#and he's like 'I was a 100% straight when I walked in there and now I'm like ????'

[whateveriwant]

Annoying Things the 141 Do

Price

Never cleans the sink well after he shaves. Every time you go in the bathroom after he’s trimmed his beard, it’s like walking into a crime scene of a hamster massacre

Always manages to load the dishwasher wrong (because, yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, John)

Asks you to wait for him to get home so you can watch your shows together, but then as soon as you start the first episode, he falls asleep beside you

Smokes his cigars inside sometimes. I don’t care that you sprayed air freshener afterwards, sir. Now the whole house smells like spring meadow and shit!

Is incapable of closing the door behind himself?? At least, that appears to be the case since he’s always leaving your door wide open even though you ask him to shut it when he goes

Doesn’t like throwing things out because he’ll “find a use for it one day”. Even if that day ever does come, I think he has a better chance of finding Atlantis than finding that scrap piece of wood he saved four years ago

Ghost

Turns the TV on and then just… walks away??? And if you try to change it to something else, he grumbles “I was watchin’ tha’” when he comes back

Drinks milk/juice/etc. straight out of the carton. Mr Simon “Patient Zero” Riley might not see the problem with this, but I think the rest of us would agree that is diabolical behavior

Leaves his wet towel on the floor after he showers even though the towel rack is right? there?

Hates asking for help even when he has no clue what he’s doing. Like, sure, I get wanting to fix things yourself. However, I’d rather spend $100 on a simple repair than $1000 on a full replacement after he breaks the thing even more

Puts his phone calls on speaker whenever possible. While this can have its merits sometimes (you get firsthand news of Gaz’s engagement!), most of the time it feels like a nuisance (do you really need to hear Soap talk about his hemorrhoids?)

MANSPREADERRRR! This man cannot sit like a civilized being to save his life. He claims he sits like that because his balls need to breathe, and to that I say good luck trying to breathe after I karate chop you in the throat :))))

Soap

Cuts his toenails in bed, which wouldn’t necessarily be an issue if he didn’t accidentally leave one or two rogue clippings that stab you in the side later when you’re trying to get comfortable

Forgets to put the toilet seat down when he gets up in the middle of the night to pee – that or he pisses all over the seat in the dark. Either way, prepare to have wet cheeks the next time you sit on the toilet

Whenever he doesn’t feel like doing the laundry, he just buys a new set of whatever’s dirty (that’s how he ended up with 100 pairs of socks and 200 pairs of underwear)

Talks nonstop through every show/movie you try to watch. Good luck getting more than five minutes of uninterrupted runtime next to this yapper

Apparently, doesn’t understand what “one bite” means? Whenever he asks you for a bite of your food, he always ends up taking five or six

Also, apparently doesn’t know how to chew with his mouth closed? Like, I’m glad you’re enjoying your meal, Johnny, but can you enjoy it without speckling it all over the table and my face?

Gaz

Two words: bathroom hog. I hope you don’t like taking hot showers or having more than a 6x6 inch square of counter space for your stuff, because after Kyle’s done with his 30-step beauty routine, there’s little of either left

Never knows what he wants to eat for dinner, and no matter what you suggest, he never thinks it sounds good

Has the gall to chastise you for your screen time even though he’s just as bad as you, if not worse (because you being on your phone before bed is so much worse than him playing video games for nine hours straight, right?)

Rests his feet on the couch/bed/coffee table while wearing shoes. It doesn’t matter if they’re brand new or beaten up; take your damn shoes off the furniture, sir!

Never writes down the shopping list because he’ll “remember everything”. (Newsflash: he does not remember everything, which means cue taking a second trip to the store)

Watches one documentary and thinks he’s an expert on the subject. You can have studied a thing for years, can present him with a bunch of rock solid facts and reputable sources, and he’ll hit you with a “Well, actually ☝️🤓” and then proceed to give the most nonsensical take ever

[winchestergirl2]

Dean

First, I just have to say I love your choice of gif for Dean!

Dean isn't one to get jealous...at first.

I absolutely see this!

You still stare at Dean incredulously. When the woman walks away, he smiles at you as if nothing happened. Sam wisely keeps to himself and sips his beer, hiding a smirk.

Oh Dean 😆 in trouble, and he doesn't even realise it yet... although Sam does!

"Gonna forgive me?" Dean asks, his lips moving against your skin. "Though I gotta admit, I kinda like it when you're jealous. All growly and fiesty. Got myself a little tiger."

Oh, you'll forgive him, but maybe you'll make him do a little more penance when you all get back home.

I like the way she thinks

Beau

His lips purse, his jaw clicks, and he keeps a firm eye on the situation. He doesn't like it.

Perfectly captured Beau here.

However, like Dean, the moment someone gets into your personal space or tries to touch you, he's pulling out some Sheriff moves.

I can absolutely see him observing to begin with, but stepping in the moment, he thinks they've overstepped the mark.

Oh wow, the audacity of that woman!! Wiping the chocolate away like that!

I could 100% picture Beau and his reaction to all of this!

"I mean it. Won't happen again," he promises. His hands mold to the curve of your waist and squeeze gently. His lips move, burning a sweet path along your jawline, your chin, over the apple of your cheeks, and finally your lips. You breathe into it, and you can't help but cling to the front of his buttoned-down shirt.

I would absolutely forgive him and melt with him doing this!

Beau smiles against your lips. "Don't you worry, darlin'. From now on, I'll tell her that I've got some good cookie at home."

Absolutely 😉

Soldier Boy (Ben)

Those men flirting with her really are dicing with death. Good job she has worked out how to cut it off before Ben gets involved. She's really out there saving lives, and they probably don't even realise it.

But when other women flirt with Ben, he takes it all with indulgent smiles, throwing in a wink and a sweetheart every now and then.

Haha, of course he does!

Ben doesn't bother with saying anything more to convince you. He just slips a hand behind your neck and kisses you soundly.

So Ben, like. Doesn't bother with apologising like the others just goes straight in there.

Russell Shaw

Russell always clocks the "situation" right away when a man starts to flirt with you.

100%

But he is quick to sidle up to your side, pointedly slip a hand along your waist, and greet you with a deceptive smile.

I am a suckered for a man doing this. A subtle way to let the other guy know.

"I'm gonna need you to listen to me, and listen good," he says. You frown at that, but he brushes his thumb across your cheek, a small, but tender caress. "You and me, we've got something good. I know what that means. So you can believe me when I say, I'm in this. I'm right here, even when I'm not here."

Headcanon: Flirting (And Jealousy)

Pairings: Dean Winchester x Reader, Beau Arlen x Reader, Soldier Boy/Ben x Reader, Russell Shaw x Reader

AN: This one was requested by one of my lovely Patreon members, @lacilou. And surprise! For the first time, I'm trying out adding Russell Shaw to the lineup because I thought he'd be an interesting addition for this prompt. 💜

Prompt: How would Dean, Ben & Beau react to either other men flirting with us or them obliviously/cluelessly letting other women flirt with them? And how we would react to them -- like how they'd make it up to us, their excuses, etc.

HC: How Dean Winchester, Beau Arlen, Soldier Boy (Ben), and Russell Shaw would react to someone flirting with you. (And others flirting with them.)

Tags/Warnings: Established relationship, oblivious flirting, unwanted advances, jealousy, some toxic masculinity (you know Ben 🙄), but ultimately lots of fluff, and some spice too.~

Dean Winchester

Dean isn't one to get jealous...at first.

He knows you're hot as hell. He pretty much expects guys to try and shoot their shot.

Plus, he's secure enough in his relationship with you to know you wouldn't consciously entertain someone who's flirting with you.

He also knows you're strong enough to take care of yourself, even with a persistent asshole.

However.

The second a man gets into your face or tries to put his hands on you, Dean's stepping in -- either to twist the man's arm nearly out of its socket, or deliver a swift punch between the eyes, or his personal favorite, grabbing the back of the guy's neck and slamming his face onto the counter.

Dean finds the sound of bone breaking against varnished wood, followed closely by the heavy tripping thud of a body to the floor, deeply satisfying.

You heave a sigh. Not because you're all that annoyed at Dean, but because you tried to warn the guy.

Now, Dean knows he used to be...well, a "ladies man," putting it mildly. He's improvised more panty-dropping one-liners than a Magic Mike stripper. His success rate is 9-and-10 (because there's always room for improvement).

He directs all that flirtatious, playful, sexual energy on you. He's fallen for you, committed to you, and once he makes a decision with his heart, Dean Winchester doesn't have an unfaithful bone in his body.

However.

He can't altogether stop women from flirting with him. Like at one of the many diners you, Sam, and Dean stop to eat at after a hunt.

"Let me know if you need anything else, okay?" the waitress says. She brushes her hand up his arm and squeezes his shoulder, giving Dean a too-bright smile that leaves nothing to the imagination (at least to you).

He smiles back at her. "Thanks, sweetheart."

It's like a reflex. He thinks he's being polite. He doesn't even follow the path of her hip-swaying walk with his eyes -- like he certainly would've before he met you.

You still stare at Dean incredulously. When the woman walks away, he smiles at you as if nothing happened. Sam wisely keeps to himself and sips his beer, hiding a smirk.

Dean notices the way your lips are pursed, bitchface activated. "What?" he asks.

You cross your arms. "Really?"

He frowns. "What's the matter?"

"Really. You need me to tell you not to let that woman eye-fucking you to put her hands all over you?" You shake your head. More dryly you add, "Right in front of me, too. I gotta give it to her, she's got brass balls."

Dean is bewildered, but then he replays the moment in his head and realizes that you're right. He kinda fucked up.

He sees the way you're getting all testy, and he has to chuckle.

"Okay. I'm sorry, sweetheart. My bad."

He reaches for your hand and manages to uncross your arms. You're stubborn in your irritation, but Dean is the king of persuasion, giving you teasing, flirty bedroom eyes and waggling brows as he pulls you towards him.

If you're still reluctant to soften, he adds, "Come on, don't be a sourpuss. Come 'ere."

Eventually he breaks you, making you laugh and hit his arm with no real force behind it.

Even Sam shakes his head, seeing how his brother manages to pacify you by sliding his arm around your shoulders across the booth. Dean leans in and kisses along your neck. He inhales your scent and hums in pleasure.

Sam clears his throat. He has to awkwardly look away.

"Gonna forgive me?" Dean asks, his lips moving against your skin. "Though I gotta admit, I kinda like it when you're jealous. All growly and fiesty. Got myself a little tiger."

You roll your eyes, but your lips tug at a smile. Your face warms in a blush, especially as his hand wanders under your jacket and teasingly up your side.

You slip your fingers into his hair, making sure to give a sharp little tug on it for good measure. He just laughs.

Oh, you'll forgive him, but maybe you'll make him do a little more penance when you all get back home.

Beau Arlen

Beau is a jealous man from the onset when a man flirts with you.

His lips purse, his jaw clicks, and he keeps a firm eye on the situation. He doesn't like it.

But to his credit, he tries not to act on it right away, letting you handle it the way you want to.

However, like Dean, the moment someone gets into your personal space or tries to touch you, he's pulling out some Sheriff moves.

If the man grabs at you, Beau's got his arm twisted behind his back so fast, he can almost feel ligaments popping. Beau gives a calm, but firm warning before sending the guy on his way. (He'd like to do more, but the department frowns on excessive violence.)

Maybe part of you gets annoyed at the show of jealousy, but a larger part of you can't help but be turned on when he protects you. You know it's not because he thinks you need protecting, but because he wants to.

"Can't help it, darlin'," he's said. "It's just how I was raised."

But you're the one that bristles when Danielle, a PTA mom at Emily's school, flirts with him. She laughs at his corny jokes with her white teeth and her perfectly layered and coiffed blonde hair.

She even gives him an extra cookie from her offering at the school's bake sale. (She knows what most of this town knows -- that the way to the Sheriff's heart is all too often through his stomach.)

Beau just nods along, smiling polite with that charming grin of his, totally oblivious while he eats. The last straw for you is when she wipes a bit of chocolate from the corner of his mouth.

Your mouth falls open in shock. "Are you shitting me?"

You accidentally say it out loud, earning not only your boyfriend's surprised look, but Danielle's guilty one as well. (And some of the kids.)

Blushing in embarrassment, you pivot on your heel and start packing up your supplies for the bake sale.

That's when Beau realizes that he fucked up.

He politely excuses himself from Danielle and goes to help you (wiping the crumbs off his face and licking chocolate off his thumb). He can tell you're feeling more than a little icy towards him, but he tries to make up for it by doing all the heavy lifting, bringing back things to the car, and helping you with the bags before he calls Emily over.

It's a long car ride home, awkward and tense. Emily can tell something's off between you and her dad, but when she asks about it, you claim nothing's wrong.

Beau knows better.

He waits until the three of you get home to the apartment you share with him, and after putting the bake sale stuff away, he follows you into the bedroom.

"Sweetheart--"

"What the hell was that, Beau?" You come in hot with it, and Beau is quick to try and ease your tension with an apology.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Couldn't you see that she was eyeing you like a honey-glazed ham?"

Beau's lips twitch at a grin, but you're not amused. You cross your arms and give him a warning look. That's when he wises up.

"Okay, you're right. I'm sorry." He chances taking a few slow steps towards you, raising his brows and keeping his hands up in surrender.

You eye him narrowly, but you let him get close enough to slip his arms around you. He gathers you against his chest and presses a lingering kiss to your cheek.

"I mean it. Won't happen again," he promises. His hands mold to the curve of your waist and squeeze gently. His lips move, burning a sweet path along your jawline, your chin, over the apple of your cheeks, and finally your lips. You breathe into it, and you can't help but cling to the front of his buttoned-down shirt.

"Do me a favor," you say quietly between kisses. "Don't eat Danielle's cookies."

Beau smiles against your lips. "Don't you worry, darlin'. From now on, I'll tell her that I've got some good cookie at home."

Soldier Boy (Ben)

Oh, Ben doesn't fuck around.

...Well, in the sense that he can't tolerate another man even looking at you flirtatiously, or otherwise with any kind of intent.

Depending on the severity, at best, it'll have Ben shooting the man a stony look of warning.

At worst, it ruins the day -- namely with the sound of bone snapping and a man's sobbing howl of pain.

You try to get him to tone it down ("For God's sake, Ben. It's fine. Just relax."), but this is one thing he well and truly doesn't budge on.

Ben is possessive. Because you're his. His to touch, and his to protect.

In his mind, it's fucking simple.

Whenever you get irritated with this brutish, knuckle-dragging, caveman mentality, you try to remember why he does it.

It's indicative of how much he actually cares about you.

Because if he didn't, he wouldn't really give a shit if other men were flirting with you. (He'd just find another woman to try and charm back to his apartment.)

So you've learned how to try and finesse these situations so that Ben doesn't notice.

You've also stopped letting down men easy, proverbially cutting off their dick and balls with your words.

Because it's quite literally to save their dumbass life.

But when other women flirt with Ben, he takes it all with indulgent smiles, throwing in a wink and a sweetheart every now and then.

He doesn't blame them for flirting with him, checking him out. He's Soldier Boy, after all, and in his mind, it's not his fault they can't help themselves around him.

However, a smile and a wink is all that he allows himself.

If he truly cares about you (and though he doesn't often express it in words, he does), then the unfamiliar twinge of guilt stops him whenever he almost accepts a woman's alluring invitation--spoken or unspoken.

His mouth might spew arrogance and gilded lies, but his actions too often betray what he really feels.

And what he really feels can't be any more clear than when he goes after you, instead of indulging the woman who basically undressed him with her eyes, whispered sultry, sexy offerings in his ear, and invited him to go home with her.

Seeing you take off out the double doors of the club, Ben rolls his eyes. He brushes the woman off without a backwards glance, and follows you out into the night air. He grabs your hand before you can get far in your heels.

"What the hell's the matter now?" he asks dryly.

You turn on him with an incredulous look.

"That woman was practically sucking your neck, Ben!"

"All right, don't fucking overreact. You're getting hysterical," he says, before guiding you back into his arms.

"I'm not fucking hysterical, you ass!" You push against his chest, but he doesn't budge, nor does he let you go. This isn't a good area, and he doesn't want you out in these streets at this time of night without him at your side.

"Ben," you say sharply. You look up at him in irritation, but he just smirks and strokes your side with his thumb.

Yes, (in his mind) you're being a little difficult, but he thinks your jealousy is amusing, adorable, and kind of hot all at the same time.

Ben doesn't bother with saying anything more to convince you. He just slips a hand behind your neck and kisses you soundly.

He invades your mouth with his tongue and devours you, reminding you that you're the one he wants.

He waylays you with his strong hands framing your body against his, and with his sinful mouth, until you finally melt into his embrace.

He's chosen you countless time before, and he knows he'll keep choosing you, for as long as this lasts.

Russell Shaw

Russell always clocks the "situation" right away when a man starts to flirt with you.

He's not one to make a scene of it at first, depending on the time and place.

But he is quick to sidle up to your side, pointedly slip a hand along your waist, and greet you with a deceptive smile.

"Hey, sweetheart. Let's grab that table over there. 'S more comfortable than the bar."

He glances up at the man, sharpness hidden well behind his green eyes. Whether the guy picks up on it or not, Russell is making a mugshot in his mind -- and he never forgets a face.

You eye him knowingly, but you let him guide you away. He's kind of cute when he's jealous, and it doesn't take much to spark that well of protectiveness that lies in wait just under his skin.

Russell isn't easily fazed by most things, but one sure way to provoke his temper (and those rougher, darker shades of him that he tries his best not to show you) is for a man to push his luck with you.

It really wouldn't take much effort at all for the former soldier to have a man clutching his bloody, shattered nose, let alone to dump his broken body in front of the closest hospital. But somehow, Russell manages to curb those darker urges. (Again, don't tempt him.)

But when another woman flirts with him, you're the one who starts to have steam coming out of your ears.

Russell doesn't miss much. He recognizes the sultry inflection in the woman's words. He catches the subtle, sensuous gleam in her eyes when she rakes him up and down with them.

He also notes the moment you look over and realize what's happening.

Regardless if you're looking or not, he tries his best to stay distant, but polite, even as a warning twinge of "aww shit" runs up his spine.

He tries to play things off with an amiable smile and being purposefully oblivious.

Until the woman gets bold, slipping her hand over Russell's and up his arm a bit, before she withdraws, tilting her head with a sweet-as-pie smile.

Cue Russ's awkward laugh/clearing of the throat. Before he has time to fully pull away and just come out with the, Sorry, I actually have a girlfriend -- you return to his side and pointedly grab his hand.

"Come on, honey, we'll be late," you say, giving him a tense smile.

The aww shit feeling is back, but Russell just nods and falls into step with you.

When you two have enough privacy to hash it out, you let him have it.

"What the hell was that?!"

Russell can't help but chuckle. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I tried to keep it classy, but that woman was persistent. Not that I blame her--"

"Oh, shut up." You roll your eyes (not that you really blame her either). Then you stare at your man in annoyance, crossing your arms. "I didn't see you trying all that hard to fend her off, huh, Romeo? If another man had touched me like that, you would've broken his fingers off, like a fucking caveman."

Russell's brows raise at the dig, but the way you're getting all testy is kind of cute (and also kinda hot).

"All right. You got me there," he says. He slips his arms around your waist and tries to soften you with a charming grin. "Come on, sweetheart. You know I'm not going anywhere."

"Do I?" you blurt out, before you have a chance to reign it back in.

Russell's contract jobs take him all over the country -- all over the world. Yes, he's on his way out, he claims. He wants to settle down with you, or so he says.

But you have no idea of knowing what he does when he's not with you.

All those days out on the road, crashing in skeevy motels, winding down at dive bars -- has he ever been tempted to "sample" the local fare? Has he ever...

Russell's amusement fades, sobering into a frown and a furrowing of his brows. He hums in disapproval. He doesn't like what he's seeing in your eyes: doubt, most of all.

"Hey," he says. It's a serious tone you don't often hear in his voice. He curls a finger under your chin and tilts your face up to meet his.

"I'm gonna need you to listen to me, and listen good," he says. You frown at that, but he brushes his thumb across your cheek, a small, but tender caress. "You and me, we've got something good. I know what that means. So you can believe me when I say, I'm in this. I'm right here, even when I'm not here."

And he smiles at you. "That make sense?"

Slowly, you start to smile too. "Not really," you laugh.

But it does. You know what he's trying to say, and...you believe him. Your fingers curl in the front of his shirt.

Tentatively, you lean up and press your lips to his; just a sweet, slow meeting.

Russell cups your cheek and leans in for a deeper taste, a deeper conviction of every word he just said.

I love you, is what it really means, even if he's not able to say that just yet.

AN: 😮‍💨 Well, there we go! lol I love me a protective man. 💜 Hope you enjoy this set of headcanons!

Join My Patreon 🌟 Get early access to new stories, bonus content, and first looks at upcoming stories, send me requests, and more!

Dean Winchester Imagines

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Beau Arlen Masterlist

Soldier Boy Masterlist

Russell Shaw Masterlist

Main Masterlist 

Dean, Beau, Soldier Boy + Russell Tag List (Part 1)

If you would like to get notified every time I post a story, feel free to follow my side blog @zepskieswrites with notifications on so you don't miss out. 💜

@hobby27 @kazsrm67 @jacklesbrainworms @foxyjwls007 @mostlymarvelgirl

@thebiggerbear @roseblue373 @this-is-me19 @emily-winchester @riteofpassage77

@deans-spinster-witch @deans-baby-momma @sanscas @mxltifxnd0m @suckitands33

@kaleldobrev @spnwoman @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @pieandmonsters @trashmoutth

@globetrotter28 @adoringanakin @midnightmadwoman @chevroletdean @tayl0rfanatic

@chriszgirl92 @lyarr24 @ladysparkles78 @spnfamily-j2 @everything-is-all-clear

@deansbbyx @sarahgracej @chernayawidow @mimaria420 @stoneyggirl2

@fics-pics-andotherthings-i-like @waywardxwords @waynes-multiverse @twinkleinadiamondsky

@my-stories-vault @kayleighwinchester @rizlowwritessortof @cookiechipdough @sixxteenbullets

@tmb510 @syrma-sensei @artemys-ackles @malindacath @mrsjenniferwinchester

[technofeudalism]

i wouldn't wish it on anyone in any way, shape or form, but all i can think about when i see those "attend your local council meetings" as a response to what's happening is someone from the wrong suburb going and raising their voice too high, only to find themselves under arrest for public disturbance.

please use reasonable caution when taking this advice. the reason that most leftists suggest that your organization stem from grassroots, community-based recruiting is because when you reach a certain point in a fascist society, going to school board meetings isn't going to solve the problem. you need friends. you need allies.

i'm not suggesting you don't get involved. you should. but this advice is dangerous and quite literally fails to understand the gravity of the situation. not a single person in this country can say with a straight face that there is going to be another presidential election with 100% confidence.

do you really think that your presence on the local school board is going to matter when the Department of Education is gone and only teachers who agree to spread fascist state propaganda are working in classrooms?

once more with feeling: it is important to get involved in local issues and politics, all the way down to the school board level. i am not discouraging anyone from doing that.

but if you let your guard down, if you don't pay attention to how things are developing around you, if you don't have the right support networks, if you don't have the adequate gauge on when you're in a hostile situation, if you don't have your finger on the pulse of what Donald Trump is doing right now, then you should think real, real hard about what government building you're about to walk into and start saying things that he wouldn't agree with. do it anyway. fuck that asshole. but pick your battles. right place, right time. because you may not get many opportunities. that is where we are whether you like it or not.

[247-diaperboy]

Welcome to Adult Baby Reform

Welcome John. I’m here to give you series of shots and you won’t have to be seen for another month. So, level 1 is light compared to level 2 and level 3.

It's my understanding that you had committed a series of crimes. Your attorney has power of attorney over you due to the fact that you are underage not to mention your parents have abandoned you. Oh, you don’t like what I have to say, that's fine.

See level 1, requires me to give you two shots of hormone therapy one into each testicle. Oh, medical necessary for sex addiction. This will stop all of your sexual urges as well as take away all control over your bladder rendering you incontinent and forcing you to remain in diapers for the foreseen future. See John this is a powerful potent form of hormone mixed with a strong muscle relaxer. This will stop your body from creating any more sperm and testosterone.

The muscle relaxer will slowly take away all muscle control, causing you to dribble and leak nonstop into your diapers. You can try as hard as you want to hold it. However, with the muscles relaxed you will be unable to hold anything back no matter how hard you try.

John, please sit back down and listen. If you can’t complete level one or refuse to or you decide to walk out that door, you will be stopped before you get to the end of the sidewalk.

Once brought back you will be given level 2. Understand you lose your freedom, and we commit you to medical nursing facilities. Go ahead john pull that door open. You will meet two big mean orderlies waiting for you to run.

John I’m not bluffing, I would advise you to sit down. John I’m serious about level 2.

That was the last thing John remembers. Everything faded to black as the orderlies tazed him.

John woke up 4 hours later and was in utter shock at how wet his diaper was. He was feeling the diaper when the nurse walked in.

Well John, I warned you about running. Now you have been given not only level one but also level 2.

Level one was injected into your testicles. The second set of shots have been injected directly into your sphincter muscles.

He was puzzled and confused he had never had any issues with bladder control, especially at night. He couldn’t comprehend why it was so wet

Whatever drugs, they are using causes severe dry mouth and constantly have John craving any type of fluid.

He knows that they’re using a strong, diarrhetic and laxative, all fluids go straight through him into his thick diaper with no control whatsoever.

The nurse explained once you had wet the diaper It was a sign that the shots were beginning to take hold and work. we know the medication has been absorbed into your body and is slowly taking full control of your bodily functions.

Let's get you on the stretcher and restrained for your ride down to the treatment room, for your therapy session.

Now while we have you here and until the medication takes full control of your body you will undergo daily electro stimulation. Not only will it milk the remaining cum from those now useless testicles but also cause you to lose bladder control.

When you place the electrodes in the right place, it causes somebody to lose their bladder control.

If you use the electrodes for one hour at max setting, you’ll lose bladder control for eight hours.

It also slowly milks the patient. draining any and all cum from his testicles.

After 24 hours of using the electro to max setting they say you lose nearly a week of bladder control.

After a week of using the electrodes at maximum setting the muscle and nerves are permanently damaged, and you’ll have no bladder control for the rest of your life.

Mixed with the shots that have been given to you, you will no longer be able to control anything, rendering you 100% incontinent.

Are you ready to wear a diaper like a baby for the rest of your life? I bet after a week you will be.

I know after level 3 of the injections you will be in diapers like a true baby rather the electro stimulation has worked its Magic or not.

Once you have been given your next dose of hormone and muscle relaxers you will be. required to stay at the medical facility for the rest of your life.

Are you scared yet?

You should be. This syringe contains, level 3 of the treatment. It is your everyday drinking alcohol.

Now that your tightly restrained and can’t move a inch. I'm going to inject your testicles with normal 100 proof alcohol.

No, you won’t get drunk.

This is what going happen downstairs.

Sterility

Impotence

Low testosterone

Inability to obtain an erection

testicular atrophy

penile atrophy

incontinence in both your bowels and bladder.

You will submit to medical testing of incontinence absorbency products. you agree to allow the facility to make future medical decisions. 

will be consider a danger to yourself and others and will be confined to the facilities for your entire sentence. a review committee will review your case and grant dismissal from the facility at the end of your stay.

Now that your fully dependent upon diapers, and the doctor can’t help. You just wish you could regain control. But after that last injection you have no hope of that ever happening.

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Perfect 10 Liners time! Ok, Yotha, you got some crow to eat, be good to our boy.

Oh, Yotha's meter is full on broken.

Which does fit with how he is with Gun, he feels a pull, but doesn't know how to really handle it. And his kisses up to this point have felt very "do behavior A to get response B" rather than any actual desire.

Obligatory beach splashing time! Pretty sure it's law by now.

Ha, of course Fai has been leaving the door unlocked on purpose. That's a good man, because if I had people snuggling in the bed next to me every night, I would be hella annoyed.

I love that we are getting to see more Fai and Wine interactions ahead of their romance!

Part of why I didn't immediately warm to Faifa was the intensity of how he came after Wine, but now I want to go back and rewatch with the recontextualization of the new scenes. It's getting sweeter by the second.

Lol, I would so be Wine here, just like "aaaah, cute older guy is talking to me, brain no longer functioning".

Oh, they are sparking so beautifully!

I love that we get Tay just randomly popping in on occasion to be the wise sage of the group.

I'm assuming his move to Nan is going to be relevant to the FaiWine story. New location for frolics?

My theory about Arm getting drunk in every episode for the entertainment of the writers is holding up.

Oh, that is so pretty.

Now I want to be at the beach.

Oh good, we're talking about the kiss.

All that and Yotha still didn't say, "I kissed him to confirm I don't feel anything anymore"? Dude, that's the most essential piece.

Hmm, this doesn't feel super romantic to me? Maybe because I've seen what waiting around for someone can be like in real life, and most of the time it sucks.

Like I get that Gun is a very sweet, loving, kind man, but I need him to be more selfish.

Yes, perfect!

Hold those boundaries baby. He doesn't get everything when he wants you to wait.

Hmm, also with the bracelet - it just feels like Yotha wants them to be boyfriends without calling it boyfriends.

Again, not mad about any of this stuff, it all fits their characters, but it just doesn't feel romantic to me.

Ha, love the friend interactions, as always.

Wow, Yotha really be walking through the halls in those pajamas, that is an impressive level of dedication.

Gah, I just - of course Gun would be sad! I feel like there's still a lack of real honest communication here.

Fai is a whole mood, I am 100% on your side bro.

Aww, Fai getting all the birthday love is cute. And deserved!

Oh for crying out loud, Yotha, you are so in love!

Seriously, all the brothers need some therapy. Please, someone just mention the word.

Lol, Gun is not fooling his mother in the least.

Yotha doesn't want to do what Wa did, but he's still setting Gun up for hurt all the same. Not being willing to call him your boyfriend or call it love doesn't change the reality, and it would hurt just as much for things to end.

Goddamit Yotha! I was giving you grace last week, but you are straight up ticking me off now.

I know we just did this plotline with ArcArm, but I need some hottie to come flirt with Gun. Boy needs to feel desired.

This is such a sweet friend group.

I love when we get to see men taking care of one another.

Oh Fai. Always sacrificing himself.

Gun deserves so much better than this.

I mean, yes, Yotha is not wrong to say he needs time, but the hot and cold is what's super hurtful. One minute he's playing boyfriends, then he can't even smile at Gun. He's so hung up on some projection of what love is supposed to be, rather than paying attention to all the ways he genuinely does love Gun.

Yotha, you are making me want this to happen for Gun.

It's not that I don't feel for Yotha, or his struggles. I think I've just seen too many real life friends being hurt by a partner who knows they have issues, but refuses to get help or work through them in order to stop causing their partner pain. And it's really shitty.

Yes, Gun! He can take his time, but you also get to set boundaries.

Waaah, stop making my AouBoom smokers.

God I love my boys.

They are very clearly "we may be side characters in this show, but we're still gonna prove why we're the number one in physical intimacy at GMMTV".

Goddamn, Aou, how much have you been working out?!

Lifting someone your own size is freaking hard!

Ok, can our BL boys just stop ever crossing the street?

They are a very pretty couple.

Hmm, this was an interesting one. I think Yotha is just bumping up against reality a little too much for me here, which is not the fault of the show.

But at least it looks like next week Yotha may finally get his shit together!

[musette22]

Evanstan AU: firefighter Chris & EMT Sebastian who 1000% has to scold this very, very handsome guy for running back into the fire to get a kids beloved toy (or smth else idk) when his compressed air was already low. BC of that he's inhaled some smoke &, yes, he's absolutely going to hold this oxygen mask to his face so he can get a better look at those eyes whiling trying to come up with a non-inappropriate pick-up line. Love you 😘

Oooooooooohhhhh OKAY OKAY, I am SO here for this 😍 This would work extremely well for both Evanstan and Stucky, ooofff.

Big, rugged fireman Chris/Steve who cares more about helping others than about his own safety, and fearless, caring EMT Sebastian/Bucky who's immediately got Chris's number (figuratively at first, and later that night also literally) and tells him to sit the fuck down so he can check him out. Over. Whatever.

Chris only complies because he's a little woozy from the lack of oxygen and a lot stunned by this gorgeous EMT with the most beautiful eyes he's ever seen. He might even say that bit out loud, whoops. But he can't be held accountable for what he says while he's high on adrenaline and oxygen, okay? And Sebastian can't be blamed for going all red and flustered: he is on the site of a fire, after all (not to mention tending to the hottest guy in all of New York - the state, not the city)

UGH, I neeeed this, thank you!!! ❤️‍🔥

[tapakah0]

(Continuation because I don't trust tumblr tags) #Oscar... pointing at her neck with the weapon like this... *sigh* eather he is a very good actor or can adapt very quickly #TRUST POINTS FROM ECLIPTICA HELL FEGEFJEGJEYGWYGWD #HE JUST WANTED TO HELP #THE PREVIOUS NEVER WANTED TO HELP AND WE EAT THEM AHAHAGGASHGSA FUNNY YEAH? # *cough* Ma'am... take room... you seem to enjoy his physical company... #OH WHAT AN OFFER HUH #YEHA HDFEMFAWHGDMA MAXAZAANABA I KNEW HE GUESSED THAT WARD IS NOT COMING BACK AHAHGAHGAAHGSA DEAR SCULPTOR YOU F***ED UP YOU TOOK THE SMARTER ONE IN THE BASIC WAY BUT WE HAVE A SOCIALLY SMARTER ONE AND THIIIIIIS IS A REAL DISASTER AHGADHGDHDGHGHAGSDH #DEAR OSCAR CONGRATS YOU ARE *SHAKING HIM* YOU EVIL DEVIL LITTLE DEMON WITH ONE BRAIN CELL THAT HAS 1000 BRAINCELLS ITSELF AND ALL OF THEM ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR TACTICS AND SOCIAL NEGOTIATION

Part 11 ‘-‘

I have a feeling Shepherd and Ward would get along really well... you know, if you put them in the au where everything is the same, but there is peace and harmony in the whole galaxy

Previous

Masterpost

[depresseddepot]

me: hey so one of the three cats has diarrhea but I need to figure out who. can you keep an eye on your cat, because he only really comes down here to use the litter box so I can't watch how he's acting like I can the others

my mother: wh.......huh........... .? "keep an eye on him"...........i mean............ill try.......how am i expected to do that......................do i just "look" at him.....?. "pay attention to him..?"......i don't think i can do that.......... .you're being so fucking dramatic actually. this fork becoming dirty after i ate using it is your fault too

[kleefkruid]

Guys, I had one of the weirdest 15 minutes of my life yesterday, as if some higher power put me in a jar and shook me around for a very short time and then let me out again.

But before I can tell the story I need to quickly make sure everyone has the context: Kotelet, the stray I took in had 2 bigger kittens and was super pregnant. These are the cutlets 1.0 and 2.0, you’ve mostly seen the second gen as they were born with me. But the two initial kittens went to Danny. They were very wild and we tried to socialize them, but in the process unfortunately one of them got out and was lost forever. This was way back in the beginning of August. The other kitten became Dietzel and recently Danny adopted one of the 2.0 gen to keep him company since we sadly never found the other kitten again… Okay keeping that in mind I can tell my story.

Yesterday around 2 I left my house to go to Danny. While waiting for my tram I was texting someone who is coming to adopt the last kitten. This combined with the nose cold I’ve been having made me a bit inattentive, and I got on the wrong tram. Not too big of a problem, bc this tram also travels close by Danny, I just had to walk one kilometer. A 15 minute walk. What could happen in that time right, I’ve done this route so often.

I get of the tram and I cross a bigger intersection. Open sky above me, as is typical for an intersection. Light goes green, I’m on the crosswalk. Suddenly, and with a loud slap, a pigeon drops dead on the ground in front of me.

I look at the pigeon. I look at the clear sky. I look back at the pigeon. I look back up. I notice the cables of the tram that go over the crosswalk, and realize it must have flown into the cables, and was killed by electrocution. At least it died instantly. Not a bad way to go for a pigeon. One moment it was going “weeeh I’m a bird”, next thing the lights went out.

The crosswalk light had turned red. Normally this would be immediately be followed by irritated honking, but as I make eye contact with the driver perpendicular to me, he also points at the cables and we exchange some “crazy right??” looks while I hurry to the side of the road.

“What’s it called again when people tell fortune by looking at birds?” I think, (it’s Ornithomancy) “the ancients Greeks did it, I remember it from the Odyssey… sure hope it’s not a bad omen!” I imagine a Greek augur predicting a war or whatever when a bird drops straight from the sky and someone going “is that bad?” I chuckle to myself, just a tiny bit nervous, and I continue my walk. Not long to go now.

“Pigeon dropped dead in front of me” I triple text Danny “Crazy. Electrocuted by the tram infrastructure. Super dead in an instance.”

A neighborhood cat cheerfully walks by me. I automatically lean down to pet it, can’t cross a friendly cat without saying hi! It’s a teenage tuxedo.

WAIT.

The cat looks at me. It has a little white moustache. It starts sniffing my boots like crazy.

Could it be…

Squatting on the sidewalk, I go in my pictures folder and frantically search for pictures of the cutlets 1.0 The cat leans against me. I find a picture where the kitten has a distinctive black mark on the back of its otherwise white socks. I stare down.

On the back of its legs it has a distinctive black mark.

“You got to be kidding me” I say. “Sniff sniff” says the cat. He headbutts me again.

I am 350 meters from Danny’s door. Obviously I don’t have anything with me. A car drives close by. I gotta do something, so I pick him up. And he lets me. And I just start walking.

After a 100 meters, he wants to go down again, so holding him in a sitting position, I grasp his hind legs with one hand, like they hold wild birds when ringing them, and my other arm goes across him to squeeze him against my chest and I hold his front paws. He meows a little and bites me so very lightly. He just kinda presses his teeth against my skin to communicate he’s not impressed by my action, but that’s all. He’s still pretty tiny after all.

I ring the doorbell, and Danny buzzes me in. “Bring a carrier!” I yell trough the speaker. “What?? Why??” “Just come down!”

He opens te door and looks confused. “Is that Kotelet??” is his first question, as they look alike. “No, try again” I say. Now Danny’s eyes go wide. “No. It’s not possible…”

It’s been more than 3 months. Danny just starts crying out of shock. I start laughing. Both losing it in different ways about the absurdity of the situation.

We’re in Danny’s living room. The little guy is eating all the wet food he can and promptly passes out. We just stare at him. The other cats are peeking in from the bedroom. I look at its white paws, all grey from the street. He purrs. We sit in silence, kind of forgetting to blink.

“Did you see my text about the pigeon that dropped dead in front of me.”

[gay-dorito-dust]

Would they or would they not catch you…

Dick: yes. 100% yes but he’s -no pun intended- a little bit of a teasing dick about it.

He will catch you but then act as though he’s going to drop you by loosening his grip, making you scream out of surprise and cling onto him tighter, all the while beaming that bright and beautiful smile of his as though he wasn’t about to willingly let you fall flat on your ass on multiple occasions.

‘I fucking hate you!’ You whined, smacking Dick on the bicep.

‘Oh do you now?’ Dick inquires as he slowly begins to losses his grip on you, smirking.

‘Did I say hate you? I meant love you, a lot! Please don’t drop me.’ You cried as you tightened your grip on his neck whilst struggling to keep your feet from touching the floor. ‘Awww I love you too gorgeous.’ Dick coos as he pressed kisses into your face as you could only glare at the cheeky bastard.

You hate him sometimes but you weren’t going to complain about the affection you were being given. So you guess you’ll suffer for now.

Side note: he might even try and see if you can catch him. 💀

Jason: He will catch you but makes it a big deal whenever he can. He loves holding you in his arms.

He could keep you in his arms forever if he could but knew that he can’t, so he settles for going about his day carrying you throughout the apartment instead.

‘You can put down any day now.’ You’d tell him but that only makes Jason tighten his grip on you as he moved in his makeshift library for a book to read.

‘No.’ He simply replied, scouring the many book titles in front of him in the hopes that one might speak to him. You pout. ‘What do you mean no?’ Jason then looks at you and says. ‘No means no. As in no I will not put you down because I do as I like and will not be told otherwise, so the cutie currently in my arms has to deal with it.’ He then smiles as he presses a kiss to your forehead before looking back towards the bookshelves.

You end up falling asleep in his arms and Jason couldn’t help but smile at how cute you were, even if you did look like the living dead.

Damian: says no but will in fact catch you without hesitation.

However if you do try to tease him about it, then he will drop you without a second thought. ‘You can catch yourself next time.’ He would say as he walks away, leaving you with a bruised ass. Titus -who saw the whole thing- would come up to you to make sure you weren’t genuinely hurt and encourage you to get up by nudging you with his head.

Don’t test him because he will do it and then act like the whole thing didn’t happen if you were to bring it up.

‘Dick.’ You’d say as you stood up.

‘I heard that.’ He’d call back, his voice echoing off the walls. ‘You were meant to.’ You reply. ‘And at least Titus came to check up on me to see if I wasn’t hurt.’ You’d add while scratching Titus behind the ear.

Needless to say you were more cautious when choosing Damian to catch you. However he does apologise for dropping you on your ass by gifting you something he himself drew by hand; He secretly doesn’t like it when you’re upset with him and will do anything to rectify it.

What a sweetheart.

Bruce: he’s too use to you pulling this type of shit that it’s basically muscle memory for him to catch you as you’re running towards him, all with a straight face mind you.

Be grateful because he risked a much needed bowl of Mulligatawny soup just to catch you in his arms, but then again the kisses you bombard his cheek is more than reward enough, a small almost missable smile appears on his lips as he then proceeds to carry you for the rest of the day as “punishment.”

( this only occurs when Bruce is feeling particularly affectionate or playful)

Much to your batkids -Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, Duke, Cass and Steph- dismay. They’d want to use this as blackmail, but they know that it will backfire as you’ll probably hang the photo on a wall somewhere in the manor, reminding them of how disgustingly their parents can be when given the opportunity.

[shrimpybbq]

rafe, his fiancée and their family in the 18 month gap between s3 and s4

“What do you think about another baby?”

rafe is ecstatic about the prospect of another kid, and he shows it. he’s constantly spoiling his girl, always doting on her and helping her around the house. he makes sure to hire staff around tannyhill and ensure she doesn’t have to stress, making sure to spend time each night with his family despite the chaos of his day. rafe knows her first pregnancy wasn’t the best (bc of him) and he wants to give her a whole new experience

high school gf was worried about telling him she was pregnant again, knowing how badly it all went the first time. she knew rafe had grown to love his son and his family, but she was still apprehensive about his reaction, knowing he was in a stressful period of life rn. she didn’t have anything to worry about however, seeing straight away how different rafe was with her now. he loved being a father and was so keen to have another baby, especially now everything is his, and he can provide for his family the way he wants

baby no. 2 was a girl, just as rafe wanted. he already has little charlie, who is a carbon copy of himself, but he wants a little girl who looks just like her mother. rafe already loved to stare at his fiancée’s face, but imagining her looking after a mini version of herself - rafe thinks he might die.

as his fiancée and mother of his child, high school gf is living good. rafe is struggling with his father’s death, but mostly, they’re happy - really, really happy. charlie is starting to speak, and he is so excited to have a baby sister

oh you know the jokes are going around the OBX about how rafe just can’t keep it in his pants (but who could blame him when his girl is just so hot)

rafe doing the absolute most to have his fiancée relaxed and resting at all times - he loves to take her out on the boat and let her lay in the warm sun, especially because she gets so clingy when she’s sleepy and calm

rafe who begins to secretly hunt for a new house for the family to move into, wanting a new space just for themselves. tannyhill had too many bad vibes and rafe wants to start fresh

the family are often seen out and about the island with little charlie either toddling in front of his parents, or being swung in between their outstretched arms

charlie becoming known by those on the island as a cheeky little boy, always pulling faces and trying to play with everyone

rafe watching his girl get closer and closer to her due date and growing more and more anxious - he was so coked up the first time that he never really worried, but now he is always hovering and checking in on their baby

rafe is there for this delivery!! he's 100% holding his fiancée’s hand and brushing her sweaty hair out of her face, whispering "you can do this, baby, you've got this"

the nurses let him cut the cord once his daughter is born and he is definitely crying and trying to subtly wipe away his tears

the whole family spending the next few weeks hiding in their new house enjoying their first moments with their new little girl

rafe picks her name and decides to call her emmeline, emmy for short

if any family ever gave off rich vibes, it's the cameron's. rafe has his kids dressed to the nines, nice cars in the driveway of his new house and his fiancée wearing the nicest jewellery

all the women on kildare being so jealous once they see sexy muscular rafe cameron fussing over a tiny little baby, emmy clutched tightly in his arms as his fiancée holds charlie's hand

rafe would never admit it, but he loves the looks he gets when he walks around his little girl - he might be loyal but he still likes to be reminded he's hot sorry not sorry

wedding time!!!!

i think their wedding is actually very casual, maybe even a holiday elopement

rafe doesn't really like the people in the obx that much and so when his girl suggested getting married somewhere quiet, just the two of them, he was like "mmm, why not?"

the pair get married on a private beach in hawaii, rafe in a loose white shirt and a pair of linen trousers, his girl in a silky dress (this is so serious to me)

they hire a photographer and definitely put a big wedding pic on their hallway wall

everyone in the obx knew it was coming (bc they were engaged) but people are still a little shocked that the high school couple actually got married?

i see them settling into a nice routine once back, really just wifey looking after their little family, rafe running cameron development and the family spending all their time together happily

idk i'm just very passionate about the concept of rafe being loved and giving love in return bc it's clear he's capable of it, he just needs to feel safe and nurtured

click here for pre-season 1 rafe, gf & their unborn son

click here for season 1 rafe, gf & their son

click here for season 2 rafe, gf & their son

click here for season 3 rafe, gf & their son

click here for season 4 part 1 rafe, gf & their son

[rookiesbookies]

The boys catch their ladies reading smut, originally this had the books I was basing this on in them but I hadn't got the time to read the books so I remove the book titles and authors. I hope you enjoy <3

Price: Yeah, she’s younger than him. This book is like 100% just breeding kinks. So she was reading this book about a man breeding his young woman and being super obsessive and clinging… while sitting in their living room… with her fuzzy, super obsessive, newlywed husband. “What are ya readin love?” He said, swiftly snatching the book from her grasp as he sat down on the couch next to her. He kicked his feet up on the couch and laid so his back was against her shins under the blanket she was bundled in. “Nothing important! But you really should give it back!” She panicked, reaching for it. “Holy bloody Jesus, love. This is a casual read for you?” “... yeah.” He wiggled his eyebrows while looking up to see her. She put a hand in his face and took her book back. “You almost made me lose my page.”

Soap: Being bent over and defiled by a hot Scotsman in a kilt? Oh hell yeah. How could you refuse?

“Jesus, Bonnie, why are ye readin about this shit when ya could get the real thing with me?” He chuckled, flipping through the book she had poorly hidden in her nightstand. “My kilt is in the closet, give me less than 10 minutes to get me socks and straps on and I’ll rock yer world harder than some words on a page ever could. You’ll see, donnae worry.”

He did indeed rock your world harder than pages ever good.

You claim and cry that you want to finish it for the plot, he says you can only read “that filth” when he’s away on deployment.

Says its a waste if you have a real heavy, hairy, and thick Scotsman at your disposal on the daily.

Ghost: Reading a story about a man whose face was painted like death and has charm that causes hormonal riots? Sounds exactly like her Simon. She lay on their shared bed as he packed up for their walk to the park. Her legs kicked up in the air as she read. 

He raised an eyebrow at what could have her so giddy so he effortlessly snatched the book and was met with a nasty surprise when he looked over the words. “Take it you’d rather stay home than go to the park,” he mumbled with a smirk before bending down to kneel in front of her now with a red face. 

“No- no I think a walk in the park will be fine.” She nervously chuckled.

Konig: Hot giant caveman dragging a woman away to have his way with her? Basic Konig when he comes back from missions.

Grabbing his sweet girl and pulling her into the dark cave that is their bedroom, only letting either out once he’s had his way with her and showing her just how much he’s missed her.

His face was red flushed as he read over her shoulder though.

“Oh meine gut, Schatz."

The scream she let out even made him fall back.

“Don’t scare me like that!”

He pressed a kiss to her temple in apology. 

“This book made me horny, can we fuck?” She asked straight up, knowing Konig preferred her blunt. She didn’t need to ask him twice.

Gaz Hot british guy? Her standards were so low for her choices in literature as long as it was someone she could imagine her Kyle as. Hmmm easy.

So when she was leading her walk with her audio book in her headphones she was more than busy. When he got a hold of one of her airpods while at the gym and she forgot he had the other one, he looked over at her with wide eyes. He texted her, “I didn’t realize you were interested in being folded like that.”

[100vern]

ex-conomics | csc

you supported seungcheol through years of being an aspiring athlete, and all you got to show for it was your undergraduate degree and an awkward, stuttered apology when he dumped you to go semi-pro. now he’s back after an injury derailed his career, and there’s only one problem: you’re the only one available to tutor him. you - 0; the universe - 1. talk about no return on investment.

⚽ pairing: choi seungcheol x f. reader ⚽ genre: exes to (lite) enemies to lovers; university au; angst, fluff ⚽ rating: while there is nothing explicit in this fic, there are two brief references to smut. while i can't stop anyone from reading this, i would prefer minors do not interact with this or any of my work. ⚽ warnings: cheol is some degree of famous, reader is a grad student/TA, mentions of an injury and coping with the aftermath of it, lots of economics talk that even i do not understand, swearing, one mention of alcohol, some misplaced jealousy, rom-com tropes, dino is kind of a loser but we love him anyway. probably a lot of other things i missed, but this is actually pretty tame for a fic of this length. ⚽ word count: 13.4k ⚽ thank you: a lot of people looked this over for me in the process and i'm sure i will forget some of them so if i do i'm sorry: @the-boy-meets-evil, @hot-soop, @highvern, and @haologram, who also gave me some wonderful ideas for the vlogs. thank you to MIT for opencourseware existing. i took microeconomics and dropped it, so i couldn't have done this without you. everyone in the discord server for helping me along the way and keeping me motivated. ⚽ author's note: i haven't posted a fic in nearly seven months, so i think it goes without saying that there are parts of this i like and a lot more i'm not 100% happy with. i'd love if this was more fleshed out and 10k longer, but i was able to write anything at all so it's good enough. this was written for the back to school with seventeen collab, hosted by @camandemstudios. thank you both for letting me participate! please make sure to check out the rest of the stories! everyone worked so hard and this collab was a ton of fun to participate in. <3

You look down at the paper. Back up at who handed it to you. Down at the paper again.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

The poor freshman kid laughs, all nerves, and even though the sound is grating, you remember what it’s like to be forced into work study. How far away graduate school seemed; how large your professors loomed over you with all their power and knowledge and credentials; how you constantly felt like the dumbest person in nearly every room you walked into for four straight years.

“Um—”

You sigh, just barely resisting the urge to slam your head onto your desk. “I—it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Your words do little to ease Freshman’s nerves. He’s still hunched over in the doorway of your office, wringing his hands as he shifts his weight back and forth, in for a lifetime of body pain with the way he’s squaring his shoulders. “You’re sure about this, though? Like, I’m really not being set up?”

“I don’t think so?” he offers, slowly starting to turn green right before your eyes. “Dr. Lee ga-gave me the paperwork himself, I don’t think he would’ve messed it up? Oh no, did I mess it up? Should I go back to Student Services and conf—”

Good god, this kid’s anxiety is gonna stink up your office for weeks. “No need!” you interject. “I’ll just…” Sign it, you want to say, but the longer you stare at the sheet of paper the quicker you’re losing your resolve.

TUTORING REQUEST FORM Student Name: Choi Seungcheol Degree: Undergraduate Major: Business Course: ECON04101 Introduction to Microeconomics Instructor: Lee Yeonseok, PhD. Recommended Tutoring: High (3-4 hours per week)

You curse under your breath. Of the two names on the paper, Dr. Lee’s does not come as a surprise. He’s a notorious hard-ass with an infamous attrition rate—most students don’t last more than a week in any of his classes—but he’s also the sole reason you were able to pay for someof your grad school tuition out of pocket with all the tutoring money you made.

That, however, was two years ago.

“Does he know I don’t tutor anymore?” Stupid question. The kid stares blankly back at you, as if to say I don’t know any more than the people in Student Services, let alone Dr. Lee. It is literally my first year here. “I’m Dr. Ahn’s TA this year. I’ve got my hands full with her bullsh… stuff—”

Immediately, you know you’ve said something wrong, because the kid’s eyes light up, all that previous anxiety disappearing like smoke. “Wait, the same Dr. Ahn that teaches the crypto course?”

“No, that one died,” you say quickly. Kid deflates. “Anyway, I don’t really tutor anymore, especially for econ. As you can see”—you gesture vaguely around the cramped four walls of your office—“they’ve upgraded me. They even put my name on a little placard by the door! Go look! They spelled it wrong! If that doesn’t sum up this university I don’t know what does.”

You heave another sigh. Try to school your face and tone into something that exudes professionalism and finality. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I tutored Dr. Lee’s students for, like, three years in undergrad so I’m sure they just… forgot that wasn’t my actual job here. Who’s in charge of tutoring these days? I’ll shoot them an email and explain all this.”

Freshman gives you a name, and it takes less than a second to find them in the employee directory. You expect that to be the end of it, but he’s still taking up space in your doorway. You quirk an eyebrow. “Yes?”

The hand-wringing returns, along with an embarrassed flush that disappears beneath the neckline of his school-branded sweatshirt. “I just—um. Maybe you could, uh. Send that now? Before I get back there?”

You blink. “Don’t you have to go all the way back across campus? How slow do you think I type?” He shrugs, and you give up on the idea of getting rid of him. “Fine. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lee Chan. I’m a sophomore. Do you know that guy?”

“Oh. I thought for sure you were a freshman, but you’re gonna need to be more specific, Lee Chan, Sophomore.”

“The guy they want you to tutor.” You freeze. The guy they want you to tutor is—“Choi Seungcheol,” Chan tacks on, and, yeah, you know—knew, you correct yourself—someone with that name, once upon a time.

But there are a lot of Chois and a lot of Seungcheols. It’s been years since you’ve spoken to the Seungcheol you knew, and that was when he’d broken up with you to—“I heard he’s a football player? Well, used to be, I guess. The girls in the office were freaking out so I guess he’s pretty famous, but I don’t know anything about sports, do you? They said they have photocards of him. I thought they only did that for idols.”

You think about being kids together in Daegu. Think about the exasperated looks you’d share when your parents would drag the two of you to festivals: Palgongsan in the autumn, Biseulsan in the spring; transformation and rebirth. Think about being eight years old and watching your father cram into the small space of the Chois’ living room, standing around the TV with Seungcheol’s dad, shouting at Park Jonghwan. Daegu FC made the FA Cup quarterfinals that year, and you think, of everything, that’s what you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

You think about falling in love slowly. Sixteen and clueless, the pair of you were. Didn’t really know any different, just that you’d look at him and feel butterflies. That you’d hold hands in secret. Text beneath the dinner table. That you’d watch him on the football pitch and be consumed by pride. That the future felt impossibly far away, that life would never catch up to the two of you.

You think about all the football jargon you didn’t understand—the academies, the teams, the implications. You think about, I’m thinking about trying out for the FC Seoul U-18, I just don’t think there’s much more I can do here in Daegu. You think about replying, Oh, I applied to university there.

You remember thinking it must’ve been fate, how easy that had worked out. How easy that first hurdle had been overcome.

You think about how fast everything happened. The try-out, the acceptance, the explosion. Remember being unable to go anywhere those first few months without seeing Seungcheol’s face, touted as the next big thing. Think about applying for scholarships when he was applying for international visas. Think about studying for midterms when Seungcheol was studying English for interviews.

You think about the last few weeks of your relationship, when it felt like you were desperately trying to cling to ghosts. Think about how Seoul had once felt endlessly big, both in opportunity and size, and how it now felt suffocating. You think about, So you’re just giving up? Is that what you’re saying? Think about, I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t feel fair to you.

You think about all the places you’ve watched him. On countless football pitches; shy glances in school hallways; in the passenger seat, wracked with nerves on the drive to Seoul; poised above you in bed, hairline dotted with sweat as he rolled his hips, telling you how much he loved you.

You think about watching him walk out the door, and how you never watched him again.

So you fire off your email, concise and to the point about why you can’t tutor Choi Seungcheol in Introduction to Microeconomics, and turn to Lee Chan, Sophomore.

“No,” you finally answer. “Never heard of him.”

For all intents and purposes, your rejection should’ve been the end of it.

A few days go by. You hold office hours, attend lectures, work on your thesis when you have both the time and the energy. Try to ignore the feeling of bees beneath your skin, anxiety needling each time you check your email. You were well within your right to decline the tutoring request, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. That someone somehow knows who Seungcheol was to you and will pull you up on it. That those girls who’d gushed about him to Chan are somewhere laughing at your expense.

But you don’t hear anything at all about it… until you do.

Sunday evening. You haven’t moved from your couch in hours, some variety show playing in the background, barely audible over your keyboard clacking. Much to your detriment, you don’t write many papers these days, so you’re out of practice. Feels like you haven’t done anything besides formulas in years, all of your academic knowledge reduced to fucking math, so you’re about ready to toss your laptop out the window long before the email even comes through.

You see, From: Lee Yeonseok. You see, Subject: Choi Seungcheol - Tutoring.

Your stomach plummets to the floor.

You scan the body quickly. You see the words personal favor… friend of his father… urgent matter… and your hands start shaking. Whether it’s from the sheer audacity of this man or anxiety, you aren’t sure, but it’s not like it matters. There aren’t a whole lot of people on campus brave or dumb enough to go up against him twice.

“Motherfucker,” you spit, bitter the only taste in your mouth.

Where did you go wrong to wind up here? You’d followed the script: got the grades, passed the exams, received half of the required education for the Respectable Career, helped a few others along the way chase dreams that may or may not have been their own. You’d fallen in love. Only had a broken heart to show for it, but that’d been in the script, too: The First Love, followed by The First Heartbreak.

The split from Seungcheol was supposed to have been the end of that chapter. You’d planned on never seeing him again, and you never would have, had it been up to you. Apparently the universe has other plans, participation required.

“Did you spill onion dip on the rug again?” You startle, sending your laptop flying. Kaori, your roommate, is perched halfway in between the living room and the kitchen like a cryptid, clearly not expecting your reaction. “Oh. Were you watching porn?”

Face burning, you fetch your laptop from the floor. “In a common area? Kaori, please, I have far more decorum than that.”

She snorts, resuming her trek to the fridge. “See, that’s what I thought, but then I walked out here and you threw your laptop so fast it was like watching my ex get caught watching furry porn all over again.” She pries the lid off a large container of yogurt. “You think this is still good?”

“Dunno. What’s it smell like?”

She sniffs it and pulls it back to check the label. “Vanilla, I think, which is concerning because it’s supposed to be strawberry.”

You shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen, you get extra”—you pause, trying to remember the correct order of things, before giving up entirely—“...biotics?”

“Mm, so close. Care if I just eat this with a spoon?”

Nose scrunched, you wave her off. “Couldn’t pay me to eat yogurt on a good day, let alone if it’s expired. All yours, babe.”

Spoon in hand and a pleased smile on her face, Kaori collapses onto the couch beside you. You try to return your attention to your paper, try to find your momentum again, and it works for all of ten minutes before you’re groaning and slamming the top closed.

You don’t even need to look over to know Kaori’s staring. “What’s up with you?” she asks. Before she can answer: “Wait, is this serious? Because I can’t have a serious conversation in this t-shirt.” You steal a glance sideways. Ask Me About My Hemorrhoid! it says, and you exhale loudly. “Don’t breathe at me, I lost a bet.”

“And continued wearing it?”

She jokingly rolls her eyes. “God forbid a girl has hobbies.” Nudges you with her foot. “C’mon, spill.”

Kaori doesn’t know about you and Seungcheol. Most people don’t, aside from a few old classmates from Daegu who found you on social media and tried befriending you once he started making a name for himself in Seoul. After that, it was just easier to keep things private while you were together. New friends knew you were seeing someone but not their name or how long you’d been together. Any curiosity surrounding why the Choi Seungcheol was following you on Insta had been waved away easily. Our parents are friends, we grew up together. Then you broke up, and there wasn’t any evidence to delete, and he wasn’t following you on Instagram anymore, and it was easier that way.

So, yeah—even though you hadn’t met her until years later, Kaori knows you have an ex. She knows you’ve had a few flings and situationships in the time since, too, and it’s why she’s none the wiser when you ask, “It’s nothing, really. Just—do you follow football at all?”

“Nah, not really. The new guy’s pretty into it and keeps trying to get me to watch the games with him, but it’s so fucking boring? I dunno, I can’t get into it. Not in real life, anyway—I binged all of Captain Tsubasa in an embarrassingly short amount of time, though. Why?”

“Student Services asked me to tutor someone the other day and I had to turn it down. I just don’t have the time, you know? This semester’s already killer, and Dr. Ahn’s been riding my ass nonstop about grades. Turns out it’s some football player, so Dr. Lee emailed me asking me to do it as a personal favor, which means, on top of all the other shit I have to do, I’m now tutoring some football player four hours a week in Microeconomics.”

Her face distorts. “God, that guy’s such a prick. Like wow, you’re good at the economy! Good for you! Who cares! Why don’t you go balance the national debt or something instead of torturing university freshmen!”

You also wrongly assume that’s the last you’ll hear of it from Kaori.

Two days later, after Student Services replies to your email with the days and times you’ll be tutoring Seungcheol, she materializes in the living room to harass you.

“You didn’t tell me your football player was Choi Seungcheol.”

The panic is instant. You know how she means it, but it’s not how your body interprets it. All of a sudden it feels like an interrogation, an accusation, and a whopping serving of guilt takes up residence in the middle of your chest for not being entirely honest.

“Explains this weird text Ken sent me.”

She slides her phone over to you, open to her text thread with her current flavor of the week. Beneath an article about Seungcheol enrolling in classes at your school:

doesn’t ur roomie TA there Why are you calling her “ur roomie” like you don’t know her name?? Rude. Also yes. ask her to get me an autograph No babe pls he was my fav player before he got injured No 🙄 fine. can i come over later? Starting to think you’re using me for my roommate. Get your own job 🙄

You hand her phone back. “I didn’t think you’d know who Choi Seungcheol even is.” It’s the best you can do, even though it just digs you a deeper grave. “You said you’re not into football.”

“I’m not, but unfortunately I am into that stupid man.” She sighs, wistful and longing. “Babe, you have to understand. His dick is so big.”

You hadn’t wanted to stay in Seoul for your graduate degree, let alone the same university you’d gone to for undergrad.

You’d applied to schools all over—Japan, Europe, even a few in the States. Romanticized the hell out of NYU, went window shopping for an overpriced apartment, picked a favorite pizzeria based on nothing but vibes and online reviews. In those few months after graduation, there wasn’t a whole lot tying you to Seoul. Your and Seungcheol’s relationship had been old history by then, your parents split. Your dad stayed in your childhood home and your mother moved a few hours closer to her sister. They’d waited until your brother was old enough to be out of the house.

And it’d just been… a lot. Overwhelming. Some days you could barely shower or feed yourself, let alone move halfway across the world, so you’d stayed in the familiar and tried not to let it feel like failure.

But the good thing about familiarity is you learn its tricks, figure out the hiding spots. Early on, your first or second week of grad school, you laid claim to a study room on a floor of the library everyone else ignored. You write notes on the whiteboard with faded blue markers that are still there days later. The chair on the opposite side of the table is always exactly where you left it, the space between it and the table enough to only accommodate you. Sometimes you leave books—old paperbacks littered with notes in your writing—or papers, just to see if they move.

They never do.

And all of this is why it feels like a punch to the gut when that sanctity is tainted. When you’re halfway through a stack of Dr. Ahn’s exams and the doorknob rattles behind you. When you don’t even need to turn around to know who it is, because he still sounds the same, still has that overwhelming presence. You’ve always sensed him before you felt him.

“There you are,” Dr. Lee says, ambling into the room before you can protest. He, too, is overwhelming, just in different ways. Immaculate posture that anchors his slight frame that’s always dressed impeccably and expensively. Wears a watch that’s triple your tuition. Shoes polished so bright they’re nearly blinding. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

This time it is an accusation.

Well, you found me, you want to say, but just knowing Seungcheol is behind him, lingering in that half-study room, half-hallway space, is enough to keep you quiet. Like if you speak you’ll summon him closer and you’ll no longer be able to pretend this is nothing more than a nightmare.

You plaster on a polite smile. Say, “Ah, here I am, kyosu-nim,” and put all your energy into trying to glue Seungcheol to the floor with your mind.

Which is fruitless, because Dr. Lee moves further into the room. Gestures for Seungcheol to follow him with an impatient huff, and the study room is small, sure, and with three people it feels cramped, but that’s not the reason it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room.

Seungcheol looks… different. He looks as anxious as you feel, and he sticks close to the wall like he’s trying to disappear. Dr. Lee introduces him with grave importance, unaware of your history, and the forced smile he offers you almost looks embarrassed.

You know Dr. Lee is still hammering away, probably giving you a stern talking-to for rejecting his request the first time, but you can’t tear your eyes away from Seungcheol. Feels like the world around you has reduced to a pinhead, all hyperfocus; feels like your lungs are sucking in stale air one at a time.

“...his father is a very good friend of mine, so I expect…”

You expected to feel nothing. Seungcheol had left to chase his dream—one you’d always been so supportive of that it sometimes felt like your dream, too—and, perhaps naively, you thought the distance and the years would’ve been enough. You expected your heart to have hardened. You expected all those nights you spent crying to hit you at full force. You expected anger, hurt—indifference, at the very least.

“...as many hours per week as you both can manage…”

But you should’ve known better. Should’ve expected the butterflies, the way your palms grow clammy, the way your heart rate spikes. Should’ve expected everything to feel upside-down. You should’ve expected to look at Seungcheol and feel sixteen and in love all over again.

“...you are responsible for his academic progress…”

And that simply will not do. You’ve spent the last few years pulling yourself out of that hole, clawing your way back to something resembling normal. You’ve purged the thought of him from your mind—let his scent fade from your sheets, an old sweatshirt he’d left behind; forgot the way his lips felt against every inch of your skin; forgot the way his entire being lit up when he laughed; forgot the safety he encompassed, the way he whispered all those sweet nothings.

You cannot go there again.

So you roll your shoulders back, smile politely. Say, “Ah, kyosu-nim, Choi Seungcheol-ssi seems very intelligent, I’m sure he is capable of being responsible for his own academic standing, don’t you think?”

Dr. Lee cannot disagree without all but calling Seungcheol an idiot, so he hovers before you in shocked silence. Makes a show of huffing and checking his watch, like he’s all of a sudden remembered he’s late for something and being inconvenienced by this conversation he started, and then he’s halfway out of the library with a terse, “Discuss and figure this out amongst yourselves,” thrown over his shoulder.

You have an entire dramatic exit planned in your head. Gather your things, fake a phone call that makes you sound authoritative and important, and brush past Seungcheol wearing your nicest perfume as if all of this is so far beneath you you can’t even bring yourself to care about it.

Of course, you actually have to brush by him for any of that to happen, and since you’ve already decided you will not go there again, you quickly scribble your email address onto a piece of paper and slide it across the table at Seungcheol, who has steadfastly remained planted just outside the door. “Here’s my email. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Seungcheol cocks an eyebrow. You start throwing things into your bag haphazardly. You know you look frantic and affected, but there’s not much you can do about that. “What? Send me a copy of your syllabus and what you want to prioritize. It’ll be easier to get through this if we have a plan instead of winging it.”

He seems to catch on to your distaste because he mirrors it. Scoffs as he rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, no use spending more time together than we have to,” and if you hadn’t gone years without speaking, you would’ve seen right through it.

But you did, so it stings all the same.

As it typically does, the planet keeps spinning after your run-in with Seungcheol.

You grade Dr. Ahn’s coursework. Try running off your anxiety at the gym, even though it’s pretty good at keeping pace with you these days. You meet Kaori’s maybe-boyfriend sneaking out of your apartment early in the morning and he has the good sense not to mention your ex, but you chalk that up to the mess of hickeys covering his neck and not any sense of social decorum.

Other people’s embarrassment saves you a ton of your own, you’ve come to learn.

Throughout all of this, Seungcheol only emails you once to send you his course syllabus. Doesn’t mention tutoring or provide you with his schedule or ask for yours, so when you’re sitting in a bar with your friends, three or four drinks deep and feeling a little petty, you forward him the original tutoring request and make sure to bold, underline, and highlight the “Recommended Tutoring: High” part for good measure.

He doesn’t take your bait—electronically, at least—but he does show up to your office hours the following Tuesday.

Bag tossed onto the floor, he flops unceremoniously into the chair across from you and says, in lieu of a greeting, “They spelled your name wrong. On the door thing.”

“I know,” you reply, your smile polite and terse. Incredible how he has the ability to raise your blood pressure in milliseconds. “What can I help you with?”

“Depends. How long do you have?”

“Well, considering you’ve shown up to my office hours on time, I’m assuming you already know I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six. So”—you glance at the clock above the door—“assuming no one comes by who needs my help more than you do, you have approximately one hour and fifty-eight minutes.”

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment as he takes you in. His stare is weighted; it makes you feel a little green around the edges. Clinical and sharp, so far removed from the way he used to look at you. You clear your throat. “I looked over your syllabus. The good news is there’s only a midterm and a final and the rest is problem sets. The bad news is there’s only a midterm and a final so they’re weighted quite heavily. You really need to know this stuff inside-out to have any hope of passing.”

“That’s why you’re here, right? Dr. Lee specifically requested you.”

You huff a breath through your nose. “I’m here as supplemental help. I can’t take your exams or do your readings for you. What else are you taking this semester?”

He sighs, sinking further into the chair, very much playing the part of the heir who has no interest in any of this. Which… is unlike him, you think, if you’re even allowed to. The Seungcheol you knew years ago took everything so seriously. Never clipped corners or took shortcuts. Anyone else would think him a spoiled, petulant child. “Business Accounting and International Trade.”

“Could be worse,” you note. “At least those three courses are tangentially related.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t taken a fucking math class in years.”

You return it. “You remember how to add and subtract, don’t you?”

“I ruptured my ACL, not my…” He trails off, looking a little embarrassed that he can’t name a part of the—“Brain.”

Whatever you were going to quip back with dies on your tongue. It's the first time Seungcheol has broached the topic of his injury—the first you’re hearing of it at all, actually—and he says it like it’s a joke, like it’s not a thing at all, but the pain is all over his face. The bitterness of the situation he’s found himself in. The unfairness of it all.

And there are so many questions you want to ask that aren’t your place: if it’s fixable, if he’ll ever play again, how he’s coping. But you don’t really need to—you can’t imagine how you’d feel if someone suddenly pulled the rug out from under you. If everything contained within the four walls of your office suddenly disappeared.

Not that the man sitting across from you hadn’t already done that, but.

“Right,” you continue, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You know Seungcheol—know he wouldn’t want you prodding, sticking your fingers in that particular wound. “I want you to take a look at this,” you say, handing over a printout you have saved from your undergrad tutoring days. “Tell me what looks familiar, what doesn’t; what does and doesn’t make sense.”

He looks down at the paper. Back up at you. Down at the paper again. “What the fuck is this?”

“I—what? Cheol, it’s my old notes on recitation. Surely you’ve already covered this—the syllabus says this is week one stuff.” He looks down at the paper again, and it’s so familiar, watching the life drain entirely from someone’s eyes.

You barely resist the urge to slam your face onto your desk a second time.

You meet Seungcheol at the sports center for your next tutoring session.

He likes the humidity and the smell of the chlorine by the pool. He also likes that it’s not the football pitch, so the two of you sit in the bleachers there and go over his lecture notes. Much to your surprise, Seungcheol talks a mile a minute. Has stars in his eyes when he says he finally understands elastic demand curves, supply shock; tells you he spent a whole hour making flashcards.

It’s the first time you’ve seen him so excited since your tutoring began—the first glimmer of hope you’ve felt since Dr. Lee cornered you in your library hideaway. None of this surprises you. Seungcheol has always been smart, even when football was his primary (and sometimes only) focus. He has more determination and grit than anyone you’ve ever met, so you’re not surprised he’s doing well, excelling, but you are surprised—

“Can I ask you something?” Seungcheol shrugs, shoves half a protein bar in his mouth and swallows without chewing. “Why are you… uh. Here?”

“At this university?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I am wondering about that, but I guess… why business?”

Seungcheol hums. Tucks his good knee to his chest and stares down at the pool. No one’s using it, and truthfully the two of you probably aren’t even allowed to be here, but you understand why he likes it. It’s nowhere near as secluded as the library and definitely not as air conditioned, but it is peaceful. Calm. The water laps against the coping in quiet, small waves.

“Ah, I don’t know. You know how it goes.”

You quirk an eyebrow. Never, in all the years you’ve known him, has Seungcheol done anything he didn’t want to do. All that grit and determination. “What about your father, then? Dr. Lee mentioned this was a favor to him. He’s a pretty important person to have in your Rolodex of favors.”

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what this is: Seungcheol’s father has new money; worked from the bottom up, made some smart investment decisions that finally panned out after Seungcheol left for Seoul. Started doing his own thing, made a name for himself. Last you’d heard from your mother, Seungcheol’s brother was second-in-command. Hell, even your own brother did an internship there.

So you know what this is: a father helping his son after his dream was shattered, life turned upside-down. You can’t blame him, even if you’ve heard the whispers from all the way across campus. That Seungcheol is washed up now, trying to nepo his way into his father’s company because of it; that all he knows is sports and he should’ve stuck to that, what does he know about business, why is he the one Dr. Lee went out of his way to help.

Doesn’t stop any of them from smiling at him, though; doesn’t stop them from asking for autographs or selfies.

But you also know this isn’t something Seungcheol seems willing to discuss, so you crack a joke—“I mean, business. God, who’d wanna go into that?”—and go back to what he was willing to talk about.

You’ve never hated elastic demand curves so much in your life.

Deep in the throes of tutoring—when you can’t tell if it’s week two or week twelve—you make it back to your apartment just before ten, head pounding.

The door flies open just as you’re about to punch in the code, and there stands Ken, looking far more put-off than you’ve ever seen him. Looks defeated, if you’re being honest, like someone mopped up all his emotions and wrung them out like dirty dishwater.

“Oh, hi,” you say hesitantly. The man in front of you seems too much like a caged animal to let your guard down. “Everything okay?”

He aborts a nod halfway. Mutters an apology as he brushes by you and stalks down the hall, disappearing around the corner to the elevators. Usually he’s a talker—you haven’t been able to avoid a Seungcheol-related conversation in weeks—so you’re a little stunned. Stand there stupidly for a while, and that’s where Kaori finds you a moment later.

“You gonna stand out here all night, or…?”

“Oh—yeah, right.”

You follow her inside. Toe off your shoes and put them in the rack. Focus on the sound of the kettle whistling instead of the overbearing tension in the room. Drop your bag off in your room, throw on a sweatshirt three sizes too big and a comfy pair of socks. Rummage through the fridge for leftovers, contemplate what mindless show you’ll watch as you eat, and you do not, under any circumstances, ask Kaori what happened.

You don’t have to. You knew what this was going to be the first time Ken spent the night—the way he looked mortified to be meeting you in the shared kitchen at seven a.m., wearing a look that begged you not to tell your roommate he was sneaking out.

I, uh, have an early class, he’d said. You know how it is.

Maybe you should’ve called him on it then. Issued a warning-but-not-really. She’ll get attached if you don’t tell her. She should know it’s different for you, if it is.

But you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t your place. Kaori wouldn’t want you in her business like that, so you stayed quiet, just nodded before watching him slip his shoes on and close the door behind him so quietly you wouldn’t have known he left at all if you hadn’t been looking. Gone, just like a ghost.

So, yeah, you know exactly why your roommate looks haunted.

“I’m a few episodes behind on this if you want to watch with me,” you offer, pointing at the television with the remote. It’s a lie—you’ve never watched this show a day in your life, which Kaori seems to know—but she contemplates it nonetheless. “Also, my mom mailed us some cookies. I think they’re in the fridge.”

“Why are there cookies in the fridge?”

You huff a laugh. “They were outside the door this morning before I left for campus. I don’t know—just saw who the package was from and was like, oh, this must go in the fridge.”

She nods. Grabs the container and joins you on the couch. Sticks her feet beneath your butt and doesn’t mention a thing.

The closest she comes is a few days later. Catches you right before you head out to campus and asks how tutoring is going.

“Not bad, actually.”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she says, “That’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you two.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore makes his unexpected return at your office hours on an unsuspecting Tuesday.

“Can I help you?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just helps himself to the seat across from you. “Maybe,” comes his cryptic retort. “I was thinking about signing up for that crypto course next semester.”

You narrow your eyes. “No, you weren’t.”

He sighs. Looks a little panicked, like he can’t believe that didn’t work. “You’re right, you’re right. I, um—I wanted to come say thank you.” He pauses. “You know, for that… email you sent.”

You blink. “No, you didn’t.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore cracks immediately. Thunks his head on your desk and lets loose a pained sound. It nearly sounds like he’s wailing when he says, “I’m sorry! They put me up to it!”

What you’re able to piece together is this: Lee Chan, Sophomore has become a bit of a celebrity in the Student Services department ever since he met you, Choi Seungcheol’s tutor. And, like any smart, previously unpopular university student would do, he took advantage of it. Might’ve stretched the truth a little to make it sound like he knew more than he did, so now here he is, angling for information the girls with the photocards may or may not have paid him to get.

“They want to know about his girlfriend.”

“His what?”

What you’re able to piece together is also this: the Photocard Girls are certain Seungcheol is dating someone, based on little more than vibes. You suspect these vibes are their three degrees of separation, considering there was an abnormal amount of Change of Major files formed after his enrollment, but you tell Lee Chan that you don’t know anything and, even if you did, you wouldn’t put his business out there like that.

But some part of you still has this inexplicable urge to protect Seungcheol, so you match their offer with interest and tell him to say there’s nothing to report—not that you didn’t know, not that he couldn’t get anything out of you. Seungcheol isn’t dating anyone.

You don’t know if it’s true, but you figure that if it isn’t, he still deserves privacy.

Which is a notion you have trouble explaining a few hours later, when Seungcheol strolls into your office with a grease-stained paper bag full of cheese coin bread, offering one to you with a proud smile that drops slowly when you just stare in return.

“What’s wrong?”

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Nothing comes out, even though it should be simple. Some sophomore kid was just in here angling for information or the Student Services department is taking bets on whether or not you have a girlfriend would both suffice, but you cannot bring yourself to say the words.

What you settle on is, “Sorry, I just… had an interesting meeting before you got here.”

“Oh. Are you okay?”

You sigh. Tilt your head back to stare up at the ceiling. “It was about you, actually.”

Seungcheol chokes, starts stuttering over words you can’t make sense of. Says, “Me? Why? I passed my last exam—I mean, barely, but I still passed. And that wasn’t your fault! I didn’t study enough! I’ve been losing my mind over my International Trade class, that shit sucks—”

“It wasn’t about your grades, Cheol.”

“Oh.” Then, slowly, a lopsided, pleased smile overtakes his face. “Haven’t heard you call me Cheol in a while.”

“Seungcheol,” you correct.

He seems to forget all about the meeting. Tries again to offer you a coin bread before he threatens to eat them all himself, so you acquiesce mostly to shut him up, say you’ll bring the extras to Kaori. For some reason, you tell him about how much she’d loved the cookies your mom sent, and the nostalgia sets him off, gets him talking again, asking if they were the yakgwa she used to make when you two were kids.

They were, but you can’t seem to tell him that, either.

Seungcheol: sorry it’s last minute - running late. can you meet me at my place instead?

Seungcheol shared a location with you

You’re halfway to replying—I don’t think that’s appropriate—before you sigh and delete it. Midterms are only a few days away and you don’t have time to argue over where your tutoring sessions will be, so if Seungcheol wants to meet at his apartment that’s where you’ll meet him.

You read over the midterm notes on the train. Once, twice, and then a hundred more times until they’re nearly memorized, all so you can ignore the voice in the back of your head saying what a bad idea this is. That you have no business being on your way to your ex’s swanky part of town or integrating yourself into his life beyond tutoring at all. You shouldn’t know where he lives. Maybe you shouldn’t even have his phone number or answer his texts.

Not that there’s much you can do about it now, two stops away.

Seungcheol greets you warmly, if not a little rushed. Apologizes for the mess once you step inside, although it’s less “mess” and more “haven’t finished unpacking,” but there’s enough clear space to study at the dining table, so that’s where you set up, determined to keep things professional.

“Sorry again about this,” Seungcheol says, placing a can of cola in front of you as he takes the seat across. “I had to meet with my father and lost track of time, I guess.”

“Oh. How’s he doing?”

Seungcheol sighs, leans further back in the chair as runs a hand through his hair. A light brown, now. “Same as he always was, I guess. Talked about the business, about my brother. Can’t get him to shut up about that stuff most of the time.”

“The business is doing good, though.” You cough, clear your throat. “My, uh. My brother interned there during undergrad. I don’t know if your father told you that.”

You don’t know why you say it, because it’s clear from the brief flicker of pain on Seungcheol’s face that he hadn’t known, that no one had told him. And it hurts you too that they felt the need to keep it a secret, to protect Seungcheol from you even in tangential ways.

“He didn’t,” he admits, “but I’m sure he was happy to see him. He was, uh—he was glad to hear you’re my tutor. Said you were always smarter than all of us boys combined.”

You laugh. Hope it sounds casual instead of strained. “Well, no need to prove him right. Come on,” you say, tossing a study guide in his direction, “let’s get to work.”

Everything is alright for a while—nearly an hour at least. He has the formulas memorized and attributed to the correct equations. He can explain supply and demand, preference and utility, but things start to fall apart around budget constraints and constrained choice.

The formulas get mixed up. He grows frustrated when he doesn’t know the answers to your questions right away. Rolls his eyes and gets a little snappy when you correct him, try to explain things differently in a way he understands. At first he’s able to temper it, collect himself before things truly start spiraling out of control, but the longer the two of you sit there the more it all unravels.

He snaps, you snap back, and you can’t figure out why. You’ve survived this long in Seungcheol’s orbit even though you never thought you’d be around him again, and perhaps it was bound to explode eventually, but…

It’s the familiarity, you realize.

You and Seungcheol aren’t friends, though you’ve been playing at it for weeks now: meeting outside of the library or your office, the personal conversations bordering on reminiscing, being in his personal space. You don’t belong here. You don’t want to be his friend—you can’t be, not for real or pretend.

“That’s not what I’m say—”

“Then explain it better,” Seungcheol fires at you, eyebrows creasing. “You’re the tutor here.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m trying, okay? All I meant was—your answer isn’t wrong, but I know Dr. Lee and he’s going to want more than that in a response.”

“Right—not good enough, like I said.”

“I’m just asking you to expand on your answer—”

“And I’m telling you that’s all I’ve got. I’m not like you, all right? I don’t have all this shit just floating around in my head all the time. I’m not smart, I barely have any idea what’s going on half the time, and you sitting here being condescending about it is doing fuck-all to help.”

You inhale sharply, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. Suggest calling it for the night, say neither of you will be productive if you keep going like this, and neither of you bother to apologize.

So much of your relationship with Seungcheol was marred by clichés.

The two of you passing notes back and forth during class. You in the bleachers of all his games, screaming along to the team chants, waving a sign around with his name on it. Not realizing you had a crush on him at all until he liked someone else and it made your stomach hurt. Childhood friends turned lovers.

Another cliché: that it’s starting to feel like that all over again.

Seungcheol sits across from you in the library, econ textbook cracked in half in front of him as he pays no attention. Keeps grabbing his phone each time it vibrates across the table. Can’t fight the smile that forces its way onto his face when he reads whatever’s there.

Stupid, you think—both to do this and to think it’d play out any other way. Seungcheol left years ago. Probably lived ten lifetimes while he was away while you were here in this exact spot doing this exact thing. Barely lived half a life, just stuck your nose in textbooks and forced your way through.

“Cheol,” you say, trying to drag his attention back to the study guide. No use. He’s typing away, presses his tongue into the fat of his cheek as he responds. “Seungcheol,” you try again.

Also fruitless.

You have no claim here, you remind yourself—not to his time, not to him. He’s only here because someone else mandated it. You’re only here because someone else mandated it, but it stings all the same. Another reminder of what used to be, of what ended regardless of what you wanted. Another reminder that the role you used to play in his life is not the role you play now. That the space you used to take up created a vacancy, and eventually it was going to be filled.

And if this was anyone other than Seungcheol, if you were more emotionally evolved when it came to him, it wouldn’t gnaw at you as much. All of this would roll off your shoulders.

But it isn’t, and you’re not.

“If you’re not going to listen, then—”

“I am listening,” he interjects, but he’s not looking at you. Not looking at his textbook or his study guide. Keeps laughing and smiling at his phone, and it’s sick how bothered you are by it. That it feels like your stomach’s been turned inside-out with jealousy; with annoyance, because you don’t want to be here anyway, don’t want to do this anymore, and you’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

Perhaps he never did.

“What are we discussing, then?”

Still not looking up: “Consumer theory.”

You laugh—more a huff of air than anything, grin sardonically out of one corner of your mouth. Seungcheol sees none of it. “Wrong,” you answer, already expecting the way he shrugs it off. “I’m gonna skip ahead a few chapters, though. Consider it a freebie for your business class.”

It must be your tone that finally grabs his attention. Cutting, precise, purposeful. Seungcheol lowers his phone, quirks an eyebrow, wonders where this is going to go. It’s clear he’s pissed you off, that you’re itching for a fight. It’s clear the years of silence are finally coming to a head.

“Let’s talk about ROI. You know what that is?” You barely give him a second. “Return on investment. A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments. So, let’s say I make one-hundred-thousand won on a ten-thousand won investment: my ROI is 90%. Are you following?”

He nods.

“Great, now let’s try something a bit more hypothetical.” You suck in a breath. “Let’s say I invest years of my adolescence into someone. A friend at first and then something more. Let’s say I played cheerleader, supported every hope and dream he had—went to every game, cheered him on, helped him practice his English. Held his hand and talked him down when the pressure felt overwhelming, when the only thing that felt inevitable was failure. Now, let’s say all I got in return was a stuttered, awkward apology as he dumped me and walked out the door. Let’s say that guy showed up again after years of silence just to once again waste my fucking time.”

The thing about pain is it’s not linear. What hurt five, ten years ago might not hurt today, but it might tomorrow; what hurt yesterday may never hurt again. The thing about pain is it lets you stick your head in the sand until it can’t anymore, and that’s where you are now: that window of time between Seungcheol walking out the door on the assumption you’d never see him again before he bulldozed his way back into your life has been slammed closed, locked up tight.

So you don’t even notice you’re crying until the room goes deathly silent and you can hear the drip drip drip of tears on paper. Until you watch Seungcheol’s hands flex and unflex in mid-air, stuck in that liminal space, wanting to reach out but knowing he has no right to. Until your chest aches so bad you’re sure you’re either about to break into stardust or cease to exist.

Until you say, “What, Choi Seungcheol, would you say my fucking return on investment was?” and he has nothing to say at all.

Kaori invites you to a party.

Just something small to celebrate the end of midterms and a classmate’s birthday. Nothing out of control or raucous, not even the kind of thing that’d earn a second glance from campus security. I won’t even make fun of you if you leave before eleven, is how she sold it to you, in addition to a small amount of begging and bargaining and a powerful set of puppy-dog eyes.

After everything the two of you have been through, you find it hard to say no.

So here you are, nearly eleven o’clock on a Friday, a cup of cheap beer in hand. A friend of a friend of a friend is wailing into a karaoke machine and although your ears are bleeding, it does feel nice for that to be your greatest worry. You aren’t thinking about your classes or how you’ve been prioritizing everyone else’s academic success. You aren’t thinking about whatever’s going on between Kaori and Ken. You aren’t thinking about Seungcheol.

At least you aren’t, until he walks through the door.

You’re going to continue not thinking about him at all—not about the fact he’s alone or how good he looks in a simple black T-shirt that’s a little taut in the shoulders. You’re not going to think about the way the air shifts, like the universe knows he’s important and is willing to accommodate. You’re not going to think about how Kaori catches your eye across the room, recognizes him from all her internet searches, and the way she mouths oh my god he’s so beefy at you.

You’re not going to think about how guilty you feel that she doesn’t know, because if you do you’re certain it’ll take over.

You watch Seungcheol work the room; watch as he floats between conversations, as strangers fall over themselves at the sight of him. How eager everyone is to give him something and how reluctant he is to take them. You watch as he winds up in the same circle as Kaori and how she must mention you, oh, your tutor is my roommate, because there’s a question in return before he turns and meets your gaze.

You wonder why the distance between you feels more insurmountable now than ever before.

Seungcheol finds you in your office.

It’s not a Tuesday or a Thursday, far later than four to six in the evening, but he doesn’t even bother knocking before he’s barreling in, stifling your space with his bad energy.

You haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Not since the party, if that even counts. Hasn’t bothered to reply to any of your texts or emails, and that was just fine by you, if that’s how he wanted to act, but it isn’t until he’s brooding on the other side of your desk that you realize you’re still aggrieved, too. Feels a little too familiar, him leaving you behind and in the dark.

So you don’t mean to—typically have much more professionalism than this—but when he tosses a stapled stack of papers with a barely-passing grade on your desk and says, “This is your fault,” the words come automatically and without forethought.

“Fuck off, Seungcheol.” It’s not your words that take him by surprise; more so the roll of your eyes, the accompanying huff. The impression that all of this is beneath you and nothing more than a mere annoyance. That however affected you were two weeks ago is not how affected you are anymore. “That’s what happens when you blow off your tutoring for two weeks because you’re a coward.”

He laughs, incredulous; unable to help the sound the tumbles out of his mouth. “I’m a—I’m a coward?”

“Yes,” you reply, tone giving away nothing. All he sees is feigned nonchalance despite the hurricane you feel brewing beneath the surface. “This,” you continue, pinching the corner of the paper between your fingertips and disposing of it in the trashcan beneath your desk, “is all on you, but do please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to blame me for. I’m all ears.”

You don’t miss it: the way Seungcheol’s eyes grow wide at your ‘I’m all.’ The way he thinks you’re going to punctuate that sentence with yours, and it nearly has bile rising in your throat. Makes you want to scream, rip at your hair. If the last few months have taught you anything, it’s that you are still hopelessly in love with the man across from you—the man that continues to leave before he’s left, always at your expense.

So, yeah—Seungcheol is a coward, but only when it comes to you.

But he doesn’t look much like one now, gripping so hard at the edge of your desk that his knuckles have gone white, baseball cap pulled down low enough his eyes are barely visible. He’s always been overwhelming, always carried himself with an exaggerated arrogance even when it wasn’t warranted, always took everything so seriously, and maybe that’s why you’d thought he’d treat you the same way. Take you seriously. Wouldn’t just throw it all away on a maybe thing, and that’s why it's been years and you still aren’t over it.

Maybe Seungcheol is a coward, and maybe so are you.

Because not once since he’s been back have you been able to say what you mean. Can’t seem to tell him about the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak. Played it all off as petty nonchalance because you foolishly thought that would hurt him, that you’ve been reduced to simmering ash, no hope left for a fire.

“I could never blame you for a goddamn thing,” he says, voice so deep you could drown in it.

You so desperately want to know. You don’t want to know anything at all. You want Seungcheol to explain everything to you in detail and spoil the ending, but only if it’s guaranteed to be happy. Enduring another loss like the first time—you’re not sure you can take it. Not after you two have crossed paths like this, because you’ve never quite believed in fate but you think that has to mean something. That so much time and life had transpired and you two came back together.

Today, though, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers.

Seungcheol straightens, looms at full height. Digs into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a thumb drive. Wordlessly, he hands it over, and then he’s gone just as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Again.

Kaori wants to spend the weekend moping, and you can’t come up with a good reason not to join her.

She doesn’t mention Ken once. Not when she’s sobbing over A Silent Voice and Toradora! after that. Not when she keeps glancing at her phone every couple minutes to see if she has any texts. Not when you—only halfway paying attention between grading and your own assignments—suggest ordering something for delivery, maybe that new burger place down the street you heard was good, and Kaori shuts it down so vehemently you can only assume it was Ken’s favorite place.

Kaori just cries over the man with the big dick she never expected to take so seriously, and not even your stonewalling makes her feel ashamed of it.

And there’s respectability in that kind of openness and vulnerability. At least whatever she’s feeling is honest; at least she can admit she’s sad. You think watching Kaori process her breakup might help you process yours too, years too late, so you suck in a breath and ask, “Can I tell you something or is now not a good time?”

Kaori looks over at you. Dabs a soggy tissue at her eyes. “Well, I guess it depends,” is her answer, and she doesn’t shy away from how waterlogged her voice sounds. “If you’re going to tell me you’re a Takasu and Kawashima shipper, maybe, but if it’s anything worse I’m not sure I could take it.”

“I—what? Who even are they?” She gives you a half-hearted thumbs up. You sigh in response, sink further into the couch. “It’s, uh.” Clear your throat. “Do you remember when we met sophomore year? At that party? And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything and you said, and I quote, why not, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing and I know that guy will have a huge—”

She hides her face behind her hands. “Ew, god, yes I remember that. My dick whisperer era. How embarrassing.”

“Right. And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything because I’d just gotten out of something.”

“Not really by choice, if I remember correctly. I told you if it was quiet it should’ve been loud, and then you never talked about it again.”

You nod. “I—yeah, that sounds like something I would’ve said.” You suck in a deep breath. “Listen, this is probably gonna sound bad considering I did never talk about it again, but—”

“Hey,” Kaori says, nudging you with her foot. Meant to be comforting, somehow. “It’s okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, too… most of which I’m not sure you should, actually.”

A laugh forces its way out, gives you a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the conversation you’re about to have. The need to explain it all, the need for advice. Maybe it’s not her—or anyone else’s—business, but you think you’ve kept this to yourself long enough. You and Seungcheol loved each other, once, and it seems foolish that no one knows.

Maybe Kaori had been right. Maybe love should be shouted from the rooftops; exist out in the open. Maybe something hidden in the shadows can never thrive in the light, and you knew it back then, deep down, but now it seems so obvious.

You think back to a few days before the library. Think about how things didn’t feel good but they felt okay. Think about the frustrated crease between Seungcheol’s eyebrows as he stared down at his textbook and how all you’d wanted to do was smooth it. Think about how you’d rolled your lips and tried not to laugh; how you thought it’d take a miracle to help Seungcheol pass this class.

Think about: What is the difference between the short-run and the long-run from the perspective of production theory?

Think about the short-run of your and Seungcheol’s relationship—that you’d burned bright and fast, even though it’d felt like a million years. Hadn’t dared to consider the long-run because anything beyond that bubble felt impossible.

Think about: Which of the following is not a property of isoquants?

Think about the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up when he knew the answer. That they’re always linear, he said, and you smiled at his enthusiasm, raised your hand to high-five him and dropped it when he hadn’t noticed.

You think about the explanation—isoquants can be linear when inputs are perfectly substitutable—and what those graphs look like. Downward sloping, left to right. Think about how the graphs change when the isoquants are perfect complements.

L-shaped. Less straight as the inputs become poorer substitutes.

You know what your and Seungcheol’s graph would’ve looked like back then.

So it’s easy, almost, to tell Kaori everything. You tell her about growing up in Daegu, about the smell of the azaleas at Biseulsan in the spring. You tell her about how your parents had befriended the neighbors, how they had a kid your age, that that kid was Seungcheol—yes, that Seungcheol.

She’s able to anticipate the rest from there, but you fill in the blanks of what she can’t: being sixteen and falling in love, holding hands, the clandestine notes. All those football matches and how your throat would be hoarse from cheering. How nauseous you’d felt applying to university in Seoul, how excited you were when Seungcheol said he was coming with you. That, after you arrived, it felt like you were living in fast-forward. Barely any time to breathe or adjust; no time to just be you and Seungcheol. You had to be a student, someone responsible; Seungcheol had to be a phenom.

“Could you feel it was going to happen?” Kaori asks, now sat ramrod straight, all her attention on you. “Like, did you know?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe I did? It’s hard to say now, all this time later. I know things definitely felt different, like life was pulling us in opposite directions.” You laugh, bitterness coloring the edges. “You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing him on some billboard, and I was just… normal, you know? I wasn’t some rising star athlete like he was, I just went to my classes. How was I supposed to compete with something like that?”

Your roommate hums, leans back into the pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you were. Maybe that’s why Seungcheol was worried—maybe he felt like you were losing your own identity feeling like you had to keep up.”

You want to push back, argue that you weren’t, that you didn’t, but the truth is that it’s possible. That the shadows created by Seungcheol’s dreams were so massive you wouldn’t be surprised if they unintentionally swallowed you up. “It still wasn’t his choice to make,” you say, voice barely above a whisper.

And Kaori already knows all about your hurt, listened as you explained it all and laid everything bare. So when she says, “Sometimes that’s just how it goes, though, babe,” it doesn’t feel condescending. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time. You can say now it wasn’t Seungcheol’s choice to make, because it’s been almost five years and you’ve made a life for yourself separate from him. But the—god, this is gonna sound so patronizing, I am so sorry—but you guys were so young. No one has it all figured out at that age.”

She snorts, runs a hand through her messy hair. “Shit, I’m nearly halfway to thirty and I still don’t know anything.” Adopts a frown. “What do you want now? Do you want closure? Want to try to fix things and become friends?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, biting at a hangnail. “He actually, um. The other day when he stopped by my office, he left me a USB drive? And before you ask, no I did not already look at it.”

“A USB drive? Who does this guy think he is, James Bond?” A pause. “Are you gonna look at it, though?”

You do.

Not until the silver, midnight light creeps in through your bedroom curtains and you’ve stared at the ceiling long enough; waited long enough for texts that never came, for divine intervention to, well, intervene. It never did—fair enough—so you decide to take fate by the reins. Grab your laptop, instant headache from the screen, stick the drive into the port.

It takes a second for it to load, but when it does: dozens of videos, organized by date. Vlogs, by the look of them—some from before your breakup but the majority of them from after.

You’re not sure what you expected, but it wasn’t this.

You click on the first one: a month and a half before both of you moved to Seoul. A fresh-faced Seungcheol appears on your screen, cheeks still round with adolescence. He’s in his room back in Daegu, can’t get the camera angle right. Nostalgia hits you like a ton of bricks as it pans to the side, to the wall behind his bed, and you see all his old posters. Mostly football players you couldn’t name, some girl group he used to love, a few movies. Just below them are some of the notes you’d written him in school, and they’re all you can focus on as he talks about how excited he is for the move.

The next: a few weeks after you’d started classes. By then, Seungcheol was well into the swing of things with Seoul FC. Already a big fish in a small pond, tryout offers from European teams starting to roll in. You can hear yourself in the background stressing over your first exam, wishing a generational curse upon your calculus professor. In the video, Seungcheol laughs, whispers like he’s telling the camera a secret as he talks about how nervous he is for his future. I don’t know why, he says, but it just feels like everything is about to change.

There’s a long pause between that one and the next. You understand why when you look at the date: three months after your breakup. Your hands hover uselessly above your keyboard. Whatever answers you’ve been looking for the last few years are probably in this video, but you can’t bring yourself to open it. Not right away, at least.

You click on a different one at random. Seungcheol’s somewhere in Europe, judging from the language on the signs behind him. Snow falls quietly—whenever he filmed this, it must’ve been early. No one else is around, and he cracks a joke that it’s a good thing, people would probably think he was crazy if they saw him. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going but he narrates the entire walk: points out a cafe he’s grown to love. The way to get to his practice stadium from where he’s standing. Pauses near a restaurant and laughs ruefully, shakes his head, says, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one of my teammates set me up on a blind date here and I got stood up. You’d probably think that was funny.

(You do. It also makes your chest ache.)

One from two years ago: Seungcheol in a hotel room, clearly nervous. He raises his hand to wave at the camera and you can see the corners of his nails bitten raw. Dark circles beneath his eyes; cheekbones more pronounced than you’ve ever seen them. On the screen, Seungcheol sighs, rakes a hand through freshly-bleached hair. Sucks in a deep breath as he says, I’m so nervous. I’m so—so fucking nervous and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I want to call you because you always knew what to say but that’s so fucking selfish. God, we haven’t spoken in years, and it’s my—that’s my fault, I know, so I brought this all on myself. I just want to hear your voice.

Another from a week after that: the color’s returned to his face, and he’s recording from what looks like a penthouse apartment. Sleek, modern; a small white dog napping on the bed beside him. He smiles, looks like he got his teeth fixed, looks like he’s no longer carrying around the weight of the world. Talks endlessly and excitedly about some tournament. Talks so fast you can barely keep up. Talks around words tinged with languages you don’t understand.

Seungcheol wins a championship. Records a drunk vlog from the same night, hair soaked through with god-knows-what—water, champagne, you don’t know. But he looks radiant. Looks like the culmination of two decades of dreaming. He looks happy, free, at peace. He looks like the reason he let you go, why he had to go away.

You scroll to the bottom of the files. Pause at the last video, dated seven months before the term started.

“Hi,” he says, and you can immediately tell everything is all wrong. Seungcheol’s in the dark, face only visible enough to see the tears tracking on his cheeks. “This is going to be the last one of these I make. I don’t know if you, uh—I’m sure you aren’t paying attention to me—my career—anymore, but. I, um. I got hurt. Ruptured my ACL. They’re not sure I’ll…” A sob escapes him. Has you wanting to climb through the screen to hold him, thumb away his tears, tell him everything is going to be okay. “They don’t know if I’ll ever play again.”

Seungcheol no longer looks happy, free, at peace. “Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that,” he continues. “Maybe it’ll help you to know I threw away our relationship for nothing.”

Cut to black.

The sudden silence is deafening. Has you desperately clicking back to the video you’d skipped, the one from just after your breakup. Seungcheol looks the same in that one, too, like the life has been drained out of him.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’ll ever show these to you now, since I…

I’m sure I owe you an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—things have been so hard, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I feel like my life went from zero to a hundred before I could even blink and now I’m scrambling. I didn’t think it was fair to—to drag you through that. Me being away, moving to an entirely different continent. I have faith we could do it, I just. I don’t know, baby, I don’t…

You deserve to have your own life. Be your own person. I’m so scared that the world will never see you for who you are—so beautiful and intelligent and kind. You don’t deserve to be reduced to my partner. And if you ever see this, I know you’re gonna roll your eyes. Probably call me a mean name because I took the choice away from you, because you think I’m trying to be selfless and heroic, and you’d be right. It’s not fair, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry.

I wish I could just… pluck out my brain and give it to you, because even if it killed me to do it, at least it makes sense to me. And I don’t—I don’t want you to think I’m not hurting. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I left. I know I’m making a mistake, I know I am, I just—how do I do what I think is right in the long-run when it’s not what I want right now, or ever?

I don’t want to get over you. I don’t want you to get over me, and that’s how you know I’m not acting selflessly, because you should. I want you to always be happy, I just… wish it was with me.

So, I’m going to keep making these. I’m going to take you along for the ride, wherever it takes us, because you should be here but I can only hope you can one day understand why you’re not. I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t…

I’m sorry.

I love you.

You fall asleep and dream that you were the one meant to meet him at that restaurant.

The first thing you do is make a call to your mother.

“Could you send another container of yakgwa?”

On the other end of the line, your mother tuts, motherly intuition audibly kicking into overdrive. Is probably wearing that all-knowing, sly grin she always does when you try to be coy and evasive. “What happened to the last container I sent?”

“Ah, you know Kaori loves those. They barely lasted an hour after I told her what was in there.”

She hums an acknowledgement. Sounds like she takes a sip of tea. “I remember someone else being quite fond of those cookies, too.”

“Well, they are the most popular cookies in the country, so.”

After haranguing you into admitting they’re for Seungcheol and not your roommate, your mother promises to send them quickly. A few days at most, which buys you enough time to figure out how you’re going to approach the man in question.

The vlogs have turned your entire world upside-down. Answered questions you hadn’t even known you had. Took all that anger and resentment you’d been holding onto and set it free, and now you’re just left with… a void. Want to mend things, and it makes you wonder if such a thing is even possible, if it’s too late, but you don’t let those thoughts get very far.

Instead, you let them spur you into action. Have you sitting in front of your laptop at your desk, office hours long since over, silence creeping in the more the department empties. The thrum of the airconditioning and the tick-tick-tick of the clock are all the only company you have.

You worry if it’ll show on camera, how out of sorts you feel: sweating from the nerves, dabbing at your hairline; cheeks warm to the touch. But you suck in a breath anyway, steel yourself. Look at your webcam and the daunting red circle…

And start recording.

He hadn’t gotten it at first. Not really.

There’d been a container of yakgwa outside his door with his USB drive taped to the top of it. No note—not that he needed one to know who it was from, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A goodbye? A please fuck off forever and never contact me again?

He’d just taken them inside. Ate too many of the cookies while feeling sorry for himself. Maybe had a glass or two of wine to compound the issue, and never, ever considered contacting you. Didn’t think he could bear it if you never wanted to see him again, but he just…

Well, he was drunk and alone and he missed you, and he’d rewatched all those videos he recorded a million times before when he was like this, so what was a million and one?

It’d been the same as every time before: he smiled at the happy parts, cried at all his old wounds. Wanted to reach through the screen and strangle his past self for including that part about the blind date, because he never wanted to date anyone who wasn’t you, why would he say that, felt mortified at the thought of you watching that—

And then there it was.

All the way at the bottom. A new video. One that hadn’t been recorded by him—

Hi, Cheol, you say, and that’s all it takes to reduce him to a sobbing, yearning mess. I’m not sure what to say here. I don’t really record much—sometimes for lectures when the professors are too busy, but never anything personal like this, but I watched every single one you made for me and I thought I should return the favor.

I wanted to tell you everything I’ve been up to since you left, but it hasn’t been much. I got my degree. Tutored a lot in undergrad—the same thing I’m tutoring you in now, actually. I was good at it and it felt good to have something that was mine, you know? I almost moved for grad school. Thought for a while I was going to wind up in New York, but then my parents divorced and it felt like too much, too scary, so I stayed. Kaori also stayed, so we got an apartment together. It’s not much, definitely not as nice as your place, but it’s good enough.

I don’t think I ever told you, but she was seeing a guy for a bit and he was… obsessed with you, to say the least. Thought you were the coolest person in the world. They aren’t seeing each other anymore. Ended pretty badly, but—speaking of which, maybe steer clear of Student Services for a while, too.

Sometimes it felt like failure that I wound up staying here. That I had scholarships from all these far-away, prestigious places and didn’t take advantage of them. That I gave into my fear. And now… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a reason I stayed behind. Maybe there’s a reason you ended up back here, too.

Whatever happens—I don’t want you to think I still blame you. Kaori says we do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time, and I understand now that’s what you did. Even though it hurt me, you were trying to protect me. I get it now. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to go to all these places you didn’t know. To have to deal with your injury, the loss of a dream.

You said in one of your videos that you just want me to be happy, and that’s all I want for you, too, whatever that looks like.

Here’s my address if you ever want to come by to talk.

I love you, too.

—and then he’d been up and out the door, feeling stone cold sober, running to the front of his building to wait for his ride.

Felt like the drive took hours. Must’ve hit every red light between his apartment and yours. Took the steps two at a time just to get to your door faster.

There’s a man already standing outside your door when he gets there. One that looks shocked to see him, stars in his eyes, and when Seungcheol says, “Oh, you must be Kaori’s ex,” he looks more like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. Embarrassed in front of his idol.

He knocks on your door and gets no response. Knocks again, harder this time, and he has to try really hard to stifle his laughter when your voice yells from the inside, “Fuck off, Kenji, I already told you she’s not here!”

“It’s me,” Seungcheol yells back.

There’s quiet again. Just enough time for it to feel like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest and follow Kaori’s ex down the hall.

Then you’re yanking the door open—slowly, so slowly, like you’re scared it’s not actually him. Your eyes are brimming with tears when they meet his own, and he doesn’t let himself think, just goes on instinct, when he grabs for you, hands on your cheeks, and presses his lips to yours.

Somehow you taste the same.

Somehow you taste like redemption.

You taste like home.

Seungcheol kisses you until the tears slow. Kisses you until the universe realigns, until he could map your mouth in the dark. Kisses you until all you’re all he knows again.

When he pulls away, you’re gripping at his sweatshirt, don’t want to let him go. He presses his forehead to yours, offers up a million more apologies, starts talking nonsense. Says he’s going to drop microeconomics, what the hell does he know, he barely has a passing grade anyway, what does it matter, he’s such an idiot—

And then you say, “You came back,” and nothing else matters.

“I always will.”

(Later on, as you’re trying to steady your breathing, slick with sweat, your thigh thrown over Seungcheol’s hip as he stares down at you, dopey smile on his face, you say, “Choi Seungcheol, don’t you dare drop that class. I have worked my ass off to get you to barely-passing.”)

if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for reading! i am still very new at writing for seventeen, so i hope this was acceptable. i'm now going to throw myself into the warped tour vernon fic and will hopefully not go another 7+ months without posting anything. 😭

i would love to hear your thoughts! <3

[heldbykento]

⊹₊ ⋆ ㅤ— “FEEL YOU FROM THE INSIDE . .ᐟᅟ ”

part 1 | part 2

wrd count: 1304

warnings: smut, fem!reader x josh, dry-humping, drinking, josh is a pervert, semi-plot, make out, drunk reader, smutty indications, aggressive teasing

a/n : my bi-monthly drop!!!! wrote this for my dear friend adri, and me :3 but also because i just finished until dawn and this sexy man is EVERYWHERE… will be writing more of him soon. stay tuned ! ;)

you knew your limits when it came to alcohol, what you could handle and what you couldn’t.

but joshua washington had to be the world's best sweet talker. because you’d convinced everyone at the lodge you’d be the most sober.

now you were the only one slurring out a random song with an empty bottle of expensive vodka wrapped around your perfectly jeweled up and manicured hand.

“jooooosssshhhhh…” you slurred to him, clinging onto his bicep that felt oddly larger than usual. all he could do was give that signature sexy laugh and shake his head at you.

he was gentle with you, still obviously teasing but not to an extent.

the boy knew you weren’t 100% yourself when you got this drunk.

“mhm, that’s my name.” he said to you, the two of you weren’t necessarily separated from the group, but you weren’t close enough to be in their conversations.

that was always the case when the two of you were together.

but to him, close was never close enough.

you were rubbing your face all on his flannel, cheek chubbying up and only looking up at him through your eyelids.

eyes big and full of drunken content.

to him, you were just so pretty vulnerable.

the way he was looking down at you was almost straight out of a cheap porno.

his wide eyes, now low and full of an extreme emotion that your weak brain couldn’t understand.

but you had an idea that it was what you were wearing, not to toot your own horn.

soft layers: a tight white tank top stacked with a hot pink zip-up that had fur on the hood and graphics on the back, your tight denim shorts and fleece tights that were meant to keep you warm, but anyone with a right mind knew they were just for show.

technically… you had packed more outfits like this for the trip, but that’s because you weren’t expecting the cabin to be so bitterly cold.

so it wasn’t really even your fault.

in reality, you were dressing this way on purpose.

okay maybe you were dressed like this because you loved the attention.

the peering looks he gave you anytime you walked by, the snarky comments that left his perfect mouth.

who were you to blame? look at that man.

“feelin’ clingy tonight, huh?” he taunted, laughing in your face at the way you were holding onto him and gawking.

“me—? clingy? y’r funny, washington…” all you could do was stutter and stumble on your words.

he made you nervous and you were so intoxicated you could barely think before speaking.

holding him like this made you imagine all the possibilities. all the things you could be doing to each other right now.

and it almost felt like he was thinking the same, like you were always riding on the same wavelength.

you know something else you could ride on.

it was stupid to imagine but there’s always been a tension between you two, so thick and palpable that it left you knees-weak every time he flirted with you.

“let’s just cut the bullshit. c’mon.” before you could even process that he was talking to you, a rough set of calluses were wrapped around your forearm, tugging you somewhere in the lodge that you couldn’t quite comprehend.

the second you heard a door close behind you two, you realized you were in the master bedroom,

only knowing this due to the sudden change of temperature in the room compared to the living room.

“wha- aren’t they gonna n— notice that we’re gone?” you were confused, but you trusted him.

despite the evident look of hunger and lust in his eyes. you trusted yourself in his hands.

“i don’t care. i just needed to get you alone.” his mouth made its way to your ear, slowly, as his warm breath came to touch with your skin,

your body froze up at the sudden attention, making you feel warm. “y/n. almost years i’ve been fantasizing about you, ever since we met,” he paused and cautiously reached for your hips.

his hands were warm and you felt safe, once you processed his words you became putty in them.

“huh?”

was all you could mutter out, keeping yourself in place by grabbing onto his triceps, looking up at him through your full and wispy eyelashes.

“i’m sayin’ i wanna fuck you, pornstar. your skin is so soft and warm. i wanna know,” he paused to straighten himself up and look at you.

“i wanna know what it feels like inside that pussy of yours.”

drunk, he was drunk this had to be the drinks talking. there was no way this was real.

even if he was intoxicated, that didn’t stop his words from going straight in between your legs. arousal pooling onto your lacy panties.

could’ve sworn your eyes started to roll back at the dirty talk, he was so good at it too.

“y’don’t mean that—“ he quickly cut you off, pulling you in nice and personal and grabbing at the plush skin that was covered by tight denim. “i do. with every fiber in me, i swear i do.”

the physical attention was overwhelming, and the verbal one was even more intense. you didn’t know what else to do but to give in to something you’ve been praying for for so long.

you couldn’t even suck in a breath before he was crashing his lips onto yours.

it was a kiss that made you dizzy, you melted into it though, wrapping yourself onto him.

he led you backwards, kissing you still while he was walking, pressing your back against whatever wall was close; stabilizing you with his knee between your legs.

you were holding onto the hair on the back of his head for dear life, loving the hot and messy kiss so much that it turned you on.

all the sexual frustration of not getting any in almost a year turned you into some horn dog.

your head was spinning, you could barely make out a thought. josh’s hand began to unzip your jacket, sliding it off your body while his lips started roaming down your neck.

“i ca— can’t take it,” a whine slipped out of your lips, head turned to face away from him to hide away your embarrassment.

this didn’t stop him though, you felt him smile against your skin and only itch on more.

rutting your hips for you against his clothed leg while he started sucking ravishingly against your neck, josh himself could barely keep himself from grinning at how much he’s won.

josh was the type for messy and quick sex. but when he thinks of having it with you, he wants it hard and slow.

painfully slow. so he can make you take in everything, make you feel everything all at once.

his fingers started sliding off the straps of your tight shirt, lips starting to make contact with the plush skin of your breasts.

“so fuckin’ sexy. just like i imagined. you g’nna let me give it to you? hm?” he was teasing, words muffled by the way he had his lips wrapped around your nipple.

“god i can’t wait to fill you up. gonna tell chris how good this pussy is.” josh snickered, grinning at the mess he was making of you.

and he hadn’t even fucked you yet.

he brought himself up to bite on your ear, hands teasing your breasts as your hips (which had minds of their own) kept grinding on his knee, the friction making your brain go into mush.

your mind was completely blown, blank and empty.

fingers were digging and wrinkling up his flannel as your mouth was agape.

you were all hot and bothered, needing and yearning for more.

if you felt this good only from foreplay, imagine how good being so full of his dick was gonna be.

you couldn’t wait.

you were letting out noises you didn’t even know you could make,

and he was barely getting started.

[wonderjanga]

Totally Me

When Billy first joined the league, he made sure to not tell anyone about his identity. This went on for nearly five years until he eventually started feeling bad for the others. They always look so sad. Not that blames them. He knows their names, where they live, their jobs, he knows almost everything about them, yet they know nothing about Marvel. So, Billy decided to tell them some things about himself, only it’s not himself. He told them about his dad, or at least what he remembers. He can’t exactly tell them he’s a twelve year old radio show host who lives in an apartment with his sister and his friend. Can he?

Supes: *talking about Jon*

Hermes: “Alright, Batson. You can do this!” *hyping him up like a sports coach*

Marvel: “He sounds awesome. The way you talk about him reminds me of Billy.”

Supes: “Billy? Who’s that?”

Marvel: *smiles* “My son.”

Supes: *jaw drops*

Clark was so happy his friend finally opened up with something about his personal life. He was smiling the entire day. This information eventually got around to the others so they tried to see if they could find out more too.

GA: “So, Cap, are you finally gonna come one of my mixers?” (ref to a fanfic I can’t remember the name of) *bros digging for information to see if cap is in a relationship*

Achilles: “Come on, Billy, let’s go! You can do this!”

Marvel: “No, I have a wife.”

GA: “A wife? What do you mean you have a wife? I expected a girlfriend not a wife?”

Marvel: *slightly nervous because he thinks Green Arrow might not believe him* “Yeah, well, I have a wife, okay?”

GA: “How long have you guys been married?”

Marvel: “Uh…” *doesn’t even know* “Like since 19-”

GA: “19??”

Marvel: “Yeah, 1920 or 30 something.” *is pretty sure that’s correct*

GA: “You’ve been married to your wife for almost 100 years…?”

Marvel: “Uh… yeah. Now that I think about it, yeah.”

By the way, anything Billy tells these guys, goes straight into the rumor mill. Once he divulges a little piece of information it’ll take like an hour, and then everyone knows.

Bruce even got in on the action by grabbing a form and walking up to Marvel:

Batman: “Captain, on your registration papers you left your occupation blank. Could you fill it out?”

Marvel: “Ah, sure!” *fills it out*

Batman: “Thank you.” *walks away and rounds a corner, only to be met with Clark*

Supes: “So, what’s his job?” *is hoping that Marvel is a reporter because he and Marvel have yapped about reporting multiple times*

Batman: *looks at the form* “He’s an archaeologist.”

Supes: “Archaeologist?” *sounds a little dumbfounded* “Huh. That seems so Marvel-like, yet so un-Marvel-like at the same time.”

Also, Billy does actually like archaeology. It’s one of bro’s special interests. In fact, to see if Marvel was telling the truth, Bruce asked a little bit about archaeology and was met with an hour long rant about how amazing it was.

[slapintoaslimjim]

Shoto Todoroki boyfriend headcanons !

fem pronouns used :3

-let’s get one thing straight, he’s about to absolutely SPOIL you rotten

-need your hair redone? he’s got you an appointment setup already. lashes? set up. nails? again, set up. those shoes you’ve been eyeing but don’t want to “waste your money on”? they’re on your bed waiting for you when you get home :3

-he just takes me as the type to snatch his daddy’s card out both spite of his dad, and because he loves you

-expect random bouquets of flowers at random times with a sweet letter in them

-or, anytime he comes back from the store, he 100% bought you something like your favorite candy, food, or something that reminded him of you

-he feels so at ease when he’s with you. so smiley, and actually talks a lot

-you’re definitely his safe space and personal diary and gradually over time he opens up more and more without realizing it

-LOVES his hair being played with!!

-your relationship is the definition of “private but never secret”

-because shoto believes that what goes on IN your two relationship is nobody’s business; but he’s damn sure not going to keep his beautiful girl a secret from the world

-so yes, you will in fact still be posted; completely random and without asking

-definitely someone who will call you “love” or “darling” instead of your name. he gets so used to calling you “love” and “darling” to the point it feels illegal to him to call you by your name

-i can see him being a little possessive of you but not in a toxic manner. he just really loves you and you're the first thing he's had that he can say is his own without his family coming into the picture and having any credit for it.

-he’s so protective of you like oh my gosh. rather it be someone flirting with you, or someone trying to act crazy, he’s right there

-like if someone tries to be rude to you he’ll say “we’re not doing that, nice talk” and walk away with his arm around your waist.

-if you’re someone who uses phrases like “i’m gonna eat you” or “i wanna chew on you” just be prepared for a response like “please don’t that might hurt 🙁”

-he’s unintentionally sassy at times though

-like yes he's your number one supporter don't get me wrong, but if you're the type (like me lol) to do a pre-shower makeup look just to see his reaction and mess with him..

-"oh!.. it's definitely a look.."

-or if you're the stubborn type and insist on doing something by yourself and end up getting frustrated or fed up, he'll just watch with a shit eating grin, arms crossed and ask "still wanna do it yourself?"

-he's so casual with pda, like at the start of the relationship he was hesitant because he didn't want to make you uncomfortable. but now? his arm LIVES around your waist