#I'm so sorry i derailed this hard
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kalpasio · 2 years ago
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this could potentially be a very stupid question, but does anyone remember if kalpas can canonically count to 14? I saw somewhere that he couldn’t, but now I wonder if I’m being delusional. It would make sense if he couldn’t considering he arrived on earth and was immediately thrown into the thick of it, it’s understandable if he never had the time or interest to learn to read or write 🤔
-yo hey anon
HIIIII!! honestly with how difficult it is to find flame chaser lore and how often that lore contradicts itself, I don't think any question related to them is stupid. like you can't just google anything about them except Elysia because devs have favorites
I don't remember exactly seeing that, but I haven't read any of the manga I know, had fan so I can't say for certain?
I don't know if anyone else knows this off the top of their head but personally I would definitely believe it to be true lmao like he doesn't need to count any higher, I don't think he'd learn. he very much gives the Sherlock Holmes vibes of "if it's not important, I don't wanna know and that includes basic facts like the earth is round"
also that scene that I mention way too often when he's counting kills and has to look at his toes which, to be fair, if I was counting things I'd use my fingers too but also I love this idiot man (affectionate)
double also now I'm imagining like even younger baby griseo learning to count and Elysia is teaching her and baby griseo is just bragging she can count higher than kalpas and oh my gosh I just want the flame chasers to be happy
OR RIN HOLDING HIS HAND AND GOING "nooooooo! Uncle Kalpas that's seventeen" and he just sits there pouting because some 7 year old is telling him how to count and he doesn't want to
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tea-earl-grey · 4 days ago
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every time i see something about Arcane i so dearly want to watch it because it feels like it highly appeals to my tastes however the animation style is so migraine inducing that i physically cannot look at it for more than a few seconds.
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icharchivist · 11 months ago
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cw: child abuse (psychological, grooming, ect)
also speaking of parental abuse there's also this text of how Millie wants to be Tyra's mother, but she doesn't want anything that makes Tyra unique.
She started loving Tyra the moment she saw her find some dinosaure when she was dying in the cold and starved after being separated from her parents, seeing that despite her situation, Tyra was so excited about finding a Tyranosaure she was forgetting how desperate her situation was and instead loved the dino right away.
Millie saw how excited Tyra was about it, and loved Tyra right away enough to decide to make her hers.
But Millie hates dinosaurs, she finds them disgusting, she uses them as tool and keeps insulting them, hates that Tyra sees them as her family.
she used the dinos as bait to get Tyra to pay attention to her, and she used a particularities of the dino to mind control Tyra
but even now as Tyra is being brainwashed, everytime she looks at the dinos, Millie just tells her "don't look at those disgusting things, just look at me, your momma"
and it's another level of control that rings way too true on parents who """"""love""""" their children, but not for who they are -- just for what it brings them.
yes Tyra is cute. But everything she likes, everything that makes her happy, is disgusting. So it needs to be removed from Tyra's life. Her love and her excitement has to carry over to Millie, not to the stuff she actually like.
it's something way too real and it's genuinely giving me the yikes it makes me unwell.
#ichablogging gbf#ichablogging tyraevent#sorry massive tmi in the tags#sorry it struck a cord bc it's something that's been on my mind for days with my own mom and i'm just. god.#my sis has a new boyfriend who happens to have 3 children - including two very cute twin girls who are adorable#i meet them for the holidays and we hit off right away. they're very cute and hyperactive and everything#and i kept encouraging them in that so they really imprinted on me hard that i legit couldn't get away from their cuddles aha#point is though that i was talking about it with my mom afterward#and she was all 'you know they remind me so much of you when you were a child. thats why i found it so shocking when you closed yourself in#and it hits me hard in the. who's. who's fault do you think it is.#because i saw how all of the adults around us were rolling their eyes at the girls#i saw how all of them were telling them to calm down or telling them straight up they were annoying and exhausting#i saw how when i tried to tell a cute story from my dad's home to the girls (about saving a hedgehog once)#my mom tried to derail the topic on how she's been done horribly dirty by my father -- directly to the girls#like. mom. they're 7. why the fuck are you cutting me when i tell them something they're interested about to tell them such a heavy thing.#and with xmas obligation and the fact i'm forced to be here but i'm mostly ignored most of the time and cut off#(s/o to the family member who said they didn't want to hear anything from me because i was 'neither interesting nor smart' a while ago)#also it reminds me of how my mom loves to brag about how passionate i am but always cut me off & belittle me bc she hates what i care about#it keeps reminding me of that. saying they love you but they don't care about anything about you. it's about what you bring them.#it hits fucking hard the timing is too tight i legit had a family thing yesterday which was the reason i could only read this event today#Granblue why would you do this to me
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supervor · 11 days ago
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Want to learn about Ukraine and their people from actual Ukrainians? Have an hour a week to spend video chatting with a new friend? Sign up to be an ENGIN volunteer!
The program pairs English speaking volunteers with Ukrainians that want to improve their English skills. You do not need to speak any Ukrainian, and they provide training and session resources. I signed up in February and it has been such an amazing experience, the woman I was paired with as my student is someone I genuinely consider a friend now and I always look forward to talking to her.
I recently watched a YouTube video of a Ukrainian performance on “America’s Got Talent.” A friend sent me the link, promising it would amaze me – and it did. You can find the video by searching “Amazing holographic 4D cube show AGT.” However, when the show’s host, Howie Mandel, said, “America’s got love for the Ukraine,” I cringed. The phrase “the Ukraine” implies it’s a territory, not a sovereign country. It’s just Ukraine – the largest country in Europe, an important nation in its own right, and sadly, a place the world still knows too little about.
Ukraine is often branded as a place of corruption and gangsters, and Hollywood doesn’t help when it makes the villains Ukrainian. After living in Kyiv for years, I’ve experienced something very different. The country I know is filled with talented, hardworking, and warm people who possess an incredible sense of humor. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, too many people think Ukraine is nothing but a war zone.
I recently heard Mstyslav Chernov, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” say that Americans often ask, “Is there more to Ukraine than the war?” I’ve had similar frustrating conversations abroad, with people asking, “Is that war still going on?”
Before the pandemic, I hosted many foreigners visiting Kyiv, often to explore IT opportunities. Questions like “Is it safe there?” or “Do they have the internet?” were common. Even more surprising are comments from the Ukrainian diaspora. In Canada, home to the largest Ukrainian community outside of Ukraine, some people who left decades ago have no idea how their country has advanced. “They have shopping malls in Kyiv?” or “Do they have electric cars?”
Yes, Ukraine faces challenges, and many people live on modest salaries. But there is a growing middle class, and the big cities capture imaginations. Every guest I hosted in Kyiv was blown away.
One misconception that always made me giggle is when people ask, “What will we eat there?” The food scene in Kyiv is incredible. There’s been an explosion of amazing restaurants, and dining out here can compete with New York or London any day. Even during the war, new places are opening, and the food is phenomenal. If you want to have a laugh,  stand-up comedy clubs are popular – even in English. Where there’s laughter, there’s hope.
I had a friend from California visit twice, and when he returned to Los Angeles, people teased him, asking if he’d visited the land of Borat. He said Ukrainians are just like people in California – trying to build businesses, raise families, and live their lives. That’s the thing: Ukraine is not some backward nation that craves war.
Before the full-scale invasion, Kyiv was on track to become Europe’s next hotspot, and I’d have bet anything on that happening. This brutal war has set everything back. Ukraine is not about war. It’s about modernity, freedom, and new culture. It’s a country brimming with energy.
Ukraine has suffered from a poor reputation for as long as I can remember. I first discovered Kyiv nearly 17 years ago, and I’ve been saying ever since that Ukraine needs to work on its brand. Of course, now that we’re in the third year of the full-scale invasion, things are different. Air raid sirens can go off at any time, and it can be scary when Ukrainian air defenses shoot down drones and missiles. During those moments, you head to the bomb shelter. But life continues.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Ukraine is that everyone here is poor and miserable. Most people don’t have easy lives, and yes, poverty exists, but that’s true in many places. I’m originally from South Africa, where poverty exists on a different scale. In Ukraine, no one lives in shantytowns. When millions of Ukrainians fled across the borders, the European host nations were often surprised to see modern cars, fashionable clothes, and the latest smartphones. It’s a high-tech nation, and the level of online convenience here would surprise any foreigner.
There’s also a wave of innovation happening. Ukraine is poised to become a global leader in military drone technology. Artists are creating, entrepreneurs are developing cool tech, new restaurants are opening, and foreign investors are exploring opportunities. Ukraine is a miracle. Even as hypersonic missiles and kamikaze drones rain down across the country, many have decided to stay, continuing their lives, albeit in a very different way. The economy needs to keep running. Life needs to go on to keep the wheels turning.
Many passionate, dedicated people are working on projects to benefit and support Ukraine. Some have been involved long before the full-scale invasion, driven by a deep belief in the country and its people. Since 2018, I’ve been part of a team of artists — Ukrainian and international — creating a storytelling film project that captures life in modern Kyiv. “We Are Ukraine” is a story about extraordinary people in an extraordinary time — people who have chosen to continue to work, live, get married, have children, and laugh, against all odds. It’s not a war story, a story about death and demise. It’s a story about life, a love letter to Kyiv, which shows us what the world would miss out on if Kyiv would cease to exist.
Freedom, independence, and identity are the culmination of modern humanity, forged over centuries through struggle, creativity, and resilience. Everything else in civil society flows from these values. Russia’s war in Ukraine is a global wake-up call – a reminder that these values must be nurtured and protected. Ukrainians are showing that not only can they defend these values, but by continuing to live, laugh, and love, they are defying those who seek to destroy them.
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ugh-yoongi · 2 months ago
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ex-conomics | csc
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you supported seungcheol through years of being an aspiring athlete, and all you got to show for it was your undergraduate degree and an awkward, stuttered apology when he dumped you to go semi-pro. now he’s back after an injury derailed his career, and there’s only one problem: you’re the only one available to tutor him. you - 0; the universe - 1. talk about no return on investment.
⚽ pairing: choi seungcheol x f. reader ⚽ genre: exes to (lite) enemies to lovers; university au; angst, fluff ⚽ rating: while there is nothing explicit in this fic, there are two brief references to smut. while i can't stop anyone from reading this, i would prefer minors do not interact with this or any of my work. ⚽ warnings: cheol is some degree of famous, reader is a grad student/TA, mentions of an injury and coping with the aftermath of it, lots of economics talk that even i do not understand, swearing, one mention of alcohol, some misplaced jealousy, rom-com tropes, dino is kind of a loser but we love him anyway. probably a lot of other things i missed, but this is actually pretty tame for a fic of this length. ⚽ word count: 13.4k ⚽ thank you: a lot of people looked this over for me in the process and i'm sure i will forget some of them so if i do i'm sorry: @the-boy-meets-evil, @hot-soop, @highvern, and @haologram, who also gave me some wonderful ideas for the vlogs. thank you to MIT for opencourseware existing. i took microeconomics and dropped it, so i couldn't have done this without you. everyone in the discord server for helping me along the way and keeping me motivated. ⚽ author's note: i haven't posted a fic in nearly seven months, so i think it goes without saying that there are parts of this i like and a lot more i'm not 100% happy with. i'd love if this was more fleshed out and 10k longer, but i was able to write anything at all so it's good enough. this was written for the back to school with seventeen collab, hosted by @camandemstudios. thank you both for letting me participate! please make sure to check out the rest of the stories! everyone worked so hard and this collab was a ton of fun to participate in. <3
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You look down at the paper. Back up at who handed it to you. Down at the paper again.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
The poor freshman kid laughs, all nerves, and even though the sound is grating, you remember what it’s like to be forced into work study. How far away graduate school seemed; how large your professors loomed over you with all their power and knowledge and credentials; how you constantly felt like the dumbest person in nearly every room you walked into for four straight years.
“Um—”
You sigh, just barely resisting the urge to slam your head onto your desk. “I—it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Your words do little to ease Freshman’s nerves. He’s still hunched over in the doorway of your office, wringing his hands as he shifts his weight back and forth, in for a lifetime of body pain with the way he’s squaring his shoulders. “You’re sure about this, though? Like, I’m really not being set up?”
“I don’t think so?” he offers, slowly starting to turn green right before your eyes. “Dr. Lee ga-gave me the paperwork himself, I don’t think he would’ve messed it up? Oh no, did I mess it up? Should I go back to Student Services and conf—”
Good god, this kid’s anxiety is gonna stink up your office for weeks. “No need!” you interject. “I’ll just…” Sign it, you want to say, but the longer you stare at the sheet of paper the quicker you’re losing your resolve.
TUTORING REQUEST FORM Student Name: Choi Seungcheol Degree: Undergraduate Major: Business Course: ECON04101 Introduction to Microeconomics Instructor: Lee Yeonseok, PhD. Recommended Tutoring: High (3-4 hours per week)
You curse under your breath. Of the two names on the paper, Dr. Lee’s does not come as a surprise. He’s a notorious hard-ass with an infamous attrition rate—most students don’t last more than a week in any of his classes—but he’s also the sole reason you were able to pay for someof your grad school tuition out of pocket with all the tutoring money you made.
That, however, was two years ago.
“Does he know I don’t tutor anymore?” Stupid question. The kid stares blankly back at you, as if to say I don’t know any more than the people in Student Services, let alone Dr. Lee. It is literally my first year here. “I’m Dr. Ahn’s TA this year. I’ve got my hands full with her bullsh… stuff—”
Immediately, you know you’ve said something wrong, because the kid’s eyes light up, all that previous anxiety disappearing like smoke. “Wait, the same Dr. Ahn that teaches the crypto course?”
“No, that one died,” you say quickly. Kid deflates. “Anyway, I don’t really tutor anymore, especially for econ. As you can see”—you gesture vaguely around the cramped four walls of your office—“they’ve upgraded me. They even put my name on a little placard by the door! Go look! They spelled it wrong! If that doesn’t sum up this university I don’t know what does.”
You heave another sigh. Try to school your face and tone into something that exudes professionalism and finality. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I tutored Dr. Lee’s students for, like, three years in undergrad so I’m sure they just… forgot that wasn’t my actual job here. Who’s in charge of tutoring these days? I’ll shoot them an email and explain all this.”
Freshman gives you a name, and it takes less than a second to find them in the employee directory. You expect that to be the end of it, but he’s still taking up space in your doorway. You quirk an eyebrow. “Yes?”
The hand-wringing returns, along with an embarrassed flush that disappears beneath the neckline of his school-branded sweatshirt. “I just—um. Maybe you could, uh. Send that now? Before I get back there?”
You blink. “Don’t you have to go all the way back across campus? How slow do you think I type?” He shrugs, and you give up on the idea of getting rid of him. “Fine. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Lee Chan. I’m a sophomore. Do you know that guy?”
“Oh. I thought for sure you were a freshman, but you’re gonna need to be more specific, Lee Chan, Sophomore.”
“The guy they want you to tutor.” You freeze. The guy they want you to tutor is—“Choi Seungcheol,” Chan tacks on, and, yeah, you know—knew, you correct yourself—someone with that name, once upon a time.
But there are a lot of Chois and a lot of Seungcheols. It’s been years since you’ve spoken to the Seungcheol you knew, and that was when he’d broken up with you to—“I heard he’s a football player? Well, used to be, I guess. The girls in the office were freaking out so I guess he’s pretty famous, but I don’t know anything about sports, do you? They said they have photocards of him. I thought they only did that for idols.”
You think about being kids together in Daegu. Think about the exasperated looks you’d share when your parents would drag the two of you to festivals: Palgongsan in the autumn, Biseulsan in the spring; transformation and rebirth. Think about being eight years old and watching your father cram into the small space of the Chois’ living room, standing around the TV with Seungcheol’s dad, shouting at Park Jonghwan. Daegu FC made the FA Cup quarterfinals that year, and you think, of everything, that’s what you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
You think about falling in love slowly. Sixteen and clueless, the pair of you were. Didn’t really know any different, just that you’d look at him and feel butterflies. That you’d hold hands in secret. Text beneath the dinner table. That you’d watch him on the football pitch and be consumed by pride. That the future felt impossibly far away, that life would never catch up to the two of you.
You think about all the football jargon you didn’t understand—the academies, the teams, the implications. You think about, I’m thinking about trying out for the FC Seoul U-18, I just don’t think there’s much more I can do here in Daegu. You think about replying, Oh, I applied to university there.
You remember thinking it must’ve been fate, how easy that had worked out. How easy that first hurdle had been overcome.
You think about how fast everything happened. The try-out, the acceptance, the explosion. Remember being unable to go anywhere those first few months without seeing Seungcheol’s face, touted as the next big thing. Think about applying for scholarships when he was applying for international visas. Think about studying for midterms when Seungcheol was studying English for interviews.
You think about the last few weeks of your relationship, when it felt like you were desperately trying to cling to ghosts. Think about how Seoul had once felt endlessly big, both in opportunity and size, and how it now felt suffocating. You think about, So you’re just giving up? Is that what you’re saying? Think about, I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t feel fair to you.
You think about all the places you’ve watched him. On countless football pitches; shy glances in school hallways; in the passenger seat, wracked with nerves on the drive to Seoul; poised above you in bed, hairline dotted with sweat as he rolled his hips, telling you how much he loved you.
You think about watching him walk out the door, and how you never watched him again.
So you fire off your email, concise and to the point about why you can’t tutor Choi Seungcheol in Introduction to Microeconomics, and turn to Lee Chan, Sophomore.
“No,” you finally answer. “Never heard of him.”
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For all intents and purposes, your rejection should’ve been the end of it.
A few days go by. You hold office hours, attend lectures, work on your thesis when you have both the time and the energy. Try to ignore the feeling of bees beneath your skin, anxiety needling each time you check your email. You were well within your right to decline the tutoring request, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. That someone somehow knows who Seungcheol was to you and will pull you up on it. That those girls who’d gushed about him to Chan are somewhere laughing at your expense.
But you don’t hear anything at all about it… until you do.
Sunday evening. You haven’t moved from your couch in hours, some variety show playing in the background, barely audible over your keyboard clacking. Much to your detriment, you don’t write many papers these days, so you’re out of practice. Feels like you haven’t done anything besides formulas in years, all of your academic knowledge reduced to fucking math, so you’re about ready to toss your laptop out the window long before the email even comes through.
You see, From: Lee Yeonseok. You see, Subject: Choi Seungcheol - Tutoring.
Your stomach plummets to the floor.
You scan the body quickly. You see the words personal favor… friend of his father… urgent matter… and your hands start shaking. Whether it’s from the sheer audacity of this man or anxiety, you aren’t sure, but it’s not like it matters. There aren’t a whole lot of people on campus brave or dumb enough to go up against him twice.
“Motherfucker,” you spit, bitter the only taste in your mouth.
Where did you go wrong to wind up here? You’d followed the script: got the grades, passed the exams, received half of the required education for the Respectable Career, helped a few others along the way chase dreams that may or may not have been their own. You’d fallen in love. Only had a broken heart to show for it, but that’d been in the script, too: The First Love, followed by The First Heartbreak.
The split from Seungcheol was supposed to have been the end of that chapter. You’d planned on never seeing him again, and you never would have, had it been up to you. Apparently the universe has other plans, participation required.
“Did you spill onion dip on the rug again?” You startle, sending your laptop flying. Kaori, your roommate, is perched halfway in between the living room and the kitchen like a cryptid, clearly not expecting your reaction. “Oh. Were you watching porn?”
Face burning, you fetch your laptop from the floor. “In a common area? Kaori, please, I have far more decorum than that.”
She snorts, resuming her trek to the fridge. “See, that’s what I thought, but then I walked out here and you threw your laptop so fast it was like watching my ex get caught watching furry porn all over again.” She pries the lid off a large container of yogurt. “You think this is still good?”
“Dunno. What’s it smell like?”
She sniffs it and pulls it back to check the label. “Vanilla, I think, which is concerning because it’s supposed to be strawberry.”
You shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen, you get extra”—you pause, trying to remember the correct order of things, before giving up entirely—“...biotics?”
“Mm, so close. Care if I just eat this with a spoon?”
Nose scrunched, you wave her off. “Couldn’t pay me to eat yogurt on a good day, let alone if it’s expired. All yours, babe.”
Spoon in hand and a pleased smile on her face, Kaori collapses onto the couch beside you. You try to return your attention to your paper, try to find your momentum again, and it works for all of ten minutes before you’re groaning and slamming the top closed.
You don’t even need to look over to know Kaori’s staring. “What’s up with you?” she asks. Before she can answer: “Wait, is this serious? Because I can’t have a serious conversation in this t-shirt.” You steal a glance sideways. Ask Me About My Hemorrhoid! it says, and you exhale loudly. “Don’t breathe at me, I lost a bet.”
“And continued wearing it?”
She jokingly rolls her eyes. “God forbid a girl has hobbies.” Nudges you with her foot. “C’mon, spill.”
Kaori doesn’t know about you and Seungcheol. Most people don’t, aside from a few old classmates from Daegu who found you on social media and tried befriending you once he started making a name for himself in Seoul. After that, it was just easier to keep things private while you were together. New friends knew you were seeing someone but not their name or how long you’d been together. Any curiosity surrounding why the Choi Seungcheol was following you on Insta had been waved away easily. Our parents are friends, we grew up together. Then you broke up, and there wasn’t any evidence to delete, and he wasn’t following you on Instagram anymore, and it was easier that way.
So, yeah—even though you hadn’t met her until years later, Kaori knows you have an ex. She knows you’ve had a few flings and situationships in the time since, too, and it’s why she’s none the wiser when you ask, “It’s nothing, really. Just—do you follow football at all?”
“Nah, not really. The new guy’s pretty into it and keeps trying to get me to watch the games with him, but it’s so fucking boring? I dunno, I can’t get into it. Not in real life, anyway—I binged all of Captain Tsubasa in an embarrassingly short amount of time, though. Why?”
“Student Services asked me to tutor someone the other day and I had to turn it down. I just don’t have the time, you know? This semester’s already killer, and Dr. Ahn’s been riding my ass nonstop about grades. Turns out it’s some football player, so Dr. Lee emailed me asking me to do it as a personal favor, which means, on top of all the other shit I have to do, I’m now tutoring some football player four hours a week in Microeconomics.”
Her face distorts. “God, that guy’s such a prick. Like wow, you’re good at the economy! Good for you! Who cares! Why don’t you go balance the national debt or something instead of torturing university freshmen!”
You also wrongly assume that’s the last you’ll hear of it from Kaori.
Two days later, after Student Services replies to your email with the days and times you’ll be tutoring Seungcheol, she materializes in the living room to harass you.
“You didn’t tell me your football player was Choi Seungcheol.”
The panic is instant. You know how she means it, but it’s not how your body interprets it. All of a sudden it feels like an interrogation, an accusation, and a whopping serving of guilt takes up residence in the middle of your chest for not being entirely honest.
“Explains this weird text Ken sent me.”
She slides her phone over to you, open to her text thread with her current flavor of the week. Beneath an article about Seungcheol enrolling in classes at your school:
doesn’t ur roomie TA there Why are you calling her “ur roomie” like you don’t know her name?? Rude. Also yes. ask her to get me an autograph No babe pls he was my fav player before he got injured No 🙄 fine. can i come over later? Starting to think you’re using me for my roommate. Get your own job 🙄
You hand her phone back. “I didn’t think you’d know who Choi Seungcheol even is.” It’s the best you can do, even though it just digs you a deeper grave. “You said you’re not into football.”
“I’m not, but unfortunately I am into that stupid man.” She sighs, wistful and longing. “Babe, you have to understand. His dick is so big.”
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You hadn’t wanted to stay in Seoul for your graduate degree, let alone the same university you’d gone to for undergrad.
You’d applied to schools all over—Japan, Europe, even a few in the States. Romanticized the hell out of NYU, went window shopping for an overpriced apartment, picked a favorite pizzeria based on nothing but vibes and online reviews. In those few months after graduation, there wasn’t a whole lot tying you to Seoul. Your and Seungcheol’s relationship had been old history by then, your parents split. Your dad stayed in your childhood home and your mother moved a few hours closer to her sister. They’d waited until your brother was old enough to be out of the house.
And it’d just been… a lot. Overwhelming. Some days you could barely shower or feed yourself, let alone move halfway across the world, so you’d stayed in the familiar and tried not to let it feel like failure.
But the good thing about familiarity is you learn its tricks, figure out the hiding spots. Early on, your first or second week of grad school, you laid claim to a study room on a floor of the library everyone else ignored. You write notes on the whiteboard with faded blue markers that are still there days later. The chair on the opposite side of the table is always exactly where you left it, the space between it and the table enough to only accommodate you. Sometimes you leave books—old paperbacks littered with notes in your writing—or papers, just to see if they move.
They never do.
And all of this is why it feels like a punch to the gut when that sanctity is tainted. When you’re halfway through a stack of Dr. Ahn’s exams and the doorknob rattles behind you. When you don’t even need to turn around to know who it is, because he still sounds the same, still has that overwhelming presence. You’ve always sensed him before you felt him.
“There you are,” Dr. Lee says, ambling into the room before you can protest. He, too, is overwhelming, just in different ways. Immaculate posture that anchors his slight frame that’s always dressed impeccably and expensively. Wears a watch that’s triple your tuition. Shoes polished so bright they’re nearly blinding. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
This time it is an accusation.
Well, you found me, you want to say, but just knowing Seungcheol is behind him, lingering in that half-study room, half-hallway space, is enough to keep you quiet. Like if you speak you’ll summon him closer and you’ll no longer be able to pretend this is nothing more than a nightmare.
You plaster on a polite smile. Say, “Ah, here I am, kyosu-nim,” and put all your energy into trying to glue Seungcheol to the floor with your mind.
Which is fruitless, because Dr. Lee moves further into the room. Gestures for Seungcheol to follow him with an impatient huff, and the study room is small, sure, and with three people it feels cramped, but that’s not the reason it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room.
Seungcheol looks… different. He looks as anxious as you feel, and he sticks close to the wall like he’s trying to disappear. Dr. Lee introduces him with grave importance, unaware of your history, and the forced smile he offers you almost looks embarrassed.
You know Dr. Lee is still hammering away, probably giving you a stern talking-to for rejecting his request the first time, but you can’t tear your eyes away from Seungcheol. Feels like the world around you has reduced to a pinhead, all hyperfocus; feels like your lungs are sucking in stale air one at a time.
“...his father is a very good friend of mine, so I expect…”
You expected to feel nothing. Seungcheol had left to chase his dream—one you’d always been so supportive of that it sometimes felt like your dream, too—and, perhaps naively, you thought the distance and the years would’ve been enough. You expected your heart to have hardened. You expected all those nights you spent crying to hit you at full force. You expected anger, hurt—indifference, at the very least.
“...as many hours per week as you both can manage…”
But you should’ve known better. Should’ve expected the butterflies, the way your palms grow clammy, the way your heart rate spikes. Should’ve expected everything to feel upside-down. You should’ve expected to look at Seungcheol and feel sixteen and in love all over again.
“...you are responsible for his academic progress…”
And that simply will not do. You’ve spent the last few years pulling yourself out of that hole, clawing your way back to something resembling normal. You’ve purged the thought of him from your mind—let his scent fade from your sheets, an old sweatshirt he’d left behind; forgot the way his lips felt against every inch of your skin; forgot the way his entire being lit up when he laughed; forgot the safety he encompassed, the way he whispered all those sweet nothings.
You cannot go there again.
So you roll your shoulders back, smile politely. Say, “Ah, kyosu-nim, Choi Seungcheol-ssi seems very intelligent, I’m sure he is capable of being responsible for his own academic standing, don’t you think?”
Dr. Lee cannot disagree without all but calling Seungcheol an idiot, so he hovers before you in shocked silence. Makes a show of huffing and checking his watch, like he’s all of a sudden remembered he’s late for something and being inconvenienced by this conversation he started, and then he’s halfway out of the library with a terse, “Discuss and figure this out amongst yourselves,” thrown over his shoulder.
You have an entire dramatic exit planned in your head. Gather your things, fake a phone call that makes you sound authoritative and important, and brush past Seungcheol wearing your nicest perfume as if all of this is so far beneath you you can’t even bring yourself to care about it.
Of course, you actually have to brush by him for any of that to happen, and since you’ve already decided you will not go there again, you quickly scribble your email address onto a piece of paper and slide it across the table at Seungcheol, who has steadfastly remained planted just outside the door. “Here’s my email. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Seungcheol cocks an eyebrow. You start throwing things into your bag haphazardly. You know you look frantic and affected, but there’s not much you can do about that. “What? Send me a copy of your syllabus and what you want to prioritize. It’ll be easier to get through this if we have a plan instead of winging it.”
He seems to catch on to your distaste because he mirrors it. Scoffs as he rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, no use spending more time together than we have to,” and if you hadn’t gone years without speaking, you would’ve seen right through it.
But you did, so it stings all the same.
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As it typically does, the planet keeps spinning after your run-in with Seungcheol.
You grade Dr. Ahn’s coursework. Try running off your anxiety at the gym, even though it’s pretty good at keeping pace with you these days. You meet Kaori’s maybe-boyfriend sneaking out of your apartment early in the morning and he has the good sense not to mention your ex, but you chalk that up to the mess of hickeys covering his neck and not any sense of social decorum.
Other people’s embarrassment saves you a ton of your own, you’ve come to learn.
Throughout all of this, Seungcheol only emails you once to send you his course syllabus. Doesn’t mention tutoring or provide you with his schedule or ask for yours, so when you’re sitting in a bar with your friends, three or four drinks deep and feeling a little petty, you forward him the original tutoring request and make sure to bold, underline, and highlight the “Recommended Tutoring: High” part for good measure.
He doesn’t take your bait—electronically, at least—but he does show up to your office hours the following Tuesday.
Bag tossed onto the floor, he flops unceremoniously into the chair across from you and says, in lieu of a greeting, “They spelled your name wrong. On the door thing.”
“I know,” you reply, your smile polite and terse. Incredible how he has the ability to raise your blood pressure in milliseconds. “What can I help you with?”
“Depends. How long do you have?”
“Well, considering you’ve shown up to my office hours on time, I’m assuming you already know I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six. So”—you glance at the clock above the door—“assuming no one comes by who needs my help more than you do, you have approximately one hour and fifty-eight minutes.”
Seungcheol is quiet for a moment as he takes you in. His stare is weighted; it makes you feel a little green around the edges. Clinical and sharp, so far removed from the way he used to look at you. You clear your throat. “I looked over your syllabus. The good news is there’s only a midterm and a final and the rest is problem sets. The bad news is there’s only a midterm and a final so they’re weighted quite heavily. You really need to know this stuff inside-out to have any hope of passing.”
“That’s why you’re here, right? Dr. Lee specifically requested you.”
You huff a breath through your nose. “I’m here as supplemental help. I can’t take your exams or do your readings for you. What else are you taking this semester?”
He sighs, sinking further into the chair, very much playing the part of the heir who has no interest in any of this. Which… is unlike him, you think, if you’re even allowed to. The Seungcheol you knew years ago took everything so seriously. Never clipped corners or took shortcuts. Anyone else would think him a spoiled, petulant child. “Business Accounting and International Trade.”
“Could be worse,” you note. “At least those three courses are tangentially related.”
Seungcheol rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t taken a fucking math class in years.”
You return it. “You remember how to add and subtract, don’t you?”
“I ruptured my ACL, not my…” He trails off, looking a little embarrassed that he can’t name a part of the—“Brain.”
Whatever you were going to quip back with dies on your tongue. It's the first time Seungcheol has broached the topic of his injury—the first you’re hearing of it at all, actually—and he says it like it’s a joke, like it’s not a thing at all, but the pain is all over his face. The bitterness of the situation he’s found himself in. The unfairness of it all.
And there are so many questions you want to ask that aren’t your place: if it’s fixable, if he’ll ever play again, how he’s coping. But you don’t really need to—you can’t imagine how you’d feel if someone suddenly pulled the rug out from under you. If everything contained within the four walls of your office suddenly disappeared.
Not that the man sitting across from you hadn’t already done that, but.
“Right,” you continue, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You know Seungcheol—know he wouldn’t want you prodding, sticking your fingers in that particular wound. “I want you to take a look at this,” you say, handing over a printout you have saved from your undergrad tutoring days. “Tell me what looks familiar, what doesn’t; what does and doesn’t make sense.”
He looks down at the paper. Back up at you. Down at the paper again. “What the fuck is this?”
“I—what? Cheol, it’s my old notes on recitation. Surely you’ve already covered this—the syllabus says this is week one stuff.” He looks down at the paper again, and it’s so familiar, watching the life drain entirely from someone’s eyes.
You barely resist the urge to slam your face onto your desk a second time.
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You meet Seungcheol at the sports center for your next tutoring session.
He likes the humidity and the smell of the chlorine by the pool. He also likes that it’s not the football pitch, so the two of you sit in the bleachers there and go over his lecture notes. Much to your surprise, Seungcheol talks a mile a minute. Has stars in his eyes when he says he finally understands elastic demand curves, supply shock; tells you he spent a whole hour making flashcards.
It’s the first time you’ve seen him so excited since your tutoring began—the first glimmer of hope you’ve felt since Dr. Lee cornered you in your library hideaway. None of this surprises you. Seungcheol has always been smart, even when football was his primary (and sometimes only) focus. He has more determination and grit than anyone you’ve ever met, so you’re not surprised he’s doing well, excelling, but you are surprised—
“Can I ask you something?” Seungcheol shrugs, shoves half a protein bar in his mouth and swallows without chewing. “Why are you… uh. Here?”
“At this university?”
“Not exactly. I mean, I am wondering about that, but I guess… why business?”
Seungcheol hums. Tucks his good knee to his chest and stares down at the pool. No one’s using it, and truthfully the two of you probably aren’t even allowed to be here, but you understand why he likes it. It’s nowhere near as secluded as the library and definitely not as air conditioned, but it is peaceful. Calm. The water laps against the coping in quiet, small waves.
“Ah, I don’t know. You know how it goes.”
You quirk an eyebrow. Never, in all the years you’ve known him, has Seungcheol done anything he didn’t want to do. All that grit and determination. “What about your father, then? Dr. Lee mentioned this was a favor to him. He’s a pretty important person to have in your Rolodex of favors.”
Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what this is: Seungcheol’s father has new money; worked from the bottom up, made some smart investment decisions that finally panned out after Seungcheol left for Seoul. Started doing his own thing, made a name for himself. Last you’d heard from your mother, Seungcheol’s brother was second-in-command. Hell, even your own brother did an internship there.
So you know what this is: a father helping his son after his dream was shattered, life turned upside-down. You can’t blame him, even if you’ve heard the whispers from all the way across campus. That Seungcheol is washed up now, trying to nepo his way into his father’s company because of it; that all he knows is sports and he should’ve stuck to that, what does he know about business, why is he the one Dr. Lee went out of his way to help.
Doesn’t stop any of them from smiling at him, though; doesn’t stop them from asking for autographs or selfies.
But you also know this isn’t something Seungcheol seems willing to discuss, so you crack a joke—“I mean, business. God, who’d wanna go into that?”—and go back to what he was willing to talk about.
You’ve never hated elastic demand curves so much in your life.
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Deep in the throes of tutoring—when you can’t tell if it’s week two or week twelve—you make it back to your apartment just before ten, head pounding.
The door flies open just as you’re about to punch in the code, and there stands Ken, looking far more put-off than you’ve ever seen him. Looks defeated, if you’re being honest, like someone mopped up all his emotions and wrung them out like dirty dishwater.
“Oh, hi,” you say hesitantly. The man in front of you seems too much like a caged animal to let your guard down. “Everything okay?”
He aborts a nod halfway. Mutters an apology as he brushes by you and stalks down the hall, disappearing around the corner to the elevators. Usually he’s a talker—you haven’t been able to avoid a Seungcheol-related conversation in weeks—so you’re a little stunned. Stand there stupidly for a while, and that’s where Kaori finds you a moment later.
“You gonna stand out here all night, or…?”
“Oh—yeah, right.”
You follow her inside. Toe off your shoes and put them in the rack. Focus on the sound of the kettle whistling instead of the overbearing tension in the room. Drop your bag off in your room, throw on a sweatshirt three sizes too big and a comfy pair of socks. Rummage through the fridge for leftovers, contemplate what mindless show you’ll watch as you eat, and you do not, under any circumstances, ask Kaori what happened.
You don’t have to. You knew what this was going to be the first time Ken spent the night—the way he looked mortified to be meeting you in the shared kitchen at seven a.m., wearing a look that begged you not to tell your roommate he was sneaking out.
I, uh, have an early class, he’d said. You know how it is.
Maybe you should’ve called him on it then. Issued a warning-but-not-really. She’ll get attached if you don’t tell her. She should know it’s different for you, if it is.
But you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t your place. Kaori wouldn’t want you in her business like that, so you stayed quiet, just nodded before watching him slip his shoes on and close the door behind him so quietly you wouldn’t have known he left at all if you hadn’t been looking. Gone, just like a ghost.
So, yeah, you know exactly why your roommate looks haunted.
“I’m a few episodes behind on this if you want to watch with me,” you offer, pointing at the television with the remote. It’s a lie—you’ve never watched this show a day in your life, which Kaori seems to know—but she contemplates it nonetheless. “Also, my mom mailed us some cookies. I think they’re in the fridge.”
“Why are there cookies in the fridge?”
You huff a laugh. “They were outside the door this morning before I left for campus. I don’t know—just saw who the package was from and was like, oh, this must go in the fridge.”
She nods. Grabs the container and joins you on the couch. Sticks her feet beneath your butt and doesn’t mention a thing.
The closest she comes is a few days later. Catches you right before you head out to campus and asks how tutoring is going.
“Not bad, actually.”
Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she says, “That’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you two.”
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Lee Chan, Sophomore makes his unexpected return at your office hours on an unsuspecting Tuesday.
“Can I help you?”
He doesn’t answer right away, just helps himself to the seat across from you. “Maybe,” comes his cryptic retort. “I was thinking about signing up for that crypto course next semester.”
You narrow your eyes. “No, you weren’t.”
He sighs. Looks a little panicked, like he can’t believe that didn’t work. “You’re right, you’re right. I, um—I wanted to come say thank you.” He pauses. “You know, for that… email you sent.”
You blink. “No, you didn’t.”
Lee Chan, Sophomore cracks immediately. Thunks his head on your desk and lets loose a pained sound. It nearly sounds like he’s wailing when he says, “I’m sorry! They put me up to it!”
What you’re able to piece together is this: Lee Chan, Sophomore has become a bit of a celebrity in the Student Services department ever since he met you, Choi Seungcheol’s tutor. And, like any smart, previously unpopular university student would do, he took advantage of it. Might’ve stretched the truth a little to make it sound like he knew more than he did, so now here he is, angling for information the girls with the photocards may or may not have paid him to get.
“They want to know about his girlfriend.”
“His what?”
What you’re able to piece together is also this: the Photocard Girls are certain Seungcheol is dating someone, based on little more than vibes. You suspect these vibes are their three degrees of separation, considering there was an abnormal amount of Change of Major files formed after his enrollment, but you tell Lee Chan that you don’t know anything and, even if you did, you wouldn’t put his business out there like that.
But some part of you still has this inexplicable urge to protect Seungcheol, so you match their offer with interest and tell him to say there’s nothing to report—not that you didn’t know, not that he couldn’t get anything out of you. Seungcheol isn’t dating anyone.
You don’t know if it’s true, but you figure that if it isn’t, he still deserves privacy.
Which is a notion you have trouble explaining a few hours later, when Seungcheol strolls into your office with a grease-stained paper bag full of cheese coin bread, offering one to you with a proud smile that drops slowly when you just stare in return.
“What’s wrong?”
Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Nothing comes out, even though it should be simple. Some sophomore kid was just in here angling for information or the Student Services department is taking bets on whether or not you have a girlfriend would both suffice, but you cannot bring yourself to say the words.
What you settle on is, “Sorry, I just… had an interesting meeting before you got here.”
“Oh. Are you okay?”
You sigh. Tilt your head back to stare up at the ceiling. “It was about you, actually.”
Seungcheol chokes, starts stuttering over words you can’t make sense of. Says, “Me? Why? I passed my last exam—I mean, barely, but I still passed. And that wasn’t your fault! I didn’t study enough! I’ve been losing my mind over my International Trade class, that shit sucks—”
“It wasn’t about your grades, Cheol.”
“Oh.” Then, slowly, a lopsided, pleased smile overtakes his face. “Haven’t heard you call me Cheol in a while.”
“Seungcheol,” you correct.
He seems to forget all about the meeting. Tries again to offer you a coin bread before he threatens to eat them all himself, so you acquiesce mostly to shut him up, say you’ll bring the extras to Kaori. For some reason, you tell him about how much she’d loved the cookies your mom sent, and the nostalgia sets him off, gets him talking again, asking if they were the yakgwa she used to make when you two were kids.
They were, but you can’t seem to tell him that, either.
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Seungcheol: sorry it’s last minute - running late. can you meet me at my place instead?
Seungcheol shared a location with you
You’re halfway to replying—I don’t think that’s appropriate—before you sigh and delete it. Midterms are only a few days away and you don’t have time to argue over where your tutoring sessions will be, so if Seungcheol wants to meet at his apartment that’s where you’ll meet him.
You read over the midterm notes on the train. Once, twice, and then a hundred more times until they’re nearly memorized, all so you can ignore the voice in the back of your head saying what a bad idea this is. That you have no business being on your way to your ex’s swanky part of town or integrating yourself into his life beyond tutoring at all. You shouldn’t know where he lives. Maybe you shouldn’t even have his phone number or answer his texts.
Not that there’s much you can do about it now, two stops away.
Seungcheol greets you warmly, if not a little rushed. Apologizes for the mess once you step inside, although it’s less ��mess” and more “haven’t finished unpacking,” but there’s enough clear space to study at the dining table, so that’s where you set up, determined to keep things professional.
“Sorry again about this,” Seungcheol says, placing a can of cola in front of you as he takes the seat across. “I had to meet with my father and lost track of time, I guess.”
“Oh. How’s he doing?”
Seungcheol sighs, leans further back in the chair as runs a hand through his hair. A light brown, now. “Same as he always was, I guess. Talked about the business, about my brother. Can’t get him to shut up about that stuff most of the time.”
“The business is doing good, though.” You cough, clear your throat. “My, uh. My brother interned there during undergrad. I don’t know if your father told you that.”
You don’t know why you say it, because it’s clear from the brief flicker of pain on Seungcheol’s face that he hadn’t known, that no one had told him. And it hurts you too that they felt the need to keep it a secret, to protect Seungcheol from you even in tangential ways.
“He didn’t,” he admits, “but I’m sure he was happy to see him. He was, uh—he was glad to hear you’re my tutor. Said you were always smarter than all of us boys combined.”
You laugh. Hope it sounds casual instead of strained. “Well, no need to prove him right. Come on,” you say, tossing a study guide in his direction, “let’s get to work.”
Everything is alright for a while—nearly an hour at least. He has the formulas memorized and attributed to the correct equations. He can explain supply and demand, preference and utility, but things start to fall apart around budget constraints and constrained choice.
The formulas get mixed up. He grows frustrated when he doesn’t know the answers to your questions right away. Rolls his eyes and gets a little snappy when you correct him, try to explain things differently in a way he understands. At first he’s able to temper it, collect himself before things truly start spiraling out of control, but the longer the two of you sit there the more it all unravels.
He snaps, you snap back, and you can’t figure out why. You’ve survived this long in Seungcheol’s orbit even though you never thought you’d be around him again, and perhaps it was bound to explode eventually, but…
It’s the familiarity, you realize.
You and Seungcheol aren’t friends, though you’ve been playing at it for weeks now: meeting outside of the library or your office, the personal conversations bordering on reminiscing, being in his personal space. You don’t belong here. You don’t want to be his friend—you can’t be, not for real or pretend.
“That’s not what I’m say—”
“Then explain it better,” Seungcheol fires at you, eyebrows creasing. “You’re the tutor here.”
You roll your eyes. “I’m trying, okay? All I meant was—your answer isn’t wrong, but I know Dr. Lee and he’s going to want more than that in a response.”
“Right—not good enough, like I said.”
“I’m just asking you to expand on your answer—”
“And I’m telling you that’s all I’ve got. I’m not like you, all right? I don’t have all this shit just floating around in my head all the time. I’m not smart, I barely have any idea what’s going on half the time, and you sitting here being condescending about it is doing fuck-all to help.”
You inhale sharply, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. Suggest calling it for the night, say neither of you will be productive if you keep going like this, and neither of you bother to apologize.
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So much of your relationship with Seungcheol was marred by clichés.
The two of you passing notes back and forth during class. You in the bleachers of all his games, screaming along to the team chants, waving a sign around with his name on it. Not realizing you had a crush on him at all until he liked someone else and it made your stomach hurt. Childhood friends turned lovers.
Another cliché: that it’s starting to feel like that all over again.
Seungcheol sits across from you in the library, econ textbook cracked in half in front of him as he pays no attention. Keeps grabbing his phone each time it vibrates across the table. Can’t fight the smile that forces its way onto his face when he reads whatever’s there.
Stupid, you think—both to do this and to think it’d play out any other way. Seungcheol left years ago. Probably lived ten lifetimes while he was away while you were here in this exact spot doing this exact thing. Barely lived half a life, just stuck your nose in textbooks and forced your way through.
“Cheol,” you say, trying to drag his attention back to the study guide. No use. He’s typing away, presses his tongue into the fat of his cheek as he responds. “Seungcheol,” you try again.
Also fruitless.
You have no claim here, you remind yourself—not to his time, not to him. He’s only here because someone else mandated it. You’re only here because someone else mandated it, but it stings all the same. Another reminder of what used to be, of what ended regardless of what you wanted. Another reminder that the role you used to play in his life is not the role you play now. That the space you used to take up created a vacancy, and eventually it was going to be filled.
And if this was anyone other than Seungcheol, if you were more emotionally evolved when it came to him, it wouldn’t gnaw at you as much. All of this would roll off your shoulders.
But it isn’t, and you’re not.
“If you’re not going to listen, then—”
“I am listening,” he interjects, but he’s not looking at you. Not looking at his textbook or his study guide. Keeps laughing and smiling at his phone, and it’s sick how bothered you are by it. That it feels like your stomach’s been turned inside-out with jealousy; with annoyance, because you don’t want to be here anyway, don’t want to do this anymore, and you’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.
Perhaps he never did.
“What are we discussing, then?”
Still not looking up: “Consumer theory.”
You laugh—more a huff of air than anything, grin sardonically out of one corner of your mouth. Seungcheol sees none of it. “Wrong,” you answer, already expecting the way he shrugs it off. “I’m gonna skip ahead a few chapters, though. Consider it a freebie for your business class.”
It must be your tone that finally grabs his attention. Cutting, precise, purposeful. Seungcheol lowers his phone, quirks an eyebrow, wonders where this is going to go. It’s clear he’s pissed you off, that you’re itching for a fight. It’s clear the years of silence are finally coming to a head.
“Let’s talk about ROI. You know what that is?” You barely give him a second. “Return on investment. A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments. So, let’s say I make one-hundred-thousand won on a ten-thousand won investment: my ROI is 90%. Are you following?”
He nods.
“Great, now let’s try something a bit more hypothetical.” You suck in a breath. “Let’s say I invest years of my adolescence into someone. A friend at first and then something more. Let’s say I played cheerleader, supported every hope and dream he had—went to every game, cheered him on, helped him practice his English. Held his hand and talked him down when the pressure felt overwhelming, when the only thing that felt inevitable was failure. Now, let’s say all I got in return was a stuttered, awkward apology as he dumped me and walked out the door. Let’s say that guy showed up again after years of silence just to once again waste my fucking time.”
The thing about pain is it’s not linear. What hurt five, ten years ago might not hurt today, but it might tomorrow; what hurt yesterday may never hurt again. The thing about pain is it lets you stick your head in the sand until it can’t anymore, and that’s where you are now: that window of time between Seungcheol walking out the door on the assumption you’d never see him again before he bulldozed his way back into your life has been slammed closed, locked up tight.
So you don’t even notice you’re crying until the room goes deathly silent and you can hear the drip drip drip of tears on paper. Until you watch Seungcheol’s hands flex and unflex in mid-air, stuck in that liminal space, wanting to reach out but knowing he has no right to. Until your chest aches so bad you’re sure you’re either about to break into stardust or cease to exist.
Until you say, “What, Choi Seungcheol, would you say my fucking return on investment was?” and he has nothing to say at all.
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Kaori invites you to a party.
Just something small to celebrate the end of midterms and a classmate’s birthday. Nothing out of control or raucous, not even the kind of thing that’d earn a second glance from campus security. I won’t even make fun of you if you leave before eleven, is how she sold it to you, in addition to a small amount of begging and bargaining and a powerful set of puppy-dog eyes.
After everything the two of you have been through, you find it hard to say no.
So here you are, nearly eleven o’clock on a Friday, a cup of cheap beer in hand. A friend of a friend of a friend is wailing into a karaoke machine and although your ears are bleeding, it does feel nice for that to be your greatest worry. You aren’t thinking about your classes or how you’ve been prioritizing everyone else’s academic success. You aren’t thinking about whatever’s going on between Kaori and Ken. You aren’t thinking about Seungcheol.
At least you aren’t, until he walks through the door.
You’re going to continue not thinking about him at all—not about the fact he’s alone or how good he looks in a simple black T-shirt that’s a little taut in the shoulders. You’re not going to think about the way the air shifts, like the universe knows he’s important and is willing to accommodate. You’re not going to think about how Kaori catches your eye across the room, recognizes him from all her internet searches, and the way she mouths oh my god he’s so beefy at you.
You’re not going to think about how guilty you feel that she doesn’t know, because if you do you’re certain it’ll take over.
You watch Seungcheol work the room; watch as he floats between conversations, as strangers fall over themselves at the sight of him. How eager everyone is to give him something and how reluctant he is to take them. You watch as he winds up in the same circle as Kaori and how she must mention you, oh, your tutor is my roommate, because there’s a question in return before he turns and meets your gaze.
You wonder why the distance between you feels more insurmountable now than ever before.
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Seungcheol finds you in your office.
It’s not a Tuesday or a Thursday, far later than four to six in the evening, but he doesn’t even bother knocking before he’s barreling in, stifling your space with his bad energy.
You haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Not since the party, if that even counts. Hasn’t bothered to reply to any of your texts or emails, and that was just fine by you, if that’s how he wanted to act, but it isn’t until he’s brooding on the other side of your desk that you realize you’re still aggrieved, too. Feels a little too familiar, him leaving you behind and in the dark.
So you don’t mean to—typically have much more professionalism than this—but when he tosses a stapled stack of papers with a barely-passing grade on your desk and says, “This is your fault,” the words come automatically and without forethought.
“Fuck off, Seungcheol.” It’s not your words that take him by surprise; more so the roll of your eyes, the accompanying huff. The impression that all of this is beneath you and nothing more than a mere annoyance. That however affected you were two weeks ago is not how affected you are anymore. “That’s what happens when you blow off your tutoring for two weeks because you’re a coward.”
He laughs, incredulous; unable to help the sound the tumbles out of his mouth. “I’m a—I’m a coward?”
“Yes,” you reply, tone giving away nothing. All he sees is feigned nonchalance despite the hurricane you feel brewing beneath the surface. “This,” you continue, pinching the corner of the paper between your fingertips and disposing of it in the trashcan beneath your desk, “is all on you, but do please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to blame me for. I’m all ears.”
You don’t miss it: the way Seungcheol’s eyes grow wide at your ‘I’m all.’ The way he thinks you’re going to punctuate that sentence with yours, and it nearly has bile rising in your throat. Makes you want to scream, rip at your hair. If the last few months have taught you anything, it’s that you are still hopelessly in love with the man across from you—the man that continues to leave before he’s left, always at your expense.
So, yeah—Seungcheol is a coward, but only when it comes to you.
But he doesn’t look much like one now, gripping so hard at the edge of your desk that his knuckles have gone white, baseball cap pulled down low enough his eyes are barely visible. He’s always been overwhelming, always carried himself with an exaggerated arrogance even when it wasn’t warranted, always took everything so seriously, and maybe that’s why you’d thought he’d treat you the same way. Take you seriously. Wouldn’t just throw it all away on a maybe thing, and that’s why it's been years and you still aren’t over it.
Maybe Seungcheol is a coward, and maybe so are you.
Because not once since he’s been back have you been able to say what you mean. Can’t seem to tell him about the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak. Played it all off as petty nonchalance because you foolishly thought that would hurt him, that you’ve been reduced to simmering ash, no hope left for a fire.
“I could never blame you for a goddamn thing,” he says, voice so deep you could drown in it.
You so desperately want to know. You don’t want to know anything at all. You want Seungcheol to explain everything to you in detail and spoil the ending, but only if it’s guaranteed to be happy. Enduring another loss like the first time—you’re not sure you can take it. Not after you two have crossed paths like this, because you’ve never quite believed in fate but you think that has to mean something. That so much time and life had transpired and you two came back together.
Today, though, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers.
Seungcheol straightens, looms at full height. Digs into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a thumb drive. Wordlessly, he hands it over, and then he’s gone just as abruptly as he’d arrived.
Again.
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Kaori wants to spend the weekend moping, and you can’t come up with a good reason not to join her.
She doesn’t mention Ken once. Not when she’s sobbing over A Silent Voice and Toradora! after that. Not when she keeps glancing at her phone every couple minutes to see if she has any texts. Not when you—only halfway paying attention between grading and your own assignments—suggest ordering something for delivery, maybe that new burger place down the street you heard was good, and Kaori shuts it down so vehemently you can only assume it was Ken’s favorite place.
Kaori just cries over the man with the big dick she never expected to take so seriously, and not even your stonewalling makes her feel ashamed of it.
And there’s respectability in that kind of openness and vulnerability. At least whatever she’s feeling is honest; at least she can admit she’s sad. You think watching Kaori process her breakup might help you process yours too, years too late, so you suck in a breath and ask, “Can I tell you something or is now not a good time?”
Kaori looks over at you. Dabs a soggy tissue at her eyes. “Well, I guess it depends,” is her answer, and she doesn’t shy away from how waterlogged her voice sounds. “If you’re going to tell me you’re a Takasu and Kawashima shipper, maybe, but if it’s anything worse I’m not sure I could take it.”
“I—what? Who even are they?” She gives you a half-hearted thumbs up. You sigh in response, sink further into the couch. “It’s, uh.” Clear your throat. “Do you remember when we met sophomore year? At that party? And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything and you said, and I quote, why not, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing and I know that guy will have a huge—”
She hides her face behind her hands. “Ew, god, yes I remember that. My dick whisperer era. How embarrassing.”
“Right. And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything because I’d just gotten out of something.”
“Not really by choice, if I remember correctly. I told you if it was quiet it should’ve been loud, and then you never talked about it again.”
You nod. “I—yeah, that sounds like something I would’ve said.” You suck in a deep breath. “Listen, this is probably gonna sound bad considering I did never talk about it again, but—”
“Hey,” Kaori says, nudging you with her foot. Meant to be comforting, somehow. “It’s okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, too… most of which I’m not sure you should, actually.”
A laugh forces its way out, gives you a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the conversation you’re about to have. The need to explain it all, the need for advice. Maybe it’s not her—or anyone else’s—business, but you think you’ve kept this to yourself long enough. You and Seungcheol loved each other, once, and it seems foolish that no one knows.
Maybe Kaori had been right. Maybe love should be shouted from the rooftops; exist out in the open. Maybe something hidden in the shadows can never thrive in the light, and you knew it back then, deep down, but now it seems so obvious.
You think back to a few days before the library. Think about how things didn’t feel good but they felt okay. Think about the frustrated crease between Seungcheol’s eyebrows as he stared down at his textbook and how all you’d wanted to do was smooth it. Think about how you’d rolled your lips and tried not to laugh; how you thought it’d take a miracle to help Seungcheol pass this class.
Think about: What is the difference between the short-run and the long-run from the perspective of production theory?
Think about the short-run of your and Seungcheol’s relationship—that you’d burned bright and fast, even though it’d felt like a million years. Hadn’t dared to consider the long-run because anything beyond that bubble felt impossible.
Think about: Which of the following is not a property of isoquants?
Think about the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up when he knew the answer. That they’re always linear, he said, and you smiled at his enthusiasm, raised your hand to high-five him and dropped it when he hadn’t noticed.
You think about the explanation—isoquants can be linear when inputs are perfectly substitutable—and what those graphs look like. Downward sloping, left to right. Think about how the graphs change when the isoquants are perfect complements.
L-shaped. Less straight as the inputs become poorer substitutes.
You know what your and Seungcheol’s graph would’ve looked like back then.
So it’s easy, almost, to tell Kaori everything. You tell her about growing up in Daegu, about the smell of the azaleas at Biseulsan in the spring. You tell her about how your parents had befriended the neighbors, how they had a kid your age, that that kid was Seungcheol—yes, that Seungcheol.
She’s able to anticipate the rest from there, but you fill in the blanks of what she can’t: being sixteen and falling in love, holding hands, the clandestine notes. All those football matches and how your throat would be hoarse from cheering. How nauseous you’d felt applying to university in Seoul, how excited you were when Seungcheol said he was coming with you. That, after you arrived, it felt like you were living in fast-forward. Barely any time to breathe or adjust; no time to just be you and Seungcheol. You had to be a student, someone responsible; Seungcheol had to be a phenom.
“Could you feel it was going to happen?” Kaori asks, now sat ramrod straight, all her attention on you. “Like, did you know?”
“I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe I did? It’s hard to say now, all this time later. I know things definitely felt different, like life was pulling us in opposite directions.” You laugh, bitterness coloring the edges. “You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing him on some billboard, and I was just… normal, you know? I wasn’t some rising star athlete like he was, I just went to my classes. How was I supposed to compete with something like that?”
Your roommate hums, leans back into the pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you were. Maybe that’s why Seungcheol was worried—maybe he felt like you were losing your own identity feeling like you had to keep up.”
You want to push back, argue that you weren’t, that you didn’t, but the truth is that it’s possible. That the shadows created by Seungcheol’s dreams were so massive you wouldn’t be surprised if they unintentionally swallowed you up. “It still wasn’t his choice to make,” you say, voice barely above a whisper.
And Kaori already knows all about your hurt, listened as you explained it all and laid everything bare. So when she says, “Sometimes that’s just how it goes, though, babe,” it doesn’t feel condescending. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time. You can say now it wasn’t Seungcheol’s choice to make, because it’s been almost five years and you’ve made a life for yourself separate from him. But the—god, this is gonna sound so patronizing, I am so sorry—but you guys were so young. No one has it all figured out at that age.”
She snorts, runs a hand through her messy hair. “Shit, I’m nearly halfway to thirty and I still don’t know anything.” Adopts a frown. “What do you want now? Do you want closure? Want to try to fix things and become friends?”
“I don’t know,” you admit, biting at a hangnail. “He actually, um. The other day when he stopped by my office, he left me a USB drive? And before you ask, no I did not already look at it.”
“A USB drive? Who does this guy think he is, James Bond?” A pause. “Are you gonna look at it, though?”
You do.
Not until the silver, midnight light creeps in through your bedroom curtains and you’ve stared at the ceiling long enough; waited long enough for texts that never came, for divine intervention to, well, intervene. It never did—fair enough—so you decide to take fate by the reins. Grab your laptop, instant headache from the screen, stick the drive into the port.
It takes a second for it to load, but when it does: dozens of videos, organized by date. Vlogs, by the look of them—some from before your breakup but the majority of them from after.
You’re not sure what you expected, but it wasn’t this.
You click on the first one: a month and a half before both of you moved to Seoul. A fresh-faced Seungcheol appears on your screen, cheeks still round with adolescence. He’s in his room back in Daegu, can’t get the camera angle right. Nostalgia hits you like a ton of bricks as it pans to the side, to the wall behind his bed, and you see all his old posters. Mostly football players you couldn’t name, some girl group he used to love, a few movies. Just below them are some of the notes you’d written him in school, and they’re all you can focus on as he talks about how excited he is for the move.
The next: a few weeks after you’d started classes. By then, Seungcheol was well into the swing of things with Seoul FC. Already a big fish in a small pond, tryout offers from European teams starting to roll in. You can hear yourself in the background stressing over your first exam, wishing a generational curse upon your calculus professor. In the video, Seungcheol laughs, whispers like he’s telling the camera a secret as he talks about how nervous he is for his future. I don’t know why, he says, but it just feels like everything is about to change.
There’s a long pause between that one and the next. You understand why when you look at the date: three months after your breakup. Your hands hover uselessly above your keyboard. Whatever answers you’ve been looking for the last few years are probably in this video, but you can’t bring yourself to open it. Not right away, at least.
You click on a different one at random. Seungcheol’s somewhere in Europe, judging from the language on the signs behind him. Snow falls quietly—whenever he filmed this, it must’ve been early. No one else is around, and he cracks a joke that it’s a good thing, people would probably think he was crazy if they saw him. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going but he narrates the entire walk: points out a cafe he’s grown to love. The way to get to his practice stadium from where he’s standing. Pauses near a restaurant and laughs ruefully, shakes his head, says, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one of my teammates set me up on a blind date here and I got stood up. You’d probably think that was funny.
(You do. It also makes your chest ache.)
One from two years ago: Seungcheol in a hotel room, clearly nervous. He raises his hand to wave at the camera and you can see the corners of his nails bitten raw. Dark circles beneath his eyes; cheekbones more pronounced than you’ve ever seen them. On the screen, Seungcheol sighs, rakes a hand through freshly-bleached hair. Sucks in a deep breath as he says, I’m so nervous. I’m so—so fucking nervous and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I want to call you because you always knew what to say but that’s so fucking selfish. God, we haven’t spoken in years, and it’s my—that’s my fault, I know, so I brought this all on myself. I just want to hear your voice.
Another from a week after that: the color’s returned to his face, and he’s recording from what looks like a penthouse apartment. Sleek, modern; a small white dog napping on the bed beside him. He smiles, looks like he got his teeth fixed, looks like he’s no longer carrying around the weight of the world. Talks endlessly and excitedly about some tournament. Talks so fast you can barely keep up. Talks around words tinged with languages you don’t understand.
Seungcheol wins a championship. Records a drunk vlog from the same night, hair soaked through with god-knows-what—water, champagne, you don’t know. But he looks radiant. Looks like the culmination of two decades of dreaming. He looks happy, free, at peace. He looks like the reason he let you go, why he had to go away.
You scroll to the bottom of the files. Pause at the last video, dated seven months before the term started.
“Hi,” he says, and you can immediately tell everything is all wrong. Seungcheol’s in the dark, face only visible enough to see the tears tracking on his cheeks. “This is going to be the last one of these I make. I don’t know if you, uh—I’m sure you aren’t paying attention to me—my career—anymore, but. I, um. I got hurt. Ruptured my ACL. They’re not sure I’ll…” A sob escapes him. Has you wanting to climb through the screen to hold him, thumb away his tears, tell him everything is going to be okay. “They don’t know if I’ll ever play again.”
Seungcheol no longer looks happy, free, at peace. “Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that,” he continues. “Maybe it’ll help you to know I threw away our relationship for nothing.”
Cut to black.
The sudden silence is deafening. Has you desperately clicking back to the video you’d skipped, the one from just after your breakup. Seungcheol looks the same in that one, too, like the life has been drained out of him.
I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’ll ever show these to you now, since I…
I’m sure I owe you an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—things have been so hard, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I feel like my life went from zero to a hundred before I could even blink and now I’m scrambling. I didn’t think it was fair to—to drag you through that. Me being away, moving to an entirely different continent. I have faith we could do it, I just. I don’t know, baby, I don’t…
You deserve to have your own life. Be your own person. I’m so scared that the world will never see you for who you are—so beautiful and intelligent and kind. You don’t deserve to be reduced to my partner. And if you ever see this, I know you’re gonna roll your eyes. Probably call me a mean name because I took the choice away from you, because you think I’m trying to be selfless and heroic, and you’d be right. It’s not fair, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry.
I wish I could just… pluck out my brain and give it to you, because even if it killed me to do it, at least it makes sense to me. And I don’t—I don’t want you to think I’m not hurting. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I left. I know I’m making a mistake, I know I am, I just—how do I do what I think is right in the long-run when it’s not what I want right now, or ever?
I don’t want to get over you. I don’t want you to get over me, and that’s how you know I’m not acting selflessly, because you should. I want you to always be happy, I just… wish it was with me.
So, I’m going to keep making these. I’m going to take you along for the ride, wherever it takes us, because you should be here but I can only hope you can one day understand why you’re not. I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t…
I’m sorry.
I love you.
You fall asleep and dream that you were the one meant to meet him at that restaurant.
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The first thing you do is make a call to your mother.
“Could you send another container of yakgwa?”
On the other end of the line, your mother tuts, motherly intuition audibly kicking into overdrive. Is probably wearing that all-knowing, sly grin she always does when you try to be coy and evasive. “What happened to the last container I sent?”
“Ah, you know Kaori loves those. They barely lasted an hour after I told her what was in there.”
She hums an acknowledgement. Sounds like she takes a sip of tea. “I remember someone else being quite fond of those cookies, too.”
“Well, they are the most popular cookies in the country, so.”
After haranguing you into admitting they’re for Seungcheol and not your roommate, your mother promises to send them quickly. A few days at most, which buys you enough time to figure out how you’re going to approach the man in question.
The vlogs have turned your entire world upside-down. Answered questions you hadn’t even known you had. Took all that anger and resentment you’d been holding onto and set it free, and now you’re just left with… a void. Want to mend things, and it makes you wonder if such a thing is even possible, if it’s too late, but you don’t let those thoughts get very far.
Instead, you let them spur you into action. Have you sitting in front of your laptop at your desk, office hours long since over, silence creeping in the more the department empties. The thrum of the airconditioning and the tick-tick-tick of the clock are all the only company you have.
You worry if it’ll show on camera, how out of sorts you feel: sweating from the nerves, dabbing at your hairline; cheeks warm to the touch. But you suck in a breath anyway, steel yourself. Look at your webcam and the daunting red circle…
And start recording.
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He hadn’t gotten it at first. Not really.
There’d been a container of yakgwa outside his door with his USB drive taped to the top of it. No note—not that he needed one to know who it was from, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A goodbye? A please fuck off forever and never contact me again?
He’d just taken them inside. Ate too many of the cookies while feeling sorry for himself. Maybe had a glass or two of wine to compound the issue, and never, ever considered contacting you. Didn’t think he could bear it if you never wanted to see him again, but he just…
Well, he was drunk and alone and he missed you, and he’d rewatched all those videos he recorded a million times before when he was like this, so what was a million and one?
It’d been the same as every time before: he smiled at the happy parts, cried at all his old wounds. Wanted to reach through the screen and strangle his past self for including that part about the blind date, because he never wanted to date anyone who wasn’t you, why would he say that, felt mortified at the thought of you watching that—
And then there it was.
All the way at the bottom. A new video. One that hadn’t been recorded by him—
Hi, Cheol, you say, and that’s all it takes to reduce him to a sobbing, yearning mess. I’m not sure what to say here. I don’t really record much—sometimes for lectures when the professors are too busy, but never anything personal like this, but I watched every single one you made for me and I thought I should return the favor.
I wanted to tell you everything I’ve been up to since you left, but it hasn’t been much. I got my degree. Tutored a lot in undergrad—the same thing I’m tutoring you in now, actually. I was good at it and it felt good to have something that was mine, you know? I almost moved for grad school. Thought for a while I was going to wind up in New York, but then my parents divorced and it felt like too much, too scary, so I stayed. Kaori also stayed, so we got an apartment together. It’s not much, definitely not as nice as your place, but it’s good enough.
I don’t think I ever told you, but she was seeing a guy for a bit and he was… obsessed with you, to say the least. Thought you were the coolest person in the world. They aren’t seeing each other anymore. Ended pretty badly, but—speaking of which, maybe steer clear of Student Services for a while, too.
Sometimes it felt like failure that I wound up staying here. That I had scholarships from all these far-away, prestigious places and didn’t take advantage of them. That I gave into my fear. And now… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a reason I stayed behind. Maybe there’s a reason you ended up back here, too.
Whatever happens—I don’t want you to think I still blame you. Kaori says we do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time, and I understand now that’s what you did. Even though it hurt me, you were trying to protect me. I get it now. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to go to all these places you didn’t know. To have to deal with your injury, the loss of a dream.
You said in one of your videos that you just want me to be happy, and that’s all I want for you, too, whatever that looks like.
Here’s my address if you ever want to come by to talk.
I love you, too.
—and then he’d been up and out the door, feeling stone cold sober, running to the front of his building to wait for his ride.
Felt like the drive took hours. Must’ve hit every red light between his apartment and yours. Took the steps two at a time just to get to your door faster.
There’s a man already standing outside your door when he gets there. One that looks shocked to see him, stars in his eyes, and when Seungcheol says, “Oh, you must be Kaori’s ex,” he looks more like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. Embarrassed in front of his idol.
He knocks on your door and gets no response. Knocks again, harder this time, and he has to try really hard to stifle his laughter when your voice yells from the inside, “Fuck off, Kenji, I already told you she’s not here!”
“It’s me,” Seungcheol yells back.
There’s quiet again. Just enough time for it to feel like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest and follow Kaori’s ex down the hall.
Then you’re yanking the door open—slowly, so slowly, like you’re scared it’s not actually him. Your eyes are brimming with tears when they meet his own, and he doesn’t let himself think, just goes on instinct, when he grabs for you, hands on your cheeks, and presses his lips to yours.
Somehow you taste the same.
Somehow you taste like redemption.
You taste like home.
Seungcheol kisses you until the tears slow. Kisses you until the universe realigns, until he could map your mouth in the dark. Kisses you until all you’re all he knows again.
When he pulls away, you’re gripping at his sweatshirt, don’t want to let him go. He presses his forehead to yours, offers up a million more apologies, starts talking nonsense. Says he’s going to drop microeconomics, what the hell does he know, he barely has a passing grade anyway, what does it matter, he’s such an idiot—
And then you say, “You came back,” and nothing else matters.
“I always will.”
(Later on, as you’re trying to steady your breathing, slick with sweat, your thigh thrown over Seungcheol’s hip as he stares down at you, dopey smile on his face, you say, “Choi Seungcheol, don’t you dare drop that class. I have worked my ass off to get you to barely-passing.”)
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if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for reading! i am still very new at writing for seventeen, so i hope this was acceptable. i'm now going to throw myself into the warped tour vernon fic and will hopefully not go another 7+ months without posting anything. 😭
i would love to hear your thoughts! <3
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writersdrug · 2 months ago
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Bartender Simon and reader compilation of them having physical contact throughout the day? Like brushing fingers when handing off drinks, or him putting a hand on her hip in the walk as he says,” behind,” to stop her from freaking out as he grabs something overhead, etc .thank youuuuuuuuuu
You guys are making me jealous of reader I swear-
You're the one who starts this game, even if it's unintentional. You ask him for a pen one day, yours is empty and you've got a six top in the corner that's ready to order. He gives you one from the bar, and you tap his forearm twice. "Thanks, Simon!" You say, skipping of to your table.
Simon Simon Simon... he stares after you, replaying your voice and your touch in his mind. It's so nonchalant for you, but it's got him derailed from whatever he was doing. Oh, right. Bartending.
But he makes a point to make you understand what you're doing to him. You're punching in a payment at the POS when you suddenly feel a hand on your upper back, and you freeze.
"Behind ya." He mumbles, reaching over you and into the cabinet to grab a to-go box. "Sorry, stealin' your boxes. I'm out."
You feel his fingers slide across your back until they retreat, and it takes everything within you to suppress a shiver. You look back at him once he leaves, feeling your face heat up and your lips quiver. Behind the bar, there's a fresh stack of to-go boxes.
Sneaky bastard.
You get him back, though. On a busy night, you jog behind the bar, nearly colliding with Simon. He stills and raises his hands. "Careful, Christ-"
You worm your way past him, ever-so-slightly pressing against his front, giving him the perfect angle of your tits. He can't breathe as you wiggle through - the fabric of his shirt and yours do little to quell the blazing heat he feels from you.
"That soda gun's broken!" You call out, filling the two glasses in your hand with the gun at the opposite end of the bar. You then trot back over and squeeze by him again - this time, your ass barely graces his cock, and he swears it nearly leaps to life just to feel the brush of your backside. "Thanks!" You call over your shoulder, disappearing into the restaraunt.
Simon takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders, staring at the bartop and trying not to go feral. (You're making it very hard for him). He picks up the soda gun and pushes all of the buttons - they all work fucking fine.
Come the following week, Simon decides to be bold. You sit at the bar on a slow Tuesday evening, watching the game on the telly, occasionally reaching over the bar to snag a fry (they're Simon's, but he hasn't touched them in a while - they would get cold). Your two tables are talking amongst themselves, waiting for their food. You would glance back into the kitchen window and check the warmer for their orders, but so far, Soap's still working on them. So you relax, having nothing better to do.
You're hoisted out of the barstool when two, large, meaty hands grab you by the waist. You shriek, dropping your fry, grabbing onto Simon's forearms as he lifts you up and deposits you onto your feet.
"Stop eatin' my chips, stop slackin', n' go roll silverware." He grumbles - he gives you two, sharp pats on the small of your back, the tips of his fingers on the curve of your ass.
You can't find it in yourself to turn around and gripe with him. You can't even look at him. You scurry off and run upstairs in search of fresh napkins, face red as a tomato and your stomach fluttering nicely. This is normal, right? This is what waitressing lis like - flirtatious behavior everywhere, both giving and receiving. It doesn't mean anything. Right?
Simon chuckles. He'll take that as a win.
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lymtw · 3 months ago
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the toji and his shy girl stuff is soooooo good like serious amazing. I WAS WONDERING IF you could do toji and his shy girl teaching her how to suck his dick or something like that?? pls and thanks🤗🤗
A/N: EEHEE, thank you! 🫶🏼 Of course I can write this out!(Please don't look at me after reading 🫣) Anyways, thank you for sending in this request 💙
Toji and his shy girl...
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"Toji?" You call, looking up from where your cheek rests on his thigh. He seems like he's very deep in thought, just staring straight ahead with the smallest crease between his brows. You tap his stomach, and the sudden contact manages to snap him out of his trance.
"Hm?" He looks down at you, like he's lost on the conversation that hasn't taken off, yet.
"You okay?" You ask, rubbing his thigh in an attempt to comfort him. He knows he shouldn't be so turned on by such a lighthearted gesture, yet he's finding it so difficult to keep something at bay.
"Yeah... Yeah, i'm okay, baby. You need something?" He looks down at you, attempting to ignore the way his dick jumps at the position you're resting in.
"No, I'm okay. Do you need something?" you return, your expression still somewhat concerned.
"Don't worry, doll, it's nothing important." He smiles at your attempt to figure out what's going on and cups your cheek with one of his hands, loving the warmth and color that spreads beneath his palm.
"Well... you always help me with unimportant things. Can I try something unimportant with you?" Your brows crease a little when you think back to what you just said. It sounded dirty, and you didn't intend for it to come off that way. "Oh, that came out wrong." You laugh, nervously.
"You're okay, baby. Try again." His eyes are lidded as he continues brushing your cheek with his thumb, the rest of his fingers feeling up the side of your neck and the underside of your jaw.
"I just wanna help you," you mumble, derailing your gaze from his intense, darkening one. You have this feeling in your gut that it's lust that changed his demeanor, but you've never liked assuming things like this. You prefer to hear him say that he needs you or to let his hands communicate and lead his desire for you, so that you know for certain.
"You're such a sweet girl," he says, his voice low and borderline sultry. "Got the prettiest eyes, the cutest nose, and those lips? Mmm..." He sighs, completely drawn to the warm and soft feeling of them against the pad of his thumb as he traces them. "They're perfectly suited for me."
Your heart is racing. Your gut is proving to be correct about this moment. He has this look in his eyes that makes your chest feel tight and his voice is like drizzling honey when he speaks to you.
"You really wanna help me out?" His eyes flit up to look at yours. He can't help the sly grin that appears when you nod, hesitantly. "Be sure about it, mama."
"I-I do. I want to help you. Anything you want or need."
"And if I said I need your pretty mouth?"
This stuns you into silence. You can't formulate a response quick enough to shut down his doubt of you meaning it when you said 'anything'.
"It's okay, doll." His gaze softens, the lust still evident in the way he hasn't released your cheek. "Don't worry about-"
"I don't know how to do it," you cut in. "Sorry," you mumble, recognizing the rudeness of your interruption.
He snickers. You're too polite for your own good. "That's alright. Be more clear, for me. You don't know how to do what?"
This is when things get hard. When Toji asks you to explain yourself during moments of intimacy. When he asks you to tell him what you want or when he knows you have questions about things you've never done before, like now. You freeze up. You don't know how he manages to say such vulgar things to you with so much confidence.
You groan, embarrassed, your flushed cheeks hidden as you pull away from his hand and bury your face into his thigh. "I don't wanna say it," you mumble.
"You're gonna have to put it into words for me, pretty." He grins like a menace. He knows exactly what you mean, but he gets a kick out of making you speak up about these topics. He finds it extremely hot when your soft spoken self verbalizes sexual things.
"Talk to me," he says, tapping your head when you go silent.
You sigh, wishing it was possible for him to read your mind. You try to get the words out in your own simplified way and hope it's enough for Toji.
"Can you guide me? On how to... suck your..." you huff, frustrated by how hard it is to explain exactly what you're talking about. You're not even looking at him and it's still proving to be a challenge. "...you know?"
"My dick?" He says, smoothly.
You nod your head against his thigh, humming to confirm, with so much relief at knowing he understood what you meant.
"Ask properly," he challenges, and your heart drops. He's playing with your hair, twirling a lock between his finger as he waits for you to talk.
"Toji, please. I can't."
"How are you gonna feel comfortable with me instructing you on how to do it, when you can't even say it? Try for me, baby."
You go silent, again, for a few more seconds, subconsciously rubbing the outer part of his thigh. You muster all the courage you have to ask the sinister question. After all, they're just words. The real nerves will appear once you start acting on your words.
"Can you teach me how to suck... your dick?"
"Good girl," he praises. "Now finish that off, nicely."
"Please?" It comes out meek due to the racing in your heart and the tightness returning in your chest.
"Mhm. Of course, my pretty girl." That smirk you know of all too well returns as he releases the lock of your hair he had wrapped around his finger. "You wanna lift your head and look at me? Wanna get a look at your pretty face."
You feel way too light as you lift yourself off of him, but nonetheless, you sit up straight and reveal your flustered state to him.
"Oh, you're so cute. Come here," he says beckoning for you to come even closer. He watches as you crawl towards him, minimizing the space between you two.
You take note, up close, of the way his scar lifts with that smile that drives you crazy. You feel jittery as you practically sit on his lap, feeling his bulging hard on poke you through his pants.
"Yeah, you feel that, don't you?" He thinks the way you nod in response is precious. His blunt nails run up and down your clothed back, making goosebumps rise on your skin. "It's all for you, ma. You did this."
With those final words, he pulls you in for a kiss. It's slow enough to allow you to melt into it, giving you a chance to move your lips along with his. The little breaths through your nose have him scrunching the back of your shirt into his tight fists, partially lifting the hem and revealing small areas of your skin. Your arousal skyrocketed, and you can physically feel it through the wetness collecting in your panties. A few breaths leave him when you start squirming on top of him, giving his hard cock some much desired stimulation.
He breaks the kiss, chuckling when you whine after chasing another kiss and being met with air.
"You ready?" He asks, lifting you off his lap and setting you down between his legs. He smiles at the cute pout and flourished color on your kissed up lips. You just got into kissing him, fully and comfortably reciprocating the kisses, and now you're jumping into learning how to suck him off. To say you're nervous is an understatement.
All of these feelings, just for you to nod and respond with a less than confident, "Yeah."
"You'll be okay. I won't be rough with you." The urge he felt to say 'this time' was immense, but he didn't want to scare you off from this, so instead he pinched your cheek, a loving gesture that brought a soft smile to your face.
You sit back like an obedient puppy and watch as he unbuttons and unzips his jeans. Already, just through the small glimpse you have of his bulge peeking out through the split of his zipper, you can see the way his cock is trying to jump out of his boxer briefs. You can't lie, not even to yourself, the sight has you throbbing. His pants are off and you can clearly see the monster he packs in all its glory, tenting through his briefs.
You let out a quiet sigh, squirming where you sit due to the throbbing you know won't be paid attention to anytime soon.
"You wanna take it out?" He asks, smirking at the way you're trying so hard not to look at his dick.
"Uh... yeah, okay." You're trying so hard to not come off as nervous, and failing miserably. The way your hands were clasped before you shakily and tentatively started reaching for him gave it away. You could feel him watching your face too. Those eyes, so focused on your every move that you felt like you were forgetting how to breathe. It all doubled down when you hooked your fingers into the thick band that cinched around his hips. Your knuckles grazed the warm skin of his lower abdomen and you let out the smallest breath before continuing.
Oh, how Toji loved watching your delicate self take charge of things. Even if he was instructing you, your hands were the ones doing all the roaming. He's simply a voice to your ears in this moment, while you do the experimenting.
He hums, relief seeping through him when you finally begin to release his cock out of its confines. The sound makes your eyes dart up towards him, meeting his once again dark gaze.
"Keep going, doll," he purrs, tucking some loose strands of hair behind your ear. You look down again, focusing on what your hands are doing as you keep pulling the front of his briefs down until his cock springs out and slaps against his clothed abdomen. "There you go," he says, loving the bewildered look on your face. He doesn't feel a bit of shame for the amount of precum he's leaking. Having your eyes on him as you wait for further instruction just encourages it.
"Lie down. Get comfortable."
You follow directions and lay between his legs. This position gives you a direct view of what will be in your mouth in just a few moments.
"Good girl. How 'bout you give it some kisses," he says, starting you off with something he thinks should be nice and easy.
"Kiss it?" You ask, feeling all the nerves rush you when he confirms with a hum. You simply look at it for a few seconds before leaning forward and placing a kiss on his shaft. "That's what you meant... right?" You ask, unsure of whether you're correctly following directions.
"Mhm," he assures. "Gonna need a lot of those."
You do as told and pepper kisses all over it, starting from the tip and trailing all the way down to the base. Every peck of your lips is soft. You look like an angel performing such an unholy act. You're so devoted to making sure you're doing this right that you don't pay any mind to the stickiness that occasionally connects you to his length through weak, thin strings.
Toji smiles as he watches you, his sweet girl, acting so dirty. Your lips are all wet as you kiss his length up and down, the tip of your nose gliding along. It's a view that has his dick throbbing as you continue on. He's pictured this scenario so many times, he's even had wet dreams that involve this exact sight, but he thought that's all they would ever be. That this vision would stay in his head. He never thought you'd actually be open to doing something like this. What a pleasure it turned out to have been wrong.
"You're doing so good, doll." He sighs, grinning with satisfaction at how well you listened. He cups your cheek, feeling the warmth of your skin beneath his palm. "Wanna use your tongue, now?"
You lick the excess off your lips, a gesture that wiped the smirk off Toji's face. He had to hold back a groan when you looked at him with those doe eyes of yours that struggled to hold his gaze. You had no idea the effect you had on him.
"Just my tongue?" You ask, readjusting your position.
"Yup. That's your next instruction from me."
You felt that surge of nerves from the beginning all over again. You felt incredibly hot, like you were melting on the spot, but again, you jumped into the moment. Your tongue darted out and you brought it up close to his cock. You licked along one of the veins that decorated it, tasting the slight saltiness of his skin.
This was more of a task on Toji, now. His level of restraint was being tested with every drag of your soft, warm and wet tongue. He'll never even attempt to consider the sight of you licking an ice cream cone or sucking on a popsicle, innocent, again.
You keep lapping at the same spot, and it's so inconvenient for him because it's a sensitive point. If you don't move on, there's a chance he might bust before you get him in your mouth. He has to redirect you.
"Make sure..." he pauses, not wanting to stutter over his words as you keep going. "Make sure your tongue goes over every inch, baby." He sighs, somewhat relieved when you move to another part. "Yeah, that's..." he groans, the sound low, but audible enough to make your heart pang. "That's good. You're doing so good, princess."
Your tongue goes to his flushed, swollen tip to collect the pearls that continue forming. You can see the way his cock twitches after every few licks, the sight serving to fuel your roaring arousal.
"Fuck," he mutters. "I think you've got the hang of using your tongue. Think you're ready to put it in your mouth?"
You stop, retracting your tongue. You don't think you've done enough to truly prepare you for taking him in your mouth. You don't want him to watch you do it. What if you get it wrong? It would easily discourage you. Will he laugh at you if you gag? Your heart is racing. There are so many what ifs that you feel he would get tired of answering, so you hit him with a simple question. One that would soothe your nerves even the slightest bit.
"Do you think i'm ready?"
He's quick to kill the doubt in your head. You don't deserve to feel like your effort is being wasted, because it isn't. There's a reason he's been leaking like a faucet this entire time, and if he has to assure you that you're doing just fine, then so be it.
"Of course, doll. Didn't you notice how much quicker the last step was?"
You nod. "Yeah, I did. I thought I did something wrong since you had to correct me."
He laughs, a deep rumble that makes your cheeks burn with a mixture of embarrassment and joy. You give him a perplexed smile, unsure if he's agreeing with what you said through the attractive sound.
"Nah, I almost spewed all over your face. We had to move on a little quicker because of that sinful tongue of yours."
You tried so hard not laugh, but the corners of your lips started twitching and then you noticed the way he was grinning because he caught on to your bitten back giggles. You were internally giddy, it was impossible not to react that way to what he told you.
"You got it, baby. Like I said before, I'm not gonna be rough with you." You've always tried for him, regardless of the nerves that course through you and that's enough. "I'm gonna like whatever you do, so don't even worry about that, alright?"
"Okay," you respond, adjusting your position. Toji looks like some god with the way you kneel in front of him. "Maybe I should put my hair up," you suggest.
"I got you, don't worry. I'll keep your hair back."
You were hoping he'd let you do it to give you more time to mentally prepare, but once again, all there was left to do was jump right into things. You put your forearms on his thighs, and lean forward. As you start opening your mouth, you realize that your jaw is going to be so sore after this. He's long and thick and it makes you even more nervous because you didn't think you'd have to unhinge your jaw to take him in your mouth. You do know one thing very well. No teeth.
"There you go." He sighs, feeling the way you wrap your lips around the head of his cock, a soft sight of relief leaving him. Your lips are soft and warm as ever. "Just breathe through your nose," he continues instructing. As promised, he keeps your hair collected in his hand and out of your face. "Mhm, good girl... Fuck."
Your cheeks are hollowed out as you attempt to take more of him. You're a little less than halfway down, yet your mouth is already so full. Is it even possible to fit the entire thing in your mouth?
You swirl your tongue over his tip, running it through the slit to see if it does any more for him. His hips buck slightly, making your heart drop to your stomach and his cock press further into your mouth causing you to pull back.
"S-Shit, my bad, doll."
You breathe before going back in, this time trying to fit more into your mouth. It's hard. You always feel like you're gonna gag, and that's the last thing you wanna do—make a sound that you don't think you could recover from the embarrassment of. You push your limits, trying everything in your power to control your gag reflex, but it's a lot. He's huge. You're drooling all over him. It's messy, does he even like this? The only thing motivating you is the sounds he makes. His sighs and low groans. The way his voice goes down an entire octave when he curses under his breath. You're pushing it, you can feel yourself wanting to gag, so you pull away, and take a quick breather.
"Doing so good, baby," he purrs, releasing your hair for a moment. "You wanna try taking it deeper? You don't have to be embarrassed about gagging. It's just a part of your learning process."
Within what seems like a quick instance, you're going again. You remember what he said about breathing through your nose as your mouth swallows more and more of his length. You're going further down, shutting your eyes tightly as you try to focus on something other than the tip of his cock hitting your throat. You let out a deep breath through your nose, before coming back up, little pants leaving you as you suck on his tip to not lose contact with him. You try his slit again, this time with more gentle licks. You hear him groan, and his hand tightens in your hair.
"Fuck..." the word comes out somewhat strained. "Keep going, baby. Use that pretty mouth on me."
You take as much of his as you comfortably can into your mouth and start going up and down with your lips, your tongue gliding along that vein that seemed to have a huge effect on him earlier.
"K-Keep going." His resolve was crumbling. It was all happening so quickly and he felt debilitated by you. He's never had something like this happen. You barely know what you're doing, yet he's about to flood your mouth with cum. He thought he'd just be a test dummy this time, so you could get a feel for what it's like having him in your mouth. He didn't think you'd actually get him to cum. You're using those underdeveloped instructions he gave you and actually making them work. He's trying so hard not to buck into your mouth, he's right there. You're relentless with that tongue, using it to find his sensitive areas and then abusing them.
Your scalp is starting to sting a little from the grip he has on your hair, but you don't want to stop until he tells you to. Your jaw hurts, but your gags are starting to minimize.
Toji looks down at you, this may have been his biggest mistake. He challenged his own breaking point by leaning his head against the headboard of the bed and shutting his eyes, leaving his body to you for a few minutes so that he could purely feel you— feel what you're doing to him. Then it occurred to him... When will this happen again? When will you ask him to do this again? It was enough of a task to get you to pronounce the question. How can he get you to want to do this after this time? He doesn't know, but for now, he gets to see the mess you make as you work your mouth on him. You have drool all over the lower part of your face and your cheeks are flushed. For now, he gets to feel the way your hands are grabbing at his thighs and he gets to listen to the lewd sounds your lips make against him. It's definitely a sight worth remembering. It'll go straight into the mental shrine of spank bank material he has of you.
"Fuck... oh, fuck... Baby," he hisses, his hips jolting upwards as he empties himself into your mouth. You pull away, glassy eyed at the harsh intrusion of his dick in your throat almost making you choke. Your tongue is coated in cum, some of it went straight down your throat, and inevitably, you have it on your lips. You watch with bright cheeks as his stomach quivers, cum drooling down his shaft.
He sighs. "Show me your tongue, doll."
The potency of his cum is all you can taste. Every taste bud on your tongue is drowned in the flavor and painted white.
"Look at that," he says, almost in awe at the sight of your sloppy tongue. Your cheeks burn hot with every second you keep your it out on display for him. A glob of cum mixed with spit glides down your palate and spills down onto the bed, and god it stirred something in Toji.
"Whoops, sorry," you say, retracting your tongue to avoid drooling any more.
"That's okay, mama. You wanna keep things tidy, huh?" He grins at the little nod and hum you offer in response. He collects the streaks of white that landed on your lips with the pad of his thumb. "Open," he says, calmly, pressing his fingertip into the slit of your mouth. You listen, opening just enough for him to drag the remnants that litter the pad of his thumb, onto your tongue. "Suck," he says, positioning his thumb onto your bottom lip, slowly dragging it out like he's running it through a wringer.
"Good girl. All nice and clean again," he praises. "What about me?"
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camomileapplesyrup · 5 months ago
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today i got into a heated argument with two TRAs over the twoXchromosomes subreddit. i made a post about the woman-centric subreddit now being overrun with men & MRAs who harass women that share their traumatic experiences with men. from SA, to spousal abuse, women found a space where they felt safe discussing their experiences in life.
posts expressing feminist thought, traumatic experiences & general fear of men were met with downvote bombings & harassment.
men pretend to be underage girls pretending not to understand masturbation and acting they don't know how to wash "down there", asking for advice for sexual gratification of course.
men CONSTANTLY adding their two cents to posts that absolutely do not need it.
the subreddit is now uncomfortable & stifling, mods do absolutely nothing about it. so i made a lengthy post and so many women responded. over 500 comments of women responding positively, and thanking me for calling out an ongoing issue.
well, apparently i am transphobic and i am acting "sussy" with saying; “every time i come here and a woman makes a post with the most MINUSCULE feminist intent, or sharing her trauma, or difficulties in her personal experiences, it doesn't just get downvoted to oblivion, but filled up with comments of dudes adding their two cents, tone policing, making sexual & or fetish comments or "not all men"ing her. this is a woman centric community. two X chromosomes. we aren't going to make our tones softer, be gentler and tip-toe around our individual experiences to make YOU, a dude, comfortable.”
all it took was this for two TRAs to gang up on me & call me transphobic. saying this is why they don't trust cis feminists, and patronising me with expressions like "you must be so brave for calling yourself a radfem". they claimed that i cannot call myself a radical feminist because it's just bigoted towards trans women, despite me living in a 3rd world country where we don't even have working woman's shelters and proper laws against spousal abuse. "im sorry your life is hard as a woman living in a misogynistic country, but that is here nor there with regard to the terminology we're discussing" i'm sorry, what?
most of us aren't privileged enough to be libfems. i wish pink fucking girlboss they/she queen xenogender discourse was what my country could be doing, but life is not fair for everyone. if a woman here gets abused, stalked, or raped, she has nowhere to go. no phone number to call. no police to call. no prosecutor to trust in. and i went through this, personally.
by the end i had to block them, because they were derailing the conversation. but fuck, even when i literally do my best and try to be inclusive to everyone, i get spat in the fucking face.
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mattyriddlesbitch · 6 months ago
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a steamy enemies mattheo fic w you as the shy yet stern tutor and he keeps messing w you. maybe at the end after he passes his exams you try to stop the meetings by saying he doesn’t need a tutor anymore and he gets mad/the jealousy trope 🤤😈🛼 also what if there’s a scene where you go to a ‘dangerous’ party w the wrong crowd and he catches you there and gets mad bc he doesn’t want u around those people
I hope this works! So sorry this took so long!
Tutor
Mattheo Riddle x F!Reader
Warnings: kissing, cussing
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You and Mattheo never got along. Everyone knew that too. Insults and snarky comments were thrown at each other all the time.
So it was infuriating when McGonagall said you were his new tutor since he was struggling with some classes. You tried to get out of it, switch with another tutor, but she just said that everyone's already set up with another student and she can't change it.
Tutoring sessions were brutal. He always messed with you. Always tried getting off topic. Even jokingly flirting with you to try to derail your lesson. But you were determined to get him to study and tutor him enough to pass so you could stop these sessions. 
“How about every answer I get right, you give me a kiss?” He smiled at you.
“In your dreams, Riddle.” You rolled your eyes, but felt the heat rise to your cheeks. “Can you just focus?”
He finally just started passing his classes, his homework and test scores soaring  enough to make him start passing classes. McGonagall said you didn't have to tutor him anymore, but she recommended you did since your own scores were going up as well as you tutored him. You had enough of Mattheo and told him you weren't going to be tutoring him anymore during your last tutoring session, showing him the tricks you learned for studying and retaining information.
Oh, he was mad. He never really hated you. He liked you and never knew how to express his feelings so he became mean to you instead. He was a dumb kid when he decided that and didn't know how to change it and make you like him, even as a friend. These tutoring sessions were making his feelings grow. He thought it'd be a perfect time to find out more about you, asking you questions about yourself, trying to change the topic to something more fun to hear you talk about something other than school, even flirting with you to try to change your view of him and see if he could fluster you.
So when you told him that you were done with tutoring him, he was upset. Moreso at himself than you. He was upset that he didn't seem to get you to change your view of him. He was upset he tried so hard, he passed enough to not need you to tutor him anymore. He was upset that he decided to be an ass to you at the beginning of your relationship so you'd always have a bad view of him.
“What do you mean you're not tutoring me anymore?” He frowned as he sat across from you in the library.
“I mean exactly that. You're doing well enough to not need one anymore.” You shrugged.
“I'm only doing this well because of you.”
“I'm showing you how I study so you can keep doing this well. You don't need me.”
He wanted to say he does need you. Merlin, he wanted to. He wanted to see how you'd react. He even wanted to see you get all smug and tease him about needing you, but he bit his tongue.
Truth was, he really didn't need your help. He knew this stuff enough to pass with flying colors. He just never applied himself. But he thought if he did start passing because of you, you'd be impressed and happy he did so well because of you. He felt like he lost his chance to win you over once he saw you leaving the library after your last tutoring session.
Your friend invited you to a party she'd been invited to, saying it'll be fun and to think of it as celebrating successfully tutoring Mattheo and being done with him. You were reluctant but finally agreed, deciding it'd be fun to relax and let loose.
You arrived with your friend, who let you borrow one of her short dresses and a pair of heels. You both drank and danced until she was eventually pulled away by one of the guys there, leaving you alone. You were slightly tipsy, just enough to make you relaxed and slightly dizzy.
A guy approached you, you recognized him enough to know he was in Slytherin, but you never learned his name. He was about to say something when an arm wrapped around your waist from beside you.
“Hey, princess. Hope you weren't waiting on me for too long.” You recognized the voice as Mattheo and turned your head to see him smiling at you.
“What-”
“You seem a bit tired. How about we go sit down?” Something in his voice and smile was off. You nodded and he guided you away from the crowd and down a secluded hallway. “What are you doing here?” He asked as he moved to stand in front of you.
“My friend invited me.” You frowned.
“And she left you alone?” He matched your frown.
“Some guy took her to dance.”
“You're kidding. This isn't safe for you.”
“What? Why?” You crossed your arms in front of your chest.
“Doesn't matter. I'll get you back to your dorm.” He said, trying to turn you back around to lead you away.
“No, tell me. If I'm in danger, then I should know why.” You said, resisting him.
He sighed, looking down the hallway before looking back at you, talking quietly. “This is for purebloods and Death Eaters, something you shouldn't get involved with. So, let me get you out of here before something happens to you.” He said, trying to guide you again and you let him this time.
“What are you doing here then?” You questioned, now sobered up from this conversation.
“My father. What do you think, Ms Know-It-All?” He teased and you rolled your eyes.
“No need to be mean.” You frowned. There was a pause as he led you out of the party and started the way to your dorm. “Why are you helping me anyways?”
“I don't hate you, you know?” He said and you turned your head to look at him again.
“You don't?” You raised an eyebrow.
“No. I never have. I'm just…” He paused trying to find the right words and you stopped walking, turning to face him as he stopped too. “I'm not good at…words-at expressing myself. I don't do well with feelings and emotions.” He sighed, looking down.
“Okay.” You spoke quietly. “So…what do you actually mean then, if you don't hate me?”
“What I mean is that…” He looked back up to meet your eyes. “I mean, I don't hate you, I…” He ran a hand through his hair, letting out another sigh. “Fuck it.” He muttered before grabbing your face gently and pressing his lips against yours. He pulled back after a few seconds, noticing your surprised expression as you still tried grasping what just happened. “Did that make sense?” He asked, hands still cupping your face.
“Um, I think so.” You said, still a little dazed.
“Let's get you back to your dorm. Maybe it'll give you time to figure it out.” He said, a small smirk playing on his lips now as he moved a hand back to your waist and started guiding you again.
Taglist:
@jeannie-beannie @yourenogoodforme @mixvchelle @helendeath @evaslytherpuff
@soaked4abby @hpnsfwaddict @mayamonroem @motherfing-stargirl @brittney-121
@dracoslovergirl @littlemadamred @mattheoriddlesbitch @acornacreacure @opheliamalfoy236
@demieyesore @akira1246 @queenshu
Let me know if you wanna be added!
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luxaofhesperides · 12 days ago
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Ghost light prompt!
Meeting the family
Gone wrong? Gone right? You decide!!!
"Do you like meatloaf?" Maddie asks as she hoists up a modified rocket launcher. Duke tries not to look too wigged out, but it's hard to keep a straight face while his boyfriend's parents deal with the hostage situation in a very strange, mad scientist/engineer way that he's never seen before.
He's starting to get why Danny didn't want his parents coming to Gotham.
"Probably?" Duke answers, hoping he can land in the general area of a good answer. "I haven't really had a lot of meatloaf before but I'm always willing to try new foods."
"That's a great attitude to have!" Jack exclaims, patting Duke on the back. His absurd strength makes Duke stumble forward a few steps. Jack quickly steadies him with a hand on his shoulder and a muttered, "Whoops!"
"I am so sorry," Danny says again, hiding his face in his hands. "I should have insisted on having them meet you some other time."
The wall before them explodes and Maddie cheers. "Alright boys, you go ahead and get to the restaurant to hold our reservation. We'll be there as soon as we clean this up! And next time, we'll skip all this mess by having you eat at home with us. Be good, boys!" She's gone before either of them can respond, Jack happily following his wife to rain holy hell down on Two Face's henchmen. Duke is left behind with Danny and the handful of other hostages gathered up to draw out Batman. If what he heard is correct, then Two Face was planning on using the hostages as a distraction to take in a large shipment of weapons from the Odessa Mob, which is a plan that has been thoroughly derailed by the Fentons.
"I knew this would be a disaster," Danny despairs, and Duke softens, lets go of his worries about the situation, and places an arm around his boyfriend's waist to draw him into a hug.
Danny leans into him, the tips of his ears red with embarrassment. "It's alright," Duke reassures, "They're making a great first impression, saving me from Two Face and all. Why don't we get the others evacuated and then head out to the restaurant?"
He nods and pulls away from Duke after a few deep breaths to settle himself. They help the other hostages get outside, following the Fenton's trail of destruction through the warehouse, and reassure them that there aren't new rogues in Gotham, just a pair of overprotective parents visiting. As Danny helps the last of them get out onto the streets, Duke takes a moment to message the Bat group chat an update with the situation.
Got kidnapped by Two Face with Danny and his parents. We're good now, his parents blew up the walls and got us out, but you might wanna swing down to save Two Face from them. He ends the messages with a peace sign emoji and puts his phone on Do Not Disturb.
Whatever else happens is not his problem. He's got a dinner with his boyfriend's parents to get to, and he's sure it'll be just as fun as this unconventional hostage situation.
(send me a Halloween/autumn word and I'll write you a ghostlights drabble!)
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taintandviolent · 6 months ago
Note
if you're takin drabble requests...perhaps consider...flashing peter maximoff? showin him some bodacious tiddy? just a suggestion from a totally mysterious person ooooooooooo...
i love you so so so so so so so so SOOOOO much btw 🤍🤍🤍
sooooo mysterious!!! who could this be?!?! 🤔🤔🤔 I love you more than words can ever express!!!!!!!!
warnings: none, really. reader flashing Peter, mentions of arousal. also, this was written at work, sorry if it’s bad!!!
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With all of your responsibilities taken care of, you had little to do besides wander the hallways back to your room. Poised to open the door, you paused -- something quite literally glittered in your peripheral. You turned your head, locking eyes on someone. Someone special, and someone very, very silver. Peter Maximoff. God, he was so cute.
He was alone in the hallway, save for Beast, whose back was to you. Nice. You chewed the inside of your cheek, assessing; the conversation seemed casual enough. Peter was chuckling and doing that adorable grin that you saw so often. You had some tact, at least -- you weren't going to interrupt anything serious.
Recognition glimmered in Peter's eyes as they flitted to you. When they did, you raised your hand, wiggling your fingers at him. Wordlessly, you brought your finger to your mouth, shushing him and preventing him from saying or doing anything that would alert the other party to your existence.
You'd been teasing him for weeks at this point; coy little glances here, determined, heated touches there... You were pretty sure you had him wrapped around your finger and he was ready to bust. But just to make sure...
Your fingers gripped the hem of your shirt and yanked it up in one motion. Your breasts sprung free, your nipples hardening as soon as the cool air of the hallway hit them. Perfect and perky, all for Peter to gawk at. You gave a little wiggle of your torso, grinning. In hindsight, it was an absolutely stellar choice to go braless today.
Lips popping apart, his jaw hung slack. In a millisecond, Peter's eyes widened, focusing hard on your now-exposed tits. His train of thought was out the window. Gonezo. Completely derailed. The only thing he was focusing on -- the only thing he could think of was your tits. Bouncy, bouncy tits... and another thing - what they looked like bouncing in a more... horizontal position.
"Uhhhh.... I.."
He thought about motorboating them. "Uh..." Heat rushed to his groin, and he shifted uncomfortably. He had to pacify himself before things got out of hand, but how could he? How could he when you were...
You bounced up and down on your heels, letting off an inaudible giddy snicker as you felt your breasts move freely. Peter's dark pupils followed your nipples up and down, his throat going dry with the action.
"Yeah, y'know what, I'm... uh..."
"Peter, you're not making any sense."
"Whaaat? I am, too. I said that... y'know, I think I remembered something I had to do." His inky irises flicked back and forth, but the majority of the time was spent on you, fighting to control his facial expressions. If he had the freedom, his tongue would be lolling out like the Howlin' Wolf.
Now intrigued by whatever had captivated Peter's attention, Beast started to pivot his body, following Peter's gridlocked gaze. As soon as he had turned around, an inquisitive brow quirked, you were gone. Well, not really. You were still standing there, tits out, tongue pressed against the back of your teeth in a shit-eating grin. Invisibility had its perks. You pulled your shirt down over your ample breasts, withholding the laughter that threatened to bubble out over your lips.
Beast turned back around, now more curious than ever. Peter was a quirky kid, that much was obvious from the moment they met. Naturally, there were a few reasons that he could be acting strangely, and you sincerely hope that he hadn't figured out which one was causing it.
Safe, you rematerialized, now decent and waved goodbye to Peter. Had you really intended for the wave to look like you were beckoning him? Maybe. Maybe you had.
It was safe to say that you'd see him later.
252 notes · View notes
skzooweemama · 10 months ago
Note
Y/n tickling the members to get what she (or they, whichever gender you write for!) wants??
I feel like tiny fics of that would be sososoo adorable😫
Ty but you can ignore this if you want!😅
yesss this is my fav kind of tk stuff 😈😈
tiny fics it is!
plz excuse how long i've been gone- life kinda took me through the ringer in the last two months...
but i'm back for now!! and i wanted to say thanks for 100 followers! y'all are the best!!
i hope you all had a happy holiday season!! enjoy!!
~~~
Bang Chan:
chan was unaware that he was no longer alone until he felt a soft touch on his back that startled him so much he nearly screamed. he hadn't heard the door open while wearing his recording headphones, and now he was paying for it. whipping around in the chair, chan's racing heart was immediately calmed upon seeing you standing behind him. he sighed in relief as he pulled his headphones down to sit around his neck.
"jesus- you scared me..." chan groaned, rubbing his eyes.
"i'm sorry, channie. i didn't mean to startle you." you replied, smiling sheepishly. chan nodded, turning back to save what he was working on. "how's it going?"
chan hummed. "well, i can't get this chord progression right and the defaults on this program are pretty hard to change, so not too great..." he trailed off again, eyes focused on the audio files disguised as colorful bars on his monitor.
you nodded in understanding (even though chan's back was to you) and glanced at the clock on your phone. it was nearing 11pm and it was clear he wasn't gonna get much further without some sleep.
"do you maybe wanna call it a night?" you asked, your tone soft as your hands made their way to his shoulders. he holding a lot of tension there. again.
"is that why you're here?" chan shot back, causing you to roll your eyes.
"i'm just worried about you, baby. seriously, all you're doing right now is getting yourself worked up. wouldn't some sleep help?" you're still trying to be diplomatic, but here's your boyfriend, stubborn as always.
"you know how sleep is."
"alright, now you're just being difficult. c'mon, i made dinner." you say finally, going to grab his coat from the coat rack. of course, chan did not listen and is still typing away when you come back. "christopher bahng, let's go."
and yet again, he ignored you.
you groaned loudly and threw his coat down, now determined to get his butt up and out of this studio. for a moment, you play with the idea of giving him one last warning, but... it really has been too long since you've seen him laugh anyway.
“your funeral…” you mutter, reaching around the back of the chair to grab at chan’s sides.
“what are you- AH!!” he cried out as soon he felt your fingers on his ticklish skin and then broke off into his squeaky giggles. “wait!! nahaha!!”
“i’ll only stop if you agree to come home~" you singsonged, your fingers tickling anywhere you could reach as chan thrashed in his seat. you knew how ticklish he was, he wouldn't be able to hold out for much longer.
chan shook his head "no" for only a moment before he felt your fingers dig into his lowest ribs. "NAHAHA OKAY!!" he relented, giggling madly. you took your hands away as he caught his breath. "alright, lehet's... let's go home now."
you chuckled and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. "that's what i like to hear!"
Lee Know:
sometimes eating really took too much energy. it was a complete hassle, especially now. you were so close to finishing a giant assignment for university and you were completely locked in. of course, this is the moment your stomach decides to inform you that it is empty.
the hunger pains hit you like a truck, and you groaned as your train of thought was completely derailed. a glance at the time told you that you had been working for hours, which must've been the reason why you were feeling ravenous.
after much deliberation, you decided that you were at a decent stopping point on your assignment, especially seeing as it wasn't due for another couple days. time to go find some food.
the hallway was pitch black when you finally emerged from your office. it had become pretty stuffy in the time you were in there and you took a deep breath as you made your way to the kitchen. it was dark in there as well, and you assumed minho had probably gone to bed awhile ago.
no matter! you were perfectly capable of making yourself something to eat.
at least, that's what you thought before you ended up standing in the refrigerator light, staring down all the options before you. it was much too overwhelming for your tired brain to handle and you ended up standing there for much longer than intended.
arms snaking around your waist and a nose burying itself into your neck was enough to snap you out of your haze.
"what're you doing, jagi?" minho purred in your ear as you grasped at the arms around you.
you leaned back into him. "'m hungry..." you sighed, shutting your eyes briefly.
minho huffed out a small laugh. "yeah? you should eat something. staring at the food won't do anything."
you groaned and turned towards him, wrapping him in an embrace of your own. "i'm too tireddd..." you whined.
"awe, you're too tired? my poor baby." minho hummed, and you could practically feel him smiling against your shoulder.
"don't tease me." you said, smacking his back lightly. "you should be making me food, though. i worked really hard today. i deserve it."
"do you?" he fired back, tone lilting and even more teasing now that you were getting worked up.
"yes! will you? please?" you pulled away from the hug just slightly to give him your best puppy eyes.
minho hummed like he was thinking. "i dunno... i'm kind of tired too..."
"minnn!" you whined once again, squeezing him tightly. as you did, your fingers dug into his sides just slightly, causing him to jolt in your hold.
"yah! don't do that!" minho cried out, suddenly desperate to escape from you.
you laughed as you realized what had happened and dug into his sides once again. "do what? hm?" he bit back a squeal and pushed at your shoulders. "if it tickles so bad, make me food~" you cooed.
minho's blushing face and red were illuminated by the light of the fridge. he looked so cute, but of course he still had to be sassy. "starve." he choked out, still fighting his own laughter.
you raised an eyebrow. "oh? if you won't make me any food, i guess i'll have to look elsewhere." you shrugged and gave him a devilish smirk, before diving forward to begin to nibble at his sensitive neck.
"AHH!! NOHO!!" minho laughed, shoving at your harder now. you held him fast and giggled into his neck at his reactions, which brought out his snorting and made you giggle harder.
the two of you stood in the soft light of the refrigerator, you tickling and minho laughing and trying to fight you off, until he finally relented and agreed to make you some food. he huffed and puffed and called you annoying, but you knew he didn't mean it. it was his fault that he was so sensitive, after all.
Changbin:
it almost seemed like the clock was moving extra slow to taunt you. when changbin said he'd be at the gym for a while, you didn't realize he would be gone this long. it had been nearly 3 hours! you couldn't imagine what he was doing that took so long. stray kids did have a big comeback tour soon, but usually that meant they'd rest in the weeks before they left. surely chan wasn't encouraging changbin to work out this much.
just as you were about to send a text to check in on him, you heard the front door open. moments later, changbin came around the corner and into the dining room where you were sat, doing some work.
"hi baby! how was the gym?" you greeted, beaming at him.
your smile faltered a bit when you took in his appearance. he looked tired and worried, with his brow drawn up and a far-away look in his eyes. you also noticed his hair was damp with sweat, meaning he didn't shower at the gym like normal.
he offered you a small smile and came over to kiss your forehead softly. "it was alright, nothing special." he patted your shoulder and turned to head down the hall. "i'm going to take a shower."
changbin was gone for a quite a while, and in that time you made dinner for the both of you and waited patiently for him to come out. the shower eventually stopped, but instead of him coming to investigate the smell of food like he usually would, you heard the bedroom door shut. you decided to give him some space and ate alone. after another hour, you decided to bring the food to him, just in case he was really too tired to come eat.
"baby?" you called into the bedroom before opening up the door all the way. "i have food for you! do you-," you cut yourself off as your eyes adjusted to the dim light in the bedroom.
changbin was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, legs drawn up to his chest as tears streamed down his cheeks.
"oh my god." you whispered, quickly setting the food on the dresser and practically falling to the floor to take him into your arms. "bin, my baby, what's wrong?"
changbin leaned into your embrace and sniffled, choking back a sob. "the comeback- i don't look good enough- i can't-," he barely got the words out, but you understood immediately.
"oh bin, you're so beautiful and strong- you know all your fans admire you for it!" you cradled the back of his head as he leaned into you and kissed the side of his head. "i do too, of course i do... please don't think so negatively of yourself."
changbin nodded against your shoulder, hands fisted in the sweatshirt you were wearing. "i know, i know. 's hard sometimes."
you hummed in acknowledgement and moved so you could take his face in your hands. "it is, i have days like that too." you wiped at the tear stains on his puffy cheeks and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "but you help me out of them, yeah? so i'll help you too."
changbin nodded once again, flushing slightly at your actions. you giggled when he averted his gaze, trailing your hands down his neck and to his shoulders, and then to his chest. you gave him a teasing look and squeezed his pecs gently. he flushed a deeper shade of red, and bit his lip, swatting at your hands gently.
"you're so strong, my love. and so handsome. i can't help but feel you up~" you giggled, leaning forward to kiss his warm cheeks. changbin opened his mouth to say something, but instead a gasp came out when you ran your fingers over the ticklish spot on the side of his chest. "oh? are you feeling ticklish right now?"
changbin shook his head, intent on scrambling away from you. "bahaby, please!" he pleaded as you caught him in a bear hug.
once you had a good grip, you used your body weight to slow him down and dug into his weak spot with a fervor. changbin screamed immediately, throwing his head back and breaking into loud cackles right after. you laughed at his silly giggles and tickled him some more.
"do you promise to come to me next time you're feeling sad?" you asked once you thought he'd had enough.
"YEHES!!" changbin shrieked, still fighting you (but just barely). his face way flushed and more tears streaked his cheeks, but you knew these ones were good. you let him go, but not before drowning him in about a million kisses.
Hyunjin:
it had been about a year since you'd been able to go home to america, and honestly it was fine with you. sure, you missed your family and friends from back home, but you had made new friends here and met the love of your life. plus, your parents visited just last month. what was there to miss?
ah. that's right. american snacks.
korean snacks were good, but none of them were like what you had back home. none of them tasted like your childhood in the same way a good old bag of american cheetos did. sometimes you think you'd sell your body parts for just one taste of something overly processed from your home country.
when hyunjin ended up leaving for tour in the states, you knew this was your chance. while he was there, you sent him a list of snacks to bring back for you. and he did, arriving home about 9 weeks later with your goodies.
you tried your hardest to savor them, but unfortunately it was yet another good thing that was gone too soon. you were back to missing your snacks once again.
that was, until you came home one afternoon to see hyunjin with a collection of entirely new snacks.
"where did you get those?" you asked as soon as you laid eyes on the items.
"what, no hi first?" hyunjin snarked back at you, and you rolled your eyes.
"hi, baby." you said, not at all sarcastically. "where did you get those?"
hyunjin shrugged. "care package."
you looked at him dumbfounded. "from who?" as far as you knew, he had no american friends.
"your mom." he replied curtly, reaching to grab a small bag of oreo bites from the hoard.
"my mom?! and she didn't send anything for me?" you cried out dramatically, looking through the pile of packaging for any sign of a care package for you.
"it might've been addressed to me and you, but honestly i think i'll just keep it all to myself." hyunjin's voice was teasing, but his words made your blood boil. you leveled an icy glare at his stupidly handsome face.
"you better share." you growled, walking towards him slowly. he just shrugged and moved the pile closer to himself. "hwang hyunjin!"
hyunjin stuck his tongue out at you childishly. "make me~"
even though heat rose to your cheeks at his words, you still wanted those snacks. and maybe you wanted to humble your cheeky boyfriend just a little too.
"fine." you shrugged, giving hyunjin a devilish smile as you rounded the coffee table. you plopped down on the couch and tackled him onto his back, your hand immediately finding the familiar spot on his right side. hyunjin didn't put up much of a fight as you dug your fingers into the spot and burst into loud cackles. you cooed at him teasingly, moving so you caged him in beneath you. "aww, did someone wanna be tickled?"
"GAHAHA!! NOHOHO!!" he cried out, throwing his head back as more screams of mirth poured from his lips.
"no? are you sure? does that mean i can have some of the snacks?" you punctuated this question with a jab to his ribs on the left side, which had him gasping and reaching for your hands.
"WAHAHAIT!! AH- AHAHA!! PLEHEHEASE!!" hyunjin forced the words out between loud laughs, his hips bucking from beneath you. you leaned forward to see glistening trails of tears running down his cheeks. you didn't wanna kill him, so you let up on the attacks on his midsection in favor of scratching gently at his neck.
hyunjin was panting and squirming beneath you, soft giggles escaping him as he looked up at you with half-lidded, teary eyes. god, he was so attractive.
"so? are you done being a snack tyrant?" you asked, smiling down at him and dropping a kiss to his wet cheek.
hyunjin shivered when you accidentally scratched at the especially sensitive spot below his right ear, and nodded. "yehehes, yes i'm dohone!"
finally, you stopped your tickling and dropped a quick peck on his lips. "good! i've been craving cheetos like crazy." you chirped as you climbed off of him.
hyunjin sighed and watched you go searching through the pile. you were lucky he loved you so much. he didn't share snacks with just anyone after all.
Han:
"han jisung, i swear to everything that is good and holy, if you sing that song one more time, i'm going to freak out!"
"babyyyy! ed sheeran is so good! i can't help it!"
this had been an ongoing argument for most of the day. you just wanted some help decorating for christmas, and of course your wonderful boyfriend was more than willing to help. you expected a day of holiday music, a fire in the fire place, and maybe some hot cocoa. instead, jisung had officially ruined "shape of you" by ed sheeran (although, let's be honest, that song was pretty much ruined anyway). over and over and over again he sang the chorus. sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes in english, and sometimes poorly translated in korean. he said he needed the practice for when they translated their own songs, but that seemed like an excuse.
regardless, you were at your wit's end and you just needed him to stop.
"my love, you know i adore your singing, but please pick a new song. there are so many nice christmas songs!" you said, rooting through box after box in search of your christmas tree star.
jisung was looking through a box of his own and sighed loudly at your words. "fineee. it's just stuck in my head!" you shot him a look. "...but i'll find something else to sing..." he grumbled in defeat.
"good. ah!" you reached into the box and pulled out the shiny gold star. "found it. wanna put it at the top of the tree for me, ji?" jisung immediately perked up and nodded, grabbing the star from you and quickly scaling the ladder you had set up next to the tree. you laughed and stood behind him, grasping his waist when he wobbled a bit as he reached to set the star on top. "be careful!" you scolded playfully, giving his waist a squeeze.
jisung nearly fell of the later again when he felt the squeeze, clasping his hands over yours as he buckled over with a yelp. you giggled and took your hands off him as he climbed down.
"sorry baby, i didn't mean to tickle you~" you cooed, kissing his reddening cheek. jisung pouted a bit at you, but when you moved to grab his hips again, he ran back to the boxes to find the lights and ornaments.
the two of you spent another hour decorating the tree without much more incident. the lights were sort of a pain to untangle after having been in storage, but eventually you had gotten them placed on the tree while jisung began to hang ornaments from the highest branches. after the lights were all plugged in, you went back to get some ornaments of your own. jisung was still stood on the ladder with his back turned to you when you heard a faint murmur.
"girl you know i want your love..." the sound just barely reached your ears, but it was enough to draw your attention.
"jisung. what was that?" you asked, crossing your arms. jisung made a coughing sound, glancing back at you briefly.
"um. nothing?" his words were unsure, and you knew he was being a little liar because of the blush sneaking up the back of his neck.
"oh really? did ed sheeran's ghost just invade our home then? because i was sure i heard someone singing shape of you again." you said, words teasing as you walked back over to where jisung stood on the ladder.
"yeah! yeah that must be it. i dunno what else it could be." he still wouldn't look at you.
"oh you don't? well i definitely do." with that, you reached up and started squeezing at his hips. jisung was just able to hang the last ornament in his grasp before he squealed and collapsed backwards. luckily he wasn't too far off the ground and you could catch him before he hurt himself.
you wrapped you arms around him, hands poised to attack his sensitive little waist. jisung craned his head back to look at you, his eyes wide and pleading.
"baby! please don't!! i'm sorry, i won't sing it again!" he whined, squirming in anticipation.
you gave him a look of faux sympathy before you dug right back into his flesh. the pinching, massaging, and scratching had jisung weak in the knees as loud laughter escaped him.
"GAHAHA!! NOHOHO!!" he shrieked, kicking out. you sure were glad that you were behind him now.
you giggled at his reactions and pressing ticklish kisses to the back of his neck, causing him to throw his head back and wack you in the nose.
immediately, you let him go with a cry of pain and cupped your throbbing nose. blood poured from your nostrils, covering your hands and face.
"oh no! oh no, baby, i'm so sorry-" jisung cried, pulling you into a tight hug, clearly not caring that he was wearing a white sweatshirt. when he pulled away, he took your face into his hands. "lemme see. i need to see if it's broken." after a trip to the bathroom to stem the bleeding and some poking and prodding, it was determined that nothing was broken. some cuddles on the couch healed your bruised ego, however, that was probably the last time you'd tickle your boyfriend for a while.
Felix:
"felixxx! you know i can't make them like you do... will you please help me?" you whined, throwing yourself dramatically on the bed.
you were on your period and absolutely fiending for some of your boyfriend's brownies. they were relatively simple to make, but you could never make them like felix did. and now he was outright refusing to make you any, instead playing games on his PC with seungmin. what were you supposed to do??
felix snorted out a laugh at your words but made no move to turn away from his game. he had been playing league of legends with seungmin since he got home from rehearsal. which was only like an hour ago, but still- didn't they get enough of each other already?
"are you even beating him?" you asked, now staring up at the ceiling.
felix let out an affirmative hum. "yep, he's losing. badly." he sounded way too smug.
you scoffed and sat back up. "yeah? i doubt it." you moved to stand beside his gaming chair and took a look at his monitor screen. it looked like felix was winning. "huh. surprising."
your boyfriend huffed at you and reached over to grab at your side.
"hey!" you cried out, jumping away from him and muttering, "jerk."
"watch it, i won't help you if you're mean to me."
you groaned, and sat back down on the foot of the bed. felix went back to his game and you watched him, praying he'd be done after this last round. the gentle clicking of his keyboard would be relaxing- if you weren't craving the brownies with every part of your being. no matter, you could be patient.
thankfully, by the time your patience had worn thin, felix was powering down his PC. you sat up, ready to go make the brownies and finally halt your craving in its tracks, when you were tackled back onto the bed. a head of blond hair started nuzzling into the crook of your neck, and the familiar tickling feeling make you jolt.
"gah! i thought we were gonna make brownies!" you cried out, making felix's chuckles reverberate through your body. in sharp contrast to your words, your hands just naturally slipped beneath his sweater and began to trace shapes on his back.
"'m tired." felix grumbled against your neck. you knew he was being a little shit to get you angry. you could practically feel him smirking.
"lix! please? can't we cuddle after?" you were getting more and more restless.
he made another noncommittal noise, so you decided to take matters into your own hands. literally.
"felix, if you don't get up and help me make brownies, i will tickle you within an inch of your life." as the threat left your mouth, you wrapped your arms tightly around his waist.
"i- what? GAH!"
you dug your fingers into his sides when you didn't hear an immediate "yes i'll help you", and felix immediately began to thrash on top of you, desperate to get away. but your hold was tight and you weren't budging until he gave you the answer you wanted.
"NAHAHA!! I'M SOHOHORRY PLEHEHEASE!!" felix screamed, barely able to speak through his laughter. he was so loud, especially since he was right by your ear. part of you hoped he learned his lesson soon, but the other, more sadistic part of you hoped you could tickle him until he passed out.
fortunately for felix, you did still want those brownies. you let up your attack just a bit so he could catch his breath and finally agree to help you out. he did, pulling away from you with a flushed face and frizzy hair, still giggling like a kid.
you smiled and smoothed his hair out, pressing a kiss to his lips before scooting off the bed. the rest of the evening was spent in the kitchen, felix teaching you how to perfect his recipe and you marveling at just how lucky you were.
Seungmin:
movie nights with all of the members of stray kids were your favorite, no contest. you always had so much fun when all nine of you gathered together to watch whatever film they voted on, either taking over one of the dorms or your apartment. in dating seungmin, you gained a whole friend group that you couldn't be more thankful for on top of a cute, caring, and funny boyfriend.
tonight, the movie was kill bill: volume 2 (you had watched the first one all together last week), and you all were wondering if the bride would actually kill bill this time. unfortunately, you never got the answer to that question because you ended up falling asleep only 30 minutes into the movie.
"hey," a soft voice roused you. "we're gonna head out, is seungmin okay staying here?"
you opened your eyes to make out the form of chan standing over you with a soft smile on his face. everyone else was standing by the door, and they waved "bye" when you looked over.
"yeah, yeah, no, he's fine. where is he-," as you went to sit up, you felt a weight on your lap and looked down to see seungmin fast asleep on your lap. chan giggled a bit at you, and you gave him a sheepish smile. "ah. yeah, he's fine."
"alright. let me know what you thought of the movie if you get a chance to finish it." he said, headed towards the door to join his members. you nodded and waved as they left.
after the front door shut, you rubbed your eyes and stretched, reaching for your phone on the coffee table beside you. the screen lit up and you saw that it was late. oh well, you had weekend off, as did seungmin.
your eyes moved to the boy sleeping in your lap. he was on his side facing you, his cheek squished against your thighs as he let out soft, hardly audible breaths. you smiled. he was pretty cute when he was asleep. he was cute all the time, but when he was sleeping he had the tendency to be significantly less annoying.
while you were perfectly content staying on the couch and allowing seungmin to use you as a pillow, your bladder had other ideas.
you really had to pee.
at first, you tried to move gently off of your lap, but either he was really heavy or you were really weak because he was not moving. no matter, you just had to wake him up. it wasn't ideal, especially because he gets grumpy after naps, but peeing yourself was not on your agenda tonight.
gently, you brushed his bangs away from his eyes and patted his cheek. "min? baby, i have to pee. why don't you go get some clothes to change into and i'll meet you in my bed?"
seungmin groaned, turning to bury his face further into your lap.
you sighed and ran your fingers through his hair. "can you move just a bit? please?" no response from the sleepy boy. "kim seungmin, i swear to god..." you muttered.
suddenly, an idea came to you. it was mean, but you had no choice if he wasn't going to move on his own. you moved your hand from his hair and rested it on the nape of his neck. seungmin didn't react, so you gently scratched at his skin.
he shifted and tried to pull away from your hand while still using your legs as a pillow. you felt him start to shake as he tried to bite back his giggles. he was awake, that brat.
"seungmin, i know you're awake~," you cooed, bringing your other hand to double the attack on his neck. "better move or this will get a whole lot worse."
seungmin rolled over just enough so that you could see the sleepy smile on his lips as he giggled. "nohoho!"
"no? alright, whatever you say." changing tactics, you reached down and began to massage his sides quickly. your boyfriend let out a yelp of surprise and tried to roll away, which only ended up with him on the ground.
you followed him as he went, tickling wherever you could reach when he landed on his front. once he was fully off of you, you squeezed his hips one more time, patted his butt, and got up to run to the bathroom. seungmin whined at you, promising revenge.
he wasn't actually gonna do anything to you, he was too tired. that is, until you turned around before you reached the hallway and stuck your tongue out at him. oh, you were in for it.
I.N:
as much as you loved your boyfriend, sometimes he sucked, especially when you wanted to cuddle. granted, you knew when you started dating him that he was not one for a lot of physical touch. in fact it was one of the first things you learned about him.
however, once you started dating him, you realized that you were his kyptonite. he didn't like cuddling unless he was cuddling you. he hated to admit it, but it was true.
it was friday and your week had been complete shit. with changes happening to the company you worked for, you had been at risk of getting laid off. you didn't, thankfully, but you did lose a few coworkers that you were close to and now you had to take on their workload as well. all in all, it was beyond stressful and you just needed some affection.
jeongin knew that. of course he did.
so why was he cleaning the kitchen instead of joining you on the couch?
"innie! please? i'm so lonely..." you called from the couch, slumped over dramatically.
"in a minute, jagi. i have to finish cleaning up." he said, glancing up at you with a smile that was just big enough for his dimples to peek out. god, he would be the death of you.
you looked away from him to avoid flustering yourself and crossed your arms over your chest. "yeah, whatever. dinner wasn't even that messy..."
jeongin chuckled at your words and went back to cleaning.
about ten minutes later, you decided the kitchen was clean enough. you pulled yourself from the couch and walked into the kitchen, pulling him into a back hug.
"are you getting restless?" he asked, his voice teasing.
"i miss you..." you mumbled into his back.
"missed me? where have i been that caused you to miss me?" at his words, you reached beneath his sweatshirt and tweaked his side. he let out an "ah!" and tried to pull away from your grip.
you giggled. "don't be a smartass. come cuddle."
"i will, i will. i just need to- AH! dohon't!!" you cut him off with his own giggles as you started squeezing his sides again. jeongin collapsed forward, leaning against the counter as you tickled him gently.
you weren't sure where you got the idea to do this, but it seemed to be encouraging him to listen for once.
at least, that was until he suddenly broke free from your grasp and began to run like his life depended on it.
"hey!" you cried out, following him down the hallway.
jeongin slipped into the bedroom and tried to shut it before you could get in, but you caught the door before it swung shut and tackled him onto the bed. you boyfriend started laughing in anticipation before you even touched him, which was so cute that you couldn't just let him go now.
though he was stronger than you, you managed to pin him in a way that allowed you one free hand to wreck every spot you could reach. you squeezed his sides, scratched his tummy, counted his ribs, and even dug into his armpits when he tried to push you away.
jeongin was thoroughly exhausted by the time you were done with him, red, tear-streaked face and all. he was practically boneless as you let him go, only moving to pull you into his chest and press a kiss to your hair.
finally, you got the cuddles you craved (and one slightly vengeful boyfriend), and your shitty week suddenly had a bright side.
402 notes · View notes
stellayuta · 5 months ago
Text
Love on The Grid - Formula 1 AU! Yuta Okkotsu - Pt 5 (FINALE)
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Your likes, comments and reblogs really encourage me to write more! So do interact with this post and let me know your thoughts 💙
PART 1 ||| PART 2 ||| PART 3 ||| PART 4 ||| PART 5
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synopsis: One-night stands were nothing but a necessary painkiller for your inability to cross paths with true love. Your most recent find at a Vegas Club was no different. He was boring, obedient, SLOW! You leave him high and hanging hoping you'd never see him again until you find yourself gawking at a supersized billboard of him on a Vegas highway with the title 'LEGEND RETURNS TO VEGAS'.
content: 18+ only. Formula one driver! Yuta x f! reader, all sorts of sexy stuff (fingering, oral, orgasm denial), swearing, angsty elements, cheating and discussion of mental health <3 WARNING! Always use protection!
word count: 10k
a/n: part 5 and the final part! For the purpose of this story, Last race of the season takes place in Japan, not Abu Dhabi.
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"Y/N..." A voice tries to break your rigid concentration. "Listen, Y/N..."
"What!" you snap finally, turning to face your anxious coworker. You look away from your monitor to find one of the timid interns holding her laptop shakily, mortified at your outburst. You clear your throat and quickly readjust your computer glasses.
"I'm sorry about that, I was just going through some of the client meeting notes." You clarify, pointing at your screen. "What's wrong?"
"No, I just wanted to make sure the tickets were booked right. I've never traveled out of the county. And this is such a big deal as an intern, I-I want to make sure I do everything right!" she blurts out, making you give her a small, nostalgic smile. You remember when you were an intern - tiny, timid, clueless. When you moved out of your small town, you left behind all the things that restricted or haunted you. Now your new job is flashier than ever, in the heart of a metropolitan city, buzzing with people and possibilities and with a promotion on the horizon. It had been a year, and you don't even remember Megumi's face anymore. You had no hard feelings and not even a single second of your time left to give to him anymore.
It was hard at first of course, but encouragement and support from your friends and a lot of self-work soon helped you find balance and self-satisfaction in life. You were at your healthiest at this point. Away from turmoil and away from self-doubt.
"Y/N, did you listen?" the intern looked at you nervously, derailing your train of thought yet again.
"Come again, sorry."
"The other Manager has recommended your name to accompany me at the Tech Summit, with two other interns. He said you'll be able to manage us properly. They've already booked your tickets."
You almost choke on the coffee you're sipping.
"What? Who the hell gave them-" you begin to roar but then looking at the poor girl cower in fear, you sit back down.
"No, no. I'm not mad at you."
You were mad because this was the weekend of the last race. The decider match.
Of course, it had been a year, you had metamorphosized, moved on. But you never forgot the race that got you on the edge of your seat back in Vegas. And neither did you forget the man who drove you crazy with lust. Not even for a single day. His business card was still hidden underneath your phone cover, creaseless. You had never dared to look at his number.
Now, you cheered him on as a fan. Following his races, rooting for him. Every now and then, your heart would ache - but you were happy for him. The only connection you had with him was through your device screen.
After a disappointing end to his last season, you had a lot of guilt. He clearly looked a bit weary, insomnia ridden for sure. Not willing to talk during interviews, keeping a low profile. He had gathered a lot of negative press because of this, people on social media sending him death threats, cyber bullying him, picking apart anything he said or did. It broke you to see him that way and there were many times you wanted to reach out - comfort him. But you knew it wasn't right.
You weren't ready then and he definitely didn't need a reminder that you happened to him. And now, it's too late for any of that.
Yuta maintained his aggressive, dominant racing style that he cultivated over the last year compared to the calm, calculative run he had during the years prior. It was a shock to the grid, but newer fans were very fond of the new beast that the track had birthed. He spoke less, remained polite and stayed out of trouble - focusing everything on winning races.
Fan interaction was the least of his concerns right now because Geto's team, Red Bull - had come up with massive and effective updates making the fight for the title a challenging yet thrilling one. They wanted to continue their laurels from last year and secure Geto his second win. They were closely tailed by Gojo and Geto's teammate, Mahito.
Geto and Yuta were currently tied in the standings. The final match was to take place on Sunday. The decider. Yuta and Geto's home race. And you would now miss it because that stupid manager can't be bothered to move his ass.
"I have plans. I can't make it." you flatly tell the intern who merely frowns. She was probably prepared to get a rejection from me because she is ready with her rebuttal. "The manager said you had committed a few weekends this summer. He just picked this one based on that."
"I'll talk to him." you reply, shaking your head and pinching your throbbing temple. With great responsibilities, come great migraines.
"Where is the summit anyway?" you ask, already typing out a message for her manager.
"Oh, It's in Japan. I'm quite excited, it's a beautiful country."
Japan?
You backspace the entire message.
"Never mind, I'm coming." You leave your laptop open as the split window flashes with a formula one ad - "Decider Race in Suzuka, Japan. Join the Fun, December this Year!"
"Let me meet up with your supervisors and talk more."
*****
The immigration at Japan's Nagoya International Airport, with three kids tailing you, hiding behind you like puppies is a bit of hassle with the language barrier and everything, but you persist regardless.
It's rather comfortably cool but not bitingly cold, even for December, owing to Suzuka's more southern location - compared to Tokyo. There is no sign of snowfall as you witnessed from the airplane while it descended. It would be good conditions for the race - a bit dry perhaps. And of course, the summit, the main attraction!
The interns, though a bit overwhelmed by the new environment, are starting to show signs of excitement as well. Their initial shyness is giving way to curiosity, their eyes wide with wonder at the sights and sounds of the bustling airport. You smile, knowing that this experience will be a memorable adventure for them too.
You are finally able to catch a shuttle to the hotel you're staying at - a five star one (courtesy of your company) and are finally able to relax, staring out the foggy window at the organized and clean Japanese streets, and the people, dressed in plain, formal clothes walking to work perhaps. You almost get lost in the mundanity of it all until the interns alert you that the hotel is here.
You all get down with all your luggage and gawk at the premier hotel building with its cream granite exterior, European design and tall pillars. It looked a bit out of place in the minimalistic spread of Suzuka. There is already a line at the receptionist's desk when you near it, making you sigh.
"Ah foo-" you turn to face your interns. "Can one of you hold the place while I sit somewhere?" The interns hesitantly, but definitively shake their head to say No. Kids, they grow up fast.
You stand in line for what feels like an hour but is only a few minutes until you hear an entourage approach you with their shiny, expensive luggage and matching clothes.
"We have VIP access, let us cut." one of them, a suited and no-nonsense woman tells you. You raise a brow at her, staring at her chapping red lips and burgundy jacket.
"Like hell. Cut after us, we're going first." You tell them flatly.
"Listen, we don't have time for this so please just comply..." the woman tries to negotiate but you don't want to budge.
"I don't have time either." you raise your hand.
"Let me handle this..." A man steps in front of the woman, towering over both of you. He is completely covered head to toe in a red beanie, red track suit and dark glasses with a black face-mask. Before he can say anything though, he simply looks at you and your interns.
"Y/N?" He removes his glasses to show a pair of cerulean eyes that you immediately match with a snowy head and a flashy personality in your brain.
"No way..." you clasp at your mouth. "Gojo Satoru?" you exclaim, confusing the parade of staff, probably Ferrari staff behind him.
"Next!" the receptionist bellows before you two can talk further and you make haste, finishing up the formalities, grabbing the keycard and returning to talk to Gojo, followed by your heard of puppies who look at Gojo skeptically. Of course they would, if a flashy, red man showed up.
"I'm- Where the hell have you been? You just disappeared!" He says and you open your mouth to defend yourself but he clearly has more to say.
"Yuta was distraught! What the hell happened between the two of you anyway! He won't talk to Geto, well they are kind of on weird terms now anyway. But he won't even talk to me!"
Hearing Yuta's name makes you immediately divert your eyes.
"H-How has he been?" you ask, softly.
"Well he was in a mood last season. We were all afraid he'd run us over with his Merc." Gojo admits, recalling some eerie memory of Yuta. "Well, specifically he was angry. But wouldn't talk about it. He got reprimanded by the management of course and started to focus his anger on the races instead." He tells you.
"I mean, he was always a beast on the track, a once in a generation talent. But now, he's simply incomparable. The only races he lost out on this season were ones where he pushed the car so hard, the engine or the mechanism went off."
Internally, you are happy that Yuta seems to be doing well. But somewhere, you feel a pang of discomfort. This isn't the Yuta you know. Or any of his peers know.
"Give me your number by the way..." Gojo asks, excitedly, removing his phone, also bright red. Human Ferrari he is, for sure.
"What for?"
"To leak on the internet..."
"Gojo..."
"What to hang out of course. And I have something to send to you." He says, forcing you to divulge your number which you do, with a grimace. What could go wrong anyway.
"Oh, and I don't know if you're still on talking terms with Yuta but, he's on floor 5 of this hotel, meet him if you want-" Gojo tells you and your heart skips a beat. You sneak a glance at your keycard and feel your throat go dry. You are on floor 5 as well. Before you can say anything else though, the Ferraris are on their way.
"Make sure you are free tomorrow! It's race day!" He says, without turning as their entourage enters the glass elevators.
"How do you know him, Y/N, he was quite hot..." One of the interns tugs at your elbow.
"Was he a former sweetheart?" The other intern grins at you.
"Hell no!" you snap. "That's a professional formula one racer. Watch ESPN a bit more, kids." you say, pulling them along with you to floor 5. You hope and pray with all your might that you don't run into Yuta at any point. Only when you send them off to their suites and enter your own, you finally take a huge breath of relief.
You thought you were over Yuta as well. That you could look at him and interact with him as fan. Maybe that was the case, given you'd never see run into him again. You cover your reddening face with your hands as you slump down to the ground and go into memory mode. It all comes back to you all of a sudden. His height, his dark hair, his large, innocent eyes, his firm, toned body and careful hands. His calming voice and his cozy demeanor. The more you think about him, the soggier your panties feel. You cannot afford to get out of this hotel room and run into him. You have no idea what you will do to him if you see him. Plus, what if he has a girlfriend now? Control yourself, Y/N. Show maturity.
You suck in a harsh breath and get off the carpeted floor, instead removing your laptop from your bag and checking emails to distract yourself. An ad keeps popping up in the corner of your screen though - about the Decider Race in Suzuka. And after all your attempts to ignore it, you finally click on it, annoyed.
You go through the seats and the prices. Even the cheapest, general admission ticket you can find sells for a fortune, making you gasp at the numbers. Great. This gives you a solid reason to NOT go. Now you can use it as an excuse to convince your brain that you are not losing out on an opportunity.
You shut the tab and continue looking at your agenda for tomorrow, smiling and humming to yourself in relief. That is until you hear your phone buzz to life, beside your laptop.
You check it to see a few messages from an unknown number.
"Helloooo!!!"
"Gojo here. Satoru Gojo. Handsomest driver on the grid. Ferrari's muse and face."
"You are already 20 seconds late at replying. Be quicker!"
You cringe at the string of messages and send him a thumbs up emoji as a reply, snickering menacingly when he sends another string of complaints. You wonder if Gojo too has a queue of women waiting for him to notice them. In that case, has he been influencing Yuta too?
You shut the thought down immediately. You're a fan. You remind yourself.
"Look what I got for you. Thank me later."
*Attached File*
Did he send you a trojan virus? nope. It's worse.
You open up the PDF file to find a ticket of some sort. Only it's the paddock VIP ticket for the race tomorrow. You'll be in Ferrari's stands.
You type out a long, long, long message. One full of swears and reprimands. But you backspace all of it and instead hit the call button.
"Ah, hi. Did you see-"
"WHAT'S THE MEANING OF THIS GOJO SATORU!" you shriek into the phone receiver earning a yelp from Gojo.
"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity, Y/N. You can't say no."
"But-"
"I've already paid."
"....."
"Oh, come on. Cheer for me. Come. You'll have fun!"
You are too angry to answer, and you simply cut the call. After your five minutes of anger subsides, anxiety takes its place. So, this is it. You get to see Yuta demolish the track live. Maybe this will be the last time ever. Maybe it's a good thing.
You decide to not think too much about it and just sleep on it instead. And sleep comes fairly easy, after your day-long air travel and the nervousness that maybe Yuta is hugging his blankets with his muscular arms, right next door. You picture those arms around your waist for a second and reminisce his deep blue eyes as you fall asleep, a bit bothered and surely wet.
*****
The next morning, you wake up before the sun even has a chance to show its face. You take a cold shower and prepare everything for the day to come. The Tech Summit will be a crucial stage to showcase your company and you, and your interns have to do a good job. As soon as the clock strikes 7, you go knocking on their doors to wake them up by force.
"Rise and shine, children! We've got some serious networking ahead of us!" you announce with infectious enthusiasm. Suddenly, the volume of your voice strikes you, and a wave of panic sweeps over you at the thought of waking Yuta. The mere idea of him hearing your voice and peeking out from one of the doors sends a shiver down your spine. With your heart racing, you quickly inform the interns that you're heading to the reception area. Without missing a beat, you make your escape, your high heels tapping a rhythm masked by the plush carpet that blankets the entire floor, each step a silent testament to your urgency.
The ground floor lobby of the hotel in the morning is a serene yet bustling oasis of activity. Sunlight streams in through the large, floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a warm, golden glow across the polished marble floors. The air is filled with a subtle blend of fresh coffee and the delicious aroma of breakfast from the lavish dining court, north of the lobby. Plush, modern sofas and armchairs are arranged in cozy clusters, inviting guests to sit and relax.You were too busy with Gojo to notice any of this, last evening. 
As you walk around amongst the many hotel guests who are going about their way, enthralled, you take a seat in one of the sofas. You even see familiar colors, worn by some of the people in groups. You see the full teals of Aston Martin, the pinks of Alpine, the orange of McLaren. Looks like the entire grid is housed in this hotel. You gulp as you try to keep an eye out for any sight of black and subtle teal of Mercedes. 
Instead, you feel a shifting of feet beside you and find a group of dark blue and red clad people looking rather grave and sitting on adjacent sofas, in a close huddle. It doesn’t take too long to recognize long, sleek hair half tied up and half down. His snake-like eyes scan the huddle, as if he’s commanding them. You don’t forget the aura of Geto Suguru. A pale guy, with wild matted and blue hair sits beside him, with a manic expression on his face, like he’s his lap dog. This must be Mahito. They seem to be having some sort of serious conversation with their team. You can’t help but listen in, keeping your eyes on the ground. 
“So what are we going to do about Strategy A?” one of the Red Bull engineers asks Geto, in a low voice, looking around to see if any of the teams are paying attention.
“Act normal, Garner.” Geto tells him, smiling sweetly but darkly. “Don’t act suspicious and no one will notice.”
“We are to proceed with Strategy B. We don’t attack the rest of the grid today. We will only focus on the Mercedes duo.” Geto states.
“That was the plan all along.” The Red Bull staff interjects. “What are you saying?”
“Well your plan was for me to defend against Okkotsu and Mahito to defend against Merc number 2, Inumaki.” Geto begins as the team leans in closer to pay attention. Mahito seems strangely excited to get a mention from Geto.
“My plan is that we leave Inumaki alone. He’s of no consequence to us. He’ll be too busy defending against the Ferraris.” Geto continues and your brows furrow. What is he on to?
“I am sitting on the pole. And Okkotsu is second. The best way to go about it is to get Mahito to play on the offensive. Okkotsu gets rash and risky when faced with competition or close tailers. It is likely Mahito and Okkotsu will take each other out.”
Your eyes widen as you hear this. 
“And Inumaki has the slower car. Ferrari’s engineers wouldn’t anticipate number 2 and 3 being knocked out. They are more prepared for a podium finish, not the top finish. This will ensure that Red Bull will go home with the Driver’s Championship trophy.” Geto concludes his idea and the Red Bull team immediately begin discussing its feasibility. From the sound of it, most of them seem on board. Mahito seems to be the most excited, willing to give anything for Geto to get his second title.
The absurdity of the ongoing discussion is enough for you to look up and find yourself directly looking into Geto Suguru’s skeptical eyes. Your nostrils flare and a sweat breaks out atop your forehead at the thought of being caught. He narrows his eyes at you but dismisses you as a fan. He doesn’t recognize you. 
Thank GOODNESS.
You smile at him and quickly move away from their group of sofas. As fast as you can. So they are going to use Yuta’s driving style against him today. Which is fine. They are willing to crash into him to take him out as well. This is all a pre-planned, premeditated attempt to injure, or…you gulp… murder.
You lean against one of the reception desks to gather yourself for a minute. The lobby’s morning hustle now feels like a surreal backdrop to the chilling plot you’ve just overheard. The hum of conversations, the clinking of breakfast dishes, and the soft footsteps of guests blend into a muted buzz as your mind races. You need to warn Yuta, but how? 
Your interns show up soon, their bright, eager faces a stark contrast to the dark conversation you just overheard. They’re ready to go for the summit, unaware of the dangerous game being plotted in the corner of the lobby. As they approach, you take a deep breath, plaster on a smile, and try to push the sinister revelations to the back of your mind. You don’t see the Mercedes team anywhere in the lobby anyway, so you take your leave for the moment, feeling a tightness in your chest.
While the task at hand is crucial, you are more than confident that you can handle it flawlessly. The Tech Summit is being held at one of the corporate headquarters in the city area, a sleek skyscraper with reflective glass windows that glisten in the morning sun. As you step into the spacious lobby, you are greeted by an impressive display of innovation: booths showcasing various avenues in computing. Executives in sharp suits mingle with tech enthusiasts, the air buzzing with excitement and possibility.
Once you are in, you send off your beaming and well-prepared interns to talk to some big shots, their enthusiasm palpable as they approach various booths and networking clusters. You retire to a quiet corner, checking your phone and brainstorming for your next move. It's only a few hours until the race in Suzuka, Japan, a pivotal event in the Formula One calendar. The summit’s focus on the intersection of technology and sports is evident, with several companies proudly displaying their investments in Formula One.
Tech giants are pouring millions into F1, not just for branding but for the practical applications of cutting-edge technology in car performance, data analytics, and real-time communication systems. The fusion of high-speed racing and high-tech innovation is a perfect synergy, driving advancements that benefit both the automotive and tech industries.
However, the tension from earlier this morning lingers. Despite the engaging presentations and lively discussions around you, the clandestine conversation you overheard refuses to leave your mind. The race in Suzuka today is more than just a sporting event—it’s a battleground where the stakes are life and death, a thought that chills you as you consider Geto’s ruthless strategy.
You open your phone to find a few messages from Gojo and it makes a bulb go off in your head.
“Come to the hotel lobby at around 4PM. I’ll send someone to pick you up. I’m at the track right now.” He has texted. You read the message and pull out Yuta’s card from your phone cover. You don’t waste time and call him right away. A woman receives your call on the other end.
“Hello! Is Yuta free?” you ask, desperately but you can tell from the woman’s silence that it is not the case.
“He won’t be free until after the race. I’m sorry.”
‘I-it’s fine.” you laugh nervously, keeping the phone.
That idea was a bust.
Before you can think more, you are pulled in by one of your interns to help you out with a heated discussion they are having with a company representative on use cases of Artificial Intelligence. The rest of the morning and afternoon goes this way, with your hands full of discussions and debates with Men in Tech, mistaking you for one of the interns until you sigh and show them your badge of ‘Director of Software Engineering’, before obliterating them during the ‘discussions’ with a curt smile.
You don’t think about the race until after you have exited the premises of the Summit along with your pumped up interns who are waxing lyrical about you. They won’t stop talking even on the cab ride back home.
“That was amazing Y/N. You saved our necks.”
“Just be confident and patient till they give you a moment to strike.” you tell them wearily. 
Probably a strategy Mahito will be using today. 
“Do we go out today for drinks? How about it?” The interns begin discussing among themselves while I tune them out, shaking my leg in agitation.
“Y/N, want to join us?” one of them asks you eagerly and politely reject their invitation.
“I have plans today.”
“What plans?” The male intern asks, curious. The other two also lean in to listen.
“I am going to watch a Formula One Race, it’s in Suzuka.” You tell them and their eyes go all sparkly before they begin smirking at you.
“It’s the hot driver guy isn’t it. He invited you? That’s awesome Y/N! Looks like he’s interested!” This makes you scoff. “He’s just a friend. He’s not the one I have eyes for anyway.”
“Oooo, so there is someone you have eyes for!” they chime together. “Who is it?” 
An image instantly pops into your head. One of him hovering over you as you moaned out his name. You smile to yourself and dismiss the interns’ questions, making all of them pout.
As you enter the hotel lobby, a stark contrast from its earlier bustling atmosphere greets you. The lively chatter and movement have dissipated, leaving behind an eerie quiet that amplifies the grandeur of the space. The reception area, usually a hub of activity, is now manned by a solitary staff member who nods politely as you pass.
Heading towards the elevator, a wave of unease washes over you, chilling your hands. Should you attempt to find Yuta by knocking on every door on the fifth floor? No, that would likely result in being ejected from the hotel.
Entering your room with a frustrated grunt, you slam the door shut behind you. Another cold shower helps clear your mind, though your appetite remains nonexistent. Stomach growling, you mechanically brush your teeth and change out of your morning pant suit into a comfortable ensemble: a red sweater, blue jeans, and sneakers. The choice of red is a nod to Ferrari, aligning with your plans for the day.
Feeling more at ease in casual attire, you pause to gather your thoughts. It’s 3:45 PM. You should head out now. You grab your phone, keys and wallets and walk out of the suite, impatiently trotting towards the elevator. You turn the corner just in time to see it close. Maybe you are hallucinating but you barely spot a glint of black and teal behind the doors as they swiftly close.
You stop dead in your tracks for merely a moment before you sprint towards the elevator. But that one is gone now. You press the down button for the second one and tap your foot on the ground, waiting for it to arrive desperately. 
When it takes you down to the ground floor, you come out, wildly looking around to see the familiar colors again. When you finally see them, your words all drown in your feelings as you see the black and teal clad man get into the back of a car, giving the driver a quick nod and a short smile. 
It was from fairly far away that you saw him, but you were certain. It was Yuta.
You have to hold yourself upright as you nearly begin hyperventilating and the receptionist has to come and check on you.
“I-I’m sorry, I’m fine.” you assure him, as he makes you sit on one of the sofas. You watch intently through the glass windows as Yuta’s car zooms past. That was your chance! If only you had come out two minutes earlier and weren’t drifting away in your fantasies.
You had to focus now. You can’t afford to have your legs turn to jelly or your head spin out of control anymore.
When the person meant to pick you up arrived, donning a red jacket and black pants, you were completely calm and composed — now willing to think clearly about what to do next.
The drive to the Suzuka Circuit is rather short for obvious reasons. The hotel had been picked to be accessible from the circuit. The car your driver has brought along isn’t a Ferrari, unfortunately.
Arriving at Suzuka Circuit as the evening settles in, the atmosphere is electric with anticipation. The sprawling complex is illuminated by bright floodlights, casting long shadows across the paddock and grandstands. The air buzzes with the hum of engines from nearby practice sessions and the excited chatter of fans who have gathered from around the world to witness the fight for domination between Red Bull and Mercedes.
The paddock itself is a hive of activity. Teams in their distinctive colors, now suited up in their race-suits, bustle about, mechanics fine-tuning the cars under the watchful eyes of engineers. Media personnel dart between interviews, capturing the pre-race fervor and probing for insights. Paparazzi lurk at every corner, their cameras flashing intermittently as they seek shots of drivers and celebrities who have shown up to support the drivers/take pictures for social media.You stare at the whole spread, starry eyed and very much in awe. It feels surreal as the world around you moves at 2x speed.
The cars themselves are a spectacle to behold. The sleek, aerodynamic designs gleam under the lights, adorned with sponsor logos and intricate details. Each team’s car reflects their engineering prowess and commitment to performance excellence, poised to navigate the demanding twists and turns of Suzuka Circuit. You want to go ahead and take a closer look but the Ferrari guy who is guiding you around stops you from doing so until later.
“You can see Ferrari’s car later.” he tells you reassuringly but you frown at him.
You spot Mercedes, clad in their silvery-black-teal livery, standing out with their meticulous preparations, but you maintain a straight face. Red Bull, in their vibrant blue and red, exude confidence and determination as you narrow your eyes at them. 
You are finally taken to Ferrari’s section — an attractive mix of red and gold flying in the stands and the air. The fans add to the vibrant tapestry of the evening. Dressed in team colors, they wave flags and banners, eagerly awaiting autographs and selfies with their favorite drivers. The scent of food from vendors mixes with the exhaust fumes, creating a unique blend that signifies race day excitement.
“Oh, look. There’s Mr. Gojo!” your guide cheers excitedly pointing to a separated section where two shiny, red cars sit in all their glory, surrounded by an army of mechanics and staff, also dressed in red. Seated in one of Ferrari's cars, a familiar figure catches your eye. He sits in the cockpit, helmet off, his tousled white hair catching the light as he adjusts his gloves with practiced ease. Spotting you amidst the crowd, Gojo flashes a brilliant smile and waves enthusiastically from the cockpit.
“Excited?” He tries to yell out over the crowd as you near him and his team. You nod and smile at his engineers before cornering him. 
“Did you see Yuta?” you ask Gojo.
“Busy day man. Haven’t really kept an eye out for him. Why won’t you go talk to him? Mercedes is right over there!” He says, pointing a gloved finger at the black and teal team.
“Won’t allow her… strategic secrets can’t be spilled.” Your guide tells you and Gojo, who seems to be unaware.
“Gojo, there’s something I need to tell you…” you begin, your unwavering eyes grabbing Gojo’s full attention as he puts on a serious face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I-It’s about Geto Suguru.”
“Suguru?” Gojo asks, his voice softening by a note. “What’s up with him?”
“Their team. They’re planning a dangerous strategy.” you say, only to get a few stares from the engineering team over at Ferrari. Gojo narrows his eyes at you, the cerulean blue piercing through you.
“And how do you know about this strategy?”
“I overheard. They’re going to make Yuta crash out.”
“Y/N.” Gojo calls out your name, and for the first time in his life, he sounds serious as hell. “Are you accusing Suguru of conspiracy? You know it’s illegal and could cost him his license.”
“But that’s what I heard!” you try to reason but Gojo doesn’t want to hear any of it.
“Suguru has known us since we were young. He would not do such a thing. And I suggest you don’t say this to anyone, not without evidence. Especially to Yuta, he won’t take kindly to it.” Gojo warns you. You hesitate on your spot before your Ferrari guide has to pull you away from the cars.
“Okay, that’s about it.” He says, dragging you away. “We can’t meddle with his concentration right before the race. Talk with him later, Miss Y/N.”
“B-but, I wasn’t done.” you complain, feeling a sting of pain in your elbow where the man grips you. “Hey, let me go!” 
“Listen! I just don’t want you confusing our drivers!” He finally snaps, spitting out at you.
“Their mental state is important! You can’t just say these things to them and bother them right before a crucial race!” he roars as I cringe in the slight flame of fear I feel inside him.
Everyone is way too busy in their chatter and taking photos of cars and drivers to notice what’s happening so you will have to struggle out of this on your own. 
You try to break free from his grip but in vain. 
“Let them get onto the track. I’ll let you go then.” He tells you, calmly.
“Are you holding me hostage right now? I said I understand, let me go!” you yelp, going for another twist of your arm to break free but the man has an iron grip. You begin panicking again now until you see another arm appear from the corner of your eye and hold on to the guide’s arm. 
The arm, covered in silvery black, padded material of a race suit. When you look at his face, your breath nearly stops. He doesn’t make eye contact with you, he barely seems to have noticed you. His penetrating gaze is fixed on your guide and he has him trapped in place.
“What’s the problem here?” He asks, in a rough low voice.
“N-Nothing, I was just escorting her away. Nothing wrong here, Mr. Okkotsu.” the guide stutters away, intimidated by Yuta.
Yuta looks the same, yet noticeably different at the same time. His once doe-like, innocent eyes now are half-lidded and uninterested, hiding secrets and carrying unknown burdens. He barely wants to smile, his lips stuck in a straight, firm line unwilling to curve. His jaw seems a bit more defined now, seemingly as he appears to look slightly manlier, and a lot more unapproachable. He has noticeable purple shadows under his eyes now and an eerily heavy aura.
“Do you not know how to behave with a woman? Leave her at once.” He says, grimly. When the guide finally lets me go and scurries away, Yuta finally looks at me, “Please, take—” but before he can finish his sentences, his lips freeze and his pupils dilate. You yourself let out a small gasp before his name exits your mouth in the sweetest voice possible. “Yuta…”
Yuta stands still for a while, his gaze not moving from you. You see his lips quiver and the muscles in his jaw ripple as he wordlessly takes his leave, moving quickly through the people, running away from you.
Not wanting to let him go to the race like that, you follow him. You follow him into a unisex restroom, closing and locking the door behind you as you find him fidgeting with the tap and the paper towels, unwilling to look at you or the mirror. The dim, dirty lights of the place only highlight his somber features as you frown at him.
You stand next to him until he is forced to acknowledge your presence. 
“H-how have you been, Y/N?” he asks, in a shaky voice.
Good? Better? I haven’t moved on from you? What do you tell him?
The stench and claustrophobia of this restroom doesn’t help the situation at all.
“I’ve been doing better, Yuta. How have you been?” you ask, tenderly. He still won’t look at you.
“I’ve been the same really. Just working hard. Racing. Boring stuff. Haha.” He laughs nervously, licking his lips, keeping his eyes down. 
“Yuta, if you don’t want to see me right now or talk to me. Tell me.” You say, with concern. “I don’t want to spoil your mood before the race.” 
“Not at all. A racer can’t let things like this affect him.” He laughs nervously yet again. “How come you’re here? Gojo invite you or something?”
“He did. That’s besides the point.” You say, getting back to business. “I wanted to meet you to tell you something.”
“Why? Do you want to get laid again? Did Megumi cheat on you again?” He interrupts. “We have all the time after the race, why don’t you excuse me now.” He furrows his brows.
“No, that’s not—”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that.” He confesses. “But, Y/N. I don’t know if I can actually handle seeing your face right now. Because you haunt my waking hours and my nightmares every single day.” He continues.
“I never stopped thinking about how you left me that day. I was begging you to stop. You don’t love me, right? Heck, I haven’t even been able to look at a woman after that. Then let me suffer in peace.” Hearing all of that breaks your heart but you have no right to console him.  
“Is there anything left to say Y/N? Do you want to tell me how much you don’t love me?” he asks bitterly now, finally looking into your eyes. Dark blue, not somber anymore but teary. Vulnerable. Evidently, very much in love with you, after all those months apart.
“Well then, the race is going to start soon, I should —”
Before he can finish though, you grab his suit and pull him down to kiss him. Euphoria spreads through your mind and body, a soothing calm coating your entire being as you feel his lips mingle with yours. He doesn’t resist — he too is a victim of his own yearning. 
The two of you grab a hold of each other's hair and deepen the kiss. You entirely mess up his perfectly combed hair until it falls to the front of his forehead, brushing against yours. The two of you don’t even surface for a breath of air and keep kissing until it’s physically impossible and you have to separate — your face red, and your lips swollen. Both of you panting.
You swipe your thumb on his plump bottom lip, staring at it as you speak to him. 
“Did you get your answer now?”
Yuta seems to be in a daze though, completely bowled over by your bold attempt.
“Listen carefully, Yuta.” you tell him. “The raging maniac I’ve been seeing on the track this past year. That’s not you. You have to play it smart and smooth today, do you understand?”
“Y/N…” he chants, running a hand through your hair and pinching your cheek. “If I don’t drive dominantly, I won’t win.”
“Okkotsu Yuta, if you have ever loved me, promise me you will not drive rashly today.” you tell him clearly, with an air of finality in your voice and he stares at you.
“I’ll do what’s best at that moment, Y/N. Don’t worry about it.”
“No! You have to promise me!” 
“Okay, okay!” he says, giving up, separating from you and opening up the restroom door. “Race starts in a few. I’m going for real now.”
“Please, Yuta. Be careful.” you repeat, tearing up now. “There’s so much I want to say to you later.”
“I’ll see you later with the trophy in hand, that’s a promise.” Yuta states. And for the first time in what seems like an eternity, he brings out the smile he always flashed earlier. Your Yuta’s heart-warming, genuine smile.
The two of you leave the restroom at last and he would not let you go back to the Ferrari zone. Instead, making you sit with his black and silver army of curious Mercedes folk. They all look at you like you’re some kind of shiny toy and it makes you blush and hide behind Yuta.
“Take care of her. Don’t scare her, I will know.” Yuta warns them, taking your hand and leading you to one of the fancy pavilions reserved for staff and their guests. They hand you a pair of headphones and make you sit with some of the women who happen to be the WAGs of the crew and the drivers. You have the pleasure of joining Inumaki’s hot as hell girlfriend who is wearing a silken top and an elegant black skirt along with a heart-winning smile. And there you are with your Ferrari sweater.
[Music recommendation, damn even the color of the audio track goes with the story:]
Yuta runs off quickly after that to hop into his car and have a final conversation with his engineers before he and his teammate Inumaki are called off to join the starting order for the formation lap. From your vantage point, you watch as the sleek, powerful machines take their positions. The sight of Yuta in his Mercedes, with his intense focus and determination, fills you with a mixture of pride and anxiety. 
As the formation lap begins, the cars glide gracefully around the track, their engines producing a symphony of power. The tension builds with every passing moment, the crowd’s anticipation reaching a fever pitch. You grip the edge of your seat, your heart racing in sync with the machines on the track. After a few minutes, the cars begin lining up in order again and the crowd goes silent — with Geto and Yuta making up the front line and an eager Mahito right on Yuta’s tail.
The race is about to begin, and you can only hope that Yuta will deliver on his promise. You press your palms together in anticipation and pray for Yuta to be safe.
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They show the faces of all twenty drivers in a promotional video running over on the giant screens. You spot Yuta just as they announce the beginning of the race.
The five red lights come to life one by one with a beep and at the next beat of your heart, they go off, the car engines revving to life and the crowd going ballistic with cheer as Geto crosses Yuta and Yuta rapidly shifts to the side, going tire to tire with Geto’s Red Bull, sliding past him by a minimal margin and taking lead of the race as the fans erupt into cheer. You find yourself standing up and pumping your fists in the air. 
The cars follow the leading duo, creeping along behind them in quick succession.
“That's Good there Yuta. Keep pushing." You here a robotic voice in your ears. Probably Yuta's engineer.
“Copy that." You hear Yuta's voice and blush. Inumaki’s girlfriend eyeing you and grinning.
As the first lap comes to an end and continues into the second lap, there's a buzz of conversation going on in the room. The engineers and staff moving around, barking at each other and some glued to the gigantic screens.
“The car's doing well. Good job guys." Yuta sends out a message.
You overhear two of the engineers discussing among themselves that Yuta was being chattier and nicer than usual today and you smirk internally.
As the second lap progresses through the team witnesses a strange change in positions. Geto slows down ever so slightly to let Mahito’s car pass. There is a bit of commotion going on inside the room, curious discussions about Red Bull’s strategy taking place but you are aware what's going to happen as Mahito's slithering car inches closer to Yuta and activates its DRS.
“No!" You yell out and the entire room turns to look at you.
“Yuta! He needs to get out of the way! He-" 
But before the engineers can register what you're saying or what's happening on the track you see Mahito’s car touch Yuta's from the behind, Yuta intercepting this and narrowly avoiding being tossed in the air. He does get pushed off the track though and into the grass until he gains control and slowly makes his way back onto the track. Now in 7th place.
You are the only one who breathes a sigh of relief because you're the only one who is aware of what went down behind the scenes. There is an uproar in the room now, a lot of them cursing out Mahito and Red Bull to no end. 
One of them finds the time to connect with Yuta on the Radio and ask if he's fine.
“Yeah, I'm alright guys." He reassures everyone. “Pushed far behind though. That seemed pretty deliberate. Put that up for review please." His voice breaks through the radio.
The crowd collectively gasps as they now see Geto swap places with Mahito and regain his position as the leader.
“Yuta. We can salvage this. Stick to the first strategy. Try to be aggressive.” The engineer instructs Yuta.
"Copy, that. At least until I gain P3" Yuta replies, making the engineers exchange  panicked glances.
You see Yuta in action on the big screen and now understand what people have been saying about his feral driving. You witness as he pushes the car to its absolute limit, overtaking two cars — an Aston Martin and Itadori’s Ferrari in one go at one of the fast corners, leaving them startled in his dirty air. He's now racing at P4, after Inumaki lets him pass as per team orders.
“Oh my god, he's up with Gojo now." Inumaki's girlfriend squeaks, holding your hand with an iron grip,making you break out into a sweat two.
Gojo’s Ferrari and Yuta’s Merc go head on, battling each other, getting into each other's way. Gojo is as unpredictable as Yuta is ferocious.
The two of them swap positions a good four times until Yuta is able to zoom past him in a dramatic show, in one of the wider corners, right into the straights.
He's now P3. And the only competition he has in front of him are the red bulls.
“You're in podium position right now. Second place is ensured. Don't do anything stupid." The engineer warns Yuta.
The room doesn't hear back from Yuta for a while until all of you witness his aggressive drive turn to a more smooth one for the first time in over a year.
"Copy that. I've a promise to keep.”
The crowd, the crew, the engineers, the photographers, the journalists, the WAGs and you. All of you watch as time stills, Yuta moving like a stream of water, smooth and direct, inching close to Mahito's car. 
They enter the DRS zone and the Mercedes’ flap flips open to let in the air stream. 
Yuta slips to the side staying just a tad bit behind Mahito whose intent now seems to push Yuta off the track for good if he attacks. 
Mahito who was expecting and anticipating Yuta to fault, for him to aggressively move past keeps waiting as they keep driving on the straight with DRS on.
It isn't until Mahito keeps straight, too drowned in his confusion to notice Yuta speed up right as they turned into a corner. 
Without warning, right as the DRS zone ends Yuta hits the throttle and speeds out of Mahito's reach, making the crowd go crazy.
In that moment, everyone on the track and in the stands is rooting for Yuta. They are waiting with bated breathes as the last lap approaches and Yuta's car creeps closer to Geto’s Red Bull.
The engineers have nothing to say now, they too, watch on in awe.
Your hands clasp over your mouth, as you watch without blinking as they enter the last corners.
Call it luck.
Talent and hard work can take you very far. But the harder you work, the better your luck is. And in those final seconds, Yuta happened to have newer, more seasoned tyres compared to Geto's more worn ones owing to an earlier pit stop. Maybe your prayers worked.
And that was it for Red Bull.
Yuta pushes the car and rockets out of the corner, zooming towards the finish line as the checkered flag waves the declaration of victory for him. Leaving the red bull, the ferraris, everyone who ever doubted him in the dust of the track.
He pumps his fists out of the cockpit, screaming profanity into the radio.
“FUCKKK YESSSS!!!!" 
“LET'S GO BABY!!! LET'S FUCKING GOOO AAAAHHHH!!!" 
He pulls his car aside while the others pass and returns to the track to do some celebratory donuts with his car, the steam from his tyres enveloping the car.
It's like a festival in Mercedes' operations room. Everyone is hugging each, patting each others’ back, crying. Inumaki's girlfriend is mumbling to herself, still holding your hand.
And you?
You are in utter shock. Absolutely unable to form sentences.
One of the engineers has to shake you awake.
“Okkotsu has done it! He's done it! Not just that, Inumaki came in third! We've won both titles! Mercedes has done it!" 
"H-huh?” You choke out, tearing up.
"Don't you want to see him? He's coming in right now!” the team exclaims, crowding at the door, aching to get out and meet their winner.
Out in the paddock, the teams have arrived to welcome their hard-fought warriors. The various colors stand together in unison waiting beside the tracks, separated from the drivers by the chain fence.
You see a line of women waiting by, standing out from the teams thanks to their eye-catching, elegant attires. They looked like supermodels — tall, magazine cover beauties. They must be the WAGs. 
You suddenly feel very conscious about your sweater and jeans. Just a year ago, you too had the most exquisite outfit possible, completely ruined by Yuta on his Lambo.
The drivers show up one by one as the paddock welcomes them. There is an impressive cheer for the arrival of Gojo Satoru, P4. He winks at the WAGs as they appear totally distracted from their own racer boyfriends but he doesn't stay for long.
He meets up midway with a dejected looking Geto and takes him away to some place you can't quite see.
Looks like they want to have a talk.
If the cheer for Gojo was something, it's nothing compared to the deafening roar championship winner, Yuta receives as soon as his Mercedes pulls in.
He jumps out of the car, removes his gloves, helmet and fireproof and comes running straight towards your lot, jumping onto them as they screech, hoisting him up in the air and ferally rubbing his hair.
“Well done, boy!" 
“Well done!" They chant.
When they finally let go and you're able to see Yuta. You don't see any sign of the depressed ghost of a man you saw earlier. This was the Yuta you knew and loved. Happy, shining bright, eyes full of life.
He wipes the sweat of his forehead as he approaches you and grabs you by the waist to pick you up and twirl you around.
He presses his sweaty nose to yours, his dark eyes twinkling.
“We did it, baby. I kept my promise." He laughs between words. 
"Now then,” he smiles at me giddily, walking away from the team with me still in his arms.
"What did you want to say to me earlier?”
You wrap your arms around his shoulders.
“Telling you just how much I love you will take more than a few minutes, Yuta." You kiss his nose.
“More than a few hot nights." You kiss his forehead.
“And more than a lifetime." You say, finally leaving a kiss on his lips.
“I love you, Okkotsu Yuta." 
You press your foreheads together, as a quick paparazzo clicks a picture of the two of you.
{{fin.}}
a/n: thank you everyone for reading! I was able to power through the chapters and put everything out quickly. Hope you guys enjoyed the tale of Racer Yuta!
----> BONUS<----
You hold the headboard of your bed for support as you grin down at a very engaged Yuta, lost in your juicy womanhood, holding onto your thighs for dear life as you sit on his face. His enthusiasm as he suckles and bites your sensitive zones drives you crazy and you come all over his face for what seems the tenth time in the past three days. He just refuses to let you go whenever he visits you in your city. You have to nearly always put in an extra sick day to cater to his and your needs. The two of you look out onto a bustling city from your high-rise condo. You wonder how many people know that a world-class, champion racing driver is eating your brains out right above their heads. The thought makes you giggle shamelessly.
"Yuta, stop, already." you urge him, laughing between words, pulling at his hair to get him to stop.
"Nope, I can't." he admits, looking up at you, with lust filled eyes. "I only get so many days with you. Need to make the most of this time."
You roll your eyes at him, getting off of him, making him whine loudly.
"Patience, lover-boy." you tease him, turning around to sit on his abs. His abdominal muscles are so well defined that even merely sitting on them sends chills up your wussy.
"Time to give my mini some love." you say, smiling at the bulge forming in Yuta's sweatpants. You uncover it to see his valiant dick stand tall, after being ignored by both you and Yuta for so long.
"It got prettier from last time." you pout at it, examining it as you stroke it with love. It pulls out the prettiest groans out of Yuta.
"Y/N, you saw it yesterday." he complains. "When you said you wanted to bounce on it."
"Well, Yuta. You can't just eat me out for all of eternity. Your dick has needs." you shut him up and take him in your mouth, savoring its thickness. It's just like the first time you ever took him in your mouth. You run and tongue up and down his length as Yuta grabs a hold of your ass, holding on till he's moaning.
You lick at his slit, playing around with the pre-cum he's leaking. His cock is so violent, it beats around inside of your mouth, and you silence it by pushing it to the back of your throat, where it sits snugly.
Your nose pushes into Yuta's balls as you let your throat do the rest of the work and soon enough, Yuta is coming inside your mouth with a monstrous groan, leaving you with plenty of fluid to play around with.
When you finally pull off, mouth full of cum, you see that there is still some life in his dick. You turn out to face him and now sit on his dick, grinding back and forth till he becomes hard again.
Your cheeks stay swollen with loads of his cum and Yuta stares at your face in disbelief.
"You really my cum don't you?"
and you nod fervently.
"Swallow it."
You shake your head.
"God, Y/N.." he closes his eyes, leaning back and letting you ride him, feeling his dick prod at your insides, its outline clearly showing through your abdomen.
"Ah..." he moans out, finding a rhythm he likes and the two of you roll your hips together. You want to moan out so bad but your cum sits in your mouth, marinating. You want to make a mess out of it on Yuta's abs and lick it all off.
How you've waited so long to do so many things to Yuta.
Only, your moment gets interrupted by a rogue phone call. From your phone.
"Buh, ish ma day ff!" you say, your mouth full and unable to speak coherently.
Yuta picks up the call and sticks it between his shoulder and an ear, while grabbing and controlling your hips with both his hands. His messy black hair falls on his sweaty forehead and his lashes brush his cheeks as he talks to the caller in his fucked out voice.
"Who's this?"
"Y/N, oh, she's busy."
"Are we fucking? Seriously, Satoru? Nunya business!"
Gojo Satoru!? The shock at his question makes you accidentally swallow the cum and you almost cry out.
"Uh-huh. Cool, bye." Yuta says, eyeing your reaction and closing his eyes.
"Oh no, I swallowed it!" you complain to Yuta and he's barely listening, chasing his orgasm. Soon enough, the grip on your waist tightens and he's coming inside of you this time. His neck stretching back and his adam's apple bobbing in his wide throat.
When he finally regains his composure, he looks back at you to reply.
"You swallowed. Finally! Good job!"
"Yuta!" you pout.
"Aw, baby..." Yuta teases you. "There's always room to do more." he sees, pinching your perky nipples.
"Your interns ask about you, Gojo told me. He takes them to races, VIP passes whenever he's free. He's made them into Ferrari fans, alas." Yuta tells you.
"Ahem. They were promoted to full time employees after the feedback from the Summit." you correct him. "Plus, they know I'm fucking you every chance I get. That's what I'm up to." you say, sliding off his dick and falling into his arms, allowing him to continue playing with your tender breasts.
"You're all packed up for this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix, right? We leave in two days." Yuta reminds you, biting your lower lip and bursting into a smile.
"Of course, I'm looking forward to it." you tell him. The two of you stare at each other, drowning in each other's passion until you realize something.
"Oops almost forgot. I love you, Yuta."
Yuta blushes pink when he hears it. "You say that every ten minutes."
"Isn't that what I told you..." you remind him.
"I'm saying it every day." You place a tender kiss on his lips.
"Forever."
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theragamuffininitiative · 7 months ago
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Just poking my head in here bc Matthew 18 isn't about determining whether or not someone is a believer or even calling out a nonbeliever. It's instruction for how to approach conflict and reconciliation and restoration when you have been wronged by someone actively in the body of Christ (regardless of their true heart condition). It's saying "here is what you do" not "here is how you know where they stand before God."
The point of this passage is not "this is how you go about publicly calling someone out as a fake." Instead it is the much more personal, communal, "if someone in the church (a brother) has wronged you, it is your responsibility to go to them and let them know and see how the two of you might work it out to forgiveness and restoration." Then, if that doesn't work, next you involve some trusted witnesses within the body of Christ (most helpfully the local body/church). This is still with the goal of forgiveness and restoration of your 'brother' (person professing Christ). After that, if there is no resolution of the hurt they caused you, then you should take it to the church and let them know what has happened, as a person who is walking in this way is a danger to themselves and the church's unity as a whole. If not even the acts of the church to attempt to bring this person back to a right relationship with their fellow believers can restore them, then it is most helpful to the church body as a whole to not continue fellowship with them.
The funny thing is, 'treat them as a tax collector and an unbeliever' still means to love them as your own self - if you look at how Jesus treated tax collectors and unbelievers. It also says nothing about that person's actual heart condition before the Lord (though clearly it is troubled, it does not mean it is nonexistent).
Verses 18-20 in this context then follow ideas about not holding grudges, about praying together for the reconciliation of your brother (gender neutral lol). They are "tricky" verses with various commentaries about their precise meaning, but to flow directly from these instructions about active reconciliation within the church, it seems very much to be talking about not holding another in offense (thus holding onto their actions on earth and before heaven as a sin committed against you when reconciliation can be had), and that by joining together (two or three or more are gathered) to seek this restoring of your brother, you are acting in unity not just with one another but with the Father and his heart.
Anyways, there are indeed many verses about how to see the renewal of the Holy Spirit of someone's heart by their actions. There are also, more to op's point, several places in Scripture dealing with those who add to or take away from the true doctrine of Christ, and the narrow way, and testing spirits, etc. However, while many Christian-adjacent sects have lots of problematic doctrine, it is often a "speck meet plank" scenario when we should really look at the sins and hypocrisy in our own heart and denomination and etc. first.
Never should we make blanket assumptions about an individual person based on the particular sect/denomination they are in. Instead, we should be praying for them and sharing truth with them where we see things that don't match up with Scriptural truth.
Anyway it's not the role of any human being to declare whether another person is or isn't a Christian or not - we are to judge by fruits alone - and if we think someone is not, we're to pray for God to guide them to Him, not go around telling them "hey by the way I've decided you're not a Christian".
To repeat: IF YOU THINK A PROFESSING CHRISTIAN IS NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN THEN YOU PRAY FOR THEM, YOU DON'T SHAKE A FINGER IN THEIR FACE.
Because it bears repeating:
IF YOU THINK SOMEONE IS "NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN" YOU ***P R A Y F O R T H E M*** YOU DO NOT GO AROUND SAYING "YOU'RE NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN"
That's not your place to decide. =) Hope this helps!
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reareaotaku · 8 days ago
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Menace to Society
Summary: You met the infamous Damian Wayne and neither of you are impressed. Content: Jon Kent mentioned, kinda derailed... I'm sorry, Could also be kind of read as Jon Kent x Reader too, but it's meant to be Damian Wayne x Reader..., Fem! Reader Taglist: N/a
[Pt II?]
[--- : Three Dashes is flashback] [---: 2nd Three Dashes is back to the present] [--: Two Dashes is Time Skip]
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You had heard the rumors about the Wayne boy, but you didn't pay it much mind. You never thought you encounter him, so it didn't seem productive to think about him. Besides you had bigger problems; Like the fact you lived in fucking Gotham City, the most dangerous city in America. Oh, to have been born to a family in Metropolis is a dream you wish for every night, hoping to wake from this damn nightmare.
The rumors varied, depending on who was telling them. Some say he was incredibly handsome, just like his father- Others said he was a rotten guy who knew no empathy or compassion for another human being. You were leaning towards the latter, because he was a rich boy, who had never known a day of poverty, of course he'd be a stuck up bastard. Though, you didn't blame him, you were sure he was enabled.
You found it weird when you'd defend the boy's actions. It could have just been because you didn't know him and felt less biased. That was until you met the asshole.
He was worse than anyone had ever described. He was literally the child of hell. He was entitled, selfish, egotistical and narcissistic. He was your worse nightmare.
He didn't like you either. You were such an annoyance to him. Granted, most people annoyed him, but you were different. It's like you were a chigger [What are Chiggers?] digging into his skin and chewing on his flesh. Not to mention it seemed you were a pest on his life. He just couldn't get rid of you no matter how hard he tried.
The crazy thing is you were rarely around ech other, but when you are it feels like eternity. You felt like you were constantly competing with a spoiled brat and he felt like you were an annoying pest trying to push him to the side.
The thing is you were too similar to each other. At least that's what Jon thought. You remembered the first time you met Jon and he made the comparison.
---
You pushed through the crowds, before getting off the train. You sighed when looking around of the city of Metropolis. It was just a small trip, because your father needed some things from the city, that weren't in Gotham, but he was to busy, so he asked you to do it. You weren't going to get distracted.
--
You looked through the multiple vinyls. There were dozens of books on the shelves around you that you had already scoured. Your eyes were lead up to the top shelf of one of the bookcase, before your eyes caught a big black clock. It said 5:45- Your father wanted you home at 6...
You were never going to be allowed out again.
You rushed through the store, trying to catch your barings, but just your luck, you run into a man. You quickly apologize before standing u, brushing yourself off and picking up your things. You look down at him- He... looked different than guys in Gotham.
You wondered if it was something in the water, because the boys in Metropolis looked more... alive? They looked like the type that haven't had evil wrap it's nasty smoke around them since the day they were born. They were carefree and happy. How nice.
He looked up at you with baby blue eyes, before a light pink dusted his cheeks. He had a school-boyish charm. He looks at your hand that you had out for him, before he takes it.
"I'm Jon," He grips your tightly as he looks down at you. He was incredibly tall and you didn't realize it until he stood up.
"Y/n..." You say, trying to take your hand back but he has a tight grip on you. "Um.. Can I have my hand back?"
He blushes a darker red, before letting go of your hand and apologizing. He rubs the back of his neck, looking away from you. "So, are you new to Metropolis?"
"Uh... No- I mean I guess, but I don't like here. I'm just getting stuff for my dad."
"Oh, uh-"
Before he can finish his statement, the shop keeper comes out and starts yelling at you about having to pay. You looked at him confused before realizing that you still had the vinyl in your hands. You blushed darkly, realizing this guy probably thought you were a thief and you wanted to shoot yourself.
You apologized to the man, before handing him the vinyl, telling him you didn't mean to take it, your mind just went blank when realizing the time. Thankfully, the store keeper was understanding and took the vinyl before going back inside.
There were a few minutes of silence, before the guy- Jon- starts laughing. "Gosh, he was so mad, his face looked like a tomato."
You smile, nodding, "Yeah, he was, wasn't he?"
Jon opens his mouth to speak, but then your phone starts ringing and you freeze up. You pull your phone out of your pocket and sigh when seeing your father's number.
"Sorry, I have to take this-" You take a few steps way from him, before answering the phone.
"Y/n were are you?"
"I'm still in Metropolis-"
"What? Why are you still there?"
"I got... distracted?"
You hear a sigh and groan, causing you to frown.
"Get home as soon as you can."
"Okay," You hang up the phone, before sighing. You were just happy he didn't yell at you through the screen.
"Are you in trouble?"
You jumped a little before looking back at Jon. You forgot that he was there.
"Uh... No, not really... But I do have to get back home."
"I can take you! I mean, I can walk with you... You know," He gestures to you, not knowing what to say. "I mean," He quickly shakes his head and hands, "Not that you can't take care of yourself, but it'd be really shitty if I let you walk alone."
You smirk, looking the boy up and down. He would never last a second in Gotham. "I'm sure I'll be fine. Besides, I don't think you want to go where I'm going."
"Well where are you going?"
--
Jon is starting to regret his offer. Not because of you, but because of the people who were squished against him. The subway smelled awful, like death and piss, and made him scrunch his nose. You were pressed against his chest, hoping the next stop was your stop.
"You know, I have a friend in Gotham. He's a lot like you-"
"I'm like a guy?" You joke, causing him to blush and quickly back track.
"No- No. I mean, you're like him in the way you act. But, you're nicer."
"Yeah? What's his name?"
"Damian Wayne."
---
You groaned, trying to ignore the laughter of the gangs that you had to pass. You could feel their stares go through you as you try and walk away as fast as possible. Your fear rose when hearing footsteps behind you.
Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back.
You hear a flop and a groan and stupidily look back. On top of the man who was following you was The Robin- Well, not 'THE' Robin, but one of them... The new one.
Robin's eyes go up to you, before they widen for a second.
"Y/n?"
"Do I know you?"
Before he could back track, you hear some fabric flap[?] and look back to see THE Batman. He was tall and incredibly intimidating.
"You should probably go home, kid."
"Yeah." You look back at Robin, before back at Batman. "Yeah, I will."
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ok555ficideas · 1 month ago
Text
If Andriel ever got married, this would be the Foxes speeches in my opinion:
Aaron 
“When I met Neil I hated his guts. He was arrogant, he had an attitude problem, he lacked any kind of authenticity,”
“Is there a compliment there somewhere, Minyard?”
“Shut it, Josten. I’m trying to say something.” 
“Actually, it’s Josten-Minyard now, thank you very much.” 
“So, I think you all know what I mean. Self absorbed, egoistic asshole. Unfortunately he makes my brother happy and I think we all know that making Andrew happy is one of the hardest jobs there is. For the longest time I had no idea what all of you saw in that idiot. He waltzed into our lives and immediately settled himself in all of your hearts. I have no idea when and how it happened and I’m a little tipsy and will refuse the implications of saying any of this tomorrow, but somehow that bastard managed to get to me too. Neil, you are an asshole and I’m so thankful to have you as my brother in law. If it wasn’t for you I would probably have zero contact with my brother in the first place and I’m glad that you stumbled into our lives. I wish you both nothing but the best.” 
Kevin
“When I first made a deal with Andrew I knew that I would have a hard time keeping my end of it. For those of you who don’t know, I promised Andrew to find him something to live for. Back then I thought it was going to be Exy. I know, I know it's very predictable of me, but come on how can you not love Exy? Okay, okay, don’t boo me Andrew I'm getting to the point, jesus. Tough crowd. As we all know Andrew doesn’t care about Exy to this day. He would be a much better player if he did- Auch! Did you just throw a fork at me? What are you? An Animal? I found you a husband and all I get is hate. Neil was the way I kept my end of the deal. I admit, I wasn’t frilled at first about their relationship. It derailed Neil’s focus from Exy, but at the end of the day it helped two of the most important people in my life be happy, so I’m happy. To Andrew and Neil!”
Renee
“As the maid of honor, I have to fulfill my duty and embarrass the groom a little bit. When Neil first joined the foxes Andrew was gone for him from the start. Don’t make that face, Andrew. You know it’s true. I had to hear over and over again about “that stupid idiot”. When they finally got together I was over the moon. I couldn’t think of two other people who fit together so well, apart from me and my wife, of course. You two had to walk through literal hell to get to this point and I’m so proud of you. I hope that God won’t throw any more hardships your way, but even if they do I know that you will be able to survive them, together.” 
Matt
“My best friend got hitched!!! Yes, people. Come on, a sound of applause to the newlyweds! Oh, Neil. The day I found out about you two was a day filled with so much new information yet this was what shocked me the most. At first I was scared for your life and sanity, but you both proved time and time again that you are perfect for each other. Andrew, I’m so sorry for ever doubting you. There is no one out there better for Neil and I’m so glad he has you. Cheers!” 
Dan
“Neil, the day you joined the foxes was the day that everything finally clicked into place. You were the last missing piece of the puzzle and I will be forever grateful to you for changing the whole dynamic of the team. You are like a little brother to me and I never wish for any harm to come your way ever again. Andrew, thank you so much for protecting him. For protecting all of us, even if we didn’t always know that that's what you were doing. We had our differences, but I’m so happy that you are a part of my family.” 
Allison
“I was kind of mad, when I found out you two weren’t eloping after all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be here, but I had a lot of money riding on it and you all know how much I hate losing bets. Neil, what you see in that guy I will never understand, but I can see that he makes you happy. Your face looks like you are holding a banana and it is a little embarrassing. No, don't show me pictures from my wedding, Neil. This is photoshop, I did not look that ridiculous. Anyway, I can see that Andrew is good for you so you two have my blessing. Andrew, you have found a gem, don’t you dare take him for granted.” 
Nicky
“Hello everyone, are you having fun? Glad to hear it. I just wanted to point out that if the grooms have organized any of this it would be fucking terrible. Did you seriously bring a knife to your own wedding, Andrew? You can wave that thing at me all day long, I know you are just a bark with no bite. Love made you softer. This is the most important wedding I have ever attended. Sorry, my love. My other cousin had deprived me of my God given right to attend his and,” 
“For fucks sake, Nicky. Will you let it go if I let you plan a party for us?” 
“Yes! You heard that people. You can expect another awesome party like this coming soon. Neil, you have entered our little family and I knew that you would shake things up from the get go. I had never imagined that we would end up like this, but I’m so glad we did. I love you and I’m so happy that you are now legally binded to us even though there was no need for a piece of paper to prove that we are where you belong. Andrew, I’m so glad that you found someone who makes your whole face light up. All I ever wanted for you was to be happy and I’m so glad you found it with Neil. I love you both so much.” 
Wymack
“Why all of you didn’t know that these two knuckleheads were bound to end up together from the beginning I will never understand. It was so fucking obvious and you are all bunch of idiots. That’s it, that’s the speech. To the newlyweds!”
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