#also it took way longer going to/coming back from class on bus

[paeinovis]

god moving from my first apartment was the best thing ive ever done. tho that one Noise still bugs me a lot, zoloft has made my misophonia chill out a bit more lol and the person above me practices piano music instead of stomping at all hour of the day and night like the stompers did

[deepestblizzardcomputer]

°•°•°•°Back 'Home'°•°•°•°

Part 4

Parts: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 /. . . .

Synopsis: you get to know Miles better (sorta)

Warning: some strong language but nothing crazy.

A/N: i was free and kinda bored so :D — also I seriously planned finishing the flashbark part in this one but it got longer x"D

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

THE NEXT DAY, you were late for class. having overslept finishing your math homework which was challenging for your braincells to say the least. You were striding through the halls to go to art class in your new uniform.

Your pervious one was left to dry.

It was the fourth time you yawned and attempted to wake yourself up, turning your head toward paths to remember your way, you were rechecking your bag for the third time to see if you forgot any of your art supplies.

It was enough you missed the first two periods, you didn't want to mess up in the third one with missing supplies. You were standing Infront the huge school's map on the wall, sliding your index finger to where you were and where was the class.

You were still holding your opened bag Infront your belly, making your way backward with your focus still on the map as you were mesmerizing your path. you didn't notice you were getting closer to someone till you bumped into their back.

They let an irritated groan, seemingly unaffected by your bump While You almost fell on your face.

thanks for your incredible balance you caught yourself, hugging your bag harder as you turned to apology to the person with awaken eyes.

" I am so sorry! I wasn't looking where I. . . .wait, it's you?" The mysterious boy Infront you was rubbing his shoulder, the area you hit while frowning at you.

" You again? " his hoarse voice spoke.

gazing at him up close you noticed those faint dark circles under his eyes, his braided hair seemed a bit messy as well and his eyes barely were awake like he just got out of bed. Huh, seemed you weren't the only one late.

you both stood in the empty hall, just staring at each other till you felt too awkward to keep staring , you gazed at your bag instead. you didn't know what to add in this silence since you already apologized and he seemed to prefer being quiet, so. .

" U-uhm anyway, see you later in class. . .?" You closed your bag throwing it behind your shoulder, you waved awkwardly and passed him.

You began speeding your steps so to escape this awkwardness and to reach your class as soon as possible.

"Wait! " You stopped on your tracks, realizing it was the quiet boy behind you who called, you turned your head at him. He was scratching his head, looking at his feet seemingly embarrassed he called for you that loud.

Thankfully there was no-one in school halls but you.

". . .Yes?" You asked, trying to sound as patient as possible. he approached your figure since you were standing far. His eyes were trailed elsewhere till it was on you when he asked.

"Do you know. . .where the art class is?" Ah, so he was lost. Typical for a new student.

you didn't know why he would be even shyer asking for direction but you found it kind of amusing comparing to your first 'meeting' the previous day.

" Well, you are lucky because I was heading to there too!" Being your overly friendly self, you sent him a smile and though he didn't return it, you weren't bothered.

You took several steps forward adjusting with your head that he follow you.

"com'on, we are going to be late."

and so, he began following you through the halls which sunlights were bathing the floors and walls, the only noise coming from you both were clicking of your shoes.

and of course you both were silent, no-one attempting to break out this quietness, you usually didn't mind it like this, you enjoyed quiet though since day one of meeting him he piqued your curiosity.

ever since you believed you had seen him somewhere and the fact he too had the same class as you, it was hard to keep your questions to yourself and it was coming from someone who minded their own business.

" Soo. . .you are in class A, right? Since we are both heading to art class. "

You briefly glanced at him before looking forward so you couldn't tell his expression, you also sort of thought he would just ignore your question like before.

" Guess so."

You let a hum. " if so, how come haven't I seen you in class yesterday? I thought you were in the other one."

a pause " I sit in the back" he answered simply not allowing much room to conversation.

" Ah, that must be it then." You sat with your friends in front rows so perhaps you didn't notice him or he might have wanted to be unseen by people.

"But I thought they would make you introduce yourself to class or whatever." You added, turning right with him behind you.

were you pushing your luck to stretch your chatting with him? not really, you were tired and if you didn't talk about anything, your mind would start to doze off into it daydreaming  phase and you would end up unfocused in your class.

It was bad enough you didn't have your morning coffee.

" dunno about that . ."

and it ended as that, you two continued striding to class in silence.

When you reached the door you checked your wristwatch.

"Welp, luckily we are only 7 minutes late! "

a subtle nod from him.

You waved at the boy, turning the knob with a smile on your face.

" Alright, see ya later Burrito boy."

he frowned at you, lifting a brow.

" Burrito boy? "

You chuckled. " You didn't tell me your name yesterday, so yeah, Burrito boy for now." You started to turn the knob.

he rolled his eyes. " I ain't some 'Burrito boy' , stop that "

You ignored his comment walking into the room and turning to him last time with a wide smile.

"See ya!" and then you were gone to a seat besides your friends, leaving him standing like an idiot in the doorway.

His mouth stayed opened then it closed, realizing it was too late to response to you now.

"chica rara" [weird girl.] He mumbled under his breath looking for his seat.

for the past few weeks, the strange boy (who you later knew as Miles G. Morales) had made a reputation of himself in class, the quiet mysterious kid. Which wasn't a huge surprise seeing how he was hardly approachable.

He was also an A kind of student which was a surprise, his popularity even existed because of his degrees. especially in Spanish class.

Did he stayed loner like those cheap edgy teenage boys in classic highschool shows? Nope, he did make friends, some of his own.

Their vibes were different from him, I mean, they were louder, more chaotic and energetic than Miles. it was weird how he managed to get along with them though maybe because of his great grades that they needed his help.

he perhaps had one or two who matched his energy but nothing else.

you would sometimes meet Miles in your class or in the halls, and you would always greet him even when it wasn't returned, sometimes at least.

Your friend, Pacifica still teased you on your flirting with such an 'annoying brat' and commented how you had other options than him, to which you would roll your eyes and would deny, changing the subject.

There had been unjustified rumors growing in school about him that you of course did not believe.

There was that one time when a student didn't mind his own business and kept nagging the boy to do his homework in exchange of money to which he rightfully declined to till that student started to get overly pushy, Miles lost it when the student mentioned bad shit about his mother and beat the crap out of him and because of that rumors had began to spread about him. What made people wary of him more though was the huge size difference between Miles and the big student and yet he managed to knock him out.(You were absent that day because of your sickness, so you didn't see it, just hearing all about it from your friends )

He might have been an A student but that didn't mean people could be merciful. He didn't seem to try fight against them though, since he really didn't care.

You did respect that in him, how he barely gave a single shit though you wished he would try a bit to clean his picture, once people start to talk they won't shut up.

You should had known better to stick to your business since that boy's problem wasn't yours and he wasn't even your friend, yet you took it upon yourself when you heard some douchbags spitting shit about the kid in the halls.

They were snickering and adding some of the worst and annoying comments possible, about him, his family who they didn't meet and going even far to being straight up racist. Miles wasn't that far, he could hear them but you thought if he did he didn't care.

He was sitting on the floor Infront the locker, sketching some stuff in his sketch book. while he sat their enjoying his time on floor you were glaring at those two who wouldn't shut up, you had stopped in your track the moment you heard the N-word being said by one of them.

Again, it wasn't your business, yet you stood and listened to what they were whispering. 'it wasn't your business' you kept telling yourself. If he didn't mind it then neither should you, you can just walk away and ignore their comments. They weren't even thrown at you.

You could just ignore and continue with your day, right?

but you couldn't stop your feet from moving toward them, having your chin high and a scowl on your face.

" Hey! Instead of saying some stupid untrue shit about someone why don't you mind your business?" You made sure your voice was loud enough to grab their attention.

which it did. They turned their head to you,  their cruel smile fading into a confused frown. they stared at you for a bit. (Unknowingly to you, Miles did too)

" why don't you mind your own business?" One of them sneered. "we aren't even talking about you."

You rolled your eyes and crossed your arms. " Wow thanks. Still doesn't make a difference." You kept your stare as intense as possible even when you were starting to feel nervous, you didn't let it show on your face thankfully.

plus, you were surrounded by students so they wouldn't try to do anything to you even if they wanted to.

"You can't just spat none sense about someone, didn't your moms teach you better?"

one of the boys rolled their eyes back at you.

" Why so offended? Is he your  dearly boyfriend or something? Cause if so go kiss his ass instead of bossing around like a bitch. "

This caught you off guard, your eyes widen at him. They started sneakering again with one of them giving the other high five.

You felt your face heat up from embarrassment and rage, you bit on your lip and clenched your fists trying to compose your reaction. You exhaled deeply to calm your nerves.

Miles had his eyebrow lift slightly at you.

" No, he isn't my boyfriend. but he is my friend and I would like for you both to shut the fuck up about him. "

Was he really your friend? Big nope, you knew his name just weeks ago and perhaps with other things but that was besides the point now.

You could say you answered with that for the sake of argument and to be convincing, to yourself more as well. You wished that perhaps that would brush these idiots off but it didn't, if more, they looked intrigued.

" Oh? And what if we didn't, what will you do?" the dark haired one said, taking a step forward toward you with a unsettling smirk on his face.

Your eyes widen though You forced your body to stay still, frowning even more. " We-ell, w-wouldn't you like to know? "  your voice started to lower to your disadvantage.

'crap I stuttered! and I should have sounded more intimidating, why am I NOT sounding intimidating enough?!'

The taller boy took another step, his friend following suit. you started to panic inside your mind. What should you do?!

" Oh we would pretty much like to know." Said the other one, smirking as well, he suddenly reached his hand to brush your hair.

You jumped taking a step back.

" S-stop that! I am warning you."

but they were unfazed and kept walking toward you, while you took steps back. The people surrounding you didn't notice this interaction, and even when you put your trust on them to save you when you call for help, your pride prevented you.

You still kept glaring at them, perhaps it would have given them the impression that you were not playing around. The same guy who touched your hair stretched his hand to do it again, rubbing your shoulder and keeping you on hold so you couldn't walk further.

"Warning us? You are so adorable darling." The dark haired one said as he started to brush your hair with you trying to shake their hand off.

You slapped one of their hands " Stop it! Or. . Or–"

"Or what princess? What are you going to do? " The shorter one repeated, smirking.

" This. "

Your eyes went wide as you watched someone step Infront you, covering your whole figure behind their back. They held the boy's hand away from your shoulder, squeezing it in force till it hurt.

You heard the boy whine, trying to break free and with no vain. His friend acted on the spot, sending a punish to the boy standing Infront of you, only for his fist to be clutched with his other hand like it was nothing, he twisted the boy's hand, making him bend Infront him in pain.

Miles still had his back to you, as you kept watching surprised how he singlehandedly took them both.

" If ya wanna start a problem, then do it with me. Leave her out of it."  He twisted the other's hand, forcing him to join the floor with his friend. some people passing by started to gaze at the scene, shocked as you were.

" Understood? " His voice though quiet, was sharp and clear. your heart was pounding as you finally let out a breath knowing you were safe now.

No answer from them and so Miles twisted their hands even more.

" Ow ow ow yes! Yes! Understood!! Leave us please!"

" Ouchh! Ouch–yeah, leave her alone got it! Let go now!"

and so he did, standing firm, having his sharp gaze on them. They backed away immediately rubbing their sore wrists.

" You are a freak!! "

" The hell is wrong with you, piece of shit?!"

" If ya believe am that dangerous or sum shit of what yo sayin then ya better be scared and stay. Away." He sneered at them before his intense gaze turned at you, they soften but you didn't notice.

too busy realizing what the hell just happened. You heard him mumble 'you okay?' to which it took a while from you to nod your head. You yelped when he suddenly dragged your arm along with him.

"Com'on we gotta go " he said so casually like he wasn't dragging a person with him.

" Wait wait– we are away now, you can let go!" You tried to break free but you couldn't, his grip was hella firm!

" estúpida, what were you thinkin? You could have just went on your way." [Idiot ] you heard him say under his breath, he even sounded annoyed for some reason.

You sighed as you just let him drag you to the end of the hall as he let go of you, turning to frown at you.

"It wasn't your business"

"Neither were theirs? someone had to do something, you had to do something! " You too started frowning, you didn't know why but it started to frustrate you how lightly he was taking the situation of people talking shit about him. Was he not bothered?

"They keep spitting nonsense about you! And you just. . Just stand there and act like it's nothing, doesn't it bug you even for a little?" You were crossing your arms, your voice turned soft at the end as you stared at him, sadly.

Miles had his eyes narrowed at you. " why do you care? Why acting like it's your problem?" He was confused by your question. as you just stared at him, not knowing how to answer.

Days ago, while you were taking a different route home with your friend you saw a familiar face painted on the walls of New York, the cop Jefferson Davis's face. You had knew of him from your father's friend who was a cop as well.

the cop used to show your father and you his photos with the guy and other co-workers at work.

the day of his death, he spoke so highly of him and how he sacrificed himself for so many people, you didn't know the guy deeply but thought of him as a hero.

While they were showing the dead victims faces on TV, he was among them. you felt kind of sad but didn't think much of it back then.

So when you saw his face again something pulled your curiosity to ask more about this guy, especially of how he reminded you of someone though you weren't sure of that theory.

when you went back home that weekend, you called your father's friend, Joshua, asking him to tell you more about Jeff and it turned out that he was from Morales family, to your shock and fear however he was Miles's father.

From that day you saw the boy in a different light, hence why you stopped calling him 'Burrito boy', you began to understand him more even when you two hardly spoke to each other. Though you began to understand through his behaviour and actions of why he was doing it.

one thing you still didn't understand was why he didn't fight for his reputation.

" So?" He asked, kind of impatiently.

You inhaled and exhaled loudly.

"Listen, Miles. . .we maybe don't speak a lot but I see you as a good person and it kind of annoys me how you won't bother to prove it to anyone else," You bit your lips at his blank expression, brushing through your hair you sighed again. 'this is so stupid'

why were your chest tightening, you weren't even confessing to him!

"I know it isn't my place to speak and it is indeed not my business, but could you at least try? Please." His eyes widen a bit as you both stared at each other, till he broke your gaze, staring besides him instead.

He clicked his tongue rubbing his eyes. " Hablas en Serio ? " [are you serious?] He couldn't believe you were asking him to defend himself a little, why were you that interested about his problem?

" If I do,would you stop standing up for me?"

You blinked, taken a back by this.

" huh? What do you mean?"

Miles smirked, to your surprise. " Ya think I am blind and don't see all that ya doing behind my back?"

the beats of your heart sped up again, as your face started to heat up, you opened your mouth multiple times then closing them like a fish.

" Yo–you. . .you noticed??" Miles smirked more. his amussing expressions were surprising you that It was hard to look away.

"You ain't that silk, ' cerebro grande' " [ 'big brain'. ]

okay now that you are talking with him, he kept speaking in Spanish, was that his native language or something? also what?

The bell rang when you opened your mouth to say something, he turned on his heels passing you before you could utter a world. his confidence and mysterious behaviour drawn your attention, you couldn't understand how a quiet kid could show such power with simple words and acts.

" Later, niña " [ little girl] you heard him mumble still smirking.

You were left there like an idiot, staring at him  bewildered and surprised, your hands clasped on the straps of your cross bag.

Miles sly smirk turned into a simple smile as he remembered your confidence when you stood up for him, he didn't like to have you involved in those situations, of course.

He may have not said it, but you were right, he should at least try stand for himself and stop those rumors from spreading even when they were going to anyway. He knew how to be witty and clever with his responses, he just didn't care.

yet since you became in the picture, he would reconsider to let himself be heard. If it meant to push you away from trouble.

Was he worried about you? well, you seemed to be stubborn and someone had to stop you before you hurt yourself.

He didn't know much about you but from your actions he could tell it wasn't new for you to stand up for someone, he did see you do it multiple times now.

he wasn't the type to focus on someone but your case was an exception.

Miles felt those following weeks were going to be interesting.

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Taglist:

@catherinekisser @ueexj

@cvqidd @akira-ri00

@axeoverblade @gwennesy

-Don't forget to comment if you liked the part!

Till next time

[dmajor7th]

Thought, feelings, and opinions on the YR3 finale

Far be it from me to rain on anyone's parade, but by God, the 'walk into the sunset' felt so cheap, lazy, and narratively unsatisfying.

Yes yes we all love love, love prevails all obstacles and suffices in all lacking, and now that they've trotted off into The Great Unknown and dived into The Vast Lake Of Possibility, it's all rainbows and sunshine from here on. Right?

If so, why does the rest of S3's build up stand in contradiction with the ending?

All the incompatibilities Simon and Wille have when it comes to class, wealth, social standing, etc, were really put under a spotlight this season and have not gone away just because they've had a little sun-kissed make-up. Once the car journey is over, they have to actually talk about how they want their joined life to look—quite the feat at 16/17 years old—and judging by Wille's treatment of Simon throughout the rest of the series, I don't see it the road ahead being paved with glory.

We blame (excuse?) a lot of Wille's behaviours this season on external pressures. And yes, Wille was trying to balance his duty to the crown with his romance and was under intense stress with his sick mother and looming ascendence to the throne, but a lot of his shitty behaviour also came from him, as a person. Those behaviours might be learned and cultivated in an upper class context, but they're still his. He chose to shush Simon in the tent then poke at the sore spot that is Simon's litigation settlement. He chose to shout at his mother instead of pulling her over for a more sensible conversation. He chose to pass on the pressures of the court to Simon regarding Simon's online presence, rather than discussing it with him or pushing back against Farima.

And yes, I know he's sixteen and troubled, but troubled sixteen year olds also have agency and personality and decision making abilities. As much as a lot of Wille's poor behaviour is a result of external pressures, we can't blame all his actions on external pressures either, lest be become a flat nothing of a character.

S3 ep 1-5 presented us with what seemed to be a fundamental incompatibility between Simon and Wille—as people, outside of any institutions. And the 'walking off into the sunset' ending glosses over all of that character and relationship build-up for the first five episodes. They even created all the mirroring resolutions for Wilmon ("I hope you have a nice summer" etc.), only to stomp on them with what? "Mom says it's ok for me not to be King anymore! Yay!" and that's it, a big silver bullet to all their problems, now they can live happily ever after.

Speaking of Kristina—Wille just asked nicely not to be King anymore and that was it? All it took was one polite conversation he failed to have with his parents for seventeen episodes and now he's "free"? Yes there was build up to Kristina's decision, but it was also way too easy. They finally get to have a grown up conversation with Wille—I don't think they're just going to let him go, like that, after 5 minutes in the car. They still want him to be King.

And even if he's not king, he's still going to be a Royal. He might not take the throne, but he will still have titles, land, duties, and a place in the Royal family tree. He's not going to be a damn bus driver now. The only thing is is that he might no longer have access to the resources he needs—namely personal security— to live the life of someone inextricably in the public eye, and that doesn't make him freer.

Look, I get that Wille and Simon's romantic relationship was central loci of the show, so it makes total sense why so many people were rooting for a happy ending. I begrudge no one, of course—there is no one way to consume or enjoy the show, and everyone will take from it what they need.

But if they were going for a Big Sappy Ending, I wish they wouldn't have make the cracks in Wilmon's relationship so enormous that they can't just be papered over, as it feels they have in ep6.

Long Live King August.

[notthatsamkim]

𝕯𝖎𝖋𝖋𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝕴𝖓𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝕱𝖎𝖗𝖊

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

heeseung x fem!reader

genre : strangers to lovers? - the forbidden "i warned you" type of story

warnings : fem!reader, reader skips class, abandonment of friends.. lmk if i missed something

a/n : this is just a snippet of a possible longer fic i am planning. just trying to see where i'm at with my writing skills after my year-long hiatus from writing — i suck at editing so let's see past that

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"y/n y/l/n??!" 

heeseung had watched you linger around one of the benches as your other classmates had made their way to their respective classes, phone against your ear several times to no luck. he watched you get up, playfully swinging your bag left and right behind your back as if you’d given up trying to reach whoever it was on the other end of your call.

"why, what's wrong?" heeseung chuckled nervously.

all coherent thoughts were thrown out the window when his legs took him in your direction. the few classes on his schedule he was due to be present at, were put on hold. all he cared about was the adventure you ought to set yourself on. he wanted to know why his friends warned him about you even though things like that can end up badly, but he also remembered being told to not pull judgement about anyone or anything if he hadn’t tried anything - for the sake of witnessing himself - yet.

"i know you're entitled to be attracted to whoever your heart desires but,.. i just don't get good vibes from her."

"you know her?"

you’d made it to the gate when you finally noticed someone following you. you’d turned around. at first, you wanted to make sure it was not you he was interested in, so you continued walking until he too turned the corner to walk through the park towards the bus stop.

“oh.. hey there?” heeseung waved shyly, suddenly losing every ability to say something. you’d rummaged through your brain where you remembered seeing him as you allowed your eyes to trail away from him. he was seen hanging out with the people who had not so nice things to say about you and you never understood why, because you thought they were grown enough to form an opinion of their own. clearly not.

not until heeseung.

"i talked to her now and then, but i definitely don't want to be her friend."

“a-are you here to report me?” 

heeseung was taken aback when your first question wasn’t why he would be following you, “why would i do that?”

you wanted to open your mouth, but didn’t find it appropriate to fill him in on how his friends had watched your every move on your way out of the school grounds, when you hadn’t had proper conversations with him yet. and it was as if heeseung got a sense of what you were trying to say.

"how do you know what she is like?" heeseung challenged. 

“i don’t know where to go yet, i guess i’ll find out when i get on the bus.”

“why don’t you ask your friends?”

you waved your phone in the air and chuckled, "tried that.”

there weren’t many times he’d ever crossed paths with you so he thought that time could be the first of many. bold coming from him, but he would have to start somewhere if he wanted to prove himself.

“would you… mind hanging out with me then?”

a quizzical expression took over your face, “sure you aren’t here gathering intel for your friends?” there, you said it.

heeseung sighed, “i’m not. but i am curious to know what is so bad about you.”

you nodded. “i hope i don’t disappoint then.”

you already regretted showing the very side of you that people are apparently warned about - being vulnerable, translated into clinginess.

"i can smell it from miles away.”

“likewise,” heeseung smiled.

"well.. i don't know her so maybe she's not like that at all and people just read her wrong?"

"i don't know hee, just be careful. or stay away to be safe."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ─── tagging : @kurosism @seungkwan-s @alohajun @kpophubb @doehee for testing

[langernameohnebedeutung]

What is the take. Please share with the class.

Oh, right my take! (I actually posted the first...thoughts of this accidentally before I could finish it because I accidentally queued them instead of drafting but that gave me more time to obsess over this)

So you know how in 2.14 this happens:

Blaine gets kidnapped by Stacey Boss, has his throat slit, and gets buried in the woods. And then by the time he digs himself back out:

Sun's up.

For a really long time, I really never thought about these scenes beyond: 'heh, there is my boy again, good for him!' until it really struck me how fucked up that was. (Partially bc I watched that Buffy episode where the others bring her back from the dead and she has to dig herself out of her own grave and everyone is horrified by how traumatising that experience must have been. Which made me go: Hey, this reminds me of-)

Blaine was down there for hours buried alive. He dug himself out for hours.

But then I thought: Hey, I can do better! I want to find out how long he was down there!

So, at first I assumed that the abduction would have taken place in the middle of the night - because that's when it would make most sense to abduct someone. But that didn't really make sense bc in all the other plots happening at the same time, everyone was still out and about, the Positivity-café from the murder of the week plot is still open etc.

But then I found this:

This takes place just two scenes after Blaine gets buried - so even if we can't really pin down whether those events happen at the same time or this one takes place a little after Blaine got buried, we can still settle for Blaine getting buried between about 7pm and (at the very latest) 7:30pm.

I skimmed through the two previous episodes and the one after that but I couldn't find anything about when this takes place - but we do know that it's really dark outside at 7pm and we do know that New Year's Eve happened Method Head four episodes ago, so it's after Winter Solstice.

So like any normal sane adult I got me this diagramme of sunrise/sunset times in Seattle throughout the year:

Now, at least several weeks have passed since Method Head so this places us well within February (which makes sense, bc the episode also originally aired on the 23rd of February 2016).

Personally, I'm actually prone to dating it even earlier, in early February or late January because they go out of their way to give us this information:

And I found this on a website about Seattle's bird-life:

Now, working out way backwards about two weeks -

-places us in late January, or very early February. Which means (referring back to our daylight diagramme), Blaine couldn't have managed to get out of that grave before 7:20am or 7:30 am.

Which gives us a pretty exact duration for how long Blaine was buried alive of about - Approximately 12 hours (minus the time it took to actually fill up the grave. Something I'll come back to)

Which is fucked up. That would be a pretty traumatic experience on normal person terms, being buried alive for 12 hours and digging yourself back out. Possibly even longer than that because by the time Blaine arrives at the morgue, it is actually well past noon -

but that would obviously include the bus-ride and we don't know how long that was. (In fact, I had a look at Google Maps and dabbled a bit to see how long different public transport rides from any surrounding forests or parks or other green areas to the inner city of Seattle would take, and it could very well be possible that Stacey just really wanted to make sure that Blaine's body wouldn't be found and had him buried really far away in any of the surrounding National Parks or national forests - and from google maps tells me, public transport only goes so far and he'd have have walked the rest, which would explain why it's already noon.

(by the way, what do people without hyperfixiations do all day? Do you just ... not use bird-mating seasons and daylight hours and public transport schedules from a city on the other side of the globe to figure out the date and time of day of tv-show events?)

But this is where speculation actually starts:

As the audience, we learn that Blaine is returning to zombie state before he gets abducted:

he can't really taste his wine anymore (and god, is he whiny about it.)

What we don't know is whether Blaine connects the dots.

What does happen is that Blaine abandons his mission of getting wine-drunk over the woes of having to pay back his debts to Mr Boss and instead suggests that Candy and he have genie costume role-play sex. Candy apparently considers this a delightful and charming notion and agrees - and they go to have sex inside another couple's coffin. Which is fitting bc now they're both dying - Blaine from reverting to zombie form and Candy because she is now infected as well. Though it need be said that as the audience, we only learn about Candy's infection after Blaine’s abduction, when Don E finds her eating the coffin owners' brains the next morning.

This also gives us some insight into the stage of his infection (which is a bit hard to tell with Blaine because he's already dyeing his hair white) - He's already infectious and showing symptoms. We had characters like Sloane who even got turned after clinical death - so at this point, Blaine's probably pretty fit to withstand some throat cutting.

Now this leaves us with two working theories:

Either: Blaine doesn't know he's a zombie again. And really thought he was going to die in the forest, up until the point at least that he survived having his throat cut or until he found himself buried alive and started digging his way back up. The latter probably being the most terrifying option. (Also: this had me thinking about how something very similar happened to Liv - she fell off the boat in the Pilot episode - and then she wakes up in a body bag. Which most likely means she died of drowning.)

Or: He did know.

Unlike most people who get turned, Blaine already knows the signs. That's personally the theory that I'm partial to. The biggest reason being that one episode later, he actually argues in favour of letting Mr Boss continue to think that he's dead - so getting abducted and faking his death actually played pretty well into his hands. Also, he very abruptly switches subjects from drinking to sleeping with Candy. And not only is infecting people kind of Blaine's thing - he also now has the perfect alibi of allegedly not knowing that he's contagious again. He gets to tie Candy to him and his business (and his brains) with perfect plausible deniability if he says he didn't know he was a zombie again. Sure, there might be some hard feelings but what can she really do? She's gonna need the brains. That's a pretty classic Blaine plan.

(there is also the third option - which is that he can tell that he's turning back but because this round of zombificiation is very different from his first one he can't really tell what's happening to him or where he's at. So if he suspects that he's turning but can't really tell what's going inside his body at this point - sleeping with Candy is still a good strategy to find out (because either she turns and he knows he's a zombie again AND he pretty much guaranteed her loyalty to his brain business OR she doesn't turn - and he at least got some nookie out of it. Plus, she's probably more likely to go along with that than with experimental scratching or blood-sharing.)

Either way, they gave him an incentive not to reveal his reversion, if he noticed it, to Candy - and we know he actively wanted to make Mr Boss believe that he's dead so he doesn't really have much incentive to put up a big fight or reveal himself or go into rage state either, during his abduction. (In this context it's interesting to point out that neither in the car nor in the woods do they have a gun to his head. So if he knows he's a zombie and he actively wanted to get away, his odds would actually have been higher taking his chances with a surprise tackle and a jump out of the car than letting them bring him wherever they're bringing him.

Which then brings me to his 'execution':

Another thing that stands out is that there isn't a lot of blood for someone who had just had his jugular cut, even after several seconds of lying in the grave.

There is the Doylist interpretation (tv restrictions) and the Watsonist one - he's a zombie, so obviously he doesn't bleed much. Though, on iZombie these explanations often go hand in hand and the zombie-thing is a way of having the characters suffer severe injuries without too much gore going on. The reason I'm bringing this up is that - if this is considered weird inside the reality of the show (the Watsonist level), then there is a surprising lack of reaction from the three seasoned murderers witnessing this scene. No one going "Wait why isn't he bleeding properly???"

On the other hand, pretty much the same gambit works on the same people from Don E at the end of the season and he canonically is a zombie, so it seems fair to attribute this to their expectation that someone who has his throat cut and is not moving is probably dead enough.

So that's that for Mr Boss' guys, but the real question is -

what's going on with Blaine.

Now, throughout the show, we see several zombies suffer severe throat injuries. (And in fact, several of those people are Blaine because he's just such a popular guy) We have our poor pal Luta, who got stabbed into side of his neck with a Balisong -

Luta ends up almost completely losing his voice from this, something that doesn't really seem to add up in light of the healing abilities of the other zombie characters, but I'm willing to ascribe it to his vocal cords healing back together wrong or scarring in a way that makes it difficult to produce sound which is a condition that normal humans can get from as much as over-using their voice. Since we saw the wound having formed a scar in a later episode, I think that's as good an explanation as any.

Our biggest example would be Dino who literally gets beheaded -

(and that's one I really don't know how to explain beyond being an example of the extreme durability of zombies. But still, there is no way to make sense of this physiologically. You need lungs to produce sound or to speak.)

But the most obvious example...would still be Blaine himself because we see him get shot, stabbed, impaled through his throat and whatnot:

In Eat A Knievel, he gets shot through the throat and basically shows hardly any physical reaction at all:

And then, just a few episodes later -

They actually put a ...kind of popping sound-effect over this that I interpret as indicating a bone/spinal injury but again, there isn't much of a physical reaction beyond entering zombie-mode - something that didn't happen on either of the other occasion (maybe a reaction to the pin still being stuck inside?)

Anyway, both of these injuries are definitely much more severe than having his throat just cut - which really just relies on the rapid drop in blood pressure and the blood loss to kill you. Both of which don't really matter much for zombies (and, as I said, considering the lack of blood loss in the forest- scene, that probably wasn't much of an issue any more at this point/stage of re-zombification.)

So yeah, assuming all that, let's remember our two (and a half) options for the forest-scene: Blaine knows he's a zombie/He doesn't know/He suspects it.

Either Blaine doesn't know/isn't sure he's a zombie at this point - then this is the point where he definitely would find out. In that scenario, he'd actually think/consider the chance that he might be dying when he gets his throat slit, maybe react to the pain or enter some state of shock.

Considering that we still see a little bit more blood on him in the forest scene as compared to the other occasions, his cardiovascular system might still not have returned to zombie-baseline entirely and have supported his body somewhat. In which case maybe he is experiencing the symptoms of blood loss or rapid drop in blood pressure - but less severely/fatally - which might explain weakness or even unconsciousness. In which case he really would be waking up underground OR while they're filling up the grave.

On the other hand, if he's far enough along into rezombification (and possibly even aware of it) - - -

He could just be faking the whole thing. He might really just be faking the neck-clutching, the unconsciousness. In fact, considering the level of drama he has falling into that grave and his history/future of faking stuff, I wouldn't put this past him.

But this interpretation also adds a whole new level of insanity to what's happening. Now, I don't know how long it really would take to fill up a grave (and I suspect it has a lot to do with ground conditions and what not) but ...I suspect it does take a while, even for two dudes. Let's give it more than half an hour. Especially considering they do a pretty good job with that grave (until Blaine breaks through the ground again, the spot looks perfectly smooth and untouched).

This means, Blaine would not only have been inside his grave, digging his way up for about 12 hours - he was also fully conscious and playing dead while he was getting buried. That would mean he was just lying there while they shovel several hundred kilogrammes of dirt on top of him. Apparently being very optimistic that he will be able to dig his way out (before he goes Romero).

He did manage, I guess. But it's still a gamble.

So that's...just there.

But that also raises the question: If he knows or is beginning to suspect or realise that he's a zombie again - what exactly is stopping him from putting an end to this? I doubt that they kept a gun trained on a dead body that whole time. And with everyone busy with shovelling and he himself being a zombie, that would have been the perfect opportunity to get out of that situation. He could just enter rage mode and maul them. Actually, this was so far my biggest argument against Blaine knowing that he's a zombie or against him being actually conscious while getting buried - and again, that's just all personal speculation.

But I still wondered: Wouldn't it have been more useful to him to just kill Mr Boss there and then rather than fake his own death? In fact, it's just three dudes, he's a zombie, two are probably busy digging. And they're already in the most secluded area that he could ever hope to get Stacey in. There's even a grave ready to throw them into.

Except, then I realised something else -

So at this point, if something happens to Mr Boss, he'd lose his immunity - which is the only thing keeping Clive and Dale from putting into prison for 10 years for his old drug charges. (And I guess he loses access to Peyton which we know he also isn't hyped for). So yeah, that makes Mr Boss more useful for him alive than dead - as long as Boss in turn thinks Blaine's dead.

And on a completely related but also wildly different note:

(and this is where I abandon speculation and interpretation in favour of completely making things up) I talked about how being buried alive for a whole night, desperately trying to dig yourself up for hours would probably be a highly traumatising experience for a person. Like...that's the kind of shit that gives you a lifetime of claustrophobia one might imagine.

But the really interesting thing is, Blaine loves to threaten to do this to other people:

I mean, he really likes doing that - especially with the added threat of burying people alive in them. Or unalive. For all eternity. Now I hear you say 'well, he has a funeral home now, so that's probably convenient to dispose of them that way'.

But let me provide a counter-argument:

Shit's expensive.

He specifically mentions that Mr Boss' casket is mahogany. He has a human-sized freezer in the basement, he could be giving him the same treatment he did Major in season 1 (which was also a confined space he locked him into, mind you). He also has a human-sized incinerator where he can dispose of bodies. And a giant collection of tools to cut into and rearrange bodies with. But no, his favourite torture method is really that: Locking people into small spaces and abandoning them. Even dumping Angus into the well holds up with that.

In fact, when it comes to actually torturing Angus into changing his will in The Whooper - he let's Chief and Candy do that - while he walks away.

Now, with Angus, it's all a lot more direct and intentional - Blaine even spells it out himself in that scene:

It's revenge for ignoring his pleas for help when he was a child. So he's now ignoring his father while Chief and Candy can do whatever they like with him and he's going to ignore it in turn. I mentioned in another post how a lot of Blaine's anger at Angus is actually less about the physical abuse his father put him through - but he seems at least much, if not more, occupied with feelings of betrayal and abandonment due to his father's absences and disregard for him.

And in fact, it makes a lot of sense considering that he was (intentionally or not) abandoned by both his parents - his mother because she withdrew more and more from her husband's abuse and Angus because he's...well, Angus. Not to mention his grandfather being institutionalised which probably also meant losing access to him. Heck, damn kid even lost his dog which was probably the only living being still left who paid attention to him at home.

A lot of the stuff we learn about that Blaine did in his childhood (like stealing his mother's beloved earrings - instead of literally anything else on their fucking estate he could have sold) really resonate as a bid for attention more than anything. And it's pretty much a behaviour that continues into adulthood - from the way he inflicts himself on Liv and Ravi sometimes, the way he keeps bragging and lying to Al Bronson about how popular and happy he is, the way he starts being drawn in by his father actually showing an interest in him in season 4, the way Major manages to get his attention with promises of statues and schools named after him - he just really, really likes being noticed, whether that be in a good or a bad way. - - - so the threat of burying someone alive somewhere for all eternity and no one will ever know about their suffering - actually seems like he's subconsciously drawing on his own experiences of something he experienced as particularly terrifying and torturous as a child: His suffering being ignored.

Now add to that his very specific love of torturing people by forcing them into confined spaces for as long as he feels like it -

(again, I'm all out on the limb of speculation here but I don't look a gift parallel in the mouth.)

So yeah, 12 hours in a hole digging his way up or being forgotten out there and going Romero in the ground.

I don't think that was fun for him.

And then it's never mentioned again because...this is not all that deep, okay??? I'm normal about this.

[kyufessions]

boy on the bus

synopsis: you’re writing a letter that won’t reach him

pairing: non-idol! changmin x g.n. reader

genre: fluff turned angst (??)

word count: 1.2k

general taglist: @jwnghyuns @eaudenana @soobin-chois

tbz taglist: @ilovechanhee

i was told life is supposed to be boring. everyday we wake up and attend our normal jobs that we either love or despise. i did what was told of me, got my degree, and got that boring job. i also never missed a singular day of work, not daring to be looked down upon by my supervisors but rather being looked at as the employee that goes above and beyond, whether the company deserves someone like me or not. but i did what momma told me, and lived that boring life that i only dreamt of as a child. “life won’t be that boring, will it?” id promise myself i wouldn’t make it boring, but rather have it be fun and exciting. but still do exactly as momma said. and that i did- except, i felt little fulfillment and joy. until i met you.

it was just a normal wednesday afternoon after work, sitting in the back corner of the bus for the next ten minutes until i arrived at my destination. headphones played day6’s discography on a loop as i stared ahead out of the window, admiring the same view of the busy streets and occasional trees and bushes that i notice everyday through the changing seasons. but this day was different, because of you.

i noticed you coming in from the bus stop in front of the local college campus, you were wearing nothing but just grey sweatpants and a random graphic tee with a pullover flannel with frames glasses that accompanied your face perfectly. the way small strands of hair stuck to your forehead was something i couldn’t help but notice, my mind fluttering with curiosity. i watched as you looked around for a seat- your eyes finally meeting mine. once they did? i felt my heart do a kick that it hadn’t for several years up to that point. no one had caught my eye quite like you did, not a single soul. but yet here was a random stranger on the bus making my cheeks heat up at the shyest smile that’s thrown at me.

one afternoon, all the seats had been occupied- all except the one next to me. this was when my life changed for the better. instead of choosing a seat farther from me, you’d sit next to me instead. we’d catch up on life (mainly yours, mine was too repetitive for any curiosity to arise) until i got off at my spot, saying our goodbye’s until the very next day we’d do the same thing. one day, we ended up getting off at the same spot due to me having to do grocery shopping. and, funnily enough, you accompanied me. then it became a friday afternoon tradition for us to go grocery shopping until one of us had to leave- each friday becoming a little longer than the previous. it was sweet, it was slow.

one day, you didn’t show up. i said “hey, i’ll see him tomorrow. it’s okay.” but that day never came until three days later. playfully, i scolded you- jokes like that became our thing. instead of getting off at your spot, you got off on mine. that night, we just walked around my neighborhood and shared a bowl of tteokbokki and kimchi at the restaurant down the street from my apartment. you told me everything from your stressful college days, to overworking yourself i. both work and classes, to friend drama- everything. it made us closer, and it made my heart warm to know how close you considered me to be to gush your feelings out to me on a random thursday night.

that very next day, i didn’t need to go grocery shopping. after telling you that, you said words i thought i had only dreamt of: “let me take you on an official date then!” the excitement in your voice, that smile.. how could one say no? you took me to your favorite cafe, remember? i do. we had banana pancakes and coffee at 6PM, then we stayed at the arcade until they kicked us out. when your hand slipped in mine, butterflies erupted. everything suddenly started feeling okay. everything felt okay.

the weekends were our date nights. do you remember when you asked me to be yours? in the sunflower field? it had been my first day off of work in a while and you had promised to make it special. and that you did. you made all my days worth living again. you made them fun, more exciting. the light was no longer dull but rather blinding with endless possibilities. it was like that for an entire year until everything suddenly stopped.

no more bus rides. no more dates. no more gushy facetime time calls as we do our skincare routines as we complain about not living together yet. it had been one day where you didn’t show up on the bus. “sorry, got busy.” was all you said. silence filled my phone for the remainder of the night until the next day. you didn’t show up again, so i asked if you were okay. “sorry. meet you for dinner?” but you never did. you never met me at that same restaurant near my home, so i walked thirty minutes to your favorite cafe. but it was closed. during the thirty minute walk back i called you, but to no avail. by the third call, i gave up. assuming you fell asleep or became busy with your finals for graduation.

the next day you didn’t show up on the bus either. i texted. no response. i texted your friend. no response. “maybe he’s busy.” id say, making up every excuse in the book. instead, i got off at your stop and walked to your apartment to find it empty. no furniture, unlocked doors, an empty fridge. i asked your neighbors, and quickly called you once they said you had moved out almost a week ago. but once again, no answer.

it’s been months, and i’m still stuck on the boy from the bus; i’m still stuck on you, ji changmin. i should be mad whenever i think of our lazy mornings with our feet tangled together as you hum a soft tune into my hair, your fingers playing with the messy strands. but i don’t. i instead get butterflies, just like when i first saw you on that autumn day. you were my first love. you taught me how it felt to feel genuinely loved for who i was, you taught me how it felt to be loved back. whether that love was true or faux, i still thank you.

should i? should i really be thanking the man who has me sitting outside of our your favorite cafe with tears streaming down my face at 3AM? probably not. but i fell pathetically for you. and i fear i might still be doing so until i snap back into reality.

why did you leave suddenly? with no warning? are you okay, wherever you are? did you finally create your own dance studio? or did you debut? do you ever miss me, too?

you made my life worth living for a while, ji changmin. maybe i can find the excitement on my own this time? maybe you were a lesson sent by the universe. and for that i thank you. it was a very cruel lesson, but thank you.

sincerely,

[wronggalaxy]

MY LEFT LEG PROBLEM:

I have an unknown condition or long-term injury that has impacted me for a few years, but has been steadily getting worse. In the past couple weeks alone I've become reliant on my cane 100% of the time, lost all physical abilities with my legs outside of walking(including running, sports, jumping, kneeling, walking quickly, kicking, etc.), and have become almost completely bedbound outside of school. I go to school, stumble through classes half awake and in indescribable pain, try and fail to eat lunch because the pain is so bad, go home and spend the next 12 hours lying on a heating pad until I have to do it all over again. I have intense pain 24/7 that randomly spikes from anywhere from a few seconds to hours multiple times every day. The pain comes from my knee, but everything below it hurts as well. I can't stand for longer than a minute and walk for more than 5 at a time, on a good day. Even after just 5 minutes of walking I can't move my leg for 10 plus minutes. After a minute of standing or 5 of walking(often times less) I will uncontrollably collapse and be unable to move at all for 30-60 minutes. Even after all that time I can still only move to go from the floor to my bed or a chair/bench if in public where I have to rest for longer. It's not a muscle or bone problem. My PT and GP think it's a torn meniscus(knee cartilage), but we won't know until I have an mri which my insurance won't currently cover because it's "not medically necessary". A torn meniscus is usually treated by surgery if severe, sometimes not even that much is needed. Since it's been at least 5 years since the tear happened(if that does end up being the problem), surgery might not even be an option. I need a wheelchair. I can't afford one, my house isn't wheelchair accessible, my school is 2 stories and the elevator is constantly broken, I wouldn't be able to ride the bus(my only way to school), where I live if you home school in high school they force you to get a GED not a diploma. If I get surgery recovery time is 6 months, so I'd have to quit the Speech & Debate team. If you quit for any amount of time you can never be on the team again. I regularly get called slurs and insulting nicknames, get fake claimed, have had people try to steal my cane, and have been intentionally pushed down my school's staircases multiple times. I tend to chew on my cane's handle when anxious which has gotten me sexualized, a lot. I'm also suspected for tendinitis in my ankle. The longer a torn meniscus is untreated the bigger the tear becomes and the more likely you are to develop degenerative knee arthritis. I'm also suspected for knee arthritis. Knee braces only make the pain worse and irritate my skin condition, leg braces don't do anything. My cane barely works anymore. I can't use a walker because of my back or crutches because of the school's broken elevator. My GP can only prescribe me ibprophen because of a lack of diagnosis. It does nothing. Nor does any other pain medicine I've tried for anything. I took a pill once that's so strong that it can kill you to take more than 1 a day. It brought me down to what able-bodied people would probably call a 'five'. That was before it got bad.

I don't know how much longer I can survive.

[umichenginabroad]

Extra American and British this week

Promiňte, I'm posting a little late. I think all the traveling has been catching up to me tbh... but more on my trip later.

The week was a bit of a mishmash of events. Our program in Prague has done a really good job of providing a range of extracurricular activities. They even hired a yoga instructor to give us weekly lessons. I'm a casual yogi, and my back has been aching from I don't even know what, so the first session was a super great way to unwind. I also had fun watching everyone else learn yoga poses. It's definitely not a skill that comes immediately if you've never done it before (unfortunately no picture proof but maybe next time lol)

There were also a lot of professors and staff from various American universities visiting this week to learn about the program, since we are essentially the guinea pigs for the first year. It was a little strange to be observed in class and then cornered for questions, but I can understand where they're coming from. I mean I kind of jumped into this experience blind, so I'm sure they want the most context as possible for their students. I'm actually a Marketing Intern for the program, so I got this fancy name tag, pictured below, for our evening speaker event. Not going to lie, did not do much networking since my professional battery was rather drained from the observation and questions earlier in the day. However, I did find both speakers to have interesting stories and paths to how they reached the Tech Sector. And another plus is the chlebíčky, I mean just look at how delicious they are.

For the weekend trip to London, I learned how to use public transit to get to the airport for the first time! Public transportation is pretty easy and cheap to begin with. I think my 3 month pass cost around $60, and I use the buses, trams, and metro all the time to travel around the city. As a heads up you don't need to scan anything to get on or off (there's places to validate tickets if you get a paper ticket), but officials will occasionally appear and ask to see a valid ticket. Anyway, my other travels have all been by bus or train; both stations are within a 20 minute tram ride. Getting to the airport took much longer. The metro station closest to our apartment is currently closed for construction, so we took the tram, then the metro, and then a bus. A little complicated in terms of transfers and it takes close to an hour, but everything is easily followable and generally on time.

Muzeum metro stop with some cool tunnel walls and following the signs to the airport bus from the metro

I feel like I've constantly needed to use phrases in other languages and ask people if they speak English, so arriving in London and seeing all English signs was shocking at first. I enjoyed fitting in... for the most part at least because I'm pretty sure anyone would be able to tell that I'm not British when I open my mouth lmao

Since I'd been to London before and also had Michigan friends in town, I split my time between touristy things and just exploring the city. Our walking tour was a stark contrast from the one in Berlin. It had much more drama and entertainment value as we learned about all the crazy dynamics of the royal family and random stories tied to various landmarks. That being said, the architecture is beautiful. Not just the monuments like Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and Westminster Abbey, but even the more modern or contemporary buildings closer to the city center.

Also discovered the abundance of good food especially at food markets within the city. Mercato Metropolitano, Borough Market, and Seven Dials Market are fantastic if anyone's looking for recs. I definitely want to see if similar places exist in Prague because I suck at deciding what to eat and they just have an abundance of options.

I ended up getting food with both my umich friends and my friend who studied abroad at Michigan last year. And it felt so comforting to catch up with them. I don't think I realized home much I missed Ann Arbor and my friends in general. Meeting new people and experiencing different cultures still excites me, but I think it's necessary to keep in touch with what home is like too.

High Tea with a bomb salmon sandwich and Seafood Paella made right in front of you

London was a great reset: somewhere I would return to for sure. I'm traveling without my roommates for the first time next weekend (which is going to be a change of pace). Additionally, I actually started doing two things I never thought I would, so keep an eye out for that next time!

Catherine Jiang Computer Science Tech Career Accelerator in Prague

Czech Words

Promiňte - sorry

chlebíčky - Czech open-faced sandwiches

[primofate]

2K Followers Event: Pancake and Waffle Cafe Masterlist

Nutella Waffles (overhearing and misunderstanding a conversation/situation) MODERN AU ANGST

Characters: Childe, Kazuha, Thoma, Albedo, Kaeya, Zhongli, fem!reader

Warnings: not proofread :D, cheating, fighting, insulting, misunderstanding (duh), pregnancy, sexual innuendos, implying sex, mentions of sex, still SFW though, of course I bent the lore since it’s an AU

Notes: I had trouble with this so I decided to make it a modern AU. That’s also why it took so long. I think my brain is starting to run dry XD I mean, there’s only so much situations/conversations I could think of that could be misunderstood. Still, enjoy!

Childe

"Ah, sorry, Y/N, I can’t walk you home today... Maybe tomorrow?” Childe smiled at you, scratching the back of his head, his school bag swung over his shoulder already. He looked like he was in a hurry. 

It’s been a few days like this and you really didn’t know what was happening. You asked him if he needed help with stuff at home or if he was having a hard time with his homework and if that’s why he was always rushing off. He would just give you the same smile and wave a hand. “It’s nothing like that,” and then off he’d go. 

The next day, as you walk towards his classroom during lunchtime you hear him and his friends talking before you even reach the classroom door. 

“Zoe is totally cute,” Childe says. The voice he uses is something that he’d never used on you before. You freeze in your tracks and try to listen in more. “Wow, she really is! Great job picking her!” one of his friends said and it sounded as if they’d hit Childe on the back as a congratulations. “Let me see, let me see,” another one says followed by a gasp. “Have you taken her out yet?” Childe laughs nervously and you know all too well without even looking at him that he’s probably scratching his head. “No, not yet,” 

“Does your girlfriend know yet?” Someone else asks.

And then you hear a laugh that’s all too mischievous. All too playful. All too heart-wrenching. “She doesn’t know!” and they continue to laugh.

You turn away and try your hardest not to let tears escape from your eyes. It felt as if you were being laughed at. Like everyone knew that he was cheating. Everyone except you. It doesn’t help that there was a Zoe in the other class too. The way his friends laughed made your cheeks heat up in embarrassment and the tears you were so desperately holding back to finally flow through.

You ended up staying in the washroom for the whole of lunch time, staying in a cubicle for an extra few minutes, late for the next class.

Somehow you didn’t expect Childe to still show up in your classroom to pick you up for the day and walk you home. You stare at him at the classroom door, your eyes had already gone back to their normal shade, but still glossy. He doesn’t notice, he has a big smile on his face that mocks you. Ridicules you. 

“Y/N! Let’s go together today!” Does he feel guilty? Is that why he finally agrees to walk home with you? Cause he’s had his fill of Zoe already? You don’t say a word and exit the classroom, going past him. Childe blinks, and turns to watch you walking away from him. “Y/N?”

He walks after you, and takes his place next to you. He touches the strap of your backpack, as usual, and says “I’ll take this--”

“I got it,” you reply curtly and move away from him. He’s dumbfounded, eyes still a little wide at your sudden coldness. Now he’s getting anxious. Did he do something wrong? “H-Hey...Y/N, are you mad because I didn’t walk home with you the past couple days? See, I was just--”

“I’m not that petty!” You nearly growl at him, holding his gaze for a few seconds before walking off again. Your eyes are starting to prickle with more tears. You just wanted to get home. As soon as you can. Away from him. You didn’t have the heart to break up with him face to face. You liked him too much, you knew you wouldn’t be able to do it while looking at his handsome face. 

Then, he snatches your wrist and pulls you back towards him. The school hallways are emptying out, there’s a few students walking by who ignore the two of you. “Then what’s the matter? I don’t like it when we fight. At least tell me what I did!” 

You wrench your wrist away from his and start sniffing. He stands there, shocked at where your tears are coming from. Until you start talking. “I heard you, during lunch time,” his eyebrows furrow. “Lunch...time?” He mumbles, not following. “When you were talking about your cute Zoe!” He doesn’t say anything for a moment and that only confirms your fears. 

He’d been looking at other girls, and probably wanting them.

“...Y/N, Zoe is...” Childe scratched his cheek, averting his eyes away. 

“I don’t wanna hear it,” you try to turn away, but he doesn’t let you and holds your shoulders with his hands, staring straight at you. “My dog,” You were crying at this point, and when you hear his next words your eyes narrow. “W-What?”

“Zoe is my new dog,” 

“B-But your friend asked if you took her out yet...”

“Yeah,” Childe tilted his head, “for a walk?” As you start to connect the dots he takes out his phone and shows you the picture of a cute miniature poodle, it had a collar and a silver tag on it that said “Zoe”. You thought that you might cry again at how cute she was but you just glare up at Childe. “Well, I didn’t tell you cause I was gunna surprise you. I’ve been going home early these days cause we had to go visit the pound a few times and finalize the papers and everything...” 

“I-Is that true? Is that all it is?” You sniff, now wiping your stupid tears away. Childe smiles down at you and takes your hands away from your face, replacing it with his, thumbing away the streaks of wetness. “Y/N, no one can ever replace you,” you sniff and let him dote on you. You’d been missing him for a while anyway. 

“...Well except Zoe, maybe Zoe can,” he’s clearly teasing you and you don’t hesitate to lift your fist and punch him on the shoulder, earning a small “Ow,” from him followed by a laugh. “I’m just kidding, how ‘bout you come over and visit her today? It’s only her second day home!”

Thoma

You’d made an appointment with your friend a long time ago. Just a quick lunch and catch up date. Thoma had graciously volunteered to drive you to the mall where you were meeting up with her.

“You sure you don’t need me to pick you up? It’s Saturday. I’m free,” he flashes you a smile, his eyes darting towards you only for a second before going back to the road. “I’ll be fine hun, I’ll take the bus home,” you reply to him.

Halfway through your journey he says that he needs to buy something from a convenience store, and so he parks the car properly and grabs his wallet. His phone is on the car phone stand and you pay no heed to it until a soft ‘ding’ makes you pick your head up to look at the screen. 

Your best friend’s name pops up, she’s messaged him and your blood runs cold.

“I’ll come over when Y/N’s gone,” the message read. Your heart is already at your throat, and you don’t know what to think. What is this make-believe situation that you’re suddenly in. Is this really happening? Your eyes dart upwards to look at the door of the convenience store. You could see Thoma was still looking at the shelves.

You gulp and you wonder what the right thing to do is. Invade his privacy and peek at his messages? Let it go? Confront him? Cry? Another ‘ding’ fills up the car.

“How long is she going to be out? The longer the better. So...” you couldn’t read the rest of the message, it being cut off but you were already spiraling down the hole of despair. How could he? Your sweet and loyal Thoma ended up going behind your back with your best friend. You thought you were going to be sick, you actually had to roll the windows of the car down to get some fresh air, just as Thoma came out of the convenience store door with a plastic bag. 

You couldn’t look at him. You couldn’t even be in the same space as him. You were going to cancel today with your friend, you didn’t think you’d be able to function properly. When he sat on the driver’s seat and saw you looking out the window, he didn’t think much of it and revved the engine up. “Ready hu--”

“Take me to my sister’s place,” Thoma blinked and turned to you, confused. “But, what about your lunch date today, dear?”

“I don’t feel like going. My sister’s place is nearby, just drop me off there,” Your hands were already typing a reply to the friend that you were about to stand up on, but you couldn’t even think of what to do or say. 

“Dear is everything okay?” He asked while backing the car up, arm outstretched to your side while he’s looking at the rear. He was appalled by your sudden mood change. You didn’t answer but he hears you sniff and he immediately stops the car again. “Y/N? What’s wrong?” He’s alarmed that you’re crying and he reaches to cup your chin and tilt it towards him but you move your face away from him. 

“Y/N?” he asked, the confusion in his voice is actually genuine and you can hear a bit of panic in it. “How long have you been seeing Aya?” you spit the words as if they’re poison and the car is quiet. You laugh bitterly. “I thought so, cat got your tongue, huh?” 

Thoma shook himself out of his confusion to say, “No, wait, I don’t know what you mean,” You scoff at him. You’re shocked at the amount of resentment you had, you trusted this man and yet this is what happens. “Yeah? Why is she sneaking into our house then?” You point at his phone, the screen is still lit up because of the messages and there were more coming in from your best friend. 

Thoma snatches the phone away from the stand and looks at it. Then, he deflates and slumps back on his seat. “Y/N, it’s not what you think,” You hate that line so much. You cross your arms and say, “Just drop me at my sister’s house,” 

“Y/N--”

“NOW!”

The drive was quiet. You didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to push you but didn’t want to drop you off to your sister’s without explaining as well. So, just before your sister’s block, he parks on the side and unbuckles his seat belt, then opens your side of the door. “Y/N, listen to me,” he’s rarely this assertive, but you still don’t listen. He’s blocking your escape path. 

“It’s your birthday today,” Thoma starts and you blink, completely forgetting about it. “Ayu is sneaking in our house while you’re gone because we were going to set up a surprise for you.” He says slowly, as if he’s talking to a child. Your eyes widen, and you relax in your seat. He gives you his phone and urges you, “Go on, Y/N, you know my passcode right? I don’t hide anything from you, you can read the rest,” 

You hesitate, but accept his offer and type it in. 

“How long is she going to be out? The longer the better. So we can set up the balloons,”

“I got the cake don’t forget the candles and lighter,”

Thoma picks up his other hand that had the white plastic bag from the convenience store, he picks up the two items from inside. Birthday candles. And a lighter. 

Your mouth opens, but you can’t say anything and you only bury your face in your hands out of shame. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry Thoma, I--” He manages to let out a laugh and kisses the top of your head. “I’m so stupid. I trust you, I really do, I just--” now you’re not sure if you’re crying out of relief or embarrassment. “I’m so sorry,” You can’t say anything else and he only kisses you on the forehead again.

“It’s alright, you can make it up to me by going on that lunch date, okay? You deserve the rest. You haven’t cancelled yet have you? Let’s freshen up at your sister’s place and I’ll send you to the mall,” 

You nod your head, small smile on your face. This was gunna be one story to tell in the future.

“Oh and it would help if you act surprised when you come home,” Thoma adds with a full laugh that you join in on. 

Kaeya

"So how are you and Y/N?”

It’d only been a couple of months of the two of you dating. Kaeya was handsome, gallant and he knew exactly what to say to people. It wasn’t a secret that he was quite popular in school. 

Little old you was just another girl in just another class.

“Good, I think,” Kaeya responds, you smile around the corner, hidden from sight, knowing that he was taking a juice box break with his friends. “It’s a little annoying though,” your smile drops and your head tilts sideways in question. “I can’t keep her away and she doesn’t even realize how annoying it is,” 

Keep me away? You think. Am I too clingy? You hear them exchange words a bit more, but none of the other words process in your head. Their laughter spurs you out of your thoughts and you return to your classroom dumbfounded. 

When the bell rang for dismissal you immediately packed and walked home by yourself. Kaeya was confused when he arrived at your classroom door, and found that you weren’t there anymore. “...Hey, did Y/N go home?” he asked one of your passing classmates. “Yeah, she went out pretty fast,”

Now he was worried. Did something happen at home? He takes his phone out as he’s out the school building, tapping your name and calling, only for the call to not even connect. His brows furrow but nonetheless, he goes home for today and types in a message for you.

“Hey, you okay? Talk to me if you need something,” 

The next day, when he usually waits outside your door for you to come out, he realizes that you’re a little late and further realizes that you weren’t going to come out. He wasn’t about to knock on your door, your parents didn’t know about him yet. 

He tries to call you again but he’s met with the same result as yesterday. He sighs and looks up at the sky while he’s walking. He hasn’t seen you for nearly a full day now, and he doesn’t realize how long a full day is until now. He just wants to see your smiling face again and he starts to wonder if he’d done something wrong. 

By lunchtime, he’s sprinting towards your classroom as soon as the bell rings, wondering if you were there. Indeed, finally, he spots you in your classroom and his shoulders slump in relief only to tense up again when he sees a guy in your class talking to you, and you, smiling happily. 

“Y/N,” he calls out to you, waving his hand. You look away from your conversation to him and he notices how your smile turns into a tight line on your face. His own smile drops, but you walk out of the classroom anyway and address him. “Yes?” He blinks down at your tone of voice. “U-Uh... Wanna have lunch together?” 

“...But it’s annoying that I’m clingy right?” The two of you unconsciously move away from the door to out in the hallway, so that you’re not blocking the way of people coming in and out. He narrows his eyes in confusion. Where is this coming from? “I--No, what do you mean? I never said that,” 

“Yesterday, you said you can’t keep me away and it’s annoying,” you averted your gaze, feeling your eyes start to water. Kaeya reels back a little, replaying things in his mind, trying to remember if he said something like that. And, with a light bulb moment, his face breaks into a grin and slight laughter. You glare up at him, “What? It’s funny?”

Kaeya places a hand on your shoulder and explains while smiling. “Y/N, you didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation, did you?”

---What really happened---

“It’s really annoying though. I can’t keep her away and she doesn’t even realize how annoying it is,” he sips on his juice box again.

One of his friends pipe up, “Dude that’s a little harsh,”

Kaeya blinks. Once, twice and thrice. Until it dawns on him. “Oh, no, I meant that I can’t keep her away from other people,” he grins and leans both his elbows on the windowsill. “She doesn’t realize that she’s super friendly, and other people like talking to her a lot. Whenever I go to her classroom she’s always talking to different people.”

His friends make a sound of understanding. “I wish I could just keep her to myself,” and continues sipping on his juice.

“That’s really cheesy, even for you, Kaeya,” one of his friends say and the lot of them starts laughing.

---That’s what really happened---

It was your turn to blink at him, confused. “S-So...”

Kaeya pats your head and smiles. “You can ask my friends if it makes you feel better,”

A small blush crosses your cheeks and you duck your head to hide it. It earns yet another chuckle from him. Your moment is interrupted by another guy who approaches the two of you. “Hey, Y/N, if you’re free, do you think you could help me out with this? I don’t really understand it,” 

Kaeya just looks at the guy and sighs, then turns to you again. “See what I mean?” to which you just goofily smile at. 

Kazuha 

“You saw what?”

Your hands freeze, holding the book you were reading open. The living room had gotten lively again, seeing as your little brother had come home from school. “I saw Kazuha with a girl,” 

You try to keep your face composed. It was a school day. You’d stayed home because you weren’t feeling too well. Your brother was saying it without a care in the world. He was just a grade schooler and telling you about the things he observed. He was looking through the fridge for something to drink. 

You didn’t ask more, but you were DYING to know more. Kazuha didn’t mention going anywhere today... You picked your phone up and wondered if you should ask him. Your phone had blown up this morning cause he didn’t see you at school and he was wondering if you were alright. 

But it seems that Kazuha himself was having a grand time too.

“So...T-The girl...Did they look close?”

Your little brother closes the fridge and looks at you while drinking from a milk carton. “Mm...They were holding each other...” You bit your lip as tingles run down your spine. They weren’t the good kind. It was the kind that you get when you watch horror movies and or a drama movie and a revelation had just happened. You were silent for a moment, but in your mind you were already thinking of how Kazuha looked with another girl. Holding each other? What did your brother mean? Like...hugging? Or...? But you couldn’t ask him about that, could you?!

You sighed out loud and slammed the book you were reading down on the table, just as your phone started ringing. “Kazuha,” you whispered under your breath and looked at your phone screen. Well...you believed in him, and you thought the best way to clear this up is to talk to him about it.

So, you grabbed your phone and retreated into your bedroom to talk to him. You picked up the call, “Kazu-kun?”

“Y/N,” he greeted. Even apart, his voice has this effect on you. Like he was really there and breathing into your ear, sending shivers down your spine. You were sure that you were blushing. “How are you? Are you feeling better?” His voice is smooth and calm and you melt into your bed. “Yeah, a little,”

“Could I come over later? I just want to check on you,” You smile into your phone and close your eyes. Kazuha could never do that to you, you think to yourself. But still, you really wanted to ask. “Of course, I don’t think my parents would mind...Hey,” you start, your fingers nervously drawing circles on your pillow. “My brother said he saw you...with a girl,”

There’s silence on the other line, and you can hear him shifting a little. “A...girl?” He repeats the question and you bite your lip. He sounds unsure and now you were unsure too. “Yeah, he said that you were holding on to each other...or something,” Again some silence, until he makes a sound of understanding.

“Ah, he must mean Sango,” there’s a little lilt to his voice, like he was happy and you were a little jealous. “Sango’s my cousin, she came to surprise me for my birthday week.” Kazuha laughs nervously and adds a little hesitantly. “She...uhm...would like to meet you actually, is it okay if I bring her over today?” 

Your heart sighs in relief, as do you and you don’t realize that you’ve done that out loud. In the next moment though, you smile and nod, even though he can’t see you. “Of course! Bring her over!” 

Albedo (More fluff than angst)

Cleaning at home was one of the things you did to get your mind off of things. Some people would call it tedious, but to you, it was sort of relaxing. It was something easy to do, you didn’t need much of your brain, just motor memory. Folding. Laundry. Ironing. Sweeping. Basic chores.

But when you clean up in the bedroom you shared with your boyfriend, and found a neatly wrapped present, red wrapping paper and blue ribbon tied on the top with a tag that said “To: Leila” you’re a little dumbfounded.

Who’s Leila? Is your first thought. Your second thought is, what’s inside? You hold the nicely wrapped box in your hand and turn it all over, trying to get some type of hint. A flash of doubt seeps into your mind but you shake it away. Albedo isn’t like that...Is he? He’s always so dedicated to his scientific research and sure he comes home late sometimes but he always makes it up to you on the weekends...

So who’s Leila? You ask yourself again. And why hasn’t he mentioned it to you? Why didn’t he ask YOU to wrap it? Menial tasks like these were usually passed on to you. You bite your thumb just thinking about it, but in the end just leave the present where you find it.

Later that night as you’re fixing dinner, you aren’t as bothered by the gift as when you first saw it. But it’s still there at the back of your mind and it resurfaces to the front when you hear the familiar keys rattle. Despite that, as he snakes his arms around your waist from behind you can’t help but smile and melt a little, pressing back against him as he leans over to kiss your cheek. “...Smells nice,” he simply mumbles and closes his eyes, enjoying the warmth of both you and your home.

“Welcome back,” you say, while closing the lid on the pot and turning around to give him a proper kiss on the lips. He hums into the kiss as a response and pulls you away from the stove. “How’s your day?” he asks you first and you smile, because your day is nearly the same time and time again. “Fine, I did find a little secret though...” you start and peek up at his beautiful eyes. 

He nods to ask you to continue. “A present, nicely wrapped. and it’s addressed to someone called Leila,” He looks down at you and you stare at him. A moment passes by before he takes his arms back and go into his thinking pose. “...Leila...?” he asks, eyes averting from your gaze. You wonder if he’s pretending. You wonder if he’s trying to make an excuse up. “...I don’t--” and then his eyebrows twitch. “Ah,” he says and drops his arms to his side.

“We were invited to a birthday party, remember? By a co-worker,” he tucks in strands of your hair as he talks. “It’s her daughter’s first birthday...I don’t care much for such things but you insisted it’d be alright to go.” he chuckles a little. “Her daughter’s name is Leila,” 

You make a sound of understanding. Suddenly your hesitant thoughts wither away. “Hmmm? You could’ve asked me to wrap the present,” Albedo pulls away from you and towards the fridge, wanting a glass of water. “The wrapping wasn’t done by me, it was the shop, free service,” and so it made more sense.

And although you want to ask more questions, like where he got it, when and what’s inside, you realize it’s such a trivial thing. It was not worth that much time. A gift is a gift, and you turn back to continue making dinner while making idle conversation with him. 

Zhongli (Warning: Suggestive) (but this is also my personal favourite... aha...)

“Zhongli?” You arrive home a little early today, dropping your keys at the front shelf. You don’t hear him anywhere and you shuffle around your living room for a while, looking at the letters for today. 

He was on a work from home arrangement today, and he would usually be in his office. You were quite sure that he would’ve come out to greet you though, if he heard you. He must be busy at the moment. 

You’d wanted to wash your hands as soon as you came home, and went for the guest washroom. When you open the door, your eyes land on something on the counter, next to the sink. This bathroom was always kept clean for visitors. You liked to host people once in a while, or just invite friends and you took pride in having them comfortable in your house.

Your eyes narrow as you go closer and your hands pick up a pregnancy test that was lying there. 

It was positive.

You put it back down and shudder a little. You don’t remember getting a pregnancy test. You bite your lip and look at yourself in the mirror. You’re already jumping to conclusions, and you can’t help it. Who the hell would leave a pregnancy test in YOUR guest bathroom? Zhongli didn’t mention anything...

You sigh a breath out and close the bathroom door behind you, taking your phone out to text your best friend.

“There’s a positive pregnancy test in our guest bathroom,”

After a moment, there’s a reply.

“OMG Are you preggers?!”

“No, it’s not mine,”

The next reply takes a moment more. “Oh, maybe ask him?” and you know that your friend hadn’t known what to reply at that moment. Because a random positive pregnancy test in your guest bathroom was NOT a good sign. To top it off, you didn’t announce to Zhongli that you were coming home early today.

Your perk up when you hear noise from the other room. You open the bathroom door slightly, and hear the unmistakable low voice of your fiance, coupled with...the voice of another woman. You close the bathroom door again, not bothering to lock it, and sit on the closed toilet seat. You’re sitting there with nothing in your mind, unable to think.

A few minutes later the voices are louder, they’ve moved to the living room, right outside the bathroom you were in. You tense up, and your jaw tightens. You don’t want to see them. You don’t want to hear them. For a moment you wish that you didn’t come home early, and just pretend this didn’t happen, but the door to the bathroom door opens, leaving you eye to eye with a woman you recognize.

Luna was a beautiful woman. Long cascading brown hair, they’re wavy and stops right at her waist. Doll-like blue eyes and a slender body. She sees you sitting there and you feel stupid, but she just breaks into a grin. “Y/N!” she grabs you by the wrist and pulls you out of the bathroom before you could even say anything. You’re numb, so you don’t respond to anything around you.

Zhongli turns around wide-eyed to see you standing there meekly, not meeting his gaze. He still goes to you though and asks curiously. “When did you come in? I didn’t hear you,” he places a hand on your arm while Luna releases you, but you still don’t look up and he wonders if something happened at your workplace to make you come home so early. “Luna and Childe stopped by,” Zhongli says, in at attempt to cheer you up. You look up, and only then did you realize that Childe was there too, talking animatedly to Luna. You tilt your head sideways, “They came with a surprise. Ah, but it’s not mine to tell,” 

That’s right... Luna and Childe had been together for a while and then it hits you when Luna shows you the same positive pregnancy test you saw on the counter, and announces that she’s pregnant. Your eyes are wide. You can’t tell if you’re more relieved that it wasn’t what you thought or more happy for your friends. You feel horrible about it but you manage to crack a smile and went along with the festivities. The more time passed the more you were able to enjoy their happiness and by the time they left, that was the only time you sighed and let your shoulders slump, exhausted.

“Is something the matter?” Zhongli asked. He noticed how your smiles were a tad bit forced. How you seemed to enjoy everything but also seemed to be on edge. You turn to him and shook your head. “It’s...stupid. It’s my mistake,” but he holds on to your waist and urges you to tell him.

And you tell him. How you came home and saw what you saw in the guest bathroom, what you thought it was and how you felt. The only thing you can feel now is embarrassment and shame. You couldn’t even feel happy for your friend. Zhongli only smiles and combs his hand through your hair. “It’s the normal reaction,” he reassures you, again trying to make you feel better. You only respond with your own hug but his next sentence makes you flustered, all thoughts of earlier gone as he whispers into your ear.

“Would you like your own positive pregnancy test?”

Taglist: @larkspyrr @rim0na @sweeti-pie @l3mon-mxshroom @hai-q-haikyuu @tkshoki @kyquu @kimbapsana @leefletter @hentaje @tempehlust @rinnesy @hallohun @softlybeloved @volleybloop @ssalamanderr @ben6ett @rytszk @guilixi @reiluvbot @mondstadts-favourite-traveler @xxcrowfeatherxx @b-trld @mkazuyuh @shittyeditsofwhatiwant @ayra2452008 @simpingover @soft-like-sunshine @lnrchii @scheophi @multifandomgeeks @sacredmouche @risasblog01 @mai-m4i @foxxtrot-116 @maple-leaaf @lucy-roo @bluepinkpink @myday6-studies @thraiaiscrying @missbuwan @the-one-that-lurks @adeptitao @xibrokensunriseix @ilovemyleftboob @marblesphere @allinduetimethefirst @nortdreww @jjsjjsjsjsjjsjjs @how-simpy @loltartaglia @minyoustar @sesetiger @Ghost1y-demon @lqvl3y @cysperia @candyqueen10 @ichigo-no-tsumi @omoriq @saving-for-xiao @trashykawasmilkbread @jjkclub @pearstears @seiiblue @midnightangelfox @korinkuu @heesocks @bobaducky @normalisthenewnorm @atasi-luna @callariri @milkypompon @fadinganchornight @coldstonecrematorium @probablybethere @qingxinteaa @hanachan_2481 @plumpkie @Ghost1yd3mon @idk-imjusthere @amigenshin @spirlimpo @hadesaedes @tsim-tsim @dilucragnvindrsgf @gahisb @yunaholics @that-one-air-collecter @allinduetime @albe4ove @berryqueue @give-xiao-almond-tofu @leafcaller @ninqat @mintyayu @luvmedaily @kiyokoshii @jendytub @thegayrubberducky @chuewi @bitandbytes @alatusorrow @midnightistyping @duskdawn052 @ventislatte @fishclaymore @jahnvi-d @justpeaxchy @tremmblingbling

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[enhasfever]

𝑇𝐻𝐸 7𝑇𝐻 𝑆𝐸𝑁𝑆𝐸: 𝑆𝑈𝑁𝐺𝐻𝑂𝑂𝑁

➪ pairing: dragon!sunghoon x female human!reader

➪ genre(s): angst, fluff

➪ tw: hoon's overworked in one scene, near injury incident, painful shifting scene (poor hoonie :c)

➪ wc: 10.3k

➪ with being the town's resident heartthrob, there isn't a time in your day where you don't hear sunghoon's name leave the mouths of fawning teenage girls. you've never really gotten the hype about him, though maybe that's because you just needed to be given a chance to talk to him for yourself. you quickly find that you're learning more about him than you intend and maybe, just maybe, you start to understand the incessant chatter about him.

a crisp morning breeze swirled around your walking figure and left tendrils of your hair blowing wildly behind you. you shivered lightly, closing the ends of your school uniform jacket tighter around yourself as you made a conscious effort to quicken your pace to the bus stop. the weight of your school bag had you hunching forward at an angle that certainly wasn't going to be helpful to the growth of your spine. you swore that by the end of the year, you'd end up with a back like quasimodo's.

you arrived at the bus stop where your few friends greeted you with equally hunched backs and quivering limbs littered with goosebumps. yuna immediately curled her arms around you and shifted your back to the direction the wind was blowing, effectively using you as a human shield.

"gee, thanks," you murmured less than enthusiastically, but you allowed her to remain hidden nonetheless. "i need to stop by the school library on the way to class to return my book. anyone wanna come with?" you invited, searching between each of your friends' faces and receiving the same sheepish expression in return.

"we kind of already made plans to watch sunghoon's morning practice before class started," ningning confessed apologetically, twirling a strand of her hair mindlessly around her finger. chaerin shrugged her shoulders, mouthing the word sorry to you.

you grunted displeasingly, though you should've expected as much. it seemed to you like every girl and their mothers wanted to bend over backwards just to breathe the same air as park sunghoon. you never understood why, though. you'd admit that he was extremely gifted in the genes department and you knew he was an above average student with exceptional grades, but that also applied to many other guys in your town. what made park sunghoon so different? was it simply because he could skate without falling on his ass with every step he took? jung sungchan could burp the alphabet backwards yet nobody seemed to be impressed by that mad show of skill.

the bus ride was as excruciating as ever having to listen to your friends giggle obnoxiously over the forbidden boy. you let a long sigh draw from your lips as you dug out your library book and began to read it for a third time in a desperate attempt to block them out. the ride could not have lasted any longer and as soon as it pulled into the school parking lot, you, being the ever so lovely friend you were, nearly knocked yuna into the aisle as you clambered over her to be one of the first to exit the bus.

you rushed inside to get away from the incessant sunghoon chatter and the biting wind gusts that nipped the tips of your nose and ears a dull shade of red. with your beloved book clutched firmly to your chest, you easily navigated through the slowly crowding hallways in the direction of the library where you had become a weekly visitor to. greeting the librarian with a warm smile as you slid your returning book over the countertop to her, you turned on your heel to scavenge through the fantasy section for the next book in the series you'd been invested in recently. after locating the next book, you briefly flipped through some of the pages to look for any rips or signs of damage, and to secretly get that bookish scent you weirdly liked.

a ping chimed from your phone in the pocket of your school bag and you hurried to snatch it out, feeling a little flustered at not remembering to have turned the ringer off before you entered the school. a text notification from chaerin asked you to snag a book she needed from the nonfiction section tagged with a bunch of hearts and kissy emojis that had you rolling your eyes fondly. you ventured over to the appropriate book section and began to scan the shelves for the requested book, finding it in almost no time at all. you whirled around in a hurry to check the books out and get to class early and somehow didn't notice the presence slipping along the wall of shelves behind you until your two bodies collided.

"ah, sorry!" you rushed out at the same time the other person had, both of you reaching out to steady the other purely on instinct. your two books tumbled to the floor with muted thumps that the rough carpet muffled slightly. glancing up at the person who you'd nearly ran over, you felt the oxygen inside of you come to a screeching halt behind the invisible barrier your throat had created as your eyes made contact with the forbidden boy's.

"it was an accident, no worries. are you alright?" a gentle smile easily graced his lips as he retracted his hands from you before bending down to gather up the two books you had dropped, handing them out to you after straightening back up. you accepted them back into your own hands as you tried to force your lungs to start working properly again, quickly dropping your gaze from his face so that you could do so easily.

"i'm fine, thank you," you echoed quietly, immediately clutching the books to your chest like you had done previously. what was wrong with you? more importantly, what was wrong with him that resulted in there being something wrong with you? "shouldn't you be at the ice rink?" you blurted out, surprising even yourself with the question that really was none of your business nor did you really care what the reason was...didn't you?

sparing another glance at his face proved to be a fatal mistake as you were once again left with dysfunctional lungs. a short chuckle reverberated from him as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his uniform's pants. "i'm just looking for something before i go. are you eager to watch?" something about the way he asked the question didn't seem arrogant like you'd expected it to, though that definitely didn't stop you from instantly becoming defensive in the face of fluster.

you scoffed, letting the puff of air pass humorlessly through your lips as you moved to take a step around him. "i'm not exactly the fangirl type. my friends are going down there to watch you so i thought you'd be there already," you objected, beginning to take slow and languid steps towards the front desk to check out the books. sunghoon's eyes followed you as you moved and you couldn't help but feel nervous under his burning gaze.

"oh, i see. well, you're always welcome to stop by if you ever find yourself with some free time, no fangirl label attached." he flashed that charming smile once more before turning to slink further into the library, leaving you to scurry to the desk and then to your class.

"you'd better never give that book back," yuna decreed with an envious pout casted in chaerin's direction from across the table. you rolled your eyes briefly before returning to the paragraph you were in the midst of reading from your newly acquired book, only half listening to the conversation at hand.

"it's checked out under my name, don't do anything unspeakable with it. i'm not letting any of you ruin my reputation as a responsible book handler," you quipped, your eyes not once leaving the pages sat open before you.

"forget about the book, y/n actually made physical contact with him. look, i think her skin is glowing now." ningning abruptly grabbed your hand to inspect it too closely under the fluorescent lighting of the classroom, yuna leaning in to observe your palm as well.

jerking your hand back to yourself with your lip curled in revulsion, you placed your marker in your book and closed it up just as the professor entered the room to start the lesson. you hadn't made it more than half an hour into the lesson when you experienced your lungs failing you once more. the professor started the class by briefly going over a new project you would be starting this semester, only the project was one half of a collaboration with another class that you weren't taking and each person would be paired up with someone from the other class. it wasn't that bad in your opinion, though you'd definitely much rather work with one of your friends. where it all went south for you was the minute the professor began to read off the pairing assignments aloud.

"chaerin will be partnered up with yang jeongin." chaerin shrugged, muttering something along the lines of how her partner could have been worse. "y/n will be partnered up with park sunghoon."

the millisecond the words had been uttered into existence, it seemed as though everyone collectively stopped everything they were doing and turned to stare you down. your wide eyes frantically searched your friends' equally shellshocked faces, their mirrored expressions letting you know that you had indeed heard the professor correctly. slowly, you slumped down in your seat as you could feel dozens of envious eyes boring holes into you from all angles of the room. a dizzying mix of emotions flooded you at once and left you barely functioning through the remainder of the class.

as you wandered down the hallway with your friends pestering you about your newly acquired project partner, the dread you'd been feeling amplified tenfold after rounding the corner and spotting the forbidden boy just at the opposite end with his own friends. you kept your head down and prayed to every god, goddess, and magical holiday being that he wouldn't say anything to you. of course, you'd probably forgotten to have a little chat with the tooth fairy or something as the exact opposite of what you'd been asking for happened.

"hey!" you'd planned to just pretend to not have realized that sunghoon was calling out to you, but of course your conniving friends weren't allowing that to happen. ningning grabbed at the nape of your shirt, promptly halting you in your steps and simultaneously nearly choking you out. you swallowed back the urge to groan aloud and forced a tight-lipped smile as sunghoon veered from his group of friends to stop directly before you. "you're y/n, right? i think we're paired up for that project."

you nodded stiffly. "yep, looks like we are." you were acutely aware of the stares you got from students passing by and the much unwanted attention had you shrinking in on yourself slightly.

"when should we meet up to start on it? i'm free after practice so if it works out for you, we can head to the library or something." an invisible cloud of warmth seemed to envelop you out of nowhere, causing you to squirm in slight discomfort.

before you could open your mouth to respond, ningning's voice spoke up on behalf of you much to your dismay. "she'll meet you there!" she chirped, successfully dodging the elbow you tried to land against her abdomen.

"cool, i'll see you later then," sunghoon answered before moving around the four of you to catch back up to his friends once more.

"did you feel that? he's so hot that he has his own climate," yuna hissed out in a harsh whisper as the group of you continued on towards your collective destination to the art room. you rolled your eyes, this time allowing the defeated groan to slip past your lips. though now your curiosity had been sparked knowing that the other girls had felt the wave of heat, also.

by the end of the day, you were sick of hearing about sunghoon more than usual. but, with all the unlucky energy you'd somehow managed to absorb over this 24-hour period, you found yourself begrudgingly following your friends to the school's ice rink for the first time in, well, ever. your lack of appearances to sunghoon's practices proved to be more of a disadvantage than you'd first thought after seeing your friends bundle up in warm coats and hats. thankfully, chaerin had additionally brought a blanket that she was more than willing to let you use.

you weren't sure whether or not to feel surprised by the number of seats in the stands that had already been taken up by female students of varying grade levels. did all these people really not have anything more important to do? following your eager friends into one of the rows closest to the front, you dropped your school bag to the ground and immediately fished out your book before slouching in the cushioned seat. you had no problem tuning out the noise around you as it had been a skill you'd learned to do quite quickly in your school career. however, it wasn't the constant buzz of conversations being held around you or even the sudden burst of cheers and encouraging words shouted from the stands as you imagined sunghoon gliding out onto the ice that distracted you, but it was the sight you caught from your peripheral vision of a lithe body launching up into the air in a triple axel before landing with such grace back onto the ice.

from all the talk you'd heard around school, you knew he was good at what he did though you did convince yourself that his talent was being a bit exaggerated by overenthusiastic fans. you definitely didn't expect him to be this skilled, and you couldn't help but let your eyes subtly follow him over the top of your book as he continued to flawlessly execute impossible looking tricks. with each successful landing, high pitched shouts of praise would echo into the rink and it didn't take long for your head to start ringing with signs of an impending headache. the chilly air definitely wasn't helping your case either and left your ears, nose, and cheeks dusting a light shade of red.

"ooh, y/n's interest has been sparked," yuna crowed teasingly above the noise of another cheer, giving your shoulder a playful shake. it didn't take long for ningning and chaerin to join in on the friendly banter at your expense. though you once more showed your displeasure with a signature eye roll, you couldn't mask the small smile that crept onto your lips as you tried to fixate your attention back to the words littering the pages of your book.

"he's alright," you admitted quietly. he may be alright, but that didn't mean you were going to drop to your knees at the mere sight of him. you simply had to tolerate him long enough to get your project finished with a decent grade, then you'd hopefully never have to be seen with him again.

clearly you underestimated the effort you'd have to put into deliberately avoiding the forbidden boy. it seemed as though every corner you turned, he was there with his flock of fangirls crowding him and his friends. and of course he couldn't go a single encounter without acknowledging you each time with a wave or a smile which effectively drew the attention of his fanclub to you. you couldn't even use the restroom without noticing a trio of girls whispering in the corner and casting pointed looks in your direction.

ningning and yuna brushed your concerns off each time you brought up the situation which only frustrated you even more. maybe they were right, though, maybe you really were just overreacting. you had nothing to hide, there was no secret relationship to keep from the eyes and ears of the student body. in fact, you wouldn't even consider there to be a secret friendship to conceal. you met up at the library after school each day to work on the assignment, rarely speaking about anything off the topic of such, then you'd pack up and head your separate ways after about an hour or two of working. there was hardly anything for anyone to be jealous about.

one thing that you could appreciate, though, was sunghoon's punctuality. every day after his practice, he was meeting up with you in the library at exactly 4:45 sharp to begin working. it had become an unspoken agreement that was shared between the two of you that 4:45 was your designated meeting time. so, when you'd glanced up at the wall clock ticking above the library door and saw that the time read fifteen minutes past, your brows furrowed confusedly. pulling out your phone to make sure that the clock on the wall wasn't just running fast, the digital numbers on your lockscreen confirmed that it was indeed past time and sunghoon was late.

it was only then that you slightly regretted not exchanging phone numbers, of course only for emergency purposes such as this. deciding you'd wait just a few minutes longer, you continued to work on your portion of the joined project. after glancing up a bit later and noticing that ten more minutes had passed with still no sign of sunghoon, you let out an irritated huff and began to pack up your things, swinging your bag over your shoulders before wandering out of the library. there was only one possible place you could think to look for him in which, unfortunately for you, was located at the opposite side of the school.

you made the three minute trek to the ice rink and pushed inside of the double doors leading into the stands. unusually, there were no students occupying the seats, but there was one person occupying the rink. sunghoon. you ventured further into the chilly arena with your arms folded protectively over yourself, a shiver creeping up your spine as goosebumps rose on the exposed patches of your skin. you opened your mouth to call out to sunghoon when another voice echoed much to your surprise.

"do it again!" scanning the seats, you didn't see anyone else out there which only served to confuse you more. taking a few more cautious steps down the aisle, you could just barely make out the top of someone's head on the other side of the rink's walls, the person watching as sunghoon glided around inside.

"i need a break," you heard sunghoon call back to the person, the exhaustion in his voice painfully evident as he bent over slightly with his hands braced against his thighs for support, his back heaving up and down with heavy breaths. copious amounts of steam rolled off of him and nearly enveloped him in a smoky cloud, and you wondered just how cold it really was in that rink.

"what you need is to perfect that transition, now do it again," the person barked back mercilessly. your eyes grew slightly wide as you watched in silence, too afraid to make your presence known now.

without another word, sunghoon straightened back up and wiped at the sweat collecting on his forehead before skating a few laps around the rink to build his momentum back up. you noticed the way that he seemed to drag his feet as he went, and a small pinch of worry had your heart skipping a beat or two. as you'd seen him do the week before, he launched himself into the air in a perfect triple axel, then again in a double, and then– an involuntary shriek slipped past your lips as sunghoon's body collapsed onto the ice with a hard thud, your hands immediately flying up to cover your face.

"hey!" the man outside of the ring whirled around abruptly at the sound of your shriek. "we said no watchers today, get out!"

sunghoon's head lifted at the sound of you being scolded, the steam still rising around his body as he lay in a heap on the ice. "y/n?" he called out, tiredly pushing himself back up to his feet. despite the seething glare of the man, who you'd figured was a coach of some sort, you found yourself rushing down the aisle of the stands and hurrying to the gate leading into the rink. just barely making it to the wall before his legs began to buckle again, sunghoon grabbed onto your outstretched hand and hobbled over the threshold.

"are you okay? do you need to see the nurse? i think she's still here." you allowed sunghoon to lean against you as he slipped on the blade guards, the heat radiating off of him causing you to feel immensely hot in a matter of seconds. you pushed that to the back of your mind for the time being as you helped him over to the bench, gingerly lowering him down onto it.

"he'll be fine," the man sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he followed the two of you over. wordlessly, sunghoon weakly lifted a finger to point behind you and you easily located the object he was asking for.

you grabbed the water bottle and even took the initiative to open the cap for him before handing it over, fixing a hard glare at the man standing over you shortly after. "i don't think that's for you to decide," you bit out harshly. "you should feel ashamed of yourself, he told you he needed a break."

a small chuckle sounded from sunghoon after he had lowered the water bottle from his lips, quickly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "i'm not hurt, y/n, promise," he assured you with a warming smile. "just a little tired." still, you shot one last unfriendly look towards the man before rising from your crouched position in front of sunghoon, crossing your arms over your chest.

"we need to get back to practice, so if you'd kindly take your leave–"

ignoring the man, you pointedly kept your attention on sunghoon. "you should get back home and rest, it seems like you've been here long enough." you weren't sure where this sudden urge to look out for him came from. just minutes prior, you were thinking up new ways to dodge him in the hallways and had even considered asking the professor to trade partners. you definitely still weren't one-hundred percent happy about the situation, though something inside of you now deterred you from your negative thoughts. maybe you actually felt bad for sunghoon, at least for now.

brushing off your words of concern with another pretty smile, sunghoon instead sat his water bottle down next to his feet before leaning with his back against the concrete half wall separating the three of you from the stands. "i'm sorry i didn't make it to the library today. we can work an extra day this weekend if you'd like to make up for it," he apologized sincerely, reaching up to wipe more sweat from his brow.

you were quick to shake your head adamantly. "no, don't worry about it. we're almost done with it anyways and we still have plenty of time before it's due."

sunghoon's gaze remained fixated on your face as you spoke, his eyes tracing over your features with a certain intensity that made you start to feel hot all over again. you swallowed thickly, shifting your weight to one side as you were the first to break eye contact with him. you hated that, you hated how you slowly began to see and understand the things that your friends gushed about constantly. sunghoon had a way of making you feel like you were the main love interest in a cheesy romance drama with the constant lingering gazes and endless smiles casted in your direction. surely it was your own mind playing tricks on you as you gradually found yourself beginning to think more and more about him regardless of your persistence to avoid him. no matter what it was that you were thinking about, it somehow always involved sunghoon.

clearing your throat awkwardly, you adjusted your bag on your shoulders and began to take slow steps towards the stands in order to make your exit. "so, you're sure you're going to be okay?" you queried, your brows furrowed with uncertainty.

sunghoon nodded. "i'll be okay, thank you. i'll see you tomorrow, y/n, and i promise to actually be there on time," he answered lightheartedly despite having nearly suffered a serious injury just moments prior. with one last wary glance, you nodded before treading back the way you had come.

"are you going to the dance?" your hand paused mid-writing and your eyes briefly darted up to glance across the table, finding sunghoon still working diligently. you narrowed your eyes slightly before diverting your attention back to your open textbook.

"no," you deadpanned in response.

"why not?" sunghoon pressed. "i'm going."

you snickered, "is that supposed to make me want to go?" perhaps it did a bit, but you were far too stubborn to admit it even to yourself.

sunghoon just laughed lightly in return, then it stayed quiet between you two as you continued working on the last bits of your project. it had been three days since the incident at the ice rink and neither of you had spoken about it since. in fact, neither of you had spoken at all until just moments ago; he had even stopped saying hello to you in the hallways. it didn't bother you...no, really, it didn't!

"are you not going with your friends?" he asked, sitting back in his chair after dropping his pencil atop the table with a short clatter. once more, you glanced up at him briefly before adverting your gaze away from him.

"no, chaerin's going with someone from another school, ningning will be out of town that weekend, and yuna's stuck babysitting for the night. besides, i have tests to study for," you sighed heavily, also dropping your pencil between the pages of your textbook before leaning back in your own chair. still, you refused to meet sunghoon's gaze.

"i'm sure if you asked someone to go with you, they'd say yes. you only get to experience high school once, you know."

you snorted lightly in response, crossing your arms over your chest. "unless you're lucky enough to repeat a year or two. besides, i don't have anyone i'm interested in asking."

sunghoon hummed softly, nodding as he reached out to begin twirling his pencil between his fingers. "i see, but what if there's someone who's interested in asking you?"

you raised your eyebrows skeptically, finally managing to spare the forbidden boy a few seconds of eye contact. "if you're implying that you want to ask me, then i'm sorry for bursting your bubble but i'm not going."

sunghoon's mouth dropped open for a few seconds before it closed again and he cleared his throat awkwardly. "uh, actually one of my friends, jisung, wanted to ask you. don't worry about it, though, he'll ask someone else."

you wanted to punch yourself. of course sunghoon wasn't going to ask you, why would you assume he was going to? your face flushed red with embarrassment and you were forced to look away from him. "oh," you answered dumbly, your fingers finding each other as they twiddled nervously.

"i'm already going with someone." of course he was, you weren't surprised at all by this revelation. were you disappointed, though? maybe just the slightest bit.

you forced a tight-lipped smile as you picked your pencil back up, hunching back over your textbook once more. "she must be a lucky girl, then," you ventured, indicating with your lack of enthusiasm that you were done with the conversation.

picking up on your cue, sunghoon let a long sigh draw from his lips before leaning over his own book. you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth as your brain failed to focus on the task at hand and instead opted to flood with thoughts about the dance. your school hosted its annual halloween dance the week before the spooky holiday and you'd never been interested in going until that point. of course the one year you'd decided to try coming out of your antisocial shell, the universe wanted to work against you by taking your friends out of the equation. not wanting to go alone, you had stuffed the thought to the back of your mind, but now that you actually had a chance to go, you were definitely starting to rethink your decisions.

finally getting fed up with your overthinking, you hastily opened up your notebook and tore out a piece of paper. you scribbled your contact information down before folding it up and shoving it across the table at an unsuspecting sunghoon. "give that to your friend," you spoke shortly before resuming your task, thankfully with much more peace of mind.

another silent week passed before the halloween dance was taking place and you were anxiously waiting in your living room with chaerin and her date for jisung to arrive and pick the three of you up. you felt that you looked like the female lead in a cheesy coming of age movie who'd just had her glow up, and you honestly couldn't decide whether or not it was an experience you enjoyed. with your hair twisted up in an elaborate updo and shimmering eyeshadow decorating your lids, it was safe to say that you hadn't felt this feminine in a long time and it made you a bit self-conscious.

glancing up at the sound of a car pulling into your driveway, you were met with a momentary wave of relief as you stood from your seat and smoothed down the silky material of your dress. however, that relief lasted all of five seconds when your overenthusiastic parents came scrambling into the living room with cameras galore, insisting that they get pictures of you with everyone before you left. your cheeks flared bright red as you opened up the door to let jisung inside, muttering a quick apology for what was about to take place before accepting your defeat and letting the slightly embarrassing photoshoot happen.

after your parents were satisfied, the four of you left in a hurry and you hobbled to jisung's car in your uncomfortable heels. you thanked him genuinely with a smile as he opened the passenger door for you and helped you inside, even going the extra mile to make sure the skirt of your dress was safely tucked inside of the car before gently closing the door. jisung was a sweet boy, that much you had come to learn quite quickly. he was prone to becoming a flustered mess in your presence and he ever so shyly asked if you wanted to match color themes with him for the dance which you couldn't say no to. there was definitely nothing wrong with him, but your mind constantly seemed to be somewhere else.

that proved to still be an issue as the next thing you knew, your door was being opened once more much to your surprise. trying to mask the fact that you had just completely zoned out the entire eight minute ride to the school grounds, you placed your hand in jisung's offered palm and allowed him to help you slide out of the car with grace. your arm naturally slid to link with his as the four of you made your way to the entrance of the school where each couple or friend group paused to have their pictures taken by the school's yearbook team.

a short wolf whistle caught your attention after the last photo was snapped, then the unmistakable voice of the class president bellowed above the noise. "is that miss y/n?"

your cheeks flushed with embarrassment as multiple pairs of eyes instantly drew to you. "shut up, chenle!" jisung hollered back before swiftly leading you into the gymnasium with chaerin and her date close behind.

the vast room was fully decked out in halloween decorations and pulsing purple lights lit up the otherwise darkened gym. orange and black streamers seemed to hang everywhere you turned and decorative tablecloths lined the snacks and drinks tables. a photo booth was set up in the far corner and students were already moving around on the open dance floor as overplayed songs bumped from the large speakers placed near the stage.

"let's go, what are we waiting for?" chaerin called above the sound of the music before grabbing both your and her date's hands and dragging you to the dance floor, your free hand instinctively clasping onto jisung's to take him with you.

you had no idea how to dance and you quickly started kicking yourself, thankfully not literally, for not thinking to learn different moves other than the awkward shuffle you had been doing for the last two songs. luckily, it seemed that jisung had no idea what he was doing either and both of you continued to giggle and poke fun at each other into the third song of the night. well, that was until jisung got suckered into the middle of a dance circle where he completely changed your assumption on his dancing abilities as he absolutely decimated the classmate who had challenged him to the small dance-off in the first place.

"where's sunghoon?" just as jisung had returned to your side after being congratulated with slaps on his back and encouraging words, a girl whom you were slightly familiar with had strutted right up to the two of you with her arms folded unamusedly over her chest. "i've been looking for him for ten minutes, text him or something. he's your friend, isn't he?" she demanded jisung with an unpleasant scowl on her otherwise pretty features.

jisung's lips parted slightly in bewilderment before hurriedly starting to pat at his various pockets to locate his phone. you quirked a challenging eyebrow in her direction, "you don't have his number?"

she scoffed, fixing her steely glare at you. "no, do you?" she bit back venomously, a satisfied smug look crossing her features as you remained silent.

"i'll come find you when he replies," jisung announced, locking his phone to slot back into his pocket when the device was abruptly snatched out of his hand.

"or," she snipped, "you'll stay with me until he replies."

jisung glanced back and forth between the two of you unsurely, prompting an irritated noise to rumble from within your throat as you bent down to hastily remove your shoes from your feet. "for god's sake, i'll go look for him," you sighed before whirling around and storming out of the gymnasium with your bare feet slapping noisily against the tiled floors of the hallway. you immediately knew where to look as should anyone who knew anything about sunghoon.

bursting carelessly through the doors leading to the ice rink, your voice immediately rang around the echoey arena. "park sunghoon!" as you marched down the aisle between the stands, you found the body of none other than the boy of the hour laying flat on his back in the middle of the rink with his limbs spread out. his head turned in your direction as you eventually made it to the gate, your figure already beginning to quiver with the cold that blew over your exposed skin. "what are you doing in here?"

"i like to come here when i need to cool off," he answered nonchalantly, not making any effort to move from his starfish pose on the hard ice. surely it was uncomfortable, right?

"right, because it must be such hard work being adored by the masses," you surmised, rolling your eyes despite the small smile that wanted to tug the corners of your lips up.

sunghoon's mouth dropped open in mock offense. "ah, if it wasn't so cold in here, i'd almost say that burned."

once more, you granted him another eye roll though this time a half-hearted chuckle managed to escape from your lips. the steam rolling off of him caught your attention once more, and this time you couldn't find it in yourself to let it slide. "wow, you really do have your own climate," you commented, leaning forward to drape your arms across the top of the gate leading into the rink.

sunghoon raised his eyebrows in question. "i do? is that your way of saying i'm hot?" the amount of heat that rose to your cheeks should've created your own shield of steam in the chilly arena.

you quickly diverted your gaze to somewhere off in the distance to refrain from showing him just how flustered that stupid question made you. "no," you asserted, "it's something stupid my friends say."

"right, of course..." he trailed off before finally pushing himself up into a seated position. "how did you know i'd be here?"

you scoffed, "please, you're so predictable. the school's ice skater disappears during a time where he's needed, of course the only logical place to look would be in the ice rink. it doesn't take rocket science to figure that out."

sunghoon laughed lightly, giving a short nod in response. "i guess you're right. can i ask another question?"

"you just did," you deadpanned, "but sure, go for it i guess."

"why did you come looking for me?" the teasing glint in his eye gave away exactly what he was thinking and you were quick to shut that theory of his down.

"funny you should ask. your date is holding mine hostage until you return, so unless you'd like to explain to her parents why you're returning her home damaged, then it may be in your best interest to come claim her."

sunghoon held your gaze for a few moments longer before nodding and pushing himself up onto his feet. taking slow and stiff strides towards the gate, he once more grasped your outstretched palm and stepped over the threshold onto solid, non-slippery ground. the heat he radiated engulfed you just as it had done before and the goosebumps and incessant shivering you'd been enduring ceased at once. something about it felt odd to you, no person should constantly be running this warm. previously you'd just chalked it up to him overworking himself in the rink, but this time he had simply been laying there. your curiosity got the best of you as you fell into step next to sunghoon while making your trek back to the gymnasium.

"are you feeling okay?" you asked, twirling the strap of one of your heels around your hand as you walked. you peeked at him through your peripheral vision and noticed him doing the same in your direction.

"yes, i'm okay. just a little nervous, i guess. why do you ask?"

you almost wanted to ask why the hell he of all people would be feeling nervous, but you were sharp enough to see what he was trying to do. "you're always abnormally hot, and before you let it boost your ego, i mean it quite literally."

sunghoon breathed out a small laugh. "i wasn't going to think about it like that, anyways." he shook his head slightly before continuing, "i guess i just always run a bit warmer than other people. i get that from my father's side, he's quite a heater, as well."

you sucked your cheeks in slightly, not buying his story for even a second. but, for argument's sake and because ultimately it wasn't really your place to poke your nose in his business, you gave a simple nod and paused just outside of the gym to slip your heels back on. a sharp intake of breath filled your lungs as sunghoon stopped alongside you, then knelt down to begin fastening the straps of your shoes after you'd slid them back on. wordlessly, he rose back to his feet and flashed that swoon worthy smile of his before entering the chaotic gymnasium with you following in tow, your mind void of all things except for the forbidden boy.

"hey, y/n!" a voice hissed in a loud whisper. you turned to your left, ready to use the book in your hand to defend yourself with until you recognized who the owner of the voice was. you let your guard back down with a small sigh, clutching the book to your chest as jisung came trotting up to you. "are you busy this friday?"

you hesitated before shaking your head negatively, your brows creasing together slightly. "no, why?"

jisung scratched the back of his neck which, you'd learned in the few days prior to your date to the dance, was a nervous habit of his. it was endearing, you decided. "well, some of my friends and i are gonna go trick or treating and i wanted to see if you'd like to join us," he explained in a hushed tone, shifting from one foot to the other as he glanced between the library book shelves.

"oh," you started, "uh, who specifically does that include?"

"me, chenle, taehyun, jinha..." he listed off a few more students before the name you were silently hoping you wouldn't hear; or, maybe you did hope to hear it, "...and sunghoon."

you swallowed thickly before shifting your focus to your worn shoes below. "do you mind if i bring some of my friends?" you finally asked, bringing your eyes back up to meet jisung's once more. he nodded rapidly, and you found yourself agreeing to tag along much to his delight. he quickly told you where the designated meeting spot would be before bounding further into the library with a giddy smile. you knew how he felt about you, he was really quite horrible at hiding it whenever you were around, but you couldn't find it in your heart to shut him down. you'd never had anyone crush on you before, at least not to your knowledge, what were you supposed to do with this information?

it didn't take very much convincing for your three friends to agree to going after you'd said the magic word, that being sunghoon. so, that friday night you found yourself waltzing to the decided meeting spot dressed as one of four ninja turtles to correspond with the three others your friends represented. you honestly couldn't remember what your turtle's name was, but you did enjoy the fact that you got to carry around a huge wooden staff. at least you now had a reason to yield a weapon to knock yuna upside the head with if she pestered you about the forbidden boy too much.

"are we ready to go?" ningning asked aloud after the four of you had arrived, swinging her empty pumpkin bucket around.

"no, sunghoon's not answering," the only other girl there answered with a harsh huff, and you immediately recognized her from the school dance.

you frowned a little, glancing around until you caught jisung's eye from across the group. he only shrugged animatedly and glanced back down at his phone like he was waiting for a notification to suddenly pop up.

"has anyone checked up on him at his house or anything?" you questioned, a scoff of disbelief falling from your lips as everyone shook their heads. "some friends you are," you sighed heavily. "then maybe we should split up to search for him? some of us check at his house, some check at the places he's at most, and the rest can check at the school. maybe he got held back during practice or something."

slowly but surely, the group dispersed in small search parties which resulted in you traveling to the school with jisung and jinha. "hey, geniuses, how do you plan to get into the school? we can't break in unless we want to start criminal records," jinha nagged from the backseat.

"chenle snagged his mom's id card so we can get inside," jisung replied, holding up the school staff badge that all school workers wore clipped to their shirts during the day.

you took the badge from jisung's hand to examine it, seeing that it was indeed the vice principal's id stamped on the front of the glossy plastic. "why does he just randomly have this?" you implored before handing it back to the boy just as he pulled into the school's parking lot.

"he stole it last year and made her think she lost it so she'd get a new one. he keeps this one in case he needs to get inside for...certain activities." sensing that jisung wasn't going to elaborate any further, you didn't push for more details and climbed out of the vehicle.

"great, so now i'm associated with a criminal," jinha pouted as the three of you charged up to the entrance, jisung hastily swiping the card across the reader panel before the doors unlocked with a loud clunk.

you rolled your eyes, leading the way inside where you were met with nothing but darkness. "don't worry, i'm sure your boyfriend will find a way to bail you out," you retorted as the three of you collectively fished out your phones to utilize their flashlights.

"of course he will, but i still don't want it on my track record."

"i think we should split up to look," you announced, quickly growing fed up with jinha's whiny attitude.

"you're insane, there's no way in hell i'm wandering around this school alone! that's how the characters all die in horror movies. jisung, you're coming with me," she stated firmly before grasping his wrist and yanking him down the east wing.

"good riddance," you muttered to yourself as you made your way down the west wing. you had to admit, the school seemed much more daunting at night with the eerily quiet hallways and the usually blocked out sounds of various electrical units running. your heart began to thud harder and faster in your chest the further into the school you crept, and eventually you had to stop and lean against the wall of lockers to collect yourself. you'd finally gotten your breathing and heart rate back to normal when you heard it, and your blood turned to ice immediately.

you held your breath, the thumping of your heart rising again as you strained to listen for the sound to come again. you took a few hesitant steps forward with your flashlight shakily guiding you before you heard it a second time. a cry of pain, it was distant but you definitely heard it and it only served to frighten you more. immediately, you began to back up the way you had just come from when a sudden feeling struck you hard.

go look.

the feeling was intense and it had you halting in your backtracking steps. why would you want to investigate? you had no idea what or who was making that noise, and you wanted no part in whatever was happening. but, no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't shake the incessant feeling that begged you to go see what was going on. with a final deep breath to clear your body of its nerves, you began to move forward down the hallway again. you weren't sure where you were supposed to be looking, but you guessed you'd just follow the sounds. another anguished cry faintly tickled your ears, then–

the ice rink.

swallowing down the urge to break down under the immense fear coursing through your veins, you bolted for the arena and came to a halt just outside of the heavy metal doors leading into the stands. you pressed your ear against the door to listen for any signs of life inside and jumped back with a yelp of surprise as the heated metal made contact with your cheek. why was it so hot? was there a fire inside? what if someone was trapped?

clutching your phone tightly in your hand, you busted through the doors and were met with a wave of unbearably sweltering heat that choked you up for only a moment or two. the air was thick with humidity and it didn't take long for your body to begin reacting to the overwhelming warmth of the arena.

in the center of the ice rink, a thick cloud of smoke nearly hid the hunched silhouette of a person who emitted the same pained cry that you'd been hearing. it couldn't be...

"sunghoon?" you called out above the loud sizzle that echoed off the walls of the vast room. throwing caution to the wind, you charged down the aisle and over to the gate where you had stood all those times prior. the closer you drew to the rink, the hotter the air became until you were sure your hair would singe if you moved any closer. "sunghoon, is that you? what's going on?" you called again, watching with squinted vision as the shadowed figure curled in on themself after letting out a guttural groan.

"leave!" he growled out quite literally, the sound unlike anything you'd ever heard a human produce. it shot a spike of fear down your spine, but regardless you remained planted by the gate. the ice around him was rapidly melting into water and evaporating into the air, adding to the thick fog encasing his body.

"i'll call for help, just stay put!" you called out once more, your shaky hands fumbling with your phone as you tried to navigate from your flashlight to your phone app to call for emergency services.

"no, don't!" the same gravelly voice grumbled, effectively stopping you from proceeding with your actions as you glanced up with wide, panic stricken eyes. slowly, he began to drag his body out of the curtain of steam and a stunned silence fell over you as a pair of brightly glowing green eyes met with yours. your phone fell to the ground with a clatter and your lips parted in a silent scream that never made it out. "y/n, please, don't tell anyone," he pleaded before dropping to the ice with another cry, his body twisting and writhing around in discomfort.

red scales painted his bare torso in random patches that ran all the way down his arms and crept up his neck, and his spine visibly rippled as small spikes began to push through his skin. if you weren't in such a state of shock, you'd almost be sickened by the sight of it, though that shock quickly morphed into concern as you watched him drag his nails against the ice in a feeble attempt to relieve the pain undoubtedly coursing through his body. now, you felt bad, bad enough to have you pushing the gate open and crouching down to scoot along the melting ice towards him.

"y/n, i'll burn you. stay back," he wheezed out, taking immediate notice of your presence creeping closer to him. against your urges, you heeded his warning and remained planted in your spot near the rink's wall.

"what are you?" you couldn't help but ask as you watched more tiny spikes travel down the length of his spine.

sunghoon's green eyes tiredly met yours, then a small amused grunt tumbled from his lips. "what are you?"

sensing that he wanted a distraction from whatever it was he was going through, you found it in your heart to play along. "i'm a ninja turtle, duh," you proclaimed, pointing to the colored bandana tied around your head. "leo, i think," you mused, racking your brain for all names you could remember.

"you're donnie, y/n. he's the super smart one," sunghoon corrected with a fatigued laugh which quickly turned into a whimper as he winced in pain. your body screamed at you to crawl over and console him, but your brain won the argument and you remained seated.

"oh, well then i guess i should take that as a compliment since my friends threw this costume at me," you chuckled, gesturing to the props and clothing covering you.

"he's also kind of a nerd and hopelessly in love with a girl he can't have."

"there's always a catch, isn't there?" you sighed dramatically, leaning back on your palms. "well, i guess he and i aren't very different after all," you admitted, your face flushing even hotter than it already was. was this really how you were going to confess your feelings? in a melting ice rink with some sort of hot demon boy rolling around in front of you? the thought alone was absurd enough to pull a laugh from you.

"you like a girl?" sunghoon teased, and you soon found yourself wanting to use your staff to whack him with but decided he was already suffering enough.

"no, stupid, i like–" you cut yourself off before you could say it out loud, swiftly moving your attention to the watering layer of ice beneath you. "never mind."

you felt the air heat up even hotter for a split second before it suddenly died down, like a bucket of water had been thrown on the blazing fire heating the room up. taking a glance around, nothing seemed to have changed other than the cloud of smoke that had now moved to encompass the both of you. sunghoon pushed himself up with shaky limbs and began to crawl closer to you much to your surprise before dropping down right beside you with his head in your lap.

he was still burning up and the heat was highly uncomfortable, but the way that he instantly sighed in relief upon making contact with you had your heart doing somersaults in your chest. with a weary hand, you gently brushed the sweaty locks away from his forehead and allowed him to nestle his cheek into the palm of your hand. the blood rushed through your veins tenfold as little sparks of something ignited inside of your chest. there was no point in denying it now, it was inevitable from day one and you knew it no matter how hard you tried to deny your feelings.

you liked park sunghoon.

"you know," he cleared his throat, his eyes slipping shut, "i hopelessly like a girl who i can't have, too." you tried so hard to not stare at the sharp canines inside of his mouth as he spoke.

"oh please," you scoffed quietly, "name one person in this school who wouldn't throw themselves at your feet."

"you," he answered without missing a beat, a small smile gracing his lips as his eyelids fluttered back open to greet you with his glowing irises. "i wanted to take you to the dance, you know."

your mouth fell agape at the revelation, your brain turning to absolute mush as you tried desperately to form a single coherent thought. between the heat of the room and the heat of sunghoon's stare trained on your lips, you felt like you were mere minutes away from ascending to the afterlife.

you shook your head slightly to wake yourself back up, your brows drawing together slightly in confusion. "then why didn't you? you could've asked me before you asked jinha," you queried, finally able to collect yourself enough to speak again.

sunghoon scoffed, "did you not see the way you reacted to me when you thought i was asking you? i knew you'd reject me, it's kind of your thing."

"oh," you answered dumbly, busying yourself with combing his damp locks back away from his face as they insisted on falling down to cover his forehead.

"plus, jisung had already expressed that he wanted to ask you and it would've been shitty of me as his friend to ask you first." he sighed, pursing his lips as his gaze dropped back down to your own once more. "can we have a do-over?"

you blinked, your eyebrows shooting up in surprise. "right now? while you're like that and i'm like...this?" you gestured to his obviously exhausted figure laying in a heap before motioning to the ridiculous halloween costume you were sporting.

sunghoon shrugged, "why not? are you bad at dancing?" a glimmer of a challenge twinkled in his eye and you found yourself caving at an alarmingly fast rate.

"as a matter of fact, i am bad at dancing, especially on melting ice," you shot back, giving his shoulder a playful shove.

not taking your excuses, sunghoon began to push himself up to his feet and steadied himself before stretching his palm out to you. "you can just step on my feet then, come on," he smiled that same beautiful smile that you hated yourself falling for each time it showed. clicking your tongue defeatedly, you grabbed ahold of his hand and allowed him to pull you up onto your wobbly legs.

"one thing first," you paused before he could bring you any closer. "i want to know what's going on, sunghoon. what's happening to you?"

he let out a drawn sigh, glancing down at the scales covering splotches of his skin before turning back up to your concerned face. "it happens every time during this year. the lunar cycle makes everyone like me go haywire, though i guess i'm one of the lucky ones. not everyone can remember who they are during this time..." he trailed off before taking another deep breath, his voice shaking slightly as he declared his next words. "i'm a dragon, y/n."

you took all of ten seconds to digest the information before pushing it aside, instead stepping forward and nearly collapsing into sunghoon as your feet slid on the slippery ice. with quick reflexes, sunghoon caught you and brought you into a tight embrace until your feet were securely planted on the tops of his own. you'd have time to think more about it later, but right now the atmosphere was far too uncomfortable for you to give yourself a headache over it.

sunghoon's hands planted firmly on the dip of your waist whereas your arms found their way around the back of his neck, your fronts pressing flush against each other as he began to take small swaying steps that somewhat resembled a slow dance. your cheek found rest against the bare skin of his chest, and the once unbearable heat didn't seem quite so unbearable now.

"you're not hurting any more?" you asked softly, glancing up at him through your lashes as he continued to maneuver the two of you around.

shaking his head slightly, he smiled adoringly down at you. "not enough that i can't handle it any more. you took it away," he confessed with a hint of shyness crossing his features.

you pulled back just enough to look him in the eye properly, then your gaze drifted downwards to rest on his pink lips. "sunghoon," you whispered breathlessly, and as if reading your mind, he wordlessly leaned in and pressed his lips against yours in a gentle, perfect first kiss.

you slammed your locker door shut after gathering the materials you needed for your next class, struggling to hoist all the books up off the floor. suddenly, a pair of hands began grabbing a few of your books off the top of the stack and you followed up the length of the arms until you were met with the sight of an all too familiar face.

"this seems like deja vu, doesn't it?" sunghoon smiled warmly as you gathered the remaining books before straightening back up on your feet. gently, he placed the books back on top of your stack before turning to follow you to your next destination.

"thank you," you blushed, the heat rising to your cheeks amplifying as you felt sunghoon's arm snake around your shoulders protectively. "did you pass your portion of the project?" you asked, desperately trying to find a distraction from the attention being drawn to the two of you as you traveled down the hallways.

"i got a 96% so i'm pretty happy with it. how did you do?" he asked in return, never once removing his arm from around you until you stopped in front of the door of your classroom.

"i got the same," you smiled back, that expression only growing wider as he leaned in and planted a kiss against your warming cheek.

"good, i'll see you at lunch?" you nodded, trapping your bottom lip between your teeth to keep from giggling obnoxiously at the show of affection before bidding him goodbye and venturing into your class.

"y/n," yuna blurted out the second you'd sat your things down on the joined tables your three best friends occupied, "you have some major tea to fill us in on."

you sat down and watched as all three girls leaned in with eager smiles and twinkling eyes, and for once you found yourself excited to talk about sunghoon with them. you spent the entire class period filling them in on your newly acquired boyfriend, though you made sure to leave out the whole part about finding out he was a living, breathing dragon. the more you thought about it, the more ironic you found the situation to be. the school's ice prince turned out to harbor a creature inside of him that could easily melt the ice he skated on, and you'd watched that very scenario play out just a few nights ago. then, it slowly but surely began to make sense to you in your head.

it all explained the heat you'd feel whenever he was nearby and it explained why it seemed like he was always in that rink. the uttered confession of "i like to come here when i need to cool off" clicked perfectly like one of the many pieces of the puzzle you'd been trying to solve for weeks now. of course back then you'd assumed he meant it as a way for him to relieve stress, but now you saw that he meant it quite literally. it both amused you and made you feel a bit silly for having not read all of the clues so easily before.

"ugh, i'm so happy for you but i'm so jealous," ningning sighed heavily, dropping her chin into the palms of her hands.

"you have such a hot boyfriend, y/n," yuna agreed with a wistful sigh of her own.

"oh, i know," you snickered lightly to yourself. "i definitely know."

© enhasfever

[bellysoupset]

Story idea from this post, by @pukeyqt

Meet my new characters, Lucas and Bells.

---

Eating the tuna salad had been a mistake. And easily avoidable mistake at that, as her roommate Tonya had pointed out it "doesn't look right, babes," but Bell was nothing if not a stubborn prick, who wouldn't let the fact that the tuna salad had been sitting in their mini bar fridge for a week deter her.

Now she was paying for it. Her stomach was bubbling ominously and had been feeling uneasy since morning. One whiff of her usual black coffee had sent her retching over the toilet for 10 minutes, but nothing came up other than frothy spit. Her belly hurt.

Not that Isabella was willing to talk about it, knowing her best friend had a cocked-and-ready-to-go "I told you so". She just wanted to get through the last class and go to Lucas' place, curl up in his incredibly comfy bed, knowing for a fact he'd love to dot on her.

A burp sneaked up on her and she pressed the heel of her hands to her lips, muffling it. It brought up the taste of tuna again and she squeezed her eyes, nausea making her skin prickle. She breathed through the worst of queasiness, swallowed in the saliva collecting in her mouth and slowly pulled her hand back. Her stomach was digging on her belt. She had picked these pants because they were a little loose, but it seemed like it was no longer the case, the metal of her belt buckle was pressing hard against her belly.

She tugged at it for some sliver of relief and glanced at her phone. There were still five minutes more before class ended. Not a single text from Lucas, which made her pout. Bell wished he was magically connected to her, that somehow he knew she was about to puke in the middle of campus and just decided it was a great time to offer her a ride.

But no. He was probably at football practice at this hour and his phone was safely tucked away in the locker's room.

Bell let out a shaky breath, then clutched at her stomach as a particular harsh gurgle made itself not only heard, but also made her belly shake lightly. She gagged, swallowed in convulsively and started putting away her text book and her notes, with shaky hands. Even if there was just three minutes more, she couldn't stay.

She all but bolted out of the classroom and straight to one of the campus' bathrooms, crouching down in front of it and gagging harshly. Still, nothing came up. Her stomach felt filled all the way to the top, the salad sitting in her throat, but nothing came up but a couple wet belches that had her eyes tearing up.

She could shove her fingers down her throat and get this over with, but the idea irked her and Bell would rather not throw up at all if possible. She stood up as the noise of people entering the bathroom got louder, presumably because all classes had ended.

One extremely unpleasant bus trip later and she was in Lucas' building. He wasn't supposed to be home for another forty minutes, but it was better than going back to her dorms and she was so queasy she could barely think straight. She just needed to sit down, undo her pants and rub at her belly, praying her food stayed down.

He had given her the key a month before and slowly she was getting more comfortable with coming over uninvited or when he wasn't around.

Bell all but chucked her bag at the general direction of his couch and stalked over to the master suite's bathroom for some extra privacy, only to feel two strong arms wrap around her middle and squeeze her hard as her boyfriend pulled her off of her feet.

It was all it took.

The pressure that had been there all morning went up and she scrambled in his grip, only to throw up down her front. The mess stuck to her shirt, to his forearm wrapped around her stomach and she heard loud swearing, but Lucas didn't drop her in disgust, only set her back down gently, keeping the arm that was already dirty firmly in place.

She was incredibly grateful for it, because the minute her feet met the ground, she nearly went down to her knees with the force of another retch, this one bringing up an even larger gush and covering her combat boots with puke.

Isabella coughed, dug on Lucas' arm for support and then embarrassment hit her even stronger than the nausea, causing a sob to burst through her.

"Oh no, honey-" Lucas was rambling somewhere over her head and then his big hand was on her face, pushing the dirty locks of hair away, wiping her tears with his thumb, "Bella, what's hurting? Bells, talk with me-"

She whimpered, wanting to wrap an arm protectively around her middle, but just the thought of the mess slowly sipping through her ratty tank top made her want to puke all over again, "I'm- gross-"

Lucas widened his eyes at her, "you're crying because you're embarrassed?!" he scoffed and then finally pulled back his arm, wiping the vomit off of it with his hand and then cleaning the hand down his jersey shirt. Then he cupped her face and did the same to her, wiping the puke off her lips, not bothered in the least, "I'm in the football team, baby, you're the least gross thing I've seen today, trust me."

She snorted, still unable to stop the tears, "I really don't feel well, Luke."

"I can see that," he teased, only to receive a weak shove to his chest and chuckle, "let's move you to the bathroom, honey."

It was a testament to how sick she felt that she didn't say anything as her boyfriend manhandled her to the bathroom and then bunched up her long curls into a messy bun on top of her head.

"There, you look beautiful," he said, crouching down in front of her and tapping her arms up, "let's get you out of these disgusting clothes-"

"You just wanna see my tits," Bell groaned, feeling marginally better and he opened a blinding smile at the joke.

"Always," Lucas promised with a wink, before slowly maneuvering her top off and throwing it inside the sink, "feels better, uh?"

Bell sniffled, nodding, "I messed up your floor..."

"Eh, nothing that hasn't happened before," he promised, leaning in to kiss her forehead, "are you sick?"

"Now you ask me?" She eyed him skeptically, heart soaring, because even if she had the flu, even if she was contagious, he clearly didn't care. She had never been anyone's priority as she was with Lucas, it made her feel lightheaded sometimes.

He shrugged, cheeks blushing and she leaned back against the wall, starting to undo her belt, "No, I just ate some garbage yesterday. Felt awful since morning."

"I'm sorry," Lucas grimaced in sympathy, "better now, though?"

Bella paused, accessing herself. Her stomach was still unsettled, but the insane nausea from before was gone, at least for now, "a little... Still don't feel great."

"Let's get cleaned up and in bed, so I can rub your tummy."

"You're a dork," she groaned, blushing at him calling her stomach tummy.

"I don't have a better word for that cute little tummy of yours, Bells," Lucas scoffed, leaning in again and then planting a kiss over her lips, only for her to pull back with a groan.

"Lucas! I just puked!"

"I don't care," he rolled his eyes, grabbing her chin and giving her another peck.

"You're crazy, boy," she groaned, resting her forehead heavily against his and relaxing for the first time all day.

[c-rose2081]

The Bench (Broken Moon)

*dark themes warning*

—

—

-

Zed didn’t realize how illusive Addison Wells actually was.

He’d looked for her after their short conversation in the cafeteria, but she was either avoiding him like the plague, or had simply vanished into thin air. The girl was nowhere to be found, and Zed wondered where exactly she ended up. Of course, the minute he wasn’t looking for her is when she decided to appear. Except it was hardly in the way he was expecting.

There wasn’t any sort of homeless problem in Seabrook. If something happened, you were supported — monsters and human alike. So seeing someone sleeping at a bus stop in the middle of a rainstorm was kinda uncommon, if not completely unheard of. Zed was already soaked, having missed his ride on the activities bus which took him back to Zombietown after football practice. So he chose to walk instead, which wasn’t bad until the clouds rolled in.

It was an early night in the storm, and he’d been hurrying to reach home when he ran right past the bench and immediately skidded to a stop. His old cleats scraped against the wet pavement as he halted his jaunt down the road, and in the light of a streetlamp he goggled back at the girl he had spent the last day trying to find.

Addison was snoozing on a bench in the middle of the storm, either unbothered by the cold and wet, or so tired to the point where she no longer cared. Her white hair cascaded in soaked rivulets through the bench’s narrow slats, picking up mud from the pavement below. Her clothing was all but transparent from the rain, and she had nothing else on her but the threadbare outfit (one that clearly wasn’t made for stormy weather). She had no backpack or bag, no phone, and no jacket of any kind. It was just her in the middle of a storm, dressed for summer weather and looking half-dead in the lamplight.

Zed hesitated and reached for his phone. He should just call someone…someone better suited to handle whatever this situation was. The human police or the z-patrol or something. But he dropped his hand in the end, taking a few small steps closer to the comatose teenager. Now, leaning over her, Zed noticed something he hadn’t before.

Scars.

Deep, ragged, painful looking scars. They were huge and a bit hard to miss, what with how they curled from under her shirt, up the side of her neck and through the underside of her jaw. They were well faded — clearly old wounds that she’d had for (assuming) most of her life — but they still made him cringe nonetheless. He couldn’t imagine what sort of accident would leave marks like that, let alone how painful it must’ve been to endure. How he hadn’t seen them when they talked yesterday, Zed wasn’t entirely sure. But then, he’d also been very distracted by Addison’s beautiful eyes and face to be staring anywhere else.

Shaking the intrusive thoughts away and scoffing (now wasn’t the time), Zed hesitantly inched forward a bit more to observe. The girl was thin — far smaller then she should’ve been — and Zed frowned deeply. Her family was gone; she had no one taking care of her as far as he knew. Did she have food at home? Hell, did she even have a home to go too now? Seabrook wasn’t keen on having open real estate sitting around, so if a house was empty it was sold just as fast.

“Hey.”

Zed spoke up, voice croaking from shouting all through football practice, “hey, Addison.”

No response.

Pursing his lips, Zed inched closer. He didn’t want to touch her, but he also had no idea if she was even breathing. He couldn’t see if her chest was moving, what with how limply she was laid across her side. The thought of having come across a…a body…made him want to be sick, and he very slowly reached down to check for a pulse. Despite her skin being the same temperature as ice, there was a heartbeat. It felt normal, but Zed wasn’t a doctor, or even a good student in health class.

The hand suddenly grabbing his z-band startled him.

He physically jumped in surprise as his arm was yanked and he ended up on the ground. At first, Zed thought maybe he’d been pushed from behind, rather then body slammed arm first. But when he looked up, there was only Addison. She was haloed in the streetlamp, and for a very brief second she looked completely feral. Glowing eyes, teeth and claws, fur and ears. But he must’ve imagined it, because the next she was just a sickly girl staring down at him in shock.

“…h-hi…” he managed, “sorry, I-I just had to check if you were…”

He trailed off. Addison was staring at him blankly, like she had no idea who he was to begin with. Actually, it looked like she had no idea where she was either, glancing around in confusion, her breathing hard and fast out of fear.

“Addison,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. She at least knew her name…that was a good thing, right? “are you ok?”

Stupid question, because clearly she wasn’t ok. But hey, at least he asked.

“I…” her voice was broken, more so than his, as though she’d been screaming endlessly for days, “I don’t…know…?”

“You don’t know if you’re ok?” Zed puzzled in worry. Maybe she’d fallen and smacked her head on the sidewalk? A hit and run resulting in a concussion, perhaps? No. Not possible. That sort of thing felt off brand for Seabrook. It was a safe place to live, Zombies aside.

Addison sat up with a wince, looking more and more pained with every movement. She opened her palms to glance at her hands, then once again at her surroundings. She still had no idea where she was — Zed could see it in her eyes. He once again thought about calling someone, but something inside stopped him. He was now leaning more and more towards the ‘possibly hit by a car’ theory, which felt wild, but he’d never seen anyone so disoriented before (and he played football for god’s sake).

“Do you have someone I can call?” He wondered, once again wanting to hit himself for the stupid question the minute it left his mouth. Her parents were dead, idiot, who was she going to call?

“…no…” she managed, “no I…I should…” the girl moved to stand, only to instantly fall off the curb in something similar to a faint. Zed scrambled from his place on the street to catch her, using his body to keep hers from hitting the pavement. Enough damage had already been done, and he still had no idea what happened to leave her this way. But, seeing as he was already neck deep in the situation, Zed couldn’t go back on it now.

“Let’s get you someplace safe, kay?” He told her, grasping the girls arms with his hands, “Addison,” he insisted, having to nearly bark to get her attention back on him, “do you remember me?”

“…I think…” she nodded, only to pause and think for a very long second before answering, “Zed? You’re Zed, from…from school, right?”

“Yes. Ok, that’s…that’s better, I guess,” He mumbled to himself, grunting as he hoisted both himself and Addison up off the wet pavement, “come on, we’ll get you out of this weather.”

“It’s raining,” she mused to him, barely able to hold herself up as he slung a shoulder under her arm (awkwardly, because she was just that short).

“Yes. And you’ve been out here sleeping in it,” he chuffed, shaking his head. It was more likely, he realized, that she had gotten hurt sometime in the night and dragged herself onto the bench before passing out completely. But why or how, he still didn’t know.

Thankfully (or not thankfully), she was incredibly light, and it wasn’t to much of a chore to get her back to Zombietown. She didn’t say hardly anything as he dragged her back home with him, but at least she was a bit more responsive to his verbal cues to step up or down off curbs. By the time they both reached the house, rain was torrenting down on them, and the streets were mostly abandoned. Thunder rolled in the distant hills as Zed guided Addison up the steps of his porch, old wood creaking from the extra and unexpected weight.

His dad opened the door before he could even reach for the knob.

“Zed!” The man barked in surprise, only to shift on his feet at the sight of a guest, “who’s this, son? What’s going on?”

“She’s from school, Dad. I think…I think she got hit by a car…”

“What?! In Seabrook?”

“She needs a Doctor,” Zed insisted, “she needs help right now.”

—

[tiesthatbind-tf]

A lad finally gets some of that coveted spotlight!

Benjamin Bane (just Ben or Benji, thanks) may be the youngest of the active Autobot team as their sprightly scout who’s got a chip on his shoulder he wants to hurl into the next Functionist or Decepticon picking on him for his size, and who’s been through quite a bit despite his age, if the burn on his left arm, the slide bite on his right hand  and the multitude of old cigarette burns he’s reluctant to explain are anything to go by.

When not on the field, he’s an avid dancer (with a love for ballet, something he could only pursue in secret until recently, and something which forms the core of his offensive style) and a good enough artist that he, alongside Mirage, are the two assigned to decorate armor for the team.

His smiley, chirpy facade hides quite a couple of issues, including PSTD and self-esteem issues, anxiety attacks, and an urge to please those he trusts even if it comes at his detriment.

More to his story below. (TW for child abuse)

Benjamin Bane (Bumblebee) would be hard-pressed to come up with a single good memory concerning his biological family during his childhood, and not for the lack of trying.

Born to an upper middle-class family in New York comprising a bullish, hot-tempered police sergeant father and a housewife mother, he grew up in the shadow of the son his father, who came from a family of law enforcers, wanted him to be in order to carry on the family legacy.

That he was a gentle, bubbly, sensitive child who loved following his mother around in the kitchen and spending his free time drawing did not bode well for the image his father wished to portray, and it didn’t take long for the discipline intended to mold him into a ‘man’ to become horrifically physical when he was barely five.

His mother, already used to his old man’s temper and quick hand, would often step in to take the punishment meant for him whenever he did something undesirable, though she couldn’t save Ben from the man’s wrath completely, and by the time he was nine, he was never seen without a hoodie in school and had perfected every excuse he’d been told to repeat when asked why he could not take it off or why he would come in on some days with a split lip.

He was small for his size, quiet, and took great pains not to be noticed, which had the opposite effect of making him the target of every other larger child looking to blow off steam, and he became good at running.

Really good.

There was no running from home however, home where the walls were insulated so neighbours wouldn’t hear what was happening within, and while some days would be better than others, there wasn’t a moment that he didn’t break into a cold sweat whenever he heard his father’s footsteps approaching his room.

With his mother unable to bear more children due to an illness, his father furiously continued with the campaign (sometimes the carrot was used  though mostly it was the stick) to mold him into the son the man wanted, so he could make the cut during the streaming process prior to high school where students would be sorted into their future occupational classes.

What support he might have had from his mother in his young years also evaporated, as she pushed him to be the son his father needed him to be to keep the peace, putting the weight of the household’s sanctity on his slight  shoulders.

He was forced into marksmanship lessons (where his first attempt to fire a gun went awry and left him with a deep slide bite wound), multiple self-defence classes to toughen him up (helpful for bullies whenever they didn’t come in packs), and a series of workouts to encourage a growth spurt so he could catch up to other potential cadet  candidates.

The little sliver of hope that he would be good enough to make the junior police  cadets went up in smoke when he was assigned to the manual class instead, owing to his size and his visceral aversion to handling firearms.

Branded as worthless and only good for paying off the ‘debt’ accumulated from the classes his father had earlier forced him into, Ben entered high school with his self-esteem scrapping at topsoil and digging deeper, and had it not been for a chance encounter with another boy who was evading a group of military-classed students intending to instil a lesson about talking back to those higher in the hierarchy, it might have dug itself into a grave.

The boy, who introduced himself as Guillermo ‘Memo’ Gutierrez after Ben dutifully sent the bullies scattering, was also assigned to the manual class and both of them  decided to stick together for safety in numbers.

Ben had ruefully accepted his lot in life after years of being broken and beaten down. Memo, however, had a loving and supportive family; this kept the spark of his defiance to the system alive and he kindled it in Ben’s by giving his friend a safe space to escape to whenever the situation at Ben’s home became too intense.

Among Memo and Memo’s family was the first time where Ben opened up about his interests, could speak freely and found acceptance for what he liked and who he was.

The desire to reclaim the things he loved pushed him to seek out part-time work, which he eventually found after befriending a girl, Charlie Watson, who had helped put an end to the harassment he and Memo endured at school by playing the hierarchy to their favour and wielding her Navy ‘prime-pick’ status.

That she actually wanted nothing to do with the class she was pushed into (Navy) and wished to pursue a career in automotives despite parental objections was something that she and Ben bonded over, and she brought him to the scrapyard her uncle ran where he found work sorting out car parts and helping perform repairs.

He began to pursue art and dance in secret with part of his pay (keeping his sketchbooks and supplies at Memo’s place and taking dance lessons under the guise of after-class study sessions), while saving up the rest and planning for the day he would eventually break free of his father, ‘debt’ or no ‘debt’.

During this time, he subtly packed away important items and was careful not to anger his old man more than his mere presence already did on a good day——something which would become increasingly hard when the Clampdown began.

He would hear his father rant over the dinner table about how ungrateful the protesters who were made up mostly of the Manual Class were, how they weren’t worth the safety net they were demanding for the job they were doing, how they needed to know their place.

He would hear, as time went by, about how his father would beat the ones who were arrested, and more than once, how he would be killed if he, as the man’s son, ever did something as stupid and insolent as that.

He bit his tongue through all this and reluctantly refused Memo’s offer to join a peaceful protest for better wages and workplace compensation.

The protest turned violent after police assaulted those taking part however, and as he watched the news hoping to see if Memo was alright, he saw his friend among those who were tossed into the dreaded black vans to be brought over to stations for interrogation.

His father, fielding a call from a colleague about the batch of protesters being brought in, told them to separate the adults from the teenagers, who would be easier to break, and it was at this point Ben’s spark turned into a bonfire.

As his father got dressed for work, he crept into the man’s study and managed to figure out the combination to the safe where the man’s gun was kept, retrieving it and aiming it at the police sergeant who came in and demanded for him to stand down.

Ben, in turn, demanded for his father to call the station and have Memo released, and when his father laughed at his audacity, mocked the way his hands shook while he was holding the gun and threatened to beat him senseless once this was all over, he shot the man close enough to the head to clip an ear to prove a point, before repeating his demand again.

This time, his father complied and called the station to order for Memo’s release; Ben’s relief however was all the momentary lapse of guard that his father needed to rush in and attempt to wrest the gun back, and in the struggle, he accidentally shot his father in the knee.

Under the hail of threats on how he was going to die once his father got hands on him, Ben flung the gun where the man could not reach, grabbed one of the bags he had secretly packed and ran out of the house to the screams of his mother.

He called Charlie and explained the situation to her, as both of them made their way to the station where his father worked to pick up Memo, who was confused about the state of affairs.

At 18 years, Ben was now a fugitive who could no longer go home; Memo brought him to the manual class district where Ben could hide among allies, and it was here that he spent a few months in hiding, disguised as a manual worker.

However, still fully terrified at the thought of his father eventually hunting him down within the confines of the city, he made plans to leave and head to the West Coast, far away from any chance that he would meet his old man by accident on the streets.

To his surprise,  Charlie and Memo elected to join him in the move, and the three of them left together on a  Greyhound bus; Him to escape his father, Charlie to escape her future with a military complex which her father died for and Memo to protect his family after he was named a person of interest in the protest.

However, they were forced to stop in Texas when police were inspecting passing buses for runaway Cold Constructs. Here, they met Ian Hart (Ironhide), a rancher secretly helping Cold  Constructs escape ownership by crossing over into Mexico to start new lives.

Ian, seeing how they ran from the bus, assumed they were young Cold Constructs and immediately took them in and offered them shelter; when they explained their situation, he kept his offer, letting them stay until they had their plans sorted out and paying them for work done on his ranch in the meantime.

All three of them grew fond of him and spent a month working on his ranch, helping out equally between his longhorn cattle and the Cold Constructs who would come in scared, starving, and seeking refuge from bounty hunters looking to bring them back to the establishments they were assigned to.

Someone however, had gotten wind of Ian’s clandestine operation, and the man was arrested during a midnight raid, though not before he flung Ben, Charlie and Memo into a secret basement with three Cold Constructs who he told them to help cross the border the next day.

They did as they were told, but decided to return to the ranch to figure out how to help Ian, and when they came back there, it was to come face to face with two strangers who were also seeking Ian after seeing him on the news.

These strangers introduced themselves as Omar Parvez (Optimus Prime), Jace Zayden (Jazz) and Preston Wan (Prowl), members of a rebellion that had sprung up in the UK, and upon hearing that they had been with Ian for the past month, requested for their help in tracking the man down to save him from a terrible fate at the hands of government interrogators.

Realising that they were now caught up in something bigger than they ever imagined, Ben nonetheless accepted the request, unwilling to stand back and do nothing while a good man suffered.

Youth, size and a lifetime of abuse would not be an obstacle to him helping someone else, especially with his best friends  by his side.

[admiringlove]

“choose her.”

+order: hi! i'm not sure if you still have spots for your 500 special but I'd like to order angst/fluff (or hurt/comfort) with Suna and "Choose her." I wonder how Suna would act with someone strongly pushing him away (not a childhood friend). This is a such a cool event and thanks <3 xx [submitted by @cherryblossomsxoxo​]

+word count: 1.2k

+warnings: smoking; hurt/comfort.

+author’s notes: hi, i hope you like this <3 i left the reader as gender neutral, but suna’s sexuality can be interpreted in any way you like! to anyone who wants to send a prompt, here is the link to the event masterlist so you can know which shows you can request from!

The night sky never looked more lonely. 

Your throat is dry as you slowly take a puff from the roll in your hand, looking up from your opened window. Nights like this one once used to be filled with mindless laughter, and reckless blushes—nights you reminisced in this one with dried tears on your cheeks and a hollow mind. 

You met him at a convenience store. It was funny, perfectly cliché—something out of the movies. One late night, you had ventured out of your dorm, looking for some excitement to spark your ordinary life. You went to the convenience store first, going to the very back and picking up a pack of cigarettes. The cashier seemed to be a tired college student who didn't give a shit, and there was only one other customer there. 

That one other customer, whose hand brushed yours while picking up the same item as you. The two of you had smiled at one another, and checked out at the same time. You stood outside the store in silence, watching the chartreuse-eyed man smoke as you tried to figure out how to do it yourself. 

He had chuckled when he looked back at you. You vividly remember him showing you how to hold it with his nimble fingers touching your hand, and then he lit your cigarette. He told you to take a puff, and you had immediately coughed after. 

He laughed. Then introduced himself, "I'm Suna Rintarō."

You two became friends faster than ever. After learning that he goes to the same university as you, he tended to spend more time with you. He had caught you walking into the library that day, and followed you in. 

You never knew when you fell in love with him though. It was unjustly a blur. 

Because the late-night escapades, the all-nighters, the 'trying out every coffee shop in town', the movie nights, the college parties—all turned into something more. You never understood how his hand lingered on yours for a tad bit longer, or how he hugged you just a smidge tighter, or how he tended to smile more when he was with you. 

You were dense like that. He used to call you dense. It made you smile, as you looked back on the better days. 

Being inseparable from Suna came with its benefits and demerits. He was sarcastic, and sometimes a little harsh-tongued. But he was also kind, passionate, and apologetic. He was the type to immediately apologize if it felt like he hit a nerve, and that was one of the many good things about him. 

Everything was going well. Or so, you thought. 

Suna Rintarō soon had someone else tagging along with him when he came to eat lunch with you at that diner by the campus. The diner soon turned into a salad bar downtown when the said 'someone else' begged Suna to go there. The movie nights soon turned into, "Sorry, can't make it tonight". The coffee-shop tryouts soon became, "She decided to come with us. The more the merrier, am I right?".

Everything changed. And soon, you learned, that the girl who had ultimately become a part of what was once just you and him, liked him.

"[Y/N] likes you," she said, in the middle of lunch one day. Your fork dropped from your hand and onto your plate as you looked up at her, and then Suna, whose eyes were wide. You opened your mouth to say something, but she got there first, "[Y/N] likes you as more than a friend."

"N-no," you mumbled out, your heart becoming audible as it began to beat louder and louder like a speeding metronome, "I don't."

Getting up from your seat, you took your bag and left, not responding to Suna's voice calling out for you. You board the bus, and when you look back, you see him. He had run out of the salad bar, and to the bus stand, but he was too late. 

Seventeen missed calls, twelve texts, and four voicemails. You chose to respond to none of them. Almost a month passed after that.

And one night, as it rained(perfectly depicting the storm brewing inside your mind), Suna Rintarō showed up outside your dorm room. He knocked on the door an insurmountable amount of times until you finally opened it and looked up at him. 

He sighs, "Why didn't you answer my calls?"

"I didn't feel like it," you lie through your teeth, not being able to meet his gaze. He could tell that what his other 'friend' said was true, but he chose to stay quiet. Running a hand through his damp hair, he says, "You didn't even talk to me after class."

"I didn't feel like it," you repeat. He nods, continuing, "Okay, so why didn't you come to the salad bar?"

"I was at the diner," you mumble, returning to your desk. He follows you to your room, raising an eyebrow at you as he says, "But I was waiting for you at the salad bar."

You drop your pen haphazardly, letting out a shaky exhale as your fingers reach your temples, "Rin, you weren't waiting for me there. Please, just... stop lying to yourself."

"Was it true?" he asks, his voice soft, and almost inaudible. You look at him this time, your eyes glassy as your voice becomes hitched, "Leave."

"Look, I don't want to leave you or her-"

"Choose her, Rin." 

He left after that. And here you were, cursing yourself as you flicked the spent ashes into a tray while staring at the cloudy sky. You regretted saying that to him, because some way or another, you had learned to find solace in those small moments. Those moments recklessly infused with love had become addicting, and after she came into your lives, it became harder and harder to conjure those sickeningly sweet times. 

There's a knock on your door for the second time this night. And you can't believe your luck, because again in the same night, Suna Rintarō is standing outside your door, completely drenched this time. 

"Let me in," he says, boring his eyes into yours, "I need to tell you something."

"I thought-"

He pushes past you anyway, taking off his boots by the door and leaving them there. You’re standing there in awe, looking at him inquisitively as he breaths out a sigh. He walks towards you, and you cower away for the second time this night. 

But he doesn't let you. 

"I can't," he mumbles, "I can't choose her."

You look up, the screams of desperation and agony stitched into your irises as you whisper out a "why". Your hands have begun trembling, and your heart is almost ready, beating faster and faster again just like a speeding metronome, anticipating to hear the words you yearn to. 

He smiles at you, pressing a small peck on the top of your head as he cups your cheek, a single tear shedding from his eyes as he prepares himself.

"Because I love you, idiot."

© all works belong to admiringlove on tumblr. plagiarism is strictly prohibited.

[sabraeal]

If the Mind Is Willing, Chapter 1

[Read on AO3]

Written for @bubblesthemonsterartist, my partner in crime, for her birthday. Joanna likes to ask me for only the most niche concepts with which to delight herself and she certainly topped herself with this one, conceptually. I hope you enjoy the thing only you could ask for and the thing only I could write

With two minutes left on the gymnasium clock, Chizuru stumbles out from behind her desk and hands over her most important accomplishment of the past three months: her last exam. Of fall semester, at least.

It’s Sakai who’s sitting in the proctor’s seat when she approaches; of Matsumoto’s two TAs this semester, he was certainly the favorite, and Chizuru doubts it’s for his rather extensive collection of cozy-looking sweaters. Touchable, she’s heard some of the other girls giggle behind her in lecture, and today he looks it, the sweep of his bangs falling gently over his forehead and his cable knit almost certainly made from the world’s softest sheep. It’s just slightly too big for him, a size that would be down to her knees if she wore it, cuffs pushed all the way up to her elbows just to see her hand.

On Sakai, it sits just an inch past his wrist. She notices it when he reaches out, his smile warm as he says, “Congratulations. You’ve passed Biology 100.”

“Oh!” Her fingers pluck at her messenger strap hard enough to make music. “I don’t know if we can say that! There were quite a few questions I really had to think about.”

Sakai is too earnest to be wry, but he comes close with the way his mouth curves. “If you say so.” Her exam settles onto the top of the stack, pleasantly square with the papers beneath it. “You certainly took more care with your answers than most of these-- I mean, your classmates.”

Chizuru blinks. “What do you--?”

Her gaze sweeps out over her shoulder, spanning the gym-- the suddenly very empty gym-- and all she can manage is, “Oh.”

It’s late, she realizes, the night sitting soft against the widows. It’s faded in places, diffused by the ambient light, like crushed velvet in an old jewelry box, worn away where silver once sat. Snow tumbles past in big, chunky flakes, the kind that melt against the pavement up until they don’t, and--

“Oh no,” she murmurs, every hair on end. “The bus.”

“Still running,” Sakai confirms, chair scraping out from underneath him. “It’s just for show right now, but it’s supposed to get heavy later tonight. We’re in for a White Christmas, I guess.”

There’s a proper way to leave the gym, one that leads out to one of the campus’s many quads and also a ten minute dead sprint to the nearest bus stop. But someone’s propped open the emergency exit, its alarm off-- that has to be a violation of some kind, the sort the school would get itself fined for if a fire marshal saw-- and that’s the opening Chizuru takes, if only because there’s a stop right there, at the bottom of the stairs.

Chizuru’s for the rules just as much as anyone, but still-- she has a limit. It’s already a long bus ride to the house, and if she doesn’t catch the next one she’ll have an even longer walk back, not only in the dark but in the snow. Her father may have prepared her for a world of dangers, but no self-defense class could fend off hypothermia.

The air has a bite when she steps out onto the concrete stairs; it hadn’t crossed her mind to check the weather before she rushed out this afternoon, but if she had, she would have at least brought a jacket. As it is, she shrugs her sweater up around her ears, cowl neck covering what her hair doesn’t. It doesn’t do anything for her hands, and oh, they’re already cracked enough from an endless parade of labs and latex gloves. That last thing they need is to get chapped as well, but here she is, exposing them to the elements as her breath mists in the cold.

There’s a car idling on the street; black and boxy in the way that says expensive rather than vintage. That would be as far as her opinions go on the matter, except that it’s idling right where the 9 should be pulling up in the next two minutes. It’s cold, her hands are freezing, and although Chizuru believes in peaceful solutions, she’s just about ready to march up to that beast of a sedan and cite as much of the moving violations section from her Driver’s Ed manual as she can remember. She got in at least a few months of good study before she flunked her test, she could probably remember the choicest bits if she got her back up enough.

It’s an effort to overcome the inertia of politeness to be rude, but even as the voice in the back of her head tells her that this would make her a bad girl, that father would be so disappointed, there’s another that’s telling her: they started it! If they didn’t want to be told about the penalty for idling in a loading zone, then perhaps they shouldn’t have parked there!

And there is yet a third voice, one that may be quieter, a murmur beneath the others, and it says: maybe they’ll have gloves in there. She’d forgive any crime if it meant her hands could be warm; if someone handed her even the thinnest pair, she would probably kiss--

“Here.” Leather slaps against her arm, the sound dampened by the thick knit of her sweater. “It wouldn’t do for my wife’s hands to get cold.”

--Ah. Never mind.

Kazama stares down at her, impassively impatient as always, as if she is eternally one step behind his demands and he’s too polite to mention it. Chizuru stifles a sigh, offering him her most perfunctory smile instead.

“That’s very kind of you, Chikage.” She holds out her hand, gently pushing his out of her orbit. “But I couldn’t possibly accept! Not when you’d only get cold instead.”

“Tch. As if these would fit my hands.” He gives them an emphatic shake, and she can see now-- they’re small. Much smaller than his giant hands, both of them already covered with supple, skin-hugging leather. No, these are ladies’ gloves, a matching pair to his own, just a shade or two lighter. “These were made for you.”

Well, it would be rude not to take them now, wouldn’t it? “Ah...thank you.”

It’s not until she slides them on that she feels the silk inside them, skimming over her skin as tight as a stocking. When her fingers bend, there’s not even a hesitation; each one articulates as if there was nothing more than air around them. These must have cost a fortune, she doesn’t say, if only to cut off one of his avenues to ruin this, but still--

“They are made to fit your exact dimensions,” Kazama tells her, too satisfied with himself. “I had Amagiri measure your hands the last time you fell asleep at the library.”

Ah, there is it. The explanation that could turn silk scummy against her skin. “I’m sorry?”

Kazama takes one swaggering step down the stairs, and oh, it’s far too late to protest. “Get in the car, wife, the jet is waiting for us on the runway.”

Chizuru blinks. She knows all those words, she does, but the order he’s put them in-- “E-excuse me?”

“You’re coming home with me.” It’s not a question. “For the holidays, of course. My parents are eager to meet their new daughter-in-law.”

We’re not married sits at the tip of her tongue, but there’s no point, not with Kazama. Accepting a gift was the entry fee to this fantasy, and it’s clear by the way he holds his hand out to her, snow falling around him, that he means to take it as far as she’ll let him. 

“Chikage, I really don’t think--”

“Give me a break.” A shadow drops down right between them, slapping his arm away. “You really don’t know when to quit, do you kid?”

All of Kazama’s self-satisfaction curdles, turning his smile to a sneer. “How many times have I told you, old man? I am not a child, you cannot simply refer to me as a kid--”

“If you’re still young enough to live off your parents’ money,” Hijikata grouses, straightening the rumpled lines of his jacket. “Then you’re still a kid.”

His chin tilts, imperious. “I have my own money. It’s simply held in trust, which I will receive when I ma--”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” One hand flaps, waving him off; a distraction for the way the other tucks itself around her elbow, steering her toward the stairs. “The point stands. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking Miss Yukimura home.”

“I do mind--”

“It was rhetorical,” Hijikata informs him, his grip urging her to stumble after him. “I don’t actually care.”

“Professor--” her feet tangle beneath her, tripping over little more than a crease between concrete slabs-- “wait, just let me--”

“Keep walking,” he mutters, picking up his pace. It had already been punishing before, her own legs too short to keep up with his, but not his step is worth every two of hers, and she practically has to jog to keep from being dragged across the sidewalk. “Look like you have a purpose. We don’t want to be anywhere near here when that idiot finally--”

“This is kidnapping,” Kazama decides, his words echoing over the empty street. “You are kidnapping my wife. I could call the police if I wanted!”

A curse hisses between the professor’s teeth, too soft for her to catch more than a syllable over their steps. It’s the only warning she has before he stops dead on the sidewalk, and it’s not nearly enough to draw up short, not before she stumbles over him, right into his back.

It’s impossible to miss the way his breath huffs out of him, hearing through his ribs that it’s not in humor but in resignation. “The sad thing is, they’d probably listen to him too, the rich bastard.”

Her head lifts from his coat, staring up at the knife’s edge of his shoulders. “Professor?”

“Listen, Yukimura--” she’s not silly enough to ask him where the Miss has gone, not when he turns, fixing all of his searing attention squarely on her-- “do you consent to me taking you away from this son of a bitch?”

His voice is pitched to be heard, the same way he does in lecture, trying to provoke a response, and oh, does Kazama give him one. His growl splits the night, voice rising to shout, “What did you say, you department store has-been?”

She balks. “I r-really don’t think we need to resort to name-calling, Professor--”

“Chizuru.” The sound of her name stops her as thoroughly as his glare. “Do you want to get out of here or not?”

“Ah...” She glances back to where Kazama stands, stomping in the snow. “N-no. I mean, yes. I’d like to go home.”

“Hear that?” Hijikata calls over his shoulder. “She says ‘go fuck yourself.’“

Her jaw drops. “But I didn’t--”

“This is why you can’t break a B in my class,” he grumbles, hauling her toward the faculty lot. “You don’t have any sense of imagination.”

“Don’t think this is over--”

Hijikata spares him the bird, flipped right over his shoulder. “Happy holidays, you miserable piece of shit.”

“Professor, please, we don’t have to-- oh.”

Amagiri does not so much stand up as appear, his suit camouflaged against the sedan’s black sheen. There’s not much that could slow Hijikata when he’s got a purpose, but this stutters him nearly to a halt, his gaze scraping over the pavement, and up, up until he meets the dispassionate gaze of the Kazama family bodyguard.

His breath mists into the air, roiling like smoke from a dragon’s snout. “Professor.”

Hijikata doesn’t shrink beneath that shadow, but his grip does tighten on her wrist. “Mr Amagiri.”

This mountain of flesh and bone shifts, his weight settling evenly on his feet, and there is not a day where Chizuru is not aware of how fast this man could be, should he be moved to action, not a moment where she doesn’t remember how quickly he’s able to insinuate himself between his charge and danger. But today, he moves at a geologic scale, his chin tilting down by inches until it rests against his chest, back bowed with respect. “Merry Christmas.”

It’s some consolation that Hijikata looks just as surprised as she is; his eyes wide and wary beneath his furrowed brow.

“Sure, yeah.” His head dips in a quick nod, not rushed or rude but simply...confused. “Happy Holidays to you too.”

Amagiri’s mouth pulls, one side a little higher than the other, and he steps aside. “Have a nice holiday, Miss Yukimura.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs. “I hope you also--”

“Alright,” Hijikata sighs, and with a firm yank, pulls her away. “That’s enough playing nice for one night.”

Chizuru is hardly an expert on automotive vehicles; Father only ever had the one, though he’d traded it in for the newest model every few years in a process as arcane as any medical textbook, and so long as it worked, that was as far as her concern ever extended. But even so, she does know this: Hijikata’s car cannot be worth the money he paid for it. Unless he actually bought it in the year it was made, which, she suspects, is not too distant from the one where she was born.

“You have a gift, Yukimura,” he mumbles, cranking the heat up to its highest setting. “And it’s attracting assholes.”

Frigid air blasts out of the vents, colder than even the outside, and she bites back a flinch. “I don’t think that’s quite fair, Professor.”

He huffs, the sound preserved in steam. “Really.”

“Really. After all, I found you--” ah, there’s no point in turning on the radiator if her cheeks are going to heat the whole cabin themselves-- “a-and if that hadn’t happened, w-well...”

She wouldn’t have anywhere to live, for one. No work study either, to cover what her scholarships couldn’t. And a dozen other things she can think of right off the top of her head, each more heartfelt and mortifying than the last, and now seems like an absolutely terrible time to have a heart-to-heart about how much he means to her. Even if there are only two more sleeps until Christmas.

His laughs saws into her silence, filling the space she can never quite close. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m including myself in the count.”

You shouldn’t. That’s what she wants to say-- what she should say-- but even thinking it makes her hands tremble, an inch too close to earnest. It’s fine to be thankful, but it would take a girl with more backbone than her to to tell a teacher that he-- that she--

“Speaking of--” Hijikata twists on the driver’s side to look at her, seat belt pulling tight across his chest-- “how is the house? You’re settling in fine? No one’s giving you shit, are they?”

It’s a little late to be inquiring about settling in-- it’s been months since her ill-advised attempt at deception, and his generous decision to allow her to stay. And yet her cheeks tingle so acutely she wonders if it’s possible to get a burn from blushing. Or at least some sort of permanent damage, maybe to the capillaries. Vessels that small are delicate, and she--

Ah, and she isn’t answering the question. “N-no, not at all! I mean, just fine. No wait! I’m settling in just fine, and no one’s, er...”

“Alright, alright, Yukimura,” he groans, flapping a hand at her. “Don’t hurt yourself. I’m sure the place is home sweet home by now. But living with that bunch of slobs isn’t bothering you?”

“Oh, no!” Her fingers curl around the center console, too timid to curl into his sleeve. “Everyone’s been very kind.”

His forehead crumples up in confusion. “Really? Those guys?”

“Y-yes! Of course.” Most of them, at least. Some have taken some...getting used to on her part. But Hijikata doesn’t need to hear that. “And I would just like to say that I’m so grateful you let me stay, even if I wasn’t, er--” a boy-- “what you were looking for.”

It’s an experience being on the receiving side of one of Hijikata’s stares. The intensity of it is a solid weight upon her neck, but she doesn’t bow, not an inch; instead she lifts her chin, meeting him halfway.

He must see something in her, some grain of truth, since he simply shakes his head, eyes narrowing before they slide to the windshield. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. But if any of them give you any trouble, make sure to let me know. I’ll take care of it.”

“Oh!” There must be something in her eye, a piece of sand or dust, or-- or something, since there’s no reason for them to tear, no reason for her tights to blur where she’s fixed her gaze to them. “I-I’m sure that won’t be a problem, Professor.”

“Really, don’t hesitate.” When she dares to look up, his mouth is hooked into a smirk, angled somewhere out the window. “You’d be doing me a favor. I’m dying for a reason to kick Souji out.”

The house is dark when Hijikata pulls his car, coughing, up to the curb. It’s strange; she’s not used to seeing it so quiet, so still. There’s never been a night since she walked through its doors that there hasn’t been some window lit up, some music blaring despite who else might be trying to make an early morning lab.

And yet tonight it’s as if the house itself is asleep, its energy emptied as thoroughly as its occupants.

Hijikata squints out her window, leaning over the center console until the space between them could be measured in atoms. Chizuru plasters herself to the passenger seat, but she’s still too close, the astringent tang of his shampoo both refreshing and overpowering at once.

“Hm,” he grunts, sitting back with a frown. “You sure you’ll be alright? I can always hang around if--”

“I-I’ll be fine.” Certainly better than she would be if she had to sit on the couch Shinpachi so proudly informed her came from a curb, making small talk with her professor like they were peers. “Most of the boys have gone home for the holidays, but Souji and Harada are still here. I’m sure they’re just--” sleeping is at the tip of her tongue, but it’s an unlikely option at best-- “out?”

His mouth pulls tight, a grim line for such a handsome face. Still, she’d be lying if she said he didn’t wear it well. “You have my number, don’t you?”

“I do.” For emergencies, though it’s more likely that she’d die in the event of one rather than use it. Every time she even considers calling him to fix the stove or get a plumber, she thinks about him possibly being in-- in pajamas. Being tucked into bed with his favorite book, reading glasses perched on his nose, and then hearing her call. To think Hijikata might unfurl himself from his mattress and come over-- Chizuru would never survive it.

“You’ll call me, right?” Her heart leaps at the gravel in his voice, in the concern he fixes her with when she dares to meet his eyes. “If anything happens, anything at all...?”

Chizuru hates to admit it, but smiling the way she does, so wide and bright people tell her it could power cities...it’s an effort. She can spend as long as she likes in front of the mirror, practicing her positive affirmations, and try to keep her thoughts bent to the brighter side no matter what misfortune rains on her day, but it’s true: it’s impossible to be all happy, all the time. She’s simply...good at pretending. Her smiles may not all come naturally, but they do come from the heart, and most people, well, they don’t know the difference.

But sitting here, watching Professor Hijikata glower at her with such concern-- it’s no hardship at all for her mouth to part, for her lips to spread wide enough her cheeks hurt in the good way.

“There’s no need to worry, Professor,” she tells him, meaning every word. “I’m sure everything will be just fine.”

Despite all her assurances on the safety of the neighborhood and her ability to use the legally registered can of mace in her bag, Hijikata’s insists on watching her hobble up the walk, his glare goading her on even as her tennis shoes threaten to slip on the snow-slick stone. There’s several points she’s certain she’s about to eat ice-- really, she needs to start checking the weather instead of throwing on any old thing-- but Chizuru keeps her feet, driven by the knowledge that at the first sign of trouble, all his promises will be worth less than the air he used to make them. Chizuru’s a survivor, tried and true, but if she has to suffer through a night of the professor fussing at her until one of the boys got home--

She shudders. It’s not from the cold.

Warm air washes over her when she steps in the hallway, enough that she sighs, long and relieved, before calling out, “Souji? Sanosuke?”

There’s no answer, not beyond her own echo. She toes off her shoes into the tray, bending down to straighten them, then the haphazard collection of boy boots sprawled next to them. There’s a pair of flip-flops mixed in, too big to belong to anyone but Harada. Chizuru shuts her eyes, steeling herself for a solid minute before she stacks them neatly to the side. At least she can take heart that he’s not wearing them now, wherever he is.

She sets her bag to the side, shaking the snow off her sweater before she slings it back over her shoulder again. She takes one step, then another, squinting down the dark hall, and then--

“The light,” she murmurs with a laugh. “I need a light to see.”

There’s a movement out of the corner of her eye when she flicks it, something out the window. Shadowy and large is her first impression, followed by the growl that shudders through the night--

But its lights flick on too, fixed toward the street. Hijikata. It’s Hijikata. Leaving now, because he hadn’t just waited until she was out of sight. Leaving now, because he waited until she was safe.

The window’s cool beneath her fingers, fogging where she touches. It covers the sedan until it disappears from sight, slipping through he fingers like water down a drain.

Father used to wait too, sitting up for hours until she came home from the library, or from a study session that ran late. She’d find him, asleep in his chair, groggily asking her the time as she coaxed him to bed. She...missed it. Not just someone being there, but someone who cared when she came home.

Chizuru pulls away, hand curling against her chest. She’ll have to-- to do something for him. As a thank you. Hopefully cookies aren’t considered a conflict of interest.

The kitchen is the first place she checks after her bag’s safely stowed back in her room. If there is a boy in this house-- a possibility that grows slimmer with each light she turns on and each dark room she passes-- that’s where he’ll be. Even a dark kitchen can’t smother that hope; Chizuru has come upon too many of her housemates in the dead of night, eating out of cans like they’d never seen a stove before.

Today it seems they all located here en mass; pots scatter haphazardly across the cooktop, each one left with less than a serving of each. Boxed mac and cheese in one-- the orange kind, its noodles already falling to pieces-- baked beans in another; there’s a particular sad one with only cloudy water she assumes was used for hot dogs. A veritable bachelor’s feast, made for seven. That’s the perk of being upperclassmen, she supposes: no last slot exams.

She picks up a pan, watching congealed cheese sag down the side. On second thought, maybe Heisuke and Nagakura headed home before dinner. There’s far too much left behind to account for two men who like to lick their plates clean, as well as the serving spoons.

Altogether, the remnants of their meal scrounge up a single serving. Months ago, Chizuru would have balked at adding different dishes to the same tupperware-- Father never liked his food to touch-- but there’s no point when she knows tomorrow they’ll all go in the same bowl, heated up until molten in the microwave. Dean Kondo might call her a civilizing force, but some days she is all too aware that she is winning battles in a war long lost.

She stares down at the culinary abomination that she’s recreated, and to her everlasting horror, her stomach rumbles.

“When was the last time I ate?” she wonders, hoping that out of sight means out of mind as she stuffs the concoction in the back of the fridge. “It must have been...?”

Lunch? No, it couldn’t be. She’d already been on campus by then. Surely she’d had a snack? Something from a vending machine, or maybe a power bar in her backpack--?

A grimace stretches across her teeth. Ah, well, that would explain why even mac and beans is starting to look appetizing. She really should eat something before she collapses into her pillow. Maybe an egg and rice bowl topped with some scallions, so long as they haven’t wilted. Or if there’s any veg in the crisper, she could make some steamed--

Ah, but that would take dishes. Chizuru peers into the sink, wincing as the tower of plates and pans teeters against the side.

Right. Dishes first. Dinner can come when everything else is clean.

Somewhere between the second pan and the sixth dish, dinner gets downgraded from rice bowl to instant ramen. By the time she’s winnowed the stack to something manageable, she’s starting to contemplate if there are any cup-o-noodles in the cabinets, and if not, which roommate she could prevail upon to borrow one. Anything to get off her feet and get something into her belly.

But still, the work isn’t done. Work first, food later. It’ll taste better once the kitchen is--

“You’re back?”

Stoneware slips from her hands, clattering into the sink, but Chizuru’s too busy jumping out of her skin to notice. “Who--?”

The shadow in the hall is too far too small to be Harada, and despite her intention to think the best of him, Souji would never bother to announce himself. He’d just sneak up on her all unawares and blow air down the back of her shirt. No need to piss yourself, he’d say, it’s just me.

No, it’s Yamazaki who shuffles across the threshold, snow still melting on his jacket and a wrinkle rucked up between his eyebrows. “And you’re doing the dishes? Yukimura, you know we have a dishwasher.”

“It’s calming,” she insists, sheepishly pulling the plug from the sink’s drain. “And the dishwasher would take too long. I think every pot got used for dinner tonight.”

He pads across the tiled floor, silent as a whisper, and it’s only then that she realizes he’s just in his socks. Big, thick woolen ones, the kind that only fit into boots one size too big, because of course he checked the weather. He might be an undergrad, just like her, but he’s still more responsible than half the boys in this house, regardless of age. “And they didn’t leave you any?”

“There was only a little left--” and not something she’d willfully choose to experience-- “I put it in the fridge, if you want it.”

His coat sighs as he opens the door, taking only a breath before he mutters, “Oh.”

It closes, just as swift. “I think I’ll pass. Were you planning on cooking for yourself? What were you going to--?”

It’s not until his fingers pluck the packet from the counter that Chizuru remembers her Top Ramen plans, the ones that had seen her rummaging in the cabinets as the sink filled to find out whether they still had shrimp flavor. As Yamazaki’s mouth twists, she’s not sure if it’s better or worse that they only had chicken.

“Yukimura,” he says, so even. “Is this all?”

“Ah...” It would be a mistake to inform him that she’d been considering cup-a-noodles. “I just thought I’d have something quick, There’s no point in making anything fancy when it’s just me.”

He huffs. “You’re worth a good meal. When was the last time you ate today?”

I can’t answer that on the grounds that it may incriminate me would be a clever way to see herself on the other end of one of Yamazaki’s epic scoldings, but Chizuru makes the executive decision to invoke her right to silence instead.

By the twitch of his lips, she hasn’t fooled him, not even a little. But instead of launching into his usual lecture on minimum calorie intake-- the human body can’t run on good will alone, Yukimura-- he simply sighs.

“It just so happens I haven’t had any dinner either.” He casts a look askance, eyes shining dark without the sink lamp on. “If you finish the dishes, then I’ll make sure we both eat something that’s a little more filling than broth and noodles.”

“Oh, no!” Her cheeks prickle again, and worst of all, so do her eyes. “Y-you don’t have to put yourself out, really.”

“I’m not.” Yamazaki doesn’t smile often, but he comes close when he looks at her, a soft rounding at one edge of his mouth. “It’s a lot easier to cook for two than it is for one. And you’re saving me the hassle of doing the dishes.”

“But--”

“Sit.” His hand taps her shoulder, so light, angling her toward the table, and--

And it’s not that she’s unused to touch, not in this house. Harada is always putting his arm over her shoulder, and Nagakura’s never met a personal bubble he couldn’t pop, let alone Heisuke treating the couch as a personal invitation to pile up like the puppies he shows her from TikTok. Even Souji likes to stand close, as if he stays just within sight, he can’t be forgotten.

It’s just that Yamazaki doesn’t do it. Not casually, as if he’s confident his touch is wanted. No, he prefers to stand a respectful distance away, pitching his volume to fill the space. With anyone else there might be accidents, points where hands brushed or shoulders bumped, but Yamazaki is a master of his own body. He doesn’t even make a noise if he doesn’t mean to, so for him to touch her so softly, so purposefully--

Her knees buckle. Just a little. And yet, still enough for him to notice.

“See?” Yamazaki doesn’t laugh, but there’s a hint of one in his voice, goading her across the floor. “You’re dead on your feet. Just give me a minute and we’ll get something in you.”

“I suppose,” she admits, begrudgingly. “But I still have to--”

“Dishes can come after.” The look he gives her is downright sly coming from him. “It would be a waste to run all these dishes and still have a sink full afterwards.”

It’s terrible how much he’s right. Even worse is how much better she feels now that she’s sitting.

“Alright,” she sighs, curling her toes. “Just for a minute.”

His mouth twitches. “Just for a minute.”

It’s not until the room smells utterly mouth-watering that Yamazaki finally says, “I’m surprised you made it home before me.”

“Hm?” She blinks up, just in time to see him roll up his sleeves, the cuff of his button-up holding up the bulk of his sweater. It’s odd, seeing skin; it’s darker than she expects, not a proper tan like Nagakura, but something more golden than ivory.

“I figured I might catch up to you on the bus, if, ah...” He coughs, head turns into his shoulder. It doesn’t hide the pink at the tips of his ears. “Sorry, that’s just-- you would have finished the test earlier. I don’t know why I thought...ugh.”

“Oh, no, please-- I only finished two minutes before time. Sakai was proctoring my room, I didn’t even think--” to remember that he must be proctoring the other; Matsumoto’s much less beloved undergrad TA. And after all the extra hours he put in, helping her study. Ungrateful, Father would call her, and she’s ashamed to think he might be right. “I was going to take the bus, but, er...”

There are many conversations she’d like to have with Yamazaki, but none of them involve Chikage Kazama. “...Hijikata offered me a ride home.”

His spine straightens. “The professor? That was kind of him.”

If anyone in this house could be said to play their cards close to their chest-- well, it would be Hajime. But Yamazaki comes in a close second. Even still, there’s a twinge in that even tone of his, the slightest hint of something like-- like--

Ah, right, envy. He might have snagged the coveted spot of one of Matsumoto’s TAs, but had he not been restricted by major...

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Her hands clap to her cheeks, doing nothing to hide the way they burn. “I should have told him to wait. Then you could have--”

“Ah, no!” he chokes out, waving her off. “There was no way for you to have known that I was only a few minutes behind you. I’m just glad you didn’t have to sit out there. It was cold.”

“But I knew you had to be proctoring--”

“Yukimura.” His voice pulls her up short, not cruel or dismissive, but merely...firm. The same way Hijikata speaks when he wants the class to be quiet. “It’s fine, really. You don’t need to worry about it.”

It would be a mistake to say, just try and stop me. Harada or Nagakura might take that as a joke, but Yamazaki-- he would see it as a challenge.

“Here.” There’s no flourish; one moment there’s only the table in front of her, and in the next there’s a steaming bowl of rice, topped with a pile of stir fry that makes her drool. “Dinner’s served.”

It’s not often she gets to eat alone with one of the boys. The kitchen is the heart of the house, the room that’s never empty, and even if it’s just a dinner made for two, there’s a peanut gallery to accompany the meal. Or at least Souji, slinking around the counters as if the only way to eat is to steal off someone else’s plate. And to get a spare moment with Yamazaki, one that doesn’t involve studying, it feels...decadent, like sneaking a chocolate from the box. Between his upper level course load, his responsibilities as a TA, and the MCAT around the corner-- not to mention his elective thesis--

Well, he’s not often available, not totally. Not for these small moments, where it’s just him and her and the light above the kitchen table. When he sits it’s with impeccable posture: scapula pressed against the chair’s back, head straight on his neck above it. His elbows don’t even rest on the table.

“Is something wrong?”

Oh, she’d been staring. “No, I was just, um...” Appreciating you seems like it might not be...appreciated. “Spacing out.”

His mouth softens, curving somewhere near a smile. “Of course, this was your last exam, right? You have to be tired. How do you think you did?”

“Great! I mean, I think.” She must be tired; it’s not like her to boast. “If I do well, it’ll be all thanks to you. I wouldn’t have remembered anything if you didn’t walk me through the study guide.”

His cheeks are still rosy when she looks at him, flushed from being bent over the stove. But his mouth has lost its lightness, settling into a line as forbidding as his brow. “I don’t think that’s true at all, Yukimura. I might have refreshed your memory on the first part of the course, but you’re smart all on your own.”

“Ah...I don’t know about that...” It’s kind of him to say, but Chizuru is more than aware of how much hard work she has to put in to keep her grades at the top of the class. “I did have trouble with a few parts, after all.”

“You did?” Yamazaki stiffens in his chair, his attention swiveling from his bowl to her face with startling intensity. “Which part? You nearly aced the practice exam, so I can’t imagine--”

“Oh, just-- just that last part, with the genetics unit. I didn’t expect there to be a question that asked us to also link it with populations.” Now that she’s talking it out, it seems obvious, silly even. But her whole last fifteen minutes had been spent puzzling over human eye color on the macro level. “I know we’d gone over green eyes in class, but I didn’t really know how to handle hazel, so I just treated it sort of like...a recessive? Only heterozygous individuals had their own phenotype, but I’m not really sure--?”

“Ah, that’s fine. Matsumoto likes to throw in a few questions that get you thinking about what he wants to cover next semester.” Yamazaki shrugs, his mouth slyly hitched up at the corner. “Even geneticists argue about how hazel eyes happen. From what it sounds like, he’s going to give you full marks for your thought process.”

Chizuru can’t help it, she stares. “You mean it was a trick question?”

“Of course.” His teeth flash behind his lips, the quickest glimpse before they’re gone again. “But you handled it well, Yukimura. Good job.”

If the skin is but one single organ, the way Dr Matsumoto says, then every inch of it betrays her at once, heating up high enough that she’s sure she could fry an egg to go along with their dinners. Or well, what’s left of their dinners, since she’s polished off her whole bowl.

She stands, so suddenly that her chair screeches across the floor. “A-are you done? I can, um, start doing the dishes if you are.”

He glances up, and-- there, that almost smile. “Sure. I think I’ve done what I set out to achieve.”

Chizuru is putting the last dish in the washer when Yamazaki finally ventures, “Has your hair grown out?”

Her fingers fly up, tangling in the strands that just brush her chin. Quite a bit longer than where she’d last left it, up by her ears. “O-oh, I guess it must have! I hadn’t really noticed.”

“It looks...”

He hesitates. It’s strange how much she wants to turn to him, to try to read on his face what his mouth struggles to say, but there’s no good reason, not when she’s supposed to be keying in the wash cycle. Something she does a little too quickly this time, barely waiting for the confirmation beep before she claps the door shut.

“Thank you for cleaning up,” Yamazaki says instead, hands braced at the edge of the counter. “You always do such a good job.”

It’s silly how flustered the compliment makes her; it’s nothing he hasn’t said before, hardly more than polite, but still--

“I just did the dishes,” she insists, smothering the nervous giggle that threatens to rise past her throat. “Really, it isn’t anything.”

“Yes, but you actually loaded all the dishes on the right rack. And,” he adds with a weariness that concerns her, “you actually used the rinse.”

“But everyone can do that.” His dubious look doesn’t help her growing worries. “Can’t they?”

There’s no hesitation when Yamazaki says, “No.”

“But, everyone--” is an adult, she means to say, but she’d only been here two days when Heisuke reduced their laundry room to suds, and last week Nagakura managed to make mustard gas when he attempted to clean the upstairs bathroom. “It’s really not that impressive. Anyone could do it, if they--”

“You don’t have to do that,” Yamazaki says suddenly, his eyebrows drawn tight above his nose. “Make yourself small. I like that you’re-- I mean, it’s good that you’re competent. It certainly takes a load off my plate around here.”

There’s not a single reply in Chizuru’s exhaustive mental database of polite protocol that covers this. At least, not in a way that is humble enough to make her comfortable. So instead she merely blurts out, “Aren’t you going home for the holidays?”

She winces. No better way to show her gratitude than making it sound like she can’t wait for him to be gone.

“I am.” He hardly looks happy about it, not the way she would be if Father decided to fly back from his sabbatical and spend the day with her. “Just for Christmas, though. My family’s close by, and I don’t really need to stay there any longer than I have to. Plus I have-- er, plans. For after New Year’s.”

“Plans?”

“Ah...” His mouth pulls into a grimace. “I just have a, er, thing. Saito’s coming too.”

“Oh, is that why he left this morning?” She tilts her head, curious. “When are you leaving, then? Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, so--”

“Tonight.” He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m coming back the day after Christmas, and my mom will complain if I don’t stay more than two--”

“Tonight?” She whips around, looking at the clock on the stove. “It’s almost ten! And there’s two inches of snow on the ground.”

“It’s not that far,” he promises. “Really. I’m used to driving in the snow.”

“The roads have to be terrible by now.” She’s afraid to pull back the curtain; it’s been an hour since she got home, and the snow’s been steady past the kitchen window. “And you stayed here to cook me dinner? Ah, you really shouldn’t have bothered, I would have been--”

“Yukimura.” Long fingers wrap around her wrist, arrestingly warm. “Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal. I had to make my own dinner too. I’ll survive two inches of snow.”

“But...” Her mouth works, but instead of words, it’s just her pulse, banging loud between her ears. “What if there’s...ice?”

“I’ll drive slow.” His grip eases, her skin slipping from beneath it. “I promise. I think you know you can trust me to be careful.”

“I...suppose.”

It’s strange to just stand here; she’s supposed to be-- be doing something, anything really, besides standing here like two is two hands too many. Like she has two extra feet, trying to shuffle at the same time as her other ones. Yamazaki has spent precious time helping her, and she-- she--

“Tea!” she gasps, rushing to the cabinets. “I should-- I can make you tea. There’s a thermos right here, just give me a minute--”

“That’s not--” Yamazaki chokes, hands waving-- “you don’t need to do anything. I’m fine, really.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” she assures him, putting the water on. “Have you already packed? It’ll stay warm in the thermos, but fresh tea is best tea, I always say.”

Or at least Father had, when he’d dumped her hours-old, untouched mugs into the sink. Ah, perhaps he had been trying to make a different point.

“Y-yes.” He stares at her, wide-eyed, as she putters through the kitchen, pulling out the carton she’s seen him pick through in the morning. “I did it before I left for the exam. But what does that--?”

She shoos him toward the hall. “Go get it! I’ll be done before you get your shoes on.” 

It’s a generous estimate; he’s got both boots and coat on when she gets to him, brow furrowed in a knot she can’t quite untangle. He takes the tea though, even if he frowns through the scarf she puts around his neck, no matter how dashingly she knots it.

“There,” she huffs, triumphant. “All ready.”

“I guess.” His mouth rucks up, not in a smile. “I didn’t really think you’d be-- hm.”

There’s something about his tone that doesn’t quite sting, but it...niggles. As if she’s forgotten something best left remembered. “What?”

He reaches a gloved hand back to rub his neck, shaking his head. “Never mind. Thanks for the tea.”

“It’s not a problem.” Yamazaki’s not much bigger than her, but with his boots on it adds another inch, one that makes him feels tall. Not like Harada, but just...more. “Then I guess I should say...Merry Christmas? Since we won’t see each other?”

The hall is dark; only the porch light shines in to light it, and it’s an imperfect source, one that makes his eyes glisten black instead of the dusky violet she’s used to. It makes him...different. Both more real and yet more shadow as he turns to open the door.

“Ah...right.” His mouth flattens into a smile, but it’s like when a crumpled paper is pressed flat-- the ghosts of its wrinkles always remain. “Merry Christmas.” 

His eyes meet hers, and it’s-- it’s a lot. Too much, somehow, since the only thing she can think to do is squeak out, “Drive safe!” before she slams the door.

“Well,” she murmurs, spinning toward the stairs with hands on her hips. “I think that went well.”

She gets up to the first landing before she thinks to look back, to actually make sure Yamazaki got to his car, and--

And he hasn’t moved, not an inch from where she left him. His shoulders rise to his ears, holding there until his breath huffs out on a sigh, spending in the night air. His first step is hesitant-- no, reluctant, and oh--

Oh, she kind of pushed him right out the door. The door she didn’t even really want him to leave.

Her hand flexes on the banister. It would be easy to go back down, to tell him he should maybe stay the night, just one more before heading home, but--

But she misses her moment, and then the next, and before she knows it, he’s off the porch and out of sight.

[iamverysmall-andihavenomoney]

Suna + Miya Twins Overhear You Talking About Them

I just did the Inarizaki boys that I’m most comfortable with writing for. But I don’t mind doing more of them, if you guys want to see them!

Haikyū!! Masterlist

Pairings: Suna Rintarō x Gender Neutral! Reader, Miya Atsumu x Gender Neutral! Reader, Miya Osamu x Gender Neutral! Reader

Warnings: Fluff, you are a badass in Atsumu’s part, strong language

Suna Rintarō:

Suna didn’t have afternoon practice, for once.

Kita had been drilling them pretty hard lately. And even the dedicated Captain needed a break, every once in a while.

So, he’d given the rest of the team off as well.

So, your boyfriend had decided to surprise you.

With how hard he’d been working recently, he honestly couldn’t wait to walk you home and take a nap with you.

It was something he’d been looking forward to, since the moment he’d found out that they wouldn’t be having practice today. 

Walking through the halls, he soon locates your classroom, smiling lazily as he spots your classroom, taking longer strides as he nears your classroom.

He steps aside to let your classmates pass him by, before then stepping in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe as his eyes scan the room for you.

Once he locates you speaking to your friends, he finally steps into the room and begins to walk over to you.

Holding a finger to his lips to silence your friends, he gets ready to hug you from behind.

Though, he stops short when he hears you say his name, suddenly tuning to your conversation with your friends.

Listening you brag about him

Listening to you brag about the date he took you on

Listening to you brag about the male who did your eyeliner in the morning and who you picked out jewelry for, in the morning

The biggest smile spread across Suna’s lips.

“- Yeah, so when we got there Rintarō made me put a blindfold on, which I was kind of suspicious of, of course, because I trust him and all, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is still very much friends with the Miya twins. He’d set up a picnic under the cherry blossom trees, for us.” You grin as you brag about the date your boyfriend had taken you on. “He says Osamu helped him with the food, but I think he was only saying that to be modest.”

   “He’s just so perfect. I love him so much,” you let out a breathy laugh, wearing a huge grin on your face. “And did you see his fucking eyeliner today? Boy is about to make me act up. Not to mention that whenever I stay the night, he pulls me into his lap so he can do my eyeliner like his. He’s so cute.”

   Rintarō couldn’t help but let out a quiet laugh, wrapping his arms around you from behind and resting his head on your shoulder. “Hey, baby.” He cooes in your ear. And there was no hesitance in the way you sunk back into his arms, leaning in to kiss his cheek with a sheepish grin.

   “So, how much of that did you hear?” You ask quietly.

   Your friends, having seen and heard enough of the lovey-dovey moments you shared between you and your boyfriend, decide to finally take their leave. “Well, he walked in, about the time you were ranting about how you wanted him to teach you to skateboard,” one responds with a smirk.

   Though another finishes, “No clue when he finally started paying attention, though!” With a chorus of laughs, they wave as the small group begins to leave. 

   Turning in his arms so you can face him, you smile up at your boyfriend, to which he grins right back down at you. “So... You talk about me?” He raises an eyebrow.

   Though his voice had a teasing lilt to it, looking in his eyes, you didn’t see condescension or judgement. Just adoration. 

   “Yeah, all of the time, Rintarō.” You respond with a smile. “Why wouldn’t I want to brag about you, to anyone that would listen?” You bring your hands to his cheeks, grinning at the way he looks towards the floor, almost in embarrassment. 

   “I love you, Y/N.” Rintarō cooes to you, before leaning in and pressing a sweet kiss to your lips.

   “I love you too, Rintarō.” 

   “Please don’t stop,” he says, placing a chaste kiss to your forehead.

   You furrow your brows, “What, bragging about you?”

   He shrugs in response, “That... Being you. Loving me.”

   “Never.” You state firmly, making him grin as he incircles you with his arm, ready to take you home so he could curl up in bed with you.

Miya Atsumu:

So, he wasn’t supposed to overhear you.

Definitely not.

Usually after his games, it took them a while to load up the bus, for the trip back to their own gym.

Sometimes you helped them, sometimes you stayed to talk with friends.

Today, it was talking to friends... Or a friend, rather. 

This two day tournament was to continue tomorrow. The team that would be playing against the winners of the last match of the day had come to scope out the competition.

Boy were they surprised when they saw someone as attractive as you, sporting an Inarizaki jersey.

Wanting to not only antagonize whatever team member you were here to support, but also flirt with you, a few of the players waltz over to you and your friend.

Imagine Atsumu’s surprise when he comes to pick up his partner and another team is flirting with them.

His temper got the best of him and he took a few steps forward.

Though, he was stopped by Osamu and Suna, who had joined him in coming to get you. 

Suna pulled his phone out and started recording, Osamu telling him to listen with an amused grin on his face.

And as he finally tuned in to what was being said, he just grinning proudly.

“Hold on, hold on... Did he just say what I think he said?” You glance at your friend, who just shakes their head in amusement at your rhetorical question. You laugh and shake your head, “My boyfriend was the setter. And I dare you to keep running your mouth about him.” 

   You take a step forward, crossing your arms. “Well, go on tough guy. You were saying something about him, weren’t you? You’re talking about Japan’s best high school setter. Not to mention, he’s a pretty damn good server, as well. And on top of that, he’s been invited to the All-Japan Intensive Youth Training Camp. So, before you start running your mouth, best get your facts straight. You’ll lose tomorrow. And that’s that. Inarizaki is going to hand your ass to you.” 

   “Come on, F/N. We have a bus to catch.” You state, turning around to walk away. As you spot your boyfriend and his two closest friends standing there, watching you with prideful grins, your eyes widen a bit.

   How long had they been there? Was Suna recording you? Rolling your eyes, you walk over to the three boys, easily pulling your boyfriend’s arm over your shoulders, Atsumu making sure to flip the shit-talker off, before turning to walk away with you, your three friends following shortly behind.

   Atsumu smirks as he looks down at you. “Brag about me like that often, do ya’?”

   “All of the time,” your friend groans from their spot behind you, in between Suna and Osamu.

   You feel your ears growing warm as you shoot them a short glare, though Atsumu just grips your chin, stopping your walking to pull you into a kiss. Grumbling comes from the other three, so they just continue on to the bus, leaving you both in their wake.

   “You know... It means a lot... That ya’ brag about me..,” he tells you as he separates from you momentarily, gently stroking his thumb against your temple as he cradles your cheek in his palm.

   You smile and lean your face into his hand. “Good. I wasn’t planning on stopping, anytime soon.” You whisper, closing your eyes as you press a sweet kiss to his palm, adoring eyes watching you.

   Despite him acting the part of a hot-headed ass, quite often... No one could deny that you made him absolutely melt. The male couldn’t help his tenderness with you. “I love you, Y/N.”

   “I love you too, Atsumu.” You open your eyes to look at him, catching his soft gaze, just looking up into his eyes.

   Until Osamu broke the moment by screaming at you two to get on the bus, with the rest of the team.

Miya Osamu:

It wasn’t often that you hung out with Suna and Atsumu, without Osamu around.

Not that you didn’t enjoy their company, but you were around your boyfriend pretty often. 

With Atsumu prying about whether he’d made a better boyfriend than Osamu or not, he ended up provoking you into bragging about how great your boyfriend was.

But here’s the kicker.

This wasn’t the first time you had bragged about Osamu to his brother and best friend.

But every time you did, Suna couldn’t manage to get it on video

And Osamu didn’t believe his brother, when Atsumu teased him about having an S/O that was so proud and bragged about him, all of the time.

You always seemed so calm and nonchalant around him.

So of course he doubted Atsumu when he told his brother how you’d animatedly bragged about him.

So, Osamu waited (hidden) in the closet in the gym, while Suna and Atsumu sat with you on the bleachers ‘waiting’ for him.

Osamu has never grown so red, so quick

Because he was wrong. 

You did, in fact, brag about him, and he found it to be absolutely adorable and sweet of you. 

He swore, he had hearts in his eyes.

“No, Atsumu. Did you cook a six course meal for your significant other? Did you take them to a carnival the next night? Do you play with their hair and let them sleep with their head on your lap, risking getting in trouble for it, in class? Do you leave notes in their locker and bring them their favorite homemade foods where they’re sick?” You huff, narrowing your eyes at the blonde challengingly. If anyone could provoke you, it would be Suna and Atsumu. They were such fucking assholes and knew which buttons to prod at, every time.

   “Don’t open your mouth to speak. You know he’s the more romantic of you two.” You huff, crossing your hands over your chest. “Don’t you already argue with him enough about this? Who’s got the partner, right now, Atsumu? - That’s right, Osamu. It’s a losing argument.” 

   So what if you were a rather competitive person? It was one of the many reasons that Osamu had been so attracted to you, in the first place. You didn’t hate Atsumu and you meant it as nothing more than banter - and he knew that, by the look of the smirk on his face. You and Atsumu argued almost as often as he and his brother did. Only, it didn’t get as heated, between you both.

   You didn’t even hear your boyfriend coming next to the bleachers, not even realizing he’s there, until he’s wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you down from the bleachers and into his arms. “Oh yeah? Ya’ think so, doll?” He cooes in your ear, grinning at the way you glare at Atsumu.

   “You set me up. Just you two wait until I get my hands on you, alright?” You watch as Suna suddenly finds himself standing.

   “You know, I think that I hear my sister calling for me.” The brunet nods, before lazily saluting you both, taking his leave.

   Atsumu takes the hint with wide eyes. “I think I hear his sister calling me too... See y’all around, alright kiddos? Don’t have too much fun, ya’ hear?”

   You roll your eyes as they leave, before looking at Osamu, who’s still staring down at you with a cocked eyebrow and a lazy smirk. “Ya’ know, I didn’t believe ‘Tsumu when he said that you bragged about me... Kind of glad I didn’t, ‘cause then I got to hear ya’ do it first hand.”

   “You enjoy hearing about me brag about you that much?” You raise an eyebrow at him, curiously.

   With a sheepish shrug, Osamu nods. “Yeah... I’ve never had anyone... Y’know, brag about me like ya’ do. It means a lot to me, ta’ here ya’ brag about me like I’m something special.”

   “You are special, ‘Samu.” You tell him, placing a hand on his cheek. “Really special... And I love you, you know that?”

   He places his hand on top of yours, pressing his cheek into your warm palm. “I love ya’ too, Y/N... A whole lot.”

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