#i love how u colour some lines as well

[gyuswhore]

Statistically Speaking...

part of the svt TA collab

kim mingyu x reader

word count: 21k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

masterlist

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which was little to none. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

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

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

Nothing. 

You knock again.

Silence. 

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

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

Except he’s asleep.

No, that’s not the professor. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could’ve sworn you heard a snore. 

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

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

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

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

“Um, it’s office—”

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

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

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

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

“But—”

“It’s on the portal.”

“No it’s not.”

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

“How—”

A loud slam! of the door. 

“—long…” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday

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

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

Regards, YN

Dear YN,

Wednesdays and Thursdays. 4 to 6 PM.

Kim Mingyu, T.A. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you here to see him?”

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

“Are you here to see him? Mingyu?”

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

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

“Yeah he’s a bit…unorthodox.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right. How can I help you?”

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

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

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

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

It stumps you regardless.

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

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

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

“You marked them?”

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

“I thought the professor marked the lab reports.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dr. Cho—”

“Is no help.”

“I understand—”

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

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

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

Help, he did. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pardon?”

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

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

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

You smile, “No problem.”

Thursday

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

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

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

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

“I’ll see what I can do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help, he does.

Monday

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

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

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

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

Something isn’t right. 

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

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

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

“...Morning.”

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

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

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

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

To Do:

Call mom

Shoot myself

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

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

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

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

What the fuck?

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

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

“Good thing it was just you. Yeah.”

Just you.

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

“Have you seen the time?” 

“Not a morning person?”

“Nope!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And that isn’t happening because…?”

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

“You—”

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

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

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

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Excuse me for doing my job.”

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

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

“PSYCH101?”

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

“Oh. So you’re a fan.”

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

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

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

“Don’t tell me you offered.”

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

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

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

“Four.”

“Four?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart is in your fucking throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Majority of the class would beg to differ.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday

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

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

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

“I’m not ready.”

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

“How do you know that?”

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

“Only the—”

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

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

“I’m assuming…” you start. 

“Hm?” he looks over to you.

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

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

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

“What did you say?” Mingyu smirks. 

“Nothing,” you huff.

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

“Who said I didn’t.”

“Well then, stop being such a worrywart.”

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

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

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

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

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

You sniffle. 

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

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

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu…did you sleep at all?”

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

“Sleep? Rest?”

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

“And you were replying?”

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

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

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

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

“What’re you trying to say?”

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu—”

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

“You have, you’ve been amazing but—”

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

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

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

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

Why on earth do you care so much?

Right. Why do you? 

“Are you asking me that?”

“What?”

“Are you asking me why I care?” 

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

His eyes are bloodshot. 

“I have to get the exam pack.”

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

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

Delusive. Chimeric. Cruel.

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

The null hypothesis of your most elaborate nightmares.

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything. You tried everything. 

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

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Estimation cannot be perfect. 

[_]

It’s Thursday

Class. Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Friday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Saturday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

              ——————

                     P(B)

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

 it gets less complicated

 promise :/ 

[_]

It’s Sunday.

Eat. Drink. Work.

The page is blurry. Your eyes hurt. 

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

you’ve got this!!! < 3

You give up.

It’s Monday.

8:14 AM. 

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

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

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

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

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

Bright pink sticky note. 

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Wednesday.

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

It’s Thursday. 

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

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

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

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

You freeze like you’ve been caught. 

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

You’re off centre. But it’s fine. 

It’s Monday.

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.

—  92/100

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

“Did you feel bad?” you spit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bright red 92/100 marks the front page.

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

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

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

Because you know you’ve lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Friday.

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

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

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

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

[Mingyu]: switch to bF10 

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

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

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

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

Do you not miss me?

Do you not want me around?

Talk to me

I miss you

Please talk to me

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

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

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

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

It’s Saturday. 

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

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

“Latte, please,” you voice. “Iced.”

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

“Um, no thank you. Just one, please.”

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

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

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

“He has time to hook up?”

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

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

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

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

“Unless he flirts in variables.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bayesian inference…z scores…null hypothesis…

Wait. 

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

no null hypothesis in bayesian approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards, YN

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

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

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

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

SEND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RE: Tutorial Error from Kim Mingyu

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

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

Clicking on the notification, the email opens. 

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

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I–no, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

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

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

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

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

“You were hurt because I hurt you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not in a TA way.”

“Tutor way.”

“Um.”

“Friend way? A human way?” 

“No.”

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

“You know what?” he rasps. 

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He snorts, “Dressed up for it too.”

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

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

“How adorable.”

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

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

“That might’ve been a little better.”

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

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

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

You give him the satisfaction of an eye roll. 

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

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

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

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

“Who?”

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

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

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

“Hm?”

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

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

“Do you?”

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

“Is it because of the TA-ing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“D’you think they’ll be okay?”

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

“Like we did?”

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

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

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

“This is getting weird,” Mingyu breathes. 

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

“For fuck’s sake.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re paying attention to me.”

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

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

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

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

There’s a ding in the background. 

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

Another ding. 

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

Ding. 

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

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

“Gyu…” you whisper. 

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

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

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

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

The ringing stops. 

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

There’s a ding. 

“Mingyu, I really think—”

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

“You should answer.” 

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

“It might be important.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Go on.”

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

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

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

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

You have to stifle a snort. 

“Is it…plugged in?”

“Of course it is, I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it showing up on your files?”

“Disk…is not…formatted.”

“Erm, it might be corrupted.”

“How did that happen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I…I don’t know how, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I need a shower.”

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

“Do you wanna come in too?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can figure it out myself, Gyu.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm? I think so.” 

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

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

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

“Gyu,” you shuffle closer. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm? Has to be what?”

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

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

“For the love of—”

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

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

“What’s that again?”

“You little shit.”

You move your mouth forward to kiss him.

“Analysis of variance.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I might love you too. 

You hide that as well. For now. 

Smiling into the skin of his temples, you sigh.

“Feel free.”

[Mingyu]: class ended early 

[Mingyu]: be there in 5 

[You]: ???

[You]: wdym ended early

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

“It’s on the bedside table, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good thing I came back early, hm?” 

“Shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that for?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a pillow fort.

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

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

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

[You]: where are you

[Mingyu]: where im meant to be?

[You]: office hours?

[Mingyu]: mhm

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

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

[Mingyu]: DONT KILL ME

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

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

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

“Whatever for?”

“For lying.” 

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

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

“Him too.”

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

“Rumour has it,” he starts. 

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

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

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

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

“Take a hike, Kim.”

“...Sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mingyu was beautiful either way. 

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

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

“More than okay,” you mumble. 

“Good. Thought I lost you there.”

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

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

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

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

“How happy are you?”

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

“The recommendation? You deserve it.”

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

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

“Not just yet.”

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

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

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

“Girlfriend duties,” you quote solemnly. 

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

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

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

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

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

You can only grumble in mild annoyance. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I think I might love you too.” 

[iplayghoul]

𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞

pairing:: onyankopon x reader

wc:: 2.6k

warnings:: umm starts off as soft sex, they get a lil crazy (my fault), tongue sucking, squirting, cunnilingus all that. nothing too crazy. using 'mama' and 'ma', reader has braids and acrylics.

note:: heyy.. how yall doin 😅 work below the cut.. dont beat my ass

“You remind me of the sun, ony’,” you mumble, cheek pressed against his bare bicep with your head resting soft against the picnic blanket as you look up at the night sky. He's like the sun to you. “mm, yeah What– does that mean, pretty?” His voice is deep… just above a whisper and in your peripheral vision you see him looking at you but your eyes are fixated on the stars above. “I dunno, your skin is always so warm when I feel cold but– I gravitate towards you all the time. Like all the other stars do. You exude something… mmph, what m’ I saying rightnow.” You fumble, chuckling lightly at your lack of words.

“do you believe in destiny? like ‘written in the stars’ n’ shit? Hm?” Onyankopon speaks up, you feel an emotion behind his tone you can't quite describe. It sounded like… uncertainty, insecurity. “Well, you know how my exes were… I'd like to think those were just unfortunate circumstances that I'm tryna grow from, baby. I don't wanna think the universe puts us through that on purpose… y'know?” You sit up, pretty little night dress falling down to cover your thighs. Your hands holding you up as you look around the night sky. The full moon tonight facilitated an impromptu shoving of a picnic blanket onto the balcony, warm glasses of chai tea emptied and hot in your bellies as you laid together to watch the moon.

Onyankopon rests his head with his hands behind his head, admiring you. He clears his throat, “I love you. Y'know that?”, “I do know that, you know I love you too?” You look at him over your shoulder before turning over and pressing your palms onto his stomach, he groans in faux pain. “Mhm,” He purrs, sitting up to clasp your hands in his own, tugging you onto his lap. “I know that, mama,” the moon was so bright. It illuminated the darkness around you both on the balcony and glimmered in his eyes. You stare. His moistened lips glistening in the light, you scoot closer to him. Chest pressed against your breasts and he sits handsomely, basking in your gaze and touch. Pretty white french tip acrylic nails with bow decor caresses his neck, scratching the back his neck and playing with his ears. Ony’ shivers lightly.

“Why you touchin’ on me like that, hm?” He bites back a smile when u tug at his earlobe. “Gimme a kiss,” You murmur, lips sealed by the clasp of his against yours. He pecks your lips several more times, Onyankopon really liked the texture of your lip gloss on his lips. Hands drag down his chest, following the tiny lines of his wife-beater: twirling the drawstring of his sweats.

“Do you wanna–”

“No,” Your eyes meet his, and Ony’ watches you as kind as ever, with his stupid handsome face. “No, baby,” He kisses his teeth, “Not g'na fuck you out here. Not on the balcony,” his cheeks deepen with dimples as he offers you a low chuckle.

“‘M not asking you to fuck me.” You roll your eyes teasingly,”And what's wrong with out here . . . we got blankets and pillows, s'comfy baby,” He's offered a sweet smile, the lavender rubber bands on your braces reminded him of the colours of the night, so he looks up at the sky.

The moon colours dusted blue and purple hues onto the clouds that bordered it. Reflecting and sparkling in your eyes and your face. Shit . . .

“What I'm asking, is that you make love to me, Ony’,” You whisper, resting your head in his neck. Onyankopon sucks a deep breath in between his teeth. “Grab some f'them pillows.” He uttered.

Ony’ scoots forward, shamelessly staring at your ass as you bunched up the pillows scattered across the balcony and stuffing them behind where he previously sat, blankets included and teacups pushed far aside. “Lay back right there,” , “Mkay . . . ,” You whisper, eyes flickering to his position while he only eyes you, fixing your braids behind your ears and tucking yourself comfortably back into the mound of pillows and blankets. “Mhm, pull it up,” Onyankopon turned to you and gave your night dress a light tug, eyes still focused everywhere else but your own.

You shuffled, clutching the little thing up above your hips, pretty panties scrunched up between your legs . . . you wore some random ones with rainbows on it. “Take it off, ma’,” Onyankopon ordered, his mouth muffled by the hand on his chin, finger pressing into his lips while he watched you. Gingerly, you hook your acrylics beneath the band slipping the panties off. Flustered, your legs remained snapped shut, though your puffy cunt still pushed itself out, feeling tickled and tingly at the touch of the cold air. It was the type of wind that blew before a cozy storm. And you nibble on your bottom lip. Ony’ grabs your knees, prying them apart. He watched how the moonshine glistened against your pussy.

He pushed your legs back ‘till your knees brushed the blankets behind you, “Ony’ don't stare,” a grumble escaped you, body warm. He hummed. Leaning down, Ony’ spread your pussy further with his thumbs before offering your clit a kiss. You gasp softly, expecting the upcoming stimulation anxiously, wishing he could just skip this part n’ pull his dick out. You drop your head back into the pillows, eyes to the stars and moon when you feel Onyankopon's tongue swirl over your hole before dipping in gently. He likes to take his time. He does this a few more times and you whine, eyes falling shut when you feel him drag his tongue over your clit. Then, he's going in; he's licking up n’ down your cunt, sucking your clit into his mouth n’ tugging it to let it snap back into your pussy. You moan freely, thick into the air. The clouds above moved with the wind and suddenly the moon sent glows onto your face, so much so that you opened your teary eyes to see what was so bright on your face.

Onyankopon groans vibrations into your pussy when he sees your face, overcome with pleasure under the moonshine. He dips his face into you, licking circles about your cunt, kissing and suckling, and spitting, and slipping his tongue deep in you. “Ony’, Ony’ c'mon,” You whine, hands dancing behind his neck, pushing his face deeper into your cunt when you feel your clit throb hard. He makes circles around your clit, kissing it and once sucking it into his mouth. “Right there, right there,” You ache when he tilts his head and tongues a spot of your clit and you start grinding your body into his face. He thinks he might suffocate in the best way possible. Little glossy pearls of tears glide down the sides of your cheeks and tickle your ear. Head pressing back into the pillows when the rest of your body arches forward to Ony's mouth. You spread your legs so wide and they stiffened, all you feel is his tongue around your clit now pushing out undisturbed by your folds and you grab your braids tight. He stuffs two fingers inside you while maintaining his motions on your clit, sloppily fucking them into you, twisting them with each stroke and you think your ears are actually ringing. With it, you let out a sob and squeal, “Fuck! Fuck, oh-my-god, Ony–,” then it was silence, “Breath, mama, breathe,” Ony groaned, and suddenly you were gasping for air, cumming hard.

Your lips were quivering, feeling somewhat numb while Ony’ offered you some slow calming strokes with his fingers as you mellowed down. “Shit, you still want s’m cock after that?” He gave your clit a final kiss, seeing your bleary eyes as you sniffle and sigh. Your legs ached when you tried to move, closing them slowly. “Gimme a minute,” you pout and flop your head back down into the pillows, collecting yourself a bit, eyes blinking wearily. “S’ sensitive, m’ sorry,” Ony’ only re-fluffs some of the blankets and pillows that were now pushed askew, lifting your lower body by your legs while he pushed them back beneath you.

“Chill out,” He whispered, shifting to lay beside you and look at the sky. “S’ finna rain soon,” He announced,”Mhm, yeah,” You push your legs out, throwing your arms above you for a big stretch, squeezing your thighs tight to block your exposed pussy from the cold air. “Want head?” you peep at Ony’ who rests his hands behind his head. He shakes his head ‘no’ and stretches. You observe him and openly stare at his hard dick printing out of his sweats. Leaning forward, you rub, ever so gently, along the shaft while he watched you.

“‘Kay, get over right here,” Ony’ sat up moving from his spot, gesturing for you to situate yourself there with a quickness and brushing your hand off him. You huff, teasing, and pull your night dress back down as you crawl on your hands and knees to the pillows. Lay on your back and braids adjusted, Ony grabs your night dress, tugging it back up your body and kissing his teeth. “Keep playin’,” He gives your ass a playful smack and you giggle.

Grabbing your ankles, Onyankopon pushes your legs all the way back. What you'd like to call, ‘knee headphones’ the way they were in line with your ears. Some traces of creamy white release cooled under the air, clit puffing out and hole aching to be stimulated again. Ony’ adjusts himself above you, leaning close and tugging his sweats down, letting his pretty, dark dick fall out and slap your thigh. Fuck, you might cry. Little beads of pre-cum dripped from the tip, he was already girthy, yet his cock got thicker and meatier towards the center of the shaft. “Y'gonna go slow?” Ony lines up, pressing his tip into you and smiles,”Yea, mama, i’mma go slow,” He sinks and drawls out a long, ”Fuck.”

His heavy hand grips your thighs, pressing you down into the pillows. Onyankopon adjusts himself over you, letting his weight hold you down while he all but throbs in you. Legs now thrown over his shoulders and dark brown eyes staring deep into your own, fighting your weighted eyelids. “Bet’ not run, ma',” Onyankopon observes your face, licking his lips and giving you a quick peck, he resists indulging you when you pout and instead kisses about your damp cheeks and neck. “Oh-my-god,” you squeal when he begins to lift his hips out of you.

Onyankopon's hands cage your head, and the closeness leaves you nowhere to grab; thus your hands are left to mindlessly flop back onto the pillows. Nice and easy . . . proper n’ slow, he begins to rock his hips into you, “Why you suckin’ me in like that, mama?” He groans low. Ony’ let's his forehead rest on yours while the tip of his dick nudges the spongy mound inside you. “Ony’ your fuckin’ dick,” you whimper, “W’ssup wit’ it, huh?”, Onyankopon pressed his lips to yours in a wet kiss, grinning when he sees your pretty little eyes welling with tears. “Deeper–,” a sniffle, “Want it– deeper, shiiiit,” And he gives you just that, digging his fat dick deeper with each antagonizing stroke. Your cleavage bounces beneath your chin with each thwack of his hips into yours, tits having been firmly mushed into Ony's chest and you feel like you're gaping. Thighs burning n’ cunt stretching as he slowly builds the well in your tummy to milk you. “Mhm, watchu’ wanted?” You only groan and bite your lips, eyes screwed shut as you lay limp on the pillows getting fucked. Onyankopon gives your cheek a few slaps, “Answer me ‘fore I stop, don't play,” You force your eyes open and see Ony's eyes locked on yours. Brows furrowed and mouth ajar, that pussy felt fuckin’ good. “Yea, s’ what I wanted– daddy, fuck,” You let out a bratty sob when sloppily fucks into you faster before slowing again.

“Stick y'tongue out,” Onyankopon hums lowly, and you're not sure if you can focus on anything besides the smack of his hips and the squelching coming from his cock. You still comply, tongue lolling out from your mouth with heavy breathes. Ony’s dick throbs inside you, and he slurps your tongue into his mouth, suckling on it before locking your lips to his, tongue massaging yours. “Takin’ that fuckin’ dick, mhm,” His lips glide over your cheeks, fucking into you with fervor. He mumbles a chant of, “Shit, shit, shit,” pummeling you with his cock, reaching depths in your cunt you hadn't even discovered before. Ony’ seemed determined on knocking the fucking wind out of you and stuffing your swollen, little pussy full of dick. “Oh–,” wails escaping your lips, “Ohmygod unh, f– daddy, fuck,” you continue to mewl.

Your hands frantically grasp any and everything, your braids, Onyankopon's back, your ankles, the pillows; entire body gyrating as he fucks you. Onyankopon tongues your neck, licking about your ear, kissing your cheek. Your cunt feels sticky, s’ sloppy and warm and your entire body feels hot all over. Your eyes roll back and he's got you so trapped under him getting pounded that you can't even arch up into him. Cunt remaining spread at just the right angle and makes your legs quiver. Onyankopon let's out a tight groan and you feel the curve of his cock digging you hard. “G'nna make me fuckin’ cum. Squeezin’ on me like that, mama.” His sharp words muttered right into the shell of your ear making you clench hard. “Mu'fuckin’, sloppy pussy,” He lifts off you and pushes your legs above your head, crossing your ankles as he holds them together for leverage.

“N– Oh, no,no,no, Onya–!” you uttered out with gasps at the new angle. “Take it, take it, take it,” Ony’ murmured. Just like that, warmth squirted out of your cunt, dripping down his abdominals and pooling right between you where the hilt of his cock slapped into your folds as he kept drilling himself into you. “Mmmmph,” You can't help but cry and moan, cheeks feeling a bit warm with embarrassment yet it's overcome by the exponential throbbing of your clit. Your hand started tapping the pillows, shaking as you tried to tap out of whatever Ony’ was serving you right now. “C'mon,” He whispered, “I gotchu’.” It's like he senses it, thumbing your clit lightly.

“Need it! Need– it, daddy, shit,” You peer up at him.

“I know you do, baby, give it to me,” His commands echoes in your head, over and over. You're gasping, body jiggling off the pillows and slapping back up into his, “‘M . . . fuck, daddy,” sobbing and failing at formulating your words.

“‘M cumming, I'm cumming, oh my god.”

Your hips stiffen up and with each pelting thrust Ony’ cussed above you; a harsh wind blows and you think the coldness against your hot body makes you gush all over his cock while he cums alot. You blink the tears out of your eyes when Onyankopon fucks your cum mixture back into you a couple more times, before pulling out quick to avoid you being too sore and pained for him to move then plopping beside you on the pillows. Your legs fall carelessly below and all you hear besides silence are his harsh breaths and his deep voice asking you something you can't yet register, your clits throbbing too hard.

The moon really did look pretty tonight. Onyankopon does remind you of the sun. Shit, you felt like you were sitting among the fuckin’ stars.

[atydblack]

sirius black x pureblood!reader where they r at a pureblood gathering in an established relationship & the reader although not a blood supremacist is pretty praised within the society and viewed almost as a pureblood princess, an example & a perfect (future) wife. she doesn’t love that but she’s used to coloring in the lines so she can’t help the way she is viewed by the pureblood society. anyway, sirius and reader r at some kind of pureblood event and he already feels out of place. reader tries to keep him at bay but eventually he causes a scene when a few boys actively hit on reader in front of sirius. reader pulls him aside and is just like wtf is wrong w u sirius u know im yours. lots of comfort and fluff plz

"pureblood princess"

masterlist

"I can't believe you're making me do this." Sirius huffed, frustratedly attempting to tie his tie.

"I don't want to go just as much as you don't!" You grumbled, wandering over to him and helping him with his tie.

"I have a solution," He smirked, "We could just... not go?"

You rolled your eyes, he had been complaining all day and you were done with repeating yourself.

"We don't have a choice, Siri."

It was the night of the annual Pureblood Ball and now that you and Sirius were engaged, your attendance was mandatory.

This year, the ball was at the Black Manor. The Blacks had been almost shunned from the society due to Sirius' behaviour but have now been welcomed back with open arms.

Sirius' parents were over the moon when they found out about your relationship. After years of Sirius refusing to accept his label as a pureblood, his engagement to you surprised everyone.

Your parents weren't so excited. There was constant gossip of the Black family after Sirius ran away and as you were highly considered the 'pureblood princess' to those in the pureblood society, they thought you could do much better.

Sirius didn't help himself when attending big events like this. You had to beg him to come and when he finally agreed, he just moped the whole evening.

"Why don't we just run away?" Sirius mumbled, pulling you in to his chest and kissing the top of your head.

"We can't." You mumbled back. As much as you did want to run away with Sirius forever, you just couldn't. Your presence was too demanded, if you ran away with Sirius they'd have his head on a stick within a week.

"At least you look gorgeous." Sirius poked at you.

That was one of the only thing you enjoyed about these gatherings, you could both dress up.

When you were much younger, these parties excited you too much. With rose tinted glasses on as a little girl the idea of wearing a pretty dress and have everyone fawning over you was a dream.

You could sense Sirius' anxiety upon arrival and as much as you tried to comfort him, he just quickly shut you down.

"Siri, you'll be fine. We just have to show our faces for a bit then we can go home." You reached for his hand.

"I am fine." Sirius grunted. "I just don't want to be here."

He avoided eye contact with you as you walked through the giant doors towards the dimly lit ball room.

You'd think that this would be any girls dream and perhaps if you ignored the details it might be. However knowing that almost everyones ideologies in that room were what many considered evil spoilt the whole thing.

Everyone was dressed in dark colours, your deep red dress complimenting the room. The most infamous names in the pureblood society were here tonight, so you knew you had to put on your best act.

"Sirius," Narcissa greeted sternly as her and her sister Bellatrix approach the two of you "Y/N."

Sirius' jaw tightened as he kept his words to himself.

"Narcissa, Bellatrix. Lovely to see the both of you." You faked a small smile.

"Congratulations on your engagement," Bellatrix sneered. "How you managed it I will never know, Y/N."

"I'm not quite sure what you mean."

"Well, our dear Sirius would have danced on all of our graves just a few months ago, including yours." Bellatrix smirked. "You must tell me the details of the charm or potion you used to make him like this."

"Oh piss off, Bellatrix." Sirius barked.

"Oops, looks like it's wearing off." Bellatrix laughed before the two of them strutted off.

"Great start." You mumbled.

"Can we just leave, Y/N." Sirius groaned.

"Just a little longer, Siri." You squeezed his hand as you moved forward within the party, before spotting both your parents approaching you.

"Y/N, darling." Your mother ushered you over. "Come join us."

"Orion," You smiled gently "Walburga, lovely to see you both again."

You had known Sirius' parents since you were born. Funny how differently women and men were treated in this odd society.

You were treat like a delicate flower and on the other hand Sirius was raised with high expectations of being this big strong man. Now somehow you were the one being praised for bringing him back into this toxic environment.

Sirius stayed silent, not bothering to utter a word to your parents nor his own.

"Oh, darling Y/N, how stunning you look." Walburga gushed. "You will be such a stunning bride."

"Indeed," Orion spoke sternly. "It will be a pleasure for the pureblood princess to be part of the Black family."

"It will be my pleasure." You blushed.

Sirius let go of your hand, walking away from the group without a word.

"He's um-" You mumbled becoming flustered. "He's still getting used to being back here."

"Don't worry darling," Walburga reassured you. "We couldn't manage him so we can hardly expect you to."

You gave a fake smile and after a while of conversing with you soon to be in-laws, you left to get a drink.

Your eyes wandered around the room as you waited for your drink at the bar, Sirius nowhere to be seen.

You couldn't blame him, it wasn't exactly the best place for him to be but you didn't expect him to abandon you within the first 10 minutes.

"If it isn't the pureblood princess," A voice was heard from behind you. "Where's your retched fiance?"

It was Evan Rosier. He had been on your case for years and after many, many proposal refusals he still couldn't give up.

"Why would I tell you." You muttered.

"Ah, he's left already? I'm not so surprised. He's always been a runner." He came closer to you, not leaving eye contact. "I would never abandon you, princess."

"He hasn't abandoned me." You snapped. "Can't you take no for an answer? I'm engaged."

"You think I believe that? What business does Sirius Black have with you? He hates all of us, including your family."

"Shut up."

"Can't handle the truth?" He reached over to grab your chin, forcing you to look at him. Not wanting to cause a scene, you let him. "Princess, I would give you the respect you deserve and you know it."

"Leave me alone."

He chuckled, leaning in closer.

"Make me." His face was inches from yours as you froze inside yourself.

Before you knew it, he was being pushed against the bar, glasses smashing everywhere.

"Keep your hands off of her you filthy rat." Sirius barked.

"Your puppies come off his leash, Princess." Evan smirked.

Sirius shoved him harder, ready to hit him.

"Sirius, don't" You grabbed ahold of his arm as the room went silent. "Don't do this."

"Yeah, or what?" He grunted.

You pulled on his arm harder and he turned to look at you, his features softening as you caught his eye.

"Lets just go, Siri, please."

He pushed Evan to the floor before storming out of the front doors.

You rushed after him, ignoring the muttering of gossip as you did so.

"Fuck!" You heard him shout out of frustration now that he was away from everyone.

He was sat on one of the stone steps with a cigarette in his hand and you sat yourself next to him.

"What was all that about?" You mumbled.

"Are you fucking kidding?" Sirius grunted. "He was all over you."

"I can handle myself."

"Doesn't bloody look like it." He bit.

"Well, I can." You bit back. "You know how many years I've had to deal with men like that?"

He was silent for a moment.

"I'm sorry I just- I can't stand being around all those people again."

"All those people? Siri, they're your family."

"Yeah well they're all pricks." He muttered. "And you- why are you pretending like becoming a Black is such an honour? My family is filled with lines and lines of horrible people and you know it."

"I know. You know I have to say these things." You responded. "But I do feel honoured."

"How could you possibly feel honoured."

"Because I get to marry you."

He turned to hide is blushed cheeks before turning back to you.

"I love you, Y/N."

-

this is not proofread and there is no smut im so sorry but i just wanted something to back into the swing of writing and loved this idea!

[spitdrunken]

ugh i NEEEEED more of ur hypnosis content w/ vox!! he goes to waste in the hands of people who have NO IDEA how fucked up and sexy an insecure manipulative control freak stalker with mind control powers is <3

so far, u r the only writer who truly understands his rancid vibe

im glad i am feeding into the EXACT brainrot you want because it's the only brainrot i adore for vox LMAO he's a fucking loser <33

notes: yandere, hypnosis, manipulation

He tries to be so suave about how he's pulling you in, like it's some genius master plan of which he's pulling the strings behind the scenes. But, let's be honest with ourselves here, it's just kind of patchetic. If he's truly as charming as he attempts to portray himself, why would he even have to hypnotise to you in the first place? It's absolutely a 'him issue. Because even if you were to fall for him hook, line and sinker, prostrating yourself in utter adoration every day, he'd still put so-called 'safeguards' in place.

Vox would prefer to start with some smaller triggers. Sure, it'd be possible to have you immediately believe you're in love with him... But that doesn't feel like it's a victory well-earned. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Instead, he starts more subtle, leaving triggers through temporarily taking over the screen of your phone.

You think your screen is just glitching out for a moment when it flickers from red to white for a couple of seconds. What you don't know is that you simply don't remember the message left for you in between. He'll plant a seed in your mind, something small, like making you think of him every time you see the colour blue. To you, the association between him and the colour doesn't even register, so, perhaps you'll start to wonder as to why you're thinking about him so often- Perhaps you'll start thinking you have feelings for him.

He'll put you in a trance while you're around your friends or your partner, all because you do something as simple as checking your phone for directions. You end up coming to, alone, vague memories of snapping at your friends and saying horrible things to them flickering through your mind... But why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense! You hadn't been upset at all. But yet, you'd done it, and you keep pushing away everyone around you further and further.

You start to become paronoid, starting to lose your trust in your perception of reality. Memories start slipping through your fingers like sand, and you return to your senses to a long string of texts to nearly all of your contacts, that ends with you blocking them. You know you're in Hell, but your life was already shitty enough. This seems to be a bit too much. You think you're losing your mind.

Of course, it's when you are about your absolute lowest point when sweet, sweet Vox swoops in to save you from yourself. Perhaps you can't trust yourself any longer, but you can trust him... Can't you? A mere snap of his fingers is all that it takes to have you mindlessly nodding along.

[puckpocketed]

who is #43?

Hello !! First off thank u for visiting. If you clicked read more by accident rip sorry it’s a lot of text. ENJOY!!! <3

1. This was the photo reference I used. I really did mean it when i said he photographs well!! I really like how scrungly he looks at times lol. v paintable

2. here’s a timelapse for your viewing pleasure in video + gif form <3

3. Process breakdown below. I am not formally trained, so don’t take any of this as professional advice!! The way i paint has been compared to channeling some evil contract with a demon also. So um . Im saying that i dont remotely think that this is efficient or correct, its just whats comfortable for me <3

3a) the dreaded lining phase. I have 2 modes of operation when it comes to painting - either i go full-dick with fancy inking/sketching + cel shading (rare, unrefined, haven’t figured out a nice workflow yet) OR i do a very very basic chicken scratch set of lines like so:

It’s less about being realistic here and more about laying down some guide lines for the chaos ahead. If i thought i could get away with it, I would start every rendered painting i do with laying down colours — but unfortchh ive tried that before and it usually ends in really weird proportions. Even with the lines i still need to make adjustments. This is something no people except me would notice but look at the above sketch; the eyes are too big and slightly too far apart, the forehead is too small and thus the hair is also not quite big enough… I have a bad habit of drawing eyes too big on faces, they’re my favourite facial feature to draw.. i barely resisted giving him big cow eyelashes (I love big cow eyelashes… all of my OC’s and most of my more stylised fan art of characters get big cow eyelashes… god…. Big cow eyelashes SAVE ME……….)

Anyway. Structure of the face + hand somewhat established. <3

3b) Underpainting!! Okay stay with me here . Ever since i figured out i dont have to paint in 03925893853 different layers, I’ve joyfully painted on 1 layer as much as possible. I dont have the brain power all the time to be managing layers so I simply dont work with that many layers. For this painting, the skin in its entirety was painted on one layer, the hair on another layer, and the effects on the last layer. There was a placeholder background off-white/grey colour for a while there, and I duplicated the line layer — one for figuring out where to lay colours, and one hidden for later so i could check back to see how accurate to the sketch/proportions were to the actual painting. 6 layers, 2 of which i painted the bulk of the piece on, 1 more at the end.

3c) here’s where I started carving out features. I think about objects in terms of volumes and light rather than lines. i love painting and sculpting because of this!! Here you see where I’ve begun to define his features — his eyelids, his bags, his nostrils. Just refining what was there before. The suggestion of facial hair before i gave it up and left it for later (his face is so naked the WHOLE time)

3d) nose bridge highlight, suggesting his eyebrows, a cheek highlight. A touch more coral red and muted yellow pull away from the grey/blue underpainting. Strategically leaving some of it peeking through.

3e) i truly start messing with the fidelity of his features here. Red lipstick <3 and some violet/blue for shadows on the right side of his face.

3f) the part where it starts looking like q.hughes to me (though, my friend said i got his vibe pretty early on which is such a compliment.. waaaaa…..) I love this part of every painting i do. I know it’s definitely not the Correct order since other parts of the entire painting are simply Not Rendered or Done, but whos gonna stop me?? :3

I love love loveeee painting faces. Adding the little shinies to his eyes + lips + upper lip + nose … you don’t know how much of a difference it makes until you do it. Also i snatched his eyebrows

3g) i really pushed the red/coral/ochre/orange here. Note the yellow highlights on his cheekbones, the forehead, and the thin thin line of pink right between where his bottom lip ends and his chin shadow starts <- very important . To ME!!!!!!! Also highlighting his waterline and adding his lashes was so so fun <3

3h) FACIAL HAIR!!! And I started rendering his hand. Some micro adjustments made to his face for proportion check.

3i) i start painting his hair in earnest and realise his forehead is too small so i make the adjustment. I really love how it falls into his eyes in this photo. <3

3j) i make some final adjustments to his eyes — a bit smaller, closer together. And i refine the outline of his jaw, push the stylisation of it just a little.

3k) Finishing details; his flyaway hairs, his moles, a bit of texture on his face, shadows cast by his hair, his little forehead cut <3

3l) i adjusted his hand here, added more texture to his skin, refined his hair a tiny bit more, and made the decision not to fuck around painting his jersey because i wanted the focus to be his face <3

3m) Canucks blue and green. Captain at 23. His form bleeds into the background. He is the franchise.

theee most fun ive had painting anything. and i finally feel... warmed up? if that makes sense. art for me is like. if i dont do it in a while it feels like nothing goes right when i come back to it. i hate that feeling, and the most difficult hurdle to clear is letting myself feel that until i get back into my Zone. after all this time i feel like im BACK !!!!!!!

i loved painting this fella. hes SO Shaped. <3

Apologies i simply do Not have the energy to write the alt text for all of these so i hope the little blurbs are okay aslkjasdklj. i gotta post and go to bed . if u made it this far, thank you for reading!!

[peachypine]

the roomies!!! i originally designed this ososan oc trio in full about a year ago to write on an rp blog. it's not really active rn, but i still want to talk and post about 'em, so here they are! just basic rundowns, but i'd be curious to hear which one (if any) is your fav of the three (feel free to leave it in the tags?? if u want!)

bonus transparent of them all together:

aaand some rambling under the cut about their designs

anzu:

i wanted to use orange as a character colour bc it's one that wasn't already used in the matsu rainbow, and i had a concept of a gyaru character named anzu kicking around in my head for a long time as well, so here we are. miwa from the mixer ep inspired the eyeshadow (orange rather than miwa's blue obv, to keep with her colour theme) and delinquent totoko's design inspired her ombre dyejob! i went with a blonde-to-orange look as a nod to anzu's namesake fruit (apricot).

the strands framing her face are split into 3 sections at the end (2/3 are grouped together and 1/3 flips in the other direction) which is a little nod to her being one of 3 siblings (eldest), as well as the "三" character used in her surname (mikado) meaning 3. the rest of her hairstyle is just because i thought it looked cute, though.

ososan's style is more simplified, but i wanted to convey makeup that was a little bold, but cute (long false lashes, eyeshadow, & and a soft pink or nude glossy lip). clothing-wise, she mixes and matches a few different substyles (agejo and onee are prominent, with some ane, tsuyome, and general old school gal influences as well?), with a particular fondness for animal prints, esp. tiger print. (that said, orange tiger print doesn't seem all that common in gyaru clothes, so in-universe i like to think that the top pictured above was originally a black-and-white zebra(?) stripe print she thrifted and dyed at home--close enough!)

her nails day to day are usually medium length since she has a lot of hobbies that involve her hands and anything longer makes those things a bit more cumbersome. sometimes they're decoden/bedazzled, sometimes they're just painted a cute colour/pattern, depends on the day! and i think she opts for press-ons over extensions for longer nails, since it's cheaper.

ran:

i'm just a bitch who loves purple, that's the reason for this one. i think the hime cut with shorter bangs is nice because you can showcase the eyebrows (i think eyebrows can really elevate a character design so i gave all 3 their own brow shape) without worrying about the lines for the eyebrows and bangs intersecting in an annoying way when you draw it. i like shorter, slightly sharp eyebrows like these because they're easy to draw, lol. i think they're usually furrowed like she's displeased with something, but that may just be her resting face. i also thought this blunter, sharper-looking cut (bold, standoffish) was a fun contrast to anzu's flippy half-updo (bright, bouncy) and yuzu's short, wavy hair (languid, relaxed).

5 piercings on each ear (2 spiked helix & 3 lobe) = 5 siblings including ran (4 older brothers). the other reason for this number of piercings was that her namesake flower (orchid) had--i thought--5 petals, but as it turns out i'm a fool, it's actually 3 petals (including the lip) and 3 sepals??? ah, well.

clothing-wise, influences from various punk/vkei styles alongside some rokku gyaru. (maybe anzu introduced her to this one?) this brash style is the total inverse of how she was expected to dress growing up. (when she and anzu first met, she was an OL with no piercings, undyed hair, and positively miserable, but that was a number of years ago now.) i'm really not reinventing the wheel with "small and angry", but y'know, we have fun here.

yuzu:

is teal distinct enough from blue to count as its own colour? i think so. for yuzu, i really loved the concept of a deadpan-looking character who is very much not the straightman, who in fact wants very badly to be the funnyman 99% of the time. that kind of straight-faced but silly comedic character is always really fun to me.

half-lidded/heavy-lidded eyes paired with thick brows are always a winner to me fsr, and i wanted to give her a more "handsome" looking face with a bit more of a defined jaw than you typically see on women in ososan. as a treat. i wanted her to look a bit like a mysterious prettyboy, but she's not actually mysterious, she's just a space cadet. (and very straightforward about her thoughts and feelings, saying them with little fuss or thought.) expectation vs reality, people deciding what you're like based on their own perception vs what you're actually like, etc. etc.

i don't have anything deep to say about her hairstyle, but maybe that's how yuzu would like it, what you see is what you get. (again, eyebrows vs hair... let that eyebrow scar that i gave her for no reason shine.) as for clothing, she prefers things that are easy to move around in, so her style is the most "matsuno"-like (t-shirts, hoodies, basketball shorts, sweats, etc.). in particular, she likes shirts with phrases, usually in english, that are funny or almost make sense but not quite ("for background visual gags" and "for the english speakers in the audience").

[letternotekisses]

Ur assistant AU has me losing it. I love it so much n i havent been able to stop imagining assistant!reader being "borrowed" by another talon member, and coming back to Akandes office dizzy and exhausted, well used and stumbling towards him @_@

(nsfw) wait cuz this is delectable anon ur juicy little brain I could kiss u

—

You’re panting when your legs are folded into your chest, Gabriel’s cock sinking deep enough into your cunt that you feel unbelievably full of him, his mask is staring you down, watching uncaringly as he knocks the wind out of you. You’d been at this for hours, bent over surfaces, pinned against walls and even put into a full-nelson a few times. You’d cum so many times that you were starting to get dizzy and breathless, your nails creasing the leather of Reaper’s cloak as you hold on for dear life because he just can’t seem to get enough. As soon as he fills your cunt and pulls out to marvel at the hefty load he’d dumped in you - he’s soon growing hard again.

You’re there until the late evening, limping out the door with an aching pussy, bruised skin and now a sore ass - seeing as Gabe gave it an appeased slap on your way out.

—

It’s dim and quiet in Akande’s office, lamplight casting his shadow large and intimidating across the cream walls, flickering over the ornate wood of the glossy floor and desk. There’s an old stereo playing soft music somewhat in the background, one he usually kept on to entertain you whilst he zoned in on important documents or paperwork. Only, you weren’t here this evening.

The last he’d seen of you was with Gabriel, chittering away whilst the wraith sat and stared with all the grace of a brooding hen. Not that Akande minded all too much, it kept you content and busy while he was occupied, and it helped soften Gabriel’s tolerance to sharing. All in all, there wasn’t a concern for Akande, apart from how late it was getting. Most nights he would take you to bed, fall asleep with his legs intertwined with yours and your head resting softly on his chest. Only some nights would he allow the others to see you so soft, so precious and so vulnerable.

His office door opens with a sharp click, sapping him from his monotony, and Akande’s eyes snap to it almost instantaneously. He softens when it’s you who steps past the heavy oak door, closing it with a soft yawn. Your hair is messy, your mascara smudged, your blouse open and your tights torn to shreds. You’re even holding your heels in one hand, it’s why Akande didn’t anticipate your arrival, he couldn’t hear the soft pattering of your footsteps in the hall.

There’s bruising on your pretty neck, and it makes him frown.

Usually it wasn’t an issue, but it seemed Gabriel had worn you out exceptionally today, and you were practically swaying on your feet. Akande stands to greet you, and you chuck your heels onto the chaise lounge across, practically melting into his arms once you feel the familiar weight of his his hands on your shoulders, pulling you against his chest.

Akande is enriched with the softest parts of you. He pulls you from your messy clothes and chucks them across his office, bundling you up and into the en-suite where he bathes you with a tenderness the outside world were unfamiliar with. All of his bathrooms are stocked and lined with your products, full of life and love and colour, and he follows your routine for you, step by step, perfect and meticulous even when you can’t lift a muscle to help. You don’t have to, he will take care of you.

He dries you off, slipping a silky soft chemise over your arms, one of the many outsides he kept for you in his rooms - all lined next to his suits, they were just as important to him. Before settling you gently into his huge bed, you’re out like a light almost immediately, and Akande is more than happy to let you cling to him like a koala until he’s ready to sleep himself.

He waited. As strong as he may be, the soft underbelly of the leader of Talon is bared only to you. He can only be well rested with you by his side. It’s pure, something a man like him isn’t accustomed to, and Akande will treasure it despite its oddities.

(And no, he doesn’t care if you drool on his pillows.)

[huellitaa]

it girl autumn 🎃🎀🍁

autumn is upon us!!!!!!!!!! all hail the best season 💭🎀🍂🧸🩷

──★ ˙ ̟🎀ur autumn to do list

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ ur never too old for trick or treating (if u celebrate!). girl get OUT THERE. (🎀🗒️note: if u have any little siblings or cousins or family, then you can take them out trick or treating and celebrate w them js as an excuse to get outside!!)

🧸𓂃 ࣪˖ make pinterest boards for ur fav autumn movies and shows bcuz they cant do it themselves </3

🍂𓂃 ࣪˖ go collect leaves outside and make a pretty piece of art out of them

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ walk around early in the morning when its all foggy and pretty

🐇𓂃 ࣪˖ learn how to bake or cook (in my case anyway) OR look for some cosy autumn recipes to learn and share w ur loved ones or just to have a cosy night in and eat for urself♡

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ go thru ur closet and wardrobe and throw out all the old things you don't wear anymore. autumn is a time of change, after all (🎀🗒️note: make some cute autumn outfits while ur at it! ♡)

🎃𓂃 ࣪˖ drink every possible pumpkin spice drink u can find in ur area

🍂𓂃 ࣪˖ get out of ur reading slump! if ur in one anyway. if not then just read more books bcuz tea, rain and books is quite possibly the cosiest thing ever

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ visit a library alone, go shopping alone, just enjoy ur alone time. autumn is a time of introspection and a time to work on urself, and though i love spending time with myself in any season, autumn is especially cosy ♡

🧸𓂃 ࣪˖ look at cute pumpkin designs and make one urself if u celebrate halloween ♡

🎃𓂃 ࣪˖ make some little halloween decorations if u celebrate ♡

💭𓂃 ࣪˖ build a little bug hotel out of twigs and leaves and things u find on the ground outside!!!!!! i used to do this all the time w my brother or my friends when i was little and its very nostalgic and fun ♡

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ take loads of pictures and make little vlogs and video diaries of ur autumn adventures, just for the memories ♡

──★ ˙ ̟🎀 music and media

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ ur autumn playlist

clairo (charm, sling)

the 1975

florence & the machine (lungs)

the cardigans

the crane wives

neil young (harvest)

the smiths

phoebe bridgers

type o negative

kali uchis (never be yours)

gracie abrams

🍂𓂃 ࣪˖ movies and shows

the nightmare before christmas (obviously)

gilmore girls ♡

coraline, corpse bride, pretty much any tom burton movie

anne with an e

fantastic mr fox

hilda

gravity falls ♡

you've got mail

over the garden wall

pride and prejudice

jennifers body ♡

practical magic

little women

kiki's delivery service

arrietty ♡

howl's moving castle

lord of the rings ♡

and i always have a harry potter marathon every autumn because i loved it when i was younger, so why not!

(🎀🗒️note: i love playing identity v, animal crossing and cosy grove in the autumn too! or meeting up w friends and literally js playing board games theyre so fun♡)

──★ ˙ ̟🎀fall fashion and staples

okay so i personally love pink, whites, browns, cream colours and just general neutrals-pastels in the autumn, but you can adjust this to ur personal aesthetic and however you see fit!

the first thing i think of when i think autumn is layering. layer layer layer layer. tops and sweaters, cardigans, jumpers, leg warmers, tights; to keep you warm and pretty ♡

pay attention 2 fabrics! knitted, cashmere, fleece, flannel, all the cosy sorts are perfect for the autumn months ♡

patterns like stripes, leopard print, chevron, argle and plaid are so cute and simple, esp in october / november ♡

neutral colours, like beige, white, brown, cream, grey, black, and pale variants of colours too i think work so well esp in the autumn ♡

anything fur lined is absolutely adorable i rest my case

MASSIVE COATS. i have this big trenchcoat my mum had since i was a baby and i wear it EVERYWHERE in autumn ♡

boots are THE autumn shoes, bonus points if they're fur-lined. they just look so so cute ajdhfjsfjhsjf♡

knit hats and small hair accessories, bonus points if they're in the pretty autumn colours ♡

not really fashion but i love doing simple makeup in the autumn. just very dewy natural looks are pretty all year around, but especially in the fall ♡

🍂𓂃 ࣪˖ pretty fall fashion:

all my love... 💬🎀🫶🏻💗

[zerobaselove]

brain freeze | sung hanbin

pairing: frozen yogurt worker! hanbin x regular customer! reader

genre: fluff, strangers to friends to lovers ?? kinda ??

word count: 5067

warnings: none i don't think! lowercase intended, not proofread, or even read or written in one sitting truthfully

notes: thank u to tiff for convincing me to write this after our zb1 as part time workers conversation, it's honestly rlly rough but i like the concept so :]] i hope u guys like it,, especially since ive been mia </3

"welcome to cosmic swirls! our frozen yogurt is over on that wall there and the toppings are just to the right! you can come up here when you're all ready and i can ring you up!"

the cheerful boy at the front counter beamed at you as you walked through the front door of the new frozen yogurt shop in town, gesturing to the other side of the store. you gave him a smile and a small thank you as you followed the bright-coloured walls towards the frozen yogurt. after a long day at work, you couldn't help but give in to the temptation of trying the new sweet treats just across the street from your work.

the shop was lined with bright purple and blue paint and star decals, a wall filled with every topping you can imagine, and the plethora of flavours of frozen yogurt that lined where you stood. there was a faint hum of whatever tune was playing on the radio, and you could faintly hear the cute worker shuffling around at the counter. you honestly weren't expecting it to be so empty, but how many people were getting frozen yogurt on a thursday night, right?

"hmm," you wondered aloud, browsing the options in front of you, unable to decide on just one.

"i recommend the cotton candy!" the cute boy chimed up, watching as you admired the machines in front of you. "ooh, i like the sound of that," you smiled, grabbing a cup and filling it with the frozen dessert. you added a few simple toppings before walking over to the counter where the boy stood.

after ringing you up and paying for your treat, the boy, who you've noticed is named hanbin, judging by his name tag, speaks up. "hope you like my recommendation!" a wide smile crosses his face, gesturing to the pink and blue swirled frozen yogurt in your cup.

"and if i don't?" you teased, giving hanbin a mischievous grin. "well," he pondered for a moment, "then i owe you a new one! but i bet you'll love it, scouts honour!"

you let out a laugh at the boy with his hand up in the air, "well i'll keep you updated." you laughed again as you went to go sit down, scrolling through your phone as you tried the frozen yogurt, pleasantly surprised at how good it was. i guess that's why everyone's been talking about this place lately, you thought to yourself.

finishing up your treat, you threw out the cup and walked back to the counter, getting hanbin's attention. "so?" he started, a smile on his face as he waited to hear your review.

"hated it!" you said, joking around with the boy as a laugh passed your lips. he feigned offence, a hand coming to his chest dramatically as if you had personally struck his heart. "no way!! how could you!" the two of you burst into a fit of giggles, drawing the attention of the lone couple in the corner before covering your mouth with your palm.

calming down a bit, you continued, "guess i'll just have to come back and try a different flavour next time!" you insisted.

"i guess you will!"

and you did. in the coming weeks, you found yourself returning to the shop more times than you could consider normal. every time, trying a new flavour than before. had to give it all a shot right? even if some nights left you with a cup of half-eaten frozen yogurt or more toppings than dessert in an attempt to drown out a flavour you weren't particularly fond of.

what you had grown quite fond of though was the boy behind the counter. hanbin. over the weeks you had gotten to know hanbin a bit; often you were there late, one of the last people there at that time, which gave you two time to talk and get to know each other a bit.

what you had learned was that hanbin was a dancer outside of his daily employment. most of the time his paychecks went to different classes with teachers he admired. something about "wanting to learn from the best." you also learned that he had a small hamster plushie that he kept behind the counter with him, even got him a miniature apron that you could only imagine he stole from a small doll. but sometimes kids would come in and he'd show off his little friend, loving to watch the way they got excited over the worker hamster. it was cute. he was cute.

and with that thought clouding your brain like an all too familiar brain freeze, you walked through the familiar front doors yet again, the jingle of the bell signaling your entrance had become something you were sure you'd hear in your dreams.

"on time as usual," hanbin smiled at your familiar face, "what flavour are you going to try today?" he questioned as he watched you saunter over to the machines, grabbing a cup before staring them down. "is the coconut any good?"

"never tried it honestly," he said simply, leaving you shocked. it was the first flavour so far that he hasn't had, "heard it's good though! you'll have to let me know!" his usual smile plastered on his face, you once again end up mirroring his expression, "guess i'll have to get it then!"

you found yourself at what you considered your usual table now, the one closest to the front counter. you like to tell yourself it was because it was convenient but you know it was just so it was easier to talk to hanbin. but that wasn't a crime!

a few minutes had passed and hanbin found himself sitting with you at the table, a now regular occurrence when there were no other customers around. "how is it?"

you plunged the spoon into the dessert, holding it up to the boy, "give it a try," you hadn't really thought about the intimacy of your offer, but hanbin didn't give it a second thought as he took a bite off of your spoon, letting out a hum of approval. "not too bad." he said, covering his mouth.

like many other nights, the two of you let your conversations run freely, only stopping to glance at the time on your phone; 11:05.

"shit hanbin," you quickly stood up, grabbing your phone and cup, "i didn't mean to keep you past close. i'm sure you wanna go home after a long day." you can't help but shake your head at your innate ability to get lost in time.

he let out a chuckle at your sudden urgency, "hey no rush, i honestly like the company, it gets pretty lonely here at night." his reassurance helped calm your guilt for a moment, "plus there's not much left to do to close up." he stacked the final chairs, the ones you had been sat at, as he continued. "but it's getting late, you should be heading home, no?" he sounded almost worried at you being out so late, and your heart swelled a bit at the thought.

"yeah i probably should head back," you let out a small sigh at the idea of ending the night with hanbin, "sorry again hanbin, and please get home safe." you gave him a sheepish smile as you turned on your heel to leave.

"make sure you get home safe too! what would i do without my favourite customer?" he joked, not knowing the way your heart skipped a beat at being called his favourite.

you were running out of excuses, or rather flavours; reasons to be at the frozen yogurt shop as much as you were.

"what are you gonna do when there's nothing new to try?" hanbin laughed, watching as you had narrowed it down to your last few choices of untouched flavours.

"die, maybe." you say nonchalantly, earning a laugh from the boy at the counter, finding your dramatics endearing. "you could just try every combination of flavours with every topping." hanbin suggested, a smug smile on his face.

you laughed, shaking your head, "hanbin that would take forever."

"and?" he questioned, "just means more time with me!"

he did have a good point, as silly as the idea sounded. you'd honestly do anything to give you an excuse to hang out with the boy more. except actually asking him out, of course.

what you didn't know was that despite the jokes, hanbin was honestly hoping you would take the idea somewhat seriously. one or two more guaranteed visits did not sound like enough time for him to finally gain the courage to ask you out, or even to get your number, so he felt like he needed all the time he could get.

you weren't the only one who had grown fond of your frequent visits. you had quickly become the thing hanbin looked forward to every week. it had only been a few months of small chats across counters and plastic tables, but hanbin could've sworn he was falling for you, at least in some capacity.

so instead of either of you asking the other out, you just sat together again like every visit, giggling and talking about anything and everything, sometimes even sharing bites of your dessert as you rambled on about an interaction at work that day. it was the least you could give him for listening to your rants.

instead of leaving when you were finished, you took it upon yourself to help with stacking the chairs, hopefully as an apology for always keeping the boy so late.

he couldn't help but smile at the gesture, "you don't have to do that y/n, i'm the one who works here not you." you simply smiled and shook your head, "but it gives me an excuse to stay here with you longer," you finished stacking the last table on your side of the room, "plus it's the least i could do."

"well i appreciate it," a shy smile spread across his face, trying to mentally stop a blush from rising to his cheeks at the thought of you wanted to stay with him longer. god i need to hurry up and ask them out. the thought echoed in his brain as he grabbed the key to lock up, walking with you to the door in a comfortable silence.

you both said your goodbyes, waving as you split off in opposite directions. you spent your walk home that night thinking more about the boy than usual, and as if connected telepathically, hanbin happened to have you at the forefront of his mind the whole drive home. not that he was complaining.

this was the time, hanbin reassured himself. this was when he'd finally ask you out, give you his number, get your number. something. anything. but as he watched the hands on the clock move at an agonizing pace, seemingly taunting him, he couldn't help but second guess himself.

in the midst of his self doubt, the familiar chime rang through the quiet store, right on schedule. and in you walked, dressed up nicer than usual. not that you didn't look great all the time to hanbin, but you looked particularly nice this evening.

"bad news hanbin," you said, walking up to the counter, "i have to take it to go tonight," your lips pressed into a frown. he looked quizzically at you, urging you to continue. "heading to my brother's graduation." you continued simply.

"and yet you still came in for frozen yogurt?" he questioned, a small chuckle escaping his lips. "well i didn't wanna miss my flavour this week," you exclaimed, as if making a very obvious point, "plus i don't think i could go a whole extra week without seeing you, c'mon now."

you kept talking as you filled up your first cup, one of the last flavours that you hadn't tried. setting it on the counter, you started grabbing the second, taking the opportunity to surprise your brother with some of the frozen yogurt you had been raving about.

tapping your card on the machine, and saying your farewell, you turned to leave the small shop and head on your way. but not before hanbin could stop you.

"wait!" he called out, quickly jogging up to you with a napkin in hand, "you might need this, for the road," a hand came to the back of his neck, rubbing sheepishly. "and uh, one minute." he quickly rushed to the back of the shop, where you assumed he kept his things, reemerging from the back door with a jacket in hand. "it's cold out there, staying warm is important, especially if you're eating frozen yogurt."

he lightly placed the jacket around your shoulders, letting the fabric drape along your frame. he took a second to catch his breath, partially from the running back and forth, and partially from the sight of you in his jacket. he quickly tried to peel his eyes off of you before his thoughts got the best of him, and luckily, that led hanbin to miss the way your cheeks heated up at the gesture.

after a moment of silence and thumping hearts, you said your goodbyes once more, accompanied by a thank you from yourself as you headed out the door.

as opposed to the usual, this time you found yourself sitting with your brother indulging in the sweet treat. "since when did you wear jackets like that?" your brother inquired, glancing over the clearly oversized mens jacket. you tried to shrug the question off, attempting to act nonchalant, "since today i guess." you brought the spoon up to your mouth to take another bite, avoiding any further answers.

"y/n, how dumb do you think i am." your brother chuckled, shaking his head at your poor attempt at an excuse, "who gave it to you?"

you quickly gave up on the facade, knowing you couldn't lie to your brother. "just the guy from the frozen yogurt place," your voice trailed off as you watched a shit-eating grin spread across his face. "i've never heard of a frozen yogurt place lending jackets to customers, or any business really." he said sarcastically, laughing at the way your face quickly heated in embarrassment, only stopping to continue teasing you.

"so do you like this boy?" he asked, as if your reaction hadn't given it away. you gave a shy nod as you hummed a confirmation, not only admitting it to your brother but also to yourself. "well as long as he treats you right, i approve, otherwise he better watch out, i bet i could take him anyways."

you couldn't help but laugh at your brothers weak attempt at intimidation, even getting a bit of frozen yogurt on your face in the process, causing your brother to erupt into laughter himself. "hold on," you reached into the pocket of the jacket, pulling out the napkin hanbin had given you as you were leaving, only now you had noticed something you didn't earlier.

there was something scribbled on the napkin. a number. hanbin's number, next to a small scrawled note reading, "in case you ever want to get some real food." a small heart outlined beside the message, even a small tear where the pen had ripped through the thin napkin.

you couldn't wait to get home that night. as soon as you had gotten into the comfort of your room, you grabbed the napkin again, quickly unlocking your phone and typing in the series of numbers messily written across.

"hey, it's y/n ^^" you typed simply, hoping the emoticon didn't feel too awkward as you couldn't stop your heart from beating out of your chest. the feeling of unstoppable palpitations only amplified as you watched the typing bubble quickly appear on the other side of the screen.

the seconds seemed to slow as you watched the typing bubble disappear, only to reappear once more before a message rang through.

"y/n! how'd your brother's graduation go??"

you quickly typed back a reply, giving a positive recollection of the night, selectively withholding the small confessional about the boy you were texting.

you spent your night getting ready for bed at a slower pace than usual, every minute or so your phone would ding with a message from hanbin, and you couldn't stop yourself from reaching for your phone to respond.

before you knew it, hours had gone by and through blurry eyes you faintly read out the time; 3:47am.

"hanbin,," you typed, pressing send on the short message for suspense, "did you realize it's nearly 4am"

his reply came faster than you thought, "shit don't you have to work in the morning?" you thought it was endearing that despite you both being awake, he was still worried about your wellbeing and rest.

after saying goodnight and tucking yourself into bed for the last time that night, you let yourself drift off, thoughts of the boy still swirling around your brain as you fell into a deep sleep.

after the longest friday of your life, you finally got to return to the comfort of your home, and you couldn't have been more thankful. checking the time and noticing that hanbin would still be at work, you decided to do a bit of self-care. as silly as it sounded, you just wanted the time to pass so you could talk to him more.

a nice hot shower and face mask later, and your phone dinged with a message.

"guess who's off for the weekend!" hanbin's name and photo popped up accompanying the message.

"hmm, me?" you typed, laughing as you pressed send, getting an excited "no way!! you too??" in response.

you spent the rest of your evening texting the boy while you listened to the white noise of whatever tv show was quietly playing in the background. that was until, hanbin asked if you wanted to call.

with an overly eager yes, you watched his name pop up again, this time your finger hovering over the answer button as you heard your ringtone blare through your speakers.

"hanbin~" you dragged out, nearly hearing the boy smile on the other end. "y/n~" he mirrored, a small chuckle escaping his lips after.

the conversations carried on into the deep hours of the night, yawns interrupting your thoughts as the time went on, leading hanbin's voice to become laced with concern.

"are you getting sleepy?" he questioned softly, his tone almost putting you to sleep in itself. you responded with a faint hum and nod, even if he couldn't see you. "go to sleep, love. don't let me keep you up." he muttered, keeping quiet as to not wake you.

in your tired state you couldn't quite process the pet name, but you were sure it would plague your mind once you were more awake.

you attempted to mutter back an argument, but before you knew it, your eyes had fallen shut to the sound of hanbin mumbling about something you couldn't quite make out.

hanbin thought it was cute; your faint snores and soft rustling in your sleeping state. he stayed on the call for a while before hanging up, leaving you to sleep peacefully. deciding it was time to head to bed himself, he got comfy in bed and opened your messages for one last time that night.

"sleep tight <3 didn't wanna accidentally wake you so i hung up." he pressed send, hovering over the keyboard for one last message, one that left his heart pounding through his chest. "and uh," he typed out, "if you're free today, maybe we can go to that diner downtown, or anywhere really, if you'd like... okay goodnight!"

he breathed out a sigh as he sent the last message, worry and self doubt taking over his mind as he considered the possibility of you rejecting his offer. but it was too late now, the message had been sent and now all he had to do was wait.

what would usually be a peaceful morning was anything but; as soon as the morning fog in your mind cleared, the night before had flooded back to you in a flash, embarrassment taking over as you failed to remember hanging up or saying goodnight before falling asleep. the only thing your brain could remember was a faint "go to sleep love" echoing over and over in hanbin's soft voice, driving you to near insanity as you opened your phone to a few notifications from the boy himself.

it only took a moment of skimming past the words on your screen before you were eagerly typing a response, accepting the offer to go out followed by a brief apology for falling asleep.

instead of a typing bubble appearing on your screen, it was a call answer screen, which you answered without much thought.

"morning~" you singsonged, hearing hanbin shuffle before responding with a raspy, sleep ridden "good morning y/n."

you swore your head was spinning at the new tone from hanbin, an unexpected change from his usual cheery voice. you took a moment to collect your thoughts before speaking up again, "d'you just wake up?"

he hummed in response, hearing his run this hand through is hair. "then why'd you call me silly?" you questioned, wondering if he had considered just typing a response when he was more awake.

"wanted to hear your voice," he sleepily mumbled, not quite aware of his own confession until it had already left his lips. you muttered a small "oh," taking another moment to process what the boy had said before attempting to come up with a response. you stuttered out a small chuckle and a teasing "well here i am" before switching the subject.

once hanbin was a bit more awake, the two of you confirmed your plans for the day; deciding that hanbin would come pick you up around 5pm and you'd go head out to a diner for some food. "it's a date," you exclaimed, your smile audible through the phone, causing hanbin to smile in return, unknown to you.

"sounds perfect," he hummed, "see you then y/n."

anxiously checking the clock for the nth time, you read the seemingly unchanging time; 4:55pm. you couldn't help but fiddle with the hem of your jacket, or rather hanbin's jacket, in an attempt to calm your nerves. the faint lingering smell of his cologne on the jacket helped ease your mind as you awaited the boy's arrival.

a few minutes had passed while you were lost in your thoughts, only pulled out from your endless what if's by a knock at the door.

you opened the door you had been pacing in front of, leaving the boy to come into view. what you hadn't considered until this moment in time was that this was your first time seeing him out of the bright-coloured uniform and apron he usually adorned at the frozen yogurt shop. instead he sported a loose fitting white t-shirt, a light wash jean jacket atop his shoulders. he looked good.

"oh hi," you managed to stutter out, trying to pick up your jaw that was hanging open. "you look nice," you muttered, eyes trailing over his frame, stopping for a moment on a tattoo that hadn't been visible in his usual attire. a delicate celestial scene placed between his collarbones, lying between the chains of a dainty rose necklace that lay on his chest.

he let out a shy chuckle at the compliment, taking notice of your wandering eyes, "hey that's my line!" he said, almost flustered as he looked over your figure hiding in his jacket yet again. "but really, you look great y/n," he smiled, "you might look better in that jacket than i do."

you simply scoffed in denial and shook your head before the boy spoke up once more, "oh, these are for you," he gestured to the flowers you only just now realized were in his hands. a small bouquet decorated with carnations and roses, small blooms of baby's breath scattered between.

a small gasp escaped your chest as you admired the bright flowers, "they're beautiful hanbin, thank you, you really didn't have to." he simply smiled, muttering a "but i wanted to," which caused you to blush as you welcomed him inside for a moment.

"let me just put these in a vase and we can go!"

hanbin took a moment to admire your cozy home. the walls adorned with simplistic art and photography, small succulents littering every surface you could find room. it felt so unapologetically you, and he loved it.

"your place is gorgeous," he smiled, his eyes, and subsequently his legs, following behind you into the kitchen. you muttered a small thank you, chatting briefly about a recent piece you had thrifted for the quaint apartment, and hanbin couldn't help but smile at the joy radiating off of you as you talked about something you loved.

once your new flowers were safe in a vase on your counter, you followed hanbin out to his car; the boy even opening your door for you. "what a gentleman," you chuckled, smiling and speaking a soft "thank you" as you looked around the car. it was nice; the air freshener smelled like citrus and sitting snug in the cupholder was none other than the small hamster plush you had seen at the frozen yogurt shop, no longer adorning the small apron.

"so you really do take him everywhere," you let out a small giggle at the boy's surprisingly adorable antics as he got into the drivers seat. he only smiled sheepishly in return, "well of course, i can't leave him at work that wouldn't be fair, now would it?"

the two of you burst into a fit of giggles as the car started up, the radio beginning to quietly play some r&b tune; you even found yourself bopping your head to the unfamiliar song as you and hanbin made easy conversation, as usual. the only difference this time was your eyes were trained on hanbin's hand on the wheel, the other resting on the console between the two of you.

you couldn't lie; watching hanbin drive so relaxed, his gaze shifting from the road ahead to you periodically. it was nearly enough to take your breath away. it was hard to believe that months ago, he was just the guy who worked at the frozen yogurt shop you decided to stop in to check out, and now you were here, in his car, on your way to what you hoped was considered a real date.

it wasn't long before the two of you had arrived to the diner; hanbin being the gentleman he was, nearly raced out of the car just to come open your door for you. it was endearing.

"finally some sustenance," you laughed, eyeing up the plate of food in front of you, "can't live off of frozen yogurt forever."

"i always wondered why you're in there so often," hanbin let his thoughts slip his mind and past his mouth, "not that i'm judging though," he quickly continued, " just seems like you'd get sick of frozen yogurt by now"

he was partially right; there was only so much frozen yogurt one person could handle. only so many brain freezes one could endure. "honestly," you popped a fry in your mouth, "i kind of am, that's why i always get a different flavour," you said matter-of-factly, "but it helps that you're there," your voice trailed off at the end, almost embarrassed by the words leaving your mouth.

hanbin seemed rather happy with your answer, a smug smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, "are you saying you've been coming to the shop to see me?" the confident tone in his voice made your brain spin, watching as he proudly took a sip of his milkshake as he awaited whatever response you could come up with.

you nervously bit your lip as you tried your hardest to form a coherent thought, "well i mean," you paused, "look at you, i'm sure you're a huge draw in for customers," you pushed out a small laugh to prevent yourself from humiliating yourself in front of the boy.

"y/n," hanbin smiled again, somehow more smug than before despite his cheeks now flushing a light shade of pink, "are you calling me attractive?"

the accusation nearly made you choke on your drink as you realized the implication of your earlier statement; and sure, it's what you were thinking, but it's not exactly what you meant to say.

deciding there was no going back now, you simply muttered a quiet agreement, hoping that would be enough for the boy. it wasn't.

"sorry what's that? i couldn't hear you," he teased, enjoying the way your ears turned bright red under the dim overhead lights. this time you lightly cleared your throat, repeating the confirmation at an audible volume. "god you're cute," hanbin muttered, lightly shaking his head at your endearing antics.

you let out a laugh for the nth time that night, "is that what you tell all your customers hanbin? that's quite the way to get sales." it was your turn to tease the boy, wanting to see just how serious he was about it all.

"only the customers i have a crush on," he said plainly, smiling as he watched your jaw drop at the blatant confession. it was as if your brain had effectively shut down, or maybe short circuited. some other form of brain freeze, perhaps? you couldn't decide as it took what felt like forever for your brain to come up with a quip.

trying to keep the light atmosphere, you continued joking around, "that's not going to get you employee of the month, you know."

hanbin only reached across the table, placing a hand on top of yours; and you could've sworn your skin was on fire at the contact. looking up at you with a sincere look in his eyes, you struggled to keep eye contact with the pretty boy sitting in front of you. it felt like you were melting under his gaze.

"well i have other priorities now," he breathed out, his voice quieter than before, "and number one on the list is making you mine."

[snowblossomreads]

Day 4: Sharing

Pairing: Severus Snape x Fem!Reader

Summary: In where Severus is reminded that it's almost the first Christmas he and [Y/n] will be sharing and he goes to try and make it special

Tag(s)/Warning(s): fluff fluff and more fluff

Word Count: 1.3K

A/N: And in something totally different once again! Here is a short little fluffy fluff about Snape and his almost first Christmas with his beloved [Y/n]. (See @deepperplexity i do know how to use the prompts in non unhinged ways are u proud of me 🤣🤣?)

The streets of Hogsmeade was filled with the bustling crowds of witches and wizards doing their holiday shopping as Christmas rapidly approached meaning that people were in a tizzy trying to purchase gifts for their loved ones.

And of course a treat for themselves.

Cheer and glee were on the faces of almost all of those who were bustling about spreading warmth in the cold air with just their attitude. All except one person named Severus Snape, who seemed to have had enough of people bumping into him as he tried to maneuver his way as swiftly as possible away from the crowd.

He should have known when he went out looking for a present for [Y/n] that he would face the tiring challenge of people. Yet he had been so caught up with preparing for the coming semester and his own experimentations that he had lost tracked of time.

And when she had brightly told him that she was excited that they would be sharing their first Christmas together in only a few days he realized he had proverbially dropped the ball.

On the outside he was his calm and collected self, agreeing with her as he was truly looking forward to sharing the holiday with someone other than himself. There was a small part of him that hated to admit that it in the past it was a bit lonely seeing all the people merrily celebrating.

Even when the Hogwarts staff tried to romp him in to their holiday shenanigans he was quick to get away not at all wanting to be invested in whatever they were up to. It was a way of punishing himself, as someone like him didn't deserve to have fun. Didn't deserve to have happy things because of what he had done and what he had caused.

[Y/n] though was having none of it when she came into his life. And he was grateful for it.

But he digressed.

That was on the outside, calm and collected as he usually seemed now and days. On the inside though he was quickly listing the things that he knew she adored and began to make a plan.

Oh yes, he would do his best to make sure the first Christmas they spent together was as lovely as his [Y/n].

First was to her favorite bakery where he was unsurprisingly met with a large line of people queuing up and waiting for their turn as it seemed that everyone had the idea to come at the same time.

An annoyance absolutely, but at least no one dared to talk to him while they were in line as he glared at anyone who seemed to want to make conversation. 20 minutes had passed and he had secured her favourite treats which included some pumpkin pasties that had extra holiday flavour in them as he had been told.

He had no idea what that meant.

A few cinnamon rolls that were topped with an abundance of sweet cream and a few more savory mini pastries that he knew she fancied.

Next was a trinket store, that she always gazed at when they walked passed though she never went in, only saying she didn't need more knick nacks laying around.

Well it was Christmas and what was wrong with a few more especially if the were useful and brought her joy.

So he went in expecting to find nothing yet he ended up coming out with a set of colour changing ink and quill, a trinket box for her little collection of rings and earrings in that played music while opened and also could sort the items for her. That aspect he found interesting thinking about what charm was placed on it to get it to do so.

And also he may have bought some dusty looking spellbook that he had never seen before which intrigued him along with self labeling potion bottle that showed what ingredients were in it.

Huh who knew that shop had so many things.

Pleased with his purchases he barreled his way through the crowd ready to finally be at home exhausted from all the pushy witches and wizard. Walking quickly to an alley way off the beaten streets of the village he took inventory of what he had making sure nothing was crushed or missing. Once he made sure everything was where he wanted, he apparated silently back home where [Y/n] was sitting in his wingback chair reading.

Well, that was until he suddenly apparated into the middle of the sitting room.

"Severus Snape! Merlin's beard!" she shrieked almost tumbling out of the chair being startled half to death by him. "I thought you told me no one can apparate in and out of the house? You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

His lips turned upward in a smirk at her words as he watched her get up from her seat and stalk up to him with a small pout.

"Hm yes I do remember telling you that," he answered matter of factly, leaning down and brushing his lips against her forehead causing her to grumble, "though I may have left off that I'm the exception. I did live here for years after all."

Pressing his lips against her forehead in a chaste kiss, he moved down and kissed her nose, before hovering over her lips waiting for her to move.

"You're the worse you know that," she mumbled shaking her head before closing the distance and kissing him showing him that she wasn't angry just startled.

"Mhm."

He kissed her softly before moving to her cheek and kissing her there making her giggle as he pulled away.

"Your lips are so cold darling here go put all those bags away," she started pausing only when she saw the amount of bags and being yet again surprised. He said he was going out potion ingredient shopping and from the looks of it he had bought the whole stock of them. "And I'm sure it'll take you a while Severus did you go on a shopping spree without me?! Oh never mind I'll make us some tea it should be done by the time you've sorted it all out!"

Without another word she was off leaving Severus with a pile of bags not even suspecting that most of the things were for her.

When she had come back out of the kitchen tea floating behind her she was surprised once more when she found a plate full of her favorite snacks sitting on the little table in between her chair and Severus'.

He had paid her no mind when she had come back, acting as if he was reading the new book her had purchased yet he was keenly aware of her presences. It was only when she had sat the tea down did she take a look at all the snacks that were waiting for them.

"Severus?" His name came out shyly as she wandered to his side making him put his book down and turn to look at her.

"Did you buy all of those for me?"

Her eyes twinkled in the warmly lit room and he nodded.

"Mhm I passed by the bakery you always go to and decided to stop by," he answered coolly as if he hadn't been squished in the shop when he got in. "Hopefully this is a good festive start to our almost first Christmas together?"

Grinning at him, [Y/n] leaned over the arm of his chair to plant a kiss on his cheek overwhelmed with excitement as she skipped over to her own seat. Plopping down she poured them both some tea and happily partook in one of the pasties groaning happily at spiced pumpkin filling.

"It's an excellent start darling," she beamed. "Thank you!"

A rare smile, well not so rare for her, appeared on Severus' lips at how happy she looked as she bit into the treat and he felt as happy as she looked at the thought of the cheer to come. It was nice to share such a time with her thought before going back to his book and relaxing in the ambience of the warm room and his warm love.

A/N: see i am capable of using the prompts normally! see you guys on day 7 prompts! (she's taking a little break to avoid writing angst 😌)

[transmutationisms]

incredibly curious to hear community opinions upon rewatch if u are willing to share...

it's always been one of my fav sitcoms honestly, even though i didn't love the later seasons lol. i think a lot of what makes it work is that it's written with an attitude that is fundamentally pro 'nerd' like, it sounds like a low bar to clear but just the fact that the writers don't treat abed as the butt of the joke, or the way their references and genre pastiches actually celebrate the conventions they're parodying, genuinely makes it a standout as far as primetime american television goes lmao. there are definitely some dated episodes and the weak side of the writing is how much characters of colour are sidelined or underdeveloped relative to jeff / annie / britta (the latter of whom is somehow also not that well or consistently written yet onscreen extremely often 😐) like on this rewatch i've really been noticing how little they give donald glover to do despite him turning out a really good performance such that he was always one of my favs. like genuinely impressive how mjch of an impression he could make with episodes where they would give him like 5 real lines and a reaction shot.

but when an episode works it really works, in a way tv comedy rarely does for me. i think there's a good balance too where there's continuity between episodes and elements build over time and become more intricate, but it also manages to 'reset' effectively each episode, which is necessary if you want a sitcom to keep going lol. we're like just at the beginning of chang's takeover arc >:)

[trippygalaxy]

(Click for better quality)

@vaathnaos @whiteperle3 @willowthearts

SOOOOO I was kinda bored and wanted to attempt to draw myself in some of my favourite styles! Idk how close I got but Im pretty proud of how they turned out!

And imma ramble under the cut about these artists cause i love their art so much and they deserve all the attention <3

While I went through their art, I noticed a few things about their art styles. Each have their own 'focus,' intentional or not, that really makes their style...theirs! Ill mostly be talking about faces rn but i might go on to more later!

Aria: Her style focus is eyes (iris) and expressions Willows: Her style focus is hair (complex) and eye liner/shape Vaati: His style focus is Noses/face stucture and hair (simple)

What I mean by this is that when you see their art, you will notice that these 'focuses' are the most unique and tailored part of their art.

Vaati's exaggerated noses, Willows complex hair styles and Aria's expressive eyes are all so attuned to their style that it really feels like those are the most recognizable and eye catching part of their art (if we take out the amazing shading/colouring, dynamic poses and generally awesomeness.) This isnt to say that these are the only things that make their style their own, these are simply the most front facing thing that those only giving a glance will notice. But I, having looked very deeply at each style to attempt to replicate, have noticed a good many things.

LETS TALK ABOUT EARS >:D

They ALL draw elf ears SO differently! Vaati strives for diversity in shapes and size while Willow and Aria carry similar shapes throughout their art, but just point in different directions (depending on the oc) but tend to be outwards. There is also to say that because of Aria's more 'chibi' art style that hers have a more simplistic shape/anatomy but she is still able to keep them from looking plain by adding beautiful earrings!

OH AND EYEBROWS!

Arias are simple- very much so. Just being tiny, thin lines, but this is PERFECT to helps her with creating more dramatic expressions which works amazingly with her style, which wouldn't fix in at all compared to the other two styles here.

Willows are a little thicker, but are more akin to the perfect eyebrows u see in magazines and stuff. They arent as expressive compared to Aria or Vaati but she is brilliant with her way of drawing eyes + mouths to convey the wanted expression!

Vaati is able to use complex (shapes and thickness) shapes as eyebrows SO well! Most (including myself) would have issues with such shapes and keeping them looking natural, but Vaati expertly uses them, adding a dramatic flair to his expressions!

I COULD RAMBLE ON FOREVER ABOUT THESE STYLES- i really really could, but shall refrain for now!

ANYWAYS! if you three got to the bottom of this, I hope you guys didnt mind the ramble and...you lost the game :D

[brianlesshetaliawritings]

if you're still doing requests- nsfw alphabet with switzerland 👉👈

i am my motivation just doesn't agree if that makes sense and most of my requests i'm either far too ambitious with and keep re-writing or are just not something i'm interested in rn. thank u for handing me an excuse to write about the guy. was an easy and fun write. might have minor errors. very sorry this took a bit ! (also- should i redo the yandere alphabet with him? i feel its REALLY ooc now that i re-read it..)

Switzerland NSFW Alphabet

warnings : nsfw ofc, nothing intense otherwise though. made him dominant here, request again if you want him submissive.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Not the most extra individual, but it's definitely not non-existent or anything. he will be ensuring you're not in pain, not thirsty, not uncomfortable.. He'll probably want to clean up and whatnot though once confirmed that you're all good.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He likes his own eyes, they're always useful and a lot of his activities frequently require good eyesight, which he has. Definitely enjoys his hands too though, he's pretty used to work that requires physical labor so they're helpful too.

He's never said it, but it's easy to tell your thighs and hips are a favorite of his regarding activities such as these. His hands frequently drift there, and so does his line of sight when he thinks you're not looking.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

He prefers it inside, just more convenient in his opinion. He'll understand if you want it outside though, then it'll usually just end up somewhere else on your body, no particular areas of interest really.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Although he feels really creepy for doing it, if you gave him literally any shirts, pants, or anything along those lines as a gift, he likely smelt it while jerking off. It just really gets him going, and he hates it (loves it, just won't admit it to himself).

Also, side note, has thought about fucking in the forest. He usually doesn't like risks, but he feels really in his element when out in the woods and his mind can't help but drift to such thoughts.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Unexperienced, but not really dumb to what he should do and the alike. Might secretly read a bit to learn what all he should look out for, or do. Keeps looking away every ten seconds though throughout his research because he's sort of a prude.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Usually goes for Missionary. He's a very simple man, and doesn't like to get too weird when it's up to positions, so it just fits him. Would also be willing to do some other ones though, as long as they aren't too squished or require too much flexibility. It's not like he can't handle either of those, it's just very distracting to him and this is definitely something he likes to focus on.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Not a silly guy in general, even less lighthearted when having sex. Finds it awkward if you make any jokes, but wouldn't mind if you laughed at any accidents or anything like one of you slipping.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Doesn't see the point to shaving that which very few people will ever see, but he also doesn't like being overly hairy. He keeps it trimmed to a shorter length, just seems like a waste of time to do anything more. It's the same colour as his hair too, not even like the slightest difference.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Not overly romantic, but it's the small things he does that shows his affection. Always keeps an eye out to make sure you're comfortable, has a tendency to adjust you without asking just to be sure you're in a nice spot. Still embarrased to kiss you, by the way.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Only when he finds it neccessary. Switzy is a rather prudent man, and sexual activity doesn't really land on his mind that often. Sometimes though, he does have those straying thoughts. Ones he has to handle himself. Ones he internally punishes himself for, but exist nevertheless.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Sorta likes the idea of outdoor sex. Just scared of getting caught, is all. He's very much a fan of nature, and he's spent lots of time in it. He largely prefers it there over cities any day of the week. So maybe on some of his property, further out, after he's scoped the whole area and put a million "no trespassing" signs up. (And likely brought a gun.. Just incaese.)

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Bedroom, usually. Bathroom, occasionally. Elsewhere, in your dreams. Too horrified at the idea of his sister coming to visit him just to get scarred for life. Hates to do anything outside his/your own home, ignoring the above section of course (when he gets brave enough to test that out).

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

As I might've mentioned earlier, he loves your thighs and hips. Size doesn't matter, scarring doesn't matter.. HE JUST LOVES THEM! If visible, they instantly catch his attention, and sort of distract him. Only a teensy bit though, he's not gawking at you or anything.. Also likes it if you give him lots of big kisses while you rub him up. Anywhere on his body too, really, it's his favorite thing. (Even more- he loves if you squeeze his butt. He might huff a bit if you do, but trust, he secretely adores it.)

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Anything that risky. In any way you can think of. Literally all forms of risks are a major no for him. Physically risky, reputation risky.. All of them.

Also, anything gross. Won't go along with watersports, emetophilia.. Anything along those lines are a no-no for him. Would completely wreck his mood.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Sort of nervous on recieving oral? Not really for himself too, he just doesn't want you to feel physical discomfort or choke or anything.. It's not really his thing. Totally up for giving, though. You might not expect it, but he's actually rather big on giving. Would honestly be satisfied if that's all you two do for the night.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

He tends to gear towards a happy medium pace most of the time (exceptions can be made..). Sensual isn't really a word to describe it, nor is it rough. Not harsh, but not fluid. He feels if he goes rough he'll hurt you, and that's really not something he wants. But if he goes slow it just makes him feel shy, if that makes sense. It gives you the opportunity to really focus in on him, and he isn't exactly talkative in sex either outside simple questions and the alike, so it makes him feel awkard. A speed that's gentle but not too calm.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He's not a fan, and he'll rarely ever agree to go along with them. If he does though, then those are the times that the exceptions mentioned above happen. Though, admittedly, even though he isn't neccessarily a fan, he doesn't hate them.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Okay, unlike above, he's actually a real hater of risks. And there's really no elaborating on it either, as it's pretty much already been covered. Will not agree to risks.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

While usually he tends to try and keep it at one to three rounds, he can do more. He's a physically abled man, and has quite a bit of stamina due to all the training he does and the alike. If he really wanted to he could go for.. Five? Probably could do seven, but he's just not that much of a sex fanatic, so that won't really happen.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Would never buy any. Why get such a thing if he's already equipped with parts for this activity? Might be willing to try some simpler things though, if you get it. Don't expect him to go for any BDSM stuff though, that's just really not his thing.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Not at all. He simply doesn't have the patience for it. Teasing him does get you somewhere though, if you're interested. Just don't expect him to humor you for too long.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Tries to be as silent as possible. Naturally, he isn't that noisy anyways, but it still embarrasess him. Panting, grunting. Maybe lower-sounding very muffled whimpering (only if you work to get it out of him).

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Has considered jealousy sex.. On multiple occassions. Only racked up the courage for it once. Just finds it too silly and stupid to do it any other time.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Uncut, six inches. His pubic hair is a slightly darker blond, but similar to his hair. Only keeps it trimmed since he just doesn't get the point to shaving. Too much drama for something that doesn't really cause any difference besides aesthetics.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Not high. It's non-existant, supposedly. It's mostly just due to the fact he chooses to ignore it instead of actually indulging himself in sexual pleasure though! Realistically, it's likely just a bit below average.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

If he does go to sleep afterwards, it's likely after a couple of hours. He has a few things to do beforehand so he won't get to it immediately. Would definitely stick with you for a bit after you fall asleep though, even if he himself decides to not rest.

[princelance]

a movie........

time for a rant that has been a looong time coming because

the FUCK??? NOOOOOOOOOOOO PLEASE NO NO NO PLEASE GOD IF YOU'RE OUT THERE NEVER LET THIS MOVIE SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY NEVER EVEN MENTION THAT SHOW EVER AGAIN IN MY PRESENCE it should fucking DIE and stay DEAD

the WORST fandom i've ever come across/been part of. everyone was so fucking braindead. god the bullying here was So Bad. vld fandom was the epitome of 'you can't enjoy what you like'. and the bullies were like, some of the most popular blogs here. the content creators (among others ofc) here were NASTY. the people making decent art were so fucking rude to almost anyone that didn't bow down to them and agree with their views on the show, sitting on their high horse like they were fucking gods or something when they were like, 17 or something. mind u voltron was a show about ugly transformers lions and a bunch of kids in space meant for 7 YEAR OLDS. like stfu it's not deep, it's not important. i get that this is the internet i really do but apparently everyone was a pedo and homophobic and racist and needed to be cancelled because they weren't pure angels. i hope the people who liked the show, both teens and adults alike, have grown up and learnt what those words actually mean and why you shouldn't just casually throw them around. i hated you all. u had to be so careful about what you said on here, it was like north korea or something. i remember how kids got bullied into deleting their harmless fanfics, the fucking voice actors got bullied on a daily basis, it was BAD. i remember i got hate for having shiro as my icon and the background was the bi flag colours. I AM BI. also, so what if i had headcanoned shiro as bi, you couldn't have stopped me or anyone else from thinking that, and also IT WOULD NOT HAVE MATTERED, HE'S FICTIONAL, HE'S JUST LINES AND PIXELS. i know this is going to shatter some of your worlds (or at least would have back then), but a random ass nobody on tumblr headcanoning a character as bi when said character is "actually" straight/gay/whatever is NOT going to affect irl queer people in any way, it does NOT have real life consequences. who gives a fuck. since when has the fandom given a shit about canon anyway? fuck you.

okay, i've been bitching about the fandom enough (no i haven't, there's no way you can ever bitch about the vld fandom enough). what about the actual show? well. once again it's meant for 7 year olds. who cares if it was good or not. i've seen seasons 1–6. i liked season 1, didn't really like anything after that since the show seemed to change so much. the first season kind of has a different vibe completely? idk how to explain it, it just kind of feels like the actual show and then the rest was just a long fanfic by someone who was in love with keith's character. but since i was watching the show with my sister who was 10 at the time, it was fine, otherwise i wouldn't have kept watching after seeing season 2 i don't think.

here are a few negative things about the show imo:

making keith the main character out of nowhere after s1 (where he definitely wasn't the main focus) was so dumb. god the showrunners loved keith sooo much, it was so stupid. keith was nooot a leader. whatever.

making keith the black paladin was also so fucking stupid my god. and yes, everyone here wanting LANCE to become the black paladin just because he was the fandom favourite (don't get me wrong, he was my fave too) was so fucking braindead too honestly. shiro or allura. no one else made any sense.

canon allurance SUUUCKED. like holy shit that was so bad and horribly written, even lotor and allura had a better love story and had waaay more chemistry (and their relationship ended badly, rightfully so). and NO klance was never ever ever going to be canon, you were so delusional. like lmaooo did we even watch the same show? i just really enjoyed their dynamic and that's why i shipped them together, whatever. but yeah, like i said the bullying here was disgusting and everyone was cancelled, great, klance seemed to be the only thing you were allowed to like so in that sense i was lucky.

everything they did with allura in the later seasons............ you know what? i'm not even going to start. because wtfffffffff, as a storyteller myself i ?????? what in the world were they thinking. but yeah whatever it does not matter.

the point of this post is that EW EW EWWWW FUCK THAT SHOW AND FUCK YOU, if you were in the voltron fandom in 2017/2018 i personally hate you

[adobe-outdesign]

Not aure if u have, but have you reviewed the Gnorbu pet yet?

Gnorbus (or Norbs, as I've gotten into the habit of naming them) are super cute, and I'm surprised they're not more popular than they are. They're basically like llamas or alpacas, to the point where their pet day is known as Gnorbu Shearing Day (TNT even swapped out the standard pet image for a shaved version the first time it was celebrated). However, they're incredibly chunky and short compared to either of those animals, so they don't come across as a 1:1 copy or anything. They have some nice use of color to, with a (typically) darker mane and spots and lighter muzzle, toes, and tail.

One thing most people probably already know is that Gnorbus started out as a fake pet called a Lamameeah, which was introduced on April Fool's Day Y7 (2005) along with many other fake pets. However, enough of these fake pets were popular than TNT eventually held a poll to make one of them into a real pet, which the Lamameeah won.

Al of people back used to whine about how they "ruined the Lamameeah" when its design was finalized, which I never understood. All they did was make it look more like a Neopet. For example, in addition to short and chunky proportions, Neopets usually have very large eyes and well-defined faces, and you can see they tweaked that up to be more in-line with other pets for the Gnorbu.

Another thing is color blocking; most Neopets use color to define areas of the design. You can see on the Lamameeah that areas like the white around the eyes and chest or that stripe down the back doesn't help emphasize any part of the design, and were fairly arbitrary additions (though they did keep it from being too solid-colored). With the final design, they gave it a mane and then added some spots on the side to break up the body, along with white on the muzzle. This helps emphasize the design quite a bit and looks a lot better than the original ever did. They also improved a few elements like the shading and the lineart.

Gnorbus basically didn't change with customization at all, though they did screw up the mouth shape slightly (as the lip no longer seems to connect). Also, for some reason some post-conversion Gnorbus have a weird error where they occasionally have an extra piece of hair, but only occasionally—compare the blue Gnorbu above with the green and you'll see the issue.

Favorite Colours:

Toy: Most of the Gnorbu's best colours I've discussed already elsewhere, but as I mentioned in my toy colour review, the toy Gnorbu is delightful. The overall piñata concept is perfect and it's nice and colorful without being too chaotic. My only nitpick is the eye should've had colored lineart so it would match the body better.

Cloud: One of the only good cloud pets, the cloud Gnorbu is super cute, with a lovely pastel blue and a fluffy white cloud and tail. The cloud patterning over the body breaks things up nicely and the darker eyes and ears stand out. No complaints here.

Robot: Even cuter than the base Gnorbu, which is not an easy feat, the robot Gnorbu has lovely bright green accents that are contrasted with its light and dark gray body. Red helps draw emphasis to the face and it has a sawblade tail, and looks good both both pre- and post-customization. What more could you want?

BONUS: The Christmas Gnorbu really isn't anything special all things considered, but I really find myself liking it. The dark greens are a lovely contrast against the white base, and the dropping of a few extra markings lets the mane stick out all the more, which is done up like a Christmas wreath complete with lights and a bow. My only issue with it is that the lights and bow are unfortunately not wearable; if they were, you could remove them and get a killer base out of it.

[helpallthenamesaretaken]

E👏P👏I👏S👏O👏D👏E SEVENNNN

We just started off with percy walking his way into crusty’s place like woah hold there buddy we’re starting quickly

the set is so pretty and colourful why couldnt everything else be like them ahem ahem waterland cough cough

Why do they know everything already 😭they’re really taking out the middle school cluelessness out of everyone in this show and its making me mad sometimes

What do you MEAN he casually has an entrance to the underworld?

walker’s acting was rlly good in this ep btw

The whole bed scene was so anticlimactic and quick STOP

”youre lucky we let you keep your head on” YEAH WELL SO IS DISNEY

grover just walking in like is it over now?? DISNEY I BEG OF YOU LET GROVER DO SOMETHING

grover’s squeaky ball to calm himself down😭 🥺

Sally and percy angst was not on my bingo card but here we are

WHEN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO KEEP HURTING EACH OTHER 😭😭

That transition was neat

wow what a well lit underworld dayum

its confirmed percy and annabeth watched that movie

“Only suckers wait in line” savage

rip ‘we drowned in a bathtub’ hello ‘everyone is dying to some extent’

i dont know if its just me but i feel like the jokes and the humour of the show was more aligned to its pjo adult fans, rather than the books, which rick included middle school humor because that was what the initial audience was. I mean removing the fun of the lotus casino and replacing it with a scene of percy driving a car (which is an activity adults do) and the dying on the inside is something only adults in their quarter life crisis complain about

Idk it doesnt feel like annabeth is scratching cerberus because she genuinely likes dogs, it feels like more of a strategical move which i am not the happiest about BECAUSE I WANT SOFT ANNABETH

squeak squeak

PERCY PULLING ANNABETH UP FROM A CLIFF

”excuse me” i love how professional she is

i read so many fanfics and theories on how the fourth pearl would go missing?? And grover lost it??? Thats it???

I hate that principal why are you taking something a 10 year old said and say he needs ‘psychological monitoring’?? Hon he drew a horsie with wings that he claimed he saw, he doesnt need to go to a psych ward or therapy or something

but imagine percy hearing this in the other room🥺

I feel like all of them have a reason to get rooted and stuff in asphodel but its apparently only annabeth so

not grover seeing two of his friends turning into trees🥺

Idk grover’s not that emotional at all about anything?? Hes supposed to be scared and on the verge of tears 24/7? Not aryans fault just the writers

ANNABETH STRESSING ON THE FACT THAT THEY NEED TO SAVE PERCYS MOM TOO 🥹

Percy rlly just said “periodt💅”

They really copy pasted hades from the musical why is no one talking about that?

walker’s acting>>>>>

why are you trying so hard to get rid of me 🥺

THE WHOLE SALLY AND POSEIDON SCENE 😭 NO SALLY U ARE NOT FAILING

I love the fact that percy’s still chilling there

I WAS ACTUALLY EXPECTING POSEIDON TO GO ACT AS A WAITER TO TALK TO PERCY LOLL

what do you mean they have to find the helm too???

why no one help grover up??

poseidons speech as percy gets up and looks at ares is peak cinema