracking a joke, throwing an insult, getting punched in the face by Vegan-Su when the mistletoe made its way over to them, accidentally breaking an ornament, getting tangled in the Christmas lights—The list could go on.

But Shooter didn’t care about how long the list was, he just cared about the man behind it.

Sheriff, he loved him—

No he didn’t love him. He couldn’t love him. But god did he love him anyways.

Sheriff, and his bright orange hair like that of a fire; drifting out and up, sending scalding embers of his personality wherever he went. Sheriff, and his elegant teal-blue eyes that glow brighter than ice shining in the morning light. Put side by side you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two, their beauty unparalleled in the great expanse of winter.

But Shooter could tell the difference.

Shooter knew the deepness of Sheriff’s eyes, like the sky, infinite and beautiful. Full of possibility. He knew the gentle touch of his lightly tanned skin; from the few times Sheriff had sought comfort in Shooter’s arms.

He knew Sheriff’s cockiness, how much of an idiot he could be sometimes. How he could fuck up so badly, yet make it out fine. How he could be so dumb, yet have everything work for him.

But Shooter loved it. He loved everything about Sheriff, from his dumbassary to his sweet giddy smiles.

He only wishes he actually could love him.

Shooter sighs, staring out the window he placed his menorah in. The menorah that Sheriff, had gotten for him. (Alongside enough candles to last all of Hanukah, which makes Shooter doubt that Sheriff had actually found this all on his own.)

“Hey Shoooooooter!” The man in question saunters toward him. Ready to continue his antics.

“You look reallllllll lonely over here you know,” Sheriff teases, “Why don’t you stop being uh…” He thinks for a moment, “damn it, Brutux what was the word again?!”

Shooter can hear Brutux sigh from the other side of the room, “A Debbie Downer?” “What he said!” Sheriff smirks.

Shooter rolls his eyes. He’s such an idiot… “I ain’t bein’ a ‘Debbie Downer’ Sheriff. I’m just thinking.”

“Mhm, bout what?”

Shooter shrugs, red tinting the tips of his ears. You “Nothing much.”

They stare out the window together, barren desert wasteland surrounds the headquarters. It looked the same year round, no matter where you went.

And most of the time, it was hot. Hotter than you’d think it could ever get. The Big Fart sped up climate change, and it hadn’t snowed since then, but it still got fairly chilly this time of year.

Proof of that was last night, up on the roof, when Sheriff pressed into Shooter’s side for warmth against the bitter darkness.

It still made his heart flutter to think about…

“Lovely weather we’re having huh?” Sheriff interrupts his thoughts.

“Beautiful weather,” Shooter chuckles, “Should be expecting snow any day now!”

Sheriff laughs with him, “Man! I can’t remember the last time I saw snow.”

“Neither can I.”

“You lived in the city, didn’t you?”

Shooter nods, “Yeah, our snow weren’t as clean as what you’d get out in the rural parts.”

“You’d be surprised.” Sheriff shrugs, “I remember one time I was playing with the pigs out in the snow, and I swear not five minutes later, all of that snow became mud.” He chuckles, “Ryan came out after a while to play too, and made a point to tell me not to eat the muddy snow. But I think it was a little too late for that…”

Sheriff exhales a reminiscent sigh that begs for the past to come back to him. “I miss that farm, the pigs, and Ryan…”

“Hey, don’t be a Debbie Downer!” Shooter teases, eliciting a smirk from Sheriff.

“You’re right! It’s the season to be jolly after all!” He laughs, before frowning again. “I just wish he was still here…”

Shooter puts a gentle hand on Sheriff’s shoulder. He flinches at the sudden touch, before leaning into it. “You got us Sheriff,” Shooter tries to comfort him, “You got us.”

Sheriff nods, “Thanks Sho—“ mistletoe smacks him in the face.

“Whoops! Sorry!” Katani laughs, moving the mistletoe stick.

Sheriff and Shooter share a confused glance, before looking up.

SHIT—OH MY FUCKIN—SHHHHHHHIITT

Shooters face is what most accurately displays his reaction; bright red. And he knew it too.

“Come on guys, it ain’t gay to kiss your homies!” BP encourages, giggling with Katani.

Sheriff awkwardly laughs, “I mean, he’s right you know?” Shooter doesn’t dare look at him.

Looking at him would make Shooter want to kiss him.

“Come on Shooter, I’m not that bad of a kisser! Swear on it!” Him and his cocky personality, back at it again…

Shooter looks him in the eye, and fucking shit. That was a bad idea. He wanted to disappear into the teal universe that was Sheriff’s eyes, disappear forever in something so beautiful, that it made him a blushing, red, sweaty, shaky, mess.

Every time he dared to meet his gaze.

“Shooter?” Sheriff’s voice draws him out of his mind, prompting him to absentmindedly take a step forward. “Hey I mean, if you don’t wanna do this it’s cool you kn—“

He kissed him.

He actually kissed him.

Only for a split second before pulling back and awkwardly laughing, “You ain’t that bad of a kisser Sheriff, no worries!” He takes a step back, “Ima uh… head off now.”

He hastily walks out of the room, leaving Sheriff in shock, BP and Katani cackling to themselves, and not a single other soul bothered.

Except himself of course.

Because holy shit, he kissed him.

End

I did it yet again, I wrote us some SheriffxShooter content. I was originally gonna make it more fluffy, but I wanted romantic tension so that’s what we get :3

Happy Holidays!

[worstloki]

where is all the dark dead dove lokius?! *cries*

people will write mobius doing the creepiest most invasive stuff with the tapes of loki's life and then it'll be tagged #fluff #pre-relationship #romance like mate.... the potential is immense the fic is dark tag it as such it is NOT a downside

[crabcanwrite]

Shopping

Written: 12/13/22

Words: 76

Fandom: Steven Universe

Ship: Kevin/Jamie

"That's a nice necklace" Jamie commented, pointing to a display inside a jewelry shop.

"I can get it for you if you want" Kevin offered

Jamie rolled his eyes before smiling "that's ok, I'm good with window shopping."

"Really?" Kevin asked, raising one eyebrow "it's not even that expensive"

"Yeah" Jamie replied, leaning against his boyfriend and lacing their fingers together.

Kevin laughed, turning to give Jamie a kiss on the cheek "whatever you want babe"

[lololololchips]

Hi babes its me 😁🤞 I saw how your reqs are open again so here i am😈

SO... minghao trying to soft launch a rs to svt😁

(I just wanted to add this for no reason)

this took so damn long IM SORRY BABE😔😔 but here it is after centuries sigh HOPE U LIKE IT:)))

(also that pic made me laugh LMAOOOO)

Xu Minghao || in which revealing a relationship is never easy…

synopsis: in which revealing a relationship is never easy especially if you’re in a very chaotic boy band

genre: one shot smau, fake texts, idol x non!idol, fluff, smau

warnings: cursing, fem pronouns, svt being chaotic as usual

[deepblueskiesabove]

Rose Quartz/Greg Universe | Steven Universe short fanfic | G

A random fic idea

"Greg!"

His girlfriend's voice was a hushed whisper, and her dark eyes were wide with something so raw and hurt even as suppressed as it seemed that he reached out to grab her hand.

Squirming uncomfortably, he tried to tell her: "It's from the construction company-" And here he slid in an undertone of distaste for the damage. "They were building something here." He took a quick breath out to quickly reassure her. "It'll heal."

"What if it doesn't?"

Greg swallowed and remembered that secret trip in June, rows and rows and her dazed expression and wet streaks running down her face that just sank into the ground and dry soil sticking to his jeans that wouldn't seem to go away. And he had taken one look at the door to Rose's cloud-filled haven and thrown them in the trash.

"We can fix this!"

And words tumbled out accidentally and came out too loud.

She tensed and gripped his hand harder, turning to look at him with ringlets falling over her bare shoulders.

"We... can?"

She looked haunted. Out of it.

He nodded firmly and squeezed her hand back.

"We can at least fix this."

"...where, do we even begin?" Her eyes were watering and she quickly wiped her eyes to put on a different face, breathing quick.

He grabbed her other hand.

"Here."

She swallowed. "It's not enough." Guilt.

"It's gonna have to be."

[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.” 

[mxltifxnd0m]

pillowtalk ☼ s. winchester

summary: a morning spent in sam's arms

pairings: sam winchester x reader, sam winchester x fem! reader

word count: 2.2K

warnings: no use of y/n, not beta'd, fluff, sam's morning voice (yes its a warning), suggestive themes, spicy, implied smut but no actual smut, but for this fic: MINORS DNI

a/n: this was birthed out of god knows where but was inspired by that photo above and I love sammy so much (also this came out a little more smutty than I intended LOL)

bestie mari @prentissluvr i hope you enjoy this as much as i did writing this last night 🤭

please reblog and lmk your thoughts and opinions!! i wanna hear what you guys thought about the fic!

𝘴𝘢𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵

The soft rays of sunlight filtered through the room as the sun rose for the incoming day. The light hit your eyes, and you inhaled deeply as you prepared to open your eyes. You could feel the light breeze flowing into the room from the open window of the balcony. You were about to roll over to Sam's side of the bed, thinking it would be empty, but then felt the warmth of his bare chest.

You slowly opened your eyes, blinking a few times before tilting your head up and finding Sam's eyes already on you. You stared into his eyes, seeing the flecks of brown and gold within the green of his gaze. Then your eyes moved from his to the mole near his left eye, the slope of his nose, and to his mouth, a tender smile dancing on his lips as you felt him cup your cheek, his thumb brushing softly against it.

"Morning." Sam's voice was soft and low, sounding a little hoarse from just waking up.

Oh god, his voice. You thought to yourself as you felt some heat begin to brew in your core. The deep rasp of Sam's voice filled the mostly silent room.

"How long have you been up?" Your own voice had a faint rasp to it.

"Not long."

You mirrored his smile. "Has anyone told you staring is rude Winchester?"

Sam chuckled lowly, making your chest fill with warmth. "Yes, but I can't help but look at my pretty girl in the morning."

You felt yourself flush at the compliment. Even if you and Sam have been together for a while now, you would never get used to hearing Sam saying the sweetest things to you.

Your smile grew wider. "Who knew Sam Winchester was such a sucker for me," You teased before leaning forward to give him a soft kiss on his lips.

You felt Sam's smile widen and pulled back slightly. "I always will be," He murmured against your lips before melting into the kiss.

It soon turned passionate as kisses with Sam always did. You adjusted yourself so you were laying on top of Sam, chest to chest, almost hovering over him as your legs fell beside his hips and so that your neck wasn't being strained from the awkward angle you were in.

Sam's hand moved from your cheek to the back of your neck, and you felt his tongue swiping at the seam of your lips, but you broke away from him before he could.

You opened your eyes to find Sam's slightly swollen lips in a pout, and the hand that was on your neck was trying to pull you back to his lips. You chuckled at the puppy dog look he was giving you.

"Morning breath," You explained as to why you broke away from the kiss.

Sam frowned. "Don't care." He continued to give his puppy dog look combined with his (adorable) pout.

Despite almost giving in (the look that he gave you nearly worked every time), you rolled your eyes as you pulled away from him and sat up, straddling him. He let his hand fall from your neck as you sat up, his hands finding your naked thighs. You glanced at the digital clock on the nearest nightstand, '6:39 AM'.

You looked back at Sam. "You going to run today?"

He shook his head, his hair moving as it fanned out against the white cotton of the pillow sheets.

You gasped dramatically, your hand shooting to your chest. "Sam Winchester choosing not to go out on his morning run? Alert the press! Samuel Will-"

You were cut off by a sharp yelp escaping your mouth as your world tilted suddenly. You were on your back, with Sam's hands settling beside your head, making the pillow sink and hovering over you with a smirk plastered on his face.

"Were you just about to say my full government name?" Sam questioned, his tone barely concealing the mirth within it.

You nodded, your face taking on a serious expression. "Yes. The world needs to know that you're willingly skipping your daily morning run."

Sam scoffed and rolled his eyes at you, but you could see the corner of his mouth twitch. "Well, someone planned this vacation, and I think I can skip a day or two of running."

When you proposed the idea of a vacation, he was very resistant to the idea, not wanting to leave Dean alone to hunt. The three of you were hunting constantly, barely staying at the bunker for a day or two before getting back in the Impala and going to a different state to kill another monster.

As much as you loved Dean, you wanted to spend some time with Sam alone, just the two of you. Sharing a motel room with his brother didn't afford any privacy as well. Besides, by the time you guys finished with a hunt and got back to the bunker, you and Sam were exhausted and had collapsed in bed.

You just wanted a break from hunting and wanted to spend time with your boyfriend without the company of his brother, so you came up with the idea of a vacation. It took a lot of convincing on your part, but Sam's stubbornness almost won out every time you brought up the word vacation.

It took you, Dean, Jody, and even Garth to convince him that a vacation wouldn't hurt. But he'd only go if Dean promised that he wouldn't hunt without a partner, which he easily agreed to (you could have kissed Dean for agreeing to Sam's terms).

You raised an unconvinced eyebrow at him.

Sam's mouth fell open slightly. "You don't believe me?"

"You went running yesterday, the day before, and the day we got here."

Sam opened his mouth to respond before closing it. You grinned at the lack of response from the man above you.

"I'm glad that I can prove you wrong and render you speechless with a single sentence." You cooed, pinching one of Sam's cheeks like a grandmother would greeting her grandchild.

Sam gently slapped your hand away with a slight scowl on his face, making you laugh. Sam was still hovering over you, and his expression soon changed from a scowl to a smirk. You saw his eyes glint with mischief, making you stop laughing.

You knew what that smirk meant. "Samuel, no." You said warningly.

Sam continued to smirk as he went from hovering over you to straddling your hips. Before you knew it, you erupted into giggles, Sam attacking your sides with his hands, poking and tickling you.

You thrashed around in the bed, kicking your feet, trying to get away from Sam, but it was fruitless.

Sam's melodic laughter joined yours as it filled the room. You were yelling at him to stop, but he continued to tickle you. It was almost impossible to get Sam's large frame off of you; he was just a wall of muscle, and he had the advantage.

"S-Sam! Pl-please st-opp!" You could barely get the words out. Tears lined your vision as you tried to squirm away from Sam's relentless hands.

"What are the magic words?" Sam asked. You could hear the amusement coating his words. The son of a bitch you called your boyfriend was enjoying this a little too much.

"I-I do-n't k-know! P-please?!" You all but shrieked.

Sam's hands finally pulled away from your body, and you felt like you could finally breathe. You took in gulps of air as you tried to catch your breath. Your sides hurt from the sudden tickle attack.

"The magic word was actually angel blade. But I wanted to be nice." You scowled up at the smug look on your boyfriend's face.

"I wish I had packed one so I could use it on you."

Sam let out a laugh at your words that shook his entire body. His bare chest was shaking with laughter. You couldn't help but grin at one of your favorite sounds that came from him.

At this point, the sun rose further up in the sky and filled the room with its golden light, highlighting Sam's features and giving him an ethereal glow.

He's so beautiful. Your smile turned softer as you watched him laugh. As you admired him, you noticed that he looked younger when he laughed, his head thrown back and the corner of his eyes crinkled with joy.

When he had calmed down, the broad smile on his face never faltered, and the tenseness that he always seemed to hold fell off his shoulders as he looked at you with his hazel eyes. Sam looked visibly lighter when he was relaxed, and he didn't have to look over his shoulder to see if there was any danger.

You tried to shift up the bed so your back was resting on the headboard. Sam lifted himself to allow you to move, and once you were settled, he shuffled forward to straddle you again.

It would look comical to anyone who saw the two of you in this position. Sam was practically twice your size as he straddled your smaller frame. But this was normal for the two of you. Your hands moved from the bed to rest on Sam's hips, your thumbs swiping against his hipbones that weren't covered by the boxers that he was wearing.

"So, no run today?" You asked again.

Sam nodded. "No run today. But..." He trailed off, leaning closer to you and resting his forehead on yours.

"But?" You asked him, your eyes half-lidded as your lips brushed against his.

"I know another way to get my cardio in." You felt Sam's lips stretch into a smirk.

You hummed in response. "Oh really? How so?"

Sam kissed you hard in response, not wasting a second before his tongue swiped at the seam of your lips and dived into your mouth. A low whine escaped you as Sam's tongue swiped against yours. Your hands wandered from his hips and up his bare chest, feeling his muscles clench as your hands roamed his torso.

Sam grunted against your lips as your hands made their way to his pecs and teased his nipples with your thumbs.

He broke the kiss. "You're playing with fire." Sam grumbled as he trailed his kisses down your jaw. You chuckled in response and took the chance to flip your positions. You moved your hands up his shoulders, lifted your hips up, and turned quickly.

Sam let a quiet 'oof' escape his lips from the abrupt move, the springs of the bed creaking a little, but before he could say anything, you straddled him and smashed your lips against his. You felt his hands land on your waist before they slid down to your ass and squeezed it. It made you grind against the bulge that was growing in his boxers.

Your hands moved from his shoulders to the nape of his neck and tugged at the short hairs at the back of it, making him growl against your lips and nip at your bottom lip. His kisses trailed across your jaw and down your neck, his scruff scratching at your skin slightly.

Quiet moans left your mouth as Sam sucked and nipped at your neck, and his hands moved to the hem of your shirt, pulling it up. He pulled away slightly to pull your (his) shirt off of you, leaving you in only your underwear. Sam's gaze felt like it was burning you as he stared at your bare torso, focusing on your heaving chest. His gaze traveled up to your spit-slicked swollen lips before meeting your eyes.

Sam's calloused hands moved to settle on your sides, his thumbs just resting on the underside of your breasts. His eyes were filled with love and desire. Sam leaned forward and brushed his lips against yours.

"I love you." He whispered.

You smiled at his words. "I know."

Sam pulled back slightly and groaned at your words. "You seriously didn't just quote Han Solo at me."

You laughed at Sam's reaction. "I did." You grinned cheekily at him.

Sam shook his head at you. "You're ridiculous."

"Yet you love me anyways."

"Yeah, I do."

You leaned closer to him. "Happy Anniversary."

Sam's eyes went so wide you'd think they fell out. You could see the panic run through him.

"It's fine, Sam." You chuckled at his bug-eyed look.

"I forgot our anniversary." Guilt filled his features.

You brushed a lock of hair out of Sam's face, your hand resting on his cheek. "Sam, honey. It's fine. I had a feeling you'd forget, so that's why I wanted to plan this trip."

"But-" You shushed him.

"We had a lot of stuff on our plate with hunting, and honestly, all I wanted for you to do is relax."

Sam still didn't look convinced; his lips pulled into a thin line.

"Sammy, it's fine. You don't have to worry about a gift or anything. Your gift to me can be you finally not worrying about research or killing monsters, okay?" You reassured him with a gentle smile.

You knew that he'd beat himself over not remembering or getting you a gift. Sam pressed his lips together before nodding.

"Fine. I'll make it up to you in a different way then."

Your head tilted to one side as your small smile turned into a curious one. "How?"

Sam flipped the two of you over. Your bare back hit the mattress again with Sam hovering over you, wearing a devilish smirk.

"By keeping you in this bed and making sure you're not able to walk when I'm done with you."

[curryshesus]

bts fics that give me life in a drought

(aka my favorite fics of all time) pt. 2

didn't expect to make a part 2 so soon but seeing how much recognition the first one got, here we are! some of these contain a hearty amount of angst, and oh they're just simply divine :( once again, please make sure to show your love and support to these lovely authors if you enjoyed any of these reads as much as i did!

➺ knife’s edge - by @readyplayerhobi

| jungkook x reader, jimin x reader | 141.8k

mafia au, fluff, angst, smut, violence, series

>> summary: "the jeon clan is family, built on blood and loyalty. it’s been an unspoken fact that one day you will marry the heir to the clan, jeon jungkook. you would be a fool to deny that you love him, but what happens when you meet a blue haired man who offers you a chance at normality?"

this fic absolutely BROKE ME. i was so conflicted all throughout and deadass went through all the 50 stages of grief. the angst was unparalleled. the fluff had me giggling like a madman cuz jk is an absolute sweetheart :( jimin is too :(( y/n is dumb and so is her situation :((( i cherish this fic sm

➺ novocaine - by @kinktae

| jimin x reader |

1990s au, exes au, angst, eventual smut, series

>> summary: "going home was hard – painful even. but falling back in love with jimin, the boy you left behind? downright gut-wrenching."

➺ ghostin him- by @adonis-koo

| namjoon x reader (taehyung x reader) | 26k

angst, angst, as well as angst. comfort too dw, one-shot

>> summary: "life is nothing more than dull colors for you, your world shattered and laying in the shards of what once was rather than focusing on what is. that is until you meet kim namjoon, who is immediately taken by you without realizing you’re a girl with a whole lot of baggage, through tears and many sleepless nights you’re faced with a choice of hanging on with bleeding hands, or accepting what is, and letting go."

ohmygod the writing hello? the amount of soul, depth, and sheer utter beauty in missy's words are beyond me. had me sobbing every other line and my heart aching all throughout and boy was it worth it.

➺ take five - by @jiminrings

| yoongi x reader | 10k

angst, fluff, unrequited love, pinning

summary: "dr. min yoongi's a board-certified dermatologist; skilled, renowned, and in-demand - oh and also, he's divorced."

➺ page turner - by @gukslut

| taehyung x reader | 13.6k

teacher!tae/ librarian!reader, fluff, smut, minor angst

summary: "corny romance and a zillion cheesy Romeo and Juliet quotes and references."

my tainted hopeless romantic heart ugh. they're so cute.

➺ bloom- by @hobidreams

| namjoon x reader | 20.7k

assassin!reader x florist!namjoon, smut, angst, action, sprinkles of fluff

>> summary: "family is who you kill for. who you die for. in this society, you and your kin are shadows, clinging to the darkness to obey orders absolute. but when such orders command you to abandon what little honor remains for wealth and notoriety, you find yourself lost in lonely uncertainty about the only vocation you’ve ever known. that is, until you meet a man with gentle hands, a poet’s heart, and a love for coaxing the world into bloom."

➺ counterfeit culture - by @ggukcangetit

| seokjin x reader | 29k

modern day au loosely based on jane austen’s pride & prejudice, e2l, fluff, smut, comedy

>>summary: “for as long as you can remember, you’ve always known right from wrong, good from bad, and woke from entitled/ignorant. but when you continue to cross paths with Kim Seokjin - the apparent antithesis of everything you believe in - certain walls begin to crumble. and over time, you come to realise that the world isn’t black and white, first impressions can be misleading, and that you are just as guilty as each person you’ve judged so harshly. realisation brings acceptance, and maybe, just maybe, acceptance can bring something more.”

➺ if i told you - by @gukyi

| jungkook x reader | 22k

friends to lovers!au, college!au, fluff, comedy, angst

>> summary: "in order to pay for university, jeon jungkook decides to market his most valuable asset to the wealthy socialites of campus: himself. donning a suit and tie, tousled hair, and glasses (to look smarter), he becomes every rich daughter’s dream: the perfect boyfriend to bring to balls, dinners, and business gatherings. all while you watch from the sidelines, only able to dream of having that much money to buy yourself what you really want: him."

➺ to hold a dragon's heart - by @softlyjiminie

| taehyung x reader | 19.1k

dragon prince!kim taehyung x warrior princess!reader, smut, angst, fluff, forbidden romance, dragon shifter!au, royalty!au, enemies to lovers!au

>> summary: "two kingdoms, two hearts and the world between them. your whole life has been a challenge, never an easy moment on your road to becoming queen but will one decision, one encounter with the man you were destined to hate, change the fate of your worlds, forever?"

[kykyonthemoon]

An Unexpected Dinner

As a reward for working so hard lately, he plans an unexpected dinner for you.

❀ Xavier x Reader/MC, Rafayel x Reader/MC, Zayne x Reader/MC

❀ Domestic fluff, cooking time, soft and sweet

❀ Requested by Trâm Hoàng

❀ Masterlist

❀ Request a fic

𝑿𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒓

You came home after a tiring day of overtime. Your plan was to make a simple dinner, then a long sleep until morning to recover. Yet from afar, you witnessed a plume of black smoke rising from your residence.

Based on the location of the black smoke, you knew right away that the troubled residence was one level above yours. That was precisely the house of…

“Xavier!”

You cried out, almost a scream. You took off running in that direction. The building's occupants remained oblivious to the situation, and your first concern was locating Xavier. He had the day off. He's probably still inside.

The fire alarm in the hallway was still silent since the smoke had not yet extended to that area. You impatiently rang the doorbell, then slammed your fist on the door while calling Xavier's name.

A few minutes later, you heard the door open from inside. You were welcomed with the sound of the fire alarm along with a plume of smoke and a burning stench. Amidst the chaos, Xavier's face emerged, with black streaks running across it and his hair disheveled and coated in white powder. He was also wearing an apron that was scorched at the hem and blood was seeping from one of his fingers.

“Xavier!” You grabbed his body and observed. “You're bleeding!”

Xavier saw then that a deep and lengthy cut had been made on his finger. He brought it up to his eyes, then put it back down.

“Let me get your first aid kit.” You said, one foot stepped inside but Xavier pulled you back.

“Don't go in there.”

"Why not?"

Xavier must have been attempting to disguise some humiliation based on the way he was acting. He remained silent and continued to hold your arm tightly.

“Why is your apartment in this state? Is there a Wanderer?”

You had checked your watch on the way here. This area was still pretty safe. You just failed to see why Xavier came to be in this situation. What could possibly bring such suffering upon such a respected Hunter as him?

You peeped inside. By then, the fire alarm had been fully deactivated. There was still some smoke in the kitchen, and the air smelled burning. You removed Xavier's hand that was placed on you and ran inside. While the crisis was soothed by the fire hose, it also unleashed an unparalleled mayhem over Xavier's entire kitchen. But it might have probably been chaotic the moment he had decided to cook something in here.

Xavier trailed you, wearing an unsettling, guilty look.

“You… What were you doing in here?” You questioned, no longer trusting what you saw. There was flour all over the counter and floor, and something in the oven had burnt black and melted into a deep pool of sugar. Dishes, pots, and pans were arranged on the counter as though he was either planning to inventory the kitchen utensils or planning to throw them all away.

Without waiting for his reply, you already grasped the situation. With a heavy sigh, you turned back to face him and said:

“I thought we agreed that you should stay out of the kitchen?”

Xavier gave you an innocent, almost sinless look.

“Um… I'm sorry… Since you often come home late from work these days, I thought… I could make you a surprise dinner, along with some desserts…”

You turned back to look at the kitchen. The "dinner" he spoke of lay still in the pan, its contents so burnt you could no longer discern what it was.

You took Xavier's hand away. "Let's go. To my place.”

Xavier let you lead him back to your apartment and obediently sat down on the sofa while you went to find the first aid kit. You cleaned his wound and then applied a band-aid on it. After giving the band-aid a close inspection, he turned to face you and grinned, saying:

“These bunnies are so cute.”

You didn't say anything, just turned away to pack first aid supplies back to where they belonged. Xavier's voice still rang out monotonously:

"Thank you. And… I'm also sorry since I wanted to surprise you, but ended up causing you more trouble.”

You remained silent the entire time, in part because you were too concerned about him and, because of the anger you felt when he ignored what you said and went into the kitchen. Even though he had good intentions to take care of you, the thought of him being in danger put you in great panic.

“Do you think these are good bunnies?” You gestured at the bandage on Xavier. When you asked that, he seemed a little astonished, but he nodded. "They listen to me and don't run around the kitchen making a mess," you went on. "Unlike a certain bunny I know…”

Xavier showed an apologetic face. “I'm… sorry…” Then he took out a few chocolates from his pocket. They fit easily into his strong grasp. “These are free gift with baking supplies… At least we still have this for dinner.”

You chuckled as you glanced at them and then back at him.

“Leave the dinner to me. But this..." You held Xavier's wounded hand. "Are you hurt?" You asked.

With a cooing voice, Xavier nodded like a toddler and said: "It's very, very painful."

You laughed. Hundreds of Wanderers had been defeated by this young man, yet he suffered a simple cut.

“Then leave dinner to me. As for this wound..." You stopped for a moment to raise his hand very close to your lips. Your fingers gently rubbed his hand, then you kissed the rabbit band-aid. “Get well soon.”

𝑹𝒂𝒇𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒍

You immediately ran to Rafayel's studio after his text message. He only said it was an emergency and needed you to be there at seven o'clock.

The entrance to the studio was unlocked. You entered cautiously. To be sure there was no danger here, you looked around. Rafayel was nowhere to be found when you searched the gallery and living room.

Impatient you were as you had no idea what could happen to Rafayel. You were about to call out his name, but at that moment, you heard a noise from the kitchen. You crept closer, afraid that there was still danger there. You entered the dining room to find everything redone, including roses, unlit candles and the circular dining table with two chairs facing each other. You grew even more curious about why Rafayel wanted you to come here so urgently.

Through the open door, you caught a glimpse of Rafayel's back on the opposite side. He was staring at a pot on the stove. The steam and smoke released cause the temperature in the kitchen to gradually increase. It was easy to see that Rafayel was sweating profusely on the back of his shirt. You breathed a sigh of relief. He was still safe even though he had not sensed your presence yet. He continued his story as if there was another person in the kitchen.

“…You know, when she's shy, her face is as red as your color when you're steamed.”

You frowned. Who was he talking to? And about who?

“These days, she's a little bit slimmer now than she was. She often leaves early and stays at work late. Her missions must be very stressful. Unlike you, so fat and round, you almost don't fit in my pot."

You heard Rafayel tapping the ladle on the contents of the pot. The smell of boiled crab and seafood filled the kitchen. What was he doing here?

“Anyway, thank you for coming here. Please help her gain a little weight. I love giving her plump cheeks a poke to watch how she reacts. Haha…”

It was not a surprise to you that Rafayel talked to himself. But to the crab he was cooking?... You wondered what would be better, to let him finish his meal or to come in and say hello?

“Do you think she will come? Since she's so busy, I'm not sure. What if she really ignores my messages? Then it'll just be me and you, and all the seafood I've prepared for her... Well, she'll definitely come, right?"

It turned out he had tricked you into coming to the studio with that text message. To get Tara to assist you with the last thirty minutes of work, you had to bribe her with boba tea. Then, you had to rush as quickly as you could to see him. You coughed loudly in the kitchen, signaling your presence there and that you knew his entire plot.

Rafayel gently turned around, as though your presence hadn't startled him.

“Oh, how come you're here so early?”

As if nothing had occurred, he grinned. Additionally, he was wearing a vibrant apron, on which you could very well assume he had painted it himself.

“Hurry and take a seat. Everything has been prepared for you. All that's left is this crab."

“You called me here for this emergency matter?”

Rafayel blinked. He carried the ladle in one hand still. “Ah, that's right. This is truly urgent.”

"Seafood? Flowers and candles? You cooking? Rafayel, what's going on?

Rafayel set down the ladle and moved in your direction. “Since you've been working so much lately, I thought a surprise dinner would make you happier.”

You clenched her fist and gave Rafayel a painful blow in the chest.

“Ouch!”

"You idiot! I ran for my life here immediately after that message. I thought something happened to you… If something really happened to you, then I…”

Rafayel raised his hand, not to ease the pain you just gave him, but to squeeze your wrist.

“Are you so frantic… because you're worried about me?”

Rafayel gave you a very affectionate look. A grin formed at the corners of his lips. The hand that was holding you moved along your wrist and hand, trying to soothe the anger in your heart. You admitted, you worried about him like crazy. You thought of all the bad things that could have happened to him on the way here. As for him, nothing happened to him except that he probably had told the crab many nasty things about you.

“Next time, I will just ignore you.” You pulled your hand away from Rafayel. He released his grip on you only to encircle your waist with both arms.

“If I hadn't said it was urgent, would you have come so quickly?”

“You just need to say you have a hearty seafood meal…” You grumbled, but enjoyed the sensation of rubbing against him, even though his body now smelled of boiled crab. “I wouldn't miss a single crab for anything.”

You heard Rafayel burst into laughter. “Then milady, would you help me set the table? Your crab will be ready soon.”

𝒁𝒂𝒚𝒏𝒆

You were a bit surprised because Zayne had asked you to come to his house on a weeknight. He would typically be really busy at that time. You got off work early so you went straight to his house. Zayne was a little taken aback to find you waiting at the entrance that early hour. Nonetheless, you were just as astonished to find him in casual attire, wearing a dark apron without patterns.

“Oh… Sorry I'm a bit early. I didn't know you were busy in the kitchen..."

"No problem." Zayne replied. He invited you into his house. “I'm preparing dinner. For you."

“For me?” You were taken aback since he had made no mention of having supper together. His message was quite brief, giving you the impression that he needed to speak with you in person instead. However, you were delighted since he was taking great care of you.

“I’m so happy right now. I didn’t expect the busy Dr. Zayne could make dinner for me.”

“You’ve been working extra hard lately. It’s my job as your physician to make sure you eat well and enough.”

You beamed, “I’m really grateful.”

Zayne replied with a smile and returned to the kitchen. You trailed closely behind. You took a look at the tidy kitchen, filled with the aroma of food, making your stomach rumble.

“Do you need my help?”

You approached him, waiting for instructions. On the stove was an extremely delicious grilled salmon. It also caught your attention that several of the other dishes were nearly done. A basket of veggies, golden egg rolls, and miso tofu soup were served.

Zayne motioned for you to turn to face the spice cabinet as his fingers deftly encircled the chopsticks.

“Teriyaki sauce.”

"Coming right up." You cheered and went to look on the shelf for exactly what Zayne needed. You had spent enough time here to be familiar with his well-kept kitchen. He focused on dinner without saying anything else. Every now and again a drop of sweat showed up on his forehead.

Zayne was far more skilled in the kitchen than you were. You simply hurried around the kitchen assisting him with various tasks. After the meal was cooked, he gave you the task of setting food on the table.

“Take caution. It's hot.” Zayne warned you carefully, but you still clumsily allowed your hand to come into contact with the boiling soup pot.

You jumped up and made a loud "oops" sound. Zayne frowned, immediately moved over to stand next to you, and grasped your hands with red fingers.

"Hot, hot, hot!"

You attempted to rub your fingertips together, but the scorching sensation persisted. Zayne held your hands open and looked down.

“It's not serious. Just a little bit of irritation. Can you put your hands in—”

Before he could finish speaking, you perked up on tiptoe and put your crimson fingers to his earlobes. Zayne alerted with wide eyes.

"What are you doing?"

"Healing myself." You laughed aloud. The sensation of burning in your hands eventually subsided. As a little child, Grandma had taught you this trick to treat burns when you accidentally touched something too hot. Zayne knew that too. To save you the trouble of having to stand on your tiptoes, he drew closer.

"Are your hands feeling better now?" His voice was really soft as he asked. Your face felt the sudden rush of his breath, your body temperature raised even more.

"Just a little." You replied while pretending to grimace. “If someone could use his Evol, maybe it would heal faster?”

Zayne sighed, but you could see a faint smile forming on his lips, and his ears began to flush. A cold touch reached your hands, followed by a pleasant feeling when the skin no longer burned.

“Can you let go now?” Zayne asked, and you felt regretful when you had to let go.

“Thank you, Dr. Zayne.”

A hand of yours was grasped in Zayne's big palm. He caressed each finger and whispered:

“I can't always be there to take care of you. Don't be so careless next time, promise?"