#chay likes his men pathetic and wet

[loveinwisteria]

people writing fanfic where kim is a Super Cool Dude need to embrace the face that this kiddo is a loser with no game, a murder board hidden behind a giant picture of Himself, and who was flattered at his fan’s stalker tendencies. Stop falling for the WiK propaganda. Sure, the boy can kill a man with his bare hands but can he hold a boy’s hand without having 16 existential crises? I think not

[kinnbig]

hi hello i’m Obsessed with your posts about who of the kinnporsche men are the most pathetic and horny (the way you logically analyse it is sending me) and i was wondering if you had any thoughts about who is the worst at flirting? :))

hi hello! thank you ah they are a lot of fun to make! and omg. okay. so i have excluded porsche and chay from this because those brothers both have game (even if it's kinda weird game)! this time, points are awarded for good (or... not awful) flirting and deducted for Bad flirting, so the worst flirt is the one with the least amount of points. science.

Kinn's guide to flirting:

make intense eye contact in the mirror as you dress him in a fancy suit +1 

talk about his dead parents and committing his first murder before you kiss him for the first time -2

ask him if he’d like you if he was a girl -1 

smash, then insist he’s not special and have your bodyguards punish him -3 

imply that he has a small dick when you’re handcuffed together in the wilderness -1

tell him to leave… maybe because he’d sacrifice a hand for you. maybe because you crossed his line. maybe- maybe because you like it when he’s happy. +3

make so, so many gun/dick puns -1

reminisce with your ex in front of him -1

lock him up in a dungeon for real -3

take him on a helicopter ride for his birthday +2

suggest he give up smoking and should put your dick in his mouth instead of cigarettes -1

total: -7

Vegas' guide to flirting:

light his cigarette for him +1

suggest he comes and works for you after roasting your cousin over noodles +1  2a. get hit in the head by a tray -2

bring him a limp rose in a hospital room (get rejected) -2

buy him a sick motorbike +2

offer him a job, then try and kiss him in your bathroom (get rejected again) -2

dip your wet clothed leggies in a pool, and tell him to be nice if he ever has to kill you -1

...tie him up in a warehouse, threaten to kill him so many times, be in cahoots with the guy that kidnapped his brother -3

Vegas' guide to flirting (take 2):

‘accidentally’ give him your monster condom for your magnum dong +1

tie him up in your basement -2 

electrocute his balls -3 

threaten his grandma -2 

beat him with a belt, make him eat off the floor, call him your pet -2 

…cry about your daddy issues -2

bond over your mutual daddy issues -1  

have a funeral for your pet hedgehog together -1

eat his ass +5 

tell him he’s sexy +2

ask him to shoot you -2

tell him he’s not your pet any more +2  12a. …in front of your little brother -1

total: -12

Kim's guide to flirting:

lie about your motivations for getting to know him -2

give him a guitar as a gift +2

ask him to write you a love song +2

give him a lil kiss on the cheek +1

when he tells you he loves you, tell him you’re hungry -1

…ghost him -2

leave him crying on the ground -1

stalk him to a club, punch his friends, and tell him not to do drugs -1

leave him dead bodies as gifts -2

plagiarise his own song to try and win him back -1

total: -5

.....it's vegas. obviously.

more very scientific kinnporsche research

[thewinedarksea]

the asked-for coffee shop au. 

tw: for the ink mage, who is himself a warning; mild abuse??; overly complicated starbucks orders; the girl, who is little knife, who is also a warning in her own right. my point is they’re all kind of awful, even in the pastel-y iteration of a coffee shop.

“Cinnamon shortbread latte. Three shots of espresso, raspberry whipped cream. Add some chocolate syrup, too, I don’t care how much. Venti.”

The voice is cool and flatly annoyed, rattling off the order with the air of someone who has done it a hundred times before and will do it a hundred times again, but they’d better not have to within the next three seconds or someone’s getting fired. 

Not that they’ll have to. The girl writes down the order, accepts the handful of crumpled dollar bills passed wordlessly over the counter, and slides the cup down to the barista. She doesn’t look up, and the customer leaves without speaking again. In her peripheral she watches the long edge of their coat whip across the tiled floor, black and spotted with dust, until it vanishes from her sight, and then goes back to counting down in her head until the end of her shift. 

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“Caramel macchiato. Almond milk, three shots of espresso, a pump of vanilla syrup. Venti.”

Two days later; same voice, same level annoyance. Same unnecessarily complicated order. It’s interesting enough that the girl deigns to glance up, and comes face to face with one of the prettiest men she’s ever seen: sharp cheekbones and large, dark eyes, framed by sweeping lashes. His hair is gathered into a messy bun, and red ink marks the left side of his face, stretching from the corner of his eye to just above his jaw. There’s a University-issue lanyard dangling around his neck. 

He fishes a wad of dollar bills from one of the pockets of his coat; his fingers are long and slender, ink-smudged as the rest of him and cold where they brush against her skin. She takes them. Rings him up. Slides the cup down the counter with a flick of her wrist.

She spends the next few customers stealing glances in his direction as she writes down orders, watching the irritated way his fingers drum across the counter, the faint sneer of disdain as he plucks his drink from her coworker’s hand and stalks off to get a straw. 

He sits in one of their corner booths and upends his bag onto the table. Papers fly in a snowstorm across the laminated surface.

Interesting. That’s what he is. The girl likes interesting—it helps stave off the boredom.

————————

His title, as far as she can find after a few hours spent googling ‘ink-covered asshole with no manners,’ is the Ink Mage, and he works in the University’s Theoretical Spellwork department. Some kind of prodigy in his field, concentrating in spell creation and sustainment, with the occasional foray into void studies and runes. 

He has a .5 on ratemyprofessor—“for excessive hotness,” reads the sole non-zero rating. “at least you’ll be able to admire his cheekbones as he drives you down the path of suicide.” 

Their shop does a steady enough business in University students coming in for caffeinated courage and to have a quiet place to cry for finals; the girl hasn’t seen any in a while, and she supposes now she knows why. That’s one mystery she didn’t care about solved, then. 

Idly, she clicks through a few of his published articles, gets distracted by the flame wars he ignites in the comments, and then, bored, wanders off to stare at a wall and not do her chemistry homework. 

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“Iced caffè americano. One espresso shot. Venti.”

“Vanilla latte. Soy milk, iced, two pumps of chocolate syrup. Venti.”

————————

They fall into a routine. The Ink Mage comes in Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, rattles off a complicated order, and retreats to the corner booth and his piles upon piles of paper where he stays for several hours, scribbling and downing coffee and occasionally swearing violently.

After the fifth visit, she starts bringing his coffee to the booth after he orders it. After the tenth, she starts bringing refills every three hours, and a collection of napkins for him to write on because her manager complains when he starts writing on the walls and her manager’s voice is very, very irking. After the twentieth she settles into the booth across him during her break—she has to shift a stack of essays, all marked with red ink and scorched around the edges—and waits to see what he’ll do.

He ignores her for the entire thirty minutes, and then tells her to bring him a cake pop when she gets up to leave. 

————————

Half the time the store can only afford to have one staff member working the counter, which means the girl ends up making a lot of the Ink Mage’s drinks. It’s a lesson in multitasking, and also the ingredients they have stashed in the various drawers and cubby holes. 

The first time she fucks up his order he dumps the entire cup over her head. She has to make him a new one, free of charge, and then clean up the spill on the floor, iced mocha dripping down her neck all the while. When her manager yells at her later it’s all she can do to keep from rolling her eyes, or punching her, or setting the store on fire. She settles for staring blankly until she’s dismissed.

Patience. She’s learning it.

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“Java chip frappuccino. Five shots of espresso. Do you have a size larger than a venti? Forget it. Just double the order, both ventis. Extra whipped cream. I don’t care how much caramel syrup you add just add some.”

The Ink Mage looks harried: there’s five pens stuck in his bun, two with the caps off, and ink splatters his cheeks and trails down the curve of his neck in a ribbon of black. He’s thinner, too, the planes of his face even more pronounced than usual, and against the pallor of his skin the bruises around his eyes stand out like blood on snow. 

Silently, the girl reaches for the cups.

————————

“My students are a bunch of soft, blubbering idiots who couldn’t tell the difference between a summoning rune and a summoner rune if I carved it into their foreheads.”

The girl makes a noise in the back of her throat, less sympathy than acknowledgement, and edges the blueberry scone she’d brought him a bit closer. The Ink Mage ignores it. Honestly, he may not even see it; he’s calmed somewhat with his double order and the refills she’s brought since then, but his eyes are still dark-rimmed, and another pen has made its way into the nest of his hair. Finals, it seems, take their toll even on him.

“No,” the Ink Mage continues, “No, I refuse to handhold a bunch of children through the finer parts of basic runal spellwork and grade their subpar garbage as if it means something, as if they will amount to anything more in their worthless, pathetic lives than to be the absolute dregs of human innovation. Honestly. If these little brats want me to read their drivel the least they could do is type in an interesting font.”

With deliberate care he gathers the entire stack of essays before him and, getting up, tips them into the trash can. 

“There,” he says. “Problem solved.” Then he sits back down and picks up the scone. Her scone.

Warmth bubbles in the girl’s stomach and fizzes through her bloodstream. Not happiness, exactly, but maybe satisfaction. Contentment. Knowledge of a job well done. 

————————

The days tick past. The register dings, dings again. The girl’s never bored on shift, now; if she’s not seeing the Ink Mage, she’s counting down to his visits, measuring the time in the bland orders and blander customers that fill the time in between. 

On her breaks she comes to share the booth with him, bringing pastries and refills of whatever confection he’s ordered that day. Equations and theories and critiques of others’ works radiate out from him as he sits, a gangly black spider in the center of his web. He has no laptop (“useless technological drivel. It can be hacked”) and no pencils (“only idiots and Professor Miller need to erase their work”), and so his work is written on paper or dashed onto napkins in his tiny, cramped scrawl, ink weeping across it all. 

The first time she undresses to find ink staining her own arms, she stares at the shower for thirty minutes before she can bear to step beneath the cold spray of water and wash it away.

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“Chai tea latte. No foam, skim milk, three pumps of caramel sauce. Venti.”

“Iced coffee. Ten pumps vanilla, five pumps hazelnut, eight pumps caramel, a splash of soy, light ice, double-blended. Venti."

————————

“Latte. Nonfat, two percent foam, three espresso shots, five pumps mocha,” the Ink Mage says on his fiftieth visit, and then, “What do you know about theoretical spellwork?”

She blinks at him. The back of her mind is still scrambling to figure out what the fuck ‘two percent foam’ means and how to make it a reality. “It’s theoretical,” she says after a stretching pause.

“Mm.” 

He goes to sit at his usual booth. It feels like she’s failed, and her hands shake so badly she has to remake his drink three times over.

————————

“I read Zhang’s Animus Theory,” she tells him the following visit. The words rush out of her, too loud and too desperate in the hushed, coffee-fragrant air. She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood to keep herself silent. 

At her words the Ink Mage pauses, examining her with the level of intensity he typically reserves for judging the artistry of the caramel drizzle on his drinks. The girl has never noticed how blue his eyes are before—not black but indigo, like wet ink, or the deep, velvety centers of the flowers blooming on her windowsill. 

“Animus is trash,” he says dismissively, and her heart does something strange and painful in her chest. “Chocolate chip frappuccino. Two pumps of every syrup you have, extra coffee whipped cream. Venti.”

————————

“Li. Whistler. Astre’s an idiot, but their theory is solid. Diaz is annoying, but accurate; Okada’s Synthesis is a good groundwork if you’re trying to break into incantational magics.” The Ink Mage frowns at her over the lip of his refill. “Are you writing this down, girl?”

“I’ll remember.”

She will. It’s his words, she thinks; his coffee order, his insults, the occasional tidbit of information he deigns to share with her, all of them creeping into the soft gray tissue of her brain and nesting there. Like maggots in the carcass of some strange animal, breeding new life.

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“Hazelnut macchiato. Four shots of espresso, extra whip, light ice. Venti.” 

“Pumpkin spice latte. One shot of espresso, seven pumps pumpkin, light foam, light whip, light caramel drizzle. Venti.”

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On his seventy-second visit to the shop the Ink Mage pauses after he orders, frowning across the counter at her.  

“Where do you go to school?” 

She tells him, and his mouth curls with disgust. 

“Transfer. Now.” When she doesn’t respond, merely cocking her head, birdlike, he rolls his eyes. “I need a new lab assistant—mine are useless.” 

“I’m failing all of my classes.” There’s no way she can get in—it’s the University, after all. People would kill for a place. People do kill for a place. 

The Ink Mage rolls his eyes again, harder. “Lab assistant. Mine.”

A good point, but:

“You don’t even know my name,” she feels compelled to point out. 

“And?”

And—

Well. And nothing. And being the Ink Mage’s assistant sounds mildly more interesting than being a barista, and she likes the sound of the word ‘mine’ in his voice: cool, level, lips shaping the ‘m’ and tongue flicking sharp around the ‘e.’

She shrugs, and slides his cup down the counter with the ease of familiarity. “Okay.”

During her break she brings him an orange scone, a day old and slightly stale, and a fresh cup of matcha green tea (iced, heavy on the whipped cream). The booth is awash in papers; she has to shove a few stacks aside so that she can sit, curled up and small, in the seat across from him. Then she breaks out her beaten-up laptop and begins filling out the transfer application. 

She skips over all the parts about personal information, statements. The only thing that matters is the name of the Ink Mage, bold and black, across the top of the form.