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gyuswhore · 2 months ago

Text

Statistically Speaking...

part of the svt TA collab

kim mingyu x reader

word count: 21k

contains: TA! mingyu, fluff, smut [minors DNI], angst, statistics, ur honour they're stupid for one another, descriptions of stress exhaustion and burnout, academic burden, disagreements, mingyu is smart as hell, shitting on bad professors, smut but its a surprise [gyu gets his soul sucked while he's reciting statistical models I mean what]

words of conviction from @highvern: Kim Mingyu, total asshole , 1-800-HOT N DUMB , THEYRE IN LOVE MINGYU SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LOSER , sick fucking freak , i know when you wrote this you put your head in your hands , OHHHM YW GOD

synopsis: In all your years of academic endurance, you’ve never failed. A 100% success rate, despite you cutting it close at times. However, the line graph that is your life starts tanking somewhere around the time you began taking this hellsent Statistics in Psychological Research class. With a professor that wouldn’t know his ass from his head, and an overworked, overenthusiastic, and overcaptivating TA, it couldn't possibly get any worse than this. However, statistically speaking,…it could.

[a/n]: this fic is set in the same universe as @highvern's wonu fic endpoint [read here!!!], some insight for wonu's pov is included here as is some of Mingyu's pov in cam's fic if you'd like to see more about what happens in the gaps!!

I want to start by thanking everyone who chose to be part of this collab fic and for being the reason cam and I were able to open up @camandemstudios in the first place. everyone's been so kind and cooperative and I still cant believe we managed to convince such amazing writers to join us on this collab journey 🥹 I love u guys

Thanking my wife camothy @highvern for brainstorming with me since day one and for betaing for me. @seokgyuu and @miabebe for also looking over the doc and reassuring me. I'm for sure forgetting someone and I'm really sorry about that, know that I appreciate you just as much 🤍

on that note, I hope you guys enjoy this fic, im HELLA nervous for some reason so plsplspls remember to reblog and send me feedback on how you liked it, I will love you forever <333

masterlist

Monday

A normal person would’ve cried. Perhaps even sued the entire institution for all it was worth. Burn down the world, if it came to it.

But as you stare at the tiny 37/100 on your screen, you feel…nothing.

You could’ve said you saw it coming, which you did, but something about blaming someone else for an exam you took was beginning to feel a little manipulative.

Clicking off the student portal, you huff loudly, five in the morning too early for you to begin breaking down over a grade that was completely unreflective of what you were taught.

Or maybe it was, because as you count one, two, three hours till your dreaded Statistics in Psychological Research class, you can only hope you’ll hold back from spitting in your professor’s coffee. But alas, you can only shut your laptop harder than necessary for what it costs and push the grade out of your mind.

You were tired enough to sleep for a couple more hours, and you take it as an opportunity to spite the entire course by giving just as many fucks as your professor did.

Which was little to none.

That was a lie—on your part anyway. Because you continue to show up, and probably will until you can put this course and all of its trauma behind you. Even now as you feel the inclining beat of your pulse sitting in the white lecture hall, you know this is all but you versus the universe.

Dr. Cho might as well have wheeled himself into the room on a skateboard with the way he struts into the room.

He’s wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off and jeans of a matching finish that do not fit him properly. There’s pins in every last colour on this earth, littering the front of his jacket with sayings that toe the silver controversial lining. There was one that said Vote for John F. Kennedy, another plain black one with I Eat Kids, and of course, the blaring Cunt written in cursive, pink sparkly letters.

This man that’s pushing into his 60s stands before his slightly wilted class in his crocs, hands on his hips as he heaves a long breath.

“I have to say, not the turn out I was expecting on that last report.”

He’s talking about the report you coincidentally failed, the same one you were pushed into with little to no direction and a deadline tighter than any you’ve had to bully yourself through.

“All I can say is to read through the feedback I’ve given and try a little harder next time.” His voice is somewhere bordering comical exasperation. Feedback that consisted of sparing ‘?’’s and ‘no’’s with zero further explanation. He could say more, but you’ve learned that he simply chooses to not.

Besides the man that drones in the front of the room, there’s another person in the other corner of the lecture hall. He’s hunched over a giant pile of papers, sifting through each and every one with a pen in his other hand.

The TA doing a mundane task is somehow more interesting than whatever seminars of disappointment your professor was giving. He’s crossing something out on every single leaf of paper that he flicks through, and you vaguely wonder if those were today’s worksheets.

“...and post hoc tests last week, we can start on Bayesian today. Mingyu will be handing out the tutorial papers.”

The poor TA looks like he thought he’d have more time, snapping his head up to look at the professor with an expression of pure incredulousness. He staggers for a moment before he’s flicking past the pages even faster somehow, striking out what seems like the same instruction in the giant pile of papers meant for an entire lecture hall. There’s a rustle as about a hundred laptops are being pulled out and booted up, waiting for the worksheets to land on the desks.

You hear the familiar warble of papers being passed out and you watch as the TA pulls chunks of sheets out of the giant stack in his arms to slam down onto the front tables.

“Pass it down, please… pass it down, please…”

There’s a voice that calls from one of the front seats, “What formula is the sheet talking about?”

Mingyu looks startled as he snaps back to look at the blaring empty whiteboard. In the midst of passing papers, you watch him sprint to the rolling whiteboards, pulling one of the giant flats of white over to the other side, the mechanism slamming into place with a louder than comfortable slam. It reveals another whiteboard underneath with the detestably long formula already written (and the one you’d have to figure out yourself).

The professor remains with his chin in his hands behind his laptop, unphased.

By the time you’ve registered the foreign symbols on the board, one of the tutorial papers has made it into your hands.

Sure enough, there’s a quick line across one of the steps with a thick black marker.

Blinking hard, you attempt to pull yourself into the zone, staring at the white sheet with words that are barely stringing themselves together. Nothing out of the ordinary, especially as you lift your head to find hunched shoulders and furrowed brows all around.

There’s one person that’s zipping back and forth, just like there always is.

You watch as Mingyu hunches over certain laptops and whispers in rapid explanation before moving on to the next, a looming sense of dizziness that trails behind him as he shoots up the stairs to the back rows to help someone else.

There’s a brief consideration to raise your own hand to ask for help, but one look at his disoriented gaze and the amount of hands that shoot up by the second, you guess it wasn’t going to help.

Back you go, hunched over the same wretched paper as everyone else, and praying for some divine revelation.

Tuesday

Divine revelation did not come to you, but the good sense to make use of office hours did.

So here you are, a printed copy of your supposedly horrid assignment and a pack of multicolour pens in your tote, and determination in your stride, you make your way to the department building.

You’ve double, triple, quadruple checked the times to ensure you don’t dip in at the wrong moment, swiping open your phone to re-check the room number yet again.

Standing outside the door, you knock with mustered confidence, waiting for something akin to an affirmative from the other side of the door.

Nothing.

You knock again.

Silence.

You glance around the empty hall before grasping onto the cool brass handle of the door, wrenching it open just a peep. Poking your head in, you find the room…empty.

The chairs and tables that usually buzz with discussing students lay barren as you step into the room. Moving to look at the front of the room, you inhale sharply as you realise the professor’s desk has been occupied this entire time.

Except he’s asleep.

No, that’s not the professor.

Moving closer, you watch the way his back rises and falls ever so slowly, head resting on his arm as his hand hangs limp off the table. Whipping your head around with more attention this time, you attempt to find an explanation written on the walls. But there’s none, even in the papers that litter the table he rests his head on.

You don’t need to see his face to know it’s the TA. But as you stand in the empty room, clutching the straps of your tote, you aren’t quite sure what to do.

Another glance around the table and you realise his laptop remains on, the screen yet to sleep. Before the obvious issue of a blatant invasion of privacy can befall you, you take a step forward to take a peek.

It’s his schedule, a million colours blaring on the screen in a colour coded regard with barely any white spaces. It doesn’t take long to find his time slot for right now, red with importance.

Glancing down, the man remains fast asleep, pen still in hand as it inks a faint line on the page. You look around the room for the nth time, taking constant glances back at his laptop that tells you he’s actively missing something right now. Clearing your throat, you hunch over a tad bit.

“Um, excuse me.” He hardly moves. So you try a little louder, hunching over his sleeping form even further. “Excuse me.”

You could’ve sworn you heard a snore.

Out of instinct, you bring a hand forward to his shoulder, shaking ever so slightly as you call for him again. “Excuse me!”

There’s a sharp inhale and he shoots up quicker than you can back away, ensuring you get an entire back’s worth of force as he bumps into you, hard.

“Wh–ow!” The noise is collective, yelps and thuds as you both back away from each other.

“W–what’re you doing here?” he asks, hair still ruffled and eyes barely open as he stands at the table. There’s a bright yellow sticky note on his right cheek, ink scribbled on in something you can’t decipher.

“Um, it’s office—”

His eyes land on the same screen you were peering into just before and it looks like his life flashes before his eyes, widening at the sight as he slams around the table looking for something.

“I have to go,” he announces, gripping onto an unstrapped watch as he registers the time, his other hand shoving his laptop and a few papers into a dark messenger bag.

“Wait, isn’t it still office hours?” you call out as he whizzes past you.

He’s swinging his bag over his shoulder and half tripping to the door as he calls out, “Wednesdays and Thursdays.”

“But—”

“It’s on the portal.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it—” he pauses as he exhales loudly, closing his eyes and bringing a hand to rub across his tired face. “I’ll double check. But it’s Wednesdays and Thursdays from now on. You can wait till I get back if you really want help.”

“How—”

A loud slam! of the door.

“—long…”

You’re left draped in silence yet again, the echoes of the slammed door ringing in your startled ears. It all happened too fast for you to process, blinking rapidly as you registered that you were now alone in the room.

He said he’d be back, but left you with no indication as to when. By the looks of his god awful schedule, it looked like he had something else to attend to right after whatever it was he buggered off to right now.

Fingers clenched into a fist, you consider your options. You could wait, sit on one of the desks and try to get some work done until he gets back.

The universe gives you your answer as the door opens with a loud creak in the empty lecture hall. It’s another professor who looks quite startled to find an overenthusiastic student already present for class.

She stares before craning to look at the room number outside the door, “Am I in the right room?”

“Uh, yes! I was just leaving,” you buffer out, moving to shuffle out immediately.

You’re halfway out the door when you hear another call of an “Excuse me!”

“Are these your papers?” The professor’s full arms are up as she gestures to the still littered table.

The No is ready on your lips. Until it isn’t.

Later on, you’d consider how you left that room with an armful of papers that did not belong to you. How you’d ducked under the table to ensure you’d gotten everything, down to the leather strap watch with the cracked clock face.

But as you stare at the stack of files and sheets that lay on your desk at home, you only know of the decent act that you’d committed.

And nothing of the hourglass you’d just turned over.

Wednesday

In your Sent box are three emails sent on three separate days, all asking the same recurring question, all responding with the same recurring reply.

I wanted to confirm the days and times for office hours. I’m aware it’s on the portal but I’d like to reconfirm.

Regards, YN

Dear YN,

Wednesdays and Thursdays. 4 to 6 PM.

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

So there you were on a Wednesday afternoon, 3:59 PM sharp, outside the lecture hall where office hours have always been. With the same tote hung on your shoulders, with the same printed assignment and pack of multicolour pens, and a separated stack of files and folders, you wrench the door open with bated breath.

The blended murmur of the usual hustle and bustle of the appointment reassures you first, the sight of scattered students of familiar faces reassures you second. And most of all, a conscious TA that sits at the professor’s desk, speaking to another student over a laptop screen.

The man does nothing to acknowledge your arrival, continuing above the babble of students that occupy the chairs and the discussion. It isn’t too full, but considerably busy nonetheless despite how early you’ve swooped in.

There’s a brief consideration whether this was in the TA’s job description at all, craning your neck to take a full sweep of the room to find a sparing glimpse of the man who should be here. The professor and his loud fashion choices are nowhere to be found.

The sigh you let out is heavy and full of an emotion you cannot possibly begin to unpack, taking a seat on one of the unoccupied chairs to slump against. Shoulders sagging, you feel every fibre of your being screaming against your better judgement to pull out some work and to be productive while you wait. Reading over your failed assignment for the nth time, the same one that seemed to be some sick form of rage bait.

You pull a couple things out so as to not look awkward sitting and staring into nothing on an empty desk, uncapping your pen and pulling up your sleeves like there was business to be done. Which there was, but none of which you wished to entertain.

People watching, you realise, is a lot easier when most of the room is preoccupied with whatever it is they’re doing, too busy to notice your blank stares.

The faces are familiar, none of which are people you’ve interacted with before but classmates nonetheless. The room is full of shaking legs, spinning pens and hunched backs, not an un-scrunched brow in sight. There’s a particular gaggle of girls somewhere around the front, their tables suggesting a work environment but between the whispers, giggles and glances to the front of the room, you assume there’s one thing in common the both of you weren’t doing.

Speaking of the front of the room, your matched glance finds you face to face with the student at the main table in the middle of pushing himself off his seat. Your reaction is immediate, hand coming over to slam against the flat of your bag to find the lost straps, moving out of your seat as you keep your eyes on the front of the room.

Bad luck must be a lover, because you realise quickly that somebody’s already beat you to it. Before you even noticed the first’s intentions to. The student stands beside the chair ready to keep it warm as the previous occupant leaves.

Slamming back down on your own seat, you realise very quickly that trying to get an audience with this TA was going to be harder than you anticipated. There’s multiple other sounds of frustration around the room, and you doubt the slowly increasing pool of students was going to help anyone’s time management.

Realising you needed to be a little more tactical if you didn’t want to sit here for the next month and half, you find an empty spot near the gaggle of girls you’d noticed before. It was right up front, just enough for you to hear when the conversation would begin to conclude at the main table.

Once again, the TA doesn’t seem to notice any of the hustle and bustle of the room as his mouth continues to move rapidly, eyes on the question as he invests himself in his explanation.

It was unfortunate that the only remaining seat was right next to the louder than necessary group, but you take it as a blessing anyway. It’s then that the one right next to you turns to stage-whisper to you.

“Are you here to see him?”

You don’t expect a conversation, ears straining to eavesdrop on the other conversation in front of you to find your cue. You snap to look at her in surprise. “Pardon?”

“Are you here to see him? Mingyu?”

“Uh—” Wasn’t everybody? “Yeah, I had a couple things I wanted to clear out.”

The revelation makes her shoulders drop as she lets out a loud sigh, “God, I can never get anything this professor says. I've been here nearly every week trying to figure it all out.”

“Yeah he’s a bit…unorthodox.”

“He’s unorthodox too.” She looks over to the main table towards the TA, chin in her hands as she gazes. “A face like that is rare.”

It wasn’t that she was wrong, it didn’t take more than a glance to convince yourself that Mingyu was possibly one of the more attractive people you’d meet in your lifetime. But the appeal lasted for all of five minutes for you, flitting away when you noticed that he dragged along a very…overwrought… suggestion wherever he went.

It was clear he was stressed seemingly all year round, nearly just as relaxed as your professor seemed to be.

But Mingyu was attractive. And you realise how much of a fool you’d sound if you admitted to anything other than such.

“It is. His willpower’s somehow even rarer,” you add. “Don’t know how he does it.”

“God, tell me about it. Forget getting his number, trying to have more than a three sentence exchange with him without some statistical nonsense involved is near impossible.” Her face has fallen, a tight little frown on her face as she irritates herself with some other memory.

Taking a glance down at her notes, you find the printed sheet littered with glitter gel pen ink lining the edges, doodles of stars and hearts and small anime characters next to p values and z scores.

There’s a distinct sound of a chair screeching, and it’s like a large GAME OVER sign is hanging above your head.

You jerk in your seat, like you could jump over the table and land in the emptying seat with some god-given stroke of luck, like the person already standing next to the chair wouldn’t hold a lifelong grudge against the insane girl with an unnatural acclimation to statistics.

Although, nothing was more unnatural than the way this TA seemed to know more than the professor. Or you were just really behind.

Alas, you don’t tumble over the table or kick back your chair, merely making a forceful motion in your seat, palms itching terribly as you watch the girl with her open laptop balanced in her arms move to take a seat.

You were preoccupied, hence you do not notice that the TA has also noticed you.

Suddenly, the girl looks startled as she’s told to wait.

“She’s been waiting nearly a week, I really hope you don’t mind,” you hear him say, voice strained as you turn to look at him. His hands are outstretched to motion towards you a few feet across from him.

For whatever reason, you had no thought that he might’ve remembered you. Something about his half asleep state when he’d spoken to you, perhaps he might’ve thought he dreamt it. Or he’d just forgotten it altogether.

The girl glances at you, and her shoulders sag a little as she nods in formality.

“Thank you.”

It comes out of both of you, snapping to look at each other hardly a moment as you go back to smiling at the retreating student.

“You can come right after her,” he reassures, his own upturned mouth tired and fading.

Never have you felt more awkward trying to come around the elongated student tables.

You pause at first, staring at the table in front of you like it was worth trying to climb over or even crawl under it to get to the desk. Another moment of eye contact as he stares at your unmoving form with a blank look, and the heat pools your skin.

Staggering for a moment, you end up moving past your chair and walking the way round anyway, the screeching of the chairs only nurturing the existing budding humiliation for no apparent reason.

It only gets worse when you sit across from him finally, backside barely touching the plastic before realising you’d forgotten your bag in your seat.

Mid smile in a timid greeting when you make a sound resembling something of an “Oh!” as you spring back up immediately. It’s easier to reach for your bag over the table you were sitting on, reaching across to grab it off your vacated seat.

The girl you were sitting next to just before makes a motion like she’s trying to help and you have to remind yourself to smile at her as you retreat.

Mingyu has the very beginnings of an amused expression on his face once you’ve finally made yourself comfortable across from him, clearing your throat just for something to do.

“Right. How can I help you?”

Pulling out your printed assignment, you bring out the sheets of stapled paper to the centre of the table, writing facing him.

One look at the sparse format of the cover page, he blows a full mouth of air at the sight of recognition. Without you having to say a thing, he flicks to the very last page, finding the rubric printed on a separate page.

“It’s a 37,” you inform him like he couldn’t see the bold 37/100 in the bottom Total cell.

“Do you think you deserved a better grade?” he asks. It would have sounded direct, an accusation even. But he asks with an intonation of genuinity, like he actually wanted to know.

It stumps you regardless.

“Well…I know I can do better, at least,” you decide to answer.

“You’re here, which means you’re at least willing to try. That’s a start,” he murmurs. His eyes are laser focused on the sheet beneath him, holding it open as his eyes move faster across the page than you can keep up with. Somehow talking to you while taking in the words on the paper.

“I remember marking this,” he says, looking up to address you. “Your concepts are nearly there, but your structure and presentation was off.”

“You marked them?”

He raises his brow, “I hope that wasn’t an accusation. I need to stick to the rubric.”

“I thought the professor marked the lab reports.”

“He’s…supposed to.” There’s a forced reservedness in his voice. “I mark them and he puts in his comments if he has any. But I’m not sure you’d fare any better than this if it was him behind that pen either.”

Every question that floated in memorisation, from the form and structure, to the nitty gritties of the data presentation, all evaporate as you realise you’re at a loss for words.

Even more embarrassingly, you feel tears prick the back of your eyes. You don’t have an explanation, but it’s somehow easier to feel helpless in front of the man that’s meant to help you. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“That’s alright,” he says as reassurance, though it sounds awfully rehearsed. Like he has to say it everyday. “We’ll work through it.”

He lets out a big sigh, adjusting in his chair and running a hand through his hair. The motion has you noticing the dishevelled nature of the mop on his head, un-uniformed and sticking out at certain places, yet still somehow cohesive with his look. His shoulders are straight and taut, fingers working as they fiddle and flick the pen in his hand.

Despite it all, his shirt is ruffled and creased, unbuttoned at the first couple steps. The buttons are misaligned, one side of his collar higher on his neck than the other. It takes an effort to not reach over and fix it for him.

“Lab reports can be quite tricky if you aren’t sure what you’re doing. Did you refer to the tutorial?”

You mean the one that did nothing to help? “Yes.”

“You got those bits right, format and whatnot. But—”

“It was a lump of writing about subheadings and word counts,” you say plainly.

Mingyu lips are in a tight line. “Well, yes, but it helps—”

“I know the results are supposed to go in the results section. I don’t need a PDF to tell me that,” you cut him off. Your voice is reserved, and you hope it comes off as a point across and not a complaint. Although it was a complaint. “I want to know why the entire section was ruled off as incorrect when we were never properly taught how to write it in the first place.”

“Dr. Cho—”

“Is no help.”

“I understand—”

“He can’t even mark his own papers. I’m quite sure that’s not in your job description. It’s supposed to be him here. Not you.”

It’s silent. There was nothing in your voice that suggested you wished to pick a fight, on the contrary, quite calm and matter of fact. Mingyu’s fingernails are going white as his grip on his pen and paper grow stronger.

“And yet, we continue to show up. Because we do what we must.” He raises his head in control, a small smile on his face, eyebrows unnaturally raised. “And, better that I’m here rather than no one at all. I can help you too.”

Help, he did.

Mingyu had made it quite clear his time with you was limited, but by the end of the near 25 minute session, nearly every inch of your printed assignment was covered in a rainbow of notes and corrections, additional papers and post-it notes pasted on the back as you remain careful to not lose them as you slip the stack in your bag.

You only remember when you spot the segregated file of papers in your bag.

“I almost forgot,” you say, slipping the files and tidbits out and in front of him.

“Where did you find this?” he asks sharply, eyes widening as sees the familiar blue.

“You left them at the desk of the lecture hall last week,” you say, before quickly adding, “There was a class right after you left. I took them off the professor’s hands before they got lost. Thought it might be important.”

“I’ve been looking all over for these,” he says as he goes through the pages and files. Random sticky tabs and highlighted regions across the pages. The leather strap watch with the broken clock face remains on top, and he picks it up. He looks up to you with wide, sparkling eyes and a smile that feels genuine. “Thank you.”

You flush for some reason, “O–of course, couldn’t just leave them there.”

Pausing, you wonder if you should make the next comment, the words tumbling out before you can make a decision. “Maybe don’t run out of rooms still half asleep.”

By the grace of God, he laughs, “No, you’re right. I should be careful.”

It isn’t till you’re pushing yourself out of your chair that he continues. “You can come in at 3:30 tomorrow.”

“Pardon?”

He’s stood up as well. “I have a free thirty minutes before office hours formally start. I can help you out a little more without the crowd.”

Feet planted on the ground, there’s not much you can do but stare. “Um, sure. I can come in a little early.”

He nods casually, “Thanks again for the papers. And the watch.”

You smile, “No problem.”

Thursday

True to your punctual nature, you make yourself known at exactly 3:29 PM.

Mingyu is at the desk, conscious and on the phone, eyes closed as he rests his face on his fist.

“I don’t know if I can make time for that—no, I understand, sir,”

Another pause as the noise from his speakers fill his ears, his rubbing over his face a little harsher than you doubt he’s entirely comfortable with.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

His phone hits the table with a heartbreaking thud, both hands covering his face as he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Light on your feet or something? I can never tell when you come in,” he startles when he notices you.

Sheepish smile on your face, you move to sit down. “Sorry.”

You know it’s invasive, and you also know you might be asking him to break some unknown university code of conduct, but curiosity takes charge as you ask a casual question. “Important call?”

“Uh, yeah, um, just work stuff,” he states, shaking his head swiftly like he’s trying to shake the thought out of his mind.

There’s a pause while you're slipping your papers and laptop out of your bag, during which he seems to have decided to divulge a little more.

“It was Dr. Cho. More stuff for me to do,” he says. “As always.”

“Does he do anything other than show up to class?” you ask through a snort.

“Of course he does. He cusses out every article he doesn’t agree with, is anything but objective and…the occasional relay of blatant misinformation.”

For the record, you’d never really heard Mingyu speak at all for the months he’d been TA-ing for the semester. It was small whispers of choice words in a vague voice, the distant murmur as he exchanged with the professor too far for you to hear.

The voice of the seemingly quiet and diligent TA was never known to you, not until yesterday as he explained statistical models and the flaws of your data presentation.

Passionately too. Incredulous for a discipline so dry and unapproachable.

That being said, something about the grit in his voice as he positively sneered through his teeth, badmouthing his professor—it was something you couldn’t quite believe he was capable of.

“I’m sorry you have to put up with him.”

Once again, by whatever stone of tolerance the universe bestowed in his heart, you watch him sigh and smile, “Anything for that recommendation. And the pay too, I suppose. Besides, he’s done a lot for the area, can’t discredit him entirely.”

With your eyebrows raised, he seems to catch your expression. He pants out a laugh, and your stomach lurches as you watch it reach his eyes, teeth on display, a lurch in his chest; a true laugh.

Raising his hands in surrender, he responds, “I’m stuck.”

There’s nothing you can do to stop the smile that reaches your own face, turning your laptop screen towards him with the JASP software display. “I am too. Help.”

Help, he does.

Monday

Mingyu ended up giving you an entire hour on that Thursday.

The thirty minutes before office hours began soared by like they were nothing, and you were ready to take your leave the minute students began to scatter in as the clock hit a swift four. Except he kept going, another 30 minutes in deep concentration as he retaught you nearly everything from scratch.

Perhaps his proven determination to ensure you don’t tragically fail is what prompted you to do this, standing at the till of your regular coffee shop as you ask, “Make that two, please.”

It might also be important to mention the 7:30 AM on the dial on a bright Monday morning as you walked into your slightly less dreaded Statistics in Psychological Research class, knowing there would only be one other person insane enough to get to the lecture hall this early.

Something isn’t right.

Mingyu is in a position all too familiar to you and everyone else who shares this class, hunched over something or the other in deep focus. The sun pours in through the lifted blinds, the lights of the class turned off as natural light does more than enough of the job.

It also shows you a blaring hot pink post-it note on his face, all too familiar to a previous interaction you’ve had with him.

He notices you before you need to announce yourself, brows separating as he recognises you in the doorway. “‘Morning!”

“...Morning.”

“You’re early,” he comments, straightening his back with a hand behind him for support as you approach.

“Figured we both needed this,” you hand him a tray with his cup of coffee, eyes still trained on his lower cheek with the paper stuck to it. “It’s a latte with no sugar, but I added a couple packets on the side anyway. Just in case.”

“O–oh, thank you. And you’re right I did need this.”

Now that you’re closer, the scrawled writing on the post-it note is clearer.

To Do:

Call mom

Shoot myself

“You, um—” It’s alarmingly difficult for you to say it, despite the words being so simple. Hey! You got a lil’ something on your face.

But all you do is dumbly point to your own cheek, eyes trained on the loud piece of paper that tells more than he might like the world to know.

There’s a loud slap of his hand on his own cheek as he crumples the paper in his hands, bringing it forward to see. “For fuck’s sake.”

“It’s okay! I wanna…shoot myself too sometimes.”

What the fuck?

“I mean!” you correct louder than you anticipated, before covering with a laugh. “It’s okay, it happens. Good thing I caught it before someone else did.”

It’s all the more petrifying when your voice echoes across the blatantly empty lecture hall, reverberating like it was a punishment for you and your horrid lack of volume control. Meeting his eyes feels like a sin right now, so you keep them downcast and pray he doesn’t try to sabotage your education.

“Good thing it was just you. Yeah.”

Just you.

“Anyways, I think I’m done with prepping for class. Do you wanna squeeze in twenty minutes of ANOVA?”

“Have you seen the time?”

“Not a morning person?”

“Nope!”

“And yet it’s 7:40 on a Monday morning and you’re absurdly early.” His brows are raised as he pulls around the professor's chair to bring it to you.

“Do you want the coffee or not?” you ask, watching as he drags another chair for himself.

The both of you sit away from the professors table, coffees in hand as you watch Mingyu run a hand through his hair.

He gives you a crooked grin,“I apologise.”

“To be fair,” he continues. “I’m not much of a morning person either.”

You narrow your eyes the slightest bit as Mingyu takes a sip of his unsweetened coffee, “I’m starting to think no money’s worth this job.”

Mingyu snorts, coffee suspended in his full cheeks. He swallows with much difficulty before answering, “You’re right. Not sure why I’m still here either. I could get an offer from another professor.”

“And that isn’t happening because…?”

Elbows on his knees, Mingyu swirls his capless coffee cup, the beige liquid moving in a growing tornado. “I like Dr. Cho.”

“You—”

“I know,” he laughs loud, a deep, echoing sound that shakes in your ears. “I know. I sound like a lunatic.”

“I don’t know about lunacy, but insanity can have its reasons.”

“Another would argue that insanity was the very absence of reason.”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Excuse me for doing my job.”

He takes another sip of his coffee, and you ask again, “No, but really. I can’t imagine this man having too many redeeming qualities as an educator.”

Mingyu lifts his chin as he presses his lips together. “When I was in my first year, there was this other class I had where we had to write a lab report for the first time.”

“PSYCH101?”

“That’s the one. I’d never written one before, but I liked statistics enough to do a little more digging than what the assignment called for. I ended up finding one of Dr. Cho’s studies, read the entire thing, word for word. I was up all night reading nearly everything he’d published, some of ‘em before any of us were even born.”

“Oh. So you’re a fan.”

“Everyone tells you to never meet your idols,” he snickers. “He’s done amazing things, but I guess he pays for it with his flawed personality.”

“I’m sorry it had to be you,” you half joke.

Mingyu looks at you sheepishly, “That might also be my own fault.”

“Don’t tell me you offered.”

“I might as well have. All my assignments referenced his work the most. I was always talking to him about upcoming research after class, and it was like he was a different person. Forget differing opinions, some of what he was saying was just…plain incorrect. He welcomed the argument though, and I couldn’t—can’t—stand listening to someone spew nonsense when I know it’s not true. He was always emailing me extra resources which…I’m pretty sure he isn’t supposed to do. Only reason I did so well in his class was because I taught myself.”

He sighs a loud sigh, straightening his back, “I guess he liked me more than I thought, because next thing I know I’m getting a call over the summer telling me I have a job.”

“Did he…have a TA when you were in his class?”

“Four.”

“Four?!”

“Two at a time. All of ‘em quit at some point. Said they didn’t want the recommendation or the pay.”

“Would he…not give you a recommendation anyway? You said he liked you.”

Mingyu shakes his head solemnly, “He’s a tough cookie, everyone in the field knows that. If you’ve impressed him, you’ve impressed everyone.”

You take a moment to really absorb everything you’ve just learned. “That’s a sucky position you’re in.”

“Tell me about it. But it’s okay. Three—three and a half more months to go? This isn’t even the worst of it, I’m just dreading study week when I’m gonna have to handle all the crying.”

You wince as he mentions something even remotely close to exam season, still barely at a stage where you can accept you’d be alright with this class.

“I know you’re not nearly as qualified or experienced as him, but I think you could take over his class.”

“Ever heard of barriers to entry? I’d be ruined if I wanted a career in this.”

You roll your eyes playfully, “All I’m saying is I’ve learned more from you in barely a couple hours combined than the last two months I’ve spent cursing this very lecture hall.”

If you weren’t lying to yourself, you could’ve sworn you saw a blush creep up his face, and paired with his shy laugh and hand at the back of his neck, you can’t help but bite back your own smile.

“If I can help you then it’s worth losing myself.”

Your heart is in your fucking throat.

“I’m glad when students tell me that,” he continues, utterly oblivious to the landslide happening in your digestive tract. “Makes me feel like I’m doing something right.”

“You’re—” you swallow thickly because you sound like a toad. “You’re doing more than just something right. You’re saving us therapy and an extra semester.”

He laughs at that, and you wish he’d let you breathe.

“Feels like I’m doing something wrong sometimes,” he huffs. “My friend’s a TA too and he’s got himself a girlfriend on top of everything else he’s got going on.”

He goes on, “Do you know how many times I need to ask people to quit twirling their hair? To look at the page and not my face? Asking for my number, I have an email for a reason, for fuck’s sake—”

Mingyu is cut off because you’re laughing, hand to mouth as your shoulders shake through your sniggering. “W–what?”

“I’m sorry,” you hiccup. “It’s just…It sounds like you don’t know what you look like.”

“What’s wrong with how I look?” he frowns.

“Nothing!” you exclaim. “But that’s the problem isn’t it.”

Mingyu doesn’t seem to buy it, even through your coaxing as you attempt to explain to him that he is, in fact, desirable.

“Can’t possibly be enough to distract people,” he huffs in earnest, still hung up on the students he can’t get through to.

“Majority of the class would beg to differ.”

There’s a pause as he registers what you imply.

After a few moments, he drops his head, opening his mouth, “Would… you also—”

There’s a loud creak of the door as you hear the immediate noises of shuffling feet and chattering mouths, as low and tired as they sounded. Turning back to look at Mingyu, he’s already jumped out of his seat, wrist to face as he checks the time on the same leather strap watch you returned.

“That’s our cue,” you breathe, pushing your chair back behind the professor’s desk as you manoeuvre around Mingyu who’s suddenly frantic.

Of course you realise there’s people other than just the two of you in the room, heightened in seats that are designed to ensure they can absorb every detail that goes on right where you stand in the front of the room.

But you feel the soft of Mingyu’s shirt over his wrist as you give him a gentle squeeze despite it all, barely enough pressure. Half your index finger brushes the skin of his hand, just enough to register how cold your fingertips are and how warm his body is.

“Relax,” you whisper. “You’ll be better off without all the panic.”

You don’t see his face as you brush past him and up to your seat, looking up to see him disappear somewhere in the corner hunched over another stack of papers. The next time you see Mingyu’s face is when the professor arrives and has begun his regularly scheduled tomfoolery, and realise all the age that can accumulate in the span of five minutes.

Thursday

Midterm season is nothing you’ve ever really had to worry about.

Something about the halfway point did make it obvious that the clock was ticking, but danger was far enough away to prevent the ultimate breakdowns reserved for the peak seasons.

Except this class isn’t ordinary, and it’s all you’re able to worry about all semester. And as Dr. Cho in his Thrasher vest announces the date for the in class midterm, the glass once half empty, suddenly looks very half full.

“I’m not ready.”

“You’re more ready than anyone else in class.”

“How do you know that?”

Mingyu stares at you blankly, “If I don’t know that, then who else does?”

You have tears in your eyes, which is embarrassing enough since this is the second time you’ve teared up in front of him, but also because you’re in a library following Mingyu around like a lost duck because he insists on putting the books he borrowed back onto the shelves himself after registering the return.

“But I don’t feel like I’m ready,” you whine, turning the corner as he searches for the last spot to place his final book.

“You’ll realise just how ready you are when all those hieroglyphs on the page start to make sense to you,” he grunts the last bit out as he reaches on his tippy toes to shove the book back up.

Dusting his hands off, he adjusts his shirt before turning to you, “You only feel that way because I’ve been giving you harder problems to work on. You’re past the level you need to be at right now. Trust me, you’re more than prepared.”

“But—”

“Listen,” he waves to the librarian as you both leave the library, your eyes still glistening as you fiddle with your sleeves. “It’s only the midterm—”

“Only the—”

“If this goes wrong, I’m just gonna have to work you harder for the real thing. Even though I know it won’t go wrong because I said so.”

You fall into silence as he walks you towards the coffee shop across the courtyard.

“I’m assuming…” you start.

“Hm?” he looks over to you.

“I’m assuming you can’t hint at what’s on the paper.”

Mingyu barks out a laugh of disbelief, “You assume correct. I’m not going through hell with this job just to lose it because of a paper leak.”

“But it’s just the midterm,” you mumble, not even close to remotely audible.

“What did you say?” Mingyu smirks.

“Nothing,” you huff.

“You know, I’m a little offended you don’t trust me.”

“Who said I didn’t.”

“Well then, stop being such a worrywart.”

There must be something written on your face, because as you pass Mingyu standing at the door he keeps open for you, entering into the coffee shop with fallen shoulders, he seems to change his mind.

He brings you a coffee, sits you down, and gives you something else you need. “I made the paper. Every question. And I taught you. Every concept. So I definitely know you’re gonna be fine.”

In that moment, with the large glass walls of the warm coffee shop, the afternoon sun comfortably resting on every last object of the room, you don’t see it illuminate anything other than the man before you.

Perhaps you're being dramatic at the revelation, but you don’t take anything into account as you note Mingyu’s eyes and how they sparkle like they were gifted from the centre of a flaming volcano, brown and polished more than any jewel or stone you’d ever seen. Reaching out to touch him, you know you’d feel nothing but smooth stone, the indentations only possible by a being beyond what you could comprehend.

He’d given you more than just reassurance, and at times, his timing makes it feel like he was sent from the heavens itself, just for you.

You sniffle.

His hands brush over yours as he hands you a napkin, and even more so, cover your own as he takes your freezing fingertips into his own palm, the contact burning you like hot coal.

You know he’s real. And you don’t know why quite just yet, but that reassurance is enough to give you calm.

Monday

You were alright, but it seems that Mingyu seemed to disintegrate right after he was done reassuring you to the moon and Saturn and Jupiter and back.

It’s midterm day, and as always on every Monday morning, you enter the empty lecture hall with two warm coffees in your hand, ready for whatever shitshow you’d have to perform for today.

It seems Mingyu must defect from at least one regular string of behaviour to remain as Mingyu, who on this occasion, stands before you in a baby blue polo sweater.

Except you only know that because you can see the unique collar, but it might also be important that his back is turned towards you.

“Morning, champ,” he gruffs, nothing encouraging about his voice in the slightest.

Your breath hitches when you finally see his face, eyes sunken in and face pale. His lips are chapped and peeling, eyes half closed.

“Why’re you looking at me like that, why has everyone been looking at me like that?” he huffs in one long, rapid question.

“Um, I mean,” you stare at his shirt that’s backwards. And inside out. “I can’t tell if that’s a choice or a mistake.”

Looking down at his front, he looks back up, “What?”

“Your collar is…not at your collar, Mingyu. And your shirt’s inside out.”

Hand at his nape, he reaches his fingers down and finds the unmistakable starched planes of his collar, eyes closing at the realisation. He’s immediately pulling his arms out of the shirt with his eyes still closed like it’d all disappear if he keeps them like that.

“Wait!” you exclaim before he strips entirely, scrambling to put your coffees down to push him out of the room towards the restrooms. “Do you wanna strip for the CCTVs?”

You only hear him sigh as he moves out and into the hall, doors closed behind him.

You’ve nearly forgotten about the midterm at this point, your concern now growing in a completely different direction. By the time Mingyu returns, he’s blabbing about wondering why everyone he ran into since he left home was giving him the strangest looks, and then something about you always swooping in to save him before the real bout of disaster strikes.

It’s hard for you to listen to him when you’re more worried about him passing out, his face doing him no favours to reassure you that he wasn’t a breathing corpse.

“Mingyu…did you sleep at all?”

“Hm?” His eyes are glazed over and unfocused.

“Sleep? Rest?”

“Oh,” he frowns. “Not really. I had emails coming in all night.”

“And you were replying?”

“It's the midterm today,” he responds flatly, like it should’ve been enough explanation.

You almost don’t believe him. “Doesn’t mean you stay up to answer something that should’ve been cleared out beforehand!”

“Couldn’t just leave them to fend for themselves,” he dramatises.

“Yes, you could!” Your voice comes out louder than you expected, eyes wide as you realise what he’s doing to himself. “You barely look human and it’s only the midterm.”

“What’re you trying to say?”

“I don’t know if this job is really worth as much as you think it is.”

Mingyu’s jaw is clenched, fists tight as he releases them to grip paper weight on the desk, knuckles white. “I can’t get anywhere if I don’t—”

“Mingyu, please. This isn’t good for you.”

He says your name. Declarative, almost like a warning. “If you think this job isn’t worth it then you just don’t know.”

“Mingyu—”

“No, you don’t, because I’ve seen how good of a job I’ve been doing.”

“You have, you’ve been amazing but—”

Mingyu’s own voice is raised, a hard impenetrable floor to the words he spills. “Then what’s the problem?”

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You look like a corpse!”

And then he’s getting out of his chair with so much force it almost knocks it backwards, “Why on earth do you care so much? So what if I look like a corpse, if I‘m doing my job?”

It might’ve been better if he knocked the chair right into you, your breath dissipating in your chest like it never existed. His face is morphed in an expression of exasperation your anxieties fear the most, every line on his face committed to irritation and anger.

Why on earth do you care so much?

Right. Why do you?

“Are you asking me that?”

“What?”

“Are you asking me why I care?”

Mingyu only sighs, shoulders dropping and eyes closed. Like so many times before, you watch run a hand through his hair, except this time he yanks on the strands harder than ever before.

His eyes are bloodshot.

“I have to get the exam pack.”

Marching out the door in front of your own eyes, you’re left with a feeling that’s right in the back of your throat, curling and whirling into something you wish you could hack and gag out. Gripping the corner of the professor’s desk, you feel the peeling wood cut into your skin.

There’s a draft, the delayed slam of the door has only hit its wind now, a delayed reaction. It’s like it registers in your mind as you feel strands of your hair shift, the clarity that comes with it.

Delusive. Chimeric. Cruel.

Everything you’d subjected upon yourself. A whimsical fantasy between pages of logic and numbers, a story that simply didn’t fit where the laws wouldn’t allow it.

The null hypothesis of your most elaborate nightmares.

Monday

Your favourite commonplace box, where your mother once placed all her most prized jewels, had a finicky latch.

It wasn’t broken, simply worn in from years of opening and closing. It took a few tries to get it shut. Simply pressing down with pressure didn’t work; you had to open it again, press down on the individual elements of the latch and then try again.

You were never satisfied until you heard the distinct click of the latch fixing itself, the box closed and ready for you to hook your lock through.

Earlier on in your undergraduate career, you remember a professor talking about the effects of external factors on the mind, how they can sometimes cause it to ‘shut down’ when overwhelmed or stressed.

It’s happened to you on many a occasion; like when you stayed up too late on a school night to watch a documentary about the Stanford prison experiment, or when you’d neglect food or water on busier days, or when you’d stop paying attention in class because you were too preoccupied thinking about Taco Tuesday.

Regardless, you’d found a way to recognise when your brain would fall into some strange kahoots with daydreams, or whatever was bothering you, and learned ways to give yourself a reset.

Pressuring and forcing the attention wouldn’t work, just like how the latch wouldn’t fit when you’d do the same with your beloved old box. So you’d take a walk, drink something cold, spray yourself with a garden hose, or even take a nap altogether. Opening yourself up, so the latch can finally click.

On the morning of your midterm, when you’d ensured your brain was in optimal condition for the exam you knew would be one of the worse ones you’ll have to take, you were sure the only external force that could ruin your vibe was from God himself.

Having been so preoccupied with your mind and its functions, you’d seemed to have forgotten where your heart had wandered off to.

Somebody else might consider it a minor disagreement; an anxious squabble if you will. But your breakfast in your throat was enough reason to deem what happened that morning much more than that. At least for you.

“Pass it on, please…pass it on, please.”

The sound of his voice is tectonic. Rattling in your head like a superior force had slammed into your skull like a padded hammer to a gong.

You hated it. You hated everything. You hated yourself. And as the midterm paper reaches you with your pen in your clawed fingers, the first three questions already making perfect sense, you realise you hated Kim Mingyu the most.

That was a lie. You were lying to yourself, yet again.

Because it was quite the opposite. You couldn’t hate him.

As you drift past every question of conditional experiments and screenshots of data and tables on a software, you hardly remember what you circle and what you don’t. Hardly remember what words you picked for the short answers and labels. You hardly remember taking the steps down from your seat to the front of the room, where the professor sat scrolling through his Skateboarders [!MEN ONLY!] facebook group, placing your paper down and leaving the classroom.

Throughout your years of living, you’d learned what you needed to get your brain out of its clouded muffle, to refocus when you needed it.

Everything. You tried everything.

But on that day, when it mattered most, your latch never clicked.

It’s Wednesday.

You order lunch from the Italian place a few streets down. Ravioli; it’s safe and you know you’ll like it.

Savouring it is easy in front of another true crime show. You pull a lone soft drink from your fridge, one that your friend left weeks ago. It tastes just as bad as the last time you tasted it from someone else’s cup, but you drink it anyway, the empty can now in your trash.

It’s 3:30 PM, and you sit at your desk. It’s strange. It feels like you’re missing something, which in ways, you are. But as you pull your laptop from your nightstand instead of out of your bag, you slow your movements.

The papers are the same. But you read them anyway.

Parameter estimation: Make inferences on characteristics of the population, including distributions of the variables and the effect of one variable over another.

It’s accursed the way the universe won’t let you live.

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue, estimation cannot be perfect.

Estimation cannot be perfect.

[_]

It’s Thursday

Class. Eat. Drink. Work.

Hypothesis testing: Determine whether null hypothesis is rejected or not after data observation.

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue, no null hypothesis in bayesian approach!!

[_]

It’s Friday

Eat. Drink. Work.

Latent means to have meaning but is yet to be manifested. The greek letters are placeholder values for values yet unknown.

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue; values that you will find out

[_]

It’s Saturday

Eat. Drink. Work.

P(A|B) = [P(B|A)P(A)

——————

P(B)

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue;

it gets less complicated

promise :/

[_]

It’s Sunday.

Eat. Drink. Work.

The page is blurry. Your eyes hurt.

There’s a scribble in the corner in a dark blue;

you’ve got this!!! < 3

You give up.

It’s Monday.

8:14 AM.

You barely glance at the front of the room; swift turn to the left and right up the steps. Dr. Cho’s outfit almost goes unnoticed by you, tamer than most. Bright Barbie pink with large polka dots, untucked into too tight white jeans. His crocs are sparkly, at least that’s what the twinkle from up here looks like.

He’s insulting another author, the man’s ProQuest journal article open for the world to see like a mediaeval scandal.

There’s another person next to the whiteboards, back to the wall, hands clasped in front of him. His hair is messy, shooting lasers into the carpet as he rocks the slightest bit, listening to the professor rip this author to shreds.

An hour later, you’re staring into the JASP software like it was written in a different language.

Glancing next to you, the boy in the spongebob hoodie is playing sharkboy and lavagirl by himself. On your other side, the girl has the same thing as you open on her laptop, her pen occupied with drawing about a hundred tiny gojos on a bright pink sticky note.

Bright pink sticky note.

You snap your gaze back to your screen quickly after that.

9:58 AM. You start packing up, shoving everything into your bag.

Dr. Cho doesn’t even notice you slip out of the room, hardly a minute to the end of the lecture.

In the hallway, you take your first real breath in two hours.

It’s Tuesday.

You’ve come down with something, head heavy as you feel yourself burn up. Skipping class is easy when you sleep through your alarm and every phone call from a friend asking where you are.

They drop by, armed with medicine and soup. You almost feel better.

It’s silent after they leave, and you realise in that moment how much you hate it.

Opening your laptop for the first time in over 24 hours, you turn on a random podcast to play in the background, needing something to fill the air before you lose it entirely.

The screen lands right where you left on the incredulous data presentation, unsolved tutorial paper crumpled between the screen and keyboard like a wilted leaf.

Hot, scalding tears sting your eyeballs when you realise there was nowhere to turn to.

It’s Wednesday.

After a long day of doing nothing, still sick from whatever plagued your body, you go to bed earlier than usual.

It’s Thursday.

Walking out of class, your mind is empty. You’re still sniffling, still achey, but better than you were. The shawl wrapped around you is warm, and your hood covers the cold tips of your ears.

This other class makes you feel better about yourself, especially when the content is digestible and so is the professor. The TA feels like a mere accessory in the room, something you’ve learned to appreciate.

With your gaze lowered, you only see midriffs as you walk out the classroom into the busy hallway.

It happens in an instant, the flash of a clenched hand as the owner walks by in quick stride. An unmistakable leather strap watch with a broken clock face on the wrist.

You freeze like you’ve been caught.

The hard bump of someone coming out the room behind you is welcomed, the annoyed “Hey!” knocking you back to earth before you could even exit the dimension.

You’re off centre. But it’s fine.

It’s Monday.

“Midterm results are out Tuesday morning. If you have any questions I’ll be sitting at office hours on Wednesday and Thursday, four to six in the evening. Or you could send me an email, either’s fine.”

Dr. Cho isn’t here. Something you only found out when the pitt sank in your stomach as Mingyu cleared his throat at the full hour.

You want to leave, not caring about how strange it’d look if you did. Not caring about how he would definitely notice if you did. You want him to shut up, to stop talking, for anything to halt the way his voice infiltrates your entire being, talking about things you don’t understand but more familiar than anything else.

Mingyu’s voice is hoarse, and you loathe the way you can tell the difference.

It’s Tuesday.

Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.

— 92/100

It’s Wednesday.

4:10 PM. It’s almost too much for you. Almost.

The screech of the door is loud, the slam of the handle’s rebound even more so. The room doesn’t so much as glance at you at the door, the half full seats preoccupied with more important things.

The front desk perks up immediately, eyes shooting towards the door for the nth time that day, like he was expecting someone that never seemed to show up.

It’s ironic, you think, how Mingyu never seemed to notice you walk into the room for the many months you’ve walked in just for him. And now, as you walk in fists clenched and jaw set, eyes wild and burning, he’s breaking away from a student to look at the door before you even come into view.

“Did you feel bad?” you spit.

“What?” he whispers. He seems to come around, glancing back before continuing, “Can we talk? Please.”

“Answer the question, Mingyu,” you snap. You don’t care there’s a confused student sitting right across from the both of you, his slot interrupted by your barge. “Did you feel so bad you had to give me something I didn’t earn?”

He’s stood up now, half confused. “Is this about the midterm—”

“I did not get a ninety two, I know I didn’t,” you grit. “Whatever happened before that stupid paper made sure I wouldn’t.”

Mingyu says your name and the sound makes you want to vomit. “What makes you think I’d do something like that?”

“I don’t know, maybe because I fucked up because of you?” you announce, louder than before.

The world disappeared, your tunnel vision pointed at Mingyu’s face that wears an expression you cannot even begin to read. The unbecoming tears in your eyes are of a type of unadulterated rage you’ve felt only a few times before. Your heart is going about a million miles a breath, everything else only triggering an added bout of infuriated tremble in the forefront of your emotions. Nothing makes sense.

Mingyu pushes back his chair in silence, stalking over to a large cupboard in the corner of the room. He shuffles around for a minute before returning.

There’s a packet being thrust into your fists when he reaches you. He does not meet your eyes.

A bright red 92/100 marks the front page.

“Here. It was all you, if you can’t believe me.”

It’s a careful mark, unmistakable lines and curves of the nine and the two.

Reality is slow to sink in, but for some reason it’s only making you angrier. The paper curls under the pressure of your fingertips. You don’t open the packet. You refuse to flick through the pages.

Because you know you’ve lost.

It’s Thursday. And it’s full of regret.

There’s a sickness in you, from that dreaded day, something beyond what affects your body temperature and your energy. It’s in your mind, flooding the nerves that swim through every crevice and cave of your brain, a physical venom that does the opposite of kill but also the opposite of letting you live.

There’s a feeling in you, that even if you were to open your mouth, unhinge your jaw, try to scream as loud as your throat would allow, there would be no sound. Something like a horrible dream, that you need to screw your eyes tight shut to fall out of. Except you aren’t waking up from this one.

In a coffee shop, where Mingyu held your hand in a reassurance you now bleed for, you were sure he was real. Real like some deiform image; too good to be true.

In your bed, dry tears on your face, midterm packet sifted through that showed you absolutely everything that you did right, thanks to him. He feels too real. Real like a cloud of obsidian that follows you everywhere, like the sad that’s been sleeping with you every night.

If there was a way to hate someone more than a human limit, you’ve crossed it with the resentment you’ve now fostered for yourself.

Barging into office hours like that, accusing him on a basis of nothing but your own dangerously stewed thoughts. If there was a hope of salvaged parts, you took a hammer to it in disregard; tearing it to ribbons that lay at your feet.

It’s Friday.

At least it was. It bled into Saturday before you realised the 3:23 AM on the dial.

Two weeks of no help and you already feel lightyears behind. The hour is getting to you, and you feel the frustration pool into tears, that turn into full fledged sobs. You’re crying over Bayesian inference and it’s somehow more pressing than any other emotion you’ve ever felt.

Impossible numbers on your data sheets taunt you, not a single reference to if it was a button you clicked wrong or if you were playing a fool’s game altogether.

Ding! You pick up your phone, the weight of it is enough gravity to pull you back to earth.

[Mingyu]: switch to bF10

[Mingyu]: you’ve been pulling numbers from bF01

It’s immediate the way your eyes dart towards your lit screen, clicking off tables to get to the drop down menu you need. And there on the left, two tiny buttons, one clicked on bF01.

With shaking fingers, you move your cursor to hover over the tiny bF10, anticipating. You click. It takes a moment for the numbers to change, but they do. The nominal values turn into something you can actually work with.

Something akin to a tut leaves you, hidden in the breath of another sob. It’s stupid, unreasonable, absurd. Your fingers hover over your phone, shaking as tears drop onto the screen, faster than before.

Do you not miss me?

Do you not want me around?

Talk to me

I miss you

Please talk to me

“I couldn’t—can’t—stand listening to someone spew nonsense when I know it’s not true.”

Mingyu is a product of his personality. You can only imagine he’s helped because he saw you struggling in class, heard from someone else, or perhaps, he just knew the very thing you’d make blunders out of.

The reasons come to you, that Mingyu is a product of his personality. Then why does it hurt? Why does it feel like the knife’s twisted a full 360, that despite the way you accused him of the thing that would strip him of everything he’s bruised himself for, he helps you. The very thing that caused this rift in the first place.

There’s a reason for that, and it is again, that Mingyu is a product of his personality.

It’s Saturday.

Perhaps you relied on your olfactory senses to remain calm, because you always knew you could count on a coffee shop to forever and always smell the same.

The universe seems to want to ruin that for you too.

“Latte, please,” you voice. “Iced.”

“We have a one plus one for the week! Would you like to receive another latte?” The lady taking your order looks no older than 17, a pep in her voice.

“Um, no thank you. Just one, please.”

She looks taken aback, a reasonable reaction to anyone turning down a free drink. But you couldn’t bring yourself to walk home with two cups in hand.

You’re plucking a napkin from the pickup counter when you hear his name.

“...that he manipulated her grade because they were hooking up.”

“He has time to hook up?”

“I remember hearing about that! She barged in during office hours and asked why he fixed her grade or something.”

“A ninety two? In that class? Oh, they were definitely fooling around with each other.”

“Whatever, at least we know he’ll entertain you if he likes you enough. I’m just glad those two are over so I can swoop in.”

There’s an eruption of giggles. You press your head down further.

“Unless he flirts in variables.”

“All is forgiven when you’re born with a face like that.”

Another explosion of giddy laughter, through which your drink is slid across the counter towards you, like it was waiting for you to hear the damning evidence before you could leave. You grab it anyway, grip tighter than usual.

Turning around, your eyes search, finding a group of people that sit in smiles and in various states of trust-falls.

There she is, the girl you sat with on the first day you attended office hours, the one with the glitter gel pen doodles on her notes and her blatant fawns over the TA you slipped under just as easily.

She locks eyes with you and her face falls, eyes widening the slightest bit in recognition.

Pressing your lips into a smile, you hope it doesn’t look as menacing as you feel. You don’t wait for a response before you walk out the large glass doors.

It’s Sunday.

It seems every sip of water you’ve taken during the week has been used up in all the tears you’ve seemed to be shedding. By the bucketload.

Alas, even blurry and puffy eyed, you pour over statistical formulas anyway, running on no energy and all antagonism. It’s another tutorial sheet left incomplete, a single question taking a pour that lasts in at least an hour of struggle.

Reading the same question for the nth time, your palms press into your temples as you stare lasers into the paper, like the revelation would come to you if you stared it down hard enough. It doesn’t make sense, the commands you’ve toggled on and off identical to the instructions on the page.

Hence the question begs why the data was coming out like someone pressed the ultimate on a number generator.

With a heat of unreasonable embarrassment, you find yourself checking your selection in one of the drop down menus, switching to bF01 and back just to see the difference. It does nothing to help, and you can’t help but feel a little relieved it wasn’t that particular snag.

The library is as silent as it could possibly be on a Sunday morning, near empty as you occupy the mostly vacant seats. The librarian is having her own day off, as you could swear she’s playing computer games behind the counter instead of actual work.

The only noise in the room is your own breathing, and that seems to be enough to mess with your concentration. You’re going cross eyed staring at the page for so long, the words doubling and disappearing before going back to normal.

Bayesian inference…z scores…null hypothesis…

Wait.

It’s like you can see it in front of your eyes right now, the scribble of someone else’s dark blue on your notes.

no null hypothesis in bayesian approach

Bayesian approaches don’t use null hypotheses. And z scores are in…

“Oh my god, this is a t test,” you whisper to yourself in disbelief. Immediately, you’re scrambling to shake your laptop out of its sleep, switching over to a t test to redo everything, following the instructions on the same data set.

And there it was…a clear 0.067 under the p value.

In a moment of questioning, you laugh out a breathy sound, the absurdity of it all becoming too real. T tests were the first thing you learned, the foundation to all your statistical knowledge. Coming so far, and it took you days to realise the instructions under a Bayesian approach were for a different realm entirely.

It was stupid of you. But in this difficult aftermath you can’t help but feel victorious. Laughing to yourself quietly in this empty library.

When the initial adrenaline fades and you’ve double, triple checked to ensure you were right, you can only stare at the tiny mail button in your shortcuts on the screen. It was clearly an error, one that was given out to nearly a hundred students.

The first step was clicking, your inbox coming to life as you drift towards the big blue button with the readily available NEW MAIL. So you click.

There’s an attached file in the email you draft.

The tutorial paper has titled t test instructions as a Bayesian approach. Just wanted to point it out and ask if I could receive a corrected version.

Regards, YN

It’s almost like you’re trying to remember how it feels like when you type an experimental m in the To bar. His name pops up immediately, email address typed out in full, full name clear on top as a regular contact.

You don’t need a suggestion to remember, his email came easier to you than your own.

But you don’t email him, backspacing till it’s empty once again.

Dr. Cho’s email sits in that place instead, a first for you.

SEND.

You don’t expect him to reply on a Sunday, in fact, you aren’t sure if he’s going to respond at all. You’ve already shut your laptop, half out of your seat in an attempt to pack up. You’re forced to consider.

Would it be terrible to go back and cc him as well?

A spiteful part of you might find joy in correcting him for a change. The rational part of you wants to actually finish the tutorial before tomorrow’s class when you’d have to tackle another beast for the rest of the week.

Sitting back down, you move without thinking. Your mind is still cooking up possibilities as you swing your screen open once again, still weighing as you click back into your inbox.

There’s a new email in your sent box after you’re done, a copy of the one you sent your professor, the same attachment and the same question; word for word. The only difference, a more familiar name in the address bar.

Before you can chicken out, you slam your laptop shut for the actual last time, shoving everything into your bag before the speeding thoughts can infiltrate your mind's barrier. You’re out the door before you know it, ready to be done with this.

You’re afraid if you put a hand to your stomach it’d be met with kicks and punches, especially with the way you feel the aggressive cartwheels slashing away at your insides. The butterflies are making it to the end of your food pipe, and you briefly wonder if you need to break into a sprint to make it to a safe throwing up zone. Your entire being jolts as you feel a buzz in your hands, a loud click that signifies a new email in your inbox.

Right there, in the middle of the sidewalk, you stop.

The grip you have on your phone is unyielding, your fingers beginning to hurt from the pressure. There’s no way to tell if you’re shaking or not, but you bring your phone to your face anyway. The screen flips on, a lone notification on the screen.

RE: Tutorial Error from Kim Mingyu

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since you sent that email, the library still in sight from where you stand. At the same time, it’s almost funny you expected any different from him.

The kicks and punches in your stomach halt, the cartwheels have calmed, the butterflies have fallen asleep. The grip on your phone has loosened, and it’s like every nerve in your body went from on fire to serenity in a whiplash inducing shift.

Clicking on the notification, the email opens.

Noted. I have another tutorial sheet for you if you want it. I’ll be in the room where office hours are held for the rest of the morning.

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

There was no way he didn’t have a softcopy he could send you in less than a minute, and you’re sure he knew you’d realise that too. You should scoff, be upset, roll your eyes.

But instead, you find your feet making a 180, turning around to go right back to where you came from. You walk, eyes still half trained on the email, reading and rereading as you walk back onto campus, towards the building you’d once considered a second home.

You walk, and walk and walk, in through the doors, up the stairs and then another set of them, you take a left and look up. The hallway is empty, the door on the right coming into view as you slow your steps significantly.

Closer and closer, you realise the light surrounding it is brighter than usual. The door is open, and you can see the empty rows of tables and chairs, set neatly against one another. It’s strange, you’ve never seen it wide open before.

Walking even closer, you can see the beginnings of the professor’s desk come into view, and it only takes you one more step forward.

Standing in the doorway now, you find yourself in the direct path of the sun that pours in through the open windows. It’s warm, but just enough to combat the cooling weather.

The desk up front is occupied, as it always is.

Mingyu is only in a t-shirt and trousers, glasses perched on his nose as he scrawls away on the paper in front of him. His laptop is turned on, screen facing the door where you stand, his inbox open and available even on the weekend.

It wasn’t that you were waiting for him to notice, but you found yourself inadvertently taking your time looking at him. Every other situation, you’d done your absolute best to avoid your eyes grazing over him at all costs, hardly drifting over his form before flitting away. You never did it on purpose, but it was more like you were unconsciously protecting yourself.

Like looking at him would only make the ache in your heart worse.

If that was the case, you would’ve been right. There’s a tug in your chest, and in that moment, it all comes flooding in like a gate destroyed.

Mingyu looks up and sees you in the doorway, standing immobile. He sets his pen down, taking his glasses off. There’s the smallest hint of a smile on his face as he greets you, “‘Morning.”

You take it as your cue to move forward, stepping foot into the patch of sun slowly. “‘Morning.”

You reach the desk, standing in front of him, the only thing blocking you being the littered table with files, papers and stationary; the trench between you both.

It’s so silent it tears at your insides, gripping the strap of your bag to have something to do.

“I, uh, double checked when I saw the email. You were right, nobody noticed in class either.” There’s an airiness in his voice, like he might be struggling just as much as you are right now.

He clears his throat when you don’t respond, looking back down at his workspace like he was looking for something. He finds a paper from some stack, handing it over to you.

“Thanks,” you hoarse. It’s the same tutorial you had, except the instructions had been crossed out, replaced by a list of handwritten instructions instead, detailed in their annotation. You recognise it, because of course you’d recognise his handwriting.

“I didn’t have time to print one out right now. I’ll probably send a corrected copy to everyone tonight,” he explains.

“That’s alright.” You look up, lips pressed together, eyebrows forced into a regular position on your face. Nodding, you thank him once again. “Thanks again. I’ll…get going.”

Every fibre in your body screams at you to turn back around, hollering profanities at your inability to deal with this. You’re already halfway to the door though, and your pride’s already deemed it too late.

Please stop me, please stop me, please stop me, please just say something and stop me—

There it is. Your name, from his mouth, in his beautiful voice.

Turning back around is the easiest thing you’ve ever done.

Mingyu has stood up from his seat, out from behind the desk. He looks like he wasn’t expecting you to turn back. “Can we talk?”

And then he’s pulling out the chair he was sitting on, presenting it like a piece offering. If you heard correctly, you could’ve sworn you heard his voice break the slightest bit when he pressed, “Please?”

So there you were, in a position all too familiar as you sit across from the man that’s haunted you for the past weeks, trying to keep your chest from falling in.

“I guess I should start with an apology,” he’s fidgeting with his own fingers. “I don’t need to give you excuses about stress or exhaustion because…”

He closes his eyes, trying to find the words. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you. You were only trying to help and I was too preoccupied with myself to notice. I’m sorry I spoke to you like that when you didn’t deserve it.”

For about the millionth time, you realise you’re tearing up again. He continues. “And then…right before the midterm too. You were right, I did feel horrible. But I swear that grade was all you, I didn’t touch those numbers.”

He really didn’t, because the papers he had thrust into your hands on that fateful day in this very room proved that you earned that mark. You wince regardless.

“I thought I could apologise before the exam started but I couldn’t find you, and then you were gone right after. I didn’t text or call because I was sure I’d fucked it all up.”

“I’m sorry too. For barging in in front of everyone and basically accusing you. I wasn’t thinking straight.” You look up from your lap, wet lashes and all. “I really hope you didn’t get into any trouble.”

“I–no, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

“I promise I didn’t.” He locked eyes with you when he said that, hoping you’d believe him. You nod slowly.

“It wasn’t even that bad, what you said,” you sniffled.

He scoffs at that, “I’d beg to differ.”

“I would’ve gotten over it,” you continue, bracing yourself to admit to something you’ve had trouble admitting to yourself. “I should’ve gotten over it. I don’t know why it hurt so much, why watching you walk out felt so horrible. But I haven’t been acting like normal ever since, and I’m sorry for stretching this whole fiasco out into something that didn’t need to turn into…this!”

“You were hurt because I hurt you.”

“People have said worse things to me. And you were practically a zombie, I should’ve just left it for another time. It was a little bit my fault too. But…yeah.”

There’s a silence as you try to remind yourself to breathe. You speak up again. “I just want us to go back to normal. I’ve missed you. Alot.”

“Me too. The go back to normal bit. And the…missed you bit.”

Mingyu’s half smiling when you look up, biting your lip hard as you try to keep a smile of your own at bay. “I’d thought if I gave up and admitted I was struggling that day, that’d be admitting defeat. That you’d think I…couldn’t do it.”

Why on earth do you care so much? It rings in your ears.

You sound light when you say it though, knowing now it wasn’t what he meant.“Since when are we on caring terms?”

Mingyu cringes. "We are. I am, at least, if you aren't anymore, which is fine. I care about you. A lot."

It’s hard to not let out a laugh. He looks half constipated as he tries to navigate his words.

“Oh well I’d hope you’d care, since you’re my TA and all.”

“Not in a TA way.”

“Tutor way.”

“Um.”

“Friend way? A human way?”

“No.”

You both know you’re being obtuse on purpose, and you aren’t sure why. Maybe you just like to watch him squirm.

“You know what?” he rasps.

“What?”

Your answer comes in the form of Mingyu lurching to grab the legs of your chair, pulling the wheels to crash into him where he sits. You’re not expecting it, the clashing legs causing you to swerve forward, hands on Mingyu’s lap.

And then his hand is on the back of your neck, and his lips placed on your own.

You’re stiff as a board, brain computing the fact that Mingyu is kissing you in a classroom.

It’s short, hardly a few moments before he pulls away. “Does that clear things up?”

There’s nothing you can do but blink at him, the reality of it all settles in. “Hm.”

He laughs at your half dazed state. It’s a purely instinctual part of you that speaks after this. “Maybe one more time. To make sure.”

Mingyu doesn’t even wait to laugh again as he wastes no time, putting his mouth on yours properly this time. There’s more of a drive in you this time, moving your mouth against his and he keeps your head close.

The ecstasy is slow but sure to build in your stomach. Mingyu is kissing you. Mingyu is sitting with you and kissing you so good you’re already half faint.

His mouth tastes like coffee and remnants of berry, a combination you can’t believe you could enjoy this much. Licking into his mouth, you let your tongue drag over his, like the tactile would convince you this wasn’t some too vivid fever dream.

He pulls away for a moment, but hardly so as his lips remain pressed onto yours.

“For the record,” he pants. “I love that you care. And I hope you’ll keep caring. Because I don’t think I can handle it if you walk away after this.”

Mouth back on his own, you decide there’s only one way to convince him you weren’t going anywhere without dragging him with you.

MINGYU'S APARTMENT IS CLEANER than you expected. You aren’t sure what you were expecting, perhaps more mad scientist than anything else. But the most you find is a mug and plate in the sink, and a moderately crowded study desk, which is to be expected.

Mingyu decided to abandon his work for the day to spend it with you, to which you contest that it was Sunday anyway. His response is making you change into something comfortable of his so you could laze on his couch.

Like you would run away if he didn’t, Mingyu keeps his arms around you in a tight hold, fingers curling around your shoulders as you lay on top of him. Your head rests directly over his heart, his cheek and lips taking turns to occupy the top of your head.

You fill him in on everything, and realise the most eventful weeks you’ve spent were actually quite uneventful in hindsight. He feels up your cheek and forehead when you tell him you got sick at one point, to which you have to reassure him it was either something going around or stress that you subjected on yourself.

“I went to a frat party,” Mingyu mumbles into your forehead. “For Halloween.”

The information has you shifting to look up at him in bewilderment, “You went to a frat party?”

He snorts, “Dressed up for it too.”

“Oh my god,” you voice in mild horror. “Do I wanna know?”

“Wonwoo and I matched,” he hums as he pulls out his phone, scrolling his gallery to look for pictures. “I was Mario, he was Luigi.”

“How adorable.”

He only gives you a look and shoves the phone in your face. By some grace of god they aren’t wearing moustaches, but the distinct red and green outfits are enough to give you enough recognition.

“Thing 1 and Thing 2 were also possible contenders,” he informs.

“That might’ve been a little better.”

“What’s wrong with Mario?” he asks sharply.

“Nothing. But I do hope you weren’t sporting an Italian accent throughout that.”

“I was,” he pushes. “A horrible one too.”

You give him the satisfaction of an eye roll.

“You could’ve gone as Peach. We could’ve matched.”

“I don’t know if I’d wanna wear any available Peach costumes during Halloween time.” You crinkle your nose as you think of all the racy costumes that unearth every October.

“Maybe in private,” he says with an insufferable smile on his face.

Placing your hands flat on his chest, you rest your chin and look up at him. “I’m not sure I want to interrupt whatever you two have going on.”

“Who?”

“You and Wonwoo, you’re practically married.”

Mingyu laughs out loud, and you can feel the rumble in his chest against your hands, his body moving against your own that’s stuck to him. “Not with whatever he has going on with his girl.”

“Oh right,” you frown in remembrance. “What happened to not understanding how he does it?”

“Hm?”

“He’s a TA too. Probably just as busy as you. You said you didn’t know how he could juggle a relationship and his job at the same time.”

His eyes spark in remembrance, pausing for a moment. “I may owe him an apology.”

“Do you?”

Mingyu frowns, “Actually no I don’t. I don’t think he and his lady are doing too well right now. He’s been insufferable lately.”

“Is it because of the TA-ing?”

“I never know with those two,” he sighs.

There’s silence once again, in the midst of which Mingyu leans over to kiss you a few times, soft and lingering. Like he’s trying to familiarise himself with the shape of your mouth, the tactile feeling of kissing you.

“Do you…know about us?” There’s hesitancy in the way you ask. But you can’t help but ask anyway.

Mingyu thinks for a moment, and it has your heart beating out of your chest. “I know that I want us to be concrete. That I wanna work around whatever life throws at us. You can decide what to call it, but I know I’m in it for the long run.”

“I’m glad you’re smarter than your husband,” you smile.

He only rolls his eyes, “He’s only good at one kind of chemistry.”

“D’you think they’ll be okay?”

“Oh yeah,” he assures. “They’re just going through a…rough patch.”

“Like we did?”

“If you’re asking me, I’d say they’re being a little more stupid about it.”

The snort that leaves you is unanimous with his own. He continues, “They’ll be okay though.”

“I hope so. I’d like to go on double dates with my boyfriend’s husband’s girlfriend.” You start giggling in the middle of your sentence, too ridiculous even for you to voice.

“This is getting weird,” Mingyu breathes.

You only hum against his mouth, “Do I have to take your husband's blessing before we can move forward?”

“For fuck’s sake.”

You’re both laughing again, a sound that comes from your stomachs, true and uncontrollable. For a moment, you can’t help but be conscious of how light you feel, how happy you feel with his scent infiltrating your nostrils, his presence known where his fingertips touch you.

“I did the sticky note thing again too,” Mingyu says into the silence, and there’s nothing you can do to stop the fit of giggles that erupt all over again.

“Said something worse this time,” he continues as you laugh into his chest. “Accept that you’ll die alone or some other shit like that.”

There’s comfort in this moment. In your giggles and in your tears, in his voice and in his affection. His lips are another sanctuary you’ve found, and perhaps even another way to make your dreaded latch click.

Nose nuzzled in his cheek, the feeling of his skin so soft against yours, fingers at his chin where a slight stubble grows, you relax in ways you cannot comprehend.

MINGYU'S LIPS BECOME A feeling you’ve grown dangerously accustomed to.

It isn’t that he has them on you too much, regardless of what an outsider might suggest; to you they simply aren’t on you enough.

The following Monday went as usual, for you anyway. You weren’t avoiding Mingyu this time, and you were grateful for it. It was two hours of following him with your eyes as he darted around the room. You could hardly constitute it as not paying attention when Dr. Cho was preoccupied with explaining every reason he hates JASP over SPSS, but also ultimately, hates them both.

You don’t even notice his loud outfit (overalls and a neon green sweater underneath), happy to watch Mingyu flit about and whisper incoherent explanations to students.

The tutorial paper is barely looked at by you, because you know your boyfriend will be happy to help you out later at his place.

You’re barely through the door that night when he gets a hold of you, tight grip across your waist as you’re catapulted into his arms, door slammed shut behind you.

Bag still on your shoulders and your shoes still on, Mingyu’s slammed his mouth onto yours before you can take a proper breath. You stumble, squealing through the kiss as you realise you aren’t escaping the iron grip he’s got on your face.

Somehow between it all, you manage to slip your bag off to let it drop to the floor of his doorway, shoes kicked off one after the other as he leads you inside, littering the way.

“You aren’t actually paying attention in class anyway,” he breathes against your mouth before kissing you again. “So why don’t you sit in the back where you don’t distract me.”

“Who says I’m not paying attention.” You open your as your back lands on the couch, looking at him as he looms overhead.

“You’re paying attention to me.”

“It was in my job description when I signed up for the girlfriend position.”

He’s all over you now, hands at your sides, mouth underneath your earlobes as he husks, “Was letting me take you in front of the entire class also a clause? Because if this goes on I might have to take up on that.”

If you didn’t know any better you would’ve assumed he’d been possessed, everything about his behaviour screaming the opposite of the well behaved, restrained man you’ve been accustomed to. The fact that he’s whispering directly into your ears isn’t helping either, a conspicuous shiver dragging across your spine.

It lands with precision, right at your core. You’re too hot to tell, but there isn’t a doubt you’ve begun to pool.

There’s a ding in the background.

He’s suckling underneath your ear, his hands roaming in ways that would smear your reputation altogether.

Another ding.

He’s reached your mouth once again, groping your right breast lightly. Like he’s testing the waters.

Ding.

Mingyu makes a noise of annoyance, the other hand trailing underneath your shirt.

His ringtone blares throughout the room, whoever the caller was having reached wit’s end.

“Gyu…” you whisper.

“Ignore it,” he growls. The ringing has stopped.

He ducks underneath to kiss at your stomach, lifting your shirt oh so slowly. He goes higher, and higher and higher, leaving a trail of kisses at the skin, taking deep breaths as he drags his mouth over your torso.

His phone begins to ring again.

Your head is spinning, your senses overcome. If you weren’t sure before, the air of wetness between your legs is definitely obvious now.

He brings a hand to your centre, pushing inwards at your jean clad core. You exhale sharply yet shakily.

The ringing stops.

Mingyu makes a gumbled sound that you can’t quite make out, too preoccupied with the way your shirt is now up past your bra, at which Mingyu has taken to leaving open mouthed kisses to your cleavage.

There’s a ding.

“Mingyu, I really think—”

His phone begins to ring again.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he curses, rearing his head like an interrupted animal, wet mouthed and bleary eyed. He looks at his buzzing phone on the floor in an accusatory glare, like he wants to chuck it out the window and go right back to burrowing into your chest.

“You should answer.”

He looks irritated as he takes his phone in his hands, and you find a flash of Dr. Cho’s name on the screen. “It’s eleven O’clock.”

“It might be important.”

“The last time he did this he asked where his peacock feather pen was,” he grunts as he silences his phone.

You laugh, running a soothing hand through Mingyu’s hair, a tiny attempt to calm him down. Pulling your shirt down, you attempt to sit up.

Mingyu makes a noise of denial, attempting to stick his face into your now clothed chest, knocking you back down, “Nooooo, I’m gonna ignore him.”

“He’s not going to leave you alone,” you sing quietly, running your nails across his scalp lightly, holding his head to your chest. You place your cheek on his head, playing with his ear.

As if to prove your point, Mingyu’s phone begins to ring again, and he groans at the prospect.

“Go on.”

He swipes to answer it. A loud sigh and then a tired, “Hello?”

His volume is bumped up enough for you to make out what’s being said on the other line. “Where have you been?”

“It’s nearly eleven, sir. I was in bed.”

“My flash drive won’t open up on my computer.”

You have to stifle a snort.

“Is it…plugged in?”

“Of course it is, I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it showing up on your files?”

“Disk…is not…formatted.”

“Erm, it might be corrupted.”

“How did that happen?”

“Did you download something off the internet onto it?”

“Hardly matters, I need the attendance sheet on it!”

Your fingers are massaging Mingyu’s temples as you feel him tense on top of you.

“Your attendance sheet is on the teacher’s portal,” Mingyu grits before adding, “sir.”

“...I have other things on there too.”

Mingyu exhales ever so quietly and you tighten your hold on him a smidge. “This sounds like something tech support could help with.”

“Why can’t you help?” he asks sharply.

“I…I don’t know how, sir.”

There’s a noise of indignation from the other end, and you can’t help but keep from laughing.

Mingyu sighs into the phone, this time doing nothing to hide it. “I’ll take it to tech support for you tomorrow. And I’ll send you a direct link for the attendance sheet for Monday and Tuesday’s classes.”

The line beeps shut. Mingyu brings the phone for you both to see the professor’s hung up as soon as the words left Mingyu’s mouth.

“Wow,” you whisper into the silence, the weight of Mingyu’s head heavier on your chest. “Not even a thank you.”

“Absent father behaviour,” Mingyu grumbles as he moves his face to burrow into your shirt.

It’s a bad joke, but you laugh anyway.

“Will I be an asshole if I say I’m not in the mood anymore?” he murmurs.

“Absolutely not. Everything sucked right back in the minute I heard his voice on the line.”

“Gross,” he comments, but he’s laughing too.

“Should we call it a night?” he asks, rearing his head.

Nodding, you rise with him. By the time you’ve reached the bedroom, you’ve already begun taking off your accessories, fiddling with your bracelet as you voice.

“I need a shower.”

Mingyu throws you a towel and a t-shirt, which you catch and move towards the bathroom. Halfway through the door, you sneak a look at him fiddling with his belt.

“Do you wanna come in too?”

Mingyu looks at you peering through the door frame. You’ve never seen anyone leap across the room as quickly as in that moment.

THE FOLLOWING DAYS WERE just as eventful as that phone call, Mingyu running around as the midterm low passed and the line creeped up towards finals season.

Perhaps it was better that you stopped attending office hours, because the room seems to become increasingly packed as the days progressed.

You only ever saw Mingyu in the wee hours of the night at his place, where he begged you to camp out till the end of the semester so he “doesn’t move to insanity”. It might even be better for you, going about your day as usual, without the usual added distraction of a partner.

Coming home to him was easier, where he could clear up your doubts while in ratty pyjamas and starfished across the bed, where you could find solace in Mingyu’s chest without prying eyes when the information became like filling an already stuffed junk drawer.

It was a Friday night, you’re alone at Mingyu’s place sitting cross legged on the floor. The table in front of you is pouring over the final question of this week’s tutorial paper, everything seemingly whizzing right past the top of your head.

Despite that, as Mingyu stumbles inside past eleven, you know you shouldn’t ask him for a thing.

Tired was a look on Mingyu you’d gotten quite used to, so you’ve learned to not comment and simply let him fall into the couch cushions with all his weight.

His face is parallel to yours as he closes his eyes with a light groan in greeting. Moving forward, you kiss the flutter of his eyelids softly, down to the apple of his cheeks, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth.

Your fingers run through his tangled and distressed hair as he mumbles against your mouth. “Did you finish the tutorial paper?”

You huff in mild annoyance, that despite his state he still thinks about work. “Not yet. One last question and I’m done.”

He hums and waits a moment before reopening his eyes. With a loud groan he’s pushing himself off the couch, sliding off of it to sit with you on the uncomfortable floor. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

“I can figure it out myself, Gyu.”

“You would’ve been done by now if you could,” he answers. It’s annoying that he says it but he’s also right.

Mingyu holds the paper a mere inch from his eyes, the sight almost comical if he also didn’t look an inch from passing out.

He mumbles the question as he reads, “It’s nothing, just worded weird. Toggle this off and move this to mixed factors and you’re done.”

The toggles are done for you, and Mingyu takes the liberty crossing he question off with a pen he finds on the table.

“Did you get everything else?” he asks in earnest.

“Hm? I think so.”

“Good.” And then he’s throwing his head back to rest it on the couch cushions behind him, breathing slowly.

He’s in a navy sweater, collar of his undershirt peeking through the top. Your gaze leads up further, to the exposed area of his throat—clean, tan and naked. You realise this might not be a good time, but it’s only natural your mind cooks up other ways to translate your helplessness as you watch your boyfriend push himself to the brink. Release is never a bad idea.

Besides, it’s a Friday night. No reason to not.

“Gyu,” you shuffle closer.

Lolling his head to look over at you, he answers in a small voice, “Yeah?”

You put on the guiltiest face you can muster, complete with darting eyes and fidgeting fingers. “D’you think…d’you think you can go over post hoc tests again?”

“Post hoc?” He furrowed his eyebrows. You bite the inside of your cheek, having blurted the first plausible model you could think of to ask him. It’s an older bit of the syllabus, something you should already be well versed in.

Not that you care what he thinks right now, he’d figure out why you were asking anyway.

“Post hoc, um,” he rubs a hand over his face as if to jog his memory.

Shifting forward, you plaster you front onto his side. He thinks nothing of it.

“Analysis tool after you’ve already run the data,” he begins.

Placing your chin on his shoulder, you let your nose nuzzle against his cheek. Trailing up, your lips find the shell of his ear.

“Results have to be…they have to be…” He falters when your hand reaches his front, running across the expanse of his clothes stomach, nails digging ever so slightly as you reach his abdomen. You continue to place open mouthed kisses at the space of neck you can reach.

“Hm? Has to be what?”

“Statistically significant,” he breathes when your palms reach the tops of his thighs. “To run a post hoc test.”

His trousers are less barrier inducing than regular jeans, something you’re both grateful for as you begin to palm his clothed bulge. “Results of what, baby?”

“For the love of—”

“Go on,” you whisper in his ear. “Please.”

One flick and his trousers are unbutton, pulling them aside as the zipper pulls open. You're pushing down his boxers when he answers you. “ANOVA.”

“What’s that again?”

“You little shit.”

You move your mouth forward to kiss him.

“Analysis of variance.”

You hum against the column of his throat at that, his half hard member in your hands. Light touches, that’s all they are, running the pads of your fingers across the pulsing length, coaxing him into full length.

“What’s it for though? We already got our results.” Bending forward, you stick your tongue to kitten lick at his tip. Mingyu hisses, hips shifting. Your tongue swirls around the tip, pushing into the skin on the head where he’s most sensitive.

“Ugh, fuck, for um,” he falters as you begin to suck at his head, tongue running over each hollow of your cheeks.

“For…for…” His chest is moving up and down in quick breathes, every sound from his mouth coming from a deep rumble in his stomach.

Letting go of his cock, you continue to pump him with your hand as you gaze up at him from your position. “For? Keep talking, baby.”

“For…To identify groups,” he grunts out. He lets out a louder moan when you place your mouth back on him, going past his tip and taking as much as you can of him into your mouth. “Identify…the differences, shit, hmph.”

He takes a loud breath before speeding through it again, “Identify which groups actually differ, oh my god.”

The bit of him that you can’t fit on your mouth is being pumped by your hands, fingers pushing into him like you were trying to indent them on the base of his cock. A glance upwards and you find his head thrown back, hands coming to tangle in your hair. His thumb caresses the side of your cheek.

“How many groups?” you ask, before diving back in.

“Three,” he chokes out. “Three or more, oh I’m gonna cum, fuck don’t stop, holy shit.”

Both of his hands are at your head, guiding you as you suck him harder, faster, more tongue digging into his slit. You hum against his dick on purpose, making sure it’s coarse enough to get the reaction you want.

You succeed, because immediately after you hear Mingyu rip out the loudest moan you’ve ever heard, his grip on your strands harder than ever. He cums into your mouth, hips stuttering as you place your entire weight on him to keep him in place.

You let some of it dribble out your mouth and back over his softening dick like a hot coating, sucking him through shooting spurts of cum that land on your tongue.

When you emerge from underneath, Mingyu looks like he got the soul sucked out of him; eyes closed, stuttered breaths raking through his entire body, a light sheen of the beginnings of sweat that glisten in the low light of the room.

Reaching for the tissue box and water bottle on the table, you soak the napkins and bring them to clean him up. He whines when the cold tissues touch him where he’s most sensitive right now, you want to kiss him but account for the cum that is actively stuck to the walls of your mouth.

You leave for a few minutes, much to Mingyu’s hoarse protests. He’s almost on all fours, hands on the floors as you promise to be back. By the time you’ve hauled his tired ass into bed, you’re just as ready to knock out as the half asleep man beside you.

Mingyu’s face is plastered into your neck, arms and legs thrown over your form as he hugs you close to him.

“I might love you,” he says into the darkness. A secret, just for you and the walls to hear.

You hide the way your heart absolutely leaps, conceal the way your hands tighten around his form into an affectionate caress, hold your breath to prevent the inevitable hitch.

I might love you too.

You hide that as well. For now.

Smiling into the skin of his temples, you sigh.

“Feel free.”

[Mingyu]: class ended early

[Mingyu]: be there in 5

[You]: ???

[You]: wdym ended early

[You]: kim did u end class early to come home

Your response comes in the form of the front door lock jiggling loudly. You’d stayed the night at his place, knowing you didn’t have anything to do but study by yourself. Sickly as you were, you doubt you could sit through two hours of even more statistics.

He’d left you in bed with a kiss, needing to be extra early since Dr. Cho decided to dump the last crucial few weeks leading up to finals season entirely on his TA. As much as there was on Mingyu’s already overflowing plate now, you couldn’t deny the elated feeling of your attendance being taken care of regardless of whether you show up to class or not.

A very real violation, but no one truly notes one skipped student in the midst of hundreds. Besides, the bag under Mingyu’s pretty eyes might be enough for anyone to have mercy and let the supposed mistake slide.

As Mingyu walks into the room, shoes flying and back dumped on the floor, he finds you still half clothed with leftover sleep in your eyes, standing in the middle of the living space like you were lost.

He drops his things to come and drown you in his arms, loud kisses all over your face as you talk. “You’re getting too comfortable with this job.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t possibly expect me to teach a bunch of half asleep idiots when my woman is all alone at home, sickly and cold without me.”

You grumble wordlessly as you feel him check your temperature with the back of his hand. “How’s the congestion?”

“Bad,” you respond nasally. “I can’t find my Afrin.”

“It’s on the bedside table, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

Still wrapped in his hold, Mingyu begins to take steps forward that lead towards the bed, pushing you to walk backwards.

“I’m not awake enough to navigate,” you sniff.

“I’ve got you,” he lowtones, pushing backwards slowly.

The back of your knees hit the bed and you let yourself fall back into the unmade sheets. You crawl back under the covers as Mingyu navigates between used tissues, water bottles and pills on the bedside table. But no sign of your nasal spray.

You have to breathe through your mouth and you hate it, but you send a remark his way anyway. “Told you.”

Mingyu bends down and emerges with a familiar red capped bottle. He stares at you while you stare at it, choosing to simply snatch it from his presenting hands and be done with it.

“Good thing I came back early, hm?”

“Shut up.”

He leaps over your form to claim the spot in bed right next to you, still fully clothed as he burrows under the covers next to you.

There’s nothing flattering about the way you stick the nozzle up your nostrils and sniff hard, but the gleam in your boyfriend’s eyes might as well suggest you were trying to get him to look at you like that.

“Are you gonna keep doing this till finals?” you ask throatily, shifting under the covers.

“Teaching during class time is just extended office hours, I’m gonna go insane if I keep going like this. Probably just today. Or…once more if I feel it.”

“Didn’t you say you were gonna extend office hours to Fridays too?”

Mingyu moulded himself against you, giving warmth to your shivering body even under thick blankets.

It seems throughout the course of your relationship, your time with Mingyu is either spent laying down or in the process of doing so. Not that you mind, you’ve found that remaining horizontal was what worked best for someone like Mingyu who seemed to want to fuse with your very being whenever you were together.

“Ugh, not this week. Do not have the patience.”

“I’m proud of you,” you say, eyes closed, already on the highway to dreamland.

“Thank you, I do think I’ve been very brave.” Even while slipping into dreamland, you find the good sense to find his nipple through his sweater and give it a hard pinch. He jerks away in a yelp, clutching his chest.

“What’s that for?!”

You ignore him and simply run your hand over the area you just attacked. “You’ve gotten better at knowing when to slow down. I’m proud of you.”

You’re too far gone to make out what he answers you with, but with the hot breath against your already warm forehead, you decide it's more than enough for you.

MINGYU DOES IT FOR the fourth time, but this time round he’s smart enough to not tell you.

It’s the Friday before finals week officially begins, and you remain in your own place for once to crack down on the last bits of syllabus you want to go over, away from your extremely distracting boyfriend.

There’s a text when you check your phone after a couple hours of hyperfocus, and you narrow your eyes at the notification.

It’s Wonwoo’s (actual) girlfriend, and she’s sent you nothing but a picture of both of your men on Wonwoo’s living room floor, thoroughly occupied with the floored expanse of sheets, pillows and cushions.

It’s a pillow fort.

Your boyfriend is building a pillow fort in his not-husband’s living room mere days before the final exam for the most dreaded course of the semester. All while he’s actively meant to be available for office hours.

You want to laugh. The man that stayed up multiple nights to answer stupid questions in emails, is now less than concerned about the pandemonium that is probably ensuing in the department building. It isn’t that you’re upset, because this was what you wanted from him. To learn to take a break when it was needed. But you would also prefer he’d time them a little better.

Inevitably, you text him, but not before sending an encouraging text to your girlfriend-in-law for putting up with the both of them all by herself.

[You]: where are you

[Mingyu]: where im meant to be?

[You]: office hours?

[Mingyu]: mhm

[You]: are u and ur husband conducting them under a pillow fort in his house

You imagine him sending Wonwoo’s girlfriend a betrayed look. Perhaps even throw a frilled throw pillow in her unassuming direction.

[Mingyu]: DONT KILL ME

You let him suffer in your silence, clicking your phone off and leaving it somewhere you won’t be tempted to look.

Besides, it wasn’t long before there was an incessant banging at your door that you ended up needing to get up to open. He looks so timid, the face of an innocent perpetrator that waltzes into your space.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, following you to your desk like a lost duckling.

“Whatever for?”

“For lying.”

You snort as you sift through tutorial sheets, “Might wanna take that up to the poor hopeless student that thought you were their last hope.”

Mingyu’s head sinks to your shoulder where you sit at your desk. “God.”

“Him too.”

In another few moments, his arms have come around to cage you into your desk where you’re sat, hands placed on the table as he towers over the top of your head, mouth to crown.

“Rumour has it,” he starts.

You make a face. “Now you’ve joined in on gossip? Maybe I have steered you wrong.”

He ignores you valiantly as his mouth drops lower, down to the beginnings of the tips of your ears. You can smell him. He smells good.

“That a textbook recitation is all it takes to get you all bothered down there.”

Lifting your head from its craned position over your papers, you stare straight ahead. Blank and unassuming.

“Take a hike, Kim.”

“...Sorry.”

NO MATTER HOW FAKE annoyed you were at your boyfriend, you cannot possibly credit anyone else for how smooth your finals had gone.

Not a single tear, hack or whine. Your meals were on time, your sleep schedule the healthiest it’s been for months. You even managed a movie night break in the midst of it all. A record for you.

The very first thing you do after walking out of the exam hall, stretching and sighing, you find Mingyu waiting with nervous eyes.

“Well?” he asks, eyes wide and lips pulled into his teeth.

You merely grab for his hand and pull him out of the crowded hall and past a few familiar turns.

“For the record I didn’t want some of the questions on there,” he yaps as he follows behind your stalks. “Hard ones weren’t mine. I promise I’m not a sadist.”

Then, in an un-CCTV’d corner, marked by the broken, empty vending machine, you round up on him. In seconds you’ve pulled him down to meet your lips in an eager, full kiss.

In the moments your lips remain intact, you can feel all the horrid statistical knowledge you’d gathered over the months slip out the cracks and crevices, relieving you.

Mingyu is careful to let you pull away first, eyes sticky to open when you do. There’s a smile on your face. “It went great.”

A strong tug against your waist and you’re suddenly pressed into Mingyu’s all too familiar hold, so everloving tight you can hardly breathe. His lips are smacking and pressing into your skin, all over your face, neck and hands. Anywhere he could possibly reach.

There wasn’t much he could do standing in a huddled corner at nine in the morning on a Tuesday, where anyone could pass by and question what in the high school was going on. But there was more than enough Mingyu could do behind closed doors.

In true Mingyu fashion, he’s begun to grope in every way you love the minute the lock clicks shut of his apartment, every fibre of both of your beings giddy and jumpy, giggles erupting from your tired mouths. You haven’t been touched in ages, always too tired to do anything even when you would find the time.

It isn’t remotely strange that you're wet from only a few kisses and hot breaths against your neck. Although Mingyu’s hands haven’t been modest either, already reaching your clothed cunt as you fall into bed.

He says it was your reward, for doing so good, his illustrious mouth suctioned onto your naked core, moving and grinding in ways you can more than just appreciate.

His tongue is nothing below made for you, like he knows exactly when to flick his tongue, graze his teeth and all but suck the daylights out of you. It’s marvellous, even more so as you realise he won’t stop. One, two, three mind blowing orgasms later, your legs still shake around his head as you cry out for him to stop.

Not that he was going to listen, as he did not the last fifteen times you tried, simply pushing a finger into your abused hole to chuck you into yet another climax. You’re sobbing, trembling, sweating; but also half hearted in your attempts to stop him.

By the time he’s relented, you’re sure you won’t feel a thing down there for at least a week. If Mingyu will even let you go untouched for that long.

But as you’re finally able to catch your long lost breath in bed, and Mingyu has curled up right beside you, like he always does, you let the finality of it all sink in. You were done. And so was he. And you could now begin to experience a Mingyu that wasn’t exhausted, stressed or tired. Even now, the long indented layers of fatigue begin to melt away, revealing a less strained man.

Mingyu was beautiful either way.

“Are you okay?” he asks you, his fingers tracing your features.

The pads of his fingers glide across your eyelids, down the slope of your nose, tracing the outline of your lips. You kiss his fingers as they reach you there, hand coming up to hold his wrists. You kiss the tips of his fingers, down to the palm of his hand. Eyes closed, you keep your lips there.

“More than okay,” you mumble.

“Good. Thought I lost you there.”

Stretching unceremoniously, you drape yourself over his naked form, head on his shoulder. “You’re not losing me. Not after being the sole reason I pass this devil’s module.”

“Is that all it takes? Make sure you don’t fail?”

“And give head like that.” It’s a half joke. “But also be Kim Mingyu comma TA.”

He mimics you between a breathy laugh, “Comma TA. Not anymore, I guess.”

“How happy are you?”

“Still have to grade the last set of papers. But I got what I wanted.”

“The recommendation? You deserve it.”

“That, and not having to be in Dr. Cho’s presence every other day. And you.”

You kiss his shoulder. “Look at you. All grown up with your big boy grad school on the horizon.”

“Not just yet.”

“You’ll get there too. If you can power through this hellsent semester, you can power through anything grad school applications throw.”

Mingyu shifts where he lays, taking a turn to lie on his side to face you. The afternoon sun peeks from behind his form, his outline made of pure gold. His breath is in your face as he talks, and there’s comfort in the air it penetrates.

“I only powered through this because of you. I hope you know that.” He’s smiling.

“Girlfriend duties,” you quote solemnly.

“I mean it. I knew I was walking into disaster with how this stupid job was going, all that work was just a distraction. I didn’t wanna believe this was a bad idea. And then you walked in.”

You cup his face and pout, “Oh, my damsel in distress.”

“Hm, my knight in shining armour,” he giggles. “Galloped in and saved me from myself.”

“You saved me too. From the world and its horrible creations.”

“I’ll start talking in formulas if this keeps up.”

You can only grumble in mild annoyance.

“I’m glad I asked you to come in early that day,” he says.

“I’m glad I was a good samaritan and gathered all your stuff that day.” You grin.

Mingyu leans in and kisses you. It’s soft, slow, and drips of the romance he’s trying to bring into the conversation. His lips are bliss, the feeling of him is bliss.

It’s almost scary how easily you’ve been able to give yourself to him. How quickly he’s placed himself in every nook and cranny of your heart. With his tired eyes and stronger than himself smile, the hand he extended in ways beyond you could ever explain to him. It’s terrifying when you realise what remains on the tip of your tongue, ready and bursting.

But it’s true, and you can only pray it remains that way. Because in that moment, naked and tangled between Mingyu’s limbs, his heart in your ears, your hands on his being, you just know.

“I think I might love you too.”

2K notes · View notes

rafesaddiction · 1 year ago

Text

Hole Practice (or: Golf Lessons) – Rafe Cameron x Reader

Summary: You want to learn how to golf better. Rafe teaches you a different kind of lesson. Rafe's pov

Warnings: mdni! – heavy smut, sorta toxic relationship, possessiveness, jealousy, spanking, rough sex, fingering, anal (first time), oral (rafe receiving), p in v, cream pie, degrading (reader is called whore by rafe), daddy kink, mean!rafe, bratty!reader, dom!rafe

Word count: 4.3k

“Hey, ain't that your girl, Rafe?”

“What?” Rafe put down the bottle of water he was drinking from and looked at Topper, then his gaze wandered to where Topper was pointing at.

“Over there. The one that is holding up everyone at hole 9.”

“Fucking hell,” Rafe grumbled under his breath when he spotted you. Several hundred yards away, there you stood with a golf club in hand, bending down to place the ball on the ground.

“She got a terrible swing but a real nice ass, real nice.” Kelce snickered and Rafe's head spun round, glaring at him.

Kelce defensively lifted his hands and slowly walked backwards. “Hey dude, chill. I'm just saying those shorts suit her nicely, just paying compliments. Respectfully.”

Rafe tossed the water bottle away, clenching his fists, stomping forward, every muscle in his body tensed up. He was frowning as he felt hot rage coursing through his veins. Rafe was about to beat the living shit out of one of his best friends when a sound made him stop and turn your way again. The wind had carried the sound of your laughter over to him. And Rafe watched you giggle and joke around with some guy, your caddie from the looks of it.

Rafe's hands balled into fists as he watched the two of you talk. That guy had put down the golf bag he was carrying for you and stepped closer. Stepped very close. Too close. He stood behind you, directly behind you, with your ass only covered by those ridiculously tiny shorts pressing against his crotch as his arms wrapped around you, his hands on yours, holding the golf club.

Rafe let out an angry scream that wasn't even a real curse and ran over to the golf cart, got in and started driving over the hilly course towards you.

“Yeah, man, take the fucking cart, so we have to walk!” Topper yelled behind Rafe, but Rafe didn't even bother to turn around. “Fucking unbelievable,” were the last words he heard from Topper, and Kelce's snickering in response. Rafe's hands gripped the steering wheel so hard, his knuckles showing white on his right hand, his other hand coverd by his golf glove.

He drove at full speed, which wasn't that fast with this damn golf cart, but at least faster than running. Racing over the greens, he didn't pay attention whether he was interrupting other people's games. His gaze was fixed on you and that fucking caddie that was practically dry humping you on the golf course.

The cart came to a halt close to you, Rafe jumped off, took a club from the bag at the back and stormed towards you and the caddie, raising the club, fuming with rage.

You and the caddie turned, looking at Rafe stunned and shocked. While you opened your mouth to say something to Rafe, the caddie muttered a curse, his eyes widened as he saw Rafe with the golf club swinging at him. The guy quickly pushed you out of the way, so you fell on the ground, landing on the grass, while he ran, ran as fast as he could with a yelling Rafe chasing him. And Rafe would've gotten him, would have beaten him to death, if it wasn't for your whining noises that made him stop and turn, lower his golf club and walk back to you.

Rafe was towering you, casting his long shadow over you, as you were sitting on the ground, rubbing your ass on which you obviously had fallen, looking up at your tall boyfriend with large eyes.

“I'm hurt,” you mouthed and sniffled.

Rafe grunted, reached down and picked you up. With so much vigor that you practically crashed against his chest. Bracing yourself, your hands touched Rafe's heaving chest, felt those tense muscles underneath the fabric of his expensive polo shirt. You looked up at him with big eyes. He clenched his jaws and his large hands gripped your hips as he held you close. He was still fuming with rage.

“What the hell were you doing?”

You lowered your head, then looked up, with just your eyes.

“I was just practicing holes.”

Rafe's eyebrows raised and he almost choked.

“You what?”

Your eyes went to his chest and your finger was idly drawing circles on Rafe's shirt. You shrugged and innocently explained, “I’m taking some practice lessons. I wanted to get better at golf, so that you would take me with you when you and the boys play.”

You stopped your drawings on Rafe's chest and looked up at him with pouty lips.

“Are you mad at me?”

Instead of answering, Rafe growled and frowned.

You smirked at him, you cocky little brat.

“What are you wearing anyway? Every bastard on this course is staring at your ass.”

“Don't you like my golf outfit, Rafey?” You knew he hated it when you called him that and you did it anyway. His jaws clenched.

You wore a collared blue shirt but instead of a matching skirt or proper golf shorts, you wore the tiniest shorts possible, tightly snugging your curves, barely covering your panties.

“This is no proper outfit for golfing. Those shorts scream ‘fuck me'.”

Rafe's right hand slapped hard on your exposed ass cheek, surely leaving his hand print.

You flinched and winced, then pouted, and struggled to free yourself from Rafe’s grip, but he was stronger and pulled you closer and slapped your ass again. His palm tingled, and from the look on your face, your cheek must be burning.

His fingers grabbed your chin to lift your face as he leaned down.

“I’m gonna teach you holes now,” he whispered, darkly, close to your lips.

Your cheeks flushed. He grinned devilishly. With all your bratty behavior and cockiness, Rafe was still able to make you blush. His mouth claimed yours in a hungry kiss, tongue pushing in, he took what was his, as he held your body close.

When he let go, your cheeks were still flushed, your lips swollen and you were slightly out of breath.

“Since you have chased my caddie away, you will have to carry my golf bag,” you announced and turned to look for your ball.

Rafe grumbled but shouldered the damn golf bag and followed you.

“Where's that damn thing anyway?” He asked when he had caught up with you.

“There,” you pointed at the gorse.

Rafe exhaled. “We're not getting it out of there. Just take a new one.”

“No, that would be cheating, I'm gonna get it.”

“Y/n, fucking don't!”

But you ignored his words and stomped onwards, right into the gorse – and with every step you took, your ass was bouncing invitingly.

“Fuck's sake,” Rafe grumbled and followed you.

He found you bent over, legs straight, head down, ass up, hands touching the high grass, looking for your ball.

Rafe's own balls tightened at the sight. That perky ass, those tiny shorts hardly covering anything, that red mark on your bare skin – he had been correct, his hand print was showing.

His growl made you turn your head at him, but not lift your upper body.

“I think I've found it, but it's stuck.”

Rafe grumbled, walked closer. Walking with his dick getting harder was damn uncomfortable.

“Fuck's sake,” he repeated.

“What?” You asked innocently, wriggling your fine ass.

“Enough,” Rafe barked and you flinched at his harsh tone.

Before you could get up, he grabbed you, threw you over his shoulder. You squealed and his hand smacked your ass several times, making you mewl. Rafe carried you out of the gorse, over the greens to the golf cart.

“Ouch,” you mouthed and pulled a face as you were seated on your ass, sore from his spanking.

He got in the cart, sat behind the steering wheel and shot you a sideways glance. His eyes narrowed.

“Stop complaining, that was nothing yet.”

“Where are we going?” You sniffled.

“To the club,” he stated tersely. He knew he wouldn't make it back home to Tanny Hill, with his dick already achingly hard. A room at the club would do, and he knew there would always be one available – the perks of being a premium member.

“But what about my lessons?” You looked at Rafe, sulking.

“Oh, your lessons ain't over yet.”

He could see you nibbling at your bottom lip, something you did when you were nervous or excited or both.

While he was driving across the course, he tried to look where he was going, but you kept on wriggling in your seat, which was fucking irritating.

“Stop that!” He faced you briefly and lifted his hand, a warning gesture.

“Sorry, daddy,” you said sweetly, leaned forward, and your mouth covered Rafe's finger. Sucking on it, you looked at him with large eyes, your lips closed tightly around the digit, your tongue swirling around it.

“Jesusfuckingchrist!” Rafe almost ran over some gaffer – not that he would've cared.

Rafe tried to get back on track while his cock was pulsing. You took his hand, guided it between your legs, rubbing over your thighs as you spread them. His hand touched the fabric of those damn shorts, and Rafe could feel that you were already soaking wet, those layers of clothing couldn't even hide that.

You began moaning as you were rubbing his hand against your core.

He pulled it away, raised it, finger pointing, and glared at you angrily.

“Don't!”

You pouted, crossed your arms in front of your chest and looked away. But Rafe grabbed your jaw forcefully, turning your face to look at him, pressing harder than necessary, which made you wince and gaze at him.

“You don't touch yourself unless I allow you. You know the rules.”

He kept his eyes on you while still driving.

“You hear me?” His voice loud and intimidating.

You cast your eyes down and mumbled, “Yes, daddy.”

His cock twitched in his pants, which were getting too damn tight by now.

When he let go, you added, hardly audible, “But I didn't touch myself, it was your hand…”

You probably thought that he didn't hear that as he didn't react to it right away, but he did hear it, and it drove him fucking insane. And you would experience soon enough how mad he was because of you.

Rafe parked the golf cart close to entrance of the main building, got out, grabbed your arm, so hard he would leave bruises, and dragged you along with him. You could hardly keep up, he was walking so quickly, and with his tall legs, he was able to make longer strides.

At the reception no one questioned why Rafe was holding you in such a tight grip while you were obviously struggling to escape. He asked for the key card to a room and he got it and on top of that, the receptionist wished him a pleasant day. Rafe growled in response.

He shoved you towards the elevator and got inside with you. It cost him a lot not to ravish you the moment the doors closed. The grip around your arm was iron. When the doors opened, he pushed you out, along the corridor to the room. After opening it with the key card, he forcefully pushed you inside. You stumbled and almost fell, but caught yourself on the edge of the king-size bed.

Right after he had let go off you, he started to undress himself, pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his shoes.

“Take off those goddamn shorts and get on the bed. Now.” His commanding voice left you no choice but to obey. You looked at him, eyes wandering over his naked body as you undressed yourself, taking the shorts together with the panties off last. He frowned at you, but your eyes were on his rock hard cock that he was stroking, while glaring at you.

You climbed onto the bed. Impatiently, he walked over and grabbed you, moved you around as he wanted to have you, flipping you over, then pulling your body up, so you were on all fours now, while he kneeled behind your spread legs.

Rafe leaned over your body, his chest touching your back, his hand grabbed your throat, forcing your head up, a restrained sound coming from your opened mouth.

“You gonna be a good whore, right?” He cooed into your ear.

With his free hand, he guided his hard length between your legs, rubbing it along your dripping wet slit, covering it nicely in your juices. You mewled and started wriggling.

“Please,” you moaned, already so needy.

He turned your face to shut those desperate moans with his greedy kiss, while his cock was replaced by his fingers, which where rubbing along your slit, parting your folds, but never quite entering and never touching your clit. You were so incredibly wet, his fingers were practically dripping as he pulled them away and sat up behind you, letting go off your throat, leaving you with a confused look on your face.

“I still need to teach you a lesson.”

You opened your mouth, trying to say something, but Rafe continued, a sardonic grin on his face.

“The lesson is: If you wear such tiny shorts, hardly covering your ass, but showing it off, inviting everyone to fuck it, you get fucked up the ass, like the whore you are.”

“But –” you started to complain, but a slap of his hand on your ass made you cry out instead.

Despite it being such a fine piece of flesh, Rafe had never fucked your ass before, only put a finger or two inside your tight hole once or twice. You didn't have proper training yet, but you needed to learn that your teasing had consequences.

He spat on his already wet fingers and stroked between your ass cheeks. You whined, but he knew that it was a sound you made when you were impatient. You wouldn't have to wait long – though it wasn't what you actually waited for, he knew that. Rafe gripped you by the hip, as his fingers pushed against your back entrance. Your muscle was tense and instead of opening up for him, it closed. Rafe growled and he felt your body shudder. His grip got firmer, preventing you from retreating as his index finger pushed inside, stretching your tight ring.

“It hurts, daddy,” you whined and craned your neck to look back at Rafe.

He slowly moved his finger back and forth inside you. Your breathing hitched as he curled that finger in your tight hole. Your muscle was clenching so hard around his digit, it almost made it impossible to move it.

He let go off your hip to hit your ass cheek.

“Relax! Or it'll just hurt more.”

Your answer was a whining sound and you let your head hang between your shoulders.

Rafe pushed your legs further apart to get better access, pressed on your lower back and you obeyed by arching your back nicely. He grinned at the sight. You were completely exposed to him and at his mercy.

He pulled his finger out, only to push back in two fingers, thrusting deep and hard.

You let out a scream and started begging.

“Daddy, daddy, please,” you whined.

His fingers fucking your ass, he let his hard cock teasingly brush along your pussy, never applying too much pressure, just enough to tease you. When he pulled back, his cock was covered in your wetness.

“So wet for me. Such a needy whore you are.”

His fingers left your hole, the tight muscle pulsing invitingly. He rubbed some more spit on it and felt you shiver under his touch.

He took his cock in his hand, guiding it, stroking your round ass cheeks with it, before pressing the wet tip against your throbbing little hole.

“You gonna take it like the good whore you are, hm? Your my little whore, right?”

You mewled and panted.

He waited.

“Daddy, daddy,” you whined.

Then he heard you inhale and exhale deeply, pushing your ass up, that little hole twitched and opened up, inviting him in, and he pushed in.

You cried out as his cock's thick head stretched your tender muscle. He needed both his hands now to grip your hip, fingers digging into your flesh, holding you in place, as he greedily watched his thick cock slowly pushing into your fine ass.

Your screaming turned into an irregular whimpering as the thick head was practically sucked into your ass.

“So, good,” Rafe praised you, his own breathing heavy. “You're doing so good, baby, taking me so good. Such a good whore.”

His thumb caressed your hip, he felt you relax just the tiniest bit. He tensed up, tightened his grip again and thrust his hip forward, making your body almost jump forward by the force, if he hadn't held you that firmly.

He growled as your walls clenched around his cock, but he pushed deeper. Pulling back, he gasped as your sensitive muscle was clamping so hard around his thick cock.

“So good, baby,” he said under heavy breathing.

He pushed in, watching with greedy fascination how his too big cock vanished inch by inch into your perfect ass, stretching your too tight hole mercilessly.

“Daddy! I can't!” You cried out, sobbing now.

“You can and you will.”

He began moving in a steady rhythm, fucking your tight ass good and hard. He didn't push too hard though, knowing well what you could take. You were sobbing and crying and whining, but he didn't stop, he knew your body better than you did, and he knew that you could do this. Your little protests, your screams and moans and whimpers made him only go harder.

He couldn't get it all in though, you were too tight and not trained, and he was too big. Part of him got angry about that, but you felt so damn good, he could use you so damn well that it seemed enough.

Then he saw your hand move between your legs, you were desperately trying to touch yourself. But Rafe didn't let you.

He angrily growled, slapped your ass hard, making you flinch. Then he grabbed your hand by the wrist, twisting your arm behind your back and holding it there.

You cried out in pain.

“I told you not to do that!” He growled between clenched teeth. You were driving him mad, so fucking mad.

Your body shook and trembled under his hard thrusts as he took what was his, took you without mercy. Pounding you harder, his growing anger made him lose all restraint.

You were so tight, the friction was so intense, the sounds you made were so hot, Rafe felt his climax approaching and he didn't hold back. He felt his every muscle tense up, then let go, gasping for air, as he reached his orgasm, shooting his cum into you. His whole body electrified and in that post orgasmic bliss, he pushed again into your well-used hole, once, twice, driving his load deeper into you, before pulling out. When he let go off you, you just face down collapsed onto the bed, breathing hard, a fucking mess. He grinned at the sight of you.

“My whore,” he whispered into your ear, leaning down, kissing your damp hair, before he got up. His own breathing slowing down eventually.

Watching you lie there, and wriggle and pant, he knew you hadn't reached your climax yet.

“Don't you dare move”, his voice a dark command.

He waited for a moment. And this time it seemed you were actually listening, probably fearing the consequences. Had you learned your lesson after all? He doubted that, you were such a brat and would always be. Since you didn't move, just lay there panting, Rafe went into the adjoining bathroom to clean himself.

When he came back, you were lying in the same position on the bed, on your stomach, arms away from your body, legs apart, your body raising and falling from your exhausted breathing, cum dripping out of your hole between your reddened cheeks. Rafe grinned at the sight of the mess he had turned you into.

He sat down on the bed, still naked, back resting against the headboard, his legs on the bed, he was sitting next to you, not touching you, but you could definitely feel the bed tilt from his weight, feel his proximity, as he felt the heat radiating from your body.

You lifted your head, turned your face to gaze at him with teary eyes.

“You're such a mess,” he grinned at you, his hand caressing your face.

“Did you cum?” He asked, but already knew the answer.

You shook your head.

“You wanna cum?”

You nodded eagerly.

“Then you know what to do,” he simply said.

You got up on your knees next to him, sat down on your heels, flinching as they poked into your sore ass cheeks.

“Please daddy can I cum?” You looked at him with pleading eyes.

“And how do you wanna cum?” It wasn't a real question, more of a test.

Still, you seemed to contemplate the answer, biting your bottom lip. Your gaze turned to his cock, though not hard, still impressive. Then your eyes moved to his hands. Those hands that knew how to hold you, to touch you. Then your look was on his face. Yours was a beautiful mess. Your lips swollen, your cheeks flushed, your eyes teary and bloodshot, tears and sweat had ruined your makeup and smeared mascara all over your face. God, you were so beautiful.

“With your cock inside me.”

The way you said those words, with such sincerity and almost solemn honesty, it made his cock twitch in response.

But words weren't enough.

“Then work for it.”

In an inviting, almost generous gesture, he pointed at his crotch.

You very willingly accepted the invitation, moved closer, bent over, and Rafe hissed as your greedy little mouth took in his thick cock, sucking hard at it, tongue swirling along the tip. One hand clasping the thick shaft, you steadied yourself with the other hand on his thigh. You gazed sideways up at him, when you began bobbing your head.

Rafe's breathing quickened, as he felt his cock growing in your mouth. His hands clutched the expensive bedsheets, stopping himself from forcing your head down further. You were already gagging on his length, not nearly half of it in your mouth.

Your efforts did some good, but he wasn't ready yet.

He grabbed you by the hair to pull you up, made you whimper, spit dripping from your swollen lips, as you were gazing at him.

“Ride it.”

His command made you freeze and visibly shudder, but you hurried to follow his order. As he let go off your hair, you straddled him, mewling when his thick length pressed against your sensitive core, too long neglected, it seemed.

He gripped your jaws hard, made you focus on him. His piercing eyes glaring at you.

“Don't you dare cum before I’m inside of you. Understood?”

You tried to nod, which was hard with his tight grip at your jaws, but your pleading eyes told him, you had understood him.

“Good.” He leaned forward to kiss you hard, before letting go and leaning back in the pillows.

Your hands ran over his muscular torso. You bit your lips, looking at his hard abs, as you began rocking your hips against him, your tits bouncing nicely. He grabbed them, kneaded them with both his hands, felt how you flinched and tensed up, as you felt his greedy hunger. His cock pulsing under you.

You closed your eyes, as if you would focus on the slick sounds your pussy made when slapping against his hard dick.

“Turn around.” Rafe's voice made your eyes flutter open. “Let me see that ass that you want the whole golf club to fuck. Let me see that ass that only belongs to me.”

Rafe added an encouraging slap on your ass to stress his command. He even helped you to turn, sit down, astride with your back to him, while you did nothing more than make those small needy sounds that drove him insane with lust.

His hand pushed on your upper back, making you bent down a bit, holding onto his legs.

He had the perfect view of your ass and pussy. His cum dripping from your ass mixing with your own wetness dripping from your pussy.

Two fingers dipped into your cunt, making you squirm and mewl and beg.

“Daddy…”

You clenched around his digits and he slapped your ass.

Pulling out his fingers, he lifted you up, pushed you into position, guiding his now rock hard cock to your pussy and pushed in. Rafe grabbed your hair to get you into an upright position again. His hands on your hips, guiding your movements as his hips rocked hard against yours, pushing his whole length into you as you sank down onto him.

“Rafe, Daddy, fuck,” you stammered, your whole body shuddered and you were completely undone, cumming all over his cock just from his first thrust into you.

And he fucked you through your high, not stopping when you were all spent. Using you over and over again.

You were such a good whore for him. And all your holes were his.

a/n: writing this was a lot of fun. i don't know shit about golf. thanks for reading. i hope you enjoyed it. reblogs and comments are very much appreciated, and likes too! i've only been doing this for 2 weeks now and i'm kinda overwhelmed that my first x reader smut fic got over 1k notes! thank you all so much! i got ideas for many more fics. let me know what you'd like to read! p.s. happy kinktober!

#rafe cameron #rafe cameron smut #rafe fanfiction #drew starkey #rafe cameron x reader #dark rafe cameron #outer banks #obx #obx fic #outerbanks rafe #rafe x you #rafe x reader #toxic relationship #smut fic #obx fanfiction #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron x y/n #rafe cameron x you #dom rafe cameron

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testoys · 2 years ago

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Santa delivered a xmas tree roller coaster

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almostempty · 2 months ago

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Look at this photograph

(joel miller x f!reader)

The half sequel (Chapter 1.5) to Never made it as a wise man

WC: 3.5k | Part 1 | Other fics | Rating: 18+

Summary: you open Joel’s dick pic and (after examination) decide to give him a call

Note: it’s me ya boi (gn), back with more divorceddadrockdilf!joel bc you guys get me. i know y’all want them to fuck, and I want them to fuck too. unfortunately, this flowed through me first, and I am merely a vessel for the spirit of buttrock joel.

so, until they get their freak nasty on, please enjoy this as a chapter 1.5, with gratuitous dick pic art critique and crankin’ it over the phone <3 don’t worry, he’s still a lil pathetic. mistakes and bad jokes are all on me.

Tags: au no outbreak modern joel, divorced dad rock dilf joel x f!reader, picks up right where ch.1 ended, dick pic descriptions, alternating pov, dirty talk, phone sex, masturbation, it’s all just phone sex, but edge yourself through it with fond memories of ch. 1, still crackish, but i am still dead serious about it being hot so idc

inspo playlist i found on spotify: Divorced Dad Rock: BANGERZ

thanks: to @hellishjoel for hosting the #hotdilfsummerchallenge and to everyone who enjoyed part 1

@gothcsz i promise fuckboy!joel is cookin, he’s just in the crockpot rn. he’s gotta tenderize like a white lady’s pinterest recipe for pulled pork.

* i tried to tag everyone who wanted more, but if you don’t wanna be here i’ll remove it <3 or if i missed you and you want to be tagged next time pls let me know

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” you blurt out after opening the message from Joel. The vulgar dick pic sends a prickly worm of arousal slithering down your spine.

Without thinking, you tilt the phone down toward your chest, and your eyes shoot up like you’ve got to make sure nobody saw your naughty message. Warmth blooms on your cheeks as the flash of embarrassment starts to dissolve. You don’t need to hide.

You’re in your bed, in your apartment, wearing Joel’s grubby Creed t-shirt. The one that smells like Degree Sport and a Jiffy Lube break room. You're free to look at all the dick pics your heart desires. And that’s what you’re going to do.

The wiggle of bashful energy turns into a squirm as you shift your hips, seeking a comfy position in bed. The t-shirt bunches up under your back and you wonder if the unique Joel scent of it will linger on your pillow beneath your shoulders. You knew pilfering the shirt on the way out the door was a good move, and now you get to enjoy your trophy. It makes it feel like the broad-as-a-barn-door DILF himself was still close enough to touch you.

It gives you another bright shudder when you think about the noises he made when he came in your hand earlier. The disappointed grunts of “fuck, wait” and how he tried to choke down the throaty groan that came from deep in his chest. Fuck. The perverted gremlins that have a permanent residence in your mind have been roused by the digital dick, and now they chitter and squawk at you. More! More! More!

You reopen the message, and seeing it gives you another rush. You save the picture to your phone storage. For your personal collection. Mine now, big boy. Your chin starts to dip towards your chest. It’s like you’re giving your phone the Kubrick stare with the ghost of a smirk. You’re free to take your time with this one. And you can be as much of a creep as you want. That makes you sigh softly and sink deeper against your pillows.

Before this afternoon, it was titillating when Joel would pop up in your mind's eye with his slutty slo-mo scenes. The one where he was bent over your car's engine like Megan Fox in that Transformers movie. Or, that damn happy trail tease with the t-shirt-sweat-rag move. You had just enough imagery to let your dirty thoughts take the wheel.

And, god, you had a good production team in your mind for projects starring Joel. Adding this will give the team a whole lot more to work with. You can hear them crashing around your conscious like the Animaniacs on the Warner Brothers lot. Horny chaos goblin mode activated.

Now that you have time to study the image, from the luxury of your microfiber sheets and lamplit bedroom, you let it get pervy. It’s your first real, lingering look–earlier today, you were so busy trying to rile him up in his jeans that you didn’t even pull it out.

It had somehow been even more delicious that way. Having him all needy and unable to stop himself from making a mess in your hand. And not just the noises, but the erratic thrusts into your tight fist? The heat of his pulsing length as he forgot himself? Yeah, you’re gonna remember that one.

But now? Now you need the visual. If the devil is in the details, you have a new neighbor with horns and a tail.

You zoom in on everything. Holding your phone closer to your face than necessary, like how do we enhance this bitch?

And holy shit.

Drool pools in your mouth and between your legs. You have the knee-jerk reaction to lick your phone.

You can hear Joel’s voice from earlier today. All husky and grumbly, arguing that you really were a slut for him, like, “You are, aren’t you, though? You came all this way in this excuse for a shirt just to see me?” He might be touch-starved enough to cream his jeans, but you just know he’s got a nasty mouth in bed, and you’ve got to find out firsthand. Soon. There’s no reason not to, right?

You pause when a flicker of reasoning tickles the back of your neck.

You’re back to looking in your review mirror in Joel’s driveway. The last-ditch attempt at checking your ego before you marched to his front door like a Halloween hoe bag version of Betty Crocker.

You had told yourself you weren’t trying to fuck your (almost) friend’s (sort of) dad. Told yourself there was nothing to pursue, and even if there was, you wouldn’t bite.

You like Ellie. She’s been (mostly) welcoming to you. You told yourself not to fuck anything up with the only person that’s got a single one of your jokes at your new job.

You were just bringing some food as a friendly gesture. The fresh visuals to add to your spank bank reel were supposed to be a harmless bonus. Okay, maybe it was a stretch to say you had rolled up to Joel’s driveway with pure intentions.

And it was an even bigger stretch–when he added that third finger while he finger fucked you on the kitchen counter—wait, no. It was an even bigger stretch when you had told yourself you probably weren’t his type anyway.

Like, that guy? With the fridge full of Coors Banquet? With those ugly Oakley sunglasses that you know are featured in his only picture on social media that isn’t a car or truck? The guy with all the words to Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bitch” and Puddle of Mudd’s “She Hates Me” memorized?

Nah, deep down, you knew. You knew there was no way that middle-aged bachelor would turn down any action. But you hadn’t planned on actually making a move, especially not a handjob in the middle of the kitchen.

That’s on Joel for leaving the door open while trying to rub one out to some bimbo on Brazzers. And for barking at you in that sexy, angry voice. And for teasing you with the bulge in his oil-stained jeans. What were you supposed to do?

Something must be really rotting in the logic department of your brain.

Hey! The gremlin voice in your head is still shouting at you. Hey!! Why are we not tasting that dick yet?!! You’re back from your daydream and the excuses you crafted for your behavior, back to laying in your bed with Joel’s dick pic emitting a bright glow in your hand.

You still do want to lick the screen.

Fortunately for your immune system, you control your tongue. The critical part of you expels a sigh when you zoom out and take in the picture.

It’s undoubtedly a nice cock, but the image as a whole? Yikes.

Why do men have to be so fucking thick? And blunt? Wait, now you’re just describing the slightly blurry boner lighting up your face. Thick as in dense. How can men be so dense?

No imagination or creativity. No patience.

You shake your head slightly, scoffing. No wonder you caught him hunched over his cracked phone screen. It was probably the first video loaded on the only site he had saved.

No sweet, sweet, buildup, setting the mood, or getting cozy. Just whippin’ it out midday or snapping a photo in some ratty sweats.

Like you’ve never been that touch-starved or down bad?

You ignore that voice to continue your art critique.

The photo you sent is… sexy.

Sultry. A flirty tease. It says, “Look who has your shirt? Am I wearing it in bed? Do you think I'm wearing anything else?”

It’s all implied in the look in your eye and the picture's composition. The tease of the soft curves on the underside of your breasts, asking if he remembers what they felt like. Your hand bunching up the shirt, asking if he remembers the slide of that fist around his cock. If he remembers those fingers, the ones you sucked his sticky spend off of.

Such delicately crafted imagery. Personalized erotic fine art.

But men are so crude about it. He sees your tasteful, sexy pic, and immediately, the best his caveman brain can come up with is: send her ur dick! STAT!! Hard cock! Now!!

And, of course, he did. Taken in the dark with the flash on, making ominous shadows in the background. His old charcoal gray sweats are pulled down just enough to expose everything he’s offering.

The color is slightly blown out from the flash, and it’s a touch blurry where his phone didn’t autofocus quickly enough. His hand looks like it’s straight up, just choking the base of his cock. It’s jarring.

But that’s really the “man” of it all, right? Nothing subtle or demure about a rock-hard erection jutting towards you, reaching like it could get to you on its own if it just could get a little bit harder. No, there’s nothing coy about the raw thoughts of a man with no blood left in his brain who’s just aching to get inside you, either.

And fuck if that doesn’t start to override your critical analysis.

The glare from the flash reflects in the beads of precome rolling down his rosy tip. Mouth wateringly delicious. Your blood rushes to your pussy, filling your tender sex with heat and a deep, needy itch. It makes you dopey and silly. Not cock drunk, but like, dick pic buzzed.

You know it felt sizeable in your hand earlier, but you aren’t an expert at estimating size from a through-the-pants handjob. You try to recreate your own grip around nothing to estimate the size.

You giggle to yourself when you realize you're just a woman in her bed staring at her hand, jerking an invisible cock. The horny goblins aren’t amused, though. They’re sick of the daydreaming and distractions. They’re picking fights with the rest of your mind. Throwing rocks and sticks, shrieking and hissing.

The part of your brain that was griping about how men used to write love letters and respect the art of romance is getting quieter and further from your faculty for caring. You can hear its muffled shouts, and you assure that voice that you won’t give it all up this easily. Then, you completely tune it out.

The last brain cell with a complaint has you rolling your eyes. You have to be ovulating or something because it’s wholly debased the way this guy is doing it for you.

He’s just shameless with it.

You sent him tasteful underboob, and he gives you jumpscare dick-in-the-dark! How is this supposed to escalate? He gave it all up immediately! You send another picture, and he sends you his money shot? What’s he gonna do to give you more? Send you an asshole shot? That one makes you snort. You bet he would do it, too, if you asked.

Oh, that gives you a better idea. He’s not getting another picture from you at all. You tap on his name and tap the call icon. Of course, this horny motherfucker answers immediately. You aren’t sure it even rang before you’re connected to his porny bedroom voice.

“What are you wearing, dollface?”

“I already showed you. Call me dollface again, and I’m hanging up.”

You can hear his breathing like he’s got the mic on his phone in his mouth. That would typically drive you fucking nuts, but right now, you wanna hear his heavy breath against your ear and feel it hot against your skin.

“All right,” he speaks slowly, distracted. You know why. “You wanna be my slut, instead?”

Fuck. That has you throbbing between your legs, but he doesn’t get to know that yet.

“I already told you,” you keep your voice low and soft, “you don’t get to call me a slut for you, not with your behavior.” You strain, trying to hear any other noises, but his mic is probably clogged with dust from his shop or lint from the pocket of his sweats. You can just hear his fucking breathing.

“What behavior, baby?” he rasps.

“You always jump straight to sending a picture of your cock?”

You hear the soft snort through the phone. Followed by a deeper, throatier noise. A noise that makes you go cross-eyed and has you running a hand down to your naked lower half to tease yourself.

“You always steal a man’s clothes after you come on his fingers?”

You don’t really care what he asked. His voice makes your tongue go numb. Your mind goes blank. You start slowly, coating your own fingers in your slick arousal and drawing circles with a light touch.

You hum a noncommittal response into the phone.

“You look good in my shirt, baby, fuck,” he trails off breathlessly. The idea of you in his clothes gets him too close.

You don’t answer, and he’s too far gone to wait and tease.

He’s been wound up since you took off this afternoon, and it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that you sent him that pic when he had just gotten into bed.

It had taken ages to get his brother out of the shop this afternoon, and then Joel completely fucked up when he mentioned you and the lasagna. He had to begrudgingly host Tommy for dinner when he couldn’t come up with a better excuse than saying, “I’m gonna need you to fuck off so I can deal with the aching balls I’ve got from your surprise visit scaring away the woman I had my fingers knuckle deep inside.”

But when he was finally alone, it was like fate; your text came through right after he flopped onto his bed. His semi-stiff cock had sprung to full mast at the sight of you. The shirt he knew he didn’t fuckin’ lose, your soft curves, and the expression on your face. Like a vixen. Your PG-13 tease would do more for him than any X-rated video.

Knowing you were thinking about him and that you wanted him to know? That had him throbbing. He already knew from the desire in your eyes earlier today that you wanted more.

He could swear his fingers still hold the lingering flavor of your wet cunt. The visceral memory of you has him on edge. When he wraps his hand around the base of his cock, he has to pause, holding firmly in place. His body screams and aches for release, but he’s determined to keep it in check. He doesn’t want to blow his load until he gets a response from you.

He fights his urges, trying not to fuck his own fist in a frantic race to come.

But, fuck, it’s difficult when he can imagine the sounds you’d make as you sank onto his cock for the first time. The face you’d make. Your tight, wet walls hugging him just right. Like, he’s where he’s meant to be.

And the way you would look, bouncing on top of him. Your tits, your blissed-out face, the way your soft lips would part when you called out his name and cried for more.

Those lips.

The way he’d love to see them swollen and slobbering around the base of his cock. Fuck. His hips buck reflexively, and he hisses out a breath through his clenched teeth. When his phone lights up with your name, he answers before it can make a sound. You’re so bold. He likes that. It plasters a saucy grin on his face.

And now, with your breathy voice crackling through his janky phone speaker, he’s not gonna last long. You've got him losing his composure for the second time in one day. His whole body is rigid. His toes flex and snap unconsciously, and his jaw tenses. He hears your soft moan, and his thoughts are overflowing. He has no filter left.

“Yeah, baby? You moaning for me?” His hips punch up into his fist, and he gives in, allowing himself firm, severe strokes. “You’ve got me so hard. You moaning for my cock?”

You are so not gonna answer that one. If the next words out his mouth are, “Yeah, you like that?” you’re gonna block him for that. But it is undeniably hot to hear him already so worked up. You just know he’s gonna be coming all over himself again for you, and that really does make you moan just for him.

Your noises earn you another growly groan from Joel that you’d kill to hear again. The more uninhibited his noises are, the louder you get in response.

“You using your fingers, or you have a toy?” his question is punctuated with a grunt.

“Mm, just fingers,” you purr, finally granting him an actual response as you roll your hips. Having Joel on the line gives you a heady sense of satisfaction. Wondering what’s going to come out of his filthy mouth next gives you a shiver of anticipation.

“I know that sweet pussy is just achin’ to be filled again.” Correct.

“Yes.”

“S’right, baby, I know.”

Joel whimpering on the phone for you is absolutely going to get you off. Your hips chase your own fingers. You switch your phone audio to speakerphone and drop it on your pillow so you can use both hands. Pinching at your own nipples as if it were Joel’s big hand under your smuggled shirt.

“Tell me,” he pants, “who do you need to fill it for you?”

“You, Joel.”

“Fuck,” he chokes out, “you wanna ride this cock, huh baby?”

“Mhmm.” Bingo. Right again. You wish you could feel the pressure of him inside of you, massaging and soothing away the agony. The weight of his body atop of yours, so solid and secure. You can just about feel the pressure of his pelvis grinding into you. The friction from the coarse curls at the base of his cock getting you closer and closer.

“Know you’d do so good,” he cuts himself off with a low noise, “so damn sexy.”

“What else would you do with me?” You wanna hear it. For your own fantasy and to know what he’s into.

“I’d have you taking me down your throat til you’re crying on it for me, fuck,” a primal noise erupts from him.

Face fucking. Of course. You can’t deny that when he says it, your body responds instantaneously. Your pussy floods eagerly at the idea, and your cheeks burn hot from the visual he gives you. You swallow down your moans, and you can imagine the weight of him on your tongue and the strain of trying to swallow around his cock.

“You wanna come down my throat?” As if that isn’t a fucking siren song that would make him steer a fleet of ships into a cliff? Your salacious words are too much.

“Shit. Yeah, baby, wanna watch you swallow for me.” You let all your moans and gasps flow freely for him to hear. “I’m so fuckin’ close,” he can’t stop the words from spilling out his mouth, “let me hear it, baby,” he can’t stop his pending bliss either. “Please, baby, I can’t, oh f-fuck,” he cuts himself off with another primitive grunt, and that’s precisely what your cavewoman cunt wanted to hear.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” The horny goblins chant out loud this time. You can envision sweaty, pleading Joel lurching toward a reckless, full-body climax.

You’re far from grace when the crude sounds he lets out turn you into an uncivilized beast. You hear him gasping, growling, and whining for you. It plunges you into a staggering orgasm. Rolling waves of ecstasy leave you panting and sweating.

You lie in bed, chest rising and falling beneath the Creed logo. You’re left stunned at the intensity. A dreamy smile spreads across your face, and warm contentment, like honey, pours slowly over your muscles. Relaxing you as your tension softens and you turn to pick your phone back up.

Why was it so wholly consuming just to listen to him? Imagining the mess he made again,

because of you.

Maybe you’re just made for each other.

You and Joel.

Oh, god. You should start listening to Alanis Morissette and Evanescence and trade your car for a 1990s-era Toyota 4runner and a pack of Marlboro Smooths. Really lean into matching his freak and the divorced alt-rock vibes.

You laugh softly into your phone before a deep sigh possesses you, and you nearly fall asleep. You stretch and smile, letting your heavy eyelids rest.

He’s muttering something at you, catching his breath from the stress of being that fucking horned up for you all evening. And the overexertion of lasting long enough to hear your sweet cries of release.

“You’re unreal,” his smoky voice rings with awe. “Got me shooting loads like a fucking teenager.”

You snort at the juxtaposition of his tender voice and crude comment before ending the call with a whispered, “Goodnight.”

It shouldn’t make you smile.

But he’s somehow such an enticing disaster. A cliche lonely bachelor, a cocksure idiot who knows he’s got a big dick and a generous guy who was willing to fix a stranger's car.

You shouldn’t be trying to justify it, but you know he had you figured out earlier.

You may be sated tonight, but you won’t be able to rest.

Not until you get your hands on that DILF – or rather, your pussy on that dick.

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tpwk-formula1 · 1 month ago

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Kinktober Day 7 - Spanking - CL16, MV1

Charles Leclerc X Max Verstappen X Reader

TW - Spanking, punishment, double penetration, Mean Max, Mean Charles, Bratty reader, squirting, degrading terms

WC 2300+

Y/N POV

"Please, Charles! Max isn't home right now," I beg Charles for the third time in the past 10 minutes.

"Amour, you know damn well he will have both of our asses red if he finds out. Which he will," Charles tells me.

"Fine," I say while getting up with an eye roll. I make my way through our Monaco apartment with Leo hot on my trail before I make it into our shared bedroom where I find Jimmy and Sassy both happily sleeping in their cat tree.

I make my way to Max's side of the bed where I grab my favorite vibrator before quietly sneaking into our guest room and shutting the door behind me. Double checking to make sure the door is locked before stripping myself completely and making myself comfortable on the guest bed.

I decided if Charles wasn't gonna make me cum cause he wanted to be good then I would take matters into my own hands and deal with the punishment later. That is if I even get caught.

I'm not even 5 minutes into my solo session when I hear the front door open and Max announcing his arrive.

"Im home, liefde," Max announces making my anxiety peak a bit knowing exactly what is going to follow as soon as he realizes where I have gone off to and what I was doing.

At this point it was too late to turn back so I might as well make the most of it.

"Where is Y/N?" I can hear Max ask Charles while I have the vibe firmly places against my clit. I whine out at the sound of my boyfriend's voice knowing even if I find a way to cum in such a short amount of time it won't feel half as good as it would if it was Charles or Max.

"She's mad at me," Charles replies back to Max. I can only imagine the confusion that is starting to set in for Max. It was rare for me to be mad at either of the boys and even more rare to disappear when mad instead of solving the problem before it could get any worse.

"What did you do to her?" Max asks making me smile a little but it quickly drops when I remember my ass is about to be at his mercy.

"She's needy. Like so fucking needy. She begged me no less than 5 times to play with her in like a 10-minute span," Charles informs Max.

"So where is she?" Max questions again not understanding why I suddenly disappeared. I normally just continued to beg Charles knowing he would eventually break.

"I'm sure in our room. She kinda just got up and left," Charles tells him honestly. It's like I can feel the wheels turning in Max's head because no less than a second later I can hear both of my men pass the guest room door straight into our room. Then back to my door where I'm sure now that they are focusing their ears, they can hear the soft hum of the vibrator.

"Y/N you have 3 seconds to open this door!" I hear Max's loud voice ring out, making my anxiety reach an all-time high. It's not the bad kind of anxiety but the kind you feel waiting for the best roller coaster in the whole park.

Knowing my punishment is already going to be bad enough I truly don't want to test him, so I clip the power off of the vibrator and rush to open the door.

when I get the door open I find Max with his arms crossed over his chest and Charles is just shaking his head knowing it's about to be a long night because of my actions.

"Get on the bed on all fours and wait for us," is all Max says which has me a little more confused than anything. Normally when I'm about to get punished Max takes matters into his own hands and physically moves me where he wants me to be.

"Give her 30," Max tells Charles as soon as I'm situated and my ass is in the air waiting for the punishment. I have my head turned so I can watch them and I can see the confusion written all over his face.

"Why?" Charles asks clearly not excited to be the one to hand out the punishment. While Charles did occasionally dominate me he was always more about pleasure not pain.

"She wanted to play with you, not me," Max tells him like it was the most simple thing in the world.

"Max, please. You always punish us," Charles tries to reason still not understanding why it had to be him.

"Charles, you know how she is when she's needy. She's going to find a way to cum with or without either of our help. You left her alone, so you're serving her, her punishment is your punishment for letting her be alone long enough to get a toy and lock herself away in another room," Max tells him finally revealing his plan.

"Please Max, I do not want to hurt her," Charles tells Max letting his dow eyes droop a little more than normal.

"She fucking loves this shit Charles and you know it," Max tells him. I can see from here Charles is really fighting with himself. He was the good boy and did everything Max told him but this was new for him. He had never once been the one to dish out one of my punishments and he was struggling to grasp at the idea.

"Color, Charles," Max finally asks seeing the same things I'm seeing. While it was technically still a punishment we made these rules because we enjoyed the dynamic and regardless of it being a punishment or not we had safe words for a reason.

"Green," Charles finally answers softly while making eye contact with Max.

I watch as Max makes his way to the bed where strips down into nothing before sitting right in front of me just out of reach.

"No. Stay there and watch me," Max says when I try to crawl closer to him so I can take him into my mouth. I just let out a loud whine before settling in and waiting for my other boyfriend to dish out my punishment.

The first slap to my ass rings out through the room making me whine at the sudden contact.

"1" I softly count. When I felt another one it was on my other ass cheek making me gasp.

"2" I continue my counting.

"She thought this toy could make her cum just as good as we can," Max says in a teasing manner clearly enjoying watching his loves play.

"No, I just needed -" But couldnt finish my sentence before another slap was issued on my ass. One that had more force than the other too. It took me by such a surprise I lost my breath.

"3" I gasp out when I finally remember how to breathe again. While this wasn't the hardest spanking I had ever received I wouldn't have known it wasn't my dutch boyfriend if he wasn't sitting right in front of me.

"Give her 5 in a row," Max informs Charles making it clear that while Charles might be handing out the punishment he was still the one in charge.

The next five spanks rang out in the room making me whimper at each one.

"8" I count again once Charles finishes the quick 5.

"Fuck, Charlie. Too much," I whine due to how rough he was being. I loved every moment of it, was just shocked at how hard he was spanking me.

"Shut up, Cherie," Charles replies back laying another group of 3 slaps on my glowing ass.

"11" I gasp in surprise looking up at Max to find the same look of shock on his face.

I can feel Charles rubbing my ass in a rough yet soothing manner before his hand left my ass before raining down on my ass again.

"12" I say right before I felt another one ring out.

"13"

"14"

"15" I gasp lightly falling forward on the bed from the force of each slap no longer having the strength to hold myself up.

"Give her a second," Max tells Charles sternly when he aggressively grabs my hips to sit me back up.

Max leans forward stroking my hair while I let a few stray tears fall at the pain.

"Color, liefde," Max asks me making sure I'm still enjoying everything.

"green, Maxie," I whisper out before feeling another slap on my ass.

"16" I continue counting just like how I was trained to do.

I feel another series of slaps on my ass all directed in the same spot making each one hurt more than the one before.

"20" I finally gasp once I catch my breath from the shock of it all.

I start to feel a series of spanks reign down one my ass all in different spots this time all the while Charles is lecturing me.

"I can't believe you're brattiness got me in trouble. I was the fucking good one, you were the damn slut and now I'm in trouble," Charles says while finishing out my punishment.

"30" I cry out once the abuse to my ass has finished. As soon as Charles steps back from my ass I collapse on the bed and start crying softly. Not necessarily from the pain but from the fact that I had gotten Charles in trouble with me even though he had done all the right things.

I feel myself being pulled into the arms of one of my boyfriends and only know who it is from their smell.

"Amour, it's done," Charles says softly making me whine into his neck and gripping onto him a little harder.

"I'm sorry Charlie. Didn't know I would get you in trouble too," I mumble into his neck making him laugh a little.

"It's okay amour. I kinda liked watching your ass glow a beautiful shade of red from my hands. Like my own little art piece," Charles announces clearly proud of the work he had done.

When I finally come back to earth completely I lean over towards Max and pull him in for a kiss which quickly turned into him pulling me out of Charles's arms and into his lap where he instantly sinks his hard cock into my tight pussy. He slid in with almost no resistance simply from how soaked I was.

It didn't take Charles long to join us by slipping behind me where I feel his fingers slip into my ass using my own arousal to make it slick.

"Oh fuck," I moan out when I start bouncing on both Max's cock and Charles's fingers.

"Cum, you little slut," Max tells me which has me instantly shaking from the intensity of the orgasm I was having.

I'm not even fully recovered before I feel Charles slipping his cock into my ass stretching me even more.

"Fuck," I scream out from the stretch and burn I was feeling. They both allow me a few seconds to adjust to their size before they both start moving in me.

"So fucking tight. We spend so much time in these holes and you're still as tight as the first time we played with you," Charles whispers in my ear making me moan.

"Such a little whore, taking two cocks like you were made for it," Max whispers in my other ear, sending chills down my spine from his dirty words.

"Our little whore is about to cum again," Max announces as if Charles didn't know.

"Cum for us, Cherie," Charles tells me which has me letting go and falling over the edge. I feel myself start squirting all over the three of us. While I'm still squirting I try to pull myself off of their cocks but Max holds me in place and continues fucking me in a brutal pace making all of my juice stray all over.

"Next time you cum, it's gonna be when we fill you up with our cum," Charles tells me making me shake.

At their pace, I can feel myself growing close faster than I would have liked.

"Close," I gasp between moans.

"5" Max starts both Charles and I's cum count down. It wasn't something we did all the time but when we did Charles and I loved it knowing by 2 or 3 we are both ready to cum.

"4, both you little whore better hold it," Max grits out making it clear that he was also on the same edge we were on.

"3" Max finally says after what felt like forever even though it was probably only a couple of seconds.

"Please, Max" Charles moans out making it clear he wasn't gonna last much longer.

"2, Charles, you better fucking hold it," Max grits out again continuing his brutal pace on my pussy.

"1, cum for me," Max grits out which has all of us falling over the edge together. I can feel cum filling my ass and pussy helping me ride out the most intense orgasm of the night.

Once we all come down from the high of our pleasure, I feel Charles slowly slipping from my ass making me whine own from the burn of it.

"Sorry, Cherie," Charles whispers out once he's fully out. He leans down and gives the back of my head a couple kisses.

I slowly start climbing off of Max's dick making both of us hiss in from the sensitivity we were both going through.

We give ourselves a couple of minutes to regroup our thoughts before we start our aftercare routine. Which consists of plenty of kisses, reassurance, a shower, and of course plenty of cuddles with our fur babies.

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dilatorywriting · 6 months ago

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Monster Mayhem: Siren's Song [Part 1.5]

Gender Neutral Reader x Vil Schoenheit Word Count: 4.6k

Summary: There is a little, annoying human trapped in this bay with him. And he's going to eat them. (Vil's POV)

[PART 1] [PART 1.5] [PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4] [PART 5]

There was a little, raggedy human staring up at him from the sand, and Vil had never felt so miserably persecuted in all his years.

The thing had been bound to him in a mess of ropes and frantic, bipedal flailing, and he’d honestly thought that it had drowned. Hoped that it had drowned. But no, apparently he couldn’t be quite so lucky. None of his pod’s raids had ever gone so terribly, and normally he was better able to keep his head about him. But it had been Epel’s first attempt at sneaking on board one of the grand, creaking, human vessels, and maybe he’d been a touch concerned about it. Like a fretting parent sending their guppy off to the deep for their first solo-swim. And perhaps he’d struck a bit too quick and sharp when he saw things headed South. Not taking the normal care he would to assess for traps, or weapons, or stupid humans and their equally stupid, fraying ropes.

But none of that mattered. It was hardly a crime to want to protect your family. It had happened, that was the end of it. There was no changing things. And now he was here. In this cove. With that thing.

You pedaled backward in the sand like those two legs of yours hardly worked at all, and even though it looked like you were retreating (rightfully so, at least you were smart enough to realize this was a lost battle), Vil still bared his teeth in a challenge. Because he was angry, and sore, and at the moment you were the cause of every, single one of his problems in the world. He tossed his tail in the surf, splattering stinging bits of ice water into your face.

“Stop! Stop!” you squawked, wheeling away like he was dousing you in acid rain rather than a bit of pissy water warfare. “I get it! I won’t come near you, jeesh! I wasn’t planning on it to begin with!”

“Of course you weren’t,” he spat. “From the looks of you, you don’t plan much of anything at all.”

You didn’t respond to his scathing insult, only kept scooting yourself back against the sand on legs that still apparently refused to work. Or maybe you’d simply forgotten about them. You seemed like you could be the type.

He ground his talons into the damp sand at his hips and felt the ridges of the fins along his spine prickling tight and painful, trying to puff out in a predatory display that they simply couldn’t because he was still bound in the godforsaken rope.

“I don’t know what your little plan was,” he hissed, “but you’ve done both of us a disservice. And while I’m sure you’re used to disappointment, I am not going to tolerate this.”

More silence. You looked—not confused, per se. But definitely not particularly keen on following his very justified rant against your person. Your gaze kept darting from his vicious glare, to his claws digging up the shoreline, and then to his lips. He could see your own mouth moving a bit alongside his, like you were trying to echo the shape of the insults flying off his tongue.

“Listen here, you fleshy rat,” he snapped, jabbing a black talon in your direction. “You’re going to tell me the course that your ridiculous ship had set so that I can return to my pod at once. Do you understand? And if you’re lucky, I won’t crawl my way up there to bite off your fingers one by one. How’s that sound?”

You blinked back at him with no comprehension, like his marvelous depiction of having your bones gnawed on for snacks just wasn’t a vivid enough picture.

The rage in his chest bubbled bright and hot, and the age-old magics in his veins zipped through his blood like a stroke of lightening.

Insolent brat.

Fine. He’d make you listen then.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” you said, and oh, you were a nuisance. He was going to rip your nerves out from the depths of your useless, human limbs. Feast on your bones until the marrow had been picked clean and leave the scraps for the gulls—

He parted his lips and sang loud and sharp—letting that familiar lull roll off his tongue like the sweetest poison. His Call had always been the strongest in his pod, after all. That’s why it was his job to keep them safe, to ensure that no one was lost in a hunt that was meant to be so simple just because they couldn’t keep their purple-headed curiosity under wraps long enough to not to be caught—

Vil turned his sneer back your way, fully prepared to see you kowtowed before him with your nose buried in the sand. And—

You were just sitting there. Butt in the muck and just as wide-eyed and brainless as before. Staring back at him with a startled sort of expression on your face and nothing else. Normally there was a sort of tether between him and his victims. A call, an answer. Simple principles. And while he could never see the tangible net of his influence tightening around their brains, he could always sense it. Or at least something like it. But this time, there was just… nothing.

Vil snarled, swallowing around the spiky pinch of something in his gut that he refused to call panic, and canted his head back to sing louder.

The shallow dregs of the cove rippled at his hips with the force of it, and he could feel the swell of his influence curling out further and further. Digging its claws into anything and everything it could reach. He could feel one tether spooling out and grabbing after the other, feel the familiar pull of subservience from the very sea itself. And—

“I can’t hear you!”

Oh, you mocking piece of—

He widened his mouth until his jaw was creaking and his tongue was going numb from the sharp bursts of arcana snapping from throat.

“It’s not a challenge!” you wailed, hands cupped over your mouth to try and shout over his howling song. “My ears literally, actually, do not work, you fucking overgrown anchovy!”

His mouth fell closed all at once, the Call cutting off so abruptly that the returning wave of snapping magics almost made his head spin. The power of it hung along his nerves like the zipping prickle of electric eels, and the water at his hips churned and bubbled.

“There,” you huffed, like someone who’d just been horribly inconvenienced by a gust of wind ruining their hair, rather than a human bearing the full weight of a siren’s fury. Brushing off some of the most powerful magics in the ocean like it was nothing worse than a bit of sand in your trousers. It was… unnerving. And it had something uneasy curdling in Vil’s stomach.

He dug his claws into the sand, fins flaring along his sides in a defensive display before he could help himself. Your eyes tracked the way the muck gave way beneath his talons and he watched your throat bob. Good. You should be afraid of him. Because he refused to be afraid of a human like you. No matter how the hair at his nape prickled or the fins at his ears pinned against the sides of his head.

“Well…” you said after a long moment, awkward and stiff. “I should get going, I suppose.”

And then you were stumbling your way to your feet to venture deeper into the crags of the small island. Vil smacked his tail against the surf, loud and sharp. A plaintive ‘good, begone,’ if ever there was one. But you didn’t even flinch, let alone turn around to witness his grand ‘fuck you.’ He wasn’t sure why he was expecting you to.

He watched you crawl your way up a mess of boulders and old shells, eyes narrowed and that same, unpleasant prickle running through his nerves. Once you were well and truly out of sight, he returned to his fins and started doing all he could to assess the damage. The sooner he could deal with this setback and set out into the depths of the ocean, the sooner he could return to his pod. And the sooner he’d be away from you, and all your strange, human ways.

You returned maybe an hour later, only a few minutes after he’d given up on trying to pick the horrid mess of twine from the wounds along his tail. His claws weren’t made for such delicate work, and the poisoned tips of them weren’t doing his shredded fins any favors.

He turned on you with a snarl that would have sent any other sentient creature scurrying for cover, fins pinned and canines on full display. But apparently you had less self-preservation than even the brainless, teeny, rock crabs burrowing hurriedly into the sand.

“Hello,” you said. Like that was any way appropriate.

“Get lost,” he snarled.

You nodded back, simple and sage, and then pointed to the mess of your ropes twined along his fins.

“I can get that off if you promise not to eat me.”

Vil sneered and surged forward to scrape his claws through the muck again, hoping his demonstration of what he would do to your face if you stepped near him was clear enough to get through your head.

“Touch me and you’ll be lucky if all I do is eat you.”

You blinked back, and he watched the way your eyes jumped across his expression. Trailed to his mouth, his brow, his teeth. Reading whatever you could see there. And then you shrugged again, unbothered by his spitting threats as before.

“Alright. Your loss, I suppose.”

There was a keenness to your gaze though, a sharp, pointed consideration that had his hackles rising all over again.

“If you think that you can be rid of me that easily, you’re solely mistaken,” he spat, smacking his fins into the shallows until the water was churning wild and angry. “This is all your fault, and whatever ridiculous plot you’re considering, I’ll gladly return it tenfold.”

Your face pinched like you had any right to be annoyed by this at all, and then promptly turned away from him like you’d lost all interest in his theatrics. You meandered around the shore, scooping up the battered remains of some of the fish that had stranded themselves during his failed Call. Then you sat yourself well away from the water’s edge and pulled a knife from your boot, running it along the fish’s scales and clearing out the muck.

“Thanks for the food!” you chirped petulantly, making long, pointed, eye contact as you did so. Like that little blade of yours was supposed to be any sort of a threat. Perhaps he could use it to pick the leftover bits of you out of his teeth.

Vil turned up his nose and returned to carefully grooming the shredded ends of his fins.

“You’re an obnoxious brat,” he growled, wincing as his claws caught over a frayed patch of scales and began to bleed all over again. “And I’m going to drown you.”

Naturally, you did not respond.

The rope burned, and he knew he wasn’t helping himself. The twine of it was frayed, poor quality. And combined with the tacky, salt-sticky damp of the waves, it made the worst sort of web. Vil threw himself around in the shallows like a pup stuck in their first net. And he knew—knew—this wasn’t going to make things better. But the more he worked to free himself and the less progress he made, the angrier he got (Not afraid, angry. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t).

A tight bit of fibers snagged along the delicate mesh of the fins at his hips and gave a shrieking riiip that had him collapsing into the sand bed with a bitten off noise that he refused to call a gasp. But Sevens, it did hurt. He pressed his face into the shallow pool of warm water beneath his chin and forced his breath to calm, to dig his claws into the grit beneath him rather than his own scales. Because this wasn’t working. And he—he needed to fix it. On his own. Because he was on his own. And he was going to manage, just like he always had.

There was a noise off on the shore—the tumbling of pebbles against stone as you shifted around in your little, makeshift hideaway. And he refused to look up to meet your gaze. Because surely you were staring. Humans were always so happy to watch his kind suffer, flailing about in their traps and bound in nets like a garish display. And he wasn’t going to give you the satisfaction of knowing he’d been seen like… like this.

So he forced himself to go still and silent, ignoring the pain biting into his sides like the teeth of a shark and the panicked, clawing thing in his gut that kept screaming that he was going to die here.

The next morning, you were wandering the shoreline, scrounging after the remains of various crabs from the day prior. Vil refused to look at you, and spent the time pointedly running his claws through the tangles in his hair and primping himself like he didn’t have a care in the world. Because if a stupid, lowly human fit for nothing but an after-dinner-snack could thrive in these circumstances, than surely he could do even better.

There was the soft, wet sounds of your footsteps behind him, and Vil turned on you with a roaring snarl—fins pinned and spines perked, defensive.

“What?” he snapped, beating his tail.

You awkwardly held up one your pickings—a round, red crab with fat claws.

“I don’t know if you all eat fish or whatever, but…”

Vil fought the urge to gawk. Were you offering him one of—but why would you—

He bit through his surprise with another sneer. “Firstly, crabs are crustaceans, not fish. You’d think any self-respecting creature that spent their days on the ocean would know something as obvious as that. Secondly, why would you even think that I would share a meal with you? Even I didn’t think humans could be that stupid, but you’re certainly setting a new bar.”

Your mouth twitched at his very sharply enunciated ‘stupid’ and he fought a smirk.

“Oh. Know that one, do you?” he cooed, all mocking.

“Look, do you want it or not?” you snapped, irritated, and his fins flared up again—wide and defensive.

Vil crossed his arms on an exaggerated, pointed huff and turned in the other direction. A clear dismissal. “I’d rather starve.”

“Whatever,” you griped, voice canted sharp with your foul temper, and then there was a crack and a yelp.

Vil turned back to see you reeling away, hand over your mouth to catch a mix of blubbering, wincing curses and a shattered crab shell clenched between your fingers in the most obvious show of stupidity he’d perhaps ever seen. He burst out into laughter before he could help himself, and you stormed away with warm cheeks and pieces of jagged, red shell still clinging to the corners of your lips.

That night he fought the ropes even harder, ignoring the way they pulled, and tore, and dug into places that he knew they should not. And maybe it was self-destructive, stupid, but if he didn’t get himself free of this horrible mess his fins would never heal. He’d never be able to swim properly again. And he’d never be able to leave this cove, never return to his pod, his family. Never—

A shell walloped him in the back of the head and Vil turned with a shriek so vicious it nearly startled even him. Because there you were—the bane of his existence. Standing at the edge of the water with that ridiculous, deadpan look on your ridiculous face and already scrounging about in the sands like you were looking for something else to throw at him. He didn’t even know what he was screaming at that point, absolutely brought over the edge in rage, and pain, and fear, and it was all. your. faul—

Then something in your expression snapped and you were storming forward towards the surf—absolutely incensed.

“Look, fish face! You were the one who attacked me! You!” you shrieked, stomping in the sand and nearly pinning the longer, trailing ends of his fins beneath your heels. “So stop acting like I’m some scheming shithead who was planning to trap you like this from the start!”

“You trapped me!” he howled, outraged. “You were going to kill a member of my pod! Who’s barely out of his pup days! And he was my responsibility, and you were going to attack him!”

Magic zipped along his tongue, demanding that you kneel. Show your throat and be done with it. But when you just kept glaring back—absolutely stone-faced and seething with indignation—Vil forced himself to take a breath, and then another.

“Epel,” he spat, low and exaggerated. He saw your eyes flicker to his lips, trace the outline of the word. “Epel,” he said again, sharp and angry. And when your own mouth began to subconsciously follow the shape of it, he was off and running again. “He’s my responsibility. Epel. He—” Vil pointed at the pale, lavender creases at the base of his fins. “His hair is like this. You saw him. You spoke to him. And you were going to tie him up just like you did to me.”

Your eyes narrowed, sharp.

“That kid,” you said after a moment, lips twisting in a frown. “You attacked me because of Purple Head?!”

“Epel,” Vil spat again, smacking his fins into the surf to douse you in a mess of seawater. “Not some kid. A pup. Barely of age. And you were going to—”

“You—” you hissed, scrubbing the salt from your eyes with the back of your hand. “He was still attacking us first! He was going after my friend!” you snapped, kicking your own wave back. It splattered along Vil’s hips, barely a sprinkling in comparison to his own tidal waves. “You don’t get to act all noble and protective, and like any of that makes any difference when you all were going to eat us!”

Vil snarled, and the twist of it left a bitter, rotten taste on his tongue. It wasn’t the same. It didn’t matter what you wanted, because you were just some human. Humans were vile, and cruel, and good for nothing but filling their bellies. And this was his family. So what if you claimed you were just standing up for your own brood? It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t.

So he turned back to dive into the shallows with as much force as his aching, crippled fins could manage. Sinking to the bottom of the cove in a huff of bubbles and clawing his way through the muck until he was well and truly hidden in the murky, sandy depths. He smacked his tail against the mess of pebbles and rocks until every creature beneath was scurrying for safety—fleeing outwith the flailing, destructive force of a Siren’s tantrum.

Was that why he was here, then? Bound and gagged on some hellhole of an island because of his own mistakes? Because you’d just been aligning yourself with the moral high ground he’d been riding this whole time? Saving your kin at the cost of your own, fragile skin. Dragged overboard to fight the monsters trying to devour your family whole. Ridiculous. He wasn’t going to let himself feel bad for the slighted prey in a hunt gone wrong. Sharks certainly didn’t regret the fish they chased, nor did the great black-and-white whales that pursued those sharks in turn. This was just the way of things, the circle of life. And he wasn’t going to feel guilty about the tight, protectivelook on your face as you shouted him down about defending your own pod at all.

You were curled up by the same rock the next morning, sleeping soundly against the rough hewn edge. It looked hideously uncomfortable, with your chin tucked up against your chest and your head pressed against half-a-dozen layered, jagged ridges. Vil had always heard that humans were used to luxury—soft, plush blankets made of foreign fabrics and great, stuffed squares of bedding that could put even the finest woven siren nests to shame. And there you were. Scrunched up with a shell clearly embedded in your cheek.

He frowned, fins rippling awkwardly at his sides where the majority were still knotted up in twine.

He needed to leave this cove. As soon as possible. And get away from… all of this.

It generally wasn’t considered the best of ideas to Call openly across the sea. Lone sirens were prime targets for all sorts of nasty scavengers. Human hunters, rival pods, even other rogues looking for a fight. It was dangerous to mark one’s position so openly, let alone in a manner that made it obvious of the less than stellar situation they had no doubt found themselves in. It was also a nasty toll to try and Call so far for so long, on himself and the environment around him. A screeching, horrible thing that he’d only heard a few times in all his years. It was a terrible idea for everyone involved, himself and his fellow castaway most of all. But, well, desperate times, and all that.

Besides, it wasn’t like you’d be able to hear it anyways.

So began his endless song.

He’d sing, and sing, and sing—feeling the ripples of it carrying across the surface of the water and shivering through the air. And then, after he’d worn his throat ragged, he’d pause. Just long enough to swallow around the sting and tilt his head to listen. His fins would flare out against the side of his head, and he’d wait. And then, when there was no answer to his Calling, he’d circle back and do it again. A part of him hoped there would be none. He’d taught his pod better than to do something so foolish—to put themselves at the mercy of all the monsters of the sea. And… if they didn’t answer, perhaps that just meant they were searching for him. Using his own, ridiculous harping to trace him down. And if not that, then at least that they were off somewhere safe. Somewhere far, and hidden.

He swam and sang until he was too exhausted for either. Bound fins a heavy, leaden weight at his hips and head barely cresting above the water.

When the sun set over the horizon, Vil let himself roll in alongside the surf to rest in the sand, boneless and sore. His eyes slipped shut with the encroaching darkness, too heavy to hold open at all. He hadn’t seen much of you today. Occasionally you’d wander down to the shoreline, head popping up over a cluster of rocks to shoot him a look that he couldn’t quite decipher, but for the most part you’d stayed hidden away. Out of his hair, at least. Perhaps you’d finally learned what was good for you, and that keeping as far away from the beast lurking in the shallows was the only way you’d be getting out of this alive.

And then his eyes were snapping open to a field of stars overhead and the moon hanging fat and low in the sky like a fruit ripe for the plucking.

And there you were, hovering over him with that laughably small knife of yours.

Carefully and gently working the rope away from his tattered fins.

Your fingers were delicate, precise. Every time those woven fibers tugged in a way that could even begin to hurt, you were softening your touch and muttering reassurances under your breath. He wondered if you realized you were doing that at all—chattering quiet, rambling nonsense like a nervous tick. ‘Ack, don’t twitch so much, it’s just going to cut deeper,’ and ‘sorry! Sorry! I didn’t think that would move like that! Just—just stay still and it will all be done way faster and then you can swim off, and—’ You were exceptionally careful over the areas of rough, beaten scales along the dip of his tail, wincing in sympathy at the raw, raw skin there. The blade never strayed anywhere it wasn’t needed, and you never touched any part of him that wasn’t in an effort to work another tangle of knots free.

Vil kept himself perfectly still and his breaths even and deep. He watched you through the low, golden dip of his lashes, eyes tracking your fluttering hands and quiet mumblings.

The last of the rope fell away with a wet, heavy plap in the sand and when you sighed there was a smile in your voice.

“There,” you muttered, soft. “Now he can swim home again.”

He froze, startled, and something dropped low and tight in his gut.

Because humans were cruel. Humans were food. Humans were nothing more than vermin crawling over the surface of his ocean in their hunkering, wooden vessels and finless feet. They didn’t deserve sympathy, or anything of that ilk. And—

Your gaze met his and the spark of horrified realization didn’t even manage to settle properly in your wide, wide eyes before he had you pinned in the sand.

It was easy—far too easy. Compared to him you were so small, so fragile. No heavy, bulk of muscle and scales to help keep you alive and fighting. Just fragile limbs and lungs that were good for nothing. He dug his claws into your shoulders and felt the warm prick of blood curl up beneath his talons—could see you wince with the first pinch of acrid poison sharpening the wound. He was going to rip you apart, just like he’d said he would. Even if you hadn’t been able to hear him, he’d show you. Because humans were vile, and no matter what you’d claimed, you didn’t deserve anything better than an end beneath the points of his fangs. Fuel for the journey back to his pod and nothing more.

‘There. Now he can swim home again.’

He reeled back, nose scrunching and teeth grinding in his jaw.

You were still beneath him, blinking up in shock but not fighting. Like being flipped onto your back had been startling out of principle, but not unexpected. Like the idea of dying at his claws was just something you’d been expecting from the get-go.

And yet—

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ you’d been rattling. ‘Ah, if you squirm it’s just going to hurt, you stupid, overgrown fish—'

Vil reared back with a snarl that had goosebumps racing all along your arms, and then he was diving back into the shallows—swiping the tip of his fins against your nose as he went in a sharp crack that he hoped would have you yelping and stumbling away from the ocean’s edge.

He paced along the edges of the bay, newly freed fins slowly uncurling in the lull of the tide. And he felt free. Sore, certainly, and aching in ways he never had before, but free.

When he popped his head back out of the water, you were sprawled out in the sand like a dying starfish, absolutely out of your mind and babbling nonsense about ‘captains’ and ‘collars’ under your breath.

‘Good,’ he harumphed, diving back into the shallows to twirl along his unbound tail. ‘Maybe that would teach you to stay out of the water.’

[TAG LIST - CLOSED]

@marvelous-maxi, @ilikefanfics4, @jackalope08, @crocwork-clockodile, @cosmicobubisi, @buttplugs-stuff, @pomefleur, @decemebercircus, @ailynyan, @genzombie, @meliade-ot, @sunlightocean, @theofficialantitherapist, @hermiona18, @sailorenthusiast, @fantasy-dating-sim-trash, @thefiasco-onyourblock, @insideous-beez, @its-clockwork-princess

@novaloptr, @imlost-sendhelp, @matcha-berry @preciosayorgullosa @whoretaglia, @kookygirlwholikescookiesandcoke, @nanauedorian, @trixeraptops, @voxnipop, @starkling25, @thedum1, @horcrux-alchemist, @sleepykitty21, @apathicace, @instantregret101, @nekanecorvus, @looney-mori, @re-ducing, @my2phetaliaheadcanons, @naughtybodypillow, @rendy-a, @carmen-404, @candy284, @thealiennamedterry, @their-name-is-fake, @huetolog, @glacticrose, @seraphinariddle, @rabioa, @sn00zl4x, @dreasimping, @jeidoreech, @ai-dev, @galaxyshine24-7, @fatally-incorrect, @juulranch, @camrastuff, @nocteetdie, @stargaryengirl, @warmsmilesandhugs, @01paige01

#twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #Vil Schoenheit x Reader #Vil x Reader #vil schoenheit #Mermay #Monster Mayhem #My Writing #vil shoenheit #Siren!Vil #Mermaid!Vil #Fantasy AU #Monster Mayhem Vil Part 1.5 #Vil's POV

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jackoshadows · 1 month ago

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Firstly, why is it that Sansa can only be praised by comparing her to Arya? Secondly, in what world is Arya physically strong and more than Sansa?!

The masculinization of Arya Stark by tradfems in fandom has become so commonplace that I suppose many of them imagine this is how Arya and Sansa are in the books:

In case folks don't know this: ARYA IS TWO YEARS YOUNGER THAN SANSA! She's the younger sibling!

Anyone who has read a Jon POV chapter should know that Arya is a skinny, little girl. Jon specifically makes a small, lightweight, thin sword for Arya to handle.

And Arya … he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. - Jon, AGoT

Arya has been on the run for two years, hunted by Lannister men, a slave put to hard physical work and starved for food.

She spent the rest of that day scrubbing steps inside the Wailing Tower. By evenfall her hands were raw and bleeding and her arms so sore they trembled when she lugged the pail back to the cellar. Too tired even for food, Arya begged Weese's pardons and crawled into her straw to sleep. - Arya, ACoK

Often as not, she went to bed hungry rather than risk the stares. - Arya, AGoT

"Lommy's hungry," Hot Pie whined, "and I am too." "We're all hungry," said Arya. - Arya, ACoK

Arya watched them die and did nothing. What good did it do you to be brave? One of the women picked for questioning had tried to be brave, but she had died screaming like all the rest. There were no brave people on that march, only scared and hungry ones. - Ary, ACoK

I knew we should never have left the woods, she thought. They'd been so hungry, though, and the garden had been too much a temptation. - Arya, ASoS

"An inn?" The thought of hot food made Arya's belly rumble, but she didn't trust this Tom. - Arya, ASoS

Rabbits ran faster than cats, but they couldn't climb trees half so well. She whacked it with her stick and grabbed it by its ears, and Yoren stewed it with some mushrooms and wild onions. Arya was given a whole leg, since it was her rabbit. She shared it with Gendry. - Arya, ASoS

The biggest toms would seldom win, she noticed; oft as not, the prize went to some smaller, quicker animal, thin and mean and hungry. Like me, she told herself. - Cat of the Canals, AFfC

We have the contrast of Arya having to trade some carrots and cabbages they picked from an overgrown garden to get some food and the innkeeper complaining about the lack of lemons to the sumptuous 64 dish feast in the Vale with a 12 feet tall lemon cake made especially for Sansa.

Anguy shuffled his feet. "We were thinking we might eat it, Sharna. With lemons. If you had some." "Lemons. And where would we get lemons? Does this look like Dorne to you, you freckled fool? Why don't you hop out back to the lemon trees and pick us a bushel, and some nice olives and pomegranates too." She shook a finger at him. "Now, I suppose I could cook it with Lem's cloak, if you like, but not till it's hung for a few days. You'll eat rabbit, or you won't eat. Roast rabbit on a spit would be quickest, if you've got a hunger. Or might be you'd like it stewed, with ale and onions." Arya could almost taste the rabbit. "We have no coin, but we brought some carrots and cabbages we could trade you." - Arya, ASoS

Sixty-four dishes were served, in honor of the sixty-four competitors who had come so far to contest for silver wings before their lord. From the rivers and the lakes came pike and trout and salmon, from the seas crabs and cod and herring. Ducks there were, and capons, peacocks in their plumage and swans in almond milk. Suckling pigs were served up crackling with apples in their mouths, and three huge aurochs were roasted whole above firepits in the castle yard, since they were too big to get through the kitchen doors. Loaves of hot bread filled the trestle tables in Lord Nestor’s hall, and massive wheels of cheese were brought up from the vaults. The butter was fresh-churned, and there were leeks and carrots, roasted onions, beets, turnips, parsnips. And best of all, Lord Nestor’s cooks prepared a splendid subtlety, a lemon cake in the shape of the Giant’s Lance, twelve feet tall and adorned with an Eyrie made of sugar. For me, Alayne thought, as they wheeled it out. Sweetrobin loved lemon cakes too, but only after she told him that they were her favorites. The cake had required every lemon in the Vale, but Petyr had promised that he would send to Dorne for more. - Alayne, TWoW

Arya was already a little, skinny girl smaller than Sansa when they left Winterfell. She has been worked to the bone, sleeping rough and gone hungry. Again, by what logic is this Arya supposed to be physically strong and more than Sansa?!

There is this idea that's often pushed where Sansa is some dainty, fragile princess while Arya is this strong executioner henchwoman and it's just so tiresome and toxic.

Arya is also not Brienne! They are two different characters. If you want physically strong warrior types to compare to Sansa, there is already Brienne. Arya is the smaller, younger sister. In canon and logically, it's the taller, bigger, elder sister with access to good, rich food who would be physically stronger.

The Stark looking Starks tend to be slender and quicker compared to the bigger, stronger Tully looking Starks.

He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast. - Bran, AGoT

The biggest toms would seldom win, she noticed; oft as not, the prize went to some smaller, quicker animal, thin and mean and hungry. Like me, she told herself. - Cat of the Canals, AFfC

"Can't you guess?" Jon teased. "Your very favorite thing." Arya seemed puzzled at first. Then it came to her. She was that quick. They said it together: "Needle!" - Jon, AGoT

Arya was always quick and clever, but in the end she's just a little girl, and Roose Bolton is not the sort who would be careless with a prize of such great worth. - Jon, ADwD

This is one of the reasons for why Jon Snow is so protective of Arya Stark - he certainly doesn't see her as some physically strong warrior type, despite gifting her with a sword. He's scared for her because he knows that despite how clever she is, Ramsay can kill, rape and torture her - she's 'just a little girl'.

Arya deserves to be protected, same as Sansa. She is not there to be anyone's henchwoman, she does not have super strength and she is certainly not physically stronger than Sansa.

#Arya Stark #asoiaf #fandom nonsense

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gguk-n · 1 month ago

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Wheels of Desire (Fernando Alonso x Lance Stroll's friend!Reader)

Summary- Finding an older man attractive is the oldest rule in the book, what if said older man is a little hesitant?

{Reader's POV}

Lance and I had recently made acquaintance through our fathers a few months ago. Since we were closer in age, we started to get along quite well. That's how I found myself at the Canadian Grand Prix. Did I know anything about cars? Nope. Did I know anything about Formula One? Nada. But was I supportive friend? Debatable. My dad wanted me at the race, I have an inkling they are trying to set me and Lance up but I believe that ship sailed a long time ago since he already has a girlfriend. That's Lance's burden to bear not mine, I'm here to keep up appearances.

I had the Aston Martin paddock pass slightly sway along as I strode to the hospitality. I did not know anyone here and that asshole didn't even come to greet me at the entrance. As I walked in, I spotted Lance. I smacked the back of his head, "You knew I came here for you, yet you wouldn't even come and greet me" I whined. "I thought you were a big girl" he laughed giving me a hug. "Whatever" I mumbled when my eyes met the man in front of me, who was also dressed in the same shirt as Lance. "Fernando, this is Y/N Y/L/N. Y/N, this is Fernando Alonso, my teammate" Lance introduced us. I smiled at him and shook his hand.

I pulled Lance to the side before whispering, "I didn't know your team was this hot" "He's old enough to be your dad." he pointed out. "He isn't my dad and my dad's way older than him" I explained. "Y/N come on" he whined. "Listen, you don't have to do anything, I'm pretty enough to handle it on my own, my only qualm is you hid that beautiful Spanish man from me" I said flipping him off. "How do you know he's Spanish?" he quizzed. "Accent and name, pay attention Strulovich" I sighed. "Now, if you'll excuse me I have a hot man to woo" I whispered and sauntered over to Fernando.

It was tragic honestly, even I could tell the way I was practically throwing myself at Fernando at this point and this man wouldn't even bat an eye. My spirit was starting to run low. But I wasn't giving up just yet, the weekend had just started and I had 2 more days.

Lance took me out to dinner to cheer me up. "In your defence, Fernando probably likes older women not infants" Lance chided. "I hate you" I seethed. "You're just hangry, here have a bite" he said placing a forkful of pasta in my mouth. "You do know how to cheer me up, Lancey" I hummed chewing on the food.

The dinner from last night made it on the tabloid, here, I am trying to woo Fernando and the tabloids are running a story of me and Lance. I think I might have to have a strongly worded letter with the said media houses.

Fernando seemed even more off than the last day; my jokes weren't landing, I couldn't even make him smile at this point. I found myself subconsciously chewing on my lower lip. "You're bleeding" Fernando said holding up a tissue to my lips. His fingers brushed past my lips and now sat on my chin as he added pressure to the wound. "What's got you so anxious?" Fernando asked. "Nothing" I shook my head. "Don't move, yet" Fernando reprimanded holding my head from the back in place with his other hand. I stood still, my brain running a 100 miles an hour, my eyes scanning his face which had creased in focus and his eyes laced with worry. He slowly moved his hand away to see the blood had stopped, I wish it hadn't. All I could think about was how maybe Fernando held your head as he kissed you aggressively.

Fernando left to talk to his engineers. I stood there staring at him until Lance came and closed my mouth. "You're drooling" he chided. "I mean how can I not? Look at him?" I chuckled. Lance just shook his head and walked away.

I spent the whole night formulating but I never came up with anything to at least peak Fernando's interest in me. None of my flirting was working.

I walked into the hospitality with my head down, it was Fernando who greeted me. "You don't look so good" he remarked. "Yeah, I didn't sleep much" I replied. "What's on your mind?" he asked. "Nothing, it's stupid" I brushed him off. "If it was that stupid why'd you stay up thinking about it?" Fernando quizzed. I felt so stupid and annoyed. Before I could open my mouth, Lance had come with a cup of coffee my saving grace. I moaned as I took a large sip from the cup. "You are the best" I said, warming my hands up against the cup. The weather had gotten colder due to the rain and the clothes I had worn were covered in a thin sheet of cold mist.

I watched them move about the hospitality get ready for the race, my eyes lingering on Fernando longer. I had only found out about him 3 days ago and right now, he was taking up an unprecedented amount of space in my head.

I tried to flirt with him as the day progressed but it seemed futile. He would brush me off or just laugh it off. I was starting to lose all hope. I lost all my hope at the end of the day when the team was packing up after the race. "You staying or leaving?" Lance asked. "I have a dinner date with your parents tomorrow and then I'll leave" I said. "Have fun" he remarked. "Aren't you coming too?" I asked. "Nope, I have plans" he said winking at me. I saw Fernando looking at me with sad eyes; I felt weird.

I was out at a bar finishing up my mocktail when I felt some one sit next to me. I turned around to find Fernando. "Hi" I greeted him with a smile. "I thought you were having dinner with Lance's family" Fernando pointed out. "Ah, that's tomorrow. I'm....free today" I said. Fernando seemed like he sighed a sigh of relief but I could be hallucinating. "I'll your finest wine and for the lady" he began now looking at me, "No, I'm good. I'll be leaving now" I said gathering my stuff. "huh....stay" he whispered in the moment the song changed.

I was shocked but I sat back down. "Why?" I asked. "You look like you don't want to be alone" he commented taking a sip of his wine. "I would like company, if I am being honest" I stated. "If you don't mind an old man's company, I'm here" he shrugged his shoulder. "You're not old and I would love your company" I smiled. "Did you drive here?" I asked. "No, taxi" he said. "Great! I'll have your finest champagne" I told the bartender. The two of us sat there enjoying each other's company.

After a while, we decided to exit the bar together; Fernando had called a cab and offered to drop me back. I'm not sure if it was the close proximity in the cab or the alcohol but when our fingers brushed I felt electricity course through me. I turned to see if he felt the same and he must've since he was staring at me. Without a second thought I crashed my lips against his. It took me a moment to realise but when I did, I suddenly pulled away, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that" I mumbled trying to put as much distance between us. "I...I....I thought you liked Lance" he muttered. "What? Eww!! He's like a brother to me. I've been trying to flirt with you since I laid eyes on you" I explained. "Really?" He asked. "Oh My God, did you think I'm that friendly to everyone?" I retorted. "I don't know" he mumbled running a hand through his hair. "Don't you think it's weird since I'm so much older than you?" he asked. I just shrugged, "I don't really look at people's ages" He looked hesitant. "Fernando, I wanna go on a date with you, I wanna date you, I wanna be your girlfriend, maybe" I spoke loud and clear. His mouth opened and closed a few time, "It's okay, take your time. Can I have your number though?" I asked hopeful. He took my phone entered his number and as the taxi driver pulled up to my hotel, Fernando pulled me in for a kiss. "I'm not completely sure but I think I want to go out on a date with you too" he muttered with a smile. "I'll be in Spain next month, see you then" I whispered kissing his cheek and exiting the taxi.

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starlightsearches · 2 years ago

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Yes, absolutely! So. Eddie x FemReader. They are best friends and have this special bond but all of a sudden Eddie pushes her aside for another girl he's dating or is interested in, letting her sit in the reader's seat, canceling traditions of years like movie night, etc. But somehow he wakes up and realizes he has been an ass to her (maybe because he actually wanted to get over his own feelings for her) but the reader isn't so quick to let it all go - she wants him to prove how sorry he is!

Jealousy, Jealousy

📼✨ mixtape milestone ✨📼 requests are open!

thanks for the request, bestie! and an even bigger thanks for your patience 😬 i hope you enjoy!

Eddie Munson x Fem! Reader

Comments likes and reblogs are always appreciated, let me know what you think 💖

Warnings: mostly just language and a little drama and angst and then fluff I think but let me know if I missed anything. I've always wanted to play around with POV switches like this, which is probably why it's taken me so long to finish this one 🙄

You're fuming in the front seat.

Eddie keeps his eyes on the road—more than he probably ever has while driving—afraid that if he even glances in your direction all the smoke you're letting off will start to fog up the windshield. Like he's driving around with a forest fire in his van.

"Listen," he says, even though he's not sure what's going to come after, "it's not even a big deal."

They're the first words out of his mouth since he told you, and they're definitely the wrong ones. Your eyes flash, smoldering at the center like cigarette ends.

Your look may be fire, but your voice is all ice.

"To you."

"What?"

"It's not that big of a deal to you, Eddie," you tell him, shifting against the dirty leather seat like you can't even stand to be near him, "but it is a big deal to me."

Valerie fucking Reed—just thinking her name has you seeing blood. Everything about her puts the wrath of god in you, from the fake-ass pitch of her voice to the way she flips her hair over her shoulder whenever she thinks she's said something clever.

You'd hated her from the moment you'd met her, after the painfully cliche the freaks sit over there cafeteria routine she'd put on for you your very first day in Hawkins. You were more prepared for that shit now—had educated yourself in the art of biting comebacks and fought only with words even when you wanted nothing more than to bash her head into the linoleum tile.

But at a brand new school when you were desperate to make friends? Absolutely devastating.

If you were held at gunpoint and forced to say one honest, nice thing about her, there'd only be one you could offer up: it was her fault you'd met Eddie. With tears still stinging in your eyes, you'd carried your lunch tray in the direction of her pointed finger, falling into the nearest empty chair and tucking your chin into your chest so no one would see you cry.

That was when Eddie swooped in, big doe eyes and denim vest rattling with pins, and a thousand stupid jokes—not exactly a knight in shining armor but you'd never wanted one of those anyway.

Now Valerie wants to take him away from you, too.

Eddie drums his hands on the wheel, fidgeting with the volume on the tape he'd let you choose to soften the blow. He let's Fleetwood Mac fill the empty space between you, all the words he should say replaced with Stevie's soft vocals.

He's not used to fighting with you. Your friendship has always been as easy as breathing—except when it's not.

. . . But you really can't be blamed for that. It's not your fault he feels all weird inside every time you smile.

He wishes you'd smile at him now.

"You know," you say, feet planted on his dash and your chair pushed all the way back, "I didn't say shit when you started ditching me at lunch to deal to her and her friends, or when you skipped on movie nights for all those parties she threw because I get why you had to go, but a fucking date?"

"She just needs a place to smoke . . ." Eddie mumbles, skin hot at the word date.

You roll your eyes with enough bite he actually feels the sting.

"Right. She just needs to get high with you at your place, because she has nowhere else to go.”

Your lips drip with venomous sarcasm—absolutely soaked through with the belief that he couldn't possibly sit in the same room as Valerie and not touch her.

Do you really have so little faith in him? Eddie's got way more self-control than either of you would give him credit for. There's never been a moment he hasn't wanted his hands on you, and he's alone with you all the time.

“Come on,” he says, swallowing so his voice won't crack, “we do that.”

“It’s different," you snap back quickly.

Yeah it fucking is, he thinks, but Eddie doesn't say a word. Maybe the silence will speak for itself—or maybe it could, if you'd let it.

You carve a frustrated hand through your hair, staring him down. “Like, how do you think it would feel for you if I went out with fucking Jason Carver?"

He resists the urge to gag. "It's not like that."

It's really not like that. Just the thought of it has Eddie feeling both sick and violent, unsure if he was more likely to throw a punch or throw up.

He takes the turn into your driveway, watching you collect your stuff with a brutal speed.

"Yes it is, Eddie," you tell him as you slide from your seat before he's even fully hit the breaks, "actually, it's worse. Because Jason is a dick to everybody, and Valerie's got some fucking target on my back. I wouldn't be surprised if this was all part of some evil plan of hers to make me jealous because—"

You cut yourself off immediately, words stoppered by some invisible dam, eyes wide. Eddie's body goes cold when you slam the door without saying goodbye, stomping off to your doorstep.

He scrambles for his seat belt, practically falling out of the van in attempt to catch up to you before you get inside.

"Wait a second," Eddie says, holding the door open with his hand and trying to catch his breath, "why would that make you jealous?"

You scuff the toe of your boot against the step. "Nothing, it's stupid."

Eddie raises a brow, but you can’t look at his big, brown, beautiful eyes right now, tracing down along his leather sleeve to where his hand is planted against the door, black-painted nails splayed wide and already chipping, although you only did them a few nights ago.

Rude that the only time you get to hold him is when you're doing him a favor.

"Stupid how?" he asks.

You shrug. "I dunno . . . she just thinks I have a crush on you or something."

It's a surprise he hadn't already heard; about half of the girl's locker room were still stripping out of their gym clothes when Valerie had to bring everybody's attention to your black lace bra, before sharing a few theories on who you were wearing it for.

"Like I said, stupid." You ignore the heat in your cheeks, gripping the door again and trying to force it shut, but Eddie's not finished.

You wouldn’t notice, but his chest is heaving under his black t-shirt, palm sweating against the door. A crush? On him?

Is Valerie as delusional as he is?

"Wait," —his mouth is on a roll before his brain has caught up— "do- do you?"

Your eyes go wide with surprise, and then shrink into slits as you push him back from the door, one hot hand planted against his chest.

"Fuck you, Eddie," —he catches the words just before the slam— "fuck you for real."

It wasn't a no.

He repeats the words in his mind like he’s casting a protection spell. Like it’s some kind of ward against your anger as he scales the tree outside your window.

It’s harder than it looks, and he’s already making it look pretty difficult—but one hand’s busy clinging to the greasy paper bag packed full with burgers and those crispy tater tots you love. He manages to wiggle his way up to your window sill without losing his pants, even though the tears at his knees got caught on every twig and branch he passed.

Eddie steals a glance of you through the sheer curtains, holding back his fist from knocking. Just so he can look at you properly, without all the static of having you look back.

You're stretched out on your bed, feet in the air and headphones caught over your ears while you flip through the pages of a book. He hasn't seen these pajamas before—the little shorts that just cup the edge of your ass, and a sheer tank top. His nails are leaving little indents in his palm.

Eddie hasn't made a sound, but with the way his eyes are tracing over you, you gotta feel it. You find him at the window, and he panics, rapping his knuckles against the glass a second too late.

You roll you eyes at him, but at least you let him in.

There are honest-to-god butterflies in Eddie's stomach when he flops beside you on the bed. And he wouldn't lie—at least not to himself—but he'd tried to feel something like this before, when Valerie first started paying all that attention to him.

Her manicured hand would brush over the sleeve of his jacket while he'd be getting her product and he'd wait for this same feeling, hoping he had a weakness for all pretty girls, that any attention would him stumbling over his words and these feelings didn't have to be the end of the best friendship he'd ever had.

But it's you.

You cross your arms over your chest, frowning. "What are you doing here?"

Eddie's smile is sheepish, but not nearly apologetic enough for your taste. He holds up the paper bag in his hand, dotted with dark splotches where the grease leaked through. It lets out the heavenly scent of fried food.

"I brought dinner, you know, for movie night."

He slips a tray of tater tots from the bag, and you're resolve falters. You hold back your hand from reaching for one even though you already know how incredible it would taste, the little rivulets of salt and shining grease coating the golden skin.

"What about Valerie?" you ask, stealing your eyes away from the junk food. You hate how petulant your voice sounds.

He just shrugs, pouring out some ketchup onto the tray, licking the excess off of his pinky finger. "Told her I had other plans."

Eddie pops a tater tot into his mouth and bites down with a heavy crunch, but it feels like your heart's the thing being popped between his teeth.

And what more were you expecting? That he'd tell her to fuck off and take her money and friends with her? She's the queen of Hawkins, and you're . . . not.

Maybe you and Eddie are both delusional—or stubborn—enough to pretend like you don't care about the politics of high school, but people had abandoned their morals for less.

“So you blew both of us off, then?”

He pauses mid-bite, like a prey animal, like if he doesn’t move you can’t be mad at him.

“What?” he mumbles through a mouthful of chewed-up potatoes.

You snatch a tater tot from the tray, chewing and swallowing even though your stomach is starting to churn because something bad is going to happen and you can feel it coming like a storm in the air.

“Why are you here, Eddie?”

“I- uh, to say sorry,” he stutters.

The food's getting cold in his hands before you respond.

“What’re you sorry for?”

What’s he sorry for? Eddie has a whole list: sorry for making a fool of myself, sorry for hanging out with Valerie because I thought it might make you jealous, sorry sorry sorry for trying so hard to get over you and doing such a bad job at it.

“I, you know . . . I shouldn’t have made other plans on movie night.”

Those were the wrong words again. Crazy how easy it is for him to fuck this up—like it was something he was born with.

For a second, Eddie thinks you'll yell at him, and he's comforted by that. If you yell at him, you still care.

You take in a deep breath, and Eddie braces himself. He can take whatever you give him, will shoulder any insults you hurl and forgive you for it the second it's over.

But your shoulders slump. You let out a heavy sigh.

And he knows he can't take that.

"I'm really, really tired, Eddie," —you won't even look him in the eyes when you say it, sliding the window open again,—"see you tomorrow?"

But Eddie doesn't see you for two whole days.

That's a fucking record.

He thought you might need space, you know. So he gave you Saturday to cool off, kicked around at the trailer and gave Wayne vague answers about why you weren't around and ignoring the look in the old man's eyes. Listening to sad records and getting high and trying not to stare at your smile in all the photos plastered on his wall.

Sunday, Eddie drove by your house with the volume all the way up on your favorite Rolling Stones album, windows down while he idled at the curb. There was a twitch in the curtains, but you weren't there to shout at him for all the noise before climbing in on the passenger side.

Eddie knocked at your door this morning, hoping at least you’d want a ride to school. Your mom opened it with a sad little frown, telling him you’d already taken your bike.

And really, the two days have only ended on a technicality. Eddie sees you right now, reading a book with your head bent low, sitting at the far end of another table.

"Hey—" Eddie twitches when the flying french fry lands against his cheek with a wet slap— "are you gonna go talk to her, or did you just wanna stare?"

Mike laughs at his own joke, and the other guys giggles along.

Eddie's used to the ribbing. He's never minded it—when you're not around. Kind of enjoyed it a little. Even with his heated cheeks and stammered shut ups that completely gave him away, he needed somebody to acknowledge what he was feeling. It made it more real.

But Eddie's not in the mood for jokes today. And he doesn't need anybody to remind him that he's in way over his head with you.

He shoots the freshmen a look that works just as well as throwing a hand over their mouths—without the risk of being licked—and brushes the potato chunks from his hair while the rest of Hellfire pick timidly at their lunches.

And Eddie goes back to staring.

This time, though, you're staring back.

He meets your eyes. Just for a second, wide with surprise before you snap your head back in the direction of your book, tucking your nose between the pages. Doesn't matter how quick you were though. Eddie caught the look you were giving him.

And his heart is beating hard, like it did on the day he first met you. His limbs all staticky and weird, palms sweating because even from the first second he knew you existed he's wondered what kissing you would feel like and the question never left his head.

Eddie's on his feet before he can think about how bad of an idea this is.

"Hey," Dustin calls to him through a mouthful of square pizza, "what're you doing?"

Eddie just shrugs.

"Probably something stupid."

You can see Eddie's long legs moving in your direction from the corner of your eye, and your stomach drops out of your ass like a dip on a roller coaster in the dark and you can't see the end. He says something to the guys—his lips are moving—but you can't make it out over the sound of the cafeteria rumble, the chatter of the other girls sitting at the same table as you, talking animatedly about all the dates they went on over the weekend and completely ignoring your presence.

You dip your head closer to the pages of your book, so close all the words blur together, trying to hide from Eddie like you've been hiding the past few days. You shouldn't have even glanced in his direction, should have let the burn of his presence so close and still too far away swallow you up.

It’s getting hotter with every step he takes toward you, and you’re getting smaller, body tight and your lips caught between your teeth.

He slides quietly into the seat beside you, fingers drumming against the table, and the sound feels louder now that the girls have quieted down, not-so-sneakily listening in on whatever's about to go down between you and Eddie—hungry like sharks for any new gossip, ready to spread the nitty-gritty about why the freaks are fighting.

Eddie dips his head down, eyes big and already so sorry it feels like a punch to the gut.

"Hey," he whispers, trying to smile and failing miserably, "come here often?"

You try to smile back, but it's not much better. "Hey, Eds."

It's quiet, but not the comfortable kind of quiet you're used to around Eddie. It's a hot and sweaty quiet, a trapped-in-a-car kind of summer burn that makes your lungs go shallow.

Eddie perks up, the first words he can think of spilling out of his mouth.

"The guys were thinking about going to the record store after school. Would you wanna come?"

You wouldn't have thought for a second about refusing an invite like that a week ago. Heaven was nothing compared to wandering around a music store with Eddie.

"I don't know if I can today," you say instead, and then when you see the look of hurt on his face, you soften the blow with, "I gotta go to the library for some . . . stuff."

He hums. "Stuff?"

You shrug, playing with the pages of your book. If you're quiet enough, maybe he'll give up.

But he doesn't go anywhere. His hands stay planted on the table, silent and still for once. The black nail polish is almost completely chipped off his nails—probably picked off and littered all over the linoleum.

Eddie's voice is a whisper when he breaks the silence. "Are we gonna talk about it?"

"About what, Eds?"

"Why you're so mad at me . . ."

You've seen Eddie through a lot of shit, but you've never seen a look like this on him—eyes like saucers and brimming with shiny tears.

And you thought being in love with him was rough, but hurting him is a thousand times worse.

"I'm not mad at you, Eddie," you admit, hiding your eyes in the palms of your hands and pressing down until you see stars, "it's just . . ."

You don't get to finish your sentence.

Valerie's calling Eddie's name from across the whole fucking cafeteria. You watch her waving, standing on her tip-toes like she's not the only place in the room anybody can look, like every facet of her doesn't already scream give me attention!

Eddie sandwiches his lips together, pressing until they turn white. You're not going to like whatever he has to say next.

So you slip the dagger from his fingers, standing from the table. He can't hurt you if you hurt yourself first on his behalf.

"Actually, we can talk about this later," you tell him, slipping your bag on over your shoulder.

"Hey—"

There's sparks in your hand where he holds you, an eruption of butterflies in your stomach. It's just your hand in his, but that's all it takes for you to forget yourself, eyes caught on his soft mouth and pink tongue.

Valerie's approaching. You can see her stalking toward you over Eddie's shoulder. There's no room for vulnerability within a mile radius of her. You've got to get away before she sees all the softest parts of you exposed and decides to go for the jugular.

The door's within reach when the room goes quiet. Quiet enough Eddie doesn't even have to raise his voice when he says your name.

He's no stranger to standing on tables, but it's the first time you've seen him look so awkward, hands swinging at his sides in tight fists.

"I- I think I might be in love with you," Eddie says, "and I'm really, really sorry."

There's a chorus of ooooooooooohs from the audience, and maybe a few confused whispers from all the people who passively assumed you were already dating. Then all eyes are on you, waiting.

It's too fucking hot in this room, and your vision's starting to blur at the edges, feeling like you're on a stage and you can't remember the next line after Eddie's verbal punch to your gut.

You mumble a sound, falling backwards through the door and into the safety of the hallway.

Eddie's down off the table as soon as you disappear from the cafeteria, totally ignorant to the laughter and the jeers from all the dickheads watching.

Valerie's in his line of sight when he hits the ground.

"That was weird," she says, and Eddie can't tell if she's purposefully getting in his way, or if she's just got that aura of somebody who could tackle you to the ground but would never bother because she doesn't have to. "I mean I always knew she was a freak but—"

"Fuck off."

Eddie really would like to get into it more with her, maybe mention that he's been up-charging Valerie every time she mentioned your name, or that half the stuff he's been selling her was mixed with ten-year old spices from the cupboard above the oven.

There's more noise, but nobody else trying to get in his way, the path clear all the way to the door.

It's quiet in the hallway, and that alone leaves Eddie disoriented, swinging his head wildly, unsure which way you went.

"I'm down here."

You're on the floor a few feet away, head rested back against one of the lockers, and all of the bad shit goes away. It's that simple—like a light-switch—Eddie's panicked, and then he's not.

You're looking up at him with a soft kind of smile, despite the tight look in your eyes and sheen over your skin.

He slides down to the floor, long legs stretched out into the empty hall, shoes leaving little scuff marks across the linoleum.

"I'm sorry,"—you tell him as soon as he hits the ground, "about, you know. It was just, um, a lot."

"Don't be," he laughs, "that wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had."

The smartest idea he ever had was talking to you that first day, snatching you up before anybody else could.

Your tongue snakes out from between your lips, and Eddie has to physically hold himself back from tasting you. Your eyes dropped to his lap, your voice is small when you ask, "did you mean it?"

"Yeah, honey,"—probably should've kept the nickname to himself— "meant every word."

He's about to mumble something like, but if you don't feel the same it's totally fine, even though it definitely wouldn't be, when your head drops onto his shoulder.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know . . . just felt like a personal problem."

You laugh, and the sound shakes through him.

"I dunno, Eds. You being in love with me kinda sounds like something that I'd wanna know."

"I'll keep that in mind, for next time," he whispers. You're looking up at him with those big, soft eyes, breath pillowing against his face.

"It's the same for me," you tell him, "in case you were wondering."

In all the time Eddie's thought about kissing you, he never imagined it happening like this—on the floor with somebody's combination lock digging into his back. With your hands in his hair and the dull roar of the lunchroom somewhere nearby and his thumb tracing along your jaw and you smiling against his lips.

He was definitely missing out.

There's the metal clank of the door, and a chorus of footsteps somewhere down the hall. Eddie recognizes Dustin's voice.

"Oh my god, dude. Fucking finally."

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson angst #eddie munson #requests #my writing #eddie munson fluff

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illarian-rambling · 9 months ago

Text

Aw balls. I almost forgot an intro

Hi, I'm Katie! I'm a writer with two ongoing wips that I like yammering about, so ima do it here!

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 20

Other interests: art, dnd, the Magnus Archives, anything Cosmere related, martial arts, Critical Roll

My wips are set in the same universe, on the planet of Illaros, fifth from the last star left living in the universe. There's a continent, some islands, and other assorted junk down there. The gods have a dyson ring, but they don't like to talk about it. The stars are the eyes of an ancient primordial force of destruction.

Honor's Outcasts follows a rag-tag group of delinquents trying to survive psycho pirates with family ties, a siren theocracy, magic that rots in your blood, and the Horrors. Their number includes such mighty heros as: a kid who can explode people with her mind, a buff shark lady who survives regular eldritch encounters by not paying attention, a mute aroace siren man with a bitchy attitude, and the world's sweetest gang mamber. Of course, they're one big family, and what's family without a little religious terrorism?

The Mystery of the Mortal God asks what happens when magic and science collide in a world where ethics panels haven't been established yet. Set a few decades down the line from HO, this story follows a cowboy witch with a chip on her shoulder as she discovers a mysterious robot laying broken and confused on the side of the road. At the same time, in a city on the other side of the globe, a blue blooded detective investigates a cold case suddenly gone hot. In time, all players will meet, including the mage who set this whole conundrum in motion.

The Final Voyage of the R.S. Starbreaker is sci-fi with ghosts! More accurately, as the magical societies of Illaros take their first steps into space, they don't use unmanned probes, but instead call upon the gods to send ghosts to be bound to a mighty runic galleon: the R.S. Starbreaker. This first skeleton crew consists of an honorable former Flying City pilot with a seedy past, a brash elven astronomer infamous for her incomplete work, a meticulous selkie cartographer determined to map the solar wheel, a laid-back fae man with a dangerous set of ideals, and the key to this mission's success: a former part of an eldritch hive mind on a hunt for his extinct people's missing afterlife.

Anyways, if you're here, feel free to say hi! I'll mostly be posting whatever bullshit comes to mind, but maybe you'll get lucky and something entertaining will come out? I certainly hope so!

Have a bitchin' day <3

An addition! Here are my characters' playlists! (And intros for those who have them) (All instrumental because I can't write while listening to vocals)

Izjik Meautammera +intro

Sepo Kaiacynthus +intro

Twenari Devaris +intro

Djek Kagura +intro

Daedryn Whitenight

Astra DuClaire +intro

Mashal Darezsho +intro

Ivander Montane +intro

Elsind Cavernsight +intro

Avymere Spearsong +intro

Ghost Ship Radio + wip intro (for the Starbreaker crew)

A second addition! Please feel welcome to check out my new Illaros library! These are short stories written (mostly) in my setting that I've shared before on here, but I figured I'd put all the links in one place :)

Down in the Deep Dark - 2,500 words - The tale of how Izjik and Sepo met

Violating the 4th - 11,000 words - Coverage of the first Surgeon case from the POV of Ceyrel (Ivander’s detective partner)

Rel's Haunting - 16,000 words - A story of a fallen angel, the dead god who made them, and finding wonder in the supermarket

Full Saturation - 2,000 words - A short horror story set on modern Earth about saturation diving and places better left untouched

And for some one-shots:

Mashal and Ivander hanging out

Izjik making Sepo a flute in the Trench

The cast of Mortal God gets a beach episode

Mashal teaches Astra to ride a horse

Again, have a bitchin' day <3

#author #writeblr #writerscommunity #my ocs #writing #oc #writblr intro

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nolita-fairytale · 2 years ago

Text

make my heart surrender | carmy berzatto x fem!reader | chapter four: friday

pairing: carmen berzatto x fem!reader

warnings: lots of swearing, angst, use of she/her pronouns, friends to lovers, smutty smut-smut, this is an 18+ chapter so minors dni, no use of y/n, second person pov

word count: 6.7k

summary: buckle up people, because this is a long one! tonight is the night: the night you and marcus' dessert menu goes live, the night you meet natalie berzatto, and the night that truths are revealed.

a/n: is it hot in here or is it just me? who's ready for some smut? this will be the last chapter i post till sunday/monday, so we can all sit with this. hear me out: it's not that i think carmy is really good at sex. but there's so much tension between these two, i think reader is good at sex, and there's something to be said for being so turned on by the other person that it just hits different.

and here is that song -- the jazz standard turned acoustic cover.

read: part three | masterlist

Friday

“Just remember that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. You just have to deliver a really damn good dessert time after time,” you instruct, setting Marcus up, pre-dinner shift.

“I think we should focus on the burnt basque cheesecake in lieu of the classic. You already have a heavier lift on the bake for the chocolate cake. That way, whatever happens with the mixer, or the ovens… this version of cheesecake is pretty forgiving. And you don’t have to fuck around with a water bath just yet.”

“The tiramisu is perfect because it’s a no-bake option, and you can mix it up with different kinds of flavors – call it a special.”

“Like what we’re doing Sunday?” Marcus suggests, in reference to the strawberry, lemon, and mascarpone version you be doing at the end of the week.

“Exactly,” you reply.

“Hell yeah.”

“It all fits into the menu so nicely too: elevated classics.”

“A play on tradition.”

“Exactly."

“Ah, I see you, chef,” Marcus nods along, excited about tonight’s R&D night.

The game plan is to serve smaller portions of each dessert for the price of one, then get feedback by the end of the weekend.

“Hey, family’s up in a minute. You guys ready to roll tonight?” Carmy asks, stopping by you and Marcus’ little pastry corner.

“Yes, chef,” you both answer, in staggered timing.

“She got me workin’ on a strawberry compote. Here, try it, chef,” Marcus encourages, grabbing a clean spoon and scooping out a spoonful from the deli container it’s been stored in. Carmy takes it, putting the spoon in his mouth and he tries the compote.

“That’s gonna be really good with the tang and slightly bitter outside of the burnt cheesecake. Good work, chef,” he congratulates, inspiring a grin across Marcus face.

“I’m learning so much from you. Seriously. Thank you, chef,” he says, turning to you.

“Hey, you’re the one that made the compote,” you reply, redirecting the praise back to him. “Just sayin’.”

“Family’s up!” Sydney calls out to the whole kitchen.

You lock eyes with Carmy, and he nods towards the front of house as if to say, ‘follow me.’ You and Marcus file in through the limited space that leads from the kitchen to the front counter, then finally, into the dining area of the restaurant. Carmy had told you all about the hellish remodel of this place – that the two tops, booths, and bar remodel had taken for-fuckin-ever. That it looked like nothing more than a diner with a few arcade games before the reopen.

“Hey, thanks for jumping in so that Angel could cover me the other night,” Ebrahim says to you, as you find a seat next to Carmy, and across from Marcus.

“Oh, it’s no problem. You feelin’ better?” you ask back.

“Very much so. A little rest and a little maraq digaag and I’m good as new,” he answers.

“What’s good, Jeff? Surprised you’ve stuck around this long. Glad we haven’t scared you away yet,” Tina greets.

Carmy’s shocked, considering Tina rarely warms up to anyone.

You chuckle in response.

“It takes a lot more to scare me away, chef,” you reply, confident that you can keep up with everyone’s witty banter. Even though you’ve been welcomed in over the last few days, you know that they were a family before you came.

And will still be one after you.

Right. Because this is temporary. You’re only here for a week, you remind yourself.

“Yeah, thought she’d be long gone after workin’ the line the other night,” Richie chimes in. “Especially considering she’s way out of your league, cousin.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you,” Carmy shoots back, almost instantly.

“I’m just glad you’re here now. Man, it’s been three days and you’ve leveled my shit up already,” Marcus compliments.

“Besides, it’s nice to have some solidarity amongst the little boys club we work in every damn day,” Sydney points out, eliciting a scoff from Richie.

The two of you share a look, like a psychic high five or some shit. It begins to dawn on you that you could get used to this: this kitchen, these people….

“What? You got something against women supporting women, Richie?”

“Oh, so what? You’re the voice of feminism now, Syd?” Richie spits back. “Holy shit! Did you guys know that we were here in the presence of the new voice of-.”

You watch as Tina and Gary slump in their chairs, as if to say, ‘here they go again.’

“Don’t be such a prick, Richie. Oh wait.” Sydney challenges.

“You know what-?” Richie starts up, before being swiftly interrupted.

“Damn, Syd. This is fantastic,” you interject, your voice louder than normal, in reference to her family meal. “These tostadas are fuckin’ perfect and I’m gonna need the recipe.”

Richie continues to go on about god knows what, distracting himself, as Sydney mouths a, ‘thank you’ across the table towards you. You nod towards her as if to say,

I got you.

“Hey, I’m a little behind on plating. Sorry, chef,” Marcus apologizes, and you can tell he’s stressed. He gestures towards the plates that are ready to go out to the bar.

He hesitates before asking, “Oh and uh… these ones are ready to go out. Can you-?”

“‘Course, chef,” you answer, a mini-pep talk coming his way. “But uh… before you keep going, Marcus, take a breath. I know you struggle a little with pacing – you want everything to perfect – but, it’s gonna come with practice and repetition.”

You can see that he’s flustered – a little frustrated even.

“Expediting during dinner is a whole other animal, and it’s just night one. You got this,” you reassure.

You and Carmy had such different leadership styles. While you both had come up in the same kind of kitchens, you didn’t like to yell unless you had to. You were here to teach, and you can’t remember the last time someone screaming at you had ever helped you learn something.

You’re more than happy to support him by taking these plates out. You spent the first half of dinner service plating so that he could get some face time with customers – since you’d be asking for feedback. Then you’d switch halfway through service. You also thought it might be good practice for him to lead, considering they’d need to hire more help with the new menus.

You take a look at the ticket, one dessert tasting - two people - bar top, before taking the dessert plates out to the designated seats at the bar. There’s a gorgeous blonde woman sitting next to a guy in a sweater vest, as you make to approach the bar top.

“Hi, you guys,” you greet, a cheerful smile on your face. “Sorry to keep you waiting. We’re testing out a few new desserts for our dinner menu, so I’d love to hear what you think.”

“Oh this looks great,” the woman says, looking at both perfectly plated desserts.

“Here we have a burnt basque cheesecake with a strawberry compote, The Bear’s signature chocolate layer cake, and then a classic Italian tiramisu,” you explain, walking through each piece.

“Wow,” the man marvels, almost as if he’s surprised.

You share your name with them, and let them know that, if they have any feedback, that they can ask for you. As you turn to go, the woman calls after you, stopping you.

“Wait,” she says, her eyes lighting up. “You’re Carmy’s friend.”

“Yes.”

“Pete, it’s Carmy’s friend!” she exclaims, nudging the man next to her with her elbow to try to jog his memory. “You know! The one that’s staying in our airbnb.”

“Oh!” he says, as the light bulb goes on in his brain. “Yeah, we’ve heard all about you.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman apologizes. “I’m Natalie, his sister, but you can call me Sugar. This is my husband, Pete.”

“Oh my god! Natalie! Yes, I’ve heard so much about you too,” you reply, finally registering that this was the same woman in family photos that Carmy had shown you years ago. “It’s so nice to put a face to the name. And great to meet you too, Pete. Seriously, thanks for letting me stay at the place. I mean, you really didn’t have to.”

“Likewise,” she says back. She scoffs before rolling her eyes and continuing. “Leave it to Carmy to ask us for a favor and not even introduce you to us, that soft shitty bitch!”

“Babe,” Pete starts. “Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on Carmy, you know, in front of his-.” He gestures towards you and you’re not sure what he thinks you are to Carmy.

Sugar brushes him off with a, ‘whatever,’ before you notice that they’re both in need of clean forks.

“You guys need clean forks. I’m gonna-,” you start.

“Oh no! I uh-, let me get it,” Pete interrupts, practically jumping out of his seat.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, leaving the two of you alone.

You lean against the bar top towards Sugar.

“Well, he couldn’t get out of here fast enough,” you say with a laugh, stating the obvious. She laughs with a nod towards her husband.

“Yeah he’s… special,” she replies. “I think he uh, I think he just wanted to give us some time to talk.”

You’re not sure what to say next, because you’re not sure what you and Carmy’s sister, one you’ve never met before, would have to talk about.

“So how’s the place? Do you have everything you need or-?” Sugar begins, in reference to the airbnb.

“Oh! Yeah, no it’s great. I’ve got everything I need. Again, thank you. You really didn’t have to do that.”

“No, we wanted to!”

“Thanks…” you trail off, suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable – nervous, maybe? Yep, definitely nervous, you realize, as you begin to ramble. “It’s a really great apartment. Beautifully styled.”

What the fuck are you even talking about, you think to yourself.

“Oh, I did that! Styled it, I mean,” Sugar’s quick to respond.

“Oh, wow!” you say. Were all the Berzattos creative? “Yeah, I just-, I really appreciate it. Made getting out here a little easier.”

“No, yeah, it’s-, it’s no problem,” Sugar continues. “Really… anything for a friend of Carmy’s.”

You’re not sure why it’s so awkward, and it feels like you’re somehow both dancing around something you’re not even sure you should be dancing around.

“I hope you don’t think I’m a total bitch for saying this but,” Sugar starts, cautiously. While she doesn’t want to make her brother look like a total loser in front of you, she’s also unsure of how else to say what she says next.

“Bear's never really had any friends… not a lot of them, at least. So I-. Thank you. I mean. For being his friend, I guess… is what I’m trying to say.”

Bear.

You figure it's a family nickname. You wonder why you’ve never heard it before, and yet, it’s no surprise that he kept it from you. He’d been so evasive about his family when you’d first met. For a bit, it just felt like a topic that was off limits.

You take a beat, processing what she’s just said. In some ways, you always knew that Carmy was a bit of a loner, but you could feel the weight of what she’s saying – how much it meant to her.

“I know he’s not always easy to love but. I don’t know. He acts like he doesn’t need people, and I know he does. I mean, people outside of this fucked up shit hole anyways,” she continues, gesturing to her surroundings.

You agree with a small laugh, “Yeah, he can be a real dick sometimes. That’s for sure.”

“Seriously. Thank you,” she says, genuinely.

“Of course,” you reply, making sure she knows that her words mean a lot to you. You take a more playful tone as you continue. “To be fair, we did meet in another fucked up spot. Not so much a shit hole though.”

“Yeah, and there’s that,” she sighs, lightheartedly.

“I’m just glad he has someone. He needs someone. Even when he doesn’t want to.”

The rest of dinner service is a blur, as your mind continues to incubate on what Sugar had said to you. You let your interaction with her sit there, but try your best to focus on supporting the rest of service.

You all work together to wrap up the evening – a chaotic dinner service with a lot of lessons learned. You and Carmy are the last to leave as you notice he’s wrapping up a few things in his office. With your jacket on, backpack slung over one shoulder, you stop by to say goodnight before heading out.

He’s sitting in the chair, furiously scribbling a few notes down on a few pages of graphing paper. Your eyes flicker over all of the silly doodles on the whiteboard behind him.

“Hey,” you say, causing him to look up from his notebook.

“Good service tonight,” he says back.

“Yeah,” you nod in agreement. “Desserts were a hit.”

“I heard,” he replies.

You wait for him to say more, only he doesn’t.

“So, I’m gonna get out of here. Marcus is gonna fly solo tomorrow morning, so I won’t be in till the dinner shift,” you start, shooting him a polite smile.

You take a few steps away from the office before he calls out to you.

“Hey!”

You stop, taking a few steps backwards so that you’re standing in the office doorway once again.

“You hungry?” he asks, tentatively.

There’s a look in his eyes that you can’t quite identify: a little nervousness, and something else you haven’t had a chance to name yet. It’s like he’s not ready to part ways with you yet. You smile back at him, hoping to quell whatever nerves he has about the question he just asked you.

“Always, Carm.”

You’re tired and your feet ache from a particularly busy service, but you’re not ready to part ways with him either.

“Watcha thinkin?” you ask curiously, sliding your other arm through the loose strap of your backpack.

“Can I cook you something?” he proposes, hopefully.

You laugh.

“Is that even a real question?”

You wait for him as he wraps up his notes and gather his things. Carmy slips on his jacket and ballcap, ready to head home with you. On the way, he lights up a cigarette, offering one to you, but you tell him that you’re trying to quit – or at least trying to cut back. It’s not a long walk back to his place, and you anticipate it being something along the same lines as what he had in New York: facebook marketplace couch, minimal food in the fridge, a TV and a bed.

Nothing else – just a place to sleep, before he spends most of his day at the restaurant.

When you arrive, you’re not surprised to see that your assumptions were correct. Carmy flips on a few lights as you follow behind him. You drop your book bag onto his couch, slipping your shoes off and removing your jacket, as Carmy bee lines for the kitchen. You hear the faucet turn on as you tentatively explore his small apartment, before meeting him in the small kitchen area.

He takes his time, washing his hands, before drying them on a dish towel and throwing it over his shoulder.

“So what are we makin’, chef?” you inquire.

“We aren’t making anything. You’re gonna sit right over here,” he begins, gesturing towards the area across from his gas stovetop. “Oh shit. Hold on. Let me grab you a-.”

“I’m good here, chef,” you interrupt, making a sound as you hop onto the kitchen counter. You immediately reach for the bag of chips he’s thrown onto it. It’s not even closed properly with a clip or anything so expect them to be stale as you pop one of the chips into your mouth.

“Sour cream and onion? Change up from your regular doritos, huh?”

A small smile spreads across his face as he moves around his kitchen, locating a quarter sheet pan. He opens his practically desolate fridge, pulling out a fresh brick of pecorino romano, guanciale, and a few eggs he throws right into the pint-sized deli container that lays on the sheet pan. The rest follow: an unopened pound of dried spaghetti and black pepper, before he gently places the sheet pan on the counter, beginning to preheat two pans on the stovetop.

“Are you-?”

“Uh huh.”

You smile to yourself. He’s making one of your favorites: carbonara.

The first time he’d made it for you, you had just started spending some of your days off together – had just agreed to be a part of each others' quarantine pods. You knew he had Italian-American heritage but it was blatantly obvious when you took your first bite.

“Holy fuck,” you had practically moaned at your first bite. “This-, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m pretty sure your talents are being wasted on fine dining, my friend. This is… this is fucking unreal, dude.”

You had tried to convince him that this is the food you both should be cooking, but he vehemently denied the idea, insisting the fine dining was the highest on the food chain and the only way he could make a name for himself.

He’d been drinking the kool-aid. You both had.

You sit quietly, as Carmy works. You watch as he cuts perfect lardons, then renders the fat from the cured pork bits. The smell of the guanciale begins to fill the apartment, and Carmy opens a window, just to let the smoke dissipate.

“You can uh, put some music on if you want,” Carmy says, motioning towards the small bluetooth speaker he has on the coffee table. You agree to, hopping off of the kitchen counter and making your way towards his living area to set up the speaker.

You flip through your phone, looking for a good playlist to put on, settling on one of your dinner party playlists. The speaker booms with the sounds of an old jazz standard, redone as an acoustic cover, and you turn the volume up a little as the water for the spaghetti comes to a boil.

You spend time looking through Carmy’s bookshelf. It’s filled with thick-spined cookbooks from James Beard winning best restaurants and chefs. You drag your fingertips over the spine of a few classics, but settle on a fairly new book, written by someone at the New York Times.

“Do you have any other books besides cookbooks?” you call out to him.

He lets out a dry laugh and you take it as a no.

You make your way back to your spot on the counter, sliding the open chip bag over, before hopping back up to your seat. You flip through the cookbook as Carmy stays busy with the pasta.

It’s quiet moments like these that you’ve missed so much. Some days the two of you could talk for hours about sous vide vs reverse searing, and the right way to make a fucking bearnaisse sauce. Other days, Carmy wasn’t much for conversation, and you loved those ones equally. Sometimes, you just wanted company, so he’d come over and work on a recipe and you’d read while he worked in your kitchen.

You could just be together, and it was nice to feel that again.

No awkward tension of things left unsaid.

But there was a different kind of tension that seemed to linger between the two of you and you wondered if it had always been there. Had you just never noticed? Between the little comments from Richie about being out of his league, and Pete’s open-ended ‘not in front of his’ you wondered if everyone knew something you didn’t.

“Which one’d you go with?” he asks, continuing his graceful dance around the kitchen.

“Korean American. Eric Kim. I hadn’t had a chance to pick up a copy for myself yet, actually,” you answer, flipping through the first few pages.

Your met with quiet as you continue your story.

“You know we’re kind of friends. We went out for drinks a few times. Before I quit my job. Went dancing in the east village and stayed out till two in the morning bar hopping and gossiping about our mutual celebrity crush, Timothee Chalamet,” you add, your attention still fixed on the vibrant, colorful food photographs.

“Timothee Chalamet, huh?” Carmy asks, amused.

Your attention isn’t on Carmy, or what he’s doing, save for the sounds of him moving around the kitchen. That is, until you look up to find him unceremoniously close to you, peering over onto the page you seem so fascinated with.

“Jesus Christ, Car!” you gasp, surprised by his close proximity. Your heart was beating faster as he took a step back. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, his head hanging as he takes a few steps back. “Didn’t mean to.”

“No, it’s okay!” you assure. But it’s too late, so you change the subject, deciding to finish your story. “Anyways uh… I had to hang out with someone after you left New York. Make some new friends.”

“We both know you’ve never struggled with that,” Carmy points out, eliciting a playful eye roll from you.

He returns with the most aesthetically pleasing twirl of spaghetti carbonara. It’s so perfect you almost can’t fathom eating it. He hands it to you, then returns to his kitchen counter, plating a second bowl for himself.

After finishing the second twirl, he carelessly tosses his carving fork into the sink, opening another drawer to grab two forks for eating.

“Come on. You don’t want it to get cold,” he encourages, handing you one of the forks.

He waits patiently for you to try it first, so you dig your fork in, creating a spaghetti twirl that hugs the fork, before raising it up to your lips. You open your mouth, taking a bite, before closing your eyes in absolute bliss.

“I can’t fucking stand you.”

He smiles, and it’s the biggest smile you’ve seen on his face this whole week.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean. Fuck you. Like… absolutely fuck you.”

He laughs, finally picking up his own fork and digging into the second bowl he’s plate for himself.

Holy fuck, is it out of this world.

“Like, do you think they’re such a thing as a talent aggression? Like a cute aggression, only I want to squeeze your head off because you’re so damn talented-kind of aggression?” you pitch your idea to him, playfully.

He laughs, a blush spreading across his cheeks, “Uh… no. I don’t think so.”

Carmy rests his back against the counter, as you eat together, side by side. You eat quietly, exchange looks and quiet giggles as the two of you finish your pasta, slurping up the cheesy, egg-yolk coated noodles. When you finish your bowl, you put it down on the counter next to you, throwing your head back with a sigh.

“Thank you,” you say, fully satisfied as you feel the dopamine rush of eating carbs.

“That good, huh?” he asks, a cocky smirk on his face.

“So good,” you exhale happily, as you rest your head on his shoulder. “And you know it, you asshole.”

He chuckles, turning his head towards you just as you lift your head off of his shoulder, your faces mere inches away from each other. You watch as his face turns a few shades darker, the blush across his cheeks running through his whole face.

Are you two fucking idiots to pretend that you were just friends?

Yeah. Yes, you are.

“Sorry, I’m, I didn’t mean to um,” he stutters, beginning to pull away from you.

“Wait,” you call out, reaching out to stop him. You grab his arm.

And there it is again… the tension. That thing that, even when you had talked it out, has remained between you two. He stops moving, his eyes fixated on your hand – the one that’s reached for him. The one that feels hot against his skin.

“Carm, I-. Um, I’ve really missed…” you stammer through, trying not to sound as breathless as you feel.

I’ve really missed you.

“... your carbonara.” He looks up at you with those beautifully sad, cerulean blue eyes, and if you weren’t breathless before, you certainly are now.

“You should make this more often,” is all you manage to get out, and you know you sound helpless.

He doesn’t know what to say back. That he can hear the ache in your voice – a yearning for him that he never imagined anyone could ever have for him. That it’d be world war three, trying to get a carbonara on the dinner menu. That screaming would ensue over a goddamn emulsion. That there’d be no way to pull this off authentically, and that he’d have to use heavy cream, and no fucking way would he compromise on that.

On your favorite fucking dish.

That he only has these ingredients on hand because he went out and bought them in preparation for your visit.

That he only got them for you.

Because he maybe only wants to make carbonara for you, and only you, for forever and ever.

That he’s missed you too, and that wanting you is one of the scariest things he’s ever felt.

His eyes flicker from your hand, the one still holding onto him, and then back to your face. He’s not sure what possesses him to do it, but he can hear his brother’s voice in his head, let it rip, pushing him to lean in – even closer towards you. You wrap your fingers around his arm, encouraging him closer to you – if it’s even possible. Your foreheads meet and it’s as if all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. It’s like your vision narrows and the dimly lit apartment has faded away behind you.

It’s just you and him.

You feel dizzy – in the most delicious way possible.

You’re not sure who moves in first, but the tip of his nose is ever so gently bumping against yours. You brush the side of your nose against his, neither of you daring to take a breath.

“Carm?”

He doesn’t answer, so you gently begin to leave a kiss against the corner of his mouth.

“This okay?”

Then the side of his top lip.

“Mhm,” he nods, eager to continue where this is going.

Then you pull back, pulling him towards you so that, as you remain perched on top of his kitchen countertop, he fits perfectly between your knees. You lean in to kiss him, and this time, it’s not as hesitant… not as cautious as you’ve both been.

No, these kisses are different, each one opening up the door to more and more – more want, more need, more lust – and as it blooms, as it blossoms, you feel Carmy’s hand move gingerly to cradle your face as you fall down the rabbit hole. Your fingers tangle into his blonde curls allowing your sheer want for him to consume you. It’s lips, and tangled tongues, and tentative, soft moans as you continue to pull each other closer and closer.

And you slowly begin to understand: the lingering tension, the avoidance of labeling you from his brother-in-law, why he’s been terrified to say a damn thing to you this entire week.

As much as you tried, and as much as he’s tried, neither of you had put that night behind you.

Sure, it was shitty timing, and sure he wasn’t in the right headspace then. But now?

Now, could be different, if you’d let it.

Carmy pulls away from you, reluctantly, his face hot before asking, “You uh, you wanna take this somewhere else?”

His tone is hopeful, as if he’s the teenage dirtbag asking the prom queen out – like if you heard him, and you laughed in his face, he simply wouldn’t survive it.

But your response is quite the opposite, and he feels silly for worrying, as you manage a breathy ‘yes’ going back in for one more kiss. He gives you some space to hop off the counter and you grab his hand, leading him towards his bedroom. It’s not a huge place, so you put two and two together about where that is. Carmy leaves the lights off in his bedroom, the only glimmer of light either of you can see comes from the living room lamps, and the kitchen overhead.

With his hand in yours, you pull him towards you again, and he’s more than happy to let you lead. You begin to kiss him, taking note of how perfectly his top lip feels nestled in between yours. He follows you down to his bed, hesitant to put his full body weight on top of you. You giggle into the kiss, pulling him down to you.

“I’m not a porcelain doll, Carm,” you tease, gently.

You feel his lips twist into a smile against yours, as he begins to leave sloppier, wetter kisses down your neck. You allow him to explore as his hesitation lessens, his hands beginning to bunch up the hemline of your shirt. Higher and higher. And before you know it, you’re taking it off, impatiently throwing it somewhere you’ll barely remember in the light of day. You pull Carmy back down for another kiss, this time with a little more intensity, as he covers his body with yours, his hands and mouth exploring every inch of newly revealed skin that he possibly can.

You’re not sure when his shirt joined yours on the floor but before it registers, you’re running your fingers across the muscles of his back, exploring each peak and valley. You hiss in pure pleasure as he pulls down one of the cups of your bra, his tongue running across one of your nipples. You can feel him smile against your skin, a well-won reaction from the pleasure he’s giving you. His other hand reaches up to give equal attention to your other breast, and moments later, you’re both impatiently pulling your bra off.

“Wanna try something,” Carmy murmurs, his eyes meeting yours.

You can feel the wet heat pooling between your legs as you breathe out, “Okay.”

The anticipation is building in your body and you feel like your head might explode. Carmy busies his mouth once again, leaving kisses down your torso as his hands begin to fiddle with the button on your jeans. You giggle, more than willing to help him out as he gets them undone, lifting your hips so that he can slide them off.

He’s hesitant, and you’re trying your damnedest to be patient as he takes his sweet time to marvel at your almost-naked body.

“So fucking perfect,” Carmy whispers, in between leaving wet, open mouthed kisses across your hip bones. You can hardly breathe, panting out loud as he continues his exploration. You make space for him between your legs as he slips his hands into your panties, dragging a finger up and down your dripping sex.

He checks in with you, gauging your reaction, and you nod as he continues what he’s doing.

“This all for me?” he asks. He means for it to sound confident, but as the words leave him, he sounds more surprised than anything.

Before you can answer, he’s pushing your legs wider, his tongue gently running across your clit, causing you to cry out to the gods. He’s tentative at first, but it doesn’t take long for him to gather up the confidence to keep going, with the noises you’re making. At first it’s all tongue, licking, circling and flattening up against you, but you’re losing your mind as he adds his fingers back into the mix. His fingers are buried deep inside of you while his lips and tongue are bringing you far past your edge.

It’s as if the only words you can remember are his name, and ‘fuck.’

You feel his lips curl into a smile against you as he murmurs, “Just wanna make you feel good.”

You can feel it – your climax – building up, and Carmy groans, rutting his hips into the bed as he can no longer ignore how hard he is.

“Carmy, yes. Don’t stop, please. I’m-,” you beg, your voice shaking.

And he has no intention of stopping till he gets what he wants – till he makes you cum. He works you through your orgasm, groaning against you as you cum on his tongue and around his fingers. You swear for a moment that you can’t hear a single thing as stars fill your vision. As you come to, it starts with only the sounds of the heavy pants that escape your mouth. Carmy sits up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Holy fuck,” you say, breathless.

Carmy lays over you once again, kissing you, and you can taste yourself on his lips.

Your hands fumble with the button on his jeans and you order, no patience left in a single cell of your body, “Off. These need to come off.”

He chuckles, hurrying through the removal of his jeans. You’re so eager to feel the weight of his body on top of yours again that you pull him back down to you before he’s even able to properly take them off.

He’s kissing you again as you reach down, grabbing his hard length through his underwear. He’s thicker than you remember. You slip your hand into the waistband of his briefs, causing him to grunt. He hisses your name as you wrap your soft hand around his dick, bucking his hips into your hand.

“Do you have a condom?” you ask, desperately. “I wanna feel you, Carm.”

“Mhm.”

He doesn’t keep condoms around. It’s not like this happens very often for him. But Richie had thrown a pack of condoms at his head the minute he found out that the friend that was coming to visit was a girl. Richie had teased him with some stupid quip like ‘don’t forget to wrap it up, cousin. No one wants a mini-eleven madison park dickhead running around here.’

He hadn’t expected this to happen. But it’s not like he’d thrown the condoms away either – tucking them into the single drawer of his nightstand.

You wait as he reaches over and pulls out a condom from his nightstand. You want to ask him about why he has them, but as long as you get to feel him, you’re not sure you care.

You’ve been here before with him, but this is different. He sits up on his knees and you follow him, pulling his briefs down properly and giving him time to roll on the condom. He follows you back down onto the bed as you wrap a leg around his waist so that he can fit perfectly between yours.

He waits a beat, and then you feel his thick tip pushing against you, causing your breath to catch in your throat. He rubs the head up and down your slick core, before slowly beginning to push into you.

You both gasp at the feel of each other.

“Fuck. You’re so fuckin’ tight,” he moans, dropping his head into the crevice of your neck. He hopes you can’t tell how utterly helpless he feels.

You hiss at the way he’s stretching you open, the pads of your fingertips digging into his arms. You’re holding onto his arms for dear life as he fills you all the way to the hilt. You let out another moan as you as he stays there for a moment.

“This okay?”

You nod, pulling him down to kiss you again. You start moving your hips against his as Carmy gives you shallow thrusts.

“Hold on,” he breathes out, holding your hips down for a moment. “Just-, just give me a second.”

And you do, allowing him to collect himself, before he’s giving you shallow, gentle thrusts.

But you’re in desperate need for more.

“Carmy?”

“Yeah?”

“Fucking move.”

Finally, finally, he pulls almost all the way out, before driving himself back into you, earning a cry from you as the pleasure is just too much.

“Oh fuck!”

You want more. You want everything and all of him and so much more. And he gives it to you, continuing to check in that what he’s doing is okay. Before you know it, you’re begging him to go faster, harder, convincing him that you’re not fucking breakable and that you want more, grasping at the sheets and his biceps, and his curls – anything you can hang on to as he’s bringing you over your edge again for the second time tonight.

You’re crying out his name as you cum, and Carmy thinks it may be the sweetest, best thing he’s ever heard in his life. He fucks you through your climax, beginning to slow down the pace of this thrusts. He pauses, kisses you long and hard, passionately pausing just to be in this moment with you.

“Carm?” you manage to get out. You wonder if he can hear how much you want him just by the sound of your voice.

“Hm?”

“I wanna ride you,” you say, and you can feel that your words have gone straight to his dick as he twitches inside of you.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The two of you clumsily change positions – him on his back staring up at you in awe, like how the hell does that perfect, beautiful, creature want to be here with me now? You reach down, guiding him back inside of you and you’re both gasping at the contact. You begin grinding your hips against him, watching his eyes roll back as you make your movement a little bigger.

“Jesus Christ,” he sighs out, the pleasure of it all taking over his brain.

You know he won’t last much longer as you begin to ride him, rocking your hips back and forth. Carmy hands are on your hips, then running up and down your torso, grabbing your tits, and then they’re pulling you down to him for another passionate makeout as you continue your movements. You can feel his thrusts becoming more erratic as he starts thrusting up into you. You keep riding him, reaching for his hands and placing them along your hips.

“Show me how you want it,” you whisper in between kisses.

“I think this is nice,” he manages to say.

“Show me how you want it, Carmen,” you demand, emphasizing your need for him with use of his full name. “Let me make you cum.”

You squeeze his hands against your ass, egging him on, and he’s not sure what he’s done to deserve this. He holds onto your hips, before thrusting up into you, setting a bruising pace as your moans become louder and louder. You scream out his name, as he brings you closer and closer to your high, chasing his with him.

He grunts, his thrusts becoming sloppier, messier, more desperate and you let him use your body in the most delicious ways.

“Are you gonna cum?”

Instead of answering, he’s driving into you like a fucking mad man, and you’re riding him through his high till you both collapse.

Carmy lets out a strangled moan as he cums, so you begin to slow your movements. You’re breathless, hunched over him, your foreheads touching as you exchange a laugh.

It's a kind of 'I can't believe we just did that' kind of laugh.

“Holy shit,” he says, shaking his head.

“Yeah,” you agree, a stupid, blissed out smile on both of your faces.

“That was-.”

“Yeah.”

You get off of him, allowing him to get up and dispose of the condom. He’s not gone long before he returns to you, wrapping the both of you up in his sheets and into his arms. It feels unlike anything you’ve ever had.

It feels… magnificent.

“Stay with me tonight?” he asks, leaving a few soft kisses along your shoulder.

“After that?” you giggle, as his lips against your neck begin to tickle. “You’re not getting rid of me, Berzatto. Not a fucking chance.”

read: part five

taglist: @lazypeachsoul @bookwormvoyageuse @allthefandomstogether @gaysludge @sobshoney

#carmy berzatto smut #carmen berzatto x you #carmy berzatto #carmy x oc #the bear hulu #the bear fx #jeremy allen white #carmen 'carmy' berzatto #the bear marcus #sydney adamu #the bear tina #richie jerimovich #carmy berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto smut

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wearethecyclones · 14 days ago

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JoshEddie part 2????

(Now that's what I call hyperfixation. This one is Eddie's POV, from the diner... turns out writing things for little tumblr fic moments is good for my little shriveled up writer brain. y'all were very nice to me about the other one [LINKED HERE], thank youuuu)

It’s been too long of a night and morning for Eddie to bother second guessing himself about this. He taps his thumb against the steering wheel at a red light and ruminates on the memory of seeing Josh and his fake mustache from an aisle away. His first thought had been “that guy’s cute” and his second had been “wait, that’s Josh.” Something to add to the list of things to unpack in therapy.

He’s been spending a lot of time third-wheeling Buck and Tommy is all. Not that he’s claiming queerness is catching, he’s just been in a space where openness is fine. Better than fine, openness is good. And Buck has always been surprisingly non-toxic in ways that absolutely have been catching. Or at least, encouraging. Eddie hadn’t ever found it all that hard to be soft and sweet with his son. Never struggled to make friends. Never wrestled with empathy or sensitivity, at least not since escaping his parents’ direct influence.

But anyway, he thinks finding another man to be attractive is just… non-toxic of him too.

Right?

Josh had told him to look for street parking and luckily downtown is still a bit sleepy at this hour so it’s not hard to come by. He parallel parks behind Josh’s efficient little sedan, Josh watching as he pays at the meter. He’s glad he pulls of a smooth parking job under his watchful eye.

“That thing is a monster truck,” Josh says, walking to stand at Eddie’s elbow while he puts time on the meter. He eyes Eddie’s truck judgmentally.

Eddie scoffs, sliding his credit card back into his wallet. Josh leads the way. The diner is on the ground floor of an old, stately building nestled into a block full of newer high rises. The stone stairs up to the door are worn smooth.

“You’re a walking firefighter stereotype,” Josh says without any indication of heat. “Mustache, huge truck…” He holds the door open for Eddie.

“Yeah? Very curious to hear what other stereotypes I fit.”

“Hot. Cute with kids.”

“Uh huh, nice swerve.” He is very determined to ignore the “hot” part there.

A waiter seats them and leaves them with sticky plastic menus. Josh peels his open and lifts his eyebrows at Eddie over the top of it. “What, are there negative stereotypes about firefighters or something?” he asks, faux innocent.

“That they cheat,” Eddie says easily. His heart twists, guilty. He’s pretty sure Josh doesn’t actually know about that but what if he does?

To his surprise, Josh rolls his eyes. He looks back at the menu in front of him. “Firefighters don’t cheat any more than anyone else in any other career does.” He flicks to the next page.

“I guess.” Eddie glances at the menu for something to do but he already knows what he wants.

Josh closes his and sets it down. The waiter comes by to set down water and coffee cups and take their orders.

After he’s gone, Josh makes a thoughtful sound. “Oh, I’ve got one. Do you have a weirdly specific tool in your pocket?”

“Or am I just happy to see you?”

“Jesus, Diaz,” Josh laughs.

Eddie smiles. He shifts to reach into his pocket and pulls out his keychain, featuring a multitool for breaking car windows and cutting seatbelts.

“There it is,” Josh says, laughing. “Though, honestly, I should probably have one. Where’d you get yours?”

“Here, I’ll text you the link, what’s your number?” Eddie asks, pulling his phone out from under his thigh.

“Oh, so you don’t have my number saved, huh?” Josh teases. “We’ve been on many a text thread together, Eddie.”

“Sure have been,” Eddie teases back. He doesn’t mention that those text threads are usually group chats related to traumatic events, most recently Chimney’s disappearance before the wedding.

“Petty,” Josh says, holding out the final syllable, trailing off into a smile. “I don’t have your number saved either.”

“Petty,” Eddie mimics back at him.

“You know, bitchy really does work for you, I kinda love it.”

“Gotta match energy.”

Josh’s mouth drops open and he holds his hand to his chest, playing at offended. And then he gives him his number.

Eddie makes a show of saving his number too. “J… O… S… H… Russolini...”

“If that’s a Mussolini joke, it’s game over for you.” But the light of an unexpressed laugh is in his eyes.

“It’s just because you’re sooo bossy.”

“I’m actually not even that bossy, you were just a little wounded by a man asserting dominance over you.” A coy smirk twists his lips.

Eddie’s surprised at how light he feels broaching this topic. Eddie hated Josh when he was at dispatch. He knew they’d probably exist in similar enough circles for a very long time despite that hatred, so he’d chosen a path of disinterest and avoidance since going back to the 118. But if he’s being honest with himself he’s pretty sure Josh was just a tributary, an off-shoot of negative energy that branched off from the river that was Eddie’s mental breakdown. It had just felt somewhat stable to dislike him.

Distantly, even then, he’d known Josh was right. And that he was good at his job. None of the people Eddie befriended at dispatch ever had any complaints about him as a manager either.

“I don’t mind a little dominance,” Eddie says. He punctuates it with a sip of his coffee and watches something complicated flit across Josh’s features. He sets the coffee down and hits send on the link.

Josh’s phone, face down on the table, vibrates seconds later. Josh picks it up. “I’m failing to think of a mean way to save your number. But I reserve the right to change it later.”

Eddie shows him his phone, Josh’s contact page open. Josh squints at it and huffs a laugh. Eddie had just written his name, simple enough, but adorned it with an emoji of a mustachioed man.

“Alright, you get the same treatment then.”

When their food comes, they descend into comfortable enough silence. Josh was right, the French toast is great. Eddie doesn’t mean to observe him too closely, but he does note that Josh is meticulous. He had carefully laid out the silverware included in the paper napkin roll and had folded his straw paper into a little puffy star. He slowly and methodically cuts his French toast into even bites. It’s at this point that Josh looks up at Eddie with a wrinkle between his brows and Eddie realizes he’s been staring a little.

He clears his throat and takes a bite of food to shake the moment off.

“So,” Josh says. “Can I ask why your kid is in El Paso or is that none of my business?”

“You can ask,” Eddie says. He takes another bite and lets the silence stretch on.

“You are such a brat, oh my God,” Josh laughs.

Eddie swallows his food and flashes him a smile.

He feels like this must be what it’s like to play chess. One little move after another, carefully placing pieces to coax someone into a position you want them to be in. Eddie’s not sure what position he wants Josh in, exactly. But he wants to see how he’ll respond. Quip for quip, tease for tease.

“He uh, well…” Eddie says, showing a little mercy. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“You got somewhere to be? Because I don’t.”

Eddie doesn’t either. And Josh’s face is open, kind. Eddie knows it’s optional, that he doesn’t have to get into it here or now or ever with Josh. But he kinda wants to.

“You know what, I don’t,” Eddie says. So he starts from the beginning.

#josheddie #jeddie #eddiejosh #911 show #911 abc #eddie diaz #josh russo #amanda writes things and stuff

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pandora-writes-one-piece · 3 months ago

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The Meet Cute - Ace's Story - 9

Source for pic

Firestarter 9

Word Count: 4410

Tags For The Whole Story: Fem!Reader, slight NSFW (It's mature, not explicit), slightly sugestive behaviour, flirting, jealousy, frenemies, sexual tension, miscommunication, unresolved tension, slight angst, slow-burn, romantic comedy vibes, alternate universe modern setting, swearing, drinking, fluff, feelings realisation, denial of feelings.

Special Warning: English is not my first language, I apologise for any possible spelling or grammar mistakes.

Summary: After moving away from the hustle and bustle of Grand Line City to help your father around the property following a horse-riding accident - and in the hopes of healing your broken heart after your asshole ex-fiancé cheated - you settle into the country calmness of the Calm Belt. You intended to have some alone time, to reflect and heal, but your childhood friend's older brother, Ace, seems to be there just to upset that fragile peace you're striving for. He's a flirt and a womaniser. But why does he also have to be so handsome and perfect? And how long can you resist his charms?

Notes: Almost at the end! I was planning on having only 10 chapters, but chapter 10 - which is in Ace's POV - is starting to get big. So maybe 10 and an epilogue? We'll see! Also, sorry if the next chapter will suffer a little delay, I will try to finish it soon, but life has been getting in the way! 😶

Tag List: @rosidaze @beachaddict48 @armiliadawn

Masterlist for previous introductory chapters.

Days roll by slowly and you feel the happiest you've ever been. The only time you're apart from Ace is when he's working or when you're helping your father. You spend all the rest of your time together, hanging out, getting to know each other, and having so much sex.

You have only spent one night apart since you two hooked up. The night after you visited the fire station, he told you he was busy with work because the reports from the whole week had piled up and he was going to pull an all-nighter, so he couldn't be with you. The other nights were spent in each other’s company.

You slept with him at the fire station once and then he developed the habit of climbing your bedroom window so you could be together. Even though he usually arrives when you're already asleep - because of work - and it's not until you sense his hot touches and lingering kisses that you realise he's next to you.

And you both have to be very quiet, because Shanks would be very mad if he found you desecrating your childhood bed.

Finally the last day of the Jubilee arrives and it's Ace's day off work, so you decide to turn it into a proper date. You'll eat something there, play a few games - you've been eyeing a giant stuffed panda since the first day - maybe ride the Ferris wheel, and then Ace suggests driving to your spot for a privileged view of the fireworks at midnight.

And after…

Well, you'll both see where the night takes you.

You have already eaten some snacks at the food stalls and are now enjoying a piece of candy floss - which Ace keeps stealing from you - when a little kid bumps into your leg and falls on his butt. It takes you a bit to calm him down and find his parents and suddenly you lose sight of Ace.

Raising your eyebrow, you take another bite of your candy and wait in the same spot. He might have seen someone he knew and wandered off to say hello.

“Did you miss me, Firestarter? I've only been gone for five minutes.” He says from behind, near your ear as he lays a kiss on your cheek.

“Oh, barely even noticed you were gone.” Sticking out your tongue at him, you offer the rest of the candy and he happily takes it. “Why were you gone?”

“Business.” He chuckles softly and winks, letting you know that he will either tell you later or it's a surprise. “Let's go to the Ferris wheel.”

You take the hand he offers you and smile at the giddiness you feel from such a simple gesture. It's amazing how he can warm your heart just by holding your hand. Waiting in line for the wheel takes almost no time and you both hop into the booth, settling in together and sighing at the sight.

You're about to snuggle into his embrace when he takes something from his pocket and you raise your eyebrow. “Turn.” He instructs, rotating a finger to indicate you should turn your back on him. Curious, you do as he tells you.

His fingers are soft and warm as he moves little strands of your hair aside. You hear a small clasp and then he places a necklace on your chest, clasping it at the back. It's a locket with a heart.

“This is lovely, Ace. It's beautiful.”

His lips scorch your skin as he presses them against your nape. He murmurs an agreement and continues his worship down your exposed spine, leaving a trail of kisses and feather-like touches, creating a burning and aching sensation all over your body.

“Ace…” You whine and melt into his touch.

“You're so perfect.” He keeps murmuring sweet nothings against your skin and you turn around, enveloping his neck in your arms and losing yourself against his lips in a passionate kiss.

No outside view compares to the stars his touch reveals. The languid strokes of his tongue against yours trace out a constellation of your own, while his fingers caress your skin, igniting goosebumps like the fiery trail of a meteor.

The booth comes to a stop far earlier than both of you would like and you emerge flushing, panting and quite dishevelled. Both sporting equally goofy grins of fools in love.

No, that's not true. You know you're in love, but you have no idea how Ace feels about you.

Maybe you'll confess once the fireworks start? See how he feels about you. You know he cares for you, that much you can tell. And you're willing to wait, if he's not at the same stage as you are, since he did claim to want a serious relationship.

Yeah, you'll ask him.

As the resolution sets in and the midnight hour approaches, you start to make your way back to the car, but Ace gets called over by some friends and you tell him to go say hi as you browse some vendor stands.

“So you're Ace's new thing?” The voice is haughty and scornful and it takes a hot minute for you to realise that the person is talking to you.

“Excuse me?” You ask as you turn around and are greeted by a tall, elegant girl with a snide smile.

“Honey, don't play dumb.” She spits as she throws her hair over her shoulder. “Ace likes to have playthings to toy with from time to time. He gets tired of his one-night stands and dates a rando for a few weeks. Until he gets bored.” She laughs a high-pitched annoying laugh into her hand and stares at you from top to bottom, making you feel self-conscious about your casual outfit - denim overall shorts and a cute over the belly top. “Oh, and honey, you are certainly boring.”

The remark leaves a hot blush on your cheeks as it stings. This girl is poking her finger in the wound and digging, making it worse. She's the type of girl Ace would go for: tall, skinny, pretty. And you… you're just you. A normal girl, nothing too special.

“Enjoy your time with him, sunshine, soon enough, he'll trade up. I'm sure he's told you you're special, and that he's never met someone like you; that you were never just some random girl, right? Does he have a special nickname for you, too?”

You're pretty sure your teeth will snap from all the grinding they're doing. You want to tell this girl to go to hell because you know Ace cares for you. But what she's saying strikes too close to the truth for your liking. It's all too real. And that's when she hits you with the final blow.

“I bet he's taking you to his special place to see the fireworks, right? Think you're the only one, honey? Think again. Been there, done that. And here I am. Jilted, as you'll also be.” She gives another high-pitched cackle and you swallow the lump in your throat. There's nothing you can say to her. No comeback, no witty response. She's telling the truth, you're sure of it. “And think about it, honeybee, didn't he tell you the other night he was too busy to spend the night with you? You thought it was about work? Oh, honey…”

You practically freeze on the spot. Yes you thought he was busy with work. You didn't doubt it at all! But if she knew about this, could she have been the one to spend time with him? And here you thought that you were actually special, that this time he was telling the truth and really wanted to be with you.

Turns out you really are just another girl?

You see Ace coming back and the girl disappears just as quickly as she appeared. You're standing in the same spot, heart thumping against your chest, eyes prickling and throat dry.

“Hey, Firestarter, are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost.” He touches your cheek softly and you recoil, a hurt look on your features. “What's wrong?” Ace eyes you with confusion.

But you don't quite know what to tell him. “I… this girl…” You take a deep steadying breath. “I… never mind.” Swallowing the huge lump that has formed in your throat, you reluctantly accept his hand.

Your head keeps replaying the words that girl told you, like a broken record, echoing them over and over. And every time your heart constricts harder against your chest as tears start to prickle the corners of your eyes. Once you reach the jeep, you feel Ace's worried look burning into you, yet when he asks you what's wrong again, you don't really know what to tell him.

You don't know if you're just making things up in your head or if what the girl said is true. What you do know is that your already fleeting trust in Ace has been rattled. And you feel more insecure than ever.

“Can you take me home, Ace, please?” Your voice is a mere whisper and you can't force your eyes to meet his. Are you really just another thing for him to play with when he's bored? Or are you actually as special as he makes you feel? You need time alone to process and think and you can't do it with him giving you worrying looks.

“You don't want to go see the fireworks? At our spot?” He sounds more sad than upset, but you shake your head at his words. A scornful expression on your lips as a dry chuckle rumbles through your throat.

“Is it really our spot, Ace? You told me it was special and you wanted to show it to me because I am special. And that's fine. But I'm not the only special girl you've had in your life, am I? I'm just your current special girl.” You're stubborn, and so are your tears. Yet you're not surprised when one breaks through the barrier you were constructing and falls down your cheek. “And that's also okay! You've had your life before me, and I can't blame you for that! Especially because I knew that before we happened.” A silly little sob escapes your lips and Ace stares at you, helpless. It looks as if he wants to hold you and comfort you, but you're giving him all the signs that you want him to stay away from you, so he does just that.

“I'm really confused at the moment, Ace. Please, take me home.” You climb into the passenger seat, vowing not to say anything else because you're feeling hurt and slighted and you know you'll snap and end up shouting and getting mad at Ace.

And you can't really do that. You told him the truth. He had a life before you reconnected. He could have dated, fucked, kissed half the town or the whole town. It was none of your business.

It still hurts, though. Because you really were starting to feel special. In your mind you had a made-up scenario where Ace had never felt for anyone the way he feels for you. That you're the first girl he ever fell in love with. Yet, according to that girl, there were other special girls before. And it should be fine, as you keep repeating to yourself.

But it's not fine.

Because you wanted to be special for Ace.

And you're not.

Ace climbs into the jeep and before starting the engine, his eyes try to pry some kind of information from you as to why you're behaving like this. You keep silent and face the window, effectively shutting him out. Sighing deeply he starts the car at the same time bright lights erupt in the sky, though neither of you cares to watch them now.

When Ace stops the jeep in front of your porch, you climb out immediately and he follows you. You're halfway up the stairs when he grabs your wrist to stop you. The burn in your eyes is getting stronger and you just want to open the dam and cry your heart out.

Whispering your name Ace wills you to turn. You do, reluctantly, but have trouble facing his gaze.

“Are you going to at least tell me what happened before you go?” He sounds so distraught. Enough to make you glimpse at his dark eyes, though your expression is still very sombre and pained.

“A girl came to talk to me, Ace. She told me you had a tendency to get bored of one-night stands when you found a special girl. You would give her a cute nickname, treat her as if she's the only girl in the world, take her to your special place and then, once you got bored again, you traded up. She made it quite clear that I'm not your type at all.” You couldn't help the sting and venom from dripping out of your words.

You had been mulling over the girl's words during the silent ride, growing angrier and angrier at them, at her, and at yourself. You were the gullible one for believing that someone would find you special.

“But you are special.” He says frowning and tugging at your wrist in a feeble attempt to get you to descend the steps and come closer to him. Yet you don't relent.

“Yet you can't deny what she said.”

He looks down and sighs. “I don't lie to you, Firestarter. You know that. You know there were other girls before, but I have never taken them to our place. And they might have been special if you want to call them that, but none of them compares to you.”

You do know that he doesn't lie to you. He told you that and you chose to believe it.

Though… “The other night when you said you were busy, did you meet with a girl?”

Ace grits his teeth and avoids your gaze as your jaw drops in surprise. He's not denying it.

“It's not what you think. She came by the station to-...”

You pull your wrist hard, away from him and he has no choice but to open his hand for fear of hurting you and he lets you go. “I don't want to hear this right now, Ace. I don't. I need to think.” You place your index and thumb against the bridge of your nose, trying to both contain a throbbing headache and the torrent of incoming tears. “I need some time apart to think things through and if you start to sputter excuses I'll just be angry and that's not what I want. I need to think about us objectively.”

You take a step back, climbing another step, still shaking your head and raising your hand to stop his words or his strides. To stop him. Period.

“Don't reach out, Ace. Don't. I'll speak with you when I'm ready.” You make the mistake of looking into his face before you turn and you can almost feel your heart shatter into tiny pieces.

He looks devastated.

Yet, so do you.

-*-

You barely sleep all night and each time you get up - often, actually - to get food, water or use the bathroom, you notice that Ace has a small light on in his room as well. He must be struggling to find sleep, too.

Every time you think about the look on his face, you feel like crying. It seems as if you are special to him, it really does. But are you, really? Or is it just wishful thinking?

Deep down you have trust issues that still need healing. Your ex cheating on you only brought them to the surface, but you know enough about trauma to realise that many of these issues stem from childhood and from feeling abandoned by Shanks. Although you hold no grudge against your father, you know you still haven't fully healed. Little triggers like what happened with that girl, are all it takes to get you spiralling out of control.

You know you need to deeply evaluate your feelings for Ace before taking this relationship further. Because there will always be girls from his past. Ace has been around. You knew that. So it's bound to happen.

Girls hold grudges like a miser hoards gold!

They will come and try to claim him, throw you off with hurtful words, and plant seeds of doubt in your mind. You need to decide now if you are willing - and strong enough - to face that every now and then.

And if the relationship you build will be strong enough to withstand it.

Sighing, you check your phone again. You're fighting hard against calling him. You've caught him writing something to you twice, seeing the speech bubbles appear. Yet, he hasn’t sent any text. Although part of you wishes he had reached out, another part of you is glad he's respecting your request.

You do need time to process.

Your heart, however, doesn’t. It keeps pounding relentlessly against your chest, reminding you it has already made its decision: it wants Ace. Desperately. It's a longing and a yearning so deep it almost aches.

You miss him.

You miss his scent, his touch, his voice and his kisses. You need him.

You cuddle the pillow he uses when he visits and take a deep sniff, filling your lungs with his scent and shed a few more tears. The only other night you've spent apart was…

The one the girl knew about. The one he was probably with her.

Sitting up you throw his pillow to the floor and cross your legs, finding your phone and unlocking it. You find Luffy’s contact and rejoice when you realise he's online. You had a vague idea he was at the firestation today, but this confirms it.

You call, and it rings twice before he answers, greeting you with your name. “How are you?” He sounds worried. Has Ace spoken to him already?

“Hey, Loof.” Your voice sounds hoarse and raspy from all the crying. “I'm… feeling shitty.” You chuckle softly while fiddling with your ankle bracelet.

“Ace told me you needed some time apart from him.” He sounds serious, which is so rare that you sit up straighter. “Want to talk about it?”

“Hmm, hmm.” You mumble between a sob and a hiccup.

He calls your name again with a sigh. “Ace really likes you. I've never heard him speak about someone the way he does about you. He even told Grandpa you two were getting serious. He never tells Grandpa anything!”

The pressure on your chest builds up and starts to expand. Does he really think you're special?

“Loof… this girl came to me at the festival. She knew Ace couldn't be with me the other night. She implied she was with him and when I asked him, he didn't deny it.”

You sound miserable. You can't help but think that perhaps you're the one keeping yourself from being happy. You've had that thought before. When you discovered that Ichiji was cheating on you, your first thought was that it was your fault. That you deserved to be cheated on because you hadn’t tried hard enough.

And now, your mind instantly goes to the same place. Ace spent the night with another girl because you just aren't good enough for him. You're not what he wants in a girl.

Completely ignoring everything he tells you and how he acts towards you. Because he keeps acting devoted and dedicated to you, and you're too dumb or too self-absorbed in self-pity to realise it.

Perhaps it's time to stop feeling sorry for the misery you create for yourself and start taking responsibility for your actions.

Ultimately, you have to be the one responsible for your fate.

“I know who she is. Ace was with her for a little while, but it wasn't that serious. I didn't even meet her officially… Anyway, she did come by the station the other day, when Ace was working. He was talking to you on the phone when she came looking for him. The station issn’t exactly private if you're not in the rooms, and he wasn't. Maybe she overheard the conversation between the two of you?” He exhales your name on the other side. “She was barely here for five minutes. Ace told her off and she left pouting. I'm sure that whatever she told you was meant to try and split you up.”

You're seething now. Obviously it was meant to split you two up! She couldn't know about your trust issues, but anyone who's dating Ace has to have them. He's a player. There will always be a nagging feeling about other girls he's been with. So it wasn't exactly a shot in the dark. She baited the hook and you swallowed it whole.

You can bet she's just waiting for you to blow up your relationship - or beginnings of one - to smithereens so she can pick up Ace's pieces and help him get over you.

“Fucking hell, she will!”

Luffy laughs on the other end. A short shishishi that gets you laughing along with him. “That's the spirit!”

Tears are still streaming down your face. But you might've reached a decision. You're going to take that leap of faith and give all of yourself to Ace. No reservations. You need to accept him for who he is.

And, more importantly, you need to trust him.

The previous plan will have to go back into action. Tell him you love him. Maybe you can build from there? Because you do love him. And there's no bitch in the world that's going to tear you apart like that.

“Thank you, Luffy. That was enlightening. I needed that.” You sigh into the phone, your voice much lighter.

“Anytime! You know, I really like my dumb brother.” And he laughs again, making you chuckle with him. “I've never seen him as happy as he's been these last few days. So talk to him soon, will you?”

You promise to do it first thing tomorrow since sleep is finally claiming you, and you say your goodbyes to your friend. Before going to bed, you pick up Ace's pillow from the floor and check out his window - the lights are now out.

Okay, you'll both get to sleep on it. Tomorrow is a new day.

-*-

Yet, tomorrow begins with a raging storm. There's pouring rain everywhere and you rush to help Shanks with the animals. Both of you are working hard and pulling the hay bales inside the barn, because the forecast did not foresee this deluge, and the bales were fine outside.

Shanks tells you he tried to call Ace to help - your heart somersaults - but he was heading to the station to help since there were floods all over town.

Well that's just another thing the storm manages to hinder. Your encounter with Ace. You were planning on heading to his house as soon as you helped Shanks, to talk with him, yet you can't do that now because he's not there.

And there's no use in calling him. For two reasons, actually: one, he's probably super busy and two, the lines are acting up because of the storm and the service is down.

So you decide to wait out the storm.

Yet, the afternoon rolls by without any sign of the storm stopping, and now you're overly anxious. Ace is still not home - the jeep is out - and you need to speak with him. You don't think Luffy would've shared your conversation with his brother so Ace is probably still feeling devastated by the way you parted yesterday. You feel responsible. And you miss him so much.

You try to call him again and by the third time, you finally get through.

Ace sputters your name with surprise. “Ace!” You can barely hear him and you're pretty sure he can barely hear you. There's lots of static and the thunder and pouring rain don't help at all. “Ace! Can you hear me?”

“Barely!” He says something else but you can't understand it.

“Are you at the station?”

“Yes.”

“I'm going to meet you there! We need to talk.”

You're not sure he heard you at all, but you think you hear him saying for you to stay home. Probably because of the storm. Yet, it seems like the rain has finally relented so what better time to go to him than now?

You're not quite sure if he hears you or not, but you need to get this off your chest before you go. “Ace, I love you.”

You hold on a second but are only greeted by static. He might not have heard you.

Sighing, you get the car keys and send a text to your dad - even if you don’t know if he’ll get it or not, so you’ll leave a note in the kitchen as well. Shanks is over at Benn Beckman helping him because the roof of the barn broke and they need to fix it because all the animals are getting wet. Shanks promised he would not get on top of the roof, in case his back gave out, but he's still helping out any way he can. So you let him know you are going out so he doesn't worry.

You've gotten into the habit of patting your car before turning the ignition and it responds well to praise, so that's exactly what you do before starting the engine and it doesn't let you down.

Grinning, you make your way to the station, going well under the limit because the road is wet, slippery and the rain reduces your visibility significantly.

You can't wait to see Ace. You need to feel him against you. There's an unending desire to feel his lips moving in tandem with yours, his tongue caressing your own as his hands explore you. The stupid silly grin doesn't leave your face.

Not even when you spot the tiny black cat in the middle of the road and you swerve right to avoid hitting the poor thing.

Not even when your car slips and slides as you push the brakes.

Not when the deafening sound of metal crashing, windows breaking and the sickening crunch of broken bones fills your ears.

It all happens too fast.

Then darkness descends just as quickly.

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