#digital SAT practice tests

[gunjangupta08]

Your Guide to the Digital SAT Prep Courses

Introduction: Preparing for the SAT has entered a new era with the rise of Digital SAT Prep Courses. These online resources are reshaping the way students approach standardized test readiness, providing a convenient, interactive, and personalized learning experience. Let's explore the advantages of embracing this digital revolution.

The Freedom to Learn Anytime, Anywhere Digital SAT Prep Courses break the chains of traditional study methods. Offering the freedom to learn at your own pace, these courses allow you to study whenever and wherever suits your schedule. No longer confined to a rigid classroom structure, you can tailor your preparation to align with your unique lifestyle.

Interactive Engagement for Effective Learning Say goodbye to dull textbooks and hello to interactive learning modules. Digital SAT Prep Courses use engaging multimedia, interactive quizzes, and real-time feedback to make studying enjoyable and effective. Visual aids and simulations bring concepts to life, making complex topics more accessible and memorable.

Tailored Learning Paths for Individual Success Every student is unique, and Digital SAT Prep Courses recognize this. Through adaptive algorithms, these courses assess your strengths and weaknesses, crafting a personalized learning path. This targeted approach ensures that you focus on areas that need improvement, optimizing your study time and boosting your confidence.

Choosing the Right Course With numerous options available, it's essential to select the right Digital SAT Prep Course. Look for platforms that offer a user-friendly interface, comprehensive content coverage, and adaptive learning features. This section guides you through the criteria to consider when making this crucial decision.

[caenewdelhi]

A Roadmap to Triumph: Excelling Through SAT Practice Tests and GMAT Coaching

In this journey, patterned tests play a crucial duty in forming our futures. For students striving to secure a spot in esteemed institutions, the two essential tools stand out: digital SAT practice tests and GMAT coaching. These resources offer pathways to success, guiding students through the complexities of exams and enhancing their preparation.

Understanding SAT 

Digital SAT practice tests are like stepping stones toward exam success. These tests mimic the actual SAT experience, letting you get a feel for what the real deal is like. Moreover, they help you understand the different question types and formats you'll encounter. Practice tests are your study companions, allowing you to assess your strengths and pinpoint areas where you need improvement.

The Convenience Factor: Practicing Anytime, Anywhere

One of the greatest advantages of digital SAT practice tests is their flexibility. You can access these tests whenever and wherever you want. This is a significant plus for students juggling classes, extracurricular activities, and other commitments. Additionally, the next response you endure later in each test is priceless. It helps you label mistakes, get or give an advantage over bureaucracy, and path your progress.

A Personalized Approach

Moving forward, let's talk about GMAT coaching classes. These classes offer something special that practice tests alone might not: personalised guidance. Instructors who are experts in the subject walk you through the GMAT intricacies. Furthermore, these classes encourage peer interaction, allowing you to learn from others' experiences and strategies.

Structured Learning for GMAT Success

Moreover, GMAT coaching classes provide a structured approach to learning. They help you navigate the sea of study materials and resources, ensuring that you cover all sections of the GMAT. This kind of organised planning ensures that no topic is left untouched, giving you a well-rounded understanding of what you'll face on the exam day.

Building Confidence

Confidence is key when you're facing a high-stakes exam like the GMAT. And this is where GMAT coaching classes shine. Instructors with a wealth of experience not only teach you but also motivate you. Their guidance boosts your confidence, making you feel ready to tackle whatever the exam throws at you. Moreover, mock tests held under exam-like conditions prepare you mentally and emotionally.

Tailored Strategies for Individual Growth

No two students are the same. That's where GMAT coaching classes make a difference. They understand that each student has unique strengths and areas to work on. Therefore, these classes offer customised strategies. Whether it's the quantitative section, verbal skills, or analytical writing, you'll get personalised attention to hone your skills effectively.

Your Path to Success

In conclusion, the journey to success in standardised tests might seem challenging, but it's entirely achievable with the right resources. Digital SAT practice tests and GMAT coaching classes are like a dynamic duo that can guide you through this journey. Furthermore, the flexibility and feedback from practice tests, along with the personalised guidance and structured learning from coaching classes, create a powerful combination.

With these tools by your side, you'll navigate the academic landscape with confidence. So, as you embark on your educational voyage, remember that the combination of practice tests and coaching classes can make the road to success smoother and more rewarding.

Source: https://ai.ceo/read-blog/78406 

[gt-prep]

10 Useful Tips to Prepare for the Digital SAT

Introduction

The new SAT is here, and it's a bit different than the previous version. It's also more difficult than ever to get an exceptional score on this test—but if you know what to expect and how to succeed, it can be done! Below are 10 tips that will help you prepare for the digital SAT as best as possible.

How to Prepare for Digital SAT in 10 Easy Steps:

1. Know the Exam Structure

The SAT is a computer-based test. It consists of two test sections: Math and Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.

The Math section is 60 minutes long, while the Reading section lasts 65 minutes; both are divided into multiple parts that you must answer in succession within their allotted time frame. The Writing section lasts 25 minutes, but it's not divided into separate parts like the other sections are--you'll have to finish your essay in one sitting!

2. Take a Practice Test

Taking a mock test is one of the finest ways to prepare for the SAT. The best way to do this is under real conditions, so make sure you use a timer and calculator if you have them available.

3. Use the Official Guide

The official guide is the best source of information about the new digital SAT. It contains practice tests, so you can see what the test will look like and how it works.

The College Board has released an updated version of its flagship exam book for 2019--and it's packed with everything you need to know before taking your first official test on Saturday, May 4th!

4. Practice Using Your Calculator

Use a calculator that is similar to the one you will use on test day.

Practice using the calculator in different ways.

Practice using the calculator in different modes.

Practice using the calculator with different types of problems:     addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; fractions; exponents and roots; powers and roots; polynomials (polynomial addition/subtraction); logarithms (log base 10); trigonometry     (sine/cosine).

5. Learn the New Math Topics You'll Encounter on the SAT.

The new SAT Math section is a lot like the old one, but with some key differences. Here are the main topics you'll want to know:

Arithmetic and Number Properties (30%)

Algebra (25%)

Geometry (20%)

Data Analysis & Probability (15%)

                            [Read More: Tips To Score 800 On SAT Math Section]

6. Familiarize Yourself with the New Reading Question Types.

The main idea of a passage is the general idea that the author wants you to take away from reading it.

Tone is how an author sounds when writing about their subject, or what kind of attitude they have toward their topic.

Purpose refers to why an author wrote a particular piece--whether     it was for entertainment, persuasion, or education;

Perspective refers to where an author is coming from in terms of     knowledge or experience;

Point-of-view (POV) refers to whether someone else has written something about your topic and how much authority does that writer have?

7. Use a Timer and Try to Finish Early.

Use the timer on the screen

Try to finish early

Don't spend too much time on any one question, but don't leave questions unanswered. You can always return to them later if you have time.

8. Focus on Improving Your Weak Areas.

When you're preparing for the SAT, it's important to focus on your weak areas. If you are unsure about a topic or concept, consider taking a class in that area or getting extra help from a tutor. It's also helpful to practice with practice tests in the same time frame as the real SAT.

9. Know How to Navigate the New Test Interface.

The new interface is much more user-friendly than the old one. It has a lot of new features that help you focus on the test questions and eliminate distractions, so you can perform your best.

Also, note how easy it is now for students with disabilities or other impairments (such as color blindness) because everything is in black text on white backgrounds!

10. Start Preparing Early!

Start Preparing Early!

Start studying at least 2 months before the test date, and if possible, start even earlier. The more time you spend studying, the better prepared you will be for the SAT.

How to Study Effectively:

Set aside time every day (or at least 3-4 times per week) to study in a quiet place where no one can disturb you.

Pick out topics that are difficult for you and focus on those first; then move on to easier ones later on in your preparation process so that by test day all of your skills have been strengthened equally.

How To Manage Your Time Well: -Study early in the morning when     people aren't distracting or interrupting

                                [Read More: Is SAT Math Hard For Indian Students?]

Conclusion

The SAT is an important test, and you need to be prepared for it. The tips we've shared here are meant to help you get the most out of your SAT experience by making sure that all aspects of your preparation are in order before test day arrives. They may seem like small things, but they can make all the difference!

[biueprint]

are you fucking serious rn. i have 2 different princeton review books for the SAT.

in 5 tests, 3 of them are the exact same.

in one book, it has TWO EXACT TESTS.

in the other book, ITS ONLY TEST IS A COPY.

i am literally going to shit myself. and nobody can stop me.

[ravenslvt]

☆ choso kamo x f!reader ☆

cw: smut! college au! virgin choso! kinda pervy choso! unprotected sex! mutual pining!

masterlist

busy thinking about your college classmate choso who has the biggest crush on you.

the pretty girl who sits next to him in his math lecture.

when you spoke to him for the first time asking for the notes from your class, he practically scrambled to get out his notebook for you to copy off of.

and when you asked for his number with a sweet smile on your pretty face (for homework! of course!) he got so nervous, going over the number over and over in his head praying he didn’t accidentally hit the wrong digit.

his breath hitches when his phone lights up a day or two later.

‘hey!! i’m so behind in math, wondering if you’d like to help me study later :)’

he blinked a couple times, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks or if you meant to text someone else. but all his worries dispersed when another text comes through.

‘this is choso, right?’

he has no idea how he ended up in your dorm room, sitting on your cute little bed with open textbooks surrounding you two.

you sigh, leaning your back against the headboard while stretching out your arms.

you were sure your brain was fried from all this mind numbing work.

“this is boring, why don’t we do something else.” your gaze falls on the dark haired boy in front of you, his eyes meeting your own. he gulped, an eyebrow quirked.

“like what?” he asks, sitting up.

you only just met him two months ago, so you didn't know a lot about the man.

you think for a second, lips pursing together as you drum your fingers along your thigh.

“you ever kiss a girl before, choso?” you ask, head tilting to the side as you watch for his reaction.

his eyes widen at your question.

“i-“ he opens his mouth to speak, nervous under your gaze.

you patiently wait for him to gather his thoughts, not wanting to make him uncomfortable.

“choso?” you softly ask. he didn’t even notice the way you were sitting closer to him, your thighs brushing against eachother.

he finally looks up at you, pink dusting on his cheeks.

“i-no, i haven’t.” he sheepishly admits, emberassed you would make fun of him or even kick him out of your room.

but instead you give him a shocked look.

“really? but you’re- i mean you’re hot.” you honestly say, making him chuckle. the anxiety built up in his body instantly relieving.

he knew he wasn’t ugly by any means, but your forwardness made his heart flutter. you always made him so nervous.

sure, he was pretty inexperienced, but he wasn’t innocent by any means. he’s watched a fair amount of porn, especially in his single dorm room at night.

he just spent most of his life watching over and taking care of his younger brothers. he was never really interested in finding a girlfriend. that was until he saw you on the first day of classes.

but the way you sat next to him on that first day, introducing yourself with a cute smile. you never left his mind since.

“could i- shit, can i-“ he stutters.

you giggle at his sudden shyness.

“you wanna kiss me, cho?” he shudders when you lean up by his ear to basically whisper to him.

“fuck, yes. so badly” all his shame flies out the window when your pretty little hand rests on his thigh.

his breath hitches when you crawl atop his lap, straddling him. fuck he was hoping you couldn’t feel how he instantly got hard from it.

you start slow, not wanting to overwhelm him. gently cupping his cheek with your hand, you lean in, slowly brushing your lips against his, testing the waters.

one of his hands go to tangle themself in your hair, while his other held your waist gently. practically forcing you closer to him.

your lips move together, slowly at first, but eventually getting more and more aggressive. almost needy.

when you give his mouth an experimental lick, his tongue fighting with yours, you unconsciously roll your hips into him, making him moan into the kiss.

you pulled back, embarrassed you could barely control yourself from a make out session.

“s-sorry.”

fuck you were cute when you’re flustered.

“don’t be sorry. it’s hot.” he smiles, holding you by the back of your neck to bring you back into another kiss. your hands rest on his chest.

with all the baggy clothes he wears, it's hard to tell what a good body he has.

his hands move to your hips, grinding you against his clothed cock.

you whine when your clothed clit rubs against him just right.

“please, can i taste you. wanna eat you out.” he begs, kissing down your jaw down to your neck.

“are you sure? you really don’t have to.” you say, his kisses never ceasing.

“been dreaming of eating your pussy, baby.” he murmurs against your neck, biting down in a few spots. he reluctantly pulls back, letting you lie comfortably against your pillow.

your heart races as you peel your bottoms off, leaving you in your cute little panties. he crawls between your thighs, groaning at the sight.

“did you know this was gonna happen?” he smirks at the sight of your lacy panties. you smile. of course you did

“lucky guess.” you shrug.

he smirks, eyes drawn to your damp panties. he experiments with a lick over the wet patch, eliciting a small gasp from you.

“don’t tease” you pout down at him, making him chuckle. he pulls your panties to the side, revealing your wet cunt.

a wave of nervousness washes over you when he just stares in awe. you thought maybe he was gonna back out.

“even prettier than i imagined” he sighs, immediately delving in, making your gasp turn into a soft moan.

your mind wanders for a moment at the thought of him imagining this before. your hands finding themselves reaching under your shirt to play with your tits as he goes down on you.

he tries his hardest to do to you what he’s seen in porn. goes from flicking his tongue over your sensitive clit, to sucking on it which made your thighs tighten around his head.

he knew he found your most sensitive spot when his tongue flicked over a certain area, making you buck your hips up into him.

your hands move to grip in his messy dark hair, unconsciously tugging as he eats you out like a mad man.

you can’t see the way he slowly grinds his hips into the mattress, his cock straining almost painfully through his sweatpants.

your mind is in a frenzy, body squirming trying to escape how good it felt, but also rutting your hips up into his mouth because you really didn’t want him to stop.

not that he even would, he's in heaven right now. eating the pussy of the girl he’s jerked off too at least several times at this point.

his hands grip at the bottom of your thighs, pulling you closer to his face as he prods his tongue into your tight hole, nose brushing against your clit. you moan, tugging at his hair for more and he groans at the harsh tug. he fucking loves it.

you were sure you were so close as he fucks you with his tongue. toes curling so hard you're scared you’re gonna get a cramp.

“choso, please don’t stop” you beg, grinding up into his unrelenting mouth.

he just hums into your cunt in acknowledgement, his movements never stopping as you coat his tongue.

your heels dig into his back, hands tugging at his dark locs, the vibration of his groan making you moan out his name as you cum on his mouth.

you were sure he was lying about being inexperienced with how hard he made you cum. but the way he stared at you like you were a fucking goddess made you think otherwise.

you whine when you realize he still hasn’t stopped lapping at your sensitive pussy. your hips jolt up in overstimulation, making him come back to earth and pulling away.

“sorry” he pants, wiping off his lower face with the sleeve of his hoodie, licking his lips.

“don’t be sorry” you giggle, pulling him up so he’s hovering over you, strong arms on either side of your head. kissing you again. your essence surrounding his tongue.

he grinds his clothed erection into you, making you feel a little bad for neglecting him.

you reach your hand down to graze over him, making him groan and buck into you.

you pat his arm, signalling for him to switch places with you. he nods, sitting against the headboard.

you crawl into his lap, straddling him so you’re face to face. you smile, admiring how pretty he is.

“off?” you ask, tugging at his nice oversized hoodie. he nods, you lean back to let him pull it off of his frame, throwing the hoodie somewhere on your floor.

you made a mental note to defiantly steal that later.

it is so fucked up this man hides this monster of a body behind all those baggy clothes.

you can’t help but stare at his defined chest, running a hand down his stomach and to his hard cock. he moans when you rub him over the fabric of his pants, the heat of your hand making him go lightheaded.

your thumbs hook in his waistband, tugging down his hips, he helps you, bringing them down to his ankles.

you watch the way his thick, pale cock sits so pretty standing up against his stomach, the tip raging and pink from all the teasing.

you reach down to run your thumb over his slit, making him shiver. you felt bad teasing, but his reactions were so adorable.

you kiss and suck marks down his neck, down to his defined chest that you just wanted to bite.

his eyes go down to your throbbing pussy, his thumb innocently pulls apart your folds, rubbing at your clit generously. you mewl against him, hand gripping tighter against his cock.

if just your hand felt this good, he was imagining how amazing your cunt is gonna feel.

he was embarrassingly close, but he didn’t wanna cum like this.

“please” he pants, pushing your hand away. you lean in to kiss his cheek.

“hmm?” you look at him, curiously.

“wanna fuck you so bad, pretty. please let me fuck you, you’re so perfect i-“ he begs. you shut him up with a heated kiss, tongues clashing together as you give him mercy.

you set your knees on either side of his thighs, hovering over his cock.

“tell me if you wanna stop, ok?” you sweetly smile at him.

‘doubt it’ he thought. but he nods, promising.

you line him up with your entrance, very slowly sinking down on him, your face scrunches up a bit from the stretch of his sheer size.

you sigh when you’re finally seated on his pulsing cock, his hands gripping hard at your waist. his head against your shoulder in concentration of not cumming on the spot.

on instinct he bucks up into your heat, making you groan and squeeze around him, hips rolling.

“f-fuck, don’t do that or i’m gonna cum” he moans, hands holding you in place so you don’t squirm.

you giggle, kissing his cheek down his jaw, letting him collect himself.

after a few moments he does an experimental roll upwards, making you softly gasp. he keeps doing this. wanting more friction, you start bouncing yourself up and down his cock.

"s'big" you whine.

he moans, hands groping at your ass to help you ride him. he looks up at you, tits bouncing through your thin little top.

“so pretty” he lifts up the bottom of your shirt to uncover your tits, taking one into his mouth. you whine, leaning into him to feel him closer.

he nibbles and sucks on your tits, pulling off to stare at your fucked out face. you stare down at him, eyes half lidded and mouth slightly open.

“kiss” you mumble to him.

he leans in, giving you a messy kiss as you fuck each other with a need for more. the way his dick fit deliciously inside of your snug pussy, almost sucking him in completely.

your hands tangle in the back of his hair, tugging and making his hips sputter. you try to do it again, but he removes your hands and puts them back on his shoulders.

"next time, g-god, m'gonna fuck you for hours, baby. promise." he pants, sucking dark red purplish marks into your poor neck.

you moan at the idea of a next time. maybe he'd take you out first on a cute date, make sweet dinner or lunch plans for you two.

or maybe he'd just take you to his dorm room and fuck you into his desk like he's been dreaming of for months. marking you up so everyone can see your matching hickies in lecture, knowing how pussy whipped you have him.

either way works.

he uses his strength to flip you back under him, never pulling out of you. he knew he was gonna cum soon, he was trying to put it off for so long but you’re making it too hard.

your head lolls back into the soft pillow, moaning as the flimsy bed frame of the dorm room squeaking like crazy. if his dick wasn't hitting every good spot right now perfectly, you'd probably give a fuck if the people next door heard.

he pumps into you as your legs wrap around his hips, bringing him closer. he fucks into you at a needy pace, his head in your neck as he whines into your ear which you could barely hear over the filthy sounds of skin slapping.

“m’sorry, gonna cum, baby” he moans. your hands go back into his hair, humming.

“please cum in me, choso. need it.” you mewl, eyes threatening to roll back at the way the tip of his cock kisses your sweet spot with every harsh thrust.

you bring a hand to your neglected clit, rubbing furiously to catch up with him, legs shivering and cunt clenching.

he groans as he spills inside of you at the feeling of your walls contracting around him sending him over the edge.

“f-fuck! feels s'good choso.” you cry, cumming so hard you practically milk his cock.

you’re both panting, his body going stiff.

you push at his arm to make him get off of you since he was practically crushing you.

“sorry” he mumbles, his voice groggy. he reluctantly pulls out of you with a hiss, pulling his boxers back on and collapsing next to you.

“hand me that towel, please?” you point to the pile of clean laundry next to your nightstand, a fresh new towel sitting atop.

“yeah, shit, sorry.” he hands you the towel as you wipe down your inner thighs.

you put your now ruined panties back in place, noticing the way he's staring at you.

"what?" you smile, covering yourself with a throw blanket you keep on your bed.

he just shakes his head in a silent chuckle, plopping down onto the bed next to you. he moves a loose strand of your hair out of your face, finger running down your jaw to your kissed out lips.

your breath hitches at his gentle touch, his thumb dragging down your lower lip.

"nothing i just..." his eyes meet yours, your stomach fluttering with anticipation.

"really like you" he sheepishly admits. you smiled at how cute he is. he just came inside of you and he was still nervous around you. how sweet.

"well i'd sure hope so." you giggle, feeling the dull throb between your legs from a few minutes ago.

it wasn't like your intentions weren't completely innocent upon inviting him here. you always thought the quiet guy in your class was hot.

you thought it was so cute whenever you'd 'accidentally' brush against him and he'd either tense up or his face would turn pink.

"but if it makes you feel better..." you cuddle up next to him, head nuzzling into his shoulder as his strong arm wraps around your waist.

"i really like you too"

you also showed up to class the next day wearing his hoodie that you successfully stole. he acted annoyed, but secretly fucking loved it.

a/n: i'm alive y'all i got my wisdom teeth out so i was not in a mood to write but i'm back!! hope u enjoy! sorry if the ending got a lil cheesy i'm trying to get better at dialogue since i usually just write pure porn.

(in need of jjk prompts i want the men so bad)

[nenelonomh]

how to get into a good university

maintain a strong gpa: focus on your studies and aim for high grades. take challenging courses like honors and ap classes to show your academic rigor.

get involved in extracurricular activities: participate in clubs, sports, or volunteer work. leadership roles and long-term commitments are particularly impressive in university applications.

prepare for standardized tests: study for and take the sat or act. consider taking them more than once to improve your scores. there are so many sites that provide practice and past papers for you to self-study.

build relationships with teachers: strong letters of recommendation can make a big difference. get to know your teachers and counselors. this will also help with quickly solving any issues you face in class!

explore your interests: pursue activities and subjects that genuinely interest you. this can help you stand out in your applications - having a niche interest.

research universities: make a list of potential schools and understand their requirements. visit campuses if possible or attend virtual tours and info sessions.

write compelling essays: your personal statement and supplemental essays should reflect your personality, experiences, and aspirations. start early and seek feedback.

seek internships or work experience: gaining real-world experience in your field of interest can strengthen your application, as well as help you to understand what fields you enjoy.

manage your time well: balancing academics, extracurriculars, and personal time is crucial. develop good study habits and time management skills. this is not just a getting into university skill, this is a life skill!

stay organized: keep track of deadlines for applications, tests, and scholarships. use a planner or digital tools to stay on top of everything.

starting early and staying focused can help you achieve your goal of getting into a good university.

[the-californicationist]

he teaches you new tricks

John Price convinces you to try using a butt plug for the first time, letting you use his ass for practice. It has definitely awakened something in you, and you're ready for more…

Warning: butt stuff, obviously.

It started innocently at first, fumbling and awkward, in the dark. John came home from deployment one day, ravenous and hungry, fingering you through the open leg of your pajama shorts, aiming for your sweet cunt. But, with a gasp from you and a gasp from him, he realized that he missed and landed his digits in a different destination. Your body’s response had been instinctual, and completely out of your control. Certainly the ragged moan he coaxed from your mouth by his accidental caress was not planned. It excited him, that much was obvious, and you discovered, as your mind processed the feelings stirring in your body, it excited you, too.

After that, he’d find excuses to lick you lower and lower, abandoning your pussy in favor of the tight bridge between your holes, even daring to flick his long tongue into what was previously a forgotten or even forbidden territory. Where you would have moved your hips out of his reach before, now you remained pliantly still, waiting for him to push his luck. Egging him on with your submission. When he grabbed your ass, his fingers would pull the cheek away just to reveal your asshole to him, thumbing it gently as he fucked you from behind, and you could feel him looking at it with a novel interest. 

It wasn’t the first time you’d been asked to consider anal sex. Price was not your first lover, but he was the first one who stood any chance of gleaning a positive response to the age-old query. He tested the waters one night while he railed inside of you, taking himself to the brink of pleasure, impairing his own judgment in a fog of bliss, nearly begging,

“You wanna try it out, love? Hm? You like my finger in there, now, dontcha?”

Your anguished cries were not a no, but they were not enough of a yes.

Later, after the fireworks died down, you lay against him, sweaty and sated, and looked up at him, musing,

“You’re so big, though…”

“Hmm?”

“Might be too much.”

“What are you sayin’, love?”

“You wanted to try anal, you said,” your voice was barely above a whisper, resonating in the hollow against his chest.

There was a long pause, and then, a smiling response through pleased sighs,

“Only if you want to. I’m more than happy as it is, clearly.”

“Would it hurt?” You asked. 

“No,” he shook his head confidently, “Shouldn’t hurt. Feels different, though.”

“We could try it,” you pushed your offering out into the quiet between you. 

He sighed,

“Don’t be doin’ this for my benefit. I told you, love, I’m not -”

“No,” you sat firm in your choice, “I wanna try. I don’t know…well, I’ve never done anything like that.”

“Tha’s okay. I’ll show ya, and hey -” he lifted your chin to look at him, gazing down at you with full sincerity, “We can stop anytime. Say it.”

You smiled, recognizing his tone,

“We can stop anytime.”

John cuddled you closer to him, wrapping his body around yours and pulling up the sheet, growling approvingly in your ear,

“Good girl.”

“How much should I put?” You asked, staring at the back of the bottle of lube, reading the vague instructions. 

“Here,” he took it from you and showed you the little pearl of clear liquid on his fingers. 

You handed him the smooth, silicone plug he’d brought home. He showed you the different sizes, the smallest being smaller than his finger - which you rejected - and the medium, and then the large. None of them had been too terribly intimidating. Price had been very serious about informing you of the dangers of not having a “flared base”, extolling the virtues of the T-shaped base he’d selected, touting its comfort and security. 

He rubbed the largest plug with the lube before reaching around and rubbing himself between his cheeks. 

“What are you doing?” You asked, not entirely sure what you were witnessing. 

“Want you to practice putting it in, so…” he smirked, blushing a bit from his finger’s ministrations, “You can use me to see how it goes.”

“W-w-what? Are you serious? You would do that for me?” You were positively aghast at his lack of boundaries. 

You had never expected any man in your life to be so free from society's Puritanical norms that he would even allow you to witness his asshole, much less put a butt plug into it - and not just for pleasure, but to educate you? You froze like a deer trapped in headlights, unable to proceed. 

“You don’t have to. You should feel the pressure, though, and see it happening. Makes it less scary, I think,” he held his hands up, not wanting to make you do anything you weren’t on board with. 

You shook your head, snapping out of your surprise,

“No, it’s okay. I just didn’t expect you to be okay with that.”

“I’m asking you to do it, so I should be able to do it, right?” He chuckled, kissing your forehead, rubbing his naked body against yours, turning you on again. 

John lay down on the edge of the bed, flat on his back, and spread his legs for you, hanging his muscular ass off of the side, rubbing his cock a bit for comfort and because he was getting obviously excited. His expressions during this whole ordeal had been positively boyish, full of bright anticipation. The novelty of taking your anal virginity fueled his giddy joy. 

You knelt between his legs, aiming the tip of the plug at his shining asshole, watching him thrust his hand against his hardening length erotically. Carefully, and too slowly, you touched the plug to his dark hole, surrounded by his curly, thick hair, using your other hand to lift his heavy balls out of the way.

Right at the first whisper of a touch, he groaned deeply. Encouraged, you pressed forward, meeting some resistance. Scared of hurting him, you paused there, keeping the tension but too afraid to go forward. 

“Push it in, love. Bit harder than that… please - yeah, fuck!”

Then, just as you applied more pressure, his hole stretched further and the plug disappeared inside of him, like a cork into a bottle, flush. John let out a groan, long and low, full of heady satisfaction.

Well, that wasn’t so scary, you thought. Unable to contain your desire, you tugged gently at his balls again, licking up to the base of his growing dick. He cried out again, enjoying the abundance of sensations. 

“Careful, love. I’ll come easy like this.”

“That good, John?” You rubbed his legs and abdomen affectionately, staring down at his occupied asshole, wanting very badly to feel what he was feeling. 

“So good. You wanna try?” He rolled over, sliding to the floor carefully, his cheeks rosy and warm as he kneeled down beside you, “Stand up for me, love.”

You stood, suddenly nervous. Price could tell. Your hesitation rolled off of your body language like a siren. He started to finger your pussy, enjoying the wetness in you, admiring the way you were already swollen and pulsing for him. His warm mouth kissed and licked your folds, drawing out long, luxurious moans from your throat, bringing you closer and closer to your climax.

Just as you thought he might make you come, he grabbed the lube from the nightstand and smeared it over his fingers, painting it onto your asshole. The slick feeling was enough to make you jolt, and you held onto his shoulders for balance. 

“C’mere, baby. Lay down for me,” he commanded in a careful timbre, moving your body as his had been on the mattress.

Price lifted your legs, grabbing you behind the knees and spreading you open, unable to resist eating your pussy when he did so, bending his head to taste you fully. Your orgasm was coiled up in your like a snake, ready to strike at any moment.

Then, you felt it, the tip of the medium-sized plug made cold contact with your asshole, and it sent a shock through your core. You gasped, and Price took it back, saying, 

“You alright, love?”

You nodded,

“You can do it. I’m okay.”

He pressed it back against your hole more confidently, pushing it into you until you felt stretched and open. Then, just as you had felt it slot into him, you felt it as it popped delightfully into you, feeling strange and extremely sensitive.

Price immediately went to your clit, licking it and fingering you inside of your pussy, and you felt the coil wind up again, stronger and more furious than before, stoked by the stimulation of your ass. He made you come, groaning right along with you, his eyes transfixed to your slick core, watching you pulse and clench around his hand. Each clench made the plug shift inside of you, rubbing against your insides, creating sparks in a place where there had never been any before. 

“Talk to me. How are you doing?” Price asked, rubbing your belly and thighs, comforting you. 

“It’s…strange. But, it’s good. Really good, actually,” you admitted, smiling, playing with your breasts lazily, coming down from your high. 

“Want me to play with you?”

You nodded, 

“Please.”

John hooked his first two fingers into the T-bar of the flexible plug, and he began to pull it out. You felt it stretching you, and then you felt a terrible emptiness when he removed it. You whimpered, involuntarily, and then gasped when he pushed it back in again. He was thrusting it in and out of you achingly slowly, letting you feel every little movement, telegraphing his actions as explicitly as he could, making sure you could see as much of his arm as possible. You were eager to feel more of it, and you told him,

“John... Feels so good. Faster, please.”

He obliged, and you understood, finally, the appeal. It wasn’t just your asshole that was sending sensation information to your brain. It was your pussy as well. The wall between your two holes was incredibly sensitive, and you felt yourself getting wetter and wetter as he fucked you with your new toy. Suddenly, he stopped and crawled over you, angling his cock to press into your pussy, slipping in easily through your slick come. 

You screamed, then. It was so intense, and you could feel both him and the plug battling each other for space as he began to thrust into you. Your shout stopped him at once, and he held his weight off of you,

“You’re hurt?”

You felt him start to pull out, panicked. You grabbed his waist, stopping him,

“Don’t go, baby.”

His sigh was pure elation, and he fed himself back into you, picking up a thumping rhythm that made the plug dance to his steady beat, teasing you incessantly. You were going to come so quickly and so hard. You could feel the build up, and it was like a stampede. Trying to warn him, you fought to catch your breath,

“John, I’m com-”

“Me, too, love. Bloody hell,” he spoke to you through gritted teeth, his pupils blown and full of a dark possession. 

You came together, gasping and keening, feeling him rolling through his orgasm like a tidal wave, filling you up quickly. 

He slid out of you, trying to catch his breath, and he carefully removed the plug, leaving you feeling hollow, full of a sort of sexual grief, a part of you begging to be filled again right away, bereft and missing your lover and his tools. 

“Holy shit,” you whispered.

“Sorry, love. You alright? Sorry…it was - It was too much for me. Couldn’t last,” he was coming undone at the seams. 

“More than alright, I think. That was…something else,” you smiled, earning yourself a wide grin in return. 

You watched him carefully remove the plug from himself, laying them on the washcloth on the small table. John reached for the other two soft rags that he had set out, and he used one to clean you up. He was so diligent in making sure he didn’t put you at any risk of infection, and you could tell it was taking everything he had to concentrate on his work. 

It had been almost a week since you’d had your adventure in toyland with John, and you were snuggling into him on the sofa, playing with the waistband of his pants absentmindedly, watching Liverpool and Tottenham. You weren’t sure how to push the envelope, so you just came right out and asked him,

“Do you want to fuck my ass tonight?”

He was mid-sip on his ale, and he nearly choked to death. His whole body convulsed as he coughed, hacking through the invasive liquid, trying to breathe. You’d startled him, and while you were a little sorry, you were also a little not. 

“Wh-what, love?” He asked through coughs, his face red and full of wide surprise. 

“I thought we could try. You know, if you wanted to.”

“Fuuuuuckin’ hell,” he caught his breath, smiling at you, his eyebrows raised high on his forehead, fully ignoring the game, “Yeah, yeah, I would do. Yeah, now?”

You giggled, curling into him cozily, 

“You’ve got forty minutes left in this match, babe.”

John didn’t reply. He clicked the screen off with his remote and scooped you off the couch, carried you into the bedroom, and playfully tossed you onto the big mattress. You were laughing with nervous excitement, impressed by his reaction. His expression was still one of genuine surprise, but along the edges, you could see a tremendous needy desire. His tone was still bright and playful, but now it was heavy with lustful warning,

“Clothes off, love. You lit a fuckin’ match, you did.”

He raked his shirt off his torso and threw it away, shucking off his jeans and socks like he was in a race, slipping his boxers off to prowl over you, fully naked and hard as a stone, leaking as his cock rubbed along your thigh. You’d almost matched him, but you still had your panties on, and he peeled them from you unceremoniously, his lips finding yours and slanting against his bearded mouth. He slipped his tongue past your teeth, dragging it along yours, licking you with a delicate longing, making your body ready and willing to respond to his every whim. 

Price was right of course, you had lit a match. He had one thing on his mind, and he let you know it. His mouth kissed its way down your body until it found your asshole, which he began to lick and writhe his way inside, lapping along the edges and onto your cheeks, devouring you. His fingers joined his efforts, rimming around the edges, sending clear signals to your body as he did so, and then he began to carefully invade your hole, prepping you for his intrusion. 

The way he scissored his fingers in you was enough to send your mind soaring with pleasure, but when he reached for the bottle of lube, your nerves returned. Your body stilled, and your breathing became more shallow. He smeared the lube against you and slowed things way, way down. 

“You alright, love? I won’t hurt you, baby, you know that,” he bent to kiss your neck, “You want me to stop?”

“No,” you shook your head, “no, I’m just nervous.”

“Tha’s okay,” he smiled, “Brave girl. Being so good for me. Hungry for me, hm?”

“Yeah, I am,” you felt the waves of pleasure return at his praise-filled words. He knew what you wanted to hear, and he was happy to oblige. 

Once he was pleased with your flexibility, he positioned himself at your asshole, slippery with lube and his thick precome, his cock jerking with excitement, rigid and stretching for you. The smooth, fleshy head of his dick pressed against your muscles, willing them to relent. 

“Breathe for me, baby,” Price coached you. 

You tried to breathe deeply, feeling yourself relax. Then, his head popped into you, mimicking the feeling of the plug. You sighed deeply, reveling in the familiar feeling. However, unlike the plug, Price had plenty more ground to cover, and he pushed himself deeper in the slowest, gentlest way possible. He was groaning the entire time, whining darkly in an animalistic way, like a wolf snarling in a fight, tense and stressed.

Wanting him to feel pleasure with you, your hands went to his belly, celebrating his body, rubbing him lovingly, rewarding him for his careful treatment. 

He hit another boundary of some kind, stopping his progress. John meet your eyes, and it was so filthy, the way he looked at you, you felt yourself pulse around him. You watched (with no small level of pride) as his eyes rolled back into his head, showing you their fluttering whites like a vicious shark, ready to snap. He whispered to you, recovering a bit,

“Breathe deep for me. One, two, three…that’s it, love, good girl. Such a good girl for me. Yes-yes-yes… ohhh…”

The rest of him pressed its way into you, and you were truly filled. As he sheathed himself, he waited there, breathing with you, relaxing into you as you relaxed, his cock simply sitting inside of you, hard and warm. 

“You okay?” He asked, quiet and falsely calm.

You nodded, cupping his bearded cheek, 

“Yes, baby. I’m good. So fucking good.”

Reserved and heavily restrained, he began to thrust into you slow and easy, making the most delicious faces as he did so. It felt like a dream and time stretched out around you in all directions. He created waves and waves of pleasure for you. You were so full and warm, and your clit was tingling without being touched, excited by the sparkling sensation of Price fucking your ass. You reached down to touch yourself, hissing at the pleasure of your own touch, and Price was salaciously injured by it,

“Oh, bloody fuckin’ hell. Yes, baby. Just like that. Touch yourself… Shite! I’m not gonna last.” 

You fondled your clit until you began to buzz from it, feeling the chill of an orgasm creep up your spine. You wanted him to join you, so you pushed him, knowing he was vulnerable,

“That’s my big bear, making me feel so fucking full. Want you to come in my ass. Wanna feel it inside me,” you doused the fire you’d built in him with kerosene words, and you grinned as you watched the resulting blaze. 

“Fuuuuck, fuck, fuck!” 

His come was thick and hot as it spilled out into you, and you could feel it inside of your asshole, wet and soft, folding around his cockhead as he thrust up into his own fluids. Pure bliss was painted across his face, and you covered yourself in his joy like a heavy coat, surrounded by it, and proud of your work, glad he was such a willing teacher.

You loved learning new tricks.

[fabdante]

my first piece colored for the @zutaracoloringbook !

the lines were done in clip studio paint, the color in marker, colored pencil, gel pen, and paint pen. with some minor digital touch ups after scanning.

you can color this piece for yourself for free! it's in this years @zutaracoloringbook , go pick yourself up a copy! there's tons of beautiful pieces in it including this one, all for free!

under the cut, for anyone interested, im going to ramble a lot about the process of this one because i just have a lot of thoughts asdfghjk the tldr is: this is not at all how i expected this piece to look, i fell asleep working on it at one point which is just wild to me, and 'ooo pretty colors'

i've sat on this one for a little bit and im still not sure how i feel about it? i like it but it's also not at all how i expected the color for this piece to look asdfghj

i originally thought the palette would be darker but after printing the piece i realized, given the lines were not as dark as they would have been if they'd been drawn traditionally, that i'd drown out the lines with that color scheme.

i also made a lot of little mistakes ranging from using colors darker then i wanted for shading to at one point Literally Falling Asleep While Coloring With Black Marker, thus leaving a black spot on the page that I then had to work around.

the paper also was a double edged sword. i did not print on marker paper or artist paper, which usually is not an issue with me. i know most marker artists will strangle me for saying this, but i have never drawn on marker paper? like ever? i taught myself how to use marker on mixed media paper and i have rarely used marker paper since. i've just never felt a need? contrary to what people have said, i've never seen any like abnormal wear and tear on my markers doing this and i, personally, just accept that markers are going to bleed. it's not my enemy it's just part of the medium. it's what markers do. they're a wet medium even on paper made for wet mediums they will bleed out and often bleed through a little bit. i learned how to work around that and use it to my advantage. this paper however, the markers didn't bleed at all? and they dried so fast it made maintaining an even texture and blending like i normally do a challenge. it just didn't have a lot of give? HOWEVER the color pay off was CRAZY like the colors are so vivid and bright and rich. like, i made my own color chart for my markers on index cards and then i would often test the colors on scrap paper of the same paper to confirm what the colors going to look like but when i would use colors on the piece itself they were always darker, richer, brighter, and just all around way more vivid. which makes the piece very nice to look at, admittedly asdfghjk. so paper pros: fantastic color pay off like crazy color pay off, paper cons: I Don't Know How To Blend.

for anyone wondering why i didn't print on marker paper: firstly, i don't have any this size. secondly, marker paper tends to be pretty thick and not super malleable so i didn't think it'd be safe for my printer. likewise, i didn't think any of my other paper would be either. so i decided to do what i did last year which was use a fancy paper stock i had that was printer safe for my printer paper so it's not just regular thin computer paper.

some of these technical issues i blame on being out of practice, i haven't worked in marker for a minute and this piece involving such large scale blending was a bit ambitious especially on unfamiliar paper (learning how to blend with markers i find is just a lot of practice with your particular markers to know how they behave while also knowing your paper). but im also just confused because i feel like the paper behaved better when i used it last year and with my self portraits asdfghj im wondering if i just printed this on the wrong side? more testing is in order before i work on my next two pieces dfghjklfghjk

so, anyway, i might try to color this one again because i don't know how satisfied i am with it. like, i like it, but also it just doesn't feel correct. i might do it digitally or i might do it traditionally, we'll see. but im not going to try again until i finish the other two i need to color. i think this stems from the fact that i just feel like the palette was meant to be different then the one i ended up with so it just still feels incomplete to me. we'll see how i feel, though, when i finish the other two.

anyway, if anyone read all of that, thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[acapelladitty]

thinnest thread, sown together

Summary: After an accident, Cooper leaves Lucy to patch up his leather duster for him but when he returns he finds that she's used his absence as an opportunity for a private indulgence (AKA: Cooper walks in on Lucy masturbating). [3.2k words]

(tw: voyeurism, vague threats, teasing, masturbation, mentions of drug use, orgasm, coming in pants)

Fic Masterlist

Link to AO3

"Try not to fuck this up, vaultie. I'm fond of that coat, you hear me?"

"Heard you the first three times, boss."

An unfortunate and somewhat embarrassing accident involving wooden boards and a protruding scrap of sheet metal had proven too much for Cooper's coat, the leather duster having almost split in half due to the pressure of the metal cleaving its way through the material as he descended in a undignified heap.

Lucy was a smart enough girl to know not to laugh, but the noise which escaped the ghoul as he had fallen sat somewhere between a deflating balloon and a startled deathclaw so the effort it had taken for her to not bust out into a giggle was borderline heroic.

The fault was Cooper's own, his footing misstepping due to his attention being pulled away by the distant sound of gunfire - the origins of it unknown but never anything good. It had been enough to throw him off though, and Cooper had sworn up a storm as he tripped on a loose board and smashed through the rickety walkway with such an undignified noise.

Not the end of the world but the genuine distress which seemed to briefly touch at Cooper's face as he recovered from the fall and examined his tattered jacket before his eyes had moved Lucy to offer to fix it up, knowing that he already owned a rusted needle and thread among the various practical belongings he had strewn around his person.

Presumably, they were the same ones he'd previously used to sew the top of her finger onto his own to replace the missing digit she'd torn off with her teeth. She didn't regret it since he'd deserved that and worse for treating her more shittily than that dog that followed him around at times, but she was curious.

More than once her gaze had lowered to her displaced finger, the lightened tone of her smooth skin a stark contrast to his own, and she wondered how it must feel. To have her as a part of him. Did it feel any different? The sight of it made something odd roil in her chest; a stunning mixture of curiosity, vague disgust, and a pleasant warmth that no matter what he did or how their partnership ended, he would always carry that little part of her whether he liked it or not.

However, that was a discussion which she hadn't broached yet but it was always there ticking away in the back of her mind.

Despite knowing that he was perfectly capable, Lucy found her offer of her sewing skills being met with quick acceptance and Cooper had moved like hell itself as he sourced her a table and room to work, securing their accommodation for the night in an old storage unit which was little more than two rooms filled with old, empty crates and not much else.

She set to work as diligently as she had the rest of the miserable and shitty tasks he assigned to her, each designed to test her skills or teach her a valuable lesson in survival. This though, she had taken to with a small smile, the repetitive and willing task remindering her of a more simple time back in her vault. Sewing circle with the others had been a blast of fun and constant gossip and she did miss it at times.

A memory stirred as Cooper watched her from his standing position a few feet behind her turned back. He saw Barb, sitting at their kitchen table doing much the same as she mended the tears in his pants after he'd taken a tumble off one of the more unstable stallions. But, just as quickly as it arose, he banished the memory away as he often did with thoughts of his ex-wife - the hurt which accompanied them making him instantly sour and grow more volatile than he would like.

Since discovering his previous life as an actor, Lucy's attitude and actions around him had been different and, more than once, he had caught her staring at him with those big, doe eyes of hers. What was surprising more than anything was that the attention didn't irritate him as much as he thought it would and he wasn't ignorant to the slight blush that stained her cheeks when he caught her making a moon face at him.

Seemed that Lucy Maclean had developed herself quite the little liking to him and he had taken that discovery into his stride with a smug gleefullness. He had always been a proud man and to have such an attractive thing interested in him had cracked open a facet of his personality that had long since closed itself off to the world.

Cooper Howard had always been a flirt, incorrigible in his prime, and those mean little teases which he afforded Lucy punished him as much as her as he refused to follow up on them. He hadn't lied when he said Lucy Maclean wasn't ready for him and that same pride refused to allow him to take any real advantage of her, knowing that in the long run, she'd probably thank him for not poisoning her with his own bullshit.

But still, he lived for the game and this was just another way to play. A bit of fun to pass the time until they had dealt with her daddy and he had found the truth of his daughters' whereabouts.

If he were honest with himself, a feat in its own given his choices, something unfamiliar and warm tugged at his stomach every time he considered the fact that Lucy's fancies had taken root with him as he was now. Not Cooper Howard, famed movie star, but Cooper Howard, ghoul and scourge of the wastelands. It was a feeling locked away with the end of the world he had known and better left by the wayside.

Besides, it was much easier to channel that warmth into some playful teasing.

Pressing himself firmly against her as she leaned diligently over his coat, his stomach was flush against her back and he felt the shiver which rolled down her spine as he engulfed her senses. She hid it well, could have easily passed it off as a natural reaction to a monster forcing its way into her personal space, but Cooper knew better.

"Don't take an attitude with me, vaultie. Your damn fault it ripped in the first place. Lucky for you that I'm a kindly man and I ain't ripping your shirt off to keep us on that equal streak we've been enjoying these last few weeks."

Her head snapping up vertically to face him as he loomed over her, Lucy's expression was as open as ever to him as he took in the torrid mixture of irritation, focus, and mild arousal which his determined positioning was causing her.

And just like that, there was that little flush of colour, sitting high on her cheeks and making him hold back a smirk as he at played her like an old fiddle.

"My shirt wouldn't fit you." Was her impressive comeback after a few silent moments of intense consideration, her mouth set into a proud line as she made her point.

"Never said I'd be wearing it, sweetheart." Cooper answered, pushing her head even further back into his stomach with the pressure of a single finger on her forehead. "What I did say is that you would be losing it. I mean, that's your golden rule, after all. Do unto others what you'd have done unto you? Hrm?"

"I never took your jacket." Lucy defended hotly.

"Well it's between your hands, ain't it?"

"Only because-"

"Enough arguing, darling." Cutting her off to frustrate her evern further, Cooper dropped his hands to the pockets of his filthy slacks. "Now I'm gonna leave on a scouting trip for five, maybe six hours, so you get that jacket all patched up and looking pretty and I'll see about forgetting what I was talking about."

Silently seething but perking up at the thought of getting to enjoy some alone time as her back felt wickedly hot from Cooper standing flush against her skin, Lucy did everything in her power to not think about the slight bulge which pressed between her shoulder blades nor the infuriating man it belonged to.

"Whatever." Lucy announced after a pause, nodding her head forward once more as she went back to mending his coat with dexterous fingers. "Try to pick up something freshly killed on the way back because your latest batch of ass jerky tastes like shit."

Having taken to calling anything Cooper hunted and cooked 'ass jerky', Lucy had yet to actually try any of his cannibalistic delicacies and, even more surprising, Cooper had never actively offered her any; appearing to almost go out of his way to find excuses for her to be denied it.

Chuckling at the rare swear from her, a sign that she was truly annoyed with him, Cooper tutted his disapproval with a soft headshake.

"Sounds good to me, valutie. Maybe you should see about washing that filthy fucking mouth out with soap before I return, huh?"

x-x-x-x-x

Arriving back from his scouting trip a few hours earlier than he expected to, Cooper heard nothing as he silently entered the first room of the storage unit. A quick hunt had pulled up nothing too fresh so shit-tasting ass jerky was back on the menu for another night for the little food critic vaultie.

Cooper dropped his gun and holster to the top of a nearby storage box, the lock rusting and clearly having been opened through sheer brute force many years previously. Against all odds, he had found himself actively missing his coat as he traversed the vast dusted grounds which surrounded the storage unit.

So used to its presence, the absence of the familiar feel of the softened leather pressing against his shoulders had made him feel oddly vulnerable as his fingers flexed and twitched towards phantom pockets. He had been quick to the trigger, gun pulled and pointed at the slightest noise as his heightened senses refused to allow him to relax on the small trip.

And, as much as it irritated him, the thought of the little vaultie hunched over his coat and fixing it up like a kept housewife amused him in a way which he found hard to pin down.

Speaking of the little vaultie, her absence in the main room was odd; particularly since the table she had preciously occupied with his coat was abandoned. It was an absence which made him curious rather than worried as she would not have left without him or without having achieved their shared goal of knocking her daddies teeth down his smug throat.

No.

She was too smart to leave.

So that would mean...

Peering in through the rounded window which sat near the top of the door that led to the second room, Cooper had to press his lips together in an instant as his cock stiffened in his pants and his eyes widened at the filthy sight which awaited him.

Unaware that Cooper's scouting trip had been cut shorter than anticipated, Lucy Maclean had apparently taken his absence as a rare excuse for some self-pleasure and, god-fucking-damn, did she seem to be enjoying herself.

Her upper body reclined against the metallic wall, her ass resting on a wooden crate as one leg hung loosely down the side of it, the other pulled up so her foot also sat atop the crate. Her knees were spread wide, the angle enough to allow her easy access to her dripping cunt without having to bend. Head tipped back against the wall, her fingers moved quickly between her slickened folds and Cooper couldn't bring himself to turn away even as shame at his own voyeurism trickled down his spine.

Falling loosely around her shoulders, Lucy's hair was in a wild state of disarray as the constant roll of her head against the wall had messed up any sense of order in the dark strands.

The only sounds in the immediate vicinity came from her, muted gasps and whimpers slipping free of her lips as her other hand split its attention between pressing against her mouth to muffle anything louder than a whine and pinching at her breasts; slender fingers rolling across her darkened nipples as they remained peaked in the warm air.

She was fucking beautiful and, as much as filthy shame continued to creep across his skin at watching her like this, Cooper found he couldn't tear his eyes away as his gaze filtered over her creamy skin, imagining how soft it would feel under his calloused hand and blunted teeth.

He knew that she had quite the little sex drive, her crossed arms having more than once demanded time or space to indulge her needs. In those moments, where she was commanding and confident in her expectations, an aspect of her personality that she didn't indulge nearly enough, he found it maddeningly endearing and it drove him more wild than she ever needed to know.

Snatching her fingers away from her left nipple, her hand dropped to something by her side and Cooper almost gave the game away as a lustful growl was quickly caught by the back of his gloved hand as his cock jerked within his slacks.

There, clenched between Lucy's fingers was his goddamn jacket; the mended leather bunching up between her digits as she simultaneously rode the fingers on her other hand - the fingers there moving in tandem and they stroked and pinched and fucked into her cunt with a steady rhythm.

"Cooper." She muttered and a sensation, not unlike freezing cold water being shucked across his body, tensed Cooper's spine as he realised he'd been caught. However, the panicked feeling passed just as quickly as Lucy's soft voice followed up with a very breathy. "Please."

She was thinking about him and that revelation was almost enough to have him shooting off in his pants like a schoolboy. Her eyes remained closed, fingers moving even more quickly as they slipped from steadily pumping within her to circle around her clit, teasing herself as she imagined him.

Thought about him.

Pictured his fingers in place of her own.

Feeling very hot under the collar and fighting the urge to say 'to hell with it' and announce himself, Cooper dropped the heel of his gloved hand to his groin - rubbing at his trapped cock through the fabric as he watched her. Fresh shame, hot and heavy, swept across his irradiated skin as his tongue slipped free to lick as his dry lips.

There had been an old fling, a women he'd met on a hunt about a decade before the whole shitshow with Don Pedro had gone down. A ghoul like him, she was hellfire in a handbag and quicker with a gun than most of the slingers he'd met.

She'd caught him at a sloppier time in his past and he had taken full advantage of their whirlwind mess to indulge his own worst traits. The chem flowed easier in those times and the other drugs she scored made the hard days all the sweeter as they snorted and fucked and inhaled themselves into a proper mess.

However, even that didn't last and one day he had awoken from a stupor to find that she had disappeared and moved on without him.

Fuck, he couldn't even remember her name, but what he could remember was the feeling of her lips on his cock and the way she could perfectly balance a powdered line on his chest as she bit her way down his skin, occasionally drawing blood and making him gasp.

She had been as rotten as him, just two ghouls numbing themselves to the state of the world for a couple of weeks as they waited for the inevitable to take them.

Hell, some of the shit they got up to would probably blow the vaulties head clean off if he described them to her. But then, she was so different to the rest that he couldn't help but wonder how she liked it.

Would she grit her teeth and moan through the pain as he fucked himself inside her, stretching her out to accommodate his size? Or would she grin that little feral smile he'd seen playing on her lips when she achieved some bloodstained victory and push back at him to demand more?

His cock twitched against his palm, the length feeling more uncomfortably trapped as he rubbed himself through his slacks, not quite trusting himself to pull it free. It was torture but, lucky for him, he was used to that by now.

Goddamn Lucy Maclean and her wicked ways had him pawing at himself like a mindless beast. Like one of those mutated things that roamed the outskirts of the desert with nothing but base desire guiding its thoughts.

Rolling his tongue against his teeth, he could imagine how good she would feel under his mouth. Her soft skin, pillowy and firm between his teeth as he teased the strength of it; biting enough to threaten the unblemished creaminess as she arched her back and pressed harder into his mouth. The taste of her sweat, fresh and mounting, as he trailed his mouth lower, lips teasing their way along her hips and inner thighs until she was a trembling mess ready for him to consume her like she knew he wanted.

In her panicked babble as she had first offered him sex, she had tried to offer the use her mouth and he gazed at her lips now, plump and wettened by her own tongue, and he could almost feel the wicked softness of them wrapped around his cock; her greedy tongue pulling him deeper as he gripped her hair within his hand and met her eyes while he buried his cock deep within her clenching throat.

Lost in the fantasy, his thoughts boldened by his voyeurism as he watched her curl her fingers expertly within her cunt, Cooper came with a muted grunt - the disgrace of his release instantly trapping within his pants as the sticky mess quickly irritated him with how heated and uncomfortable it felt.

Lucy still wasnt finished, her casual edging of her own pleasure only making her move more slowly as she built herself back up to the point of release. Her grip on his coat flexed with each pump of her fingers as she enjoyed herself, still unaware of the struggling ghoul who observed her with heated eyes.

Backing away from the door with regret etched in the lines of his features, Cooper silently exited the storage unit once again as he recalled a nearby barrel of water - the stagnant liquid probably decent enough to allow him to clean off his mess and hide all evidence of his unexpected show.

Her innocent question rattled through his mind once more, the weeks old offer still as fresh as ever in its casualness.

Do you want to have sex?

And, after that little taste, Cooper felt a weight lift off his shoulders as he settled on the fact that, yes, if Lucy Maclean - with her big eyes and busy fingers - asked him again, then he would take her up on her very generous offer, consequences be fucking damned.

Links to the rest of the series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

[gunjangupta08]

A Guide on How to Submit SAT Scores to Colleges

Introduction:

Getting into college can feel like a big puzzle, and one essential piece is sending your SAT scores to the schools you're interested in. Let's break down the steps on How to Submit SAT Scores to Colleges to make this process easy and ensure your application shines.

Understanding How SAT Scores Work:

First things first, let's get how SAT Scores are shared. When you sign up for the test, you can send your scores to four colleges for free. But what if you want to send them to more or decide later? We've got you covered.

Checking Your SAT Scores:

Once your SAT scores are ready, log in to your College Board account. Find the "My SAT" section to see your scores. Jot them down – you'll need this info for the next steps.

Picking Where to Send Your Scores:

Go to the "Send Scores" section in your College Board account. Here, you choose the colleges you want your scores to go to. Grab the right college codes from the College Board website to make sure they get to the right place.

Understanding Score Choice:

Ever heard of Score Choice? It lets you decide which SAT scores you want colleges to see, especially helpful if you took the test more than once. Keep in mind that not all colleges are into Score Choice, so check their rules.

Sending More Scores Later:

If you need to send scores to more colleges after your first try, no problem. Ask for extra score reports on your College Board account, but be ready – there might be a small fee.

Using the Common App for Scores:

If you're using the Common Application, you can share your SAT scores there. But keep an eye out – some colleges still want official scores from the College Board.

Knowing Each College's Rules:

Every college has its own way of dealing with scores. Some might mix and match your best scores from different tries, while others look at your best overall score. Do a little research to know what each college prefers.

[caenewdelhi]

A Dream Come True: Studying Overseas with the Right Prep

Pursuing higher education is one of the most exciting ways to gather life-enriching experiences, explore different cultures, and travel while building a striking, professional portfolio. Even though studying abroad has become more convenient, it remains a tiresome process with the hassle of deadlines, tests, visa applications, accommodation services, and so on. Education consultancies come as a respite for aspiring students by providing them guidance and support to make the admission process less stressful. 

How are Digital SAT Practice Tests and GMAT Coaching Beneficial? 

SATs: SAT is, at present, one of the most in-demand standardised tests for higher education. Although not all colleges will require you to appear for the SAT exam, most well-reputed colleges have mandated a competent SAT score. While 1600 is considered the perfect SAT score, the average range that will effortlessly get you through the admission process is 1600 and above. SAT exams are also crucial for applying for and qualifying for scholarships. 

A General SAT assesses your Written and Verbal skills, Critical Reading, and mathematical expertise. Candidates can also sit for an SAT Subject Test to showcase their skillset and knowledge in a particular field, such as Science, Psychology, Literature, Math, History, or other subjects. We understand how significant a change transitioning from school to college is in a student’s life. Our Digital SAT Practice Tests are here to take some load off your shoulders and guide you through the newness of it all. With our mock tests, videos, and reading material, assistance is available at any hour of the day. 

Our abroad education consultants in Delhi have also put together a series of mock tests to help you ace that SAT exam to the best of your potential. 

GMAT Coaching Classes: Graduate Management Admission Test or GMAT is a computer adaptive test (CAT) mandatory for application to MBA programs. A computer-adaptive test uses algorithms to tailor the difficulty of questions in real time based on individual responses. Business schools primarily use the GMAT to assess a candidate’s analytical abilities. Your GMAT comprises four sections—

Analytical Writing Assessment or AWA: AWA requires the candidates to write an essay in answer to the analysis of an argument. 

Integrated Reasoning or IR: IR tests your problem-solving, data analysis and interpretation skills. 

Quantitative Reasoning or QR: QR is what we understand as the Math section. It assesses a candidate’s basic understanding of algebra, fractions, arithmetic, geometry, etc. 

Verbal Reasoning or VR: VR will assess your reading skills, critical reasoning, grammar proficiency, and ability to comprehend, evaluate and express.

GMAT is scored in increments of 10, with 800 as the highest possible score. The plethora of information and preparatory resources available online can become overwhelming, making it challenging to filter reliable sources. It is always a good idea to look for abroad education consultants in Delhi that bring you the most competent guidance for your preparation.

These GMAT coaching classes can be accessed in both online and offline modes and guarantee personalised attention to all students.

Advantages of Preparing with Abroad Education Consultants in Delhi

Competent Assistance: The tutors at coaching centres provide just the assistance and guidance you need to go in the right direction. They are familiar with all the updates in exam structure, format, syllabus, and exam strategies. With personalised attention and competent strategies, cracking your SAT and GMAT becomes a cakewalk. 

Flexibility and Convenience: Students often refrain from taking assistance from education consultants due to their busy schedules. Education consultancies have become more flexible as they have begun providing both in-person and online guidance. You can choose a mode of instruction that suits your schedule and prepare even from the convenience of your home. 

Reliable Study Material: Coaching services are mindful of planning their study material per the official syllabus as prescribed by GMAC. The study material is carefully designed to cover all sections of the exams and provide a quality prep that aims to build a strong foundation by strengthening basic concepts and advanced strategies. 

Practice Tests: All students aspiring to study abroad already know how crucial realistic practice tests are. Mock tests aid the students in becoming more familiar with the exam conditions, structure, type of questions, and time management strategies to save them the stress of unforeseen challenges during the actual test.

It is time to expand your horizons, venture into life, and see all it offers you! 

Source: https://ai.ceo/read-blog/74115

[4doras]

it will always be you

han taesan x reader

academic rivals to lovers

genre: fluff

wc: 1,455

a/n: i was in a crazy writing mood so enjoy this!! i was planning on starting the anton smau but i felt like writing. this is my first au in a WHILE… so sorry if this has any typos or grammar mistakes since i didn’t proofread it. i don’t know if i’m really happy with this because i’m weirdly scared to publish this 😭 but nevertheless, enjoy reading 💕

You had a test tomorrow and you had been practicing for it for almost 2 weeks. You looked up from your book, checking the time on your digital clock, 2:47AM, it read. Your study session spanned for much longer than you hoped for. You sighed, closing your book and putting your pens back into the case. You tucked yourself into your warm bed, as you let your eyes close themselves.

You woke up four hours later, at the ripe hour of 6AM. You quickly checked your Instagram, seeing that your rival had posted a story, you clicked on it. It was a picture of his face at 5AM, oh how sweet he looked, from the way his hair was slightly disheveled but still kept tidily, his lips, the perfect shade of pink, so soft and kissable. Only if it wasn’t for his personality, only if he treated everyone like he treated you. The way he stupidly raised his eyebrows when his name was called as the top scorer instead of yours, a small smirk arising on the sides of his flawless lips. It provoked so many emotions in you, seeing his face so early in the morning. You put your phone down, took a quick shower, put on simple jewelry, and headed out the door.

You sat down in your seat, not long after, the boy of the hour joined you, weirdly enough, sat next to you. He made his existence more clear, as if you hadn’t been thinking about him the whole morning. The universe must be telling you something.

“You good?” he asked, oddly kind for his usual remarks. He snickered, “You don’t seem like you got enough sleep from the look of it.” His signature smirk plastered on his face. “Oh shut up, I was studying, Taesan.” you rolled your eyes back, thankful he hadn’t spoken about your attitude. “Dropped the last name?” he said, looking at you through the side of his eyes. You swear you heard him say a small “cute” under his breath. The small word made you burn up, why did you feel like this? Right next to him? He started to rummage through his bag, pulling out a little bottle, an energy boost. “I got it for myself, but, seems like you’ll need it more.” he says, propping it on your desk. “Thanks, I guess…” you were confused by the backhanded comment but grateful for the small act of kindness. You opened the bottle, taking the drink like a shot and feeling the taste flow through your throat. With that, you two kept quiet as more people bustled through the door.

You finished your test with a sigh. You made sure you put your name on it, as well as flicking through the papers to make sure you wrote an answer in all the questions and passed in your test. You packed your stuff back into your bag and left, but of course, not before Taesan caught up to you. “Hey, Y/n!” he smiled sweetly, him saying your name in such a way wasn’t good for you. You waited for him, standing still as he ran towards you. “How was the test?” he asked, passing you a candy while walking. A heart shaped candy. You couldn’t get your mind off of it, you thought about it while eating dinner, showering, you couldn’t even focus on your homework because your mind was busy, creating new ideas yet scrapping them, denying the thought of him liking you with a coincidence.

Your phone got a notification from an unknown number.

this is y/n, right?

yeah, who is this?

taesan :)

oh, how’d u get my number?

mmm a little bit of sneaking

???

kiddinggg i was looking at the board and it has the numbers of students who tutor

right. i forgot they did that… did u want tutoring?

nope, just wanted to talk to u, silly

wellllll i’m gonna study a bit so ttyl?

still studying? the test is over

i still wanna study for science, i’m not super familiar with the topic :(

i could help u

u wanna?

sureeee let’s call!!!

alright, but i look a bit weird so don’t judge

i’d never, ur too pretty

…

ok sorry let’s call

You and Taesan called. Something was so comforting about calling Taesan, maybe it was the way his voice sounded, his tone was gentle, much more different than when you two were bickering at school, or the way he helped you and made sure you understood everything well, it all made you feel so at home. Or maybe it was his perfectly sculpted face in juxtaposition with the oversized hoodie he seemed to wear. “Thank you, Taesan, and sorry for keeping you so long…” “No worries, Y/n, it was nice to keep you company. Well, goodnight Y/n, sleep well, yeah?” “Mhm, you too, Taesan.” you smiled at your phone, waving at Taesan as you ended your call, you closed your eyes with ease, smiling into your pillow as you recounted the moments you had with Taesan. Whatever happened to you hating him had somehow faded away, had it turned into love?

As you got into your seat, you saw Taesan comfortably sitting next to you. “Thank you for yesterday.” you smiled. “Hey, I told you, it’s no problem.” Your routine of staying quiet as more people entered the classroom resumed.

You got your math results back, your hands covered the results and in your head, counting down, you removed your hands to see your marks. 78%. 78%? You spent so long studying for your test for not even 80%? You held back tears, excusing yourself to the toilet.

The second you got outside of the school building, you sat on the benches outside, the tears started flowing. You couldn’t believe you spent so much time and energy, staying up for nothing. You felt so upset, how could you forgive yourself? Your moment was cutoff by a voice, Taesan’s voice. “Y/n? Are you okay?” he crouched down by your legs, looking up at you. “Taesan, I did so bad. I spent so long studying on this, for not even 80%? I seriously can’t believe myself.” you sobbed into your hands, as Taesan sat next to you, holding your shoulder. You looked at him, holding the silence as he fixed pieces of your hair, tucking them behind your ears. “Y/n, it’s okay. You did the best you could, and that’s all that matters. This one test won’t discard the work you’ve put in and will put in. Please, don’t worry.” he softly swiped away the tears that streamed down your cheek. He pulled you into a warm hug, his arms wrapping around you, as you rested your cheek on his shoulder, taking in his scent.

You spent a couple minutes with Taesan, walking together so that no one would know you were crying. You re-entered your classroom and took a deep breath. You couldn’t bear spending any more time in that classroom, but you’d do it for Taesan.

After school ended, you got another notification from the unknown number, namely, Taesan. Before you answered his message, you wanted to change him contact.

wait let me change ur contact

ooh, what r u changing it to?

what do u want it to be? because i don’t know honestlyyy

can i ask u a question first?

shoot

can i be ur boyfriend? i mean, i want to at least!! also, sorry i’m asking online and not irl but i couldn’t catch u after school :(

actually? THE han taesan asking to be my boyfriend? (yes)

i thought u hated me

i thought i did too, but i realized it’s probably because i wanted to deny my feelings for u. and i haven’t been able to get u out of my mind

cute. well anyway, u should save me as “super sexy and cute boyfriend”

cute? sure. sexy? hmm

come onnnn pleaseee :)

save me as ”super smart and pretty girlfriend” then

ofc baby

BABH

BAHY

BABY

?? do u not like it

yes

wait no

i mean i love it

i love u, my super smart and pretty girlfriend

i love u, my super sexy and cute boyfriend.

The next day, you immediately went to Taesan, though he wasn't aware of your being. You gave him a small peck on the cheek and that had him turning around. "Hey, my boyfriend." you giggled with a sweet smile that made Taesan's eyes fill with love for you. "Hey, my girlfriend." he said, holding his hand out, waiting for yours to be in it.

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 18.3k ❧ warnings: cursing, renjun gets CONSENSUALLY dosed with a magical aphrodisiac For Science ❧ genre: fluff, humor, one (1) heavy makeout scene but no actual smut, 0.1 seconds of angst if you can even call it that, academic rivals to lovers, modern magical creatures au, college au, siren reader, human renjun ft. siren ten, same universe as strawberry sunday ❧ extra info: in my lore, siren scales are visible when they’re in more human-like forms because of magic, and it’s not an indication of their skin tone at all. so when the reader’s scales are mentioned, please don’t take this as any sort of allusion to them being pale/light-skinned! i tried to take care and make sure i wasn’t implying that in how i wrote it, but please tell me if it reads like that this work is set in the same universe as strawberry sunday but can be read as a standalone! there is no continuing plotline between fics in this universe, they simply take place in the same world/magic system and may have overlapping characters (neos may pop up in more than one work!) ❧ author’s note: y’all. get ready for this one. no spoilers but renjun and reader r both crazy and nobody should be subjected to them except each other. like they both look at the other and think “i could fix them but whatever the fuck is wrong with them is infinitely funnier to me” but they’re both Wrong. they could not fix the other. i don't want what they have but good for them. anyway as always i had way too much fun writing this that it went over my projected word count and i hope y’all have a lot of fun reading it too

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ explore the strawberry sunday universe more here!

“Would you shut up?” You sat back up, grabbing him by the hair.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to kiss you again, idiot.”

2608, 2610, 2612…

The numbers of the study rooms you passed by went up, up, up, as you continued your hunt. You knew he’d be here. It was the day before the first test in your Linguistics in Magical Creatures Studies class, meaning he was going to be holed up in the library until closing time. Now it was just a matter of finding him. Somewhere quiet, obviously, which was why you’d completely skipped the first floor with its wide-open “collaboration areas.” The second floor was all bookshelves and private study rooms that would hold four or five students at most. You peered into the narrow window on each painted metal door as you walked down the hall. While the first floor was recently renovated with new technology and upgrades such as the “collaboration areas” and bright pops of your university’s school colors that made for great promotional photos to put on the website and pamphlets to hand out to new students, this floor hadn’t had seen anything more than a janitor in a good couple decades. The musty, stale smell of old, unused books was all around you, the air conditioning hummed and clicked irregularly, all the furniture had ugly, outdated patterns, and the exactly three desktop computers they did have in a far back corner were practically as old as you. Which, in the digital age, meant that they were artifacts belonging in a museum.

And of course, sitting at very last one, as if he had been hiding behind all of these bookshelves from you personally, was Huang Renjun.

Renjun was sat in the wooden chair facing the computer, clearly deep in thought. He had one foot propped up on the wide chair seat as both of his hands were on the archaic-looking keyboard, speedily typing something out. He wore a pair of jeans, yellow hoodie, and a red backwards baseball cap kept his hair out of his face. An open energy drink can and empty bag of chips on the desk next to him belied that he had already been there for some time.

Now that you had found your target, you put on a burst of speed, stalking up to him from the side and smacking your hand down on the tabletop beside him. “Renjun.”

The human jumped in his seat, looking up from his screen to you. Taking his hands from the keyboard, he made a couple quick clicks on the mouse as he used the other to take his headphones out of his ears. “Y/N. Fucking hell… is your new strategy this semester to give me a heart attack and kill me?”

“If murder was on the table as part of our little academic rivalry, don’t you think I would’ve just drowned you after our Intro course freshman year?” You asked, tilting your head innocently. After all, you were a siren, that would be much easier than scaring him into an early cardiac episode.

Huang Renjun was not your friend. Not necessarily an acquaintance either, you’d known him for going on four years now, since your first class on your first day of college. The two of you were in the same Introduction to Magical Creatures Studies class. He had sat in the very front row, you just behind him in the second row. When your professor had asked an open question to the class, both you and Renjun eagerly blurted out the answer, Renjun just a millisecond before you. Dr. Li gave him the credit, and also requested that you two raise your hands in the future. And from then on you hated Huang Renjun.

Well, hate may be a strong word. You overlapped in at least two classes every semester being in the same major, and were both chronic overachievers. The first to raise your hands when a question was asked, studying in the library until closing (separately), and visiting professors’ office hours just to discuss topics from class further. Your professors noticed this. Some would pit the two of you against each other, and others would try to pair you up, whether on projects, research, or just in general, as a meeting of the minds or whatever. And you two would get your project done, pocket your As, and part ways again. Academic rival slash frenemy was the best way you could describe who Huang Renjun was to you.

“Who knows, you might still, if they ask me to carry the banner,” he muttered, picking his pen up and spinning it between his fingers.

This was your last semester, both you and Renjun were graduating in just a few months. At commencement, each department picked one “outstanding student” to lead the progression, carrying a flag with the department’s name and seal on it. This semester it was Magical Creatures Studies’ turn to select a student for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and your program head had already heavily implied that they could choose either you or Renjun, but they hadn’t made their final decision yet.

This was actually a pretty good segue into what you were really here to talk to him about. Pulling your lips into an alluring smirk, you nodded, “You’re right. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that—”

“A fucking what?” He cut you off, his face scrunching up as he blinked at you in confusion.

“Obviously it’s going to be one of us two, since we’re the two best students in the program.”

“Well, yes.” He nodded, seeming to let go of what had presumably been another one of your jumbled human malaphors. You admittedly hadn’t been living among humans for terribly long, and for some reason their idioms just didn’t stick in your brain very well.

“I mean, we not only are dedicated to the field itself and the content we study in class, but the program too. We probably know everybody in it, professors and students, right? Between the two of us?”

Renjun considered this for a moment. “Yeah, probably. We’ve both taken on a lot of SI and tutor opportunities for lower-level classes.”

“Right. So, you know those forums the school has on the online class platform? The general message boards?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m going to need you to sit tight with me on this until I finish talking, okay?” You pointed at him sternly. He nodded slowly. “Good. Back in the fall, about the end of September, I was on the message boards, just browsing around killing time. I was in the Tips & Advice section and saw this post. It was a gryphon who was losing feathers on one specific spot on her wing, and she didn’t know why. The witch she went to didn’t know why, nobody could figure it out. I was about to reply asking if it was her left or right, when I saw that somebody else already had. It was her left, and she’s a lefty. The same person replied again, asking if she sleeps with her wings out or not. She sleeps with them out. It turns out she was stress-preening in her sleep. Username: dr_magic2303. A couple weeks later, same message board, Tips & Advice, a human is suddenly producing dark purple goop from his feet but it’s so slippery he can’t even leave to go see a doctor or a witch and he was typing the post from his bathroom. Within an hour, this Dr. Magic is back telling him someone’s put an aether ooze hex on him, and to sit down and scoot on his butt to the kitchen and gather up all these ingredients for a cleansing foot bath. And if he doesn’t have them, then he’ll have to butt-scoot his way to an apothecary or call one who does home deliveries. Now people are posting on there specifically asking Dr. Magic to come heal all their magical aches and pains.”

Renjun stared at you, unblinking. The pen had gone still in his hand.

You breathed in, continuing, “I tracked this Dr. Magic all the way back to their first post in the first week of fall semester of this year. Now, I’ve been trying to figure out who they are on my own, and I’ve made a lot of progress on who they aren’t. But I’m going to lose access to those message boards once we graduate at the end of the semester. I know Dr. Magic has to be an MCS major, there’s no way they would be able to have to breadth, depth, and flexibility of knowledge by just Googling this stuff. And you and me, Renjun, I know we can do this. Not only do we know MCS, but we know the department, the people in it. It has to be us.”

He was still staring at you, mouth slightly agape. Then, his whole demeanor shifted. He dropped his leg so that both his feet were on the ground, and he resumed spinning the pen.

“Okay. I’ll help you.” He nodded thoughtfully. “If you’ll do something for me.”

“Do what?” You straightened up.

“I’ll tell you after we find Dr. Magic.”

You crossed your arms. “No, tell me now or no deal.”

“I tell you after, but you can still say no then if you don’t want to do it.” He bargained.

“That just sounds even more concerning, Renjun. Tell me now or I’ll do it myself.”

“I’m hurt. What happened to ‘it has to be us?’”

“I’m a siren, I know how to sweet talk. Don’t take it personally.” You snorted. “Now, what do you want from me?”

“You’re a siren,” he echoed plainly, as if that were all the explanation you needed.

“And you’re a genius.” You retorted. “Tell me now or I walk out.”

“I... want to experience siren venom. For science.”

Oh, you could kiss him right now, no deal necessary. He was meeting your gaze head-on, a slightly unhinged glint in his eye. Not a hint of fear, just a craving for new experiences, unbridled curiosity. Yeah, he was a bit crazy, you were realizing four years on, and you wanted him.

“You’re insane.”

He leaned back in his seat, putting his hands up in front of him in an ‘I-don’t-care’ gesture, “If you don’t want to find Dr. Magic—”

“I didn’t say no, I said you’re insane,” you corrected him with a grin, dragging your eyes up and down his form as he sat so confidently, negotiating with a siren like it was any average Tuesday for him.

“So do we have a deal?” He set his pen down and held a hand out to you.

“You help me find Dr. Magic, then I’ll spit in your mouth.” You momentarily thought about the disparity in division of labor on that, but decided not to point it out aloud. Easiest handshake of your life. “Deal.”

You wanted to eat him alive.

“You’ve tried IP tracking?” Renjun asked, scrolling through your word document of notes that you’d accumulated on Dr. Magic.

“‘You’ve tried IP tracking?’” You mimicked him under your breath, making your voice so high-pitched to the point of mocking.

He rolled his eyes.

This was your first meet-up to try to hunt down Dr. Magic together. It was a couple weeks after he had agreed to help you in the first place. There was a test and some assignments in a few of your classes to get through first before either of you had enough spare time to dedicate to this. But now the two of you were back in the library, having taken a study room on the second floor and set up with your own laptops. You’d sent him your notes to look through on it while you perused the message board for any new posts from Dr. Magic.

“You do know that any geographical location an IP address can give you will just be the city, right? It’s not like the movies,” you snorted, dropping your voice back down to your normal intonation as you shook your head. “Anyway, I did do some extra legwork with the IPs, and matched most of them to desktop computers here in the library. I think the others are a personal device, their laptop or something.”

“They’re all different.”

You tutted at him, “Oh, you sweet Thursday’s child…”

“That’s not the say—”

“They’re all somehow on other continents. Now, I don’t think Dr. Magic teleporting abroad and cross-dimensionally to make forum posts.”

“VPN?”

“Definitely. They’re covering their tracks, they almost never use their own device, and when they have to, they use a VPN to cover up the IP address of it.”

He made a noise of acknowledgement, eyes still focused on his screen.

Then, something on the forum caught your eye. “Oh! Right here. Thirty-six minutes ago, a dryad posted that she can’t sprout daffodils from her body anymore. Every other plant and flower are fine, except daffodils. She posted it specifically asking Dr. Magic if they know what’s wrong with her.”

“Huh.” Renjun’s brow furrowed. “Just daffodils?”

“That’s what it says,” you confirmed, making a few clicks on your computer. “And… ‘notify me.’”

“You can turn on notifications for forum posts?”

“You can’t,” you informed him smugly. “But one of the sirens in my pod, he’s got a bunch of CompSci friends who I paid to write a browser extension for me that bookmarks forum posts and sends me email notifications when anybody replies to them. So I’ll know exactly when Dr. Magic responds.”

“You…”

“Have definitely spent too much time, energy, and money on this, I know. Sunken cost fallacy, look it up.”

“I was going to say ‘are insane,’” he breathed out, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief.

When you looked up from your computer at him, you saw that he had a curious gaze fixated on you, eyes narrowed slightly, mouth parted, and head tilted ever so slightly to the side.

You leaned forward minutely, holding his eye contact. “Takes one to know one, Junnie.”

He looked down at his keyboard, shifting in his seat before he looked back up at you. “Why are you calling me that?”

“Do you not like it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you do like it.” You smirked.

He frowned. “I didn’t say that either.”

“Well do you?”

“Answer my question.”

“Answer mine.”

“I asked first.”

“Ooh, how very primary school,” you teased, setting your chin in your hand.

“It’s only fair.” He pointed out.

“We could flip a coin.”

“Y/N.”

“Junnie.”

The human sighed, holding your eye contact wordlessly, looking entirely unamused.

You finally gave in with a casual shrug. “I just am.”

“Seriously? We’ve known each other for four years and you’ve never called me that—you’ve called me plenty of other things—but now suddenly you’ve got a nickname for me?”

“I’m not trying to be derogatory with it, if you’re worried about that,” you clarified. “Just sort of happened. I’m a siren, I flirt with cute people, sorry. Do you want me to stop calling you that?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing some off his face as he turned his focus back down to his screen. “It’s fine.”

“Anyway, I bookmarked the new forum post, so it’ll go on the board.”

“The board?”

“I, uh, I may be using a spare wall in my apartment to host a conspiracy theory board with you know, the red string and thumbtacks and stuff…” You admitted quietly.

“Can I see it?”

“Ho-ly shit,” Renjun breathed out, staring up at the multiple time-stamped printouts of forum posts, pictures of classmates and faculty, sticky notes, and yards of red string that you had pinned to a blank wall in your apartment.

You stood next to him, gazing up at your creation with a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment. This was the first time you’d let someone see this, and you were kind of glad it was Renjun. He actually seemed impressed. You were sure that any of your friends and family would be weirded out at best, and very concerned at worst.

“Yeah, I’m adding color copies off the school printers to the invoice I’m sending Dr. Magic at the end of all this.”

“You’re sending them an invoice for your self-assigned mission to hunt them down?” He snorted.

“Yup. It’s their fault for not using their school-issued login.” You crossed your arms. “Makes them enigmatic.”

Your classmate pointed to one of the headshots. “Is that Dr. Li?”

“Did you think our scope was narrowed to just students? Faculty have access to the message boards, too. And we’ve learned everything we know from our professors, so they obviously have the knowledge and skill to be Dr. Magic.”

“And their names also start with Doctor.” He added dryly, which you took to be a joke.

You decided that it wasn’t at your expense, though, and after giving a short chuckle, continued on with your explanation of why you specifically had your program head up on the board. “When I was grilling Dr. Li for information in the fall, he was giving me very duplicitous answers. Pointed me towards a freshman who I swear didn’t even know the difference between Arctic sirens and glacial sirens.”

“You think it was a diversion.”

“Obviously.”

Renjun tapped his chin thoughtfully. “What sort of questions were you asking him?”

“I couldn’t straight up ask him if he was Dr. Magic. So I was asking him things like... other than you and me, who did he think was the best student in the program, that kind of stuff. Said that kid reminded him of you and me on that first day of Intro to MCS.” You couldn’t help but let out an indignant scoff at the idea. “Can you believe? Didn’t know the difference between Arctic and glacial sirens…”

“Who was it?”

“Some basilisk in one of his Intro classes last semester. Uh…” You snapped your fingers as you tried to remember his name. “Seunghan! Hong Seunghan!”

“Seriously?” The human turned to look at you incredulously, clearly offended at the comparison as well.

“Seriously!”

He clutched at his chest like he was about to have a heart attack. “That’s who he thinks is the next us? I was an SI for that class…”

“I know! He’s not the brightest tool in the shed, huh?”

“So close, Y/N. So close…” He sighed.

“It almost completely threw me off my search for Dr. Magic. I figured I needed to seriously step up my game in his undergrad research or something.” You shook your head at the horrible memory. “Then I realized he might have been trying to get me to do exactly that.”

“Huh.” Renjun folded his arms over his chest as he looked away, pretending not to seem interested. “You did research with Dr. Li last semester?”

“Don’t give me those kicked puppy dog eyes, you’re doing research with Dr. Kwon this semester and she’s like, my academic idol!” You pointed at him accusatorily.

“And Dr. Li is mine!”

You waved your arms in front of you, shaking yourself out of the academic envy-induced frenzy you’d gotten worked up into. “We’re getting off-topic. We’re here to catch Dr. Magic, remember?”

“Right…” He took a deep breath, turning back to the conspiracy wall.

As Renjun studied your work, you studied him. You had a strand of fairy lights clipped up above the conspiracy wall for light and ambiance (mostly ambiance), and they now lit his features from the front. He didn’t have a baseball cap on today, leaving his brown hair to fall over his forehead, down past his eyebrows and just into his eyes. He blinked and shook his head slightly. A piece had presumably been bothering him. The curving slope of the bridge of his nose, his lips, his chin that he still had one hand propped up to hold, a finger tapping against his cupid’s bow like a metronome. You listened closer, curious if it would be mimicking the beat of his heart. The tapping was just slightly slower than his heart, and would stop if he found something that he took particular interest in, then start back up when he moved on again.

Not that you were going to tell him, but you were double motivated to find Dr. Magic now. Seeing Renjun under your venom was going to be a reward all on its own. You understood full well why he felt like he needed to ask you as part of an exchange like this, but he seemed to greatly underestimate his own selling value. Which was good for you. This was a win-win-win in your eyes.

Thinking of the deal made you curious, though. He had that request ready to go almost like…

“So, do you want to be petrified by a basilisk, too?”

Renjun didn’t take his eyes off the wall. “Already have been.”

“Really?”

“My friend Mark is a basilisk. When he had just gotten his powers a couple years ago and couldn’t control them, he kept accidentally petrifying his human roommate. So I figured out when it was most likely to happen, invited myself over and hid his sunglasses. It was strange, being able to think but not speak, see but not blink, and telling my muscles to move and not having them obey.” He casually detailed what sounded like one of the most horrifying experiences ever to you, leaning in towards a specific post from November. “But it only lasted one minute and twenty-nine seconds.”

You stared at him with both admiration and alarm. “You manufactured an opportunity to get petrified.”

“I knew he wouldn’t do it if I asked. He’s a wimp. That, and he couldn’t do it on command at the time, even if he did agree.”

“Have you had your blood drank?”

“Yup.”

“Been flying?”

“How so?” His eyes flicked over to you for a second, and you were glad that you had relaxed again with the more casual conversation.

“With a gryphon, phoenix, take your pick.” You shrugged.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have a list for this stuff or something?”

“Written down, no. But I suppose I have a mental list.”

“Poisoned by a wyvern?”

“Would have to find one first.”

You felt your eyes bug out of your head. “You want to be poisoned by a wyvern? You know there’s no cure for that, right?”

“Yes, I took the same class that you did on them last spring.” He reminded you tersely. Your head jerked back minutely, surprised for a second that he had noticed, remembered, and brought it up. The two of you didn’t have a spat in that class, taking an ‘ignore and pretend the other doesn’t exist’ approach that semester when you could, and hadn’t mentioned it since. Seeming to realize what he’d done, Renjun rushed to move on, “So I also know that there’s no cure because they went extinct hundreds of years ago.”

“Supposedly.”

“You think they’re still out there?”

“Maybe.”

“Hm.” He stepped to the side to read over the next post from the first week of December.

You scoffed. “Okay, coming from the guy who believes in aliens.”

“We haven’t explored all of space. But we know what habitats wyverns lived in, and they’re not there anymore.”

“They could’ve adapted, gone somewhere else,” you tried to argue. “I’m not exactly splashing around the ocean right now, am I?”

“Where did they go, then?”

“I... I don’t know,” you admitted, holding yourself by your arms protectively.

“Hmph.”

You tightened your grip, swallowing hard against the lump threatening to grow in your throat. “I just don’t want to believe they’re gone, okay?”

“So this isn’t a scientific hypothesis, but some rosy daydream?” Renjun’s disapproval of the lack of academic rigor in your argument was clear in his tone as his eyes never left your wall, following a red string up to your next connection for Dr. Magic.

“I don’t want to believe that wyverns went extinct because that means that sirens could too! Alright?” You finally snapped, hands squeezing tightly around your biceps as your claws came out with the raw burst of emotion. “I know that Magical Conservation was just some class to you, but I had to sit there and take notes on how exactly the native habitats of sirens—me, my friends, my family—are shrinking, and could theoretically lead to our extinction, and then write a discussion post on it after like it was some intellectually stimulating bit of information. So yeah, maybe I like to imagine that there’s still wyverns out there somewhere, because it gives me a modicum of hope that after everything, there could still be sirens, too. Sorry that that’s not academic enough.”

The image of Renjun that you had been yelling at in front of you was wavering as tears swam in your vision. He’d turned around to listen, mouth parting as he seemed to immediately realize his mistake. The human nodded regretfully, running a hand through his hair before finally picking his words.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean to be so dismissive. I-I misread the tone of the discussion. Sirens aren’t wyverns, and you won’t meet the same fate they might have. Siren advocacy and conservation groups are making huge progress. The world now is a lot different than it was hundreds of years ago,” Renjun said, and you could hear both the remorse and firm belief in his tone. “And who knows, maybe there are still some wyverns out there. I could be wrong... it’s been known to happen before.”

You took a deep breath, your claws receding back into your fingers and just leaving your normal fingernails. As you looked down at your arms, though, you let out a sigh.

“Damn, I got myself.” You clicked your tongue in your throat regretfully, spotting a few drops of what looked like molten silver metal welling to the surface where you’d punctured your skin.

“Ooh,” Renjun winced sympathetically. “Do you have some… bandages?”

“Even better, I’ve got running water.” You started towards the door, then noted that there were no footsteps behind you. Turning back around, you looked at the human knowingly. “Do you want to watch, Renjun?”

He perked up. “Please?”

“Come on,” you jerked your head, holding your arms level as you shuffled towards your kitchen.

Thankfully, you hadn’t been nearly deep enough to get your scales, just the skin overtop. Turning the kitchen faucet on, you grabbed one of your sleeves, then looked at your classmate imploringly.

“A little help, Junnie?” You nodded towards your other arm, where the end of your sleeve was getting close to your blood.

“Oh, sure.” He surged forward to help you roll up the other one.

“I know you know this but be careful not to touch my blood,” you reminded him, finally pulling up the sleeve you’d started on well enough. Siren blood was a neurotoxin to humans—and not the fun kind like your venom, but a proper ‘kill you in an excruciatingly painful way’ kind.

“Uh-huh, got it.”

A couple drops on your left and a drop on your right had run down to your elbows, and you just managed to catch yourself so that they dripped into the sink and not onto your counter (or gods forbid, Renjun). Looking over to make sure he was watching, you stuck your left bicep under the stream of water first. The ocean blue scales that peeked through your skin shimmered in the kitchen lights directly above your head. Thankfully you hadn’t come anywhere close to nicking one of those. That would’ve actually hurt. Within a second of touching the water your skin had meshed itself back together. You turned your arm to rinse off the blood, then brought it back out to show that there was no scar left. Doing the same with the other, it healed just as quick, no mark left behind to indicate that anything had ever happened.

“Yep…” Renjun breathed out as you grabbed a hand towel and went to dry off your arms. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that.”

“How many does that make?” You giggled.

“What?”

“How many creatures have you seen magically heal themselves? What number am I?”

“You make me sound so…”

“Like a common MCS whore?”

“I was going to say clinical, but damn, tell me how you really feel, Y/N.”

Both of you laughed, and you put the hand towel back.

“You’re the first siren,” Renjun answered your question genuinely anyway.

You hummed as you mulled this over. “I’ll take it.”

He made a dramatic motion of wiping sweat off his forehead, and you reached forward to smack his forearm. You two laughed again.

After a bout of comfortable silence, your eyes settled on him again, still thinking about exactly how you’d accidentally stabbed yourself in the first place.

“I forgive you, by the way,” you said. “I don’t think I said that.”

“You didn’t.” He nodded. “Thank you.”

“You really mean all that? You think I’ll—we’ll be okay? Sirens?”

“Of course I mean it. Or I wouldn’t have said it. It’s the most scientifically plausible. I did take that Magical Conservation class seriously, you know. I know it couldn’t have meant the same thing for me as it means to you, but I did my final paper on siren conservation projects in the Arctic. The progress that’s being made there is incredible. I-I don’t want to tell you about your own species’ problems, obviously, but—”

“I did mine on siren conservation in the tropics.” You let out a dry chuckle at the flawless symbiosis. “You can tell me about your paper sometime, Renjun.”

“And I’d love to hear about siren conservation in the tropics.”

“Ah, ‘a meeting of the minds.’” You did your best impression of Dr. Li, thinning your voice out to sound like an elderly man, which garnered a smile from Renjun. “Isn’t this what our professors always wanted?”

“Uh-oh. We’re giving them exactly what they want.” He shook his head ruefully. “Quick, you need to start yelling at me about something.”

“Well you need to say something obnoxious first.”

Another gentle lull in the conversation, and you watched as Renjun looked around your apartment a lot more carefully than when you two had first entered. Your destination then had been solely the conspiracy wall, but now he seemed to be really taking it in.

“So why don’t you have like… a fish tank or something?” He asked.

“Because that would be cruel! Imagine if someone kept you in a 2-foot by 2-foot box!” You jabbed a finger into his chest accusatorily.

He held his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. That was a stupid question.”

“I’m glad you said it, because I was about to.”

“So why don’t you reply? To the posts.” Renjun asked curiously, back to trolling the message boards for new Dr. Magic posts. You two were holed up in your second floor study room again. “You’ve been tracking Dr. Magic so closely, you’re getting to these posts before they do, and you can help all these students, too. So why don’t you just reply instead?”

Yours and Renjun’s search for Dr. Magic had been going on for a month now, and he’d been proving himself useful. He’d finally convinced you to rule out Dr. Li as a suspect when he found a message board post made from a school computer while Dr. Li was away at a conference giving a presentation. Confirmed to be done at the exact same time. So you’d found another wrong person, but you still didn’t feel any closer to the right person. The remaining people felt like they were going to turn out to be dead ends, and there was nobody good to rule in either.

Spring break was coming up in a few weeks, which meant that commencement preparations would be starting, which meant that the colleges would be announcing who would be chosen to carry their banners, which meant the actual students who were going to be chosen would be told at least a week or two ahead of time. Every time you thought about that you wanted to bite something. Maybe there was some ancestral link between sirens and werewolves. Another paper waiting to be written.

“They don’t want me. They want Dr. Magic.” You told Renjun, hating the irritable edge in your voice when you addressed him. You weren’t upset with him, you were just anxious in general. He didn’t deserve to have you take it out on him.

“Right. Sorry…”

“No, Renjun, I’m sorry,” you sighed, taking the wood pencil out of your mouth that you had been gnawing on. “I just want to get this Dr. Magic stuff over with before midterms because you and I are both going to get super busy studying for midterms, and then no matter which one of us gets picked to carry the banner, that’s going to suck up a lot of time preparing for commencement too. I shouldn’t have snapped at you though, sorry.”

He offered you a small smile. “It’s okay, I get it. It’s another deadline. But it’s a group project, remember? We’ve got this, Y/N.”

You nodded. “Yeah, I know. Just feeling the pressure. I’m going to get something from the vending machine. You coming?”

“No, I’ll keep chugging along.”

“Okay. You want anything?”

“Nah. Thanks, though.”

“Alright,” you nodded, standing up and rolling your neck out. “I’m going to stretch my legs while I’m up, so I’ll be a few.”

“I won’t sound the alarm then.” He gave you a two-fingered salute as you headed to the door.

You meandered around the second floor, taking your sweet time to get to the stairs. There was a vending machine on the second floor, but it had a limited selection. The good snacks were all in the vending machines on the first floor, by the collaboration zones. Your back cracked all on its own as you plodded down the steps, and you let quiet groans with each one, until you finally landed on the first floor. There was a noticeable hum to the first floor, which only increased as you neared the two-thirds of the floor that was taken up by the collaboration zones. The vending machines were on the boundary of the bookshelves and the open spaces filled with tables and TV monitors and so many students.

Stopping in front of the drinks machine first, you mused over the options for a moment. Picking out your preferred seaweed-infused iced tea—an option you only saw sirens and the really hardcore human health-nuts drink—you then sidestepped to the snacks. It took you just a second to select a pack of mini peanut butter sandwich cookies. Neither peanut butter nor peanuts themselves were in the regular diet of a siren, but Renjun sometimes had the cookies on him for one of his werewolf friends and you’d picked up a taste for them. You would’ve never considered even trying them before hanging out with Renjun. Being an MCS major, you didn’t like to admit it, but your social circle wasn’t very diverse species-wise. You had your siren pod, and you were very happy sticking with them, thank you. Renjun, meanwhile, seemed to be best friends or friendly acquaintances with everything except a wyvern. You knew plenty about other species, after all, you excelled in class. But practical experience, you were finding you seemed to be lacking in. Maybe you should start your own Renjun-esque bucket list. Something to consider after finding Dr. Magic.

Taking a step back over to the drinks machine, you made the split-second decision to get Renjun’s favorite non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic drink. Honeydew melon soda. He had already said that you didn’t need to get him anything, but you wanted to.

“Hey, Y/N!” A cheerful voice greeted you, and you spun around, your two drinks and bag of sandwich cookies in hand.

You already knew who it was going to be, smiling at the familiar face of Ten. He was not only another siren, but specifically a siren from your pod, ocean blue scales and golden eyes matching your own. You threw your arms around his neck to give him a hug. “Ten! Ah, hey!”

“Are those… peanut butter?” He looked at the snack in your hand suspiciously.

“Uh, human study buddy,” you brushed off his concerns nonchalantly.

“Right, gotcha.”

The two of you usually hung out a lot—about as much as you and Renjun were together now, you figured—but since your spare time had been taken up with putting the search for Dr. Magic on full throttle, you were blanking on the last time you’d seen him. The beginning of the semester. Oh shit, you felt so guilty now.

The apology immediately started spilling out of your mouth, “Gods, I am so sorry we haven’t hung out, I wish I could say it was classes, or even research or something, but I’ve got this project. I can’t even really explain it without sounding crazy but—”

“Woah, Y/N, it’s okay,” Ten reassured you with a laugh, the same bright smile on his face as always. “I know how you get when you get really into one of your projects. Just let me know when you’ve finished it, and we can hang. Or if you ever need a break from it, too. It’s fine. If you weren’t a little crazy and obsessive, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you.”

He ruffled your hair with a snicker for good measure, and with your hands full of food, you couldn’t fight back, just huff and try to duck out of the way. But he was genuine about his sentiments, which really did make you feel better.

“Thanks, Ten. I’ll get in touch soon, I promise. I think I’m almost done!” You told him proudly.

“Soon in normal person time or soon in Y/N time?”

“Me time…”

“That’s what I thought. I’ll see you in six months then.”

“I’m not that bad!”

“Remember when I wondered aloud if sirens at the North and South poles were related, and you ended up spending our entire winter break researching that?”

“It only took four weeks!”

“You said it would be a quick search.”

“Exactly! People will dedicate their entire lives to that kind of research! I vastly condensed it!”

He shook his head fondly at the memory, elbowing you gently. “Get back to your project so you can finish early again and we can hang out soon, okay? And scoot, I’m trying to use the vending machine. You’re always in my way, I swear.”

You playfully pretended to block him, laughing as he nudged you out of the way with his shoulder. Starting back off towards the stairs, you turned around to give a cheery, “See you, Ten!”

“Bye, Y/N!” He waved to you with one hand, punching in the vending machine code with the other.

In better spirits having seen your friend, you traipsed up the stairs with extra pep in your step. Except Renjun wasn’t in your study room. Huh. Well, nothing in the rules saying a guy can’t take a bathroom break.

Setting his melon soda down next to his laptop, you plopped back down in your chair and kicked your feet up on the table. You ripped open your peanut butter sandwich cookies and cracked open your tea. The cookies were sweet, and while you didn’t have any oceanic reference for what peanut butter tasted like (you were told that “nutty” was a flavor profile unto itself, which wasn’t very helpful), you had decided that you liked it.

Waking your laptop back up, you saw that you had a new email, and shot up in your seat when you saw the subject.

dr_magic2303 replied to a post.

8 minutes ago.

Holy fucking shit, 8 minutes ago. While you were in the library? They could still be there. You looked around frantically. Where the fuck was Renjun when you needed him? Shooting to your feet, you snatched your phone from the table and rushed to throw the door open. Into Renjun’s face.

He stumbled back, holding his face as he let out a string of curses.

“Shit! Sorry, Junnie!” You didn’t sound all too sorry as you bounced on your feet, antsy to get a move on with your search. “No time for an ice pack though. Dr. Magic just replied to that dragon post we had bookmarked eight minutes ago. Which means that they’re probably still in the library! We need to go look for them right now!”

You took off in the direction of the desktop computers on this floor, keeping your voice at a fervent whisper-yell. The second floor computers were their favorite, according to the IPs.

“I know!” Renjun hurried after you, still clutching his nose. “I saw the email, and I tried to call you, but you left your phone in the study room.”

Checking your phone, you did in fact have a missed call from Renjun from 6 minutes ago. Well shit.

“So I went to go get you, but you weren’t at the vending machines, so I came back up to the study room and then nearly got my nose broken.”

You looked over your shoulder at him with wide eyes. “You went to get me? Not look for Dr. Magic on the freshest lead we’ve ever had? When they were quite possibly around the corner?”

The two of you had arrived at the desktops, and there was nobody in sight. One was awake, on the account login screen, the other two asleep on the ancient screensavers. You let out a heavy sigh, looking over at Renjun.

“I went to get you because this is your thing, not mine. I don’t know, I’d figured you’d want the satisfaction of taking the mask off them.”

You nodded. “Thanks, Junnie. Next time, though, just get them.”

“And how about you keep your phone on you?”

“So we both fucked it up.”

He gave you a one-shouldered shrug. “There’s still three more floors, Y/N.”

“Right, come on. You take the first, I’ll go up to the fourth since I smacked you with the door.”

The other floors were busts, and when you finally met back up with Renjun in your study room, you were glad to have your cold bottle of tea waiting for you. Knocking back a third of it in one go, you let out a noise of relief. Renjun had already opened the soda you’d gotten him.

“Thanks, by the way.” He held it up gratefully before taking a sip.

“You’re welcome.”

“And, I’m sorry. That I let Dr. Magic get away.”

“We don’t even know what floor they were posting from yet. They’ve could’ve been on the fourth floor and would’ve been gone by the time you got there anyway.” You brushed away his apologies. “Or they could’ve been on the second and been a psycho and you would’ve been a poor defenseless human all by yourself.”

“Oh, right, without my big strong siren to protect me.” He scoffed. “Woe is me.”

“Exactly,” you laughed, shutting your laptop. “Anyway, I’ll take a look at the IP later. Who knows, they might not have even been in the library. Might’ve been one of those rogue VPN posts.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He looked over you packing up your things. “You heading out?”

You nodded, zipping up your bag and tossing it onto your shoulder. “Prior arrangements. Sorry to cut this short, completely forgot about it when we agreed to meet up.”

“You’re so popular.”

“I know!” You mimicked his sarcastic tone, holding the door open with your foot as you stopped in the threshold. “Oh, hey— the midterm in MCS Linguistics. It’s my only one this semester, I’ve just got papers in all my other classes. Do you want to study together for that?”

“Yeah, sure, sure.”

“First session Saturday? My place for lunch?”

Renjun grimaced, presumably remembering your typical stock of pantry items tailored to a siren’s food preference. “I’ll pack a lunch.”

“Cool. See you in class, Junnie!” You waved to him cheerily as you took off for the faculty advisor meeting with Dr. Kwon that you were going to need to run across campus to be on time for.

“What is it?” Renjun set his book down where he was sat across your coffee table from you, an inquisitive eyebrow quirked up at you.

“What? Nothing.” You bit down on your lip, eyes boring holes into your computer screen.

“No, it’s not ‘nothing.’ You’ve been staring at me ever since I got here, while also refusing to make eye contact with me. What? Something in my teeth? My hair look bad?”

Normally that would’ve made you chuckle—he was wearing a backwards baseball cap again today—but you just bit down harder on your lip and shook your head.

“Now you’re refusing to talk?” He scoffed. “Did you get hexed or something? I can’t believe you’re refusing to talk.”

“No, I can talk,” you insisted. “What uh, what’d you get for number four? On the review packet?”

“Don’t tell me you’re still stuck on number four. Y/N, I’m almost done, and there’s twenty-five questions on this.”

“I’m not, I finished and went back, it was just one that I didn’t—”

But Renjun had grabbed your computer and turned the screen around, and you knew he could see that you had only done the first one. You buried your face in your hands, your skin prickling uncomfortably with shame. Your friend’s sigh was audible, but surprisingly, the next thing said wasn’t a string of derision. Instead, you heard the shuffle of clothes against your rug, and then he was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee with you.

“Y/N, what’s going on with you today? Or, not today, the past couple days? You weren’t all there in class yesterday either. I left it alone then because it was Dr. Hyun, and nobody is ever all there for her classes but— what’s wrong?”

You slowly shook your head.

“You can’t tell me?”

You nodded.

“Okay. Is it bad? Like, dangerous?”

You shook your head.

“Alright, that’s good.” The relief was audible in his voice. “Is it family? Or, pod?”

You shook your head.

“School?”

You nodded.

“Alright, yeah. A lot going on. Is it like burn out?”

You shook your head.

“So, new stuff?”

You nodded.

He put an arm around your shoulders. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I know you already had a lot. Getting this midterm over with will be one more thing off your checklist, right? That’ll open a spot for this new thing.”

With a sniffle, you nodded.

“Ah, but you’re not going to be any good studying like this.” He sighed again, dropping his arm from around your shoulders and his presence shifted away from your side. “Come on, quick field trip. Then we’ll come right back to the MCS Linguistics grind. Sound good?”

You finally took your hands from your face to look up. Renjun was standing right next to you, offering you a hand. You tentatively put yours in his, and he tightened his grip to pull you up to your feet.

The two of you ended up in a froyo shop down the street from your apartment. You gleefully picked a gummy shark off the top of your swirl, biting the head off first before tossing the rest in your mouth. Renjun lifted a meticulously curated spoonful of froyo and toppings to his mouth, satisfaction on his face as he tasted his perfect bite. You watched in amusement as he went to start creating his next scoop that had the precise ratio of yogurt and every single topping he had chosen—each partitioned to their own area atop the froyo. You decided to save your second big gummy shark for last, and took a big spoonful from the melting edge of your froyo.

“Why not me?” Renjun asked abruptly, his gaze still on the dessert in front of him.

“Huh?” Your jaw dropped. How could he have known what—

“You haven’t asked me if I’m Dr. Magic. Why not?”

Ah, Dr. Magic. Of course.

“You were my first guess, and the first person I ruled out back in like September,” you admitted with a shrug.

His head snapped up at that. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re such an arrogant, neurotic overachiever that you’d want credit if you did all this. You wouldn’t use an alias.”

“Oh. Huh.” Renjun looked between you and his froyo, a sheepish smile coming to his face. “Strangely, that makes me feel better.”

You watched a dollop of froyo fall off your spoon and plop back into your cup. “And I nabbed your IP address off your laptop the first time we hung out in January and double-checked it with every Dr. Magic post. Just in case.”

“When I was in the bathroom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Of course you did.”

“Were you taking it as an insult to your intelligence that I had apparently not considered you as an option?”

“Maybe…”

You laughed, and laughed, and laughed. You laughed so hard your sides hurt, there were tears in your eyes, and you genuinely started wheezing. Renjun pretended to roll his eyes, but you saw the smile on his face and knew what he was thinking: success, no more mopey siren.

Once you had enough air back in your lungs to talk, you pointed your spoon at him firmly. “See? Just proving my point. You want people to know you’re smart.”

He crossed his arms. “As if you don’t.”

“Oh, I definitely do. But I know I’m like that.” You put a hand over your chest, looking him dead in the eye. “Do you?”

With your head screwed back on the normal amount, you and Renjun were able to dive back into your study session at your apartment. Several hours into it, though, you noticed Renjun blinking like way too much and constantly rubbing at his eyes. It was to the point where it was distracting for you.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” You asked bluntly.

That immediately burst the Renjun griping dam (which was really held together with tape and prayers anyway). “The screens hurt my eyes and human blue light glasses don’t do shit and no fairy has let me try theirs out. I know I should probably just take the plunge and buy them but I really can’t justify the price and—”

“Try mine.” You stood up, walking over to a display shelf on the other side of the living room.

“You have a pair? Why? Sirens don’t—”

“You collect magical experiences. I collect magical things.” You said nonchalantly, grabbing the pair of silver frames from where they sat between a phoenix feather (a gift) and a small wristwatch that would tell the correct time until it was put on, then it would be set on the time and date most significant to the wearer in that moment until it was removed. Walking back over to him, you held them out to him insistently, “Here, try them.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Renjun gingerly took them, sliding the arms over his ears and the frames onto the bridge of his nose. The pair you had was a little older, admittedly. You’d picked them up at a novelty shop, so they had some retro charm to them. An older style of frame, thicker lenses. But you thought it added a quaintness to their look. Especially on Renjun, he just looked downright adorable in them.

You sat back down to watch with your head in your hand as his brown eyes blinked from behind the thick lenses, and he looked around your living room like a newborn woodland animal. His face had already relaxed, and he turned his focus down to his laptop screen next, messing with the brightness up, then down. After that, he took out his phone, doing the same with that device.

“Well?” You prompted him, though you truly would’ve been content with watching him look around as if he’d been born colorblind and it were his first time seeing in color. Which, you had an enchanted pair for that too, but he wasn’t colorblind to your knowledge.

The human looked at you, a giddy smile stretching across his face. “They’re perfect! Thanks, Y/N!”

His hand reached up to take them off, but you stopped him.

“Keep them—”

“No, these had to be so expensive!” He protested immediately.

“Just for a week or so,” you finished your sentence pointedly. He was cute, but not that cute. “Make sure you really like them before you buy, okay? If you end up hating them, give them back. If you like them and buy your own pair, you can give them back whenever yours arrive in the mail.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I’m using them. Superior siren eyesight.” You tapped next to one of your eyes for emphasis.

“Thanks for not rubbing it in or anything.”

Scrambling to dial Renjun’s number, you put your phone on speaker as you fervently flicked through all of your Dr. Magic notes. You’d been laying in bed binging some mindless baking competition to numb your brain from all the studying you’d been doing when an email notification had popped up alerting you to a new Dr. Magic post.

“Y/N?” Renjun answered the phone, sounding utterly confused. “What’s—”

“New Dr. Magic post. I ran the IP and they’re in our city!” You blurted out.

“Okay… Well we already knew that, right?”

“Yeah, but this is an IP in our city that they posted from at midnight on a Saturday. Not any of the school computers.” You hit CTRL + F, typing in the string of numbers to quickly cross reference it with your extensive list. “This could be their IP. Like, their actual one, from a personal computer.”

“Oh, yeah. Could be.”

“Can you give me a little more enthusiasm here, Junnie? Did I wake you up or something? It’s only—” You stopped like you’d just walked face-first into a brick wall, eyes locked on the search result.

“Yeah, only quarter after midnight,” he scoffed.

You clicked the next arrow on the search bar, but that was the only match. 1/1 results.

“Y/N?” Renjun called for your attention. “You there?”

You hung up.

Not wanting to lose your nerve, you pressed the doorbell over and over insistently. You could hear the complaining tone of the occupant before his words were even audible.

“Christ, I have neighbors, you know?” Renjun swung open the door with a scowl. The human was in a big, slouching hoodie and pajama pants. His hair was stuck up in a couple different directions, making you think he might’ve just woken up. Except behind him, you could see that his kitchen light was on, and a couple books and his laptop were open on his kitchen table. Late night studying. And the fact that you’d just talked to him on the phone fifteen minutes ago.

“Can I come in?” You requested, fidgeting with the sleeve of your cardigan.

His face immediately softened. “Yeah, of course.”

“Sorry to just show up like this,” you said as you took off your shoes by the front door before following him further into his apartment.

“It’s okay.” He stopped you two in the kitchen, picking up a colorful, patterned cardboard box. “Uh, I was just about to make a midnight snack. Pizza bites, you want some?”

“I… don’t think I’ve ever had them.”

“Perfect, you can try one now then.”

“Mm,” you made a non-committal noise, leaning against his kitchen counter to watch him pour out the frozen food onto a baking sheet.

The oven beeped, and he put the tray in before pressing a couple more buttons.

“So, I was thinking about the Dr. Magic stuff. Not the IP stuff but like… What even is your plan for when you do find Dr. Magic?” Renjun asked as he put the remaining pizza bites in his freezer.

“What do you mean?”

He leaned against the countertop across from you, though in the narrow space of his kitchen, you were practically knee-to-knee. “Like, say we finally find out who they are, we run up to them in the library or on campus or something. Then what? What are you going to do? What are you going to say? You’ve done all this, and I know why you had to. I get it. But, do you know what you’re going to say to them?”

“Probably something along the lines of…” You trailed off, giving an exasperated sigh. Dropping your chin to your chest, you groaned, “Gods, I don’t know.”

“Hey, that’s why you got me. So you can bounce ideas off someone, do a dry run.”

“I thought the words would just come to me, and now that I’m trying, I can’t—”

“It’s fine, Y/N. Let’s think about why you did this. I know it’s really hard to put into words. I mean, I know why you did. I get it. It’s that need to know. Not because you can, but because you have to, right? It’s curiosity in its rawest form. So obviously it’s not going to be some schmaltzy ‘haha I caught you’ spiel or anything.”

Looking up from the kitchen tile to Renjun’s eager features, you shook your head in disbelief. “You’re still helping me… when I know it’s you, Junnie.”

He tilted his head to the side, a comical noise of confusion coming from his mouth, “Uh?”

“I know it’s you, and you know that I know that it’s you.”

“You already ruled me out, because I’m an arrogant—”

“Junnie, you made a post on the forums from your laptop. No VPN. When you knew I was still tracking Dr. Magic’s IP on every post they made, and that I had your IP. That’s not a whoopsie that you make unless you want to be caught.”

The human crossed his arms over his chest, but otherwise seemed entirely calm about being caught. “And you didn’t come in here guns blazing now that you’d caught me, either. Why?”

“I didn’t know how to say it. I mean, you’re right, I only did all this because I needed to know.”

“And now you know.”

“Why now? Why just give up now?” You asked with a shake of your head. “You started posting as Dr. Magic back in August, and I came to you in January. You knew everything I was doing; you could have cruised through the rest of the semester and I’d have never caught you.”

“You wanted to find out who it was by midterms. One less thing on your plate.”

“And now I know…”

“So how does it feel? Finally catching Dr. Magic?”

You wrinkled your nose and sighed, “Bit disappointing. I was right on my first guess.”

“And you immediately dismissed me out of hand for being an arrogant, neurotic overachiever on your first guess,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I didn’t really know you then. If I’d known you then like I know you now, I would’ve known as soon as I saw the first post.”

Renjun batted his eyes teasingly. “Aww, Y/N…”

“Doctor underscore magic two, three, zero, three? Twenty-three, oh-three? That’s your birthday, Junnie,” you deadpanned.

“Right.”

Pushing off the counter to stand up straight again, you said, “Anyway, you did help me find Dr. Magic. So, my turn.”

“Oh, no, you seriously don’t have to do that. I rigged the deal—”

“Yeah, about that.” You took a step forward. “How did you think that was going to end up for you, anyway? Were you going to sell somebody else out as Dr. Magic and hope I wasn’t going to talk to them? Spit in your mouth first and ask questions later?”

“I was thinking on my feet.”

“Maybe think laying down next time, Junnie.”

“Ouch.”

“Anyway, come on, you’ll want to sit down for this.” You grabbed his wrist, pulling him towards the living room.

“You don’t need to feel like you have to do this,” he reassured you.

Stopping the two of you in front of the couch, you turned to face him with a smirk. “Believe me when I say that it is going to be a treat unto itself for me to see you under the effects of siren venom. M’kay?”

Renjun’s surprise was evident on his face. “Oh.”

You stepped closer to him, delicately placing a hand on his chest. “Now unless you want me to literally spit in your mouth, I’m going to have to kiss you, to administer the venom.”

His eyes flicked between the hand you had on his chest and your face as he replied. “I’m okay with that—the kissing—if you are.”

“Renjun, I’ve been ready to eat you alive since you said the words ‘I want to experience siren venom for science’ to me.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. So why don’t you sit?” You guided him with the hand against his chest to sit back against his couch. Swinging one leg over his hips, then the other, you lowered yourself onto his lap. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded, tentatively settling his hands on your thighs. “Is this okay?”

“More than.” You smiled, looping your arms around his neck. “Now, a couple things, before we get started.”

“We haven’t started?”

“You’ll know it when we do.”

“Right.”

“I know you think you know what siren venom is like, but whatever scientific articles you’ve read, or documentaries you’ve watched, or slides you’ve studied under microscopes in lab, cannot actually prepare you for what it’s like. Which, I imagine is why you want to experience it for yourself.” You smirked down at him as you watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down with a gulp. “So before I actually dose you up with it, I need you to tell me what you’re actually okay with doing and what you’re not. Because once you get my venom in you, you’re going to want to let me do anything and everything to you, up to and including kill you, remember?”

“Well that’s off the table.”

“Good to know,” you snorted, running a fingernail down the nape of his neck. You felt a shudder go through him. “Is this okay?”

“Y-Yeah.” He seemed to be fighting to keep his eyes open. You halted your motions to let him think, and watched in amusement as he blinked his mind clear.

Once enough time had passed, you prompted him, “So?”

“I think just kissing,” Renjun answered. “Like, making out, or whatever. If you want…”

You snickered. “What part of ‘eat you alive’ was I unclear about?”

“The ‘eat’ part, actually. How literal is that?”

“Guess you’ll find out,” you teased. Then, you focused again as you sat back a little. “Okay, making out. Making out means different things to different people. So… we know kissing’s on the table. Tongue?”

“Yeah.”

“Teeth?”

“Where?”

“Waist up. You got somewhere you don’t want them?”

He took a moment to think about this. Then shook his head. “No. You can use them. Anywhere.”

“Same goes for you. Hickies?”

“Giving or receiving?”

“Both. You first.”

“Both are okay. You?”

You were already zeroing in on his neck and a small part of his collarbone peeking out from under his hoodie. “Same. Touching over clothes?”

“Okay, as long as you don’t think it’ll be too much with the venom…”

“Oh, Junnie, everything is going to be too much.” You grinned down at him.

His breathing had picked up pace as the two of you were talking. “You? The touching?”

“Good. Great. Touching under clothes?”

Renjun squirmed underneath you, but maintained your eye contact. “Just under my shirt.”

“Smart boy,” you said approvingly. “Me too.”

“Is that it?” He asked quietly, eyes now flicking down to your lips.

“I think so…” You looked around the room to buy a couple extra seconds of thinking time. When you hadn’t come up with anything else, you looked down at the human below you once more. “Ready, Renjun?”

“Yes.”

You took one final look over him like this, how much he already wanted you before he’d even gotten any of your venom in him, and dragged the tip of your tongue over your bottom lip instinctually. His heartrate jumped, and you wondered if it was fear—if the motion had reminded him perhaps of a hungry predator—or need. Or maybe a bit of both.

But you couldn’t tease him nor yourself any longer, swooping down to connect your mouths. You started off with just a couple light, closed-mouth kisses, to ease him into it. You heard him inhale quickly through his nose, his grip on your thighs tightening minutely. Swiping your tongue across the seal of his lips, you were delighted when he immediately parted his mouth in response, his tongue seeking yours out. You hummed contentedly into his mouth as you started stroking a fingernail down the back of his neck again. At the same time, your venom was beginning to mix in with your saliva, being passed onto Renjun.

Once his jaw started going slack in the kiss, and his hands slowly slid off your legs entirely to rest lamely at his side, you deemed him plenty dosed up. Consciously, you blocked off your venom glands once more. When one particularly drawn-out scratch down the back of his neck finally elicited a noise from him, an involuntary whine, you felt something in you snap. You needed more of that.

“So this is what siren venom feels like…” He mumbled breathily, letting his head loll back against the couch cushion as you kissed a path down his jawline and neck. When you felt his breath hitch in his throat over one particular spot, you decided to take your time there, sucking and nipping a mark into his skin.

When humans were… locked in a lover’s embrace, they let off a certain perfume distinguishable only to sirens—which was what made them the favored prey of sirens for so long. A human under the influence of siren venom? Delectable. And every human’s was unique too, so Renjun under the influence of your venom? Absolutely addictive.

With each kiss you stole from his lips, every nip you left on his neck that you then soothed over with your tongue, you got another taste of it. A sweetness that came with a bite, like ginger candy.

Renjun was still talking, though, his vocal cords vibrating under your lips. “My-My heart’s beating so fast, and I’m so warm—that’s so the ocean water doesn’t feel cold, of course—”

“Would you shut up?” You sat back up, grabbing him by the hair.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to kiss you again, idiot.”

“Oh. Right.” He closed his mouth, looking up at you with glassy eyes, waiting. Gods, he was so pretty like this.

You crashed your lips back on his, a mess of teeth and lips and tongue as he tried to keep up with you. But you knew that your venom was in full effect now, every single one of his nerve endings was approximately three and half times more sensitive. So you were sure it was all a little overwhelming. But he was definitely trying his best, kissing sloppily into your mouth with hungry, desperate whines.

Pulling him back off with your grip in his hair, you traced a thumb over his kiss-swollen bottom lip, cooing over how fucked-out he looked like this. “Oh, baby. Oh, poor Junnie. What’s wrong? Can’t even kiss me properly because it feels too good? Baby’s overwhelmed with just a little bit of kissing?”

He opened his mouth wider, darting the tip of his tongue out to brush against the pad of your thumb. You pushed the finger in his mouth, groaning as he immediately closed his lips around it. “Gods, you’re perfect, Junnie.”

Taking your thumb back out of his mouth just to grab his chin with the same wet digit, you attacked his lips with yours again. Ginger candy. His hands that had been lamely resting at his sides the entire time now fumbled at something in the area where your hips met.

“What? What are you trying to do, baby?” You asked, leaning back to look down. He was grabbing at the hem of his hoodie, unsuccessfully yanking it up towards his head as part of it was stuck under one of your thighs.

“‘m too hot. Please…” He panted, dropping it as he looked up at you pleadingly.

You nodded slowly in understanding, knowing that one of the effects of the siren venom was an increase in body temperature, not to mention what you two were just doing. The collar of another shirt was visible underneath the sweatshirt. “Okay, Junnie, we can take your hoodie off. But only the hoodie. Your other clothes are staying on, understood?”

He nodded quickly, hips bucking up against you. Sweat was beading up on his forehead, his hair getting stuck to the damp skin. You shifted back on his lap so that none of the sweatshirt was under you anymore, grabbing the hem and reaching behind him to yank up from underneath him as well.

“Sit forward for me, baby?” You requested in his ear sweetly.

Renjun obliged as best he could, leaning forward to get his back and shoulders off the couch. You pulled the hoodie up over his head, tossing it off to the side, leaving him in a black t-shirt that certainly couldn’t be helping much either. But having that heavy layer off seemed to provide some relief for him, as he let out a sigh, falling back against the furniture again.

You giggled as you settled back into the crux of his lap again, lacing your fingers together behind his neck. “Is that better now, Junnie?”

He shook his head, and you arched an eyebrow curiously.

“Oh? What’s wrong, then?”

Renjun tugged gently at your cardigan where it had shrugged down to show one of your shoulders. “Please?”

Pulling your bottom lip in between your teeth, you thought this over. You had a tank top on under the cardigan, and both of you were still wearing everything else. Not to mention that you were starting to get a bit warm too. Sirens ran naturally cooler than humans, so you were sure that to him, you felt practically refreshing right now, but you honestly were a bit hot for a siren’s tastes.

Giving a contemplative hum first, you finally relented, “Alright, Junnie. But just my sweater. Everything else stays on, because we didn’t talk about that before the venom, do you understand?”

He rushed to strip you of the knit cardigan, his mouth following his hands’ path down your skin. First on your shoulder, then down your arm. You let the garment drop on the floor behind you as he kissed back up along your shoulder, then over the fabric of your tank top until he got to your collarbone, and finally the hollow of your throat. Fondly stroking the back of his head, the pleased purr that had started in your chest turned into a surprised moan when he licked a long stripe up your throat.

Holding his face in your hands so that your noses brushed, and your lips barely ghosted over each other, you let your breaths mingle in the meager space afforded. Renjun ended your little anticipation game quickly, kissing you tongue-first, and you kissed him back just as eagerly, sucking on his tongue with lewd, wet noises. He moaned into your mouth, his hands grabbing at your waist for purchase first, then slipping and curling into the material of your shirt, bunching it in his fists.

Slowing the pace of your kisses, you eventually sat back, appraising the state he was in. You affectionately ran a hand through his hair as you took in his blown pupils, kiss-swollen lips, and pink cheeks. “Junnie? How are you feeling? Need a break?”

You hadn’t given him another dose of venom since the initial one, which wasn’t very large to begin with. But this was his first time experiencing it, so you wanted to check in. He should be just past the peak of it by now, starting to come down but for all intents and purposes still very much intoxicated. Siren venom wasn’t meant to last very long, after all, it took an adult human less than a minute to drown.

“Need you…” He insisted, arching up towards you.

Indulging him in one, two more feverish kisses, you pulled away once again. “I know, baby. And you’ve been doing so good for me. So I need you to tell me if you need a break. Okay?”

“’kay.” He agreed before you sealed your mouth over his again.

Kissing down from his mouth to just under his jaw, at the same time you trailed a finger down the center of his front until it got to the hem of his t-shirt.

He nodded fervently before you could say or do anything more. “Please… please…”

“Shh, shh, shh,” you quieted him down gently. “Doing so good for me, Junnie. The best.”

You slipped your hands under his shirt, just to stroke his waist. His muscles tensed under your touch, and he let out a sound of satisfaction. He grabbed at your thighs again, but you couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at reciprocity or to have something sturdier to ground himself to than your flimsy tank top. The corner of your lips quirked up as you pressed a couple more kisses down his neck to hover your lips over his pulse point, content to start a new mark there as your hands continued to explore under his shirt. It was when you gently raked your nails down over his pecs that you got the loudest moan out of him yet, and you groaned in response.

“Gods, you’re perfect,” you nuzzled your nose into Renjun’s neck, then pressed a couple relatively chaste pecks to his cheek. “Just perfect…”

Taking your hands back out from his shirt, you silenced his whine at the loss of contact by slotting your lips together once more. You cupped his face with one hand, using the other to take one of his hands off your leg and lace them together, palm to palm. This seemed to make him content once more, especially when you brought your connected hands up to the back of the couch, pinning his behind his head. He squirmed under you, letting out a familiar noise of pleasure into your mouth and squeezing your hand tightly.

You knew the venom was well and truly starting to wear off when Renjun began keeping pace with your slow, lazy kisses, his mouth not as sloppy but no less delightful as it moved in tandem with yours. The thumb of the remaining hand on your thigh started to stroke over your skin, and the hand that you were holding gave yours a gentle squeeze. You gave him one, two last lingering kisses, drinking in the dwindling taste of ginger candy while you could, Renjun matching you beat for beat.

Unlacing your fingers and dropping your hand from his face, you drew back from him. Before you could say anything, though, Renjun grabbed you by the back of the neck and pulled you in for one more kiss, sinking his teeth into your already tender, over-kissed bottom lip. You gasped into his mouth, which gave him the perfect opportunity to intertwine his tongue with yours again on his apparent mission to try to kiss the breath from you. A nigh impossible task for a human to do to a siren, but it definitely felt like he was succeeding. He was crushing his lips against yours so hard you were worried about him drawing blood—not because you would mind the pain, but for fear of his safety if he got a direct hit of your blood in his mouth.

In the back of your mind, you were desperately trying to remember if you had maybe accidentally opened your venom glands a second time later on, but just drew a blank. That wasn’t something you did unaware, it wasn’t automatic, it had to be done on purpose. Then, for a brief moment, you were worried about secondary wave syndrome—some humans break down siren venom in two phases instead of one, and the second one almost always kills them if they’re not brought to a human medical doctor for treatment—and you started running through the symptoms as well as the nearest human emergency rooms in your mind. Burst capillaries in the eyes, refusal of food and water, the hospital three blocks over should have an ER, right? But the kiss didn’t feel like when he’d been intoxicated on your venom before, this one felt deliberate, in control. He was in control. You let out a small moan at the thought, and Renjun’s lone hand on your thigh tightened in response.

Once he finally let you go, you both sat there in silence for a good few seconds, you still on his lap. You stared extra hard at the whites of his eyes. They looked normal. He seemed… normal.

It was rare for either of you to be speechless, much less the both of you.

“Well…” you broke the silence. “That was siren venom. You should drink some water. Stay right here, I’ll get it.”

You climbed off of him, heading into his kitchen. Looking at the oven, you were wondering how the timer hadn’t gone off in that entire time when you saw that it wasn’t on. The words ‘TIMER SET?’ were flashing on the screen at you, and the preheat hadn’t been started either. The pizza rolls had just been slowly defrosting on a pan in the cold oven. You couldn’t help but laugh, reaching into his fridge for his Brita filter then securing a couple cups from the cabinets.

Walking back into the living room, you handed the human his cup of water and remained standing as you took a sip of yours.

“You didn’t start the oven, for your pizza rolls,” you informed him quietly.

“Wh— oh, shit,” Renjun groaned, tipping his head back. “I guess I don’t get to give you your first pizza roll tonight.”

“That’s okay.” You dropped onto the couch next to him, shoulder to shoulder.

“So… that was siren venom,” he breathed out, then took a long gulp of his water. Definitely not second wave syndrome.

“That was siren venom,” you confirmed with a laugh, fondly brushing a piece of sweaty hair off his forehead.

“You were right… I was not prepared,” he admitted with a laugh, taking another drink.

“So do you think you would’ve let me kill you?”

“Yeah. I would’ve given you my credit card info, bank password, spilled all of my friends’ worst secrets, let you kill me, killed someone else if you asked me. God, that was…” He said with wide eyes, shaking his head. But there was a familiar glint in his eye as a smile cracked across his face, “Incredible.”

“Glad you think so,” you giggled, patting his chest. “Now don’t become a venom junkie, okay? I couldn’t live with myself if you did and it was my fault.”

“I won’t. Not really what I meant anyway.”

You grinned slyly at what he seemed to be implying, that it might not have just been the siren venom, but that it was you and your venom that made it so incredible. Like how every human had a slightly different essence, every siren had a unique chemical signature in their venom. It’s why using it non-consensually nowadays would be extremely stupid (as well as just an immoral thing to do and also a crime)—it can be matched to the siren in a lab like DNA. In addition, anecdotally, every siren’s venom was said to produce a slightly different high, but no mass studies had backed that up. You were inclined to believe the stories, though.

Renjun was still a bit hazy, though, still riding the high of the venom, so you decided to tuck a conversation like that away for another time.

“So why did you pick Magical Creatures Studies? Other than you’re insane?” You redirected the topic to a more neutral one.

Renjun didn’t seem put off at all about this jump. “When I was a kid, my family traveled around a bunch, for my dad’s job. I got to meet a lot of different kinds of beings, some of them became my best friends, and I never wanted to stop learning about it all.”

“What does your dad do?”

“Government job,” he answered, suddenly interested in picking at his nails.

You furrowed your brow thoughtfully. “Wait a minute… Huang Renjun. As in, your father is Ambassador Huang? That we’ve had to write papers on in class?”

Ambassador Huang was the first human ambassador sent on diplomacy trips to outside nations of magical creatures post-integration. His trips had largely been considered a monumental success, and credited as a big driver behind the huge uptick of immigration that your city has been seeing from outlying areas in the past couple decades. You’d hardly gotten through a single contemporary MCS class without directly learning about him or at least hearing his name. And you’d apparently been going to school with his son for four years and just pumped said son full of your venom and made out with him while he was high on your venom.

“Yeah…”

“Dude! What the hell? You didn’t think to mention that at some point?” You asked incredulously.

“And sound like some uppity nepo kid bragging about my dad? No thanks,” Renjun snorted.

“Yeah, maybe not like day one but like… I don’t know, before I used my venom on you!” You nudged his arm teasingly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I just venom-ed Ambassador Huang’s son!”

“Oh my God, could you not call me that?” He snapped at you. “This is why I don’t tell people! Because now I don’t have a name anymore, I’m just Ambassador Huang’s son.”

You immediately realized your mistake, your stomach dropping as you heard the hurt in his words. “Renjun, I’m—”

“Just go.” He demanded, standing up from the couch and putting distance between you two again. “We both got what we wanted, right? You found out who Dr. Magic was, and I experienced siren venom. That’s all this was, so you can go. You don’t owe me anything else.”

You clenched your jaw, setting your cup on the end table beside the couch. Picking up your cardigan from the floor with as much dignity as you could, you pulled it back on. Neither of you said another word as he watched you stalk over to the front door, shove your shoes back on, throw the door open, and slam it closed behind you.

Drumming your fingertips along your keyboard, you squinted at the flashcards on your screen. You were in a sour mood, which had persisted ever since you’d left Renjun’s last night feeling used.

Ten was next to you at your picnic table outside the student union, finishing up a pencil portrait sketch of one of his other friends—one of the CompSci majors you’d paid to write your browser extension, actually. Dejun, a dragon, whose slit pupils, many bejeweled earrings, and a singular fang poking out from under his top lip featured prominently in the portrait. The sketch was part of Ten’s midterm portfolio check-in for one of his classes. Midterms were literally this week. Like, right now. You forced your sharp teeth further into the wooden pencil in your mouth.

“You’re going to ruin your cuspids like that, Y/N,” Ten chastised you calmly, rubbing at a line with the pad of his ring finger to smudge it before flipping his own non-mangled pencil around and continuing to sketch with the graphite.

“I’ll grow another set,” you grumbled, but took the writing utensil out of your mouth nevertheless.

“And have no teeth in the meantime. Real sexy siren stuff. Sure to lure all the hotties to their deaths looking like GamGam missing her dentures.”

“Shut up!” You shoved his head away, earning a loud peal of laughter from your friend. “As if you’ve been pulling anybody yourself. You’re literally a siren art major covered in tattoos that he designed himself, more piercings than a dragon, including nipple rings, and you haven’t been on a date in… what, almost a year?”

“So we’re both disappointments to the good siren name, huh?” He held up his hands in surrender, still grinning. “Just a couple of poor, celibate sirens doomed to be disgraces to their species forever…”

“Can you not yell that to the entire courtyard, dude?”

“What? Not announce very loudly that you haven’t been with anybody in exactly four—”

You lunged to cover his mouth before he could publicize precisely how long it’s been since you’d hooked up with someone. Ten immediately broke down into laughs behind your hand that was covering his mouth, his shoulders shaking even as you smacked him on the back of the head with your other hand.

“Gods, what is wrong with you?” You hissed at him. “You’re a menace to society. And me.”

When you’d finally let go of his face, he said through a couple more chuckles, “Hey, you could easily do it back to me.”

“Why would I want to do that? And the fact that you’re suggesting it makes me think that you want me to do that, which makes me want to do it even less. You freak.”

Before your podmate could respond, you caught sight of a figure approaching your table head-on. Setting your jaw, your body immediately tensed. There was no mistake, Huang Renjun was walking straight towards you. Ten seemed to have noticed the shift in your body language and mood, as he didn’t say anything further, quietly going back to his sketchbook as you watched Renjun get nearer and nearer.

“Y/N,” he said your name quietly, stopping not quite at the end of the table beside you, but next to the end of the bench across from you.

“What do you want from me now, Renjun?” You replied bitterly, pretending to return your hands to your keyboard as if you were going to refocus on your studies.

“Uhm, to talk, I guess?”

Ten interjected, “Do you guys need a second? I can go—”

You held him in place with a hand around his wrist, your voice curt, “No, Ten. Stay. This will be short.”

Your friend lowered himself back down into his seat.

You then set your hard gaze on Renjun. The marks you had left on his neck were still visible above the collar of his t-shirt. Moving your eyes from that to his face, you cocked your head to the side. “What’s in it for me? You established that our relationship is purely transactional, remember? We apparently just use each other. You scratch my back, I spit in your mouth, quid pro quo.”

“Okay, I’m going now,” Ten declared, wrenching his arm from your grasp to grab his sketchbook, pencils, and backpack before taking off.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I don’t see you like that at all, I just... I got defensive and snapped. It’s not an excuse, but still, I want you to know that I don’t mean anything I said. I’m sorry.” Renjun shifted uncomfortably on his feet, but you could see the genuine remorse on his features.

You breathed in, then out.

“I’m sorry too,” you sighed, letting your voice relax back to the natural softness that it held around Renjun. “You’re your own person, aside from just ‘Ambassador Huang’s son.’ I’m sorry for treating you like anything other than Renjun.”

“It’s not that I’m not super proud to be his son or anything, I think he’s really awesome. He was my hero growing up; still is. I mean, I’m going into the same field as him. Kind of. You know? It’s just because we’re going to be doing the same kind of thing, I want to be able to be looked at for what I do. Good or bad.”

“Bad? You plan on using your degree for evil, Renjun?” You teased, scooting over on the bench seat to take Ten’s previous spot and freeing up a place for Renjun to scoot in beside you.

“I could,” he played along, gladly taking the seat offered.

The two of you made eye contact, then burst into laughter at the same time.

“What?” He questioned in mock offense. “I think I’d make a great evil dictator, personally. You don’t think so?”

“Not at all, you’d be great at it.”

“Thank you. My friends don’t take my threats so seriously.”

“Which will ultimately be their downfall.”

Renjun looked back out at the campus in front of you two, his voice turning serious again, “But, seriously, I mean, I don’t want people having all these lofty expectations for me and then be disappointed when I don’t change the whole world, nor do I want them making things easy for me because they know my dad.”

“That’s fair. Unattainable, but fair to wish for,” you nodded in understanding.

“Ugh...” He slumped forward, dropping his head into his arms atop the table.

“Look, Renjun…” You rested one hand on his arm as the other rubbed up and down his back supportively. “You can’t change who your dad is, and you said it yourself, it’s not like you’re ashamed of him either. So don’t brag, and don’t be a dick when somebody brings him up either. Just do your best to show people who Huang Renjun is. And if they still don’t get it, that’s their loss. Because I already know him, and I think he’s pretty cool.”

Renjun sat back up to look you in the face with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “You’re such a cheeseball. Aren’t sirens supposed to be alluring and enchanting?”

“Shut up! I will drown you! See how alluring I am when you’re under a siren call,” you huffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I’m kidding.” He grinned at you, nudging your shoulder with his. “That really did make me feel better, thank you, Y/N.”

You smiled back. “You’re welcome, Renjun.”

The two of you kept smiling at each other for a moment before he broke the eye contact, looking down at his hands then shifting his gaze back to the courtyard.

“Uhm, while we’re airing stuff out about last night...” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Yeah, Junnie?” You tilted your head to the side, watching as his cheeks started flushing.

“I don’t think I ever said thank you. I kind of popped off on you right after... everything. But thank you, for taking care of me before, during, and after. It didn’t even occur to me to talk about what we could and couldn’t do beforehand. Thank you for that, and for getting me the water. And... all of it in between...” His ears were bright red too at this point, but he managed to look you in the eye as he gave you his genuine gratitude.

You nodded in understanding. “You’re welcome. I’m glad that you felt cared for during all of it. In addition to, you know, everything else you felt.”

“Mm, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Studying his face curiously, you said, “You look like you want to ask me something else.”

“Well, I feel like you still weren’t very clear on the ‘eat me alive’ thing.”

You rolled your eyes. “Gods, Junnie, I’m not going to actually eat you—”

“I mean...” Renjun took a deep breath. “I kind of always feel like I’ve got a little bit of siren venom in me when I’m around you, Y/N. My heart races, and my skin is warm, and everything is just better when I’m with you. I want to see you when you’re not around, and when things are hard for you, I want to make everything better. I like you, and between the Dr. Magic deal, and our stupid academic rivalry, and what we did last night, I don’t know what I am to you, but that’s how I feel.”

If someone had told freshman you that Huang Renjun would ever say words like that to you, you’d have laughed in their face to the point of tears— or slapped them. And yet, in that moment, you weren’t surprised in the slightest. It was the most natural, beautiful, delightful, perfect thing that could’ve happened. Just like you leaning over to give him a modest, near-demure kiss on the cheek, absolutely beaming at him as you pulled back.

“I like you too, Renjun,” you admitted.

His eyes went wide before a broad, tender smile spread across his features and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders. He let out a drawn-out sigh of relief, “Ohh, that’s one weight off my chest for this week.”

You laughed in agreement. “Me too. Actually makes everything feel lighter.”

“Yeah, it does,” he said, squeezing your shoulder. “So how much do I owe you?”

“What?”

“You said you were going to invoice Dr. Magic. For the browser extension, and the color copies, and whatever else. How much do I owe you?”

You tapped a finger against your chin, pretending to think before a smirk pulled across your lips. “Mm, should be exactly the price of one nice dinner and a movie.”

“Dinner and a movie? Just how many copies were you making?” He asked with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

“A nice dinner,” you reiterated. “I paid those CompSci majors fairly for their time.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Friday night after your last midterm, you were knocking on Huang Renjun’s door. The two of you had seen each other this week for your Linguistics in MCS class, but had been utterly locked into academic mode and hadn’t met up aside from that. So, per his invite, you were here in your “midterms best”— i.e., the pajamas you had been wearing at your own apartment since submitting your last mid-semester draft earlier today. You’d been told this wasn’t going to be a fancy affair.

Judging by the pajamas that Renjun had also answered the door wearing—giving you vivid déjà vu to the last time you were here—you were dressed appropriately for the occasion. He led you in by the hand, informing you there was something he wanted to show you in the kitchen.

You came to a stop in front of a plate piled high with small, pillow-shaped pieces of dough, some with bursts of red sauce leaking out of them. You couldn’t help but let out a sputtering laugh. “Pizza rolls? Did midterms scramble the egg on your face so bad that you missed the part where I said nice dinner?”

You might not have ever eaten pizza rolls, but you knew what section of the grocery store they came from.

“I can’t even tell what that was supposed to be… You’re so beautiful…” He was staring at you with a look of pure adoration, and surprised you by giving you a fleeting peck on the cheek, gone as soon as you’d realized what he was doing. Your hand instinctually came up to brush at your skin, almost in disbelief, as he went back to explaining his plans for tonight. “Anyway, I didn’t get to give you your first pizza roll the other night, and I figured that the last thing you actually wanted right after midterms week was to go out to some hoity toity place and be out at the movie theater really late, right? So, I’ve got pizza rolls, peanut butter cookies, your seaweed tea, and like way more snacks and candy and stuff. So we can chill and watch whatever movies you want tonight, unwind from midterms. And then next weekend, we’ll do your nice dinner and go to the movie theater. Think of it as an IOU.”

A fond smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as you nodded your approval. “Mmm… you’re right. This is great, Junnie. Thank you.”

Set up on Renjun’s couch with the assortment of snacks—pizza rolls included—and your first movie chosen, you settled in next to him, knee to knee, under the same blanket as the two of you ate. You decided that pizza rolls weren’t that bad (you still liked peanut butter sandwich cookies better), convinced Renjun to try some of your ocean flakes again—a favorite snack of sirens, which he’d already tasted on one occasion at a Dr. Magic hunting session and hated—to similar results, and finished off a bottle of seaweed-infused tea by the time the first movie was about a third of the way done. At this point, you were pretty satiated food-wise, and set your empty drink bottle on the coffee table to sit back on the couch.

Linking your arm with Renjun’s, you rested your head on his shoulder as he was still finishing up his plate of pizza rolls. “That was good, Renjun. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I call dibs on little spoon first, by the way.”

“Damn.”

Once he was done eating as well, you laid down to eagerly take your promised place as little spoon. Renjun stayed partially propped up against the arm of the couch so he could see the TV as you were nestled back against his chest, one of his arms slung over your waist. Your fingers played with his under the blanket absentmindedly as you got used to your new place, with him, in his arms.

“Renjun?” You said into the quiet. The only noises were coming from the TV. The movie was nearly done, just a couple little resolving scenes after the climax left. You’d seen it plenty of times before—both of you had, it was a favorite that you’d discovered you two shared earlier in the semester—which was why you’d picked it, an easy watch that you both liked. But nothing that required your full attention, so you could talk or miss scenes if you wanted.

“Yeah?” He responded just as softly.

“This is really nice. Hanging out, just us. No school, no Dr. Magic.”

“I know. Almost doesn’t feel real.”

“What? That we’re hanging out without trying to kill each other?”

He let out a couple laughs, catching your hand that had been playing with his under the blanket and lacing your fingers together. “I think there’s definitely some people that would be shocked to see us right now. But I meant more-so that we don’t have any schoolwork to do right now, and that the whole Dr. Magic thing is finally over. Other than the dinner that I owe you.”

“Oh… I owe you… I-O-U…” you sounded the words and letters out slowly. “I get it now.”

“God, you’re perfect,” he sighed dreamily, brushing your hair away from your face to press two kisses to your temple in quick succession.

You turned over to face him to properly protest, “Hey, I didn’t grow up around humans, you know that, right? I just came here to go to school! I moved here like, two weeks before our first day of freshman year—”

“I’m not making fun of you, Y/N!” He promised, sandwiching your hand between both of his and squeezing it tightly. “I respect how difficult it must have been for you to acclimate to the new culture and city when you moved, and so suddenly, on top of starting school. I just love y- love when you do that. Genuinely, I’m so charmed by it. Endeared. Bewitched. Whatever word you want to use. It’s something I never noticed until this semester, when we started doing the Dr. Magic stuff together. Despite knowing you for so long, in the department, in classes.”

“You know what I never knew about you before this semester, Junnie?”

“What?”

“That you were such a softie,” you snickered fondly. “I thought you were all textbooks and GPA and flashcards and whatever.”

The human ducked his head bashfully. “It’s something I’ve been working on this year.”

“Between this and Dr. Magic, I think you’ve been doing pretty well.”

“Thanks.”

“So, why did you do it, Junnie?” You asked curiously. “Not be a softie, I mean, but…”

“What? Be Dr. Magic?” He clarified, to which you nodded. “I didn’t mean to make a persona like that, really. I had to pick a screenname, and the guys had jokingly called me that a couple times when I helped them out with some problems. That’s all.”

“I know why you started the account. Knowledge. That’s also why you didn’t get the credit. You just needed to know. Though, the story behind the name is cute,” you pinched his cheek, and he tried to deter your hand with his shoulder half-heartedly. “I mean more like, why were you hiding your IP and using VPNs and stuff before you even knew that I was trying to track you down? In the fall.”

“I made the first couple posts from the school computers just because I like to do my work there, I wasn’t trying to cover anything up. Then I pictured what I’d do if I found someone posting like I was on the forums. And I would’ve tried to find out who they were. So I started covering my tracks a bit more intentionally after that. Didn’t want any groupies rolling up on me.” He pinched your side teasingly with the last sentence, and you slapped his hand away with an eye roll.

“Oh shut up!” You scoffed, ignoring his hands as he tried to pull you back towards him again.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m sorry,” he apologized through his chuckles. “If anything I’m your groupie, I swear. Your number one fan from the moment you showed me your conspiracy board.”

“Mm, fine.” You scooted closer to him, letting him wrap his arms around you once more. “Glad we got that cleared up.”

Renjun shifted to lay on his back, and you easily followed the move to snuggle in mostly on top of him, resting your head in the crook of his neck and your hand on his waist, fingers innocently smoothing over a patch of skin above his hipbone where his shirt had ridden up. It sounded like the credits were on by now, but you didn’t really care about picking another movie as Renjun hummed along to the familiar song that played over the scrolling names. You’d sing along too, if you were alone at your own place. But now you didn’t dare even hum like the human with you for fear of what it could do to him. Renjun’s voice was plenty lovely enough though, even just this casual little bit humming. You’d see if you could get him to sing for you properly one of these days. If an opportunity came before graduation. Who knew what your days would even look like before then.

Gods, graduation. You felt like you could shrivel up and die just thinking about it. Not to mention that you hadn’t even told Renjun that you’d—

“Hey. What are you thinking about?” He suddenly asked, his disapproving tone clear.

You gulped. “How could you tell I was thinking about something?”

“For one, you’ve got your bad thinking face on.” He pinched your bottom lip. “You pout. It’s very dramatic. You look very concerned.”

“I have different thinking faces?”

“Yeah, you look different when you’re studying. I’ve seen you do plenty of that to know the difference. And you’ve got a third face when you’re contemplating. Usually you do that one when you’re looking at menus.”

“I didn’t know I was apparently an open book.” You covered your face with your hands in embarrassment.

“It’s cute, Y/N. You’ve got a cute face, and you make cute facial expressions with it, don’t cover it up.” He gingerly grabbed your hands to encourage you to take them off. “Except I am worried about what’s making you make your bad thinking face right now. What’s wrong?”

With a sigh, you pushed up into a sitting position. Renjun followed your lead curiously, a thoughtful frown on his own features as he watched you pull your knees to your chest.

“Renjun, I need to tell you something.”

He regarded you with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “Okay… go for it.”

Nervously, you smoothed out some wrinkles in your pajama pants as you confessed, “Uhm, Dr. Kwon asked me to carry the banner at commencement. I said yes.”

“I knew that.”

“What?” You looked up at him in disbelief.

“Well, since it was midterms already, I figured that if they’d picked me, they would have asked me by now and since they hadn’t, then they must have picked you. I was just waiting for you to tell me so I could tell you… Congrats.” Renjun grinned brightly at you, reaching out to rest his hand on your arm.

“You’re not upset?” You asked trepidly.

“We’re not petty little freshmen anymore, Y/N. No, I’m not upset. I’m proud of you, you deserve it.”

“So did you.”

“Not any more than you did.” He shook his head firmly. “So would you just accept my congrats already?”

You gave a small, shaky smile. “Thank you…”

“There we go.”

“This is what I was so freaked about… when we went to get froyo.”

“You were afraid of me being mad at you for being picked to carry the banner?” Renjun asked incredulously.

“I didn’t know how to tell you!” You defended yourself. “And now I have to do the commencement practices, on top of senior capstone and my extracurriculars…”

He wrinkled his nose. “Ew, commencement practices. So glad I didn’t get picked now, actually.”

“And that was so convincing, Junnie.”

“You remember what you said to me when we got froyo?”

Scrunching your face up, you struggled to think back to the exact conversation you had that day—you’d been really stressed. “Uh, ‘exactly two gummy sharks on mine please?’”

“Well, yeah, your hyper-specific froyo order—”

“Throwing stones at black kettles much?” You teased.

“Excuse me?” Renjun’s eyes went wide.

“Is that not—? I really thought I got it that time.”

“Did you mean to say ‘throwing stones in glass houses’ and/or ‘the pot calling the kettle black?’”

“…Yes.”

He turned very serious as he went to tenderly cradle your face in his hands. “I’m going to kiss you in like two seconds after I finish what I was saying, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” you agreed weakly, wishing very much that he’d just do it now instead of making you wait. He then let your face go.

“When we were talking about wanting people to know that we’re smart,” Renjun clarified. “You said that we’re both like that, and you knew that you were like that. And then you asked me if I knew that I was like that. I had tried to swear up and down this entire time that I was doing all of this—the needing to be the best—for myself. But it wasn’t. I’m like that too. That’s kind of what Dr. Magic was, me taking a step back from needing everyone to know I was the smartest person in the room. A quasi-experiment, to see if I could do it.”

“I think that after graduation, maybe we both chill on being the smartest person in the room, and try to just spend a summer working on that magical bucket list of yours?” You suggested.

“Oh?” He perked up at this. “Really?”

“You ever seen a werewolf shift?”

“No…”

“That sounds like a ‘not yet’ to me.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He confirmed with a conspiratorial grin that mirrored the one that you could feel across your own face. “You know how sirens can’t get dosed up on their own venom?”

“Yeah…” You nodded, wondering where he could be going with this.

“Well, I know a witch with a proprietary love potion blend that I think we might be able to modify to produce similar effects.”

“Fascinating.” You thought on this for a second, very quickly running through your knowledge of potion properties to imagine what it could be. “Two-factor blood potion?”

“Yes. But we’d put your venom in it instead of your blood so it wouldn’t kill me.”

“That could work…” You mused. “Speaking of, I should really give you a full dose one of these days.”

He breathed in sharply. “That wasn’t a full dose?”

“Nope.”

“Holy shit…”

“Have you ever watched a phoenix reincarnation?” You added another suggestion to your joint summer bucket list.

“Have you? Wouldn’t that literally blind us?” Renjun questioned, something akin to genuine concern on his face now.

You shrugged. “Allegedly. It’s never been recorded in a lab setting, so who really knows.”

“I think we’re going to get each other killed before we can get our PhDs,” he declared with a fond smile and shake of his head.

“Hey, the betting pools said we’d kill each other by junior year, so I think we’re doing well for ourselves.”

“Do you think we can collect on those bets when we graduate and we’re both still alive and have all of our limbs?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”

“Oh my god, come here,” Renjun groaned deliriously, kneeling to grab your face with two hands and crash his lips to yours. You curled your fingers in the front of his shirt, pulling him down with you as you fell back against the arm of his couch, still connected.

Yeah, you’d drive off that burning bridge when you got there.

⤷ blog masterlist  ⤷ anthology masterlist

[xbraveheartx]

WARNING !! Contains spoilers for Lies of P! If you haven't beaten the game, be warned! This is just a first draft !! I might change it... I might not. I'm just testing the waters and seeing how far I'll get. I think I'll just post the prologue for now and then proceed solo in google docs after. But I wanted to see how people are feeling about the idea ♡ I'll upload the rest most likely on AO3 A "I don't care what canon gave us, I'm bringing Romeo back" fic that'll end up in a romance between our favorite real boy and his bestie ♡ It takes place post-canon!

Prologue

The sun had barely risen when they set off on their mission, a gentle shower coating the city of Krat in sleek rain that took little time to drench every stone and tile. Only once they had reached their destination did the skies suddenly open, a hint of blue smiling down on the otherwise desolate buildings. One couldn’t avoid puddles under such conditions, but there wasn’t any true concern to be had over them.

There were far greater things to worry over. He only hoped they were still there.

“Jeepers. It sure is creepy being back here again.” Gemini chirped, effectively breaking the silence that blanketed Krat Central Station. “Now that the monsters aren’t as much of a problem, everything just feels kinda…” He trailed off, causing the boy’s head to turn just slightly in an effort to toss back a glance in the lamp’s direction. “... Spooky? Haunted is the word, maybe? Almost like something is hiding just around the corner, ready to just– Jump out at you!”

“You’re being dramatic.” Slender digits rose to tuck a long, grey lock behind an ear, palm rubbing a stray droplet of water from a freckled cheek.

“And you’re being careless, pal!” Gemini countered, ignoring the eye roll given in retaliation. “I’m just saying, even if we can’t see the monsters all around like we used to, I’m sure there’s bound to be some still lurking around! Just be more careful, okay, Carlo?”

There was a pause in his steps, the echo of the last dying out shortly after as nothing but the dripping of water and creaking of pipes met their ears.

Carlo… it was still strange, hearing that name, and while he felt it was just right, it felt strange in the same breath. It was familiar yet foreign; He was still learning.

He felt his heart beat.

“Did I say something wrong?” Came Gemini’s chirps once more, the sound coming off as one of concern. Carlo shook his head, lashes fluttering rapidly as he came back to himself whilst lips tugged into a slight smile.

“No, no. Sorry, just… Thinking.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie. Gemini seemed to accept the excuse regardless, trilling gently in a way that Carlo could just picture a real cricket practically vibrating with eagerness.

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go! Er– b-but! … Y’know!... Carefully.” The guide seemed to beam, and Carlo couldn’t help but beam right back, hopeful that their journey would be fruitful in the end.

There, in the dimly lit station, was their target. Track C, train number three– The Blue Fairy. It was funny, looking back on it now, but there was no stopping to admire any form of happenstance. The train itself had been subjected to all manner of bile and questionable fluids, but otherwise, remained intact. The boy hesitated just before entering, hand rising to touch the door frame as he stood at the entrance and listened. When nothing but silence rose to greet him, he pressed onward, stepping over forgotten luggages and shattered glass.

“You really think something like this’ll work?” Gemini spoke again, chirps blending with the crunching of a wineglass underfoot.

There was no immediate response, not until they had made it to the back of the train where a familiar chair sat in the middle of the aisle. He stepped around it, choosing instead, to make his way into the hidden workshop behind.

“I don’t know.” Carlo confessed, fingers trailing across abandoned notes and papers left atop a messy desk. Blueprints were among the litter, notes bookmarking heavily written pages of journals, their fine leather covers worn and frayed. He gathered it all, leaving nothing he deemed important behind. One of many discarded suitcases was chosen among the piles, and with its original contents discarded, was used to house the very legacy his father had left behind. “But I have to try.”

Venigni thumbed through the blueprints, eyes roaming through Geppetto's old notes that had been laid out before him. It was a daunting task, to say the least, and they both knew it. 

"This is... beyond my field of expertise."

The moment of silence to follow after felt far too long, seconds seemingly to stretch into hours that didn't exist. Finally, the boy's lips parted, voice heavy with newly gained emotion that unashamedly manifested as a beg.

"I believe you can do it." Came the quiet encouragement, brows drawing together to further accentuate his plea. "Please?" Yet another pause followed after whilst muted blues fell for but a moment, until finally, they resettled on Venigni. "For... a friend?"

The sigh of defeat to follow the request said enough.

"I shall do what I can, but I make no promises, compagno!" As if a switch was flipped, suddenly a black gloved hand rose with a snap. “Pulcinella! Some fresh parchment, if you would! I must get started immediately! And you!” Once more did the man’s head snap in Carlo’s direction, a finger dramatically being pointed all the while. “You still carry the most important component, do you not? All that’s left is the body– Go and bring it back here. I will give it my all, for I am the Incredible Lorenzini Venigni, and I will settle for no less than my one-hundred percent!... But again, no promises.” 

The emotion to grip at his heart was almost overwhelming, the heavy THUD THUD of the organ pounding against his chest in a mixture of anticipation, joy, and above all else, hope.

“I’ll be back.” He announced with a nod, though he made no move to leave just yet. Instead, he gave the man a smile, brighter than any he had expressed in the past. “Thank you, Venigni. I appreciate your help.” The words were met with a nod and something akin to that of a mutter and a hum. Already was the other absorbed by the notes before him, ink meeting paper in rapid scribbles from the very moment Pulcinella had provided the writing tools.

“Let’s go get your pal… pal!” Gemini chimed in, spurring the boy into motion with a nod. “Leave the technical stuff to the professionals! Rosa Isabella Street awaits!” A trip that would surely be a bit more eventful than their visit to the train station, knowing full well that the puppets would still be prowling around their fallen king’s domain.  Please let this work… The silent prayer was sent skyward.

[tadashisdisaster]

𝐇𝐚𝐧 𝐉𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐗 (𝐟𝐞𝐦)𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 - 𝟖 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

CWˏˋ°•*⁀➷    smut, fluff, college au, soft sex, mutual pinning, fingering, slight public sex, unprotected sex (keep it safe guys + reader is on pill, just not mentioned), hair pulling kink, size infatuation, shy reader, established relationship, dirty talk, rough sex

AN ~ In the mood to write about our lil squishy boi, I just can’t with how cute he is. I just wanna go nom nom🍡🐿️🤍

You never had to study so hard for a test before.

Finals were a few days away and you needed to pass or your mom would personally find a way to your dorm room and kick your ass. You groan at the thought, slumping your head on the open history book. Your head was throbbing, you were so stressed. When was the last time you drank water? 1 no 2 hours ago maybe?

You jolt up feeling a cold compress rest against your neck. You look up to see a smiling Jisung looking down at you. “Coffee?”

Jisung removes the drink and hands it to you. You give a small smile and a gentle, “Thanks…” before opening the can and continuing your work. He looks at you, astonished at how you could work so hard even when you were so visibly tired.

“Y/n, are you okay? You haven’t slept in like…” Jisung trails off counting the numbers of days on his fingers. “5 DAYS!” He shoves his hand in your face. “See!”  You push his hand down and continue to write notes on your iPad, while flipping through pages in your history text book and flash cards. “I’m fine Ji…” It was true, you hadn’t slept in days but not 5, at least you don’t think.

“I thought you came here to study with me.” Jisung scoots his chair away and raises his hands in front of his face. “Nah, I think i’m good. You know I hate studying.” Jisung looks at your tired face as your eyes droop and you frown.  He scoots closer to you and rests his arm on the back of your chair. “Well, maybe I could study for a little while…” he kisses your cheek and grabs a pencil from your pencil pouch and pulls out his note book.

1 hour later 

Jisung had his head slung back and the pencil between his upper-lip and nose. You take a momentary brake, stretching your arms and legs. You stand up raising your arms in the air. It felt good to stretch your aching bones. Jisung pulls you into his lap. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, planting soft kisses trailing up to your ear.

“Jisung…” you almost whisper. His cock twitches in his pants making him buck up into your ass. You slowly climb off of his lap making you way back to your chair. “Not now Ji, not when I have so much-” you shiver at his touch making its way up your leg.

“So much what?” Jisung said moving closer to where you sat, teasing his way up your leg, eventually finding his way to your soaked underwear. “So wet and ready for me, huh baby?”

You whimper as he rubs slow circles on your throbbing clit. “P-please…” Jisung slides 2 fingers through your folds, glad you had chosen to wear a skirt with no shorts. “Nothing but a skimpy pair of underwear? Whose attention were you trying to catch?” He scoffs while sliding his long digits in and out of your pussy, his speed increasing as your grip on his shirt sleeve tightened.

You clench around his fingers signaling that you were close. Jisung pulled out and licked his fingers clean. You puff as a single tear rolled down your face. “I thought you said, you were busy. What do you want baby?” His half lidded eyes focused on your quivering bottom lip making you shutter under his intense gaze.

“I-I want you sungie…” you practically whisper against his lips. Jisung groans, “Let’s go home,” Jisung grips the plush of your thigh. “Now.” You nod your head and quickly pack your things. You grab his hand in yours and walk towards the exit, giving the old librarian a small bow on you way out of the library.

The two of you walk to your shared apartment sneaking glances at each other both growing hot and bothered as more and more time passed. “Why didn’t I take the car…?” You chuckle at the cute pout on his face and peck his cheek. You let go of his hand and run away.

“HEY! NO FAIR!” You laugh and turn around to look at your boyfriend trying to catch up with you. “YOU’RE SO SLOW!” you shout back. “OH YEAH!?” 

“S-slow down Sungie-” 

Your breath hitches as his hips snap back into yours. Shiny beads of sweat ran down his temple as hair stuck to his forehead. Your fingers were tangled in his soft locks pulling whenever he bucked back into your tight cunt.

“Fuck y/n…” jisung hisses as you pull his hair. You feel his cock twitch inside of you making you clench around him. You give a lazy laugh as you eyes rolled to the back of your head.

You let your hands drop to each side of your head. You looked so small and venerable, almost like a “Bunny? You still with me?” You moan in response. Jisung smirks “Fucked my little bunny dumb huh? My little cock sleeve. You like being my little cock sleeve baby?”

You nod your head not really comprehending what your boyfriend was saying at the moment. Jisung interlocked his fingers through yours and pinned them above your head, relentlessly pounding into your poor abused hole.

“CUMMING!” was all you could say as your legs locked him into place, keeping him from really moving. With one hand, Jisung took your ankle and hooked it over his shoulder. “Cum for me yeah?”  Thats all it took for you to get knocked over the edge. You bite you hand and the overstimulation from his cock drilling into your tight cunny. “s’too much Ji…” tears runs down the side of your face as your legs quiver.

Jisung nips and sucks at your neck, as you claw at his back. “Fuck, gonna cum baby. Right in this little pussy. Want that huh?” You nod you head for the second time that night. He loved seeing you in this sate. To him you looked so beautiful.

Jisung dumps his load deep in your cunt. You hum at how full you felt. Jisung slowly pumps in and out of you 3 more times before pulling out. He plops right next to you, breath a little ragged. Pulling you close he kisses your face, “I. Love. You.” He says between kisses. You giggle and close your eyes.

“I love you too sungie!” You wrap your arms around your boyfriends torso and snuggle deep into his chest, falling asleep a little bit after. Jisung reaches over to the night stand to turn off the light. He hums and strokes your hair.

“My pretty baby. I think I love you more than you think.” With that he closes his eyes, a small blush creeping across his cheeks. 

[peskellence]

Rule Of Nines

Betrayal Pt. 1

Explicit content, Graphic Violence (18+)

Pairing: Reed900

Tags: AU, Multi-Chapter, Lovers to Enemies, Kidnapping, Crime and Violence, Oral, Anal, Dom/ Sub

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Read on AO3 here:

Summary: In a world where loyalty is currency and compromise is weakness, Gavin Reed, a ruthless mobster, lives by his own rules. When an old enemy resurfaces with a deadly demand, his life is thrown into chaos-as his trusted second-in-command, Nines, is put to the ultimate test of allegiance. Will he stay committed to Gavin, or will the loyal guard dog begin to stray? (Human Mob!AU)

Warnings: Major Character Death (before events of the story), Graphic Violence, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Dubious Consent

Tag List: @sweeteatercat @wedonthaveawhile @ladyj-pl @tentoriumcerebelli @negative-citadel

If you would like to be added to the tag list for future projects, please let me know♡

In the days that followed, they continued to receive packages from DeLuca's gang. They painted a vivid timeline of everything their prisoner had endured at their hands, supplied in meticulous detail. It seemed like Connor couldn't so much as wheeze for breath or piss his pants without the entire process being captured on a grainy video feed. 

These recordings would be sent to the Reed Hideout in the form of more flash drives—of which they'd amassed quite a collection, piled high on the meeting room table. Gavin couldn't help but wonder where the snake had gotten them all. Perhaps he'd held up a local convenience store for their office supplies…

It wasn't just the videos, of course. They'd had plenty of other weird and wonderful shit arriving at their doorstep. At one point, they received a densely packed envelope containing nothing but cigarette butts. There'd been seemingly no reason for this until a day later when the photos came—mapping in meticulous detail where exactly they'd been stubbed. 

Very few of his men had the balls to open the mail after that, the last of the stragglers calling it quits following the most recent instalment in the 'Connor Torture Chronicles.' 

It was impressive, really. Just how quickly a room full of criminals could turn into a PTA of pearl-clutching moms when the blood being spilt on-screen belonged to one of their own. Had the inherited burden of the family not already inspired sickness in Gavin, their reception of DeLuca's ongoing media project would have more than secured his disdain. 

The video that had proved too much for their delicate sensibilities found Connor in a new location, much better lit than the dingy warehouse which usually hosted his suffering. 

Evidently, DeLuca wanted to make sure this most recent performance was made crystal clear for its audience, showcasing all its bloody glory.  No one had made it all the way through, with the last viewing attempt interrupted as one of the men loudly and violently expelled the contents of his lunch. 

In the relative security of his well-insulated (and much less pungent) office, Gavin pushed back the screen of his laptop and calmly resumed the clip:

↻      ◁     ||     ▷       ↺

Connor had been strapped by his wrists to a dilapidated table, secured with bulky leather binds. An unidentified contraption sat in front of him, looking like some long-forgotten relic from a medieval torture dungeon—or something out of a horror movie.

Rusted wires connected its mechanisms to a series of steel vices, which had been clamped around his fingers. They anchored the digits a few millimetres above the splintered wood, leaving a small margin of space. The scene remained motionless for a number of seconds, as though the screen had frozen until one of DeLuca's masked goons emerged in frame. 

They settled into a fold-out chair, its creaky frame groaning under their weight. Gavin could practically taste the expectant satisfaction oozing from them as the corners of their mask creased upwards, hinting at a concealed grin. Protruding from the side of the strange device was a small plastic dial. While it had been scarcely visible until now, it became much more apparent as the captor's hand shot towards it. His reach extended until a voice sternly dissuaded him—and the grubby appendage stilled, waiting. 

Faint mumbling could be heard off-screen, as though an unseen group were deliberating on the best course of action until the masked man was given the go-ahead in the form of a terse: "Now."  

He wasted no time obliging the instruction as the switch was swiftly turned. One of the wires lurched back, taking a finger with it and forcing it to yield to an increasingly distorted angle. As it snapped in two, splintered bone pierced Connor's flesh, resembling a broken tree branch.

Given his already grotesque condition, this newest injury was barely noticeable. Over the course of the week, his body had been transformed from a blank paper doll into a vibrant, morbid mosaic. Angry, blistered welts wrapped his skin, sectioning numerous cuts and bruises. 

His mind was clearly in similar ruin, as his head hung limply across his lap, dark eyes boring vacantly into the spring-lock mechanisms destroying his hands. He made no attempt to fight the restraints, nor did he try to plead through gagging binds of worn-out scotch tape. The room was silent, save for gurgles of pain and the repeated crunching of bones. 

↻      ◁     ||     ▷       ↺

Gavin paused the video, sliding the laptop to one side as he reached for a neglected packet of cigarettes. It had failed to tug any heartstrings, which he suspected was the intent. 

DeLuca and his gang could prolong the ordeal as much as they wanted; it wouldn't change his refusal to meet their demands. To him, the elimination of another undesirable bastard from his operations could only be considered a blessing.

What did get him thinking, however, was why Connor had been selected as the bargaining chip for the ill-conceived power play. It was no secret just how much Gavin loathed the man. No doubt Salvatore would have seen it himself during his time with the family. The frequent displays of vocal disdain and physical animosity were hardly subtle. 

Not that he tried to hide it. He wore his hatred of the eldest Anderson as a badge of honour, boasting his ability to see through his bullshit in a way that no one else could. That was the bastard's M.O., after all: a 'skilled negotiator and manipulator', as Dad liked to put it. 

The younger Reed favoured his own assessment, considering it more accurate. Connor was nothing more than a conniving, underhanded piece of shit. Someone who couldn't be trusted, with his purported 'skills' beginning and ending with his ability to convince people otherwise. 

Clearly, he wasn't that great of a fucking negotiator, having failed miserably to sleaze his way out of his current predicament. A mess that Gavin was fast suspecting he’d created for himself—

A sudden knock rang through the office, derailing his thoughts and causing his hands to falter as he attempted to ignite a cigarette. The flame brushed the inside of his palm, and he dropped his lighter, hissing in pain. He then glared at the door, regarding the man concealed behind it with appropriate disdain:

"Yeah? Who the fuck is it?"

The unidentified figure was silent, as though paralysed by indecision, inspiring greater annoyance. This ill will festered cleanly into a familiar sense of impatience as he barked another demand. "Either answer me now or right fuck off. I don't have all damn day." 

Even before recent events, it seemed most of his goons existed in perpetual fear around him. Maybe it was the threat of Nines pile driving them into the floor if they ever spoke out of line. It couldn't be a coincidence that the only person who'd ever shown the gall to charge him head-on, regardless of consequence, had always been Connor. 

He'd put an end to this misguided confidence as soon as he could once he'd taken over from Dad. Making it clear he wouldn't be giving the doe-eyed cretin any of the same special treatment. This also extended to Nines, as he firmly dissuaded the soft touch he had been lending his sibling. 

Because it wasn't deserved, it hadn't been earned. Gavin wasn't  his Dad, any more than Nines was his brother—

There was another knock on the door as a despondent voice spoke:

 "... It's me."

— At least, that's what he'd always believed. Until recently. 

The pitiful address brought with it a whole new wave of frustration. Having recovered from his brush with the lighter, Gavin picked it up, sparking the awaiting cigarette hanging from his lips. He inhaled deeply before releasing the coiling smoke from his lungs with a harsh growl. 

"Was wondering when you'd show your face," he grumbled out accusingly, "You've been pussyfooting around me all day." 

What followed was far more 'demand' than it was 'permission' as he fought the urge to grab the man by the scruff of his neck, hauling his ass through the threshold himself. "Stop dicking around and get in here, jackass." 

Nines had been terrible during the entire ordeal, and it was reflected in his Hellish appearance as he lifelessly skulked through the doorway. He looked like a zombie, his once meticulously styled hair hanging greasy and limp against his face. His fair skin was nearing grey from how sickly it had become; exhaustion formed in deep-set rings around his eyes. 

Even with the door no longer muffling his words, Nines sounded nothing like himself. His words came dull and monotonous, lacking their usual bite: "We received another delivery…a few minutes ago…" 

His movements were just as stiff as he idled by the foot of the doorway, a string-bound package clutched limply in his hands. The style of wrapping was all too familiar, making no secret of its origin. 

Gavin reclined in his seat. He kicked up his steel-capped boots and thumped them down on the desk, almost sending his laptop flying. As he took another drag of his smoke, he summoned the other man closer with a lazy beckon. "Well, better be something exciting if it's important enough to interrupt my 'me time'" 

Nines straightened up a bit, his slumped shoulders rolling in a tense bristle, but ultimately remained frozen. The timid movement inspired an ongoing ripple of disfavour, fanning the flames of the embittered resentment. 

Honestly, the mobster could have forgiven Nines' sudden glow down, and even his sudden shitty work performance, had his corpse-like appearance not come with a matching libido. 

It had been days since the man had last touched him. Longer than he'd ever been forced to abstain in the entire time of their 'arrangement'. The current distance between them felt staggering, and Gavin hated just how deeply it sought to affect him. 

"What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?" His lips twisted into a bitter snarl as he fired off a biting instruction. " Now , dipshit."

Slowly, Nines dragged his heels to where Gavin was sitting, moving in small, laboured shuffles. His lax grip was relinquished as he deposited the parcel onto the grimy surface of the desk.

He toyed with the strings, exerting minimal effort as he loosened them. The paper beneath fell away to reveal a tape-bound box, which he hacked at clumsily with a nearby pen knife.

As the container was opened, the first thing that hit was the smell. Wafts of copper mingled with rot drifted into the smoke-laden air. It was overwhelming, forcing him to recoil instantly. He pinched his nostrils and tilted his head—a reflexive action to shield himself from the full hilt of the stench. 

"What the hell is that?"

Admittedly, he already had a pretty firm idea of what it was. Or, more precisely, who . What part of him he was looking at, however, remained a mystery. The putrid mass of flesh sat limp and bloodied in the centre of a pile of shredded paper, unidentifiable. 

After taking a moment to steel himself, he moved back towards the package; eyes narrowed as he peered curiously into the contents. Following a period of closer inspection, he mumbled out a tasteless remark. "...Kinda looks like the mouse I had to dissect in 8th Grade." 

Nines didn't laugh at the joke or attempt to feign any degree of interest. Opting to stare rigidly at the yellowed rolls of paper peeling from a nearby wall. Gavin's smile dropped at the snub, having officially exhausted his patience with the man's ongoing pity party. 

"I dunno. What do you think?" He then gestured his cigarette towards the box in line with a pointed glare. Ash scattered across his desk as it missed his often-neglected tray. 

The movements of Nines' head were jerky, robotic, as he dared a small glimpse into the bed of crinkled packaging. The regret in his eyes was instantaneous, his sallow complexion growing even more sickly as a sharp hitch escaped his throat. 

"I think it's—" 

The sentence was aborted as his throat tightened, larynx clenching. The contractions became increasingly pronounced as though he were repressing the urge to vomit. 

"...I think it's part of his ear." 

Gavin whistled at the revelation, his lips pursed in bemusement. He was almost impressed that such a delicate cross-section had been severed from the appendage, especially by a group of thugs who probably struggled to tie their shoes.  

"Well, shit. Good thing he's got two of 'em."

"We have one more day," came a sullen response. Nines anchored himself across the desk, subtly reducing the gap between them, "and we haven't done anything. Communicated with DeLuca at all, even to acknowledge that we've received the messages." 

"I know. We're not going to."

"Gavin…" Nines sounded winded, almost painfully so, as he attempted to support himself against the soiled wood. His palms were caked with powder, dirtied by a thick layer of grey. "He's my brother."

"He's a rat," the other man corrected. His fingers drummed idly against the table, flecks of ash falling in sync. "With any luck, pest control will do their job."

"He'd never do anything to betray you. Betray us—" 

"Oh, what, did he tell you that?"  The question was simpered mockingly, concluded with a barked laugh. "Come on, think about it. Why would DeLuca take him when he had literally any other option?" 

Despite all the enduring desperation he'd shown in pleading his case, Nines had no response to this. His lips gaped open and closed before pulling into a tight frown. 

"Guess whatever deal they had finally went south…" Gavin tutted in false sympathy as he flicked his now extinguished cigarette across the room. "That's a real shame." 

"I understand you've never warmed to him…but I implore you not to make decisions based on that alone." In an act of desperation—and presumably madness—he reached forward, attempting to place a hand on his calf. "Just try to be reasonable for a moment."  

Gavin bristled at the insolence. 

Oh no you don't.

He shot his legs back, preventing contact from being made, as he planted the ridged soles of his boots firmly onto the ground. He then hauled himself up from his chair, grabbing Nines by the collar and yanking him further across the desk.

"Don't fucking tell me what to do." The words were seethed through clenched teeth as his jaw locked tight in warning. They were close enough that speckles of spit propelled onto the other man's face, glossing his cheeks.

They stayed this way for quite some time as Nines stared back at him fixedly. Waiting in hushed anticipation as he deliberated on his next move. 

The longer spent in this proximity, the more Gavin could feel his convictions wane. All it had really taken was a whiff of the woody cologne clinging to the other man's neck for anger to slip into hesitancy.

There was musk as well. Clearly, he hadn't showered in a couple of days, but even that proved inexplicably tempting in his current repressed state. Enough to send a shiver up his spine and the blood in his brain rushing south.

God-fucking-dammit. 

Even when he looked like an extra out of  The Walking Dead,  Nines still possessed his unique ability to drive him completely insane. It didn't matter how many nights of sleep he missed; there was no getting past the marble-like chest and the jawline that could cut through glass…

Reaching for his face, his subordinate tensed as though preparing for a strike. Gavin then ran a hand up his neck, kneading the flesh beneath his fingertips. In a show of possessiveness, he flicked up his thumb, pulling it across his jaw as he firmly traced the bone.

"Come on, baby," he crooned, craning across the barricade that dared to separate them. He tickled the shell of the other man's ear in long puffs, shamelessly goading a response. "Connor isn't worth us fighting over. You're smart enough to know that, right?"

Nines' eyes pinched closed as his expression grew increasingly strained. Clearly, he was a man at war with himself, torn between duty and desire. Then, he slowly began to give in, relaxing under the touch, leaning towards it reflexively. 

"Gavin, please. Just this once, give DeLuca what he wants." Slowly, his eyes opened, icy grey darkened by lust. He grabbed his lover's hand, cradling it firmer against his face and ran his cheek against it. Then he brought his fingers to his mouth, peppering them with gentle kisses. "Do it for us. For me." 

And just like that, the moment was ruined. His dick stopped thinking for him as the blood surged back to his brain, firing off a series of blaring warnings. 

No. 

This isn't right .

Nines knew the rules, he understood damn well this wasn't how they did things. They did grabbing hands, tongue, and teeth, not soft touches and whispered promises. It was too intimate—throwing into ruin years of carefully crafted understanding. 

The kisses burned hotter than any lighter, and Gavin snatched his hand back, stomach churning. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" 

Nines recoiled, the underlying vacancy of his gaze giving way to focus for the first time in days. His eyes sprung wide, staunchly alert, and after a period of tense shock came confusion, nestling in the cracks of his stricken features. "...I… don't understand what you mean."

The sickening churn grew more pronounced as something rose in the back of his throat. Initially, it could have been mistaken for bile—until low chuckles began to echo against the muscled walls. They ramped quickly until they had built into large, bitter cackles. 

Gavin sat back in his chair, trembling, as he punctuated his disbelief with a harsh slam against the table. An empty coffee cup rattled on the trembling foundation before slipping from the desk and shattering on the ground. 

Maybe you aren't as smart as I thought. 

While he was willing to chalk at least  some  of the misunderstanding down to Nines' current exhaustion, the lapse in judgment still demanded a correction. He held himself upright, chin jutted high, as he cracked the bones of his now pulsing knuckles. 

"Let's make something clear—because it looks like you might have forgotten. I might let you fuck me, but you're still my bitch. You do what I want when I want it. I'm the one calling the shots." 

The more he spoke, the more Nines seemed lost to despair. Watching as the line he'd cast, Gavin vanished into the ocean, pulled by an intense force. "I have never once questioned you, and I don't intend to do so again. This is not something I ever predicted I'd have to ask for. I just…" 

The words trailed off, adopting a distant quality, as his brow pinched in concentration. 

“...thought…after all this time…"

"You thought wrong." Gavin interrupted, refusing to let him continue. "I keep you around for two reasons: You can shoot a bullet through a man's eyes from across a football pitch, and you screw better than some coked-up hooker."

His gaze was spearing, carving into him in line with the daggers spewed from his lips. Every aspect of Nines' response was monitored closely—with cold, unfeeling scrutiny. As he watched the man fall apart, he saw something more than the stony-faced machine his Dad had always praised. 

Nines looked hurt . All wide eyes and trembling lips, the picture of vulnerability.

In his current crestfallen state, he was a spitting image of Connor. The realisation worked another knot into the mangled mess of his gut as Gavin realised the bounds of his trust had extended too far, allowing for too much leniency. It was a wrong he sought to correct. Swiftly and definitively. 

"You mean nothing to me, and neither does your shithead brother. Do you understand that?" 

Nines' face pulled and contorted as though struggling to contain a deluge of sentiment. Waves built, cresting rampantly as they prepared to crash down—but the flood never came, trickling away without event. 

Sharp features settled back into their usual stoic rigidity as he coolly returned to form, nodding in acknowledgement. 

"Understood."

Gavin could feel the tension that had amassed slowly begin to wane. He slunk down into his seat with a satisfied grunt. "Good. So quit bitching and do something useful. Either handling the situation down at the docks. Or…well…” He made a gesture towards the fly of his jeans, smirking as he did so. "You know the drill."

There was little consideration made for the crude proposition. Nines spun on his heel, refusing to dignify it, as he briskly strode from the office without saying another word.