#i get to go to school and study linguistics!!

[yo9urt]

the other day i had this beautiful realization that in many ways i am living the life my teenage self dreamed of

[xoshepard]

in an ideal world i could just spend all my time studying languages

[milf-harrington]

i love finding old fanfic ideas in my notes app

[akira-seeya]

problem: uh oh! i'm gonna be an adult real soon and i'm planning on going to a japanese college/university as some point, but my username is my irl first name! this would be relatively ok in the us, but it wouldn't be as safe in japan because it's way easier to find people and i'm also in a way more of a minority!

solution (broke): change my username

solution (woke): change my irl name

[idontdrinkgatorade]

i want to know how my bio dad never got an autism diagnosis

[liillyliilly]

No Free-Solo

kenji sato x reader words; 10021 synopsis; from high school on, kenji couldn't do it alone, especially not when she was there for him.

“You’re missing me with that busy shit. You’re missing me with your whole ‘I can’t come over tonight’ act.” Kenji sat in what she liked to refer to as his dungeon, his lair, his Ultraman den. His too large for life couch made of black leather was cold and the emptiness was expansive in his mansion. He wanted her near, he wanted her to come back.

“I really can’t come over, I’m helping out Ami with Chiho tonight.” She tried to let him down gently, but he huffed through the phone.

She wasn’t a nanny per se, but she did do a fair amount of long-term babysitting for lots of people, mostly for Ami, occasionally for other busy mothers. She had a certain touch to the whole watching and raising kids thing, entertaining the child while also educating them.

Chiho was snoring in her bed. Ami was out with her fellow reporter boyfriend. And she, well she was watching movies in the family room of Ami’s house. Drawings that Chiho had done were covering the walls, plenty of Ultraman pictures to Kenji’s amusement.

She knew the Sato family through a long-winded connection by friendship shared between mothers. Kenji’s mom was best friends with her mom. In terms of maturity though, she was light years ahead of Kenji even when they were in high school. Back in America, when life was typical (meaning lacking in Kaiju and Ultraman responsibility) and the LA Dodgers still reigned supreme in Kenji’s head. They had met for the first time right before her junior year and his senior year.

She would be the youngest junior at the school and he would be one of the oldest seniors at their Los Angeles high school.

Her mom had insisted they visit her good friend the summer before her junior year started, and that she would need to help the son out in adapting to American High school since they had just moved from Japan.

She was worried due to a potential language barrier, but her mom assured her that he would be fluent in English. But how would her mom know that? Her anxiety was off the charts. She spent hours studying basic Japanese, which she found was probably going to kill her, why a language needs more than one writing system was beyond her.

“Ah! It’s so good to see you, Emiko!” Her mom went in for a big hug, and the petite Japanese woman returned the hug with as much enthusiasm as had been given. Her mom muttered about the separation between Emiko and Hayao, and Emiko gave a strained smile, leading them into the house.

Kenji was lounging on the couch, which she soon learned that he loved to do, a tendency to sprawl due to his height and lankiness. He was switching TV channels, until he landed on a baseball game and committed to watching that.

Her mom ushered her over to him, telling her to make conversation and get to know him. How she expected her to do that despite not knowing him at all was a wonder. She didn’t suspect that they had anything in common, and with the zeal he was watching the baseball game, she also suspected that he wasn’t going to be a huge fan of her preference for movies and shows over sports.

So she mustered up a greeting in Japanese from a textbook she had picked up. She had missed the way his eyes glinted with amusement, it was at that moment he decided to play just a small inconsequential game. A game where he pretended he didn’t know any English.

He responded in Japanese, and she realized she really knew nothing at all about Japanese. He sat up and patted the seat next to him. The moms left the main living space in favor of drinking some tea upstairs on a balcony, leaving her alone and incapable of communicating.

Pointing to herself, she said her name with a forced smile. He said ‘Kenji’ while pointing to himself and saying a variety of other words that she had no idea meant anything at all. At least Japanese sounded pretty, so she started thinking about the linguistic history and design of the syllables. He waved a hand in front of her face and she snapped out of her mini history lesson to herself.

Pushing his joke a little further, he used his head to point to a door near the stairs. She raised an eyebrow. He spoke for a few more moments, and she could only stiffly smile and nod in return. When he grabbed her hand and went to the door she thought she was going to die.

Inside the door was his room, and she really thought that this was the end of her sanity, her childhood, her innocence. She had fandangled herself into an intimate relationship with someone who didn’t even speak English and her heart was going to burst at the seams. Trying to recall all the words she had memorized, she was mad that she never learned the words for; no, stop, or I’ll kill you.

It was when she began to slink towards the door and hold her arms across her body in a cross shape that he realized maybe he should drop the joke. Her ears seemed like they were burning and her breathing had increased to a mile a minute in pace.

“Relax, I just wanted to show you my baseball cards.” He held up a binder and opened it to reveal a collection of player cards double sleeved and tucked neatly into a sheet protector.

“I thought you didn’t speak any English!” She frowned and put a hand to her heart. He laughed and she realized she had fallen for a trick.

“My bad.” He holds his hands together and puts them up near his head with a slight bow to apologize. Kenji pushes his bangs back and licks his top row of teeth, “Do you know if our school has a baseball team?” He asks.

She nods. “We’re in the top bracket for playing, it’s super hard to get onto the team though, my friend tried-”

He raised a hand to get her to stop speaking, then he informed her of his inherent athletic prowess, “Believe me, I’ll get onto the team.”

And he had. He’d even qualified to play on the varsity team.

A few months into the school year, while she was eating in the library with some friends, Kenji came bustling into the open space with his pack of baseball players. They always tagged along behind him, treating him like some sort of fancy foreign exchange kid, which she realized was exactly the situation and so her mental analogy didn’t end up working out and she clicked her teeth.

But the majority of white boys at the school did tend to lean a little too hard into the racial stereotypes and unfunny jokes. All Kenji could do sometimes was purse his lips and keep eating his natto. They thought because they had an Asian friend it was an excuse for their behavior, why Kenji never stood up to them and told them off was a huge confounding plight in her eyes. Kenji himself didn’t quite understand it either. Not even when they shortened his name into just Ken for ease and convenience.

Before she could tidy up her comparison and dissection of Kenji Sato, he was leaning on her desk, eating her carrots and searching for her eyes to meet him. He said something in Japanese, and she tried to remember how the words sounded so she could look up what he had said.

“I need your help.” He stole a bite of her sandwich, then drank some of her water. Before he even took it without asking, she offered her pastry to him and he ate the whole thing in one bite and mumbled a ‘thanks’ with his mouth full. He finished chewing and swallowing.

“I need you to pretend to date me so I can get these guys off my back.” He stuck his thumb in the direction of his teammates.

“Absolutely not. No way in hell, Kenji.” She started to pack up her bag, but he just put his hand on her bag and pressed it hard against the desk. With his other hand he gently grabbed her by the chin, and tilted her face up to his. Inches away. Her eyes went wide.

“Pretty please?” He licked his lips and she tried to bring her own face back to avoid his tongue getting to her lips.

She thought about what her mom said, telling her to help out Kenji if he needed it. This couldn't apply though, right?

“I’m going to need so many favors.” She groaned, managing to get her bag out from under his hands.

He pressed a quick kiss to her lips, ruffling her hair and heading out with his friends who began to goad him for keeping her a secret for so long. He had just taken her first kiss and it didn’t seem like it bothered him at all. She was too busy pressing her hand to her lips to even notice the way his ears were a scorching hot red.

When she went to research what he had said to her, she thought she must have misheard him because the proposed English translation was something along the lines of, ‘please let this work out in my favor’.

Continuously, she called in favors, and he was there to meet them. Getting books off the top shelves in the library. Sharpening pencils when they were studying. Even helping her learn just a little more of his language.

“No, no you gotta give each syllable its own beat. Copy me.” Kenji went over the blended ‘r’ and ‘l’ sound that felt clunky in her mouth.

She did replicate what he was saying, at least to her own belief that that was her best ability. He laughed a little and she frowned.

“Okay, move your tongue a little, right behind your front teeth, but also not touching your teeth, just let your tongue kinda do the sound in the middle.” Kenji opened his mouth a little so she could observe. She tried again but it sounded even worse than the first attempt.

“I wish I could just move your tongue for you so you could get the motion right.” She looked quickly side to side, biting her bottom lip. Kenji backtracked immediately, “That didn’t come out quite right, I think that’s enough Japanese for one day.” She nodded rapidly and closed the journal she was using to take notes.

He said that they could go get food, she agreed and they got burgers and milkshakes at a run down family owned diner. He paid, despite her insisting she could pay for her own food. Saying that that was apart of the whole fake dating thing.

“You know, you do a lot of things under the guise of our not dating, dating thing.” She sipped her milkshake. Kenji took a bite of his burger, musing about what he would say.

“Well, we’re friends as well right?”

“Yeah, we’ve been hanging out since you basically arrived here. We’re friends, but honestly, we behave more like best friends.” She finished off her shake and cleaned up her area.

That was something he liked about her, her consideration for cleanliness and organization. But also her appreciation for others around her, cleaning up her stuff so that the likely overworked waitress didn’t have to. A person who thinks about other people. Now that was his type he decided.

“I’m happy with being best friends.”

In all fairness, he was probably the best fake boyfriend that a girl could’ve asked for. They had settled on knowing their relationship was best friends, but for others they had the additional label of dating. Sometimes though, he’d do something like grab her hand or wrap an arm around her. When those situations presented themselves, she always looked for possible viewers, his teammates. But based on her data, he only did things like that around 20% of the time when his teammates were actually watching. Meaning that the other 80% of the time he did the physical acts of affection, no one was around to watch.

While his English was practically perfect, he had the hardest time in social studies and history, so he got her help with his U.S. government class. He claimed that because he hadn’t lived here at all, and because he had Japanese citizenship that this class was completely useless for him. His defeatist attitude towards history made her roll her eyes at him.

One day, when she was intending to come over to help him, Emiko crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe as he cleaned up his room. He threw his baseball socks and jersey into the dirty clothes hamper.

“She’s coming over then?”

He mumbled an affirmative answer.

Emiko got giddy, saying she’d make a good rich curry tonight for dinner and that he’d need to tell her to stay for dinner. He gave a wave and kept picking up his room.

When the doorbell rang, he ran to the door. Emiko chastened him and told him to calm down. He let her in, and she greeted his mom, giving Emiko the box of fruit her own mom told her to drop off. He complained in Japanese that she always went straight to his mom instead of greeting him first. Emiko in turn smiled at her while scolding her son again in Japanese.

Watching the conversation unfold, she shrugged, Japanese was just not her strong suit.

“How hard is it to understand a constitutional federal republic?” She looked over his essay answer to a prompt she had given him to practice for his upcoming test. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, chewing the end of a pen. She was leaning against his bed frame, reading papers and marking up his essay with her red pen. Each time she made another red mark, he grumbled. Of all the people she had tutored though, his handwriting was the best.

“Correct these things first, and then I can edit again with my orange pen.” She held up said pen while handing the paper back to him. He just mimicked what she had said, holding his own pen the same way she had held up hers, even going so far as to bring his shoulders upwards to make him appear smaller.

In response to the insulting imitation she grabbed her notebook and hit him repeatedly on the knee. He let out a pained ouch, and she felt bad, so she put the notebook away and just patted his knee instead.

“If you really loved me you’d just write out the whole essay and then I could just memorize it and cross apply the right parts for the actual prompt Mr. Henry gives in class next week.” Kenji adjusted his body position, and her hand wasn’t on his knee anymore but dead center of his thigh instead. He smirks, and she immediately retracts her hand.

“Good thing I don’t love you then.” Kenji presses his hand to his heart and sighs, falling back into his pillow. “Just do the essay Jiji.”

He lifted his head and repeated what she had said, “Jiji?”

“Kenji.” She says his name and enunciates the two syllables cleanly.

“I like Jiji, I think it suits me. It’s a cute nickname.”

He finished rewriting the essay while she poked around his room. Photos of him with his mom and dad, which she already knew not to ask about because last time she did he went total silence for two weeks. But then he felt guilty about ghosting and took her out to get a sweet treat everyday after school for one week straight. Trophies from his old school back in Japan for his baseball achievements. Multiple MVP awards from the games he had played here.

The other photos that were in his room were mostly of him and his teammates. He just didn’t look too happy in those ones, so she tried to skim them, but failed. His teammates did their best to make him seem like he was a part of the group, but it just didn’t click all the way. Kenji always looked too serious in the photos, or it seemed like he was actually looking at the baseball diamond instead of the person taking the photo.

There was an adorable little figure, made either of acrylic or vinyl, of a little superhero with a red and silver supersuit and a blue circle on the chest. She picked it up and inspected it. What she assumed was Kenji’s name was on the foot of the toy. She bent the arms of the toy and moved it around like it was flying midair.

Kenji had completely paused writing his essay in favor of watching her dart around his room. He clenched his jaw for a second when she picked up the Ultraman toy, then eased his body language when she started making the toy fly around. If only that’s what Ultraman really was, just a toy. Just a toy and not an impending responsibility to protect and serve the people of Japan from Kaiju monsters. He wondered if she’d ever want to live somewhere besides Los Angeles. Tokyo for example.

“Kenji! Curry! Get the applesauce from the cabinet please!” Emiko called out.

She set the toy down and turned around, but Kenji was already standing right behind her. He had only meant to watch her movements a little more closely, but now this was entirely too close. He played it off like he was adjusting the Ultraman doll, smiled and then opened his door for her to exit and head downstairs.

When he heard the steps trailing down, he silently screamed and raised his hands to the sides of his head. Then he dragged a hand down his face and carded fingers through his hair. He envied the self he saw in the photos, cool and nonchalant.

“So, are there any boys you think are cute at school?” Emiko ate another bite of katsu that was drenched in curry sauce.

She swallowed thickly for a second, “I- uh, no. There’s not many good options for dating material at a hyper-athletic school.” She laughed to cut the edge off the conversation.

Emiko drank some water, but then prodded a little more. Kenji wished the earth would open and swallow him up.

“Not even at a school full of athletes? I would’ve sworn there were some good options for you on Kenji’s baseball team. What was his name? Eric? Eli?”

“Ohh, Ezra Johnson?” She supplied, eating some applesauce and then tapping her mouth with a napkin.

Kenji looked to her, then to his mom, then back at her. He was trying to stuff his face with his food so he could exit the conversation and then drag her and himself back to his room. She seemed insistent on blocking out the whole fake dating thing from his mom’s view and perception.

“Yes! He’s a really nice kid! He actually greeted me when I went to the first game. It was so sweet of him. His mom and I got to know each other a little bit. I can send you his details if you want?” Emiko grazed the back of her phone.

“No!” Kenji burst. His mom and his fake girlfriend both looked at him. “Uh, Ezra is talking to this girl named, um, Claire. Yeah, Claire.” He held his plate up and his mom nodded.

Rinsing his plate off he put it into the dishwasher, then from behind his mom’s back he tried mouthing to her so they could go back upstairs but she was too busy still talking to his mom to notice anything.

When she finally finished eating, she said she needed to go back home.

“What about my essay though?” Kenji rested his forearms on the kitchen counter while she was busy doing the dishes despite having to gently fight with Emiko about letting her even do the dishes in the first place.

“I gave you enough content to work with, just do the corrections and you’ll be good to go.” She bumped the dishwasher with her hip to close it, and he wondered what her bumping into him would feel like. And then he groveled a little that he wanted to be a dishwasher for even a split second. “I need to do my own homework now, tell your mom thank you again for me, okay?”

She rubbed his arm to comfort him slightly, but he took his chance to reach to her hip, tugging her lightly into him.

“What are you doing?” She hissed at him, trying to keep her voice down in case Emiko was still lurking around.

“Saying thanks for the help, goodbye, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” He grabbed the hand that she had on his arm and held her hand for a second, then brought it up to his mouth to press a light kiss to her knuckles.

She smiled, then pushed his shoulder.

When she had left the house, he flung himself onto the couch and giggled a little. Kicking his feet that were dangling over the arm of the couch. His mom peeked downstairs to see Kenji wriggling around and muttering. She just laughed a little. Maybe her instigation had worked out in the end.

The next week, she was hounded by baseball players after school.

She kept holding up a hand to cover her face, but they would not relent. Asking questions about her and Kenji. What Kenji was like outside of school, outside of baseball. If Kenji ever stopped being serious and aloof for even a minute. At this point they were just crowding her and not giving her the space to breathe.

She kept giving short curt answers, tugging her backpack straps closer and closer to her. At one point, one of them stepped on her foot and she winced a little.

It was like some kind of sonar sensor, Kenji could tell something was wrong. When he turned the corner, all he could see was his girl getting cornered by a bunch of idiots who didn’t even have his best interest at heart. The only reason why he asked her to fake date him was so that he could get out of dates with the girls his teammates had thought would suit him. The secondary reason was so she could avoid his teammates entirely. But clearly, the second reason did not go as planned because his teammates were a bunch of no-brainers who didn’t even really care about baseball.

“Hey, let’s go, I’ll drive you home today.” Kenji stuck his hand in between two of his teammates, and she grabbed it, so he was able to pull her out from the crowd they had made around her.

He strung two fingers around her jean belt loop and guided her to his car. When they finally sat down, and Kenji had started the engine, she let out a shaky breath. He put his hand behind her seat, and then moved his hand so he could lightly touch the back of her neck at her nape.

“Are you okay? I had no idea they would do something like that, I mean, it’s just completely ridiculous. I don’t even talk to them that much, if at all. And they treat me like some kind of foreigner, which I may be yeah, but really come on. That’s just herd mentality to the max. Ridiculous behavior, so childish.” Kenji kept talking while driving, she thought that maybe he needed a chance to really unload everything and mitigate the tension that had built up around him.

When they got to her house, he apologized again. And again.

“Don’t let it eat you alive, it’s all good, no harm no foul, if it makes you feel better, they totally reeked of body odor.” She chimed in after he finished his long wind of apologies. “And, um, what time is your game on Wednesday? My mom asked, she wants to hang out with your mom.”

“And here I thought you just wanted to see me completely kill the opposing team.” Kenji tried to lean out of the car just a little more, but his seatbelt kept him from getting his head out of the passenger side window. “I’ll text you. Get to your house safe ok?”

To her house from the car was approximately seven steps. The smile she gave him wrinkled her eyes and creased her nose just perfectly. He slid his hands up and down the wheel, smiling to himself as he started home.

The game went perfectly, he stole practically all the bases, and he made two home run hits. And an LA Dodgers scout was there. Once he got the documents and the scout shaked his hand, he was over the moon excited to play for the best team in the United States.

When he saw her with her mom and his mom, he just couldn’t hold himself back. In a second, he was hugging her and ranting about the scout continuously just repeating the experience over and over. Since his mom knew she would have a hard time prying Kenji off of his best friend, she just had to listen in to what he was saying, and she clapped when she had finally heard it all, celebrating from just far enough away to let them enjoy the moment.

His graduation was boring, she sat with his mom in the stands waiting for him to get his name called out. There were a lot of speeches, and she recognized the valedictorian from various library encounters, but for the most part everyone was a stranger to her. Emiko kept getting a call from an international number, but she didn’t try to ask about it.

Kenji barrelled through the crowd of graduates to get to his people, his mom and his best friend. When he started to talk about what he was going to do over the summer, his baseball camps and training, getting to meet the members of his team. His mom put a gentle hand to his shoulder, and he furrowed his eyebrows at the serious environment his mom had suddenly crafted. She backed away a little, but Kenji grabbed her hand and shook his head, telling her to stay for whatever his mom had to say.

“Kenji, your dad, he’s, your dad wants to talk to you. He’s, he’s on the phone.” Emiko couldn’t help but stutter a little, unnerved with how Kenji would react.

Kenji shook his head no, pulling her closer to him trying to use her as a crutch to prevent an interaction with his father from occurring. She looked between Kenji and his mother for a moment. Emiko with her tightened face and hand gripping the phone tightly said more than what her original request was saying. Emiko wanted Kenji to answer the call. So, she in turn encouraged him to answer it.

“Jiji, just answer the call. It’s your dad.” He felt betrayed.

“I’m not picking up the phone, I’m not talking to dad, and I’m getting a ride with a friend.” He pulls his hand away, despite missing her touch, and leaves his mom and her standing and stunned from his reaction.

Emiko pulled her into a side hug. “Thanks for backing me, you’re much more mature than I think people give you credit for. I have udon at home, call your mom and let’s have a girls night. I don’t think he’ll be home for a while. I’ll let him blow off steam today, but don’t think I’m soft on him, he’ll have some hell to pay when I catch him tomorrow.”

Patting the back of her head, Emiko went to the small electric van. She stood for a second, thinking about the space Kenji had just occupied. Maybe the family dynamic in the Sato household was more complex than she had anticipated, Emiko seemed to still love her husband despite them being separated. Kenji seemed adverse to and angry with his father, but Emiko didn’t carry any slight of resentment.

Girls night was a blast, including face masks and bad romance movies. Kenji got back around midnight, just as her mom and her were leaving his house. When she left, he was the one who closed the door after her. He gave a short pained smile and a wave. In her mind, it was a win because at least he wasn’t upset with her for taking Emiko’s side.

Summer was hot and burned the apples of her cheeks, leaving both sunburns and memories in it’s fragmented state. Kenji was busy conditioning for baseball practically everyday. Somedays he’d invite her out just to watch him play, so she could sip some icy lemonade and sit in the shade instead of being cooped in her house doing whatever it is that homebodies do.

It would be deceiving to say that she didn’t enjoy just watching him play. The way his baseball jersey would bunch at his elbows and shoulders when he hit the ball. Or the way he would run the bases each time he missed a throw from the ball machine. He still needed to get a haircut, so his bangs would completely cover most of his face, until he ran a hand through his sweaty hair and his almost snake-like eyes would study her from afar.

The best part was when he told her to move her legs a little, so he could sit on the row of bleachers in front of her. Eventually positioning himself to settle in between her legs, resting his arms on her thighs and his head was leaning on her torso. Although his sweat would lightly mark up her shirts when his hair dripped from his practice rounds, she still loved to be there for him in this capacity.

Either he was here with her or he would be at the diamond alone and angry. When he came alone, he would throw his bat when he made a mistake instead of just brushing it off and doing a lap. Somehow, doing baseball training alone while waiting for official LA Dodgers’ orders made him all pent up and out of control. So when she came to observe, it felt like he had more things in his control, his ability to manage.

“How are you gonna survive without me next year?” Kenji rolled his shoulders before getting his water bottle and guzzling down the IV infused liquid.

“Well, as far as everyone knows, we’re still dating, so I’ll have another year of free solo-ing the romance world at a hormone ridden cesspool.” She slid her backpack on, ready to start the trek home.

Kenji slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, then quickly switched which shoulder his bag was on once he saw which side she let her bag rest on, so that their bags wouldn’t bump into each other as he walked her home.

“You’re not gonna tell people we ended it?” Kenji sucked in some air through his teeth, readjusting the bag’s weight placement a little.

“Nah, it’s just easier that way. At graduation though if anyone asks how we’re doing I’ll say you found a supermodel that preys on greenie Pro-Baseball players.”

He nods, accepting the route she was going in order to terminalize their fake relationship.

“I was a good boyfriend though, right?” Maybe he asked so that he could feel out the possibility of a real one, or seeing what he could do better when he finally worked up enough courage to ask her out for real and for forever. For now though, he knew that friendship would satiate most of his yearning for her time and attention.

“Comparatively, to what I heard other girls went through, you were practically a saint. I mean, you never did press me into a couch so we could make out. Ruby held that over my head for the whole year once her girlfriend did that to her.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad actually,” Kenji stroked his chin, “One last boyfriend duty for me to do before I get too busy, ya know?”

“Kiss me without permission and you're a dead baseball boy.” He held up his hands defensively.

“That was one time.”

“In the middle of the library, in front of a good majority of my friends, right after I had been begged to be a fake girlfriend.”

Kenji raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head, “I do not recall begging.”

“You definitely begged,” She clasped her hands together and turned towards him, pausing their pace on the sidewalk for her to parody him, “Pretty please.”

She fluttered her eyelashes and pouted dramatically.

He rolled his eyes and tugged her hands so she would keep walking.

The postseason began around October for Kenji, and he made his official debut into the stage of professional baseball. Around the fifth game he played, he snapped. And that’s why he was sitting on her bathroom counter holding a bag of peas to the side of his face, while she dug through the closet just outside the bathroom looking for a first aid kit.

The catcher had just stepped out of line according to Kenji, messing up his at bat routine with his comments about his age, his inexperience, his lack of genuine talent. The first punch was Kenji’s, the second punch was the catcher’s and it rocked Kenji immediately.

Tasting the metallic blood in his mouth, he was just glad all his teeth were okay. He did feel bad for going to her instead of going home. But he knew that his mom would’ve killed him for hitting another player. The only reason why his mom wasn’t at this specific game was because she had some research files from years ago that his father needed, so she was spending the time trying to transfer data from floppy disks to USB drives.

She should’ve been asleep, or studying for her upcoming exams. He felt like an inconvenience and like a child who was being coddled, but he did feel like he was being fawned over by her which he could live with. Even the way she had reacted to him texting her and asking if she could help patch him up a little. She had sent nearly thirty messages, mostly angry, but also laced with worry.

“This might sting a little.” She reached up and pressed a cloth to his lip. He lurched away from the disinfectant, and she almost fell over due to having to reach up to get to his face.

“Hold on, give me a second.” Kenji got off the counter regardless of her complaints, she stopped complaining and was silenced once he swapped their positions, her sitting on the counter and him in front of her with his hands on either side of her hips, placed on the edge of the counter. “Better.”

She hummed a little, pressing the cloth to his face again, he tried to not lurch away this time. She put some triple antibiotic ointment on his lip and temple where there were some cuts. Putting some small star shaped bandages on his face where the cuts were biggest.

“All done!” She put her hands on his shoulders and gave a big smile.

Maybe he leaned in, maybe he didn’t. But their lips were definitely touching. When she pushed him away he realized he must have made a fatal error. So he decided to play it off.

“Sorry, a little faint from the fight earlier, not in my right mind.”

“Yeah, you, uh, you were just trying to, yeah.” She chewed the inside of her mouth.

Kenji helped her off the counter, and walked to her front door, ready to head out.

Holding onto the door, she stuck her head out and commented to him before he got too far away from hearing distance, “No more fights okay?”

He threw her a thumbs up before leaving her house. When he was safely back in his car, he did something that was all too familiar when he slipped up around her, he silently screamed and gripped his hair.

Years went by.

They stayed close, and he made sure of that. Baseball was going great, but no championships under his belt. She had graduated college, working at an office as an assistant. She moved out of her family home and got a shared apartment with some college friends who also worked in the main part of Los Angeles

Then, his dad hurt his leg, and everything went to hell. Hayao had called, telling Kenji it was finally time to take the name of Ultraman. He now needed to bear the gauntlet, the responsibility of keeping his home country safe. His mom just agreed, putting her hands on Kenji’s knee. Telling Kenji it was finally time for him to go home and be who he was supposed to be. And he was supposed to be Ultraman?

Baseball was his thing, he knew baseball and he was good at it too. Baseball felt like home, LA felt like his home, she felt like his home.

On top of all that, within a week of his father’s request and his mother’s urging, his mother had an accident. He had no idea what happened. Just that one day, Emiko was there and then she wasn’t.

He was depressed, and so he drank. His house was a mess. Dirty dishes piled up in the sink, he was wearing the same clothes from four days ago. His toothbrush had become unfamiliar. He didn’t bother turning on the lights, staying in the dark and sulking.

When her mom found out about Emiko’s disappearance and presumed death, she called her daughter and told her to check in on Kenji. He had been distant lately, and she knew that the distance was a result of his grief. Her stomach twisted into knots, and she realized she hadn’t reached out to him in a few weeks.

His front door was locked, she had a basket of fruit and a stack of tupperwares filled with lunches and dinners for an entire week. She tried to think about what food were both comforting and had a lot of protein, so she made a variety of pasta dishes with extra meat.

“Kenji?” She knocked repeatedly, checking her phone only to see that her messages had been left on read. She called out for him again, knocking harder. “I know you’re in there Jiji.”

Opening the door made her grasp the gravity of the situation he was in. His hair was covering his face, he seemed to have recoiled into himself, wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt instead of his typical jeans and jersey thrown over a solid color tee. He smelled too, not of his usual mintiness and clean linen, but of all and any sort of alcohol. With eye bags darker than dirt, and hollow looking features, he just left the door open as he lurked back into his blacked out house.

Setting her gifts on his kitchen counter, she turned on the lights, and got to work. First the dishes, and then she picked up all the clothing and started a load of laundry. She made him a plate of the food she had brought, and a big glass of water and some Advil for the inevitable hangover he would have.

Lying on the couch, Kenji played with the hem of his sweatshirt. He tried to take another sip straight from a bottle of red wine when she stole it out of his hands. Whining, he told her to give it back and turn the lights off. She clicked her tongue.

“Eat this,” she handed him the plate, “Drink this,” she sat the water and pill on the coffee table. She tapped her foot, her arms folded in front of her chest. He groaned but did as told.

Satisfied with his actions, she dragged him upstairs and told him to take a shower. Hearing the water running, she looked around his room and cleaned it up. His passport, along with a one way ticket to Tokyo for one month out, was on the floor, covered by blankets that were strewn around. Opened letters were lying on the floor as well, pictures and clippings of ‘Kaiju’ attacks in Japan. Maybe she needed to brush up on her international news instead of staying in her little bubble.

Coming out of the shower with baggy clothes on, he dried his hair with a small towel.

“What are you doing?” He saw her holding the letters his dad had sent. He reached out for them, but she held them back and to her chest.

“What are Kaiju?”

Soon, he was sitting on his bed with her as well. He had the Ultraman doll in his left hand and a stuffed animal that she had given him some years ago in his right hand.

“Basically, I’m this, by blood,” He shook the Ultraman doll, “And I’m supposed to fight these back home. Since my father can’t anymore.” Laughing slightly, he slammed Ultraman into the stuffie repeatedly.

Her eyes were wide. She may not have understood everything about what he was, or what he was supposed to be doing, but she knew it was important to him to some degree. It was irrelevant that his dad needed him, the only thing he cared about was that his mom had asked him to take the step to become something he wasn’t sure of.

But the idea that her best friend was going to be a superhero? That he could change into some kind of robotic monster slayer? She had to disconnect a little from reality just to process the whole thing.

Suddenly, he thought of something that could possibly get him out of his funk. Something that could make his time in Tokyo, living an entirely new life bearable.

“There’s some extra rooms at the place I’ll be living in. I know that you want to go to some kind of graduate school. There are really good graduate schools in Tokyo.” He scratched the back of his head, if she said yes, then he would be truly mortified that she had seen him like this but he would also get to have neverending time with her on a day to day basis if she agreed.

“I remember none of the Japanese you taught me, I’d need to get a visa,” She started listing off all the things that would keep her from leaving, “But, uh, I think I’ll go with you. Yes.”

“I can handle the visa thing, you’re just going to need to sign some papers and have an interview with some people, and you’ll need to wear a ring on your ring finger. As for the Japanese, I’m a better teacher now than when I was 18.”

Getting married was not on her bucket list, but at least she could get better tuition at her graduate school for technically being a form of naturalized Japanese national. Her mom was glad to see her living away from LA, and she was grateful for Kenji going with her daughter. Her mom just didn’t know about the marriage for a green card/visa situation, and honestly, she didn’t plan on telling her mom.

The whole flight to Tokyo she was practicing her Japanese with Kenji. For the first time in a long time, he was actually happy. Not ready for the whole Ultraman thing, but ready at least to leave home and be out of LA. Los Angeles reminded him of his mother, every street sign, every restaurant, the greenery and flowers, it all came back to his mom.

What he had explained to her as the Ultrabase wasn’t just some place that he was staying at, it was a literal industrial modern masterpiece of a mansion. The sleek design ebbed and flowed into the molding of the island it resided on. Ceilings higher than a museum’s, she traced her finger along every surface trying to soak in the elitism of it all. He reclined himself on the ginormous couch, watching her observe the surroundings.

To him, she was the best feature of the homebase. Where most things were cold and stricken with a detrimental weight of his responsibility, she was like a beam of no expectations. She gave him the space to just exist without pressure. That and she was always fighting with his robot assistant MINA which also made each time returning back from fighting a little easier to endure.

“Listen MINA, I just think that you’d be more effective if you were pink, also can you pass me my pencil case.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, snacking on candy and working on an assignment from one of her professors on her Master’s Committee. MINA used an extended robot hand to fly over the pencil case that had been in her backpack.

“If I was pink, it would detract from my integrated design.” MINA floats around her head, observing her completed work thus far. “Your work is completely correct, why are you changing the grammatical structure?”

“For the love of the process MINA, for the love of the process.”

Kenji just ate another bite of his New York Strip, enjoying the free entertainment. When he finished his meal, he asked if she wanted to go out for an adventure.

Matching helmets, black and gold design with her wearing one of his extra leather jackets just in case. For safety he justified. The cool Tokyo air felt even colder as they rushed around the streets, lane splitting and cutting in between cars. The headphones had built in bluetooth so they were listening to a shared playlist they had made. Blending rap, RNB, pop, and EDM crafted the right ambiance needed for a late night drive.

In some ways, Tokyo was similar to LA. She reasoned that it might have been the lights to a certain degree, but here, the lights were brighter and bolder. Neon signs and air pollution were the common denominators between the two cities.

He takes a corner just a little too hard, and she instinctively tightens her arms around his waist, tucking her head a little closer to his shoulder.

They end up taking a break for a minute, pulling off the side of the road to grab some vending machine drinks. Tea for her, coffee for him.

That’s when his watch begins to blare red. She fidgets with the ring on her hand, she didn’t need to wear it around he told her, but the cool diamond gem had grown on her. Just as a precaution if the case workers came around to check on their ‘marriage’, that was the explanation she gave to him for why she always had her ring on. They never talked about why he always kept his on too, despite interviews asking and continuously pestering him about the ring. The baseball world had just concluded it was either a secret wife or for the style since he never gave an answer.

“I think you have to go do your whole superman thing.” She pointed at his watch that he was trying to ignore.

Kenji groaned a little, calling for a ride so she could get back to his place. MINA had already gotten to them by the time the watch had started to blare.

“Ken, it is time to mitigate the primary conflict in Shinjuku.” MINA did a bow with their robot body. She tried to throw a pebble at MINA to test for reaction time, that being said MINA caught the rock. She shrugged.

Back at the dungeon, also known as the Ultrabase much to her distaste for a name like that, she was surprised to see an elderly man with a crutch sitting on the couch in the central living room.

He was watching a big hologram screen, which now clearly looked like Kenji (in Ultraman form) fighting with a pink monster dragon thing. When he got a particularly nasty body slam she sucked in some air through her teeth.

“Ahh, hello strange girl in the Ultraman base.” He circled her for a moment, his crutch slowing down his assessment of her.

“Ahh, hi strange grandpa in the Ultraman base.” She waved, and the older gentleman introduced himself as Professor Sato.

“Kenji’s dad?” She checked.

“Yes, I’m his father.” She nods, getting a glass of water.

When Kenji gets back to the base, that’s when things get a little crazy. What was once a slimy egg turned into a cute komodo dragon mutant baby. She was all over the baby in an instant, trying to get to know it better.

“She’s adorable. I love her.” She was tapping the glass of the containment cylinder, cooing at the infant Kaiju. The baby seemed to respond positively, making little coos back and stomping around a little.

Kenji just folded his arms and took it all in. He was still trying to get rid of his dad, despite his father’s willingness to help out. He just couldn’t balance it all without Hayao’s help, he realized. Especially when Emi needed more assistance, and help avoiding the KDF’s insistent attacks. She loved Emi, despite the Kaiju having the ability to totally crush her, Emi reciprocated quickly to her. Considering the contrast in how long it took for Kenji to demonstrate that his Ultaman form and his regular self were the same through systematic desensitization.

They became a family, even if a family consisted of a pro-baseball player, his fake wife/best friend, an estranged but loving father, a Kaiju baby, and a robot assistant.

A learning curve consisted of a lot more mistakes and complaining, but at the end of it all, Kenji had to commit. He was Ultraman now. He needed to protect Tokyo. At least now he had a support system he could rely on. Slowly, changes occurred with him. Putting others before himself, really truly thinking about life and the value of other human beings. The catalyst was a Kaiju baby named Emi, especially the way that said Kaiju baby loved openly.

The misadventures of raising Emi were wild and laced with KDF fights, but in the end, Kenji and his dad were brought together by defending Kaiju in a unique way. The monsters weren’t intentionally villains, humans had just made them out to be like that. That’s life though, people defining and categorizing things into concepts and schemas that made sense to them.

That’s what his dad was doing when he and Emiko separated. Hayao was trying to find ways to open human eyes to the world and beauty of Kaiju. Living in tandem with them may not have been immediately possible but why shouldn’t it be ever given a chance? Professor Sato, his dad, wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, he was trying his best to make the world a little bit better. Forgiving a father who he once believed left him wasn’t an easy road, but it was a path that needed to be traveled.

Saying goodbye to Emi was rough, yet, the Kaiju Island was close enough to go and visit on occasion. Baseball was great, winning the championship and going into a post-season diffusement.

Yet, Kaiju still came and wreaked havoc, and Kenji still had to fight and protect Japan. Even if that meant coming back to the base bloodied and bruised. She was almost always there, wrapping his arms in white bandages and wiping off blood with towels. Running ice baths and making cold soba noodles.

Which is what she was doing at this moment, rinsing the noodles in ice water and stirring a sweet sauce for Kenji to pour over rather than dunk his noodles into.

He was resting a frozen water bottle on his shoulder, hoping it would numb the pain, the Kaiju just had to try and rip his good arm off didn’t it?

“Hey, can I come in? Got your soba.” She knocked on the bathroom door using her elbow, since both hands were carrying bowls of soba with sauce containers precariously resting on her lower palms.

“Yeah, I’m wearing swim trunks.”

“Good because I’m not ready to see you naked, like, ever.” She chuckled, but pulled a chair next to the ceramic tub, breaking her chopsticks and saying a quick itadakimasu. He copied her, immediately drowning his noodles in the sauce she set on the edge of the tub. She rolled her eyes at his action.

He laughed a little, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, “What, it tastes better like this.”

She hummed an affirmative sound, but her eyes glinted with an agree to disagree conclusion.

The noodles had been fully digested, but she was still there, dipping her fingers into the water and making small swirls. The frigid temperature makes her fingers feel detached from her body.

Kenji lowers himself in the tub for a moment, getting his hair wet. When he came back up, she was pushing his bangs away from his face, smiling. Her hand stayed in his hair, brushing the strands away from his face as they dropped droplets down the back of his neck and then into the tub again. The ice cubes bumped into each other, melting slowly but steadily.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, uttering a few words, “Hot tub?”

She nods and heads out of the bathroom to get a swimsuit on.

The pool on the second to bottom floor of the base had an attached hot tub. He turned on the low lights, leaving the space in a warm brown shade of yellow light. The glass wall gave an outlook over the city and the ocean that surrounded the base.

MINA zoomed into the pool area, “Shall I put on some smooth jazz Ken?”

“No. Do not do that.” Kenji waved off MINA with red stinging his ears. MINA states they were just trying to speed up the whole process, and quoted one of her favorite phrases adding an addendum of MINA’s understanding and AI learning, “For the love of the process, especially if it's about love.”

The hot tub was warm, not quite boiling, but warm. She rested her arms on the outside ledge of the tub, looking out through the window. Kenji came to her side and replicated how she was positioned, before remembering that his shoulder hurt and gave out a small sound of displeasure. She giggled a little, rubbing the back of his shoulder where there weren't any distinct injuries.

“You’ve changed a lot since we were in high school.” She closed her eyes and dropped her head so that it was on her crossed arms.

“That’s what happens with time.” He wants to ask why she brought up his self-improvement. But she cuts him off before any words settle in his mouth.

“Yeah, but you’ve made a lot of great changes. You’re actually friends with your teammates now. And you’ve taken on this whole responsibility for an entire country. You aren’t just Kenji Sato, you’re also Ken Sato, and Ultraman, and I like to think you’ve fully embraced your father again, and not to mention our friendship.” She looks up at the ceiling, “You’re like an actual adult now.”

“I’ve been an adult for way longer than you.”

“But not like this, like an actual responsible person. You can juggle everything now.”

She sniffles a little, “Which is why I can understand if you don’t want me to stay once I finish my program you know?”

Kenji grabs a hold of one of her hands, “What the hell? Why would you ever think I’d want to kick you out?”

She shrugs.

He continues, “I hate to say it, but I think you’re stuck with me. You know too much about my dark secrets.” She smirks in response to his teasing tone.

Kenji dives deeper into things he wished he would’ve said earlier.

“I mean, you already have the ring to prove it too.” Her mouth gapes open a little, raising an eyebrow.

It would be amiss to say that this wouldn’t alter everything, but it was time.

“I know that we’ve only ever been friends, but you need to know what I feel.”

“I think I already know.” She cups the side of his face, and he pulls her into him, and makes her face him. She’s sitting on the expanse of his thighs, and he looks up at her from how he’s leaning back onto the wall of the hot tub.

Wrapping arms around his neck, careful to not rest too much of her arm on his shoulder, she brings their noses to brush against each other.

“Mine now? Right? You’re mine now?” When she doesn’t respond he continues, “Pretty please? Mine?”

“I thought you said you never begged?” She grazes his lips with her own and he sighs with a light shudder in his chest.

“I’ll beg for this, for you.”

“Fair enough.”

He tightens his grip and pulls her flush to him. Angling his neck up and tilting his head, he kisses her. She smiles too much for it to be a proper kiss, but he keeps pressing against her mouth. When she stops smiling and starts responding with her own pressure of lips to lips, he has to suppress the hunger to bite her.

His tongue brushes against her bottom lip and she opens her mouth for him, he runs his tongue along the inner lining of her mouth before biting on the tip of her tongue when she tries to take her turn. He chuckles when she pulls back a little, nose crinkled and lips wet.

“C’mere.” He trails kisses down the side of her face, going to her neck and collarbones, glad that her swimsuit was low cut enough for him to graze the top of her chest, where the rise of her curves began. She just presses kisses to the top of his head while her hand tangles into the hair at his nape, twisting the locks into fake curls.

When their fingers were wrinkled from the water in the hot tub, they showered and curled up on his bed, watching a meaningless show.

“So, my thoughts are that we can just skip the dating thing and go straight to marriage since legally we already are.”

“My mom will kill me.”

“Good thing she loves me, just say we eloped.” He wraps his good arm around her and pulls her down to lay on the pillows. She snuggles into the silk blend pillow cases and murmurs a little, tired from a long day. He caresses the side of her face and rests his hand on her hip.

MINA flits around the base, erasing specific footage from the recordings in the pool room, for everyone’s benefit.

Kenji paced back and forth in the base, waiting for her to get back from babysitting Chiho, hoping that Ami’s date would end shockingly early for his benefit.

He’s still on the phone with her, “I don’t want to wait to see you.” He kicks a throw pillow that had fallen on the ground from the couch.

“Have patience, I’ll be back around one AM.”

“This is spousal abuse.”

“It really isn’t”

MINA chimed in and agreed with her, so she exclaimed and said that even a robot knows the truth that Kenji was just a little clingy.

“I think you should stop watching other people’s babies and come take care of your family. And by family, I mean me.”

“I know what you meant.”

He looks to the clock, three more hours of waiting would be excruciating. But at least she’d be back in time for him to wish her an extremely early happy anniversary with the new ring he got.

[lexirosewrites]

I've been in a funk ADHD wise so I haven't had the same inspiration I usually do🥺 let's give this a try

Steve & Robin r platonic soulmates & they're both omegas & they're gross twins with little to zero boundaries

They share the same piece of gum till it runs out of flavor, they've helped eachother build up a storage of tasteful nudes on their respective phones, when Robin had constipation Steve not only got the laxatives he held her hand in the bathroom, when Steve got food poisoning Robin not only helped him out of bed she helped him aim for the toilet or trash can, their heats r synced up in a way tht allows them to take care of eachother in turns, yes Steve taught Robin how to kiss, yes Robin taught Steve to use a knotting dildo

When Steve eventually gets kicked out of his house bc his parents want to sell it he just goes to the Buckley's with a couple of suitcases & one box bc so much of his stuff was already at their place anyway, robins parents barely blink when stobin tells them tht Steve is moving in, they all cry when Steve says he'll b changing his last name to Buckley tho

Robin graduates high school & then they're setting off for the big city so she can study linguistics & Steve can study cosmetology

When they get their degrees they decide "why the hell not?" & go to live in California bc neither of them have seen the Pacific ocean before. They end up in LA even tho the plan was San Francisco, and they both find semi fulfilling jobs. Robin works as an interpreter with various state government offices, helping individuals whose first language isn't English, taking some of the pressure off of the children in the situation

Steve finds work at a small hole in the wall salon that's been in business longer than the many fancy salons all around LA. He's doted on by the regulars, surrounding shop owners, and his coworkers. There's a small hole in the wall barber shop a few shop fronts down the street tht the salon has a friendly relationship with. On the corner is a teeny tiny burger spot that's been around since the 1920s with no changes to the menu except for price & it has the best burgers Steve & Robin have EVER had.

It's a good life, the only thing they want tht they cant give eachother is a romantic connection, but they've tried every app & no one seems to actually want a relationship or they get weird abt how close they are

Well one day a chipper female alpha wanders into the salon looking for a last minute shampoo & trim to keep her strawberry blonde waves healthy. The only person available is Steve & he does so well tht the alpha introduces herself as Chrissy & books an appointment with him for a couple of months later when she knows she'll need another trim.

Except Steve & Robin don't rlly engage with social media, they rarely watch recent shows or movies, and their taste skews between horror or romance there's no in-between. So neither is aware tht the nice female alpha Chrissy is THE Chrissy Munson, an up & coming movie star, adopted sister to Eddie Munson the lead guitar of world famous metal/rock band Corroded Coffin, and someone very fussy abt her hair.

Chrissy comes back for her next appointment & at the end she point blank asks him if he'd like to be the only person doing her hair for the next 8 months, he asks her why & she realizes he genuinely has no idea who she is, so she explains & tht she has a production filming soon & she wants him to handle hair at the end of the day to wash out all of the gunk that gets into it for filming

Steve says yes only after the salon owner & regulars tell him to say yes & tht there will b a job waiting for him when he's done

Blah blah blah

Steddie meet & fall in love then buckingham meet & fall in love

scarily close stobin is my favorite flavor! and of course all steddie needs a side helping of buckingham🥰💕💕

[leeknow-thoughts]

minho, seungmin and jeongin as sub teachers who fucked you after school :3

୨୧ A+ STUDENT

𝝑𝝔 cw : college!au, blowjob, tit job, unprotected p in v, some clit play, 3 way, uhhhh I think that's it, porn with some plot

𝝑𝝔 a/n : I feel like I should say this!! I am semi fluent in Korean! I'll add translations under texts that are in Korean for those who don't speak it!! <33 I slightly changed this to them being teaching assistants in college!!!

After months and months of putting it off you had to do a speaking appointment with one of the teaching assistants for your Korean Language class. They'd just ask you questions in the language that you should be able to comprehend and reply to, you'd answer the questions, and they'd give you a grade based on pronunciation and overall comprehension. It was supposed to be simple, except it totally fucking wasn't. You weren't bad at speaking Korean, especially not after your months of practicing, rather you were just bad at speaking to new people. "You really shouldn't be nervous," your closest friend, Felix insists while walking with you to the campus library, "I know the guy you're gonna do the speaking appointment with, he's really nice don't worry," he reassures.

It does little to help your nerves though, becoming more anxious with every step closer to the library. "Felix why couldn't it just be you doing the speaking appointment with me," you grumble, dragging your feet as you step into the library.

"You'll do great y/n, don't even sweat it!" he encourages and parts ways with you.

You check your phone, looking for the study room that your teaching assistant had booked for your session. You find the room after a moment of searching, knocking on the door before opening it and coming face to face with the man who was going to be grading you. "H-hi," you wave to the man.

He had ginger hair, small eyes, and a fox like face, "hi," he hums looking up at you, "please come in," he motions to the seat across from him, "it's y/n right?" he asks as you sit down, placing your blue tote bag on the ground next to your rolling chair.

"Yeah, that's me," you smile, "what's your name?"

"Jeongin," he stretches out his hand for you to shake, which you do, "since this is your first speaking appointment I figured we should do a small ice breaker before we start," he smiles.

He has a nice smile, he's cute too, undoubtedly so. Cute little dimples are like jewelry added to his pretty white smile. "Oh yeah, for sure," you agree, letting go of his hand.

"So where are you from?" he asks.

"I'm from the north part of the state, I'm living down here for college and all," you explain, "what about you?"

"I'm from Busan, South Korea, I'm here on an educational visa," he tells you, "so why are you learning Korean?"

"Well I'm a linguistics major, so I need to take a foreign language and this one seems like the best," you smile.

"Why not take Spanish or something easier, I'm guessing that by now you know that Korean isn't very easy?"

"Yeah, I like a challenge though," you grin, "and besides I already speak Spanish."

"Mhm," Jeongin nods his head, "do you want to get started?"

"Yeah, let's go."

"그래. 너 부전공이 뭐예요?" he asks, fiddling with his hands on the desk.

"okay. what study are you minoring in?'

"저의 전공은 언너인데 부전공은 화학이에요," you explain.

"my major is language but my minor is chemistry."

"좋아요," he praises, "그래 will you translate this sentence to english, 애기가 깨지 않게 조용히 노크해 주세요"

"good" "okay... please knock quietly so the baby doesn't wake up."

"Please knock quietly so the baby doesn't wake up," you recite after a moment of thinking.

"Great job," he praises, his eyes turning up when he smiles.

The speaking appointment is over before you wished it was, you walking out with a good grade as well as a cute boy to have a crush on.

The next day eventually approached, you having to wake up early in the morning in order to get to your Korean lecture. You put on your cutest, and shortest, skirt just in case you ran into Jeongin on the way to class, wanting to impress the pretty boy.

When you walked in you were surprised to see three men standing around the podium in the center of the room instead of your usual professor. One of those men being the boy you had met yesterday, Jeongin, the other two were two men you had seen around campus a few times. You briefly recognize one of them, a man with cat like features and black hair, he was on the dance team with Felix, you had seen him on stage at one of Felix's recitals. The other guy, also with black hair, you had only seen around campus a few times. They were all extremely attractive, you had to admit.

You took the seat you normally sat in, in the front of the room so you could hear well. When class officially began the man in the middle, the one on the dance team spoke to the room of tired freshmen college students, "hello, since the professor for this class started her maternity leave today, we are going to be taking over her class for the rest of this semester and the next one," he explains, "does anyone have any questions?"

When no one in the room raises their hand the man you had only seen around campus speaks up, "my name is Kim Seungmin, this is Lee Minho," he points to the other man with black hair, "and this is Yang Jeongin," he motions to the ginger haired boy on the other side of Minho.

Jeongin smiles when Seungmin says his name, and Seungmin continues, "today we're learning about how to ask 'or' in Korean," Seungmin informs the class.

The two boys next to Seungmin take seats in the audience while Seungmin is pulling up a slideshow. You're beyond shocked when Jeongin takes the seat next to you, giving you a small smile, his eyes immediately refocusing on Seungmin who is standing behind the podium. "H-hi," you greet the man next to you.

"Hi," he grins, turning his head to look at you, "I actually wanted to talk to you about something," your heart can't help but skip a beat, "I was wondering if you could stay after the class and talk to me and the other teaching aids, we were grading one of your papers and we noticed a few mistakes, we just wanted to help you out and let you make up the points you missed."

"Oh," you can't help but sound a little disappointed, "y-yeah totally," you agree, "thanks."

"Of course," he grins, he leans in closer and you feel your heart nearly jump out of your chest when you feel his breath under your left ear when he whispers to you, "I like your skirt, don't tell me you wore it just because you were hoping to see me."

You turn your face to the man who is seated beside you, a smug grin plastered on his face, "okay, so," Seungmin projects his voice so the lecture hall can hear him beginning his presentation.

The lecture takes forever, with every second you're dripping more and more into your silk panties. Rubbing your thighs together and willing for the clock to speed up. You wait in your chair as students file out of the lecture hall one by one. Until finally you're the only person left in the room, along with the teaching assistants. "So you're y/n," Seungmin is leaning on the podium, his gaze taking in your figure, "you weren't lying Jeongin, she is hot."

"Wh-what?" you can't help but stutter.

"And in her cute little miniskirt," Minho is cooing, standing up from his seat a few rows behind you and Jeongin, walking down the aisle, taking a seat on the other side of you.

"I-I w-what's going on?" you nearly whimper.

"You're going to make up your grade," Seungmin explains, "by letting us play with you."

Jeongin's hand is moving up your thigh before he speaks, "you'll let us right? You'll be a good girl just for us?"

Who could've thought his pretty face could just be a facade for his filthy mouth. Minho cups your jaw, forcing you to look at his intense gaze, pressing the pad of his thumb on your lips before you're opening your mouth, letting him put his thumb in, your lips enclosing on it, sucking earnestly. "That's it, jagi," Minho groans.

Jeongin is standing up, moving in front of you and you hear the sound of his zipper coming undone before he's pulling your face back to him, Minho's finger slipping out of your mouth. "You're gonna suck my cock," Jeongin commands with a gentle tone.

He pulls down his boxers just enough so that his pretty cock is freed, and your mouth is fucking watering at the intoxicating sight. You're quick to act, spitting in your hand before wrapping your aforementioned hand around Jeongin's dick. Slowly jerking him off before you're pressing a kiss to his tip, a gesture that makes him groan in the filthiest of ways.

You're soon sucking his tip into your mouth, looking up at him, watching as his lips fall into an 'o' shape. You take a deep breath before you slide your head down more, taking more of his cock in your throat. "God, you're filthy aren't you," Minho is humming from his seat.

You whine around Jeongin's cock, watching as his body reacts to the vibrations of the noise, your hand wraps in his, bringing it to your hair, conveying to him it's okay for him to move your head.

Which he does without hesitation, his cock hitting the back of your throat, tears falling from your lashline. You don't care though, not when Jeongin's hip movements become more and more sporadic, his grip on your hair only tightening with each stroke on his cock.

"You're gonna swallow all of my cum," Jeongin instructs in a sultry voice.

That's all the warning you get before you can taste his cum on your tongue, a few more languid strokes of his cock to ride his orgasm before he's pulling your head off his cock, "open your mouth, let me watch you swallow like a good girl," he demands.

You open your mouth, showing him his own cum, before closing your mouth and swallowing every last sultry drop of it. "Atta girl," Jeongin rasps, "now go help my hyungs," he points to Minho.

You finally turn to man beside you, his cock fat and hard and slapping against his stomach, "c'mere, kitty cat, you're gonna ride my cock," Minho tells you.

You're eager to stand up, moving to hover above his lap while he moves your skirt up just enough to expose your ass and yanks your panties to the side before he's sitting you down on his cock.

Each inch stretching you more and more, your head rolling back eyes clamping shut, utterly consumed with pleasure. "Well don't just sit there, jagi, bounce on my fucking cock," Minho commands.

Like a cock drunk whore you're following his every command, bouncing on his fat cock, his fat tip kissing your cervix with each movement of your hips.

Your eyes are snapping open when you feel one of the boys squeezing your tits together.

It's Seungmin, he's standing over you, his cock also out, before he spits on your cleavage, squeezes your tits together before shoving his own pretty cock between the mounds. You don't even remember feeling him take your shirt off but you don't care when Seungmin is fucking your tits and Minho is fucking your cunt and Jeongin is watching intently from beside you.

Your eyes are screwed shut, as the feeling of pleasure builds in your stomach the more and more you fuck yourself on Minho's cock. The feeling erupts when Jeongin's pretty fingers move to play with your sloppy clit.

Your vision completely whites over, waves of pleasure overtaking your entire body, lighting every nerve on fire. "Oh my fucking God!" you cry as you cum on Minho's cock.

"There you go," Minho hums, "fuck, I'm gonna cum, just keep fucking riding me don't you dare fucking stop."

It hurts so bad, the burning ache in your thighs, but the pleasure is worth it. Minho cums with a low groan, followed by Seungmin jerking his cock until his cum spills all over your tits with an airy whine spilling from his lips.

"Good job," Jeongin hums from beside you, "you're definitely making an A plus after all the work you just put in."

[dr3amfyr-e]

modern!jace thoughts ( wc. 600-ish )

i have a jace parasite living in my brain <3 i’m cooking up a part two ( i cooked it up )

jacaerys who studies literature and linguistics at university — on the pre-law track. he’s such a diligent student, a frequenter of libraries and study rooms. ( but he doesn’t really have to try that hard, it comes easy, it’s aggravating )

he lives in the nicest dorm on campus, probably private housing.

jacaerys who wears glasses :3 but only when he must, makes an effort to put contacts in every day. but some days are just glasses days. ( they’re the sliver squoval wire framed ones )

jacaerys who prioritizes hygiene, he’s so clean. (i’m a jon girl at heart, i can acknowledge that he is not squeaky clean. jace is squeaky clean) jace has a skincare routine and a haircare routine. he’s using olaplex and cerave and that super expensive moisturizer. he knows how to defuse and gel cast his curls, he’ll happily do yours too! i firmly believe he uses an electric toothbrush AND HE TAKES CARE OF HIS NAILS

jacaerys who attended a private school until university, and started playing competitive football ( ⚽️ ) at age 10. he plays in college too, but he’s not as serious about it.

lucerys attends the same private school and plays for the same team, so jace practices with him ( it usually ends with a physical altercation, think the sword fight scene ‘what. was. THAT?’ )

jacaerys who likes animals, and LOVES his dog. vermax lives at home while he is off at school, but when jace gets a place of his own the dog will come with. he walks him every morning and evening and takes him for runs most days over the summer. vermax sleeps in jace’s bed, and he takes up a good portion.

jacaerys who is SO oldest daughter coded. he’s driving his siblings around. taking joffrey to pediatrician appointments and picking him up from school. going to all of luke’s football games and rhaena’s violin concerts.

chronic over achiever, he has to be his mothers favorite daughter- what, who said that?

mama’s boy jacaerys who looks up to her more than anyone. he’s bragging her up to anyone who will listen: in his gender and women’s studies class like, “my mom is a ceo! 🙋” “my mom is married to a woman! 🙋”

he would defend his mother’s name with his life. he’s getting into fist fights at social events, ryan atwood style. ( no he’s not, but he really wants to )

jacaerys who can be mean. he doesn’t mean to be, he doesn’t want to be — he hates it. but the world he grew up in was exclusive, and cliquey, and competitive.

he’s good at controlling it, thinking before he speaks. because he’s not a mean person. he’s good, and kind, and gentle. but, it comes to the surface when he goes into defense mode.

he made luke cry once, and started journaling to channel his emotions.

english/history person jacaerys. he’s hopeless at helping his brothers with their math homework.

when his mother married his late grandfather’s former wife he started reading lesbian theory to cope. and he liked it! he borrows baela’s feminist theory books, they bookclub.

jacaerys who, unfortunately, does participate in performative reading. omg nooo don’t come talk to me while i’m reading didion and wearing pearls and mewing 🧏

jacaerys who has a really expensive digital camera and also a really expensive film camera. he likes to post his pictures on his instagram ( no one cares )

all of his social media accounts are private because he doesn’t want to be the internet’s next eligible bachelor.

jacaerys who cries when he’s frustrated.

jacaerys who tolerates his step-brothers, but not very well or with much enjoyment. he has way more in common with alicent than he’d like to admit ( quintessential horrifying step-child experience of being mistaken for your step-parents biological child ) he likes helaena, though! they’re kind of bestie

he separates puzzle pieces by colour for her and looks at all of her art and knows all of her favorite bugs. ( he’s always wanted a sister )

jacaerys who is a fantastic boyfriend ( i’ll get into this later ) (( i got into this ))

[jymwahuwu]

alani, what if the reader who wants to be one of the sages dream (to be a sage) was rekindled by old classmate of y/n who visited them after they never met. that old classmate heard y/n's location from the researchers that came back from avidya forest and yes, the old classmate went there seeing y/n's and tighnari babies. however when tighnari went to forest while eating with the old classmate, the old classmate told y/n that they can continue studying while they're taking care of a baby. y/n was encouraged but of course, tighnari heard it.

yandere tighnari breeding reader part 1

tw: non-con, yandere, misogyny, forced breeding, kidnapping, pregnancy, breastfeeding

I like this!! it will be a disaster💀😂 and he will remind you not to leave🥺

After recovering from the emptiness and shock of knowing you were pregnant, you lived a safe pregnancy under the care and protection of all the forest watchers. You live in a tree house with Tighnari, and the books you can read are parenting guides, but you do learn more than a thing or two from the forest, including nature, animals, aranara, and more. This is a leisurely life that cannot be experienced in akademiya.

Sometimes, Tighnari sits with you in the forest enjoying the breeze. Tighnari allows you to run your hands into his large tail fur when it gets a little chilly. He loves listening to baby's little kicks and rolls on your belly - which might be really sweet if the reality wasn't him forcing you to get pregnant and keep you in the woods.

Eventually, a baby…no, babies were born. Unexpectedly, not one, but three. You bear not to cry. All three fox cubs are adorable, two of them are more lively and one is quieter. All three of them have similar furry fox ears and tails. Breastfeeding becomes a challenge - Tighnari comforts one while two babies suckle from your swollen breasts. Housework takes up most of your time, and the rest of the time you teach Collei how to read and write, and… and continue to get breeding from Tighnari. He always likes to breed you in different poses - doggy-style, mating press, spoons, etc. He's a little mean in bed.

When the leaves start to turn yellow and orange, a new guest visits avidya forest. It was afternoon, and Tighnari had set off to patrol the forest. Ah, that guest is an old classmate of yours, you both studied together at akademiya and took the same course. You didn't expect him to visit! You're a little scared that your old schoolmate knows about your current life, but it seems he already does.

You know the news has spread in akademiya now.

To entertain old school friends, you cooked sabz meat stew and pita pocket. He chats with you about the latest research and recent events - but you find that seems unfamiliar to you, and you can only nod occasionally in response. He noticed your expression and asked if you want to go back to akademiya and continue your research. "You know what? That scholar used to be a housewife. They've gone back to study linguistics now, and I think you can too." Your eyes widen, a little hope rekindled in your heart. "Re-really? But I have babies to take care of…" He suggested that you can take care of them while studying, or you can go back to akademiya when the babies are older and pursue your dream of becoming a sage.

"May I ask you not to put these irresponsible thoughts in my wife's head?"

Just as you were about to discuss it, you heard a familiar voice. You look up to see Tighnari standing at the door. He was staring at the strange man in the room. "Meddling in other people's lives - the akademiya scholars are getting so disrespectful now. Or are they arrogant to think that family life is not worth going all out for?" The old schoolmate was instantly awkward and overwhelmed. He tried to explain that he didn't mean to be rude, but Tighnari asked him to leave.

After the old classmate leaves, you shudder and explain that you didn't mean to say yes, but it's too late. Tighnari knows you're a little encouraged. Once you discover that this is possible, you will try to leave him again. He has to stop you right here. You obediently go back to bed and spread your legs. His pelvis hits you, burying his dick inside of you. And your whisper like please don't cum inside- please don't- was ignored by him.

[atimeofyourlife]

A group thing?

written for @steddieholidaydrabbles prompt: no upside down au | rated: t | wc: 944 | tags: no upside down au, pre-steddie, steve x corroded coffin Steve gets a job in a record store in Chicago, and a familiar group of guys come in looking for a place for their band to play. Who knows where it could go

Getting out of Hawkins was the best thing that had ever happened to Steve. The plan had been cemented between him and Robin when they started working at Family Video after the freak fire at Starcourt, the result of an electrical fault caused by the cut corners and corrupt construction. They were both going to work as many hours as possible at Family Video, so they could save up ready to move away after Robin graduated high school, with Steve planning to follow her to wherever she went to college.

The plan led them to Chicago, with Robin getting accepted to study linguistics at the University of Chicago. They found a small, relatively affordable two bed apartment, and did everything they could to make it theirs. While Robin worked on her degree, Steve found work at an independent record store. Even though it was still retail, he found it much better than working at Family Video and Scoops Ahoy had been. There was no uniform, the manager was pretty chill, and employees could choose anything from stock to play over the store's sound system. Steve did tend to play a lot of Queen when it was his turn to pick, but he was learning a lot about other genres from his coworkers' tastes in music.

But Steve's favorite part of the job was the live music. There was a small stage area that local bands could book and come in and play for free, in a chance to get more experience playing. Some of them weren't the best, but some of them were amazing. It was something that made it feel less like work. Some bands were pretty regular, and Steve was starting to form a real friendship with some of them.

"Hi, how can I help?" Steve asked as he came back to the counter from the stock room where he'd been processing a delivery with his coworker. There were a group of guys all waiting around, so he assumed that they were a band wanting to get a play spot. There was something familiar about them, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what.

"Er, hi. We've just moved to the area, and a buddy of ours told us you let bands play here for free." The guy at the front with long hair said, seeming to be the leader.

"Yeah, we do that. Just give me a moment." Steve ducked down to grab the folder from under the counter. "So the boss is the one who makes the final decisions on all the bands, so I'll just need to take your details, and she'll call you back to arrange everything. And I can give you the information sheet with everything you need to know."

The band took the sheet, and murmured a little amongst themselves.

"Okay, so if I can start with the band name?" Steve asked, pulling out a sign up sheet.

"Corroded Coffin." One of them replied.

Steve wrote it down, and tried to make conversation as he did. "You said you guys just moved here? Where'd you come from?"

"This shitty, small town in Indiana. You've probably never heard of it."

"Uh huh. And a phone number we can contact you on?"

The number got rattled off for Steve to note down.

"That sounds a lot like where I'm from. You wouldn't be from Hawkins, would you?"

"Yeah, we are."

"I thought you guys seemed familiar. We probably went to high school together." Steve said. "And your names?"

Each said their names as Steve wrote them down. The last one, who had seemed to be the leader, "Eddie Munson."

Steve looked down at the sheet, before looking up at Eddie. "You used to sell, right? At a picnic bench in the woods behind the school."

"You used to buy? Then do we get your name, big boy." Eddie asked, leaning on the counter.

"Steve. Harrington." Steve replied, watching hesitantly as they all seemed surprised.

"King Steve, what brings you to working in a place like this?"

"Trying to make rent. My parents cut me off after I graduated, and I'm pretty sure it would be a total disownment if they knew half the shit I got up to now. So me and my best friend moved up here after she graduated. She's in college and I'm making sure we can afford our shitty two bedroom apartment."

"Now I want to know what you get up to." One of the others said, Steve was pretty sure he'd said his name was Gareth.

"Let's just say I know what the bandanna in Munson's back pocket stands for." Steve winked as he said it, and couldn't help laughing as they all spluttered slightly. "I've got all the information I need, and I'll make sure to put in a good word with the boss for you."

Steve was working when Corroded Coffin were playing at the store for the first time. He was on hand to help them get set up and make sure everything went smoothly.

"I think that's everything, you guys can start playing when you're ready, and I'll let you know when your time is nearly up. Do you need anything else?"

"How about a kiss for good luck?" Eddie asked.

Steve smiled before pulling Eddie in by the shirt and kissing him deeply.

"Hey, what about the rest of us?" Gareth called from behind his drum kit.

Steve just shrugged, before going around and kissing each of them softly on the lips.

He made his way back behind the counter, looking forward to what could come between him and the band. Friendship, or maybe even something more.

[max1461]

I don't typically feel at home with "nerds" (in the sense of "programmer type guys"), because I feel there is something important about the world that very often they cannot see, and I am going to try to articulate what it is.

First, a digression.

My extended family is... well, most of them are not really evangelicals (insofar as they're Christian at all, they're not very good Christians and they mostly don't seem to care), but culturally they're part of the vulgar evangelical milieu; the sort of people to whom prosperity gospel megachurch pastors appeal. Years ago when I was about to start college, my uncle came to visit, and I told my him that I was going to study math. He's a smart guy, and started telling me about how he was always good at math in school, and telling me stories about the various times he'd used math (meaning, basically, elementary algebra) to great effect in his various business ventures. That's what he understands: business, making money... to put it less charitably (though I say this with considerable affection): scheming. So he tried to speak the language of making money to me about it. When he asked me what I wanted to do with my math degree (by implication: what sort of scheming was I looking to get involved in) I said something to the effect of "there are all kinds of job opportunities you have with a math degree, but that's not really why I'm studying it—I really just want to understand math at a deeper level". I remember the look on his face when I said that very clearly. It was utter bafflement. Not because he hated math or something, but because I genuinely don't think the concept of "wanting to understand something at a deeper level for its own sake" had ever occurred to him. The inherent appeal of understanding the world is, I think, not something which exists (or exists very strongly) in his emotional landscape. He is blind to that part of the human experience which drives scientists to be scientists.

Well, that's alright. He's a schemer and not a scientist by nature. Some people are that way. I like my uncle well enough, and I enjoyed talking to him on that visit. But he's not someone I would try to share my love of math or linguistics with; on both accounts I don't think there is anything I could say to make him get it.

Why do I bring all this up? Well, one way in which I relate to programmer type guys is that we both like math, and I think we like for basically the same reason. And I think most programmer type guys will have met someone like my uncle, someone who seems like they fundamentally cannot see the appeal in this thing which drives you so strongly, this thing which is so great a part of your emotional landscape. I'm sure a lot of you will know the exact feeling I had during the above interaction. You are so fascinated by these questions about how the world works, and how it can be rationally understood, and this other guy basically seems like he just... can't even comprehend what it's like to be motivated by that. It's so completely foreign to him, and his perspective is thus completely foreign to you.

We are all, sometimes, this uncle.

Part of why I am interested in linguistics is because I have this deep urge to explore the world (by this I mean principally: the human world). I have this desire to travel, to talk to people, to see and experience different places and different ways of doing things. I want to go to various places and see what they look like, and meet the people there and hear what they have to say, and so on and so forth. There is an "openness to experience" element to this, but that is very insufficient to characterize the thing I am trying to articulate; for instance, I have little interest in psychedelics or other prototypical "high openness to experience" type activities. To me, there is an ineffable vibe that every place seems to have (a "place" in this sense could be as large as a country or a small as a particular bar), and the vibes of nested places are like layers on top of one another that make being in the world feel like an extremely rich experience. Learning languages and learning about languages gives me this window into other places, which is extremely appealing, and furthermore I can access it to some degree from my own home, which is nice. Of course doing this from my bedroom is not enough, I want to actually go, to wander around, and in those times when I've gotten the chance to do so I have felt that it was very much everything I had imagined it to be.

When I try to talk to programmer type nerds about this aspect of myself, I often feel much the same as when I was trying to talk to my uncle about wanting to study math. They just don't seem to have any sort of reference for what I'm talking about, these emotions have never occurred to them in any significant way, and they can't figure out how to relate. I believe this is, in essence, the source of my frequent abrasions with rattumb, and why I have basically bounced off of coding for cultural reasons time and time again in my life, even though conceptually it's exactly the sort of thing that interests me. For reasons of nature or nurture, programmer guy personality traits rarely co-occur with wanderluster personality traits, they just don't seem to go together. And so in spaces like, well, this one, I'm just left feeling like nobody can quite relate to what I am getting at a good chunk of the time, and the consequence of this is that I feel emotionally impoverished. That's not anybody's fault for being a different sort of guy than me, and I'm sure there's stuff about which I'm the confused uncle (in fact, I know there is: the appeal of psychedelics, meditation, and other "transcendence" based activities is one of these things for me). Idk, just thought that was something worth expressing.

[formosusiniquis]

Am I the Asshole?

Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington; Robin Buckley/Original Female Character(s); Steve Harrington/Original Character(s); Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 6052 | Rated: T | Tags: Modern AU, Reddit AU, Some AITA typical terrible people, QPR Steve & Robin, NB Steve, NB Robin AKA the Stobin AITA fic

r/AmITheAssshole u/HufflepuffHero94 9yrs ago AITA for being concerned about my girlfriends living situation?

Context: My (20F) girlfriend (18F) is amazing. She's a polyglot linguistics major, speaks three languages fluently and she's completely self-taught, a genius basically. We go to the same college (Midwestern Liberal Arts college) where we met in the marching band. Now R, my girlfriend, is from a small town. Like the kind of small town that they make jokes about in sitcoms, she isn't really online (so I'm not worried about her seeing this) because she claims they didn't even have the internet until she was in high school. She isn’t really “out” because of this. It’s like she lives in this semi-closeted space like some kind of TV queerbait character. It's not really a problem, I mean she’ll tell people we’re dating if they ask and all of our marching band friends know but when I ask about it she says it’s because it wasn’t really safe in her hometown growing up. But it’s 2014 not 1980…

Even though R is a freshman she’s in special accommodations. Instead of living in the dorms like the school usually requires she’s got a small, studio apartment just off of campus. A perk considering how awful living in the dorms is. R is a pretty private person and super studious. Most of our dates have been in the library or a study date at the coffee place on campus. She’s not big on PDA, she says she’s trying to get better at it but she’s still only sort of out and I’m her first real girlfriend. I was psyched when she asked me if I wanted to go with her to her apartment to study, said her best friend had a never fail study method that she was eager to try (and when she told me what it was I was pretty eager too).

R can’t drive, so when I pull into the parking lot of her complex she notices something and says her roommate hasn’t left for work yet. I’m a little confused because like I said she lives in a studio apartment, but she just brushes it off and says something about asshole parents and this being what they could afford when some money fell through. She’s sent me snaps from her place, so I know it’s pretty cozy so I tell her it’s fine. Obviously I’m concerned about what the set up is going to be like when we get up there but she insists that dingus (her words) will only be there for another couple minutes before they have to leave for work and that Stevie (again her words) is her best friend in the world. They moved here together from the same small town or something.

To give R credit, she’s definitely done the best she can with the space. When I walked it it definitely felt as homey as it does in her pictures. The door opened up into the kitchen and living room and she’s got those spaces divided off from the beds with one of those Chinese paper divider thingies. Anyway to make a long story short it turns out her roommate and best friend Stevie is actually a whole dude (19). He comes out, gives her a look and asks her if “us girls are planning a sleepover” and if he should make himself scarce for the evening. R says she doesn’t give him shit when his “special friends” come over and after that I kinda stopped listening. I slipped off into the apartment looking for the bathroom and that’s when I saw how their “bedroom” was set up. Twin beds INCHES apart, they might as well be sharing the same one.

Here’s where I might be the asshole. When her “friend” finally cleared out I told her the truth. I didn’t know how comfortable I was hanging out in her place where she lives with a guy. I do live in the dorms but I’ve got a single right now. I asked her to move in with me so she wouldn’t have to be in this situation. I guess it maybe sounded like I was dissing her friend, which I was but I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I just think it’s weird that she won’t come out to anyone and is also living with some guy! I told her I wasn’t interested in being an experiment and if things were serious then she would want to move in with me.

That’s when she kicked me out and called me an asshole. But really I don’t think I’m being a dick for being concerned that she might just be jerking me along while she plays lesbian so she can tell her boyfriend about it at home. Even if nothing is going on I'm just worried that living in this kind of environment isn't safe for her. I mean this guy is probably just pretending to be her friend to get in her pants, I think the fact that they're from the same small town means she can't see that. I really think she would be better off if she moved into the dorms with me aita?

u/otpsnotbrotps NTA

u/foreplayisntreal NTA guys and girls can't be friends. If she even is a lez and a katy perry wannabe then roomie is just biding his time til she's ready to be converted

Read the rest on AO3

[benkyoutobentou]

Beginner Manga Recommendations for Japanese Learners

It's time, you've done your due diligence in studying. Now it's time to jump into native material. But where to start? Here are a few manga series that I've read that I think would be a reasonable place for a Japanese learner to start their immersion journey.

Disclaimer: I haven't read every series, and the manga that's interesting to me might not be interesting to you. We also all encounter different words as we go along our language learning journeys. A series that I find relatively easy might have you looking up every other word. The trick is to not get discouraged and just keep on pushing through! As with everything, it gets easier the more you practice.

消えた初恋 - アルコ＆ひねくれ渡: This BL series follows a group of four friends and their experiences with love in high school (it also has a drama adaptation that I highly recommend! Available to watch for free on Viki). This series is so silly and just a fun time. The art has great visual gags and it's definitely a series where you can sit down and not even realize that suddenly you've gone through an entire volume and why didn't you buy more of this series to start with? It has furigana on everything, but the characters do speak pretty casually, so there's some slang and less standard language. This series is completed with nine volumes.

佐々木と宮野 - 春園ショウ: This is another sweet BL about Miyano, a high school first year, who catches the eye of an upperclassman, Sasaki. After asking to borrow Miyano's book, the two bond over a shared enjoyment of BL manga. The vocabulary is pretty simple in this one as well, but it does use quite a bit of otaku slang, which can be difficult if you've never encountered it before. It has furigana on everything, though! This series is ongoing with nine volumes and also has a spin off series titled 平野と鍵浦 which is also ongoing with four volumes.

月刊少女野崎くん - 椿いづみ: The first manga I ever read in Japanese! This series follows a high schooler, Sakura, as she confesses to her crush and classmate, Nozaki. However, Nozaki thinks that Sakura is just a fan of his shoujo manga series, and recruits her to be his assistant. This series is so enjoyably silly with a wonderful cast of characters that absolutely steal the show. There's a bit of vocabulary specific to the process of making manga, but it isn't too overwhelming. There's also plenty of casual speech and some great moments that can't quite come out in translation (bonus fact: I actually wrote a paper on this series and how humor is translated in one of my university linguistics class). It also has furigana on everything. It's ongoing with fifteen volumes.

加瀬さんシリーズ - 高嶋ひろみ: This adorable little GL series follows two high school aged girls, popular and athletic Kase and the shy gardener Yamada, as their relationship develops over their high school years. The vocabulary in this one is relatively simple with the exception of some more specific words, but those tend to pop up time and time again. This one doesn't have furigana but I think it's a great introduction to readying manga without furigana! This series is completed with five volumes, but there's an ongoing sequel series called　山田と加瀬さん that currently has three volumes released.

ささやくように恋を唄う - 竹嶋えく: This is a music based GL series about a high school first year, Kino, who tells an upperclassman, Nagi, that she loves her music. Nagi, however, misunderstands this as Kino confessing her love for her. The story follows both the relationship between Kino and Nagi as well as the trials and tribulations of Nagi's band. This is another one without furigana, but the vocabulary tends to be simple enough that I think it's still pretty accessible. It's ongoing with eight current volumes.

かけた月とドーナッツ - 雨水汐: Our last GL, this follows two coworkers, Uno and Satou, and their blossoming relationship in a society that pushes conformity and marriage on women. I really loved the way this series depicted coming into one's sexuality as an adult. Another one without furigana, but simple vocabulary regardless. A possible difficulty with this one might be the office vocabulary, though. This series is completed with four volumes.

[starlightkun]

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

2608, 2610, 2612…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Do what?” You straightened up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re insane.”

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

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

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

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

You wanted to eat him alive.

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

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

He rolled his eyes.

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

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

“They’re all different.”

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

“That’s not the say—”

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

“VPN?”

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

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

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

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

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

“You can turn on notifications for forum posts?”

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

“You…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you not like it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you do like it.” You smirked.

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

“Well do you?”

“Answer my question.”

“Answer mine.”

“I asked first.”

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

“It’s only fair.” He pointed out.

“We could flip a coin.”

“Y/N.”

“Junnie.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The board?”

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

“Can I see it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You think it was a diversion.”

“Obviously.”

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

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

“Who was it?”

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

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

“Seriously!”

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

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

“So close, Y/N. So close…” He sighed.

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

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

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

“And Dr. Li is mine!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

“Have you had your blood drank?”

“Yup.”

“Been flying?”

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

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

“Uh-huh.”

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

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

“Poisoned by a wyvern?”

“Would have to find one first.”

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

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

“Supposedly.”

“You think they’re still out there?”

“Maybe.”

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

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

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

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

“Where did they go, then?”

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

“Hmph.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He perked up. “Please?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh-huh, got it.”

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

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

“How many does that make?” You giggled.

“What?”

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

“You make me sound so…”

“Like a common MCS whore?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You didn’t.” He nodded. “Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well you need to say something obnoxious first.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right. Sorry…”

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

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

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

“No, I’ll keep chugging along.”

“Okay. You want anything?”

“Nah. Thanks, though.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right, gotcha.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Me time…”

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

“I’m not that bad!”

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

“It only took four weeks!”

“You said it would be a quick search.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dr_magic2303 replied to a post.

8 minutes ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So we both fucked it up.”

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

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

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

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

“You’re welcome.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re so popular.”

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

“Yeah, sure, sure.”

“First session Saturday? My place for lunch?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You slowly shook your head.

“You can’t tell me?”

You nodded.

“Okay. Is it bad? Like, dangerous?”

You shook your head.

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

You shook your head.

“School?”

You nodded.

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

You shook your head.

“So, new stuff?”

You nodded.

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

With a sniffle, you nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, Dr. Magic. Of course.

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

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

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

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

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

“When I was in the bathroom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Of course you did.”

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

“Maybe…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have a pair? Why? Sirens don’t—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Keep them—”

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

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

“Are you sure?”

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

“Thanks for not rubbing it in or anything.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, yeah. Could be.”

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

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

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

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

You hung up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I… don’t think I’ve ever had them.”

“Perfect, you can try one now then.”

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And now you know.”

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

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

“And now I know…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right.”

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

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

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

“I was thinking on my feet.”

“Maybe think laying down next time, Junnie.”

“Ouch.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

“We haven’t started?”

“You’ll know it when we do.”

“Right.”

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

“Well that’s off the table.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah.”

“Teeth?”

“Where?”

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

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

“Same goes for you. Hickies?”

“Giving or receiving?”

“Both. You first.”

“Both are okay. You?”

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

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

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

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

“Good. Great. Touching under clothes?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh? What’s wrong, then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does your dad do?”

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

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

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

“Yeah…”

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

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

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

“What does that have to do with anything?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uhm, to talk, I guess?”

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

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

Your friend lowered himself back down into his seat.

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

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

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

You breathed in, then out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not at all, you’d be great at it.”

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

“Which will ultimately be their downfall.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You smiled back. “You’re welcome, Renjun.”

The two of you kept smiling at each other for a moment before he broke the eye contact, looking down at his hands then shifting his gaze back to the courtyard.

“Uhm, while we’re airing stuff out about last night...” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Yeah, Junnie?” You tilted your head to the side, watching as his cheeks started flushing.

“I don’t think I ever said thank you. I kind of popped off on you right after... everything. But thank you, for taking care of me before, during, and after. It didn’t even occur to me to talk about what we could and couldn’t do beforehand. Thank you for that, and for getting me the water. And... all of it in between...” His ears were bright red too at this point, but he managed to look you in the eye as he gave you his genuine gratitude.

You nodded in understanding. “You’re welcome. I’m glad that you felt cared for during all of it. In addition to, you know, everything else you felt.”

“Mm, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Studying his face curiously, you said, “You look like you want to ask me something else.”

“Well, I feel like you still weren’t very clear on the ‘eat me alive’ thing.”

You rolled your eyes. “Gods, Junnie, I’m not going to actually eat you—”

“I mean...” Renjun took a deep breath. “I kind of always feel like I’ve got a little bit of siren venom in me when I’m around you, Y/N. My heart races, and my skin is warm, and everything is just better when I’m with you. I want to see you when you’re not around, and when things are hard for you, I want to make everything better. I like you, and between the Dr. Magic deal, and our stupid academic rivalry, and what we did last night, I don’t know what I am to you, but that’s how I feel.”

If someone had told freshman you that Huang Renjun would ever say words like that to you, you’d have laughed in their face to the point of tears— or slapped them. And yet, in that moment, you weren’t surprised in the slightest. It was the most natural, beautiful, delightful, perfect thing that could’ve happened. Just like you leaning over to give him a modest, near-demure kiss on the cheek, absolutely beaming at him as you pulled back.

“I like you too, Renjun,” you admitted.

His eyes went wide before a broad, tender smile spread across his features and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders. He let out a drawn-out sigh of relief, “Ohh, that’s one weight off my chest for this week.”

You laughed in agreement. “Me too. Actually makes everything feel lighter.”

“Yeah, it does,” he said, squeezing your shoulder. “So how much do I owe you?”

“What?”

“You said you were going to invoice Dr. Magic. For the browser extension, and the color copies, and whatever else. How much do I owe you?”

You tapped a finger against your chin, pretending to think before a smirk pulled across your lips. “Mm, should be exactly the price of one nice dinner and a movie.”

“Dinner and a movie? Just how many copies were you making?” He asked with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

“A nice dinner,” you reiterated. “I paid those CompSci majors fairly for their time.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Friday night after your last midterm, you were knocking on Huang Renjun’s door. The two of you had seen each other this week for your Linguistics in MCS class, but had been utterly locked into academic mode and hadn’t met up aside from that. So, per his invite, you were here in your “midterms best”— i.e., the pajamas you had been wearing at your own apartment since submitting your last mid-semester draft earlier today. You’d been told this wasn’t going to be a fancy affair.

Judging by the pajamas that Renjun had also answered the door wearing—giving you vivid déjà vu to the last time you were here—you were dressed appropriately for the occasion. He led you in by the hand, informing you there was something he wanted to show you in the kitchen.

You came to a stop in front of a plate piled high with small, pillow-shaped pieces of dough, some with bursts of red sauce leaking out of them. You couldn’t help but let out a sputtering laugh. “Pizza rolls? Did midterms scramble the egg on your face so bad that you missed the part where I said nice dinner?”

You might not have ever eaten pizza rolls, but you knew what section of the grocery store they came from.

“I can’t even tell what that was supposed to be… You’re so beautiful…” He was staring at you with a look of pure adoration, and surprised you by giving you a fleeting peck on the cheek, gone as soon as you’d realized what he was doing. Your hand instinctually came up to brush at your skin, almost in disbelief, as he went back to explaining his plans for tonight. “Anyway, I didn’t get to give you your first pizza roll the other night, and I figured that the last thing you actually wanted right after midterms week was to go out to some hoity toity place and be out at the movie theater really late, right? So, I’ve got pizza rolls, peanut butter cookies, your seaweed tea, and like way more snacks and candy and stuff. So we can chill and watch whatever movies you want tonight, unwind from midterms. And then next weekend, we’ll do your nice dinner and go to the movie theater. Think of it as an IOU.”

A fond smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as you nodded your approval. “Mmm… you’re right. This is great, Junnie. Thank you.”

Set up on Renjun’s couch with the assortment of snacks—pizza rolls included—and your first movie chosen, you settled in next to him, knee to knee, under the same blanket as the two of you ate. You decided that pizza rolls weren’t that bad (you still liked peanut butter sandwich cookies better), convinced Renjun to try some of your ocean flakes again—a favorite snack of sirens, which he’d already tasted on one occasion at a Dr. Magic hunting session and hated—to similar results, and finished off a bottle of seaweed-infused tea by the time the first movie was about a third of the way done. At this point, you were pretty satiated food-wise, and set your empty drink bottle on the coffee table to sit back on the couch.

Linking your arm with Renjun’s, you rested your head on his shoulder as he was still finishing up his plate of pizza rolls. “That was good, Renjun. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I call dibs on little spoon first, by the way.”

“Damn.”

Once he was done eating as well, you laid down to eagerly take your promised place as little spoon. Renjun stayed partially propped up against the arm of the couch so he could see the TV as you were nestled back against his chest, one of his arms slung over your waist. Your fingers played with his under the blanket absentmindedly as you got used to your new place, with him, in his arms.

“Renjun?” You said into the quiet. The only noises were coming from the TV. The movie was nearly done, just a couple little resolving scenes after the climax left. You’d seen it plenty of times before—both of you had, it was a favorite that you’d discovered you two shared earlier in the semester—which was why you’d picked it, an easy watch that you both liked. But nothing that required your full attention, so you could talk or miss scenes if you wanted.

“Yeah?” He responded just as softly.

“This is really nice. Hanging out, just us. No school, no Dr. Magic.”

“I know. Almost doesn’t feel real.”

“What? That we’re hanging out without trying to kill each other?”

He let out a couple laughs, catching your hand that had been playing with his under the blanket and lacing your fingers together. “I think there’s definitely some people that would be shocked to see us right now. But I meant more-so that we don’t have any schoolwork to do right now, and that the whole Dr. Magic thing is finally over. Other than the dinner that I owe you.”

“Oh… I owe you… I-O-U…” you sounded the words and letters out slowly. “I get it now.”

“God, you’re perfect,” he sighed dreamily, brushing your hair away from your face to press two kisses to your temple in quick succession.

You turned over to face him to properly protest, “Hey, I didn’t grow up around humans, you know that, right? I just came here to go to school! I moved here like, two weeks before our first day of freshman year—”

“I’m not making fun of you, Y/N!” He promised, sandwiching your hand between both of his and squeezing it tightly. “I respect how difficult it must have been for you to acclimate to the new culture and city when you moved, and so suddenly, on top of starting school. I just love y- love when you do that. Genuinely, I’m so charmed by it. Endeared. Bewitched. Whatever word you want to use. It’s something I never noticed until this semester, when we started doing the Dr. Magic stuff together. Despite knowing you for so long, in the department, in classes.”

“You know what I never knew about you before this semester, Junnie?”

“What?”

“That you were such a softie,” you snickered fondly. “I thought you were all textbooks and GPA and flashcards and whatever.”

The human ducked his head bashfully. “It’s something I’ve been working on this year.”

“Between this and Dr. Magic, I think you’ve been doing pretty well.”

“Thanks.”

“So, why did you do it, Junnie?” You asked curiously. “Not be a softie, I mean, but…”

“What? Be Dr. Magic?” He clarified, to which you nodded. “I didn’t mean to make a persona like that, really. I had to pick a screenname, and the guys had jokingly called me that a couple times when I helped them out with some problems. That’s all.”

“I know why you started the account. Knowledge. That’s also why you didn’t get the credit. You just needed to know. Though, the story behind the name is cute,” you pinched his cheek, and he tried to deter your hand with his shoulder half-heartedly. “I mean more like, why were you hiding your IP and using VPNs and stuff before you even knew that I was trying to track you down? In the fall.”

“I made the first couple posts from the school computers just because I like to do my work there, I wasn’t trying to cover anything up. Then I pictured what I’d do if I found someone posting like I was on the forums. And I would’ve tried to find out who they were. So I started covering my tracks a bit more intentionally after that. Didn’t want any groupies rolling up on me.” He pinched your side teasingly with the last sentence, and you slapped his hand away with an eye roll.

“Oh shut up!” You scoffed, ignoring his hands as he tried to pull you back towards him again.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m sorry,” he apologized through his chuckles. “If anything I’m your groupie, I swear. Your number one fan from the moment you showed me your conspiracy board.”

“Mm, fine.” You scooted closer to him, letting him wrap his arms around you once more. “Glad we got that cleared up.”

Renjun shifted to lay on his back, and you easily followed the move to snuggle in mostly on top of him, resting your head in the crook of his neck and your hand on his waist, fingers innocently smoothing over a patch of skin above his hipbone where his shirt had ridden up. It sounded like the credits were on by now, but you didn’t really care about picking another movie as Renjun hummed along to the familiar song that played over the scrolling names. You’d sing along too, if you were alone at your own place. But now you didn’t dare even hum like the human with you for fear of what it could do to him. Renjun’s voice was plenty lovely enough though, even just this casual little bit humming. You’d see if you could get him to sing for you properly one of these days. If an opportunity came before graduation. Who knew what your days would even look like before then.

Gods, graduation. You felt like you could shrivel up and die just thinking about it. Not to mention that you hadn’t even told Renjun that you’d—

“Hey. What are you thinking about?” He suddenly asked, his disapproving tone clear.

You gulped. “How could you tell I was thinking about something?”

“For one, you’ve got your bad thinking face on.” He pinched your bottom lip. “You pout. It’s very dramatic. You look very concerned.”

“I have different thinking faces?”

“Yeah, you look different when you’re studying. I’ve seen you do plenty of that to know the difference. And you’ve got a third face when you’re contemplating. Usually you do that one when you’re looking at menus.”

“I didn’t know I was apparently an open book.” You covered your face with your hands in embarrassment.

“It’s cute, Y/N. You’ve got a cute face, and you make cute facial expressions with it, don’t cover it up.” He gingerly grabbed your hands to encourage you to take them off. “Except I am worried about what’s making you make your bad thinking face right now. What’s wrong?”

With a sigh, you pushed up into a sitting position. Renjun followed your lead curiously, a thoughtful frown on his own features as he watched you pull your knees to your chest.

“Renjun, I need to tell you something.”

He regarded you with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “Okay… go for it.”

Nervously, you smoothed out some wrinkles in your pajama pants as you confessed, “Uhm, Dr. Kwon asked me to carry the banner at commencement. I said yes.”

“I knew that.”

“What?” You looked up at him in disbelief.

“Well, since it was midterms already, I figured that if they’d picked me, they would have asked me by now and since they hadn’t, then they must have picked you. I was just waiting for you to tell me so I could tell you… Congrats.” Renjun grinned brightly at you, reaching out to rest his hand on your arm.

“You’re not upset?” You asked trepidly.

“We’re not petty little freshmen anymore, Y/N. No, I’m not upset. I’m proud of you, you deserve it.”

“So did you.”

“Not any more than you did.” He shook his head firmly. “So would you just accept my congrats already?”

You gave a small, shaky smile. “Thank you…”

“There we go.”

“This is what I was so freaked about… when we went to get froyo.”

“You were afraid of me being mad at you for being picked to carry the banner?” Renjun asked incredulously.

“I didn’t know how to tell you!” You defended yourself. “And now I have to do the commencement practices, on top of senior capstone and my extracurriculars…”

He wrinkled his nose. “Ew, commencement practices. So glad I didn’t get picked now, actually.”

“And that was so convincing, Junnie.”

“You remember what you said to me when we got froyo?”

Scrunching your face up, you struggled to think back to the exact conversation you had that day—you’d been really stressed. “Uh, ‘exactly two gummy sharks on mine please?’”

“Well, yeah, your hyper-specific froyo order—”

“Throwing stones at black kettles much?” You teased.

“Excuse me?” Renjun’s eyes went wide.

“Is that not—? I really thought I got it that time.”

“Did you mean to say ‘throwing stones in glass houses’ and/or ‘the pot calling the kettle black?’”

“…Yes.”

He turned very serious as he went to tenderly cradle your face in his hands. “I’m going to kiss you in like two seconds after I finish what I was saying, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” you agreed weakly, wishing very much that he’d just do it now instead of making you wait. He then let your face go.

“When we were talking about wanting people to know that we’re smart,” Renjun clarified. “You said that we’re both like that, and you knew that you were like that. And then you asked me if I knew that I was like that. I had tried to swear up and down this entire time that I was doing all of this—the needing to be the best—for myself. But it wasn’t. I’m like that too. That’s kind of what Dr. Magic was, me taking a step back from needing everyone to know I was the smartest person in the room. A quasi-experiment, to see if I could do it.”

“I think that after graduation, maybe we both chill on being the smartest person in the room, and try to just spend a summer working on that magical bucket list of yours?” You suggested.

“Oh?” He perked up at this. “Really?”

“You ever seen a werewolf shift?”

“No…”

“That sounds like a ‘not yet’ to me.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He confirmed with a conspiratorial grin that mirrored the one that you could feel across your own face. “You know how sirens can’t get dosed up on their own venom?”

“Yeah…” You nodded, wondering where he could be going with this.

“Well, I know a witch with a proprietary love potion blend that I think we might be able to modify to produce similar effects.”

“Fascinating.” You thought on this for a second, very quickly running through your knowledge of potion properties to imagine what it could be. “Two-factor blood potion?”

“Yes. But we’d put your venom in it instead of your blood so it wouldn’t kill me.”

“That could work…” You mused. “Speaking of, I should really give you a full dose one of these days.”

He breathed in sharply. “That wasn’t a full dose?”

“Nope.”

“Holy shit…”

“Have you ever watched a phoenix reincarnation?” You added another suggestion to your joint summer bucket list.

“Have you? Wouldn’t that literally blind us?” Renjun questioned, something akin to genuine concern on his face now.

You shrugged. “Allegedly. It’s never been recorded in a lab setting, so who really knows.”

“I think we’re going to get each other killed before we can get our PhDs,” he declared with a fond smile and shake of his head.

“Hey, the betting pools said we’d kill each other by junior year, so I think we’re doing well for ourselves.”

“Do you think we can collect on those bets when we graduate and we’re both still alive and have all of our limbs?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”

“Oh my god, come here,” Renjun groaned deliriously, kneeling to grab your face with two hands and crash his lips to yours. You curled your fingers in the front of his shirt, pulling him down with you as you fell back against the arm of his couch, still connected.

Yeah, you’d drive off that burning bridge when you got there.

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[biasbuck]

BiAsBuck’s ficrec Fridays

Happy Friday 13th everyone! Oh my gosh, two weeks to go, I'm so excited. Here's another round of the fic I've been reading when not actively losing my mind over all the buzzy promo landing. You can find previous rec lists here.

13 September 2024

the wayward son by @gayhoediaz had me GRIPPED. As the author summarises: 'Eddie misses his son, grows a mustache, pines after his best friend, and becomes a regular at a gay sex club. That last part is either an indulgence or an inevitable, somewhat self-destructive conclusion to several decades worth of compulsory heterosexuality and catholic guilt. Don’t ask him which.' The result of this is a scorchingly hot voyeuristic thrill ride with an absolutely aching emotional heart along as a passenger. I felt so much for Eddie as he self destructed and built himself back up again, truly throwing himself in at the deep end, and then Buck there to catch him when he falls. This fic gave me every emotion and was so incredibly satisfying. I already know it's gonna be one to go back to time and again.

had a feeling i could be someone by @butchdiaz of course I had to include the butch dyke Hotshots on XYZ inspired Eddie contemplating shaving her head fic. This one resonated with me so much, and was such a lovely take on the themes we're seeing in personhood and self actualisation and ownership of image versus what your parents intended for you. I love this character study of Eddie reclaiming her butch identity and expression, and Buck's sweet support in her journey. Make sure to check out the gorgeous fanart by @iinryer it was inspired by and it inspired if you haven't already seen it!

whatever you like by @clytemnestraaa 'hello mr performance anxiety meet mr desperate to please' sums it up perfectly. In which established relationship Eddie and Buck are having sex, but they still need to work on their communication. Buck wants to know what Eddie likes in order to give him that experience, but that's easier said than done when you're not really sure what exactly it is you want, or how to go about it. I really loved this exploration of a misalignment in sexual experience, the resulting cross purpose conversation, and the non-judgemental openhearted hand extended in order to find your way together. Or 'two 30-something men inexplicably put through an episode of Sex Education.' Sympathetic, sweet, and funny too.

But God, I love the English by @starlingbite this au tickled me for the sole reason of having watched several seasons of the show before someone told me Oliver is from London, and not having picked up on that accent slippage despite ALSO BEING FROM LONDON. Chimney and a British Buck take part in a six week cultural exchange programme with Chim going to London to stay with Maddie and work at a fire station, whilst Buck joins the 118 in LA. Eddie is instantly besotted by the handsome stranger, and fun linguistic hijinks aside, Buck fits right in. How will they manage long distance when it's time for him to go home? So much fun, and with sweet background Madney too!

it's leading me on, every time we touch by @bisexualbellamyblake in which after Eddie mentions to the team that he's having a little back trouble, Maddie lets slip that Buck once trained to be a massage therapist during his career jumping youth! As an almost certified professional of course it wouldn't be like Buck to not offer his services. And Eddie has no reason to turn him down. Does he? This oozed with sexual tension, whilst also being really lovely moment of friends getting to know each other better. Really excellent character voice and internal dialogue from Eddie.

all of the girls you loved before by @wildehacked back again with yet another banger...literally. Let me tell you, I read this one on public transport and had to school my expression with all my decades of fic reading experience in full force. Dragged out to team drinks on their evening off, the tipsy conversation turns to the team's top sexual experiences. When Buck finds out Eddie's is from years before, he can't help but dwell on just exactly how he could fix that. And he finds narrowing down his own top five a little tricky. With flashback cameos from Abby, Taylor and Tommy, this 5+1 fic was hot as hell.

P.S. Insert plea for Madney and Henren friendship/extended family fic here...I think I'm gonna need it! As usual feel free to self rec! And please share and reblog :) See you next week.