#i want to cut everybody off. i want to start a new life.

[thatdude-noah]

there is something seriously wrong with my brain i need a diagnosis oh my god

[4unnyr0se]

❥ moth to a flame | toru oikawa

warnings: timeskip! argentina oikawa, fem! reader, ushijimas ex! reader, alcohol consumption, recording, fingering, making out, HEAVY flirtiny/dirty talk, hickeys, rough sex, multiple orgasms, ushijima hate, exhibitionism, degradation, oikawa is a bitch ass motherfucker

MDNI | 18+ content

word count -> 5.1k

a/n: based off of this post right here, i hope i did it justice. also sorry to all the ushijima girlies out there

❥ song: moth to a flame - the weekend

Oikawa really fucking hated Ushjima. He hated how good he was. He hated how he could easily get his ass handed to him on a silver fucking platter. Not that he would ever admit that, of course. The Great King had too much pride ever actually to acknowledge that someone was better than him at volleyball. He knew that the ace was secretly talking behind his back, telling everybody that it was such a shame that Oikawa never went to Shirtatorizawa. Fucking dick, what the hell did he know? He had a dumb face. Ushijima was only useful for hitting balls into the opposing team's court. It’s no wonder he got drafted onto the Alders, no universities would accept him. Now, did Oikawa actually have any proof that Ushijima was dumb? Well, not exactly. But he didn’t need proof, Oikawa knew that already. He fucking hated Wakatoshi Ushijima and anyone that associated with him, including the ace’s pretty little girlfriend.

You were too pretty to be Ushijima’s girlfriend, way too pretty. There was no way someone like you would ever willingly be seen with him, right? He was probably blackmailing you into going out with him and posing for Volleyball Monthly; that’s how Oikawa found out about your little relationship. “Shiratorizawa’s Power Couple” the magazine title proudly boasted, using a photo of you standing a little too close to Ushijima for Oikawa’s liking. The only reason you were even featured was because you were the captain of Shiratorizawa’s cheer squad. Probably the only fucking good thing to come out of that school was you. You were wasted on Ushijima, no matter how well he could treat you. Oikawa was furious; Ushijima had a cute girlfriend, but he didn’t. It didn’t make any sense, right? Oikawa could have any girl he wanted, yet he chose you, someone he couldn’t have. What a mind-fuck that was. 

Ushijima kept dating you after high school, much to Oikawa’s annoyance. Rumors were circulating that you would marry and give birth to the next great generation of volleyball, but Oikawa stopped caring at that point. He started playing for Argentina and decided (begrudgingly) that it was for the best that he stopped obsessing over that one Shiratorizawa cheerleader. That perfect, pretty, popular, and so fucking sexy cheerleader. Oikawa was content with his new life in Argentina, especially knowing he would never have to see you or Ushijima again. Boy, was he wrong. 

The beach was sunny that day, and it was full of people doing whatever they wanted: making out, poorly playing volleyball, making sandcastles, whatever they wanted. Oikawa considered joining in on an amateur volleyball match, but he shrugged it off. They would probably recognize him, and while he enjoyed his fame, he preferred his female fans to his male ones. He instead opted to do what he did best: lie there and look pretty. His muscles rippled in the bronzing sunlight as he observed how the waves of the ocean danced, how the children laughed, and how the seagulls terrorized innocent picnic-havers. It was the best thing ever…until he got bored and wanted a drink. Something light, something with lime and coconut. He didn’t care what as long as it had those two things. 

The bar was unusually empty, which was great. His fame got him a lot of special treatment, but cutting the line at the beach bar was certainly different from them. He gave the bartender his order and gave him the pesos, turning his back to the employee as his drink got mixed. Oikawa zoned out for the better part of it, not thinking of much until he was snapped out of his thoughts by a feminine voice. 

“Virgin margarita, please,” you spoke so sweetly like honey was falling from your lips. Oikawa snapped his head in your direction, and his eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. You, Wakatoshi Ushijima’s girlfriend, were standing a few feet away from him, in the cutest little black bikini he had ever seen. He choked on his saliva, pretending to brush it off as a cough. Fuck, did you notice him? There was no way you didn’t. Whatever, there’s no turning back now. Oikawa plastered his signature smirk onto his handsome features, staring at you through his designer sunglasses.

“Well, if it isn’t Ushijima’s illustrious girlfriend. What brings you to Argentina? Let me guess, he sent you to sign me to the Alders?” his voice was smug, annoyingly smug. 

You groaned and took off your sunglasses, nestling them atop your head. “Okay, you’re so wrong on so many levels,” you placed your hands on your hips, raising an eyebrow. “First of all, I’m not his girlfriend anymore. I broke up with Wakatoshi after he got drafted to the Alders, which probably answers your second question.” the ghost of a smirk dusted your lips. 

“Oh,” Oikawa was momentarily silenced. “But you’re still on a first-name basis?”

“And is that any of your business?”

“Wow, since when was Shiratorizawa’s princess so fucking bitchy? I thought you were Snow White or something,” he scoffed, stepping towards you with his arms crossed. 

“And you’re just as pretentious as people say you are,” you snickered. “For your information, Oikawa, I can act however I want. I broke up with his sorry ass, and I’m not telling you why. God, I can’t believe we’re at the same beach.”

Shit, he liked how you were talking to him. No one had put him down like that long ago, not since Iwaizumi. It was nice…did he like it when girls were mean to him instead of worshipping the ground he walked on?

“Hey, don’t get pissy with me, princess. It’s not my fault you just happen to go to the beach near where I live,” Oikawa scoffed. “What are you even doing in Argentina anyway? What, did university not work out for you back in Miyagi.”

You rolled your eyes. “For your information, asshole, I got into every university I applied to. I just…” you signed, rubbing your temple. “I just needed some time away from that place. Everything reminds me of Wakatoshi. It was just better for me to get away for a while.”

The bartender coughed awkwardly, holding your drinks. You both took them as the employee turned back around, visibly uncomfortable. Oikawa took a sip of the drink, nodding in approval. “So, I take it finding me on this beach wasn’t the most relaxing thing?”

“I thought you were going to be nice to me, but I guess I was wrong since you thought I was still with Wakatoshi,” you sipped your drink, the cool liquid drooling down your chin and onto your breasts. “But…I guess I can forgive you. After all, neither of us went to nationals since Karasuno got number nine and ten, right?” 

Oikawa chuckled. “Yeah, you’re right. Fucking Tobio.”

“You know he’s on the Alders as well, right?”

“What? Oh, fucking of course he is,” Oikawa scoffed, placing his drink down at the bar. He looked at your form again, drinking in each curve that your bikini did such a poor job of hiding. Did you wear that thing on purpose to find someone here to fuck? Maybe Ushijima never fucked you right. Maybe he never made you cum. Maybe that’s why you dumped his sorry ass because he was a terrible lover. Oh, wouldn’t that just be a fucking treat?

“So,” Oikawa stared at the ground. “Do you wanna head back to my apartment? It’s within walking distance. Plus, I have drinks that aren’t stupidly overpriced,” he shot the bartender a dirty look. “No offense.”

You thought for a moment, your perfectly manicured finger tapping on your bottom lip. “Sure, that could be fun. Besides,” you leaned forward, exposing your cleavage to the setter. “If Wakatoshi heard about that, he would be so fucking pissed. So why not, hm?”

Holy shit. You were perfect. “Wow,” Oikawa was speechless, which was a rare fucking treat. “And here I thought you were all sweet and innocent,” he casually snaked his arm around your waist, shamelessly feeling your supple skin. “I guess I was wrong.”

“You’re lucky we hate the same person, or else I would have broken your arm off by now,” you snicker, allowing his hand to feel up and down your waist. “Now, where’s your apartment? Let me guess,” you pointed to an expensive-looking building. “Penthouse suite on the top floor right over there?”

“How the hell did you know that?” he raised an eyebrow in suspicion. 

You scoffed, walking in tune with Oikawa. “I mean, it’s painfully obvious. That’s the only apartment complex within comfortable walking distance, and knowing your ego, you probably chose the apartment on the top floor because you think you’re entitled to it, somehow,” you smirked, staring into his milky brown eyes. “Well? How right am I?’

Oikawa frowned, pouting like a baby. “...pretty right…” he mumbled.

“What? I didn’t catch that?” you pretended to cup your ear.

“I said you’re right. Jeez, since when were you this cocky?” he grumbled, pulling you closer to his muscular form. He was ripped, more ripped than he was in the sports magazines from high school. His chest was chiseled, and his shoulders were broad as if he had been sculpted by the gods themselves. You would never admit this to him (not sober, at least), but Oikawa was hot as fuck, even though he was a major brat. 

“I’ve always been this cocky, just not in public,” you looked up at the door of the penthouse apartment complex, the doorknobs brandishing an expensive golden sheen. “Wow, these sure are different than the Miyagi apartments,” you mumbled, rubbing on your arm. Oddly enough, you felt out of place, like you didn’t fit the right tax bracket to be allowed here.

“Well, cutie, I am a professional athlete. I make more than the entire staff does combined,” he bragged, waving to the desk attendant, who had the most annoyed look on her face. Maybe she knew what a dick Oikawa was as well. 

You bit down on your bottom lip, tapping your sandalled shoe against the cool tiling of the lobby. Did he just call you a cutie? You shouldn’t take it personally. He probably did that with every other girl he found attractive. Wait, does that mean he found you attractive? Oh god, did you actually like being flirted with by Toru Oikawa? You slapped your hands over your cheeks, attempting to hide the ever-blooming red blush.

“Are you okay? You look red,” he thought for a second, his lips twisting into a smirk. “Is Shiratorizawa’s Princess blushing?” he leaned forward, smirking as the elevator doors closed. His large and calloused hands pressed against either side of your head, trapping you between the wall and his shirtless frame.

“Shut up!” you slapped him across his cheek, leaving a stinging imprint on his flawless skin. He gasped, massaging his cheek. “You’re a pervert, you know that?”

“I haven’t even said anything perverted yet! No one hits me, no one!” he wined, uncaging you from the elevator wall. “You’re feisty,” he mumbled under his breath, something you couldn’t hear.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the elevator door dinged. You both left the elevator and walked to his apartment in silence, your hands massaging your arms as the cold air of the upper floor set in. Rich people have excellent air conditioning. 

“This is it,” Oikawa jiggled his key into the lock, pulling open the mahogany door. “Ladies first,” he winked, making you scoff as you entered the vast apartment. 

“Holy-” your words died on your lips as you took in Oikawa’s living space. How perfect and elegant it was. It was massive, boasting a designer kitchen with beautiful granite countertops and three ovens. Who the hell needs three ovens? “This place is huge! Damn, I forgot how much they pay professional athletes!” 

Oikawa chuckled at your childlike marveling, or perhaps it was envy? Either way, he could get used to you gawking over his wealth. “I know, I know. I’m fucking fantastic,” he strode over to the bar cart, mixing some peach juice and vodka. “I know this isn’t the most manly drink, but beer is so gross. Don’t you agree?” he handed you a glass, not even trying to hide the fact that he was staring at your tits.

“Oh, totally. Beer is gross,” you took a sip of the drink, smiling at the peach juice hit your tongue. “Oh damn, this is good. Where did you get this?”

“I’m not telling. You could buy out my entire supply!” Oikawa laughed, taking another sip of his beverage. “So,” he leaned against his kitchen counter, staring into your eyes with his half-lidded ones. “What will it take for me to learn why you dumped Ushijima, hm?” his voice was a purr, like a siren trying to lure you into the sea.

You rolled your eyes and sat down on the couch, admiring the tasteful throw pillows he had. “Well, if it gets you to shut up, I’ll tell you,” you patted the seat right next to your own. “You’re lucky I have vodka in me, or else I’d be really bitchy right about now.”

“Who’s saying you aren’t being bitchy?”

You shot him a glare. “Do you wanna know my breakup story or not?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he rolled his eyes and sat next to you, purposefully spreading his muscular thighs. Fuck, he was sexy as hell. “Well? Let’s hear the story, cutie.”

“Okay,” you took a deep breath, locking your eyes on your pedicured feet. “We started dating because one of his teammates said we would look good together. Tendou, I think his name was. He asked me out, but it wasn’t very romantic. He was stoic, unfeeling. I guess he’s always been like that,” you paused, licking your bottom lip. “He was a good boyfriend for the most part, I guess. He was kind, and he supported me in anything I did. It’s just…volleyball was his top priority, not me. And don’t get me wrong, I loved cheerleading. Wakatoshi prioritized sports over his relationship, so I dumped him once he was signed to the Alders.” you looked up at Oikawa, a soft smile gracing your lips. “I’m happy I dumped his sorry ass.”

“Wow,” Oikawa mumbled, setting his drink on the coffee table. “I’m sorry he treated you like that. I always knew he was a piece of shit, and now I have the proof,” he smacked his lips together, wrapping an arm around your shoulder. “C’mere, I gotta ask you something else.”

“Do we have to be this close for you to ask me a question?” you raised an eyebrow, secretly enjoying the intimacy.

“Yes,” Oikawa immediately responded. “Answer me this,” his voice dropped to a deep octave, goosebumps covering your arms. “Did he ever make you cum, or did you have to fake it every time?”

Your breath hitched in your throat, a blush dusting your cheeks. “Well, technically, no, he didn’t make me cum,” you whispered, knowing damn well that Oikawa had a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

“I fucking knew it,” he pulled you impossibly closer, pulling your lip down with his thumb. “Poor little girl, hm? You’re big, strong boyfriend never gave you an orgasm. Did he even know where the clit is?”

You shook your head. “No, I had to show it to him, and he still has never found it.”

“Oh, that’s pathetic. And adorable. To think,” his lips trailed upwards to the cartilage of your ear, nibbling on it. “That a pretty thing like yourself had a boyfriend that wouldn’t give her what she wanted…that’s just tragic, don’t you think so?”

You looked at him, your eyes ablaze. “I guess so. What, did you wanna do something about that?” your hands slid up and down his thigh, dangerously close to his hardening cock. 

“I think I will,” without any warning, he scooped you up and threw you over his shoulder, slapping you on the ass. You squeaked and were thrown onto his bed, the crisp cotton sheets welcoming your burning skin. Oikawa crawled on top of you, pinning your wrists above your head. “I have an idea, something that will piss Ushijima off. That’s what we both want, isn’t it?” he planted a daring kiss on your neck, the aroma of your tropical perfume filling his nostrils. “I know you wanna see him angry, don’t you, cutie?”

Fuck, his words landed right at your core. You squeezed your legs shut, tilting your head to the side so he could plant more of his blazing kisses on your delicate skin. “Mhm, I wanna see him get so mad he does something he’ll regret,” you purr, gasping as Oikawa sank his canines into you. A soft moan fell from your lips, only encouraging him to leave more delicious bruises. He stopped his ministrations, licking his way up to your ear. “I wanna film me fucking your brains out,” his voice was a low rumble, practically dripping with want. “I wanna send him pictures of you covered in my fucking cum with your tits covered in hickeys. That’ll show him, right?” he shamelessly palmed your breast, wanting to tear that slutty bikini off your perfect body.

“Fuck, Oikawa,” you moaned, breaking free from his grasp. “If you’re gonna do that,” you sat on the bed. “We have to be equals in this, or he’ll think you’re fucking me without consent.”

“What? So, no bondage or anything?” he pouted. “Well, I guess that’s fair,” his milky eyes darted to one of his dresser drawers. “I…I have a professional camera in there, as well as a tripod. Don’t fucking ask why I have those, okay? If we’re gonna film a little something for your ex-boyfriend,” he playfully nipped at your ear. “We’re gonna do it right.”

“Sounds like a plan,” you chuckled, swatting his hands away as he fumbled with the string of your bikini top. “Nope, you have to undress me on camera. That’ll really piss him off.”

Oikawa smirked, setting up the tripod quickly. How many times did he use that thing? “You sure know him well, don’t you, cutie?” he hit the record button, crawling above you again. The camera was positioned to have the side-view of whatever you two decided to participate in. “Don’t worry, I’ll get the money shot with my phone,” he snickered, hovering his lips above yours. “Now, cutie, do you wanna make a movie with me?”

“Fuck yes,” and his lips were upon yours, ravaging them like he had drank a love potion. They moved in sync with your own, relishing in the mango-flavored chapstick you wore. He kissed you like he owned you from the second he saw you in that slutty bikini. The way his teeth clashed against yours was animalistic in his fight to be dominant, not even asking for entry before shoving his tongue inside your mouth. Your wet muscles danced, pulling moan after moan out of your lungs before he pulled away abruptly, cheeks flushed and chest heaving. 

“Gotta fucking catch my breath,” he chuckled. “You kiss like a fucking whore.”

“I bite like one, too,” you smirked, rolling over to straddle Oikawa’s waist. He gasped in confusion before quickly being silenced, the sensation of you harshly sucking on his muscular neck making him whimper. You chuckled, grinding yourself onto his pelvis, your most intimate parts being covered by thin pieces of fabric.

“Fuck, cutie,” Oikawa’s hands squeezed your hips, rolling the fat between his taped fingers. He bucked his hips upwards, making you yelp. “Take off that fucking top now,” he growled, fisting the sheets beneath him impatiently.

You giggled and reached behind your back, undoing the bikini knot teasingly slow. Oikawa knew what you were doing. He’d seen it a million times by now. Usually, he wouldn’t mind. It was just another beach slut taking her time, trying to draw out their experience with the great Toru Oikawa. But this time was different. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted you creaming on his cock the way Ushijima never made you. Besides, there would be a second time. And a third, and a fourth.

His hand cracked against your ass. “Don’t fucking tease me, cutie,” his voice rasped, his hands hungrily grasping onto your tits. “Fucking take this off, or I’ll rip it off of you. Show me those tits, don’t get all shy on me now.”

You squeak, your clit pulsating at the contact. “Fine, whatever you want, baby,” you threw your bikini top across the room, letting your breasts be exposed to the cool air of his bedroom. Oikawa groaned, rolling over so he was on top once more. His mouth found your breast, sucking at the pillowy flesh while his hands rolled over your pert nipple, alternating between each breast. He sucked on your areloas, making sure not to be gentle. He only got more confident with each slutty moan he ripped from your lips, relishing in the incredibly high ones he received when he bit down on your nipple. Your chest was littered with tiny purple circles and covered in his saliva, the desire in your belly practically bubbling over. His cock was painfully hard, pressing against your inner thigh. You swore you could hear it throbbing, begging to fuck your cunt. 

“Oikawa!” you whimpered, grabbing his ashy brown hair and forcefully pulling him away from your chest. “I-I think you marked me enough, right? C’mon,” your hand guided his into your bikini bottom, sighing as his thumb finally found your desperate clit. “I’m so wet down here for you, Oikawa. Don’t you wanna take care of me?”

Your voice was high-pitched like the girls in porn, and Oikawa fucking loved it. You were both putting on a show in shorts. A show to piss off a man that you both despised, but it was a show nonetheless. It's a sexy, depraved show.

“You moan like a fucking slut,” he pushed your bikini to the side, exposing your dripping pussy. Without a second thought, he shoved his middle and ring finger deep inside your heat, curling them slightly. You cried out, arching your back further into the mattress as his other hand still had a firm hold on your breast.

“Oh, you like that, cutie? You like getting finger-fucked by your ex-boyfriend's enemy?” he growled, fucking his fingers in and out of your weeping pussy at a relentless pace. “I wonder what they would say if they saw you like this, a slutty little mess under me. You’re such a whore for my fingers, aren’t you?” his thumb dragged over your clit, his fingers and his arm being so precise in their ministrations. Your pussy squeezed around his digits, feeling your first orgasm in such a long-time approach.

“P-please, Oikawa! Fucking make me cum!” you sobbed, your hands clenching onto the white sheets. You saw stars as your orgasm crashed over you, rolling your head to the side to stare directly into the camera. With your blown-out eyes and bruised lips, you looked fucking ethereal.

“Good fucking girl,” Oikawa popped his fingers in his mouth, tasting your slick. You tasted incredible, unlike anything he had ever tasted before. “Open up,” he ran his finger over your soaked core, gathering up more of your essence to forcefully shove inside your mouth. “Suck,” he commanded, and you did. Your tongue ran over his fingers while you made direct eye contact with him, making the setter impossibly hard. “Little slut.”

“M’not a slut,” you whined, spreading your legs further apart. You were contradicting yourself. You were on display for him as if his apartment was some kind of brothel. The look in his eyes when he saw your gorgeous body, your thighs still trembling in the aftershocks of your release. Fuck, it really looked like he ripped you straight out of a porno. 

“Then how come you’re spread out like one for me, hm? That pussy’s dripping all over my bed, dirty girl.” he slid off his swimming trunks, his cock slapping against his rock-hard abs. He boasted a proud, sensitive pink tip that was leaking with precum. He pumped his cock a few times before aligning it with your entrance, slapping the head against your clit. “Now, are you gonna beg for me to fuck you better than that pathetic ex-boyfriend of yours ever could?” he looked directly into the camera, mesmerized by the flashing red light. “Better than Ushijima, I’m better than Ushijima.”

“T-Toru!” you whined, pulling him down by his shoulders into a passionate kiss. You stared into the camera as well, giving it a wink. Using Oikawa’s first name would surely make your ex furious. It just had to. “Fuck me! Fuck me better than Wakatoshi ever could!” you sobbed, wrapping your legs around his waist so he had no hope of escaping. Your eyes were wet with fake tears, begging him to ruin you.

“Shit,” he groaned, pushing the head of his cock past your entrance. “That’s what I like to fucking hear.” he slammed his lips down on yours once again, bullying the rest of his throbbing length deep inside your heat. “So fucking tight.” Oikawa hissed at the sight of your greedy pussy sucking him in, his teeth nipping at your lips.

“S’fucking big, Toru! Fuck!” you cried, your nails leaving angry red crescent marks on his back. Oikawa revealed in the pleasure, continuing to make out with you as he fucked you harder, the tip of his cock kissing your cervix occasionally.

“You’ve ever been fucked this hard before, hm?” he bit down on your shoulder, leaving an imprint of his teeth. “No one’s ever fucked this pussy as good before, huh? Fucking answer me, cutie,” his hand wrapped around your throat, squeezing softly. 

You gasped, struggling to take his massive cock and breath at the same time. “No one’s, fuck, no one’s ever fucked me like this before, Toru!” you sobbed, sighing in relief as he let go of your neck.

“So fucking obedient. And you let her dump you, Usjijima? Fucking pathetic,” he rolled his hips against yours, hitting even deeper inside your pussy. His balls slapped against the cleft of your ass, the apartment echoing with lustful moans and squeals. He grabbed your jaw and pulled you in for another kiss, his tongue exploring your mouth as his cock ravaged your core. 

“Toru, I’m gonna fucking cum!” you sob into his mouth, your nails now leaving furious red scratches down his back. He whined into your mouth, his hips never faltering as they continued their unrelenting and unforgiving speed. Sweat dripped from his brow and into your hair, moan after beautiful moan being ripped from your lips as he fucked you like he owned you, like you were his. It was more than just a revenge fuck, so much more.

“Fucking cum on my cock, cutie. Be a good fucking slut and make a mess on this cock,” he growled into your mouth, pulling on your hair to force your neck to the side. He planted open-mouth kisses as you were pushed over the edge, crying out his name as your release coated his pulsating shaft. 

Fuck, he wasn’t going to last, not at the rate that your pussy was milking him. He eagerly reached for his phone on the mattress, and just as he felt his orgasm approach, he pulled out of your addictive cunt. The camera app was opened, and the record button was pressed, videoing Oikawa desperately fisting his cock before letting out a guttural, almost animalistic roar. His thick, white-hot ropes of cum painted your stomach and fucked out face, some even landing on your lips. Oikawa stopped recording and took several pictures, each with a different angle of your cum-covered curves.

“Gorgeous,” the setter muttered, tossing his phone back onto the now-ruined sheets. He got off the bed and grabbed the camera, winking at the lens as he hit the power button. The light stopped blinking, and Oikawa was satisfied. “Well, you just made your first porno. How do you feel about that, cutie?” 

You shrugged your shoulders. “It’s more of a revenge porno than anything, but I liked it,” you averted your gaze. “You’re a good fuck.”

He placed a hand on his hip. “Well, obviously,” Oikawa rolled his eyes, grabbed a box of tissues, and handed them to you. “Clean yourself off. I’ll run you a bath in a minute.”

You needed clarification. “You’re doing aftercare?”

“Why the hell would I not?” he sounded offended. 

“Because you seem like an inconsiderate piece of shit,” your words were so casual, yet so mean. Why did Oikawa crave more?

“I made you cum, didn’t I?” he snatched the box of tissues out of your hand. “Twice, I made you cum twice. That’s more than fucking Ushijima ever could.”

“Woah, don’t get your panties in a twist. It was just an assumption, damn.” you rolled your eyes, stepping off of the bed. “Now, I’m gonna need to borrow a shirt before I get the hell out of here. You kind of ruined my bikini top.”

Oikawa shook his head, placing the camera inside his drawer beside him. “You aren’t going anywhere, not until I’ve gotten as many orgasms as I want out of that slutty little pussy of yours.”

You chuckled darkly and pounced on him, straddling his waist once again. “Only if I get to be on top this time, okay?” you licked his neck. “I wanna see how the Great King reacts to Shiratorizawa’s Princess riding his cock.”

Oikawa grinned and pulled you down for another kiss, his cock already hard. You were in for a long fucking night.

Ushijima woke up to an onslaught of ringing sounds coming from his phone. Groaning, he turned to the side to see who had the balls to be emailing him at 2:56 in the morning. 

His eyes widened as he saw two video attachments, as well as several image attachments, of Oikawa’s cock plunging in and out of his ex-girlfriend's pussy. Her cries and moans quickly filled up his bedroom as Oikawa’s mischievous brown eyes locked with Ushijima’s green ones from behind the screen. He sat up, scrolling through the rest of the attachments. Each image was enough to send him into a rage, but the last one was what got to him. Your head resting on Oikawa’s chest, various hickeys covering your tits and neck as you slept soundly. On the other hand, Oikawa was smirking as he held up the number five with his fingers. Ushijima’s hands cracked his phone, shattering the protective glass.

Toru Oikawa was a smug-ass motherfucker.

[temiizpalace]

☆┆TEND TO MY WOUNDS !

SUMMARY: red alert! he’s injured! it’s alright, for the prefect of ramshackle is here to save the day.

CHARACTERS: leona, jade, jamil, rook, idia

(i spun a wheel to try and write other characters.. jamil and leona just love me teehee)

GENRE: fluff

WARNINGS: the boys get injured, but nothing is life threatening. — cursing — MENTIONS OF BLEEDING (not fatal)

ROMANTIC, ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP

reader is g/n, reader is yuu

🦁┆LEONA KINGSCHOLAR

“shit! ow—“

leona groans, feeling the stinging pain of alcohol rubbed onto his forehead. spelldrive didn’t go as it usually did.

everything was normal. practice was going well, and everybody was doing the proper training regiments. it was all fun watching leona and everybody practice by a nearby tree. except leona wasn’t practicing this afternoon.

today, he felt like napping right beside you. he laid his head in your lap, sound asleep. this all goes south when some freshmen decide to mess around, sending the disc flying in your direction.

typically leona would’ve been able to divert it with magic, but feeling a little hazy from barely awakening, it hit him straight on the forehead.

now here you both are, present in the infirmary, leona sitting on the cot, and you being his own personal doctor. “i can’t believe the great leona kingscholar got hit by a spelldrive disc. it is truly an honor to witness it first hand.” you joke, causing him to roll his eyes.

“tch.. whatever— FUCK.” it’s funny to see leona in such a state. one where his tough guy act isn’t all the way up. you thought he’d brush off the pain like a man, but surprise! we learn something new everyday.

“haha.. wait here. i need to find bandages.” you walk over to the cabinet, only to find all the boxes of bandages empty. except for one. a bandaid box. you snicker at the sight of them and take a couple out of the box. leona raises a brow as he heard your giggling in the back til you made your way back towards him.

you stood in front of him and placed the bandaids on his forehead. he liked the close proximity. he likes being by your side. you caring for him like this is actually one of his deepest desires. he won’t ever say it aloud of course, but he hopes you take the hints.

“you are now officially cured.” you grin, finally applying the last bandaid. he stood up, looking you in the eyes. he wanted to thank you. wanted to thank you for helping him. wanted to thank you for caring enough about him to do this. to help him.

but leona being leona cannot say thank you. “..I don’t wanna owe you any favors so,” he pulls out his wallet from his pocket and throws it to you. you catch it, nearly dropping all the thaumarks inside on the floor. “go buy somethin’ while you’re at it.”

he ruffles your hair, walking out of the infirmary. you flip through the wallet, it barely closing due to the amount of cards and thaumarks inside. rich boy privileges go crazy. ruggie wasn’t kidding when he said leona was stinkin rich. all you could do was stand there, shocked.

leona walks back out to the field, hearing the team laugh as he approaches. he looks at them with a puzzled look, the laughing becoming unbearable. “oi, what’s so funny? mind tellin’?”

“cute bandaids ya got there, boss. shishishishi..” ruggie chuckles, looking at leona’s super cute and silly unicorn bandaids on his forehead. at first, he’s confused. then he rips a bandaid off and looks at the patterns.

start running <3

🐬┆JADE LEECH

“jade, stop moving!”

you sigh, trying to place a bandaid on jade’s cut. you wanted to help him cook today since mostro lounge has been extremely busy lately. azul had been working him to the bone, so he used his time off as a way to spend time with you.

only to end up back in the kitchen, but whatever. since you’re there, it’s all good. while chopping a mysterious vegetable, (it’s a mushroom..) he accidentally cut his finger. he wasn’t paying attention to where he was cutting. cause he was looking at you.

normally somebody would wince in pain, but jade is jade. so. “oh my, this is unexpected.” he says, as his blood gets on his gloves and contaminates the mushrooms. “oh my what— OH MY GOSH, JADE.” you yell, as he’s abnormally calm about the fact blood was all over the mushrooms.

so now he’s sitting at one of the barstools in mostro lounge as you try to patch up his finger. anytime the bandaid gets remotely close to the cut, he squirms and jerks his hand away. you can’t tell if he’s messing with you or if he’s just sensitive to touch because he still has his dumb polite smile.

“jade. stop. moving.” you grunt, trying to grab his wrist to hold his hand still. “fufu..” his stupid chuckle is usually very nice but it’s just growing irritating.

for some reason he still has the impulse to tease you. even when injured. all you want to do is care for him, so why is he making this so difficult?! is he waiting for something?

oh. that’s an idea.

“jade, may i see your hand?” you ask, putting the bandaid on the counter. he raises a brow, but complies nonetheless. “of course. do be gentle though, im wounded.” well no shit.

you held his hand gently, raising a finger up to your lips. you place a gentle kiss on his finger. not on the wound exactly, but near it. his eyes slightly widened and his cheeks tinted slightly red. he loses his composure for just a moment, giving you time to apply the bandaid onto his cut.

you smile in victory, standing up from your seat. “there, all better!” you winked at him before making your way back to the kitchen. he sat there, dumbfounded. how curious.. if that’s a way to get free kisses..

“oh dear, it appears i had just cut my lower lip. what a shame. it appears i am in need of some assistance.” this wasn’t even five minutes later.

🐍┆JAMIL VIPER

“you scream like a girl.”

you laugh as jamil looks away from you. he couldn’t bear to look you in the eyes. a little earlier, the both of you were sitting in the lounge of ramshackle as comfortable silence filled the air.

he was flipping through pages of a book while you leaned onto his shoulder, playing a game of some sort on your phone.

“..AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

that silence was interrupted as you heard a high pitched scream next to you, turning your head to see jamil absolutely mortified and panicked.

“JAMIL?! WHAT IS—“ then you spotted it. the wretched cockroach crawling on the table. he shut his book and threw it at the table, missing. now he’s grabbing all nearby objects to kill the insect.

“JAMIL PLEASE CALM DOWN, PLEASE! FUCK, JAMIL—” he ended up using his magic, but used a lil too much. as you held him back, his leg bumped against the table, causing him to scurry back to the couch.

confirming that the roach had cleared the premises, you sat next to him and checked the bump on his leg. his breaths were heavy and a sweat was across his brow. you would’ve thought he looked insanely attractive if it weren’t for the incident just before.

now he’s embarrassed, his hood is pulled over, and he’s pouting as he looks away from you. “i think you got a small cut, but it should be fine. i’ll go get some bandaids!” you hum, getting up from the cushions to find the box of bandages.

he completely humiliated himself in front of you. he was weak in front of you. and he hates that. “im back and here to repair your boo-boo.” you came back with the box, sitting back down and opening it. you remove a bandaid and slowly apply it til you hear him mutter something.

“sorry.”

“hm? sorry, couldn’t hear ya. mind speaking up for me?” you heard him perfectly fine. he irks before speaking up, his tone hinted with annoyance. “sorry.”

“all is forgiven, my love.” you smile, wrapping your arms around him and pulling him into a hug. he sighs, reciprocating the hug and leaning onto you. “please forget you saw that..” he mumbles, his face practically burning.

you chuckle, playing with loose strands of his hair as the both of you now lied on the couch. “no promises..” he clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes, but placed a quick kiss on your cheek. he shuts his eyes, needing to recharge.

“mhm. love you too, jamil.” you whisper, allowing him to rest on your chest. he fell asleep in no time flat. let him rest. or even better yet, join him!

🏹┆ROOK HUNT

“how’d you fall?”

you ask, seeing as rook lied on the ground. i don’t know how to explain his pose, he’s just a theatre kid.

“never mind the details, ma chère. all that matters is that you had rushed to my rescue!” he smiles as you stood there. the most deadpan expression on your face. “i’ll just go get you bandages and not question it.” “merci!”

you rush to the infirmary, grabbing the bandages and rushing out. if nobody knew better, they’d all have assumed that rook was dead. he hasn’t moved an inch.

“where’d you injure yourself?” you ask, crouching down and inspecting his arms. “non, non. you must guess!” he laughs, sitting up right away. you groan as he initiated such an idea. “rook. im not going to guess—“

“if that is the case, ill be stuck in everlasting pain! it’d be unbearable.” he sighs dramatically, causing you to furrow your brow. “fine. did you injure your leg?” you grumble, checking each limb.

he shook his head, smiling like an absolute idiot. “here, allow me to give you a hint.” he grabs your hand guiding it to the place of the wound. of course he can’t do it without teasing you a little.

he places your hand on his shoulder, his hand, his neck, til eventually he stopped on his cheek. “my injury can be found around here.”

you look at his cheek, but there is no cut, scratch, or bruise to be seen. you raise a brow at him, but he has no shift in reaction. “rook, are you lying to me?” rook shook his head, looking you in the eyes. “I wouldn’t lie to you, mon amour. perhaps you need a closer look.”

before he could even explain what that meant, he pulled you towards him. causing you to fall onto him. “can you see it now?” he asks, staring at you lovingly.

you sigh, pulling a bandage out and placing it onto his lips. his eyes widened, but he wasn’t mad. not in the slightest! he wrapped his arms around you. taking this opportunity for a cuddle session.

despite your “annoyance,” you smiled and laughed slightly. “you’re impossible, rook.”

he nuzzled his head into the crook of your neck, humming happily as you spoke. his fingers intertwined with yours as the sun hit both of your figures. creating a scene resembling one of a fairytale.

💀┆IDIA SHROUD

“you can’t lock yourself into your room because of this.”

you slightly chuckle as you patch up idia’s knee. moments before, his PE class had to do the sprints. looks like he went to class on the wrong day.

while he was running, he tripped on a conveniently placed rock and fell on his knee. ortho quickly went to find you and bring you to idia so that you can comfort him.

he had tears coming from his eyes, which caused ortho to panic. you both carried him to the infirmary since he had an inability to walk. you situated him onto the cot and grabbed some bandages from the cabinets. “don’t worry niisan! the prefect will take good care of you!”

ortho chimed, trying his best to comfort his brother. idia felt his stress lessen, but that doesn’t change the immense pain he was in. “thank you, ortho. but i don’t im ever gonna to go outside again.”

he mumbles, causing ortho to pout. you come back with the bandages, smiling as you sat to the side of the cot. “im gonna have to go explain to coach vargas why you’re not here! hang tight, niisan!”

you waved to ortho, leaving just you and idia in the infirmary. “idia, you’re not going to die because of this.” you smile, placing the bandage onto his knee. idia groans, picking at his fingers. “i looked so cringe just now. definitely not my moment.”

“you didn’t look cringe, idia. you got hurt.” you grabbed his hand and held it in yours. he smiles slightly as you tried to reassure him. it was endearing to him. “thanks.. but i want to lock myself in my room for like ever after this..” he quickly mutters, hoping you wouldn’t hear that. surprise! you heard him.

“no idia, you can’t lock yourself in your room forever after this.” you sigh, realizing this was the man you fell in love with. “what? you can come too. you’d be free from all the normies surrounding you.” he stated bluntly.

“..no.” you hesitantly said, squeezing his hand slightly. you both sat in the infirmary for a few more moments before you sat up and let go of his hand. “can you stand?”

“no.” he quickly replies, not even bothering to try. you stare at him before exhaling deeply. “i’ll bring your switch then. wait here.” he smiled as he watched you exit the room. he appreciated how understanding you were. how you knew what he wanted before he even had to ask. ..well, most of the time anyway.

when you came back, you sat next to him on the cot. you both played smash bros together, playing until the console runs out of batteries. lucky for him, his console lasts for almost an entire week before it runs out of power.

let me just say, he beat your ass in smash bros.

A/N: this sat in my drafts for a very long time. i had to brainstorm A LOT to see how idia could get injured.

date published: 1/27/24

© temiizpalce — don’t steal or copy my work!

[luimagines]

Maybe a scenario where the chain is female hero's Era and they meet her era's link which is her little brother of like 6 and she confesses that the quest was actually for him.

LITTLE LINK!?!!?!?!? MY LOVE, MY LIFE, MY SON!?!? ABSOLUTELY!!!! XD

Everybody get ready for more Lucky. I will never have enough of this boy. ^.^*

Side note: Reader is written as Gender Neutral per the rules of the blog, but this isn't really about them anyway. :D

Masterlist

Content under the cut!

"Just a little closer." You say under your breath as you push aside the surrounding foliage. You step into a well beaten path. there's roots sticking out of it and the dirt is bare and dry, but you know that it's safe to travel along and that it'll take you straight to your destination.

"We've been walking for hours." Legend groans. "Are we there yet?"

"Almost." You hold the branch open for the others to pass through.

"This Link of yours must be a pain in neck to get to if his lives this far out into the middle of nowhere." Hyrule spits out a leaf.

You snort, keeping it vague for the sake of keeping him safe. They'll know the truth soon enough and frankly, you're scared to see the aftermath. "It's just up the path."

"Finally!"

"Come on! Let's go!" Wind cheers and takes off running, following swiftly by Wild, Wolfie and Four.

You try to keep a leisurely pace, knowing you're going to need all the energy you can reserve for when you arrive. You want to run just as much as the others, but you know better.

Time seems to have caught on and gently smacks your shoulder. "You never said how you happened to meet him."

"I didn't?" You smile, playing it coy. "Strange."

"This is it?" Four asks with a skeptical look.

Just beyond the hill is a run down cottage. There's holes in the roof and the fence is broken in many areas. The forest and meadows around it are about to over take the small house and return the woods of its skeleton back to where they came from.

You try to hold back a bitter smile and the way your heart swells at the familiar sight. You pat Four on the shoulder and keep walking towards the cottage. Putting your fingers to your mouth, you let out a shrill whistle and keep walking.

A beat passes, setting the young men behind you on edge before the door of the cottage all but bursts open. You can feel some of the boys reach for their weapons but they hesitate when you start hollering in excitement.

Your calls are answered back by a small body that comes running out of the cottage at full speed. It comes out like a shot and b-lines for you with the intent to tackle. You catch the familiar mop of blond hair and laugh, peppering the small boy with kisses and tickles.

The group behind you is stunned.

"Bubbah! You're home! You're home!" The child cries.

You smile, getting a little teary as you hold the child closer. "I get to stay for a little bit this time before I travel again. I wanted you to meet some friends of mine. They've been very excited to meet you."

The little boy looks over your shoulder and gasp, a bright grin covering his face. "New people! Hello! Welcome to my house!"

You set him down with a proud smile as he runs to the Chain. He stops in front of them, holding his hand out like the polite gentleman he's growing up to be. "My name is Link, what's yours?"

Twilight bites the bullet and kneels to his level, shaking his hand. "Why- My name is Link too! It's great to meet you!"

You sighs and look back to the house. Your grandmother must still be inside. Age has not been kind to her.

The introductions are going on behind as your brother gets more and more amused that they all share the same name. He laughs, bright and joyfully and still the child you've fought so hard to keep. "No wonder you wanted to meet me too!"

"Yeah.... That's why." Legend clenches his jaw in a tight smile. He catches it quickly, the mark of the Triforce of Courage already on his little hand. Legend points to his hand to show that he has the same mark. "You have that too?"

Link, your brother, nods and proudly shows it off. "Bubbah says it's because I'm special. They had to leave home after it showed up though. They saved me from the monsters and told me to take care of grandma."

"Then I'm sure you're doing an incredible job." Time says gently. "That mark is special. I'm sure your grandma is very proud."

Warrior makes it a point to step aside, roughly grabbing your arm as he speaks in a hushed voice. "What is the meaning of this?"

"This is my home." You try to keep the growl out of your voice. "Link is my brother."

"Tell me you're joking."

"I wouldn't be the one traveling with you if I was."

"Bubbah!" Link calls for your attention. "Can they stay for dinner?!"

You slap a grin onto your face and wave back to him. "That was the plan, short stack! You mind going to tell grandma we have company?"

"Oh yeah!" He grins and runs back to the house right as your grandmother has reached the door. She sees you and sighs of relief that you've returned safe and sound.

You wave from where you are and blow her a kiss. You try not to look at the other boys around you.

You can feel them staring holes into you head as it is.

This is going to be a long story.

[bloodwrittenletters]

KISS ME ONE MORE TIME

pairing . . . percy jackson x fem!mortal!reader

the cassette playing . . . waiting room! phoebe bridgers

the letter reads . . . perseus jackson was supposed to die at 16, not get a girlfriend who he could break.

warnings . . . angst, cursing ( slightly ), slight nsfw ( making out ), ptsd ( post-traumatic stress disorder ), survivor's guilt, mention of suicidal thoughts

a/n . . . hi guys! sorry it took me a little more than what I said to get it published, I got an emergency and didn't have time to work on it (everything is alright 🫡) I REALLY liked how this turned out, I love the son trio SOSOSO much so of course I had to give them a little mention, hope you all enjoy it!! actual part 2 is on the way, I promise :pp also, this doesn't really follow the canon, so just fyi!!

a continuation of this . . .

percy jackson knew he loved you the moment he laid his eyes on yours.

because they were pretty, full of light and happiness, two orbes made out of pure beauty that were protected by soft eyelashes.

and percy jackson was a sucker for pretty things. or he was a sucker for you in general, because every milestone he had given you with his hear full of hope (because, yes, he had saved a lot of his firsts for only you), or because for the first time in his life, he had allowed himself to want something for himself. only for him.

since he was twelve everything— everyone had told him he was going to die soon, 'you're not gonna make it' 'you're too weak to be the hero of the prophecy' 'you will die alone, just how you started' blah, blah, blah. it didn't matter, he knew he was doomed to die soon, and for a long while, he wanted it, too.

percy started the end of his life at twelve, and by the time he was fourteen he was exhausted.

he worked himself to exhaustion each summer, picking up on more quest (or forcing himself in some, for a little while), not even allowing himself to break after each loss.

luke, chris, bianca, zo��, lee, charlie, silena, ethan...

it was all his fault, they were supposed to live, even if one of them made it out alive, it was his fault they didn't have a better life— the one they deserved.

he lost so many people. and everything in his birthday, like fate wanted to remind him that this was his fault. for all the time where the camp was in Manhattan, he even had forgotten it was his birthday, he was too busy focusing on trying to keep everybody alive to remember his day.

for a moment, percy felt bad for forgetting, and for the next one he just wanted to cry and find his mother. he wanted to be six again and be smothered by sally in Montauk, while they were away from the hell of house that smelly gabe had made.

that couldn't be, though.

percy jackson had found you, passed out on the streets of new york, holding bags of gifts and a boque of blue roses and lilies, all of which you had gotten for him.

"no, no, no, no," he breathed, repeating the word over and over as he laid his hand on your forehead. "please... j-just—" he cut himself off when his thumb rubbed on your pulse point. "you're good, yeah?"

he left a soft kiss on your forehead, before pressing his hear over your heart, sighing when he heard it beat loudly.

listen to me, i'm here, i didn't leave.

percy gently detached your hands from the bags, grinning at your hard grip, as if you didn't want to lose what you've gotten him.

"i'm not taking them from you, sweet girl, let me hold you, please," he whispered to you, holding you up on his chest, and grabbing your things before taking you to the Empire State Building.

if olympus were to fall, it would be after overcoming hundreds of demigods; that was the only safe place for you.

the rest was the usual for a hero, his beloved one waking up to his breakdown and being convinced to date. usual stuff. happens every tuesday in your local divinity show to your favorite sweetheart. you pick it.

he celebrated every day of dating you differently, but all started with soft, gentle kisses.

though, your second month anniversary had gotten... a little heated.

"you're so beautiful," he murmured against your neck, kissing the exact vein he had rubbed to make sure you were alright two months ago. then, he left wet kisses up yor neck and jaw before kissing your mouth. "i'm so grateful for you, baby. so, so grateful."

"pers—"

"what do you need, sweet girl?" percy gently shifted the both of you, grabbing his stuffed penguin and turning it around, before looking at you with a grin. "we don't want to traumatize him," he said as he kissed the corner of your mouth.

there were soft giggles between the two of you, before percy took a hold of your jaw and tilted your head, kissing around your adam's apple with wet lips, gently nipping the skin with his teeth, giving you a tiny smile when you digged your nails into his shoulder, creating soft crescent moons into his skin.

"so, what was it, angel?"

"hush, your lips made me forget."

percy wiped his head out from the crook of your neck, and pressed his big smile against yours.

it was one of his favorite memories with you, one hera couldn't take away from him as well as a lot of his memories.

there were only two things he was able to keep, your name, and the soft memory of your lips.

his only two amulets against all the hardships he faced in the little time he wasn't asleep.

"you should really consider calling home," frank, of course, had called after percy when he was slipping away into the endless pit of loneliness that had grown into his chest.

green eyes met brown ones, and soon percy's eyes had the water his irises imitated.

frank stepped forward and wrapped an arm around percy's body, and then the other, hugging him tightly as he held percy through cries.

"i miss her so much," percy voice was broken and low, yet the words cut through sobs.

"i know you do."

"y-you would love her, and she would love you," percy cried harder. "i.. i'm sorry, frank."

when percy tried to pull away, frank held him tighter.

"you're okay, percy, just cry until you feel a little better."

frank's body was like a living teddy bear, warm and safe, soon percy was gripping the purple shirt as he cried in his friend's shoulder, breaking apart after months— years, of holding it together.

every day for all the months he was missing had taken form of tears, falling and falling through his cheeks, burning his skin as more and more tears fell.

huffs and puffs, sobs and tears, all fell out of percy. soon he fell to his knees, only being held together by frank.

the boys sat on the sidewalk, frank's hand gently patted percy's head, supporting him through everything.

"t-thanks, frank," percy patted the shoulder his head wasn't resting on. "usually i'm good keeping it together."

"me, hazel and that girlfriend of yours are gonna have a talk about you putting too much pressure on yourself."

"what—"

frank pulled two coins from his pocket, like a magic trick, and offered them to percy.

"call home, percy."

percy looked like a fish out of water, an o instead of a mouth as he stumbled over his words, before swallowing them and grabbing the money, to then run over to the closest phone booth.

he punched in the only number he could remember, being the one from the jackson apartment, and hoped with every bit of his soul for his mother to pick up.

for someone to pick up.

"hi?"

percy wasn't expecting your voice, his stomach fell to the floor, feeling his organs creep and drool around his feet.

he opened his mouth, but then closed. once, twice, until your voice revived the line.

"anyone there? is this just some stupid prank?"

it wasn't. percy almost broke down again, gripping the phone tighter.

please, just say something, he begged himself in silence, feeling like he could pass out in a moment.

"i'm going to hang up if you don't talk soon—"

percy finally spoke up, feeling like he could cry.

"hi, baby... i miss you."

"holy shit."

percy laughed, finally hearing your voice, he just wanted you to beg you to keep talking. to never shut up.

percy laughed, more like a breath of relief.

"hi, pretty girl... can you talk?"

"y-you— me— percy, oh my god. where the hell are you?! oh my god, oh my god, ohmygod, i'mgoingtocry."

"uhm... well, it's a long story."

there was sobbing on the other line, and percy's knees went weak. he had to take a long drag of breath to stop himself from crying, too.

"sweetie.. please, don't cry, i'm too far away to hold you."

you composed yourself, hugging tightly the blue bunny you had, tears rolling down your neck. you had to focus on him.

"'kay. percy, my love, where are you? i'll tell annabeth and we'll go get you."

"tell her to tell you about camp, and to come get me from camp jupiter."

"alright... we'll meet you there," and before he could fight you on it, you rushed to your next sentence. "i love you, percy jackson. please don't run off to where i can't find you."

holy shit, indeed.

"i... i love you, too."

[vivwritesfics]

Keep On Rolling - MV1

Chapter One

Summary: Lando's best friend having feelings for anyone on the grid? Impossible, right? She worked with them, sharing her friendship with the grid with the world via the FormulaY/N youtube channel.

After film a video including... spicy water (alcohol), everything changes between her and a certain world champion. Good thing she hasn't had a crush on him since his F1 debut, right?

Right?

2K words

Hello everybody! Long break, I know (life throws curveballs), but I'm taking the blog in a different direction. Hope you guys like my first F1 imagine, I'm really passionate about it.

Series Masterlist

"Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Paddock Pals," Y/N said to the camera, holding her microphone in her hand. "Now, if you're new to the channel or don't remember the first installment, Paddock Pals is where cameraman James and I go around the Formula One paddock, dressed in the best disguises, and try to have the weirdest interview possible with the drivers," she explained. "Whoever recognises us first wins the game."

Y/N L/N was maybe the biggest name in Formula One youtube. She brought something to the game that nobody else had - access to the drivers.

Growing up as best friends with Lando Norris had its perks. She got to make a career out of her friendship and got to travel the world. She wasn't much into the sport until she met Lando. Now, she was a woman obsessed.

"As you can probably tell, James and I are not yet in disguise. We're filming this the night before so we had head straight there tomorrow, catch them bright, early, and unaware." She was stood in her hotel room in Australia, going over the previous installment of Paddock Pals. "Last time we got caught out by the honey badger himself, Daniel Riccardo. So, this time around, Danny Ric is going to be helping us out by letting us do a pretend interview with him when we need to."

The cameraman walked over to the mirror, showing himself. "This year we're making predictions on who we think will catch us out. I think it'll be Charles this year," he said. "He's been suspicious for a while, always asking when we're doing the next episode."

"As always, I think it's going to be Lando," said Y/N when the camera turned back to her. "I always try to leave him until last because, if anybody is going to catch us out, it's going to be him."

After that, James cut the camera. They needed a break, a moment to gather themselves together. "You really think Charles?" Y/N asked as they changed over the head of her microphone. Usually, it was the FormulaY/N microphone, but she changed it to a generic black one for the Paddock Pals video. "Not Max or Oscar?"

"And why would I say Max?" Asked James with a grin. Y/N glared, but she didn't push. Charles was a good choice. He spent almost as much time with Y/N as Lando did. Her audience loved him, and she lived to keep her audience happy. That was what brought in the money. "Want to put a wager on this one?"

Y/N shook her head. She positioned herself ready to start filming again. They filmed late into the night, Y/N showing off the props and the outfits they were going to wear for the rest of the video. Her phone buzzed once, and they had to film the whole section again.

By the time they were finished they had barely any battery left in the camera and were ready for bed. James had left to go to his own room but Y/N was sitting on her bed, texting Lando. It wasn't anything important, wishing him good luck for tomorrow and complaining about the heat in Australia.

And then it was a restless sleep. When Y/N woke up in the middle of the night, she stayed up scrolling through her comments. It didn't make getting to sleep any easier for her, scrolling through the comments on her youtube videos and social media posts. There were positive fans, most of them seemed to be young women. But there were some, commenting on her appearance and calling her friendship with the grid fake. Some said she didn't know what she was talking about when it came to Formula One, that she was only there because she was sleeping with Lando.

Of course, none of it was true. It played over in Y/N's head nonetheless. Normally, Y/N would text Lando when this happened, but he was asleep. And sleep was desperately what he needed leading up to the qualifying.

Eventually, Y/N fell asleep, her phone still in her hand.

Y/N and James woke up to their alarms in the early hours of the morning. They got up, set up the camera and got into their disguises. "You're so lucky I was obsessed with special affects as a kid," said James as he attached the fake nose to Y/N's face. He placed a bushy moustache under it and handed her the coloured contacts to put in.

Y/N's clothing was heavily padded, hiding her shape. She had her hair hidden up in a cap and an obviously fake press pass. She just had to help nobody looked too closely.

James did his own disguise. He changed everything but the camera, but they just had to hope nobody noticed that, either. Once they were ready and had given an update to the viewers, Y/N and James made their way down to the paddock.

"A lot of people have been asking us to include Alonso and Stroll in these videos. Truth is, I only do these videos with the guys I'm close with. Fernando is such a legend that I get nervous around him, and I just haven't spent that time with Lance," she explained to the camera as they walked.

"And now, for our first victim," said James.

The drivers that walked past were the ones Y/N didn't have anything planned for. Sargeant, Stroll, Checo Perez. Y/N and James waited and waited until somebody came by.

Oscar Piastri. The poor, young Australian was Y/N's first victim. "Oscar! Welcome to your first home race in Formula One!" Y/N shouted, calling him over for an interview. The second question was normal, something Oscar was happy to answer. But then Y/N got a little strange. "As all F1 fans know, the man who had your seat before you loved to do a shoey. Have you managed to try one yet?" The question itself wasn't strange, but it was about to be.

Y/N slowly eased off her shoe as Oscar answered the question. When he answered no, not yet in Formula One, Y/N passed him her microphone. "Hold this for me," she said and picked her shoe up from the floor. She grabbed a can of beer from her coat pocket and poured the contents of it into her shoe. "Here, try mine."

Oscar's eyes went wide. "Uh, no thanks," he said and passed the microphone back to James. Without finishing the interview, Oscar walked away. Y/N couldn't blame him, she would have done the same.

"Warm up complete. Time for the real thing," said Y/N brushing down the hairs of her fake moustache.

The next driver to walk past was poor George Russell.

Y/N went on and on, asking the drivers the weirdest questions she could think of. Most finished the interview, or walked away before it had finished. Halfway through, Y/N had her interview with the honey badger himself, Daniel Riccardo. It wasn't a real interview, but they made it look as such. The end of the interview was made to look like a success.

After that, Y/N interviewed Ocon, Tsunoda, and Leclerc. Charles went on the longest out of any of the drivers. Y/N asked him questions about Ferrari and how sad he is after almost every race. He looked at her with confusion when she spoke, and Y/N thought she had been found out.

Y/N moved on. It was Verstappen next. Y/N asked weird questions and got the perfect response. He definitely knew, she thought as he laughed. Towards the end of the interview, Y/N felt the hat come off her head, revealing her hair. She gasped and turned around to see Charles stood there, her hat in hand. "I knew it!" He cried, using her hat to smack her shoulder. "I knew it was you!"

"And there you have it, folks," Y/N began, placing her hat back on her head. This time it didn't hide her hair. "This years winner of Paddock Pals is Charles Leclerc! What do you win, Mr Leclerc? Bragging rights, of course," she said and passed her microphone to the Monégasque.

Charles did an acceptance speech. Like everything he and Y/N did together, it was all for a laugh.

"That concludes this years episode of Paddock Pals. Thank you everybody for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and join us next week and in Azerbaijan for the next race."

James cut off the camera. "And we're out," he said and pulled off his fake nose.

Y/N did the same, pulling off the fake nose and the moustache from her face. "Did you have any idea?" Asked Y/N, turning to Max. The heat in Australia was sweltering. Y/N worked on taking off her multitude of padded jumpers, leaving her in a loose, classy shirt and a pair of shorts.

Not answering, Max looked away and let out a laugh. Of course, he knew, thought Y/N. Shaking her head, she turned away from him. "Good luck, Super Max," she said and took her leave, walking away from the Paddock.

It wasn't race day, but her viewers didn't have to know that. It was qualifying and Y/N wouldn't miss it for the world. James left the paddock, going back to the room to begin editing the video. Y/N made her way to the grandstands to watch. She loved nothing more than sitting with the McLaren fans to watch the qualifying and the race. In most laces Lando's fans were her fans, but they were also respectful, asking for selfies before the qualifying began so she could watch in peace.

***

Race day meant race day vlogs for Y/N. Everything from getting ready to after the race, the people wanted to see it all. Y/N tried to dress her best for every race, this time a McLaren shirt with a white tennis skirt.

Cameraman James didn't accompany her for race day vlogs. Sometimes he was in them, watching the race alongside her, but that was a rarity. Y/N had a separate camera for her vlogs. The video quality was worse than when James had his big camera, but the quality wasn't what people were there for.

After having breakfast and getting her final bits ready, Y/N headed down to the paddock. It had become a tradition that she heads down there to wish Lando good luck. She filmed herself going down to the paddock and wishing Lando luck, but turned off the camera after that.

"You look tired," said Lando as Y/N put the camera down.

Y/N shrugged her shoulders. "I thought my makeup covered it up," she answered, leaning against the wall.

Rolling his eyes, Lando put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her away from the wall. "You could have texted me if you couldn't sleep."

"And make you tired before the race? No way, Norris."

Lando laughed. "You better get going to the grandstands," he said, walking her to the edge of the garage.

Nodding, Y/N followed him. "Good luck out there, Lando Norris," she said and kissed his cheek.

Y/N filmed herself making her way to the grandstands. She turned off her camera for more selfies with the fans and waited for the race to begin.

The race started smoothly. Of course, Verstappen was on pole, but that's why they called him Super Max. He had Sainz, Hamilton and Leclerc behind him. Lando was stuck in the midfield, but Y/N still cheered him on.

Lap twenty and Lando was taken out of the race. "Shit!" Y/N cried, standing up. She watched as he was stuck in the barrier and thanked God he was near the pits. He drove the car into the garage and Lando climbed out.

Biting her nails, Y/N pulled out her phone and texted Lando.

Letting out a breath, Y/N pulled out her camera. "Update on the race, Lando has just retired after a crash. He's okay. He's in the garage right now and the race is still ongoing. Our favourite driver might be out of the race, but our second favorite is still going," she said and put the camera down.

Y/N sat back in her seat. She turned her attention back to the race, keeping her phone on and in her lap in case Lando needed her.

[lookforsomeoneelse]

i don’t want to set the world on fire… (prologue)

been reading through old imposter au sagaus, and found inspo to get off my butt and start typing…

anyway tw for your standard imposter au stuff like persecution, violence, and cussing

also you might be a trans allegory? idk what that means but i think i can infer

Imagine waking up in a body that is not your own.

It freaks you out; the first couple of days after the sudden shift, but you gather enough information to piece together the puzzle of where you are.

You’re in Genshin Impact, a game you just played to kill time.

Things are different here, you soon find out, as evident of the statues strewn about your new residence.

Your “family” and “friends” worry about you for a while, as you get set in your new life.

It’s disorienting, but after a while you eventually manage to find stable ground to stand on for your new life.

The tides of life remain calm for what seems like a moment after that, before everything you thought you knew about this world comes crumbling down.

Rumors of an imposter who takes up “Their Grace’s” face begin to pop up.

It scares you, the way that everybody takes up arms and begins a manhunt for this person who, to you, hadn’t done anything at all.

As one of your neighbors shoves a pitchfork into your hands, you quickly stammer out an excuse about thieves coming and robbing houses if they all go, and you also offer to stand and look out for whoever the hell they’re trying to kill.

They buy it.

Only six hours have passed since that interaction, and you hear the shuffling of… something.

Opening the door to your humble abode, you find a person covered in blood and rags, bones broken and cuts all over their damaged body.

Your gazes interlock, and their eyes widen at the sight of you. One step, two steps, three steps back. They turn and begin to run, before their legs give in to their fatigue and they trip.

You approach them as one would a wounded animal, which is probably what they’ve been treated like. You’ve already put two and two together.

This is the so-called “imposter” that everyone’s looking for.

They let out a couple of whimpers, and they’re hyperventilating. They shuffle away from you on all fours.

When your shadow inevitably casts over their crawling figure, they turn and begin to earnestly plead. You can only feel pity in your heart as they do so.

“PLEASE,” They cry out, “DON’T-DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!” Their eyes begin to water. They look so scared, you think to yourself.

“please. just leave me alone…” They cover themselves up with their arms, hoping to alleviate at least some of the pain that comes their way.

When they realize that the pain doesn’t come, they come out of their shell slowly to face you.

In a random act of kindness, you decide to take them in, despite everyone else’s differing opinion on what you should do with or to them.

“Don’t worry,” you assure them, “I’m not going to hurt you.” You extend a hand out. “Can you stand?”

Wiping off tears of joy in their eyes, they take your hand and use your grip to pull themselves up. However, once they let go, they stumble to the ground, forcing you to pick them up and help to carry them.

“I don’t think we have time for names. But, I’ll try to at least feed you and give you some spare clothes.”

“O-ok….”

Once you make it to your residence, you sit them down and bring over a bowl of freshly heated potato soup. They devour it with fierce voracity, evident of how they’ve been mistreated. You also look around for anything that looks like it’ll fit and give it to them.

It’s a perfect match.

For the next about two months, life was pretty easygoing for the two of you. You hide them in a supply closet in your home when anyone would show up at the front door.

But they decide that it’s time for them to go. With a smile and a wave, you send them off on their journey, making sure that they have all their necessities on them.

Shortly after, another rumor- completely different from the one before it- spreads like a great wildfire.

The “imposter,” the one you had taken in and cared for, was actually the true creator all this time.

They’ve made a big speech about how they would destroy all of Teyvat for its sins against its creator, but they declare that they will not do this thanks to the sympathy and kindness of a certain individual.

That “certain individual?”

that’s you.

___________________________

WOOO IM BACK BABBBBYYYYY

anyway if yall wanna use this idea go ahead

I don’t get paid for this and you probably don’t either so go crazy with it

[moonlinos]

Invisible string (pt. I)

♡ Pairing: Lee Minho × fem!reader / Hwang Hyunjin × fem!reader

♡ Synopsis: With your terrible history of boyfriends during high school, you swore off love and vowed to get through university without a relationship. Things are great: you’re in your junior year, in an uncomplicated arrangement with a friend with benefits, and living in a nice sharehouse with two amazing roommates. But things begin to change once you meet Lee Minho, a student in your new class who vows to change your perspective on love.

♡ Genre: A ‘lite version’ of a soulmate AU, fluff, eventual smut, light angst, pining, jealousy, strangers to friends to lovers, friends with benefits

♡ CW: Swearing, sexual themes and discussions, mentions of anxiety/panic attacks, alcohol consumption, mentions of smoking

♡ Word count: 16.4k

♡ A/N: This is a three-part story because I can’t shut up. The second part will be posted sometime next week, and I’ll link it here. I’ve been writing all my life and have written for maaaany fandoms, but being on Tumblr as an active reader of SKZ fics made me want to write for them. So, yeah, guess this is what I’m doing now.

part II →

You are woken up by Hyunjin shifting beside you on the bed. He groans, arm reaching to mess with your already closed curtains. You chuckle.

“You know, the curtains won’t close any more than that.”

“I keep telling you your bed is in a terrible position,” He grumbles as you turn to face him with a smile. “Who thought placing a bed right under a window would be a good idea? Mornings are fucking hell here.”

You shrug. “Well, it’s not my house so I didn’t exactly have a say in that matter.”

“I told you a million times I could help you move it.”

“And I told you a million times Mrs. Choi doesn’t like for us to mess with her furniture,” You explain, turning under the sheets so you could face him before bringing your fingers up to pinch his cheek. Hyunjin scrunches his nose. “Speaking of which, you need to leave. You know her rule: no—”

“No boyfriends spending more than two days at the house,” He interrupted you with an eye roll. “I’m not your boyfriend, though, so that rule shouldn’t apply.” He shrugs.

Hyunjin has been one of your best friends since you first met over two years ago. It was Hyunjin’s first college party and one of the many times your housemates had dragged you along on a night out. His friends had dared him to try and chat you up, arguing it would be hilarious to see him get turned down by an older girl. What they hadn’t expected, however, was for Hyunjin’s clumsy attempt at flirting to be so endearing to you; his pink cheeks and bowl-cut hair made him look like a helpless kid despite his height towering over you. Before you knew it, you had spent the entirety of the party talking to him about everything and anything, only stopping once your housemate Eunha emerged from inside the house to drag you home with her as she desperately tried to dodge a rather insistent guy’s advances. After that day, you and Hyunjin became almost inseparable.

You can’t quite pinpoint when you began hooking up. It was meaningless in the best sense of the word. It was simply something that had happened. All you can remember is that Jisung had recently bleached Hyunjin’s hair after yet another dare from his friend. It had started with cuddles, which turned to kisses, which turned to touches, until you eventually slept together for the first time sometime last year after an excruciatingly stressful exam period. It had never once gotten weird between the two of you; the line was always clear: you were just friends who hooked up due to convenience. Everybody had needs and stress and shit complicating their lives, and fucking your best friend was far more practical and safe than going out to look for a random hook-up whenever you needed it.

You find yourself smiling at Hyunjin once again. His now long black hair fell in his eyes as he stretched his arms over his head.

“Yes, you’re not my boyfriend, but how am I supposed to explain what we are to a little old lady?”

“Doesn’t she always say she’s super modern?” Hyunjin raises his eyebrows at you with a chuckle. “Maybe she’d like a situationship of her own and you’re depriving her of that by keeping this knowledge to yourself.”

You roll your eyes at his words, attempting to push him off your bed. “Why did you sleep here, anyway?”

Hyunjin sits up on the bed, a pout on his full lips. “I had a shitty date. I was sad and lonely. Glad to know you were paying attention to my story.”

“Hyune,” You sigh, ‘When you tell me said story while fucking me, can I really be blamed for not remembering anything?”

Hyunjin flicks your forehead lightly. “Yes, you can. At this point, it’s like our thing to vent about bad dates during sex,” He argues before getting up from your bed, finding his shirt, which had somehow been thrown over your study desk.

“You mean it’s your thing,” Correcting him, you get up as well, turning to fix up your sheets. “I don’t even go on dates and you know that. The only thing I vent to you about is how awful academic life is.”

Once you turned to face him again, Hyunjin was busy messily tying his hair. His brows promptly furrowed as he took in your words. “Remind me why you literally never leave the house again?”

“Just don’t want to get distracted. Getting my degree is more important than getting a boyfriend.” You lie with a shrug.

Your history with relationships was something you kept secret from everyone you met after high school. You feel embarrassed, as if it was all somehow your fault. After five failed relationships where you had been the one to be broken up with or cheated on, you began to accept that maybe the problem really was you. Maybe something about you makes men want to yell at and cheat on you. Perhaps you are just bound to be a distraction until they find someone better.

Which is why you don’t date.

Would anyone go through the hassle of reading a long, tedious book if they already knew about the bad ending?

Hyunjin rolls his eyes at your answer, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your degree isn’t going to keep you company when you’re eighty and alone.”

“Well, my degree isn’t going to wake up one day and suddenly decide to leave me either,” you refute, earning an annoyed groan from your friend as you walk past him to leave your room.

“You literally never have fun, though. All you do is go to class, work, and study. You should at least pick up a new hobby,” Hyunjin insists as he follows you, walking into the kitchen-living room area. “Go out more, stop avoiding college parties like the plague before it’s too late to experience the joys of watching your friend throw up on some random person’s couch.”

You make a face at the offers, grabbing your mug from the cupboard. “Why would I want to see that? Besides, I have hobbies.”

“I meant a social hobby. Sitting in your room watching fucking iceberg videos isn’t sociable,” He explains, and you let out an aggrieved gasp. Your iceberg videos were educational and entertaining, thank you very much. Behind you, your housemate’s bedroom door opens, and you turn to watch as she stumbles out of her room, looking half-awake. “Soojung, don’t you think she should get a new hobby?” Hyunjin addresses the blonde girl, who stares daggers at him.

“If I say yes, will you two stop speaking so loud?”

Hyunjin slams one hand on the kitchen counter, his other pointing a finger at you. “See, she said yes. You’re outnumbered, now you have to stop spending all your free time holed up inside your room.”

Soojung groans, stepping into the kitchen and shoving Hyunjin to the side. “He’s annoying, but he is kind of right,” she mumbles.

Truthfully, you did feel bad about having essentially wasted three years at university by actively avoiding parties and invitations any chance you got. The only parties you did attend, however, only served as an irritating reminder as to why you shouldn’t put yourself in those situations. Parties and bars only meant desperate college boys. Desperate for sex, for attention, for a potential relationship. For someone’s heart to break. You had met Hyunjin at a party, for fuck’s sake. Who knows just how south things between you two could’ve gone if he had become interested in you romantically?

But, as much as you hate to admit it, Hyunjin is right. Your life is essentially an endless loop of studying and working. You only socialize when your roommates are home, when your few friends come over, and when you and Hyunjin hook up. But you aren’t ready to step out of your comfortable bubble of avoidance, so you settle for the best thing you can think of.

As Hyunjin rummages through your fridge like he lived there and Soojung stirs her coffee blankly, you loudly set your mug down on the counter. “An elective course,” you announce.

The both of them turn to face you with the same puzzled expression.

“The fuck?” Hyunjin questions, and you roll your eyes.

“I’ll take an elective,” you explain matter-of-factly, “The university offers a lot of great courses in things I’m actually interested in. It’ll be a way for me to get out of the house without having to watch a friend of mine puke on a couch or whatever atrocity it is that you said.”

Hyunjin slams the fridge door closed, earning a scolding scream from Soojung, and walks over to where you’re standing. He pulls you into a tight embrace, and you can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “You’re such a fucking nerd, what the fuck, but I’m so glad your hermit life is coming to an end.”

The elective course you choose is Japanese. It’s a language you’ve always been interested in learning, and while you know the class is merely introductory, you figure it will be fun to learn some phrases and expressions. You might even find yourself wanting to learn more in the future, and you’ll undoubtedly be glad you took this class during university.

Even if that means having to endure Hyunjin calling you a weeb.

You are able to begin attending classes a week after signing up; the lessons lining up with your work schedule to a T. The professor explained that, since you had joined the course late, you would likely need some guidance with phrases and words the class had already been taught. You didn’t mind, actually feeling excited in the morning despite your boring routine classes since you knew you would be doing something new you enjoyed in the afternoon instead of simply killing time around your house until it was time for you to work.

You walk into your first class ten minutes late, mentally cursing Eunha for being so good at telling stories about her weirdly entertaining life that it made it physically difficult for you to drag yourself away from her. You mouth a brief apology to your professor before scanning the room and scurrying over to the only available seat. 

You sit down in haste so as to not disrupt the class any further, swinging your bag over your chair and accidentally knocking over your seatmate’s water bottle all over his side of the desk. Luckily, the bottle lands on the soft surface of his notebook, barely making any noise. Unluckily, said bottle had been filled with coffee, staining his notes a faded brown color. You silently gasp, instinctively reaching out your hands to fruitlessly try and dry the pages that are now sticking to each other.

“I am so sorry, what the fuck,” you mutter under your breath as you continue to inspect his notebook frantically. “I’ll buy you a new notebook and another cup of coffee as soon as class ends, I promise,” You whisper to him, your eyes boring holes into the stained pages as you watch the bitter liquid slowly dissolve some of the black ink. At this point, you’re rambling out of nervousness, but you can’t seem to stop, adding, “Hell, I’m so angry at myself for what I did I’d bind you a new notebook and brew you some fresh coffee myself.”

You mentally berate yourself for your word vomit. It was just your luck that you would make someone hate your guts on the first day you attended a class.

After what feels like minutes of silence from him, you are prepared for the imminent burst of rage bound to come your way, the guy’s wrath more than likely stirring inside him as he sits beside you and watches as you foolishly shake the piece of paper, hoping it will miraculously return to its untainted state.

However, what you aren’t prepared for is the small burst of laughter that leaves your seatmate’s lips; it’s quiet, but you’re close enough to him to be able to hear it.

You furrow your brows, finally mustering the courage to look up at him for the first time.

“Did you…” You trail off. You feel a strange sensation inside your chest as your eyes meet his. It was something you had never felt before, a small burst of a fluttering that briskly washed over you before disappearing just as quickly. Like a pinwheel was placed inside of you and a strong wind had suddenly started blowing. You shake your head, returning to the matter at hand. You are probably just experiencing some anxiety due to what has happened, you argue mentally. “Did you just laugh at me?”

As you finally take him in properly, the guy before you looks as dazed as you felt just now, courtesy of your minor panic attack; his lips agape and his round eyes blinking while his dark pupils are fixed on you. You two remain that way for a few seconds in an impromptu staring contest that causes the peculiar feeling to bloom inside your chest once again.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. “You… offered to bind a notebook for a stranger,” His lips twitch into a grin. “It was a little funny.”

You open your mouth but promptly close it, unable to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make you appear like more of an idiot than you already do. You sigh. “Sorry,” you mumble, your voice low as well. “I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. I’m—”

“You two, on the back,” your professor calls out in a louder voice, however still keeping her calm demeanor. You and your seatmate turn to look at her. “I’m going to teach a few new phrases useful for traveling now. How about you two talk after class? This is actually quite perfect. Minho is one of my best students, so he could help you catch up to where we are.” She offers the two of you a small smile, and you feel your cheeks burn.

This class wasn’t mandatory, and you didn’t need it to get your degree. It is still a class, nonetheless. Ever since high school, you’ve always hated people who disrespect their professors by brazenly talking or sleeping during class.

“I’m sorry, professor,” You muttered. Beside you, your seatmate — Minho, as he was just called — scoots closer to you and whispers something you don’t understand under his breath. You look at him, confused. He chuckles, and you feel his breath on your cheek. It makes the odd fluttering return.

“Gomenasai,” He repeats more clearly, his voice louder, “It’s ‘I’m sorry’ in Japanese.” He offers you a smile, and you soak in just how good-looking he is. Ever since you first raised your head to look at him — when the pinwheel inside your chest rapidly spun and unexplainedly made you feel nervous — you knew he was a handsome guy, but his soft smile and calm eyes made him look even more annoyingly pretty.

Before you’re able to do it yourself, your professor speaks again and pulls you out of your trance.

“In this case, Sumimasen would be a bit more appropriate,” she corrects Minho, who clicks his tongue and mutters something under his breath. The woman chuckles at his reaction. “It’s okay. This is also something you can explain to Y/N after class.”

As the class went on, you couldn’t help but notice how Minho didn’t take any notes. Your mind latched onto how you ruined his notebook and how it was your fault that he couldn’t properly study during today’s class, so you couldn’t find the courage to offer him some paper so he could take notes.

After almost an hour of unrelenting guilt swallowing you up slowly, you place your hand on Minho’s shoulder as soon as the professor announces class is over after assigning the students a small written assignment.

“We could talk outside? If you want,” you offer him, feeling the now-familiar nervousness come back, making your mouth speak faster than your brain can even think to rationalize, “There’s a bench I really like outside this building. It’s a good spot. There’s a nice shade, and it’s secluded enough that people don’t bother me when I’m studying. Or googling how to bind a notebook.”

Minho lets out a brief chuckle. “Okay. I would love to talk on your favorite bench.”

You blink at him. “I don’t have a favorite bench.”

“Hm, it sure sounded like it. You listed some good attributes of that bench,” He argues, a grin etched onto his lips.

“I told you I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He raises an eyebrow at your words. “You’re nervous?”

“Of course I am. I never bound a notebook before.”

Minho lets out a hearty laugh this time, his head thrown back and his eyes turning into crescent moons before he shakes his head. He picks his notebook off the table, showing you the crinkly light brown-tinted pages. “It’s dry now. I actually kind of like it, gave the pages a sort of vintage vibe. You don’t have to bind me a new notebook,” He reassures you, placing the small book into his bag. “As much as I would love to see how that would turn out.”

And just like that, your nervousness fades away. You smile at Minho, asking that he follow you over to your favorite bench.

The two of you talked for almost two hours. During that time, Minho helped you catch up with the vocabulary and phrases you had missed in class. When you asked him how he was able to know so much off the top of his head, his lips curled into a crooked grin as he sheepishly told you that he had been taking Japanese lessons since he was in high school. He explained that because he procrastinated signing up for an elective course, the advanced class was full by the time he got to it, so he decided to go for the introductory one instead. You chuckled and questioned why he would choose to spend his time on a course when he already knew everything being taught. He shrugged and explained that it was nice to have at least one class in which he didn’t have to try and that the fact that it made him feel smart also helped.

Not even your shift at work was able to make your conversation stop flowing, as Minho offered to walk with you to the coffee shop upon realizing it was near his apartment.

That was one of the many coincidences and things in common you found to have with each other that day.

It started with ordinary things like the fact that Minho had three cats back home just like you and how he had been collecting plushies since he was a child, while you had started your own collection as soon as you had access to money of your own. Or how your favorite authors were Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë — Minho swore you would die if you saw the special edition books he had back at home.

Then, it became a bit more amusing as you found out that Minho had worked at a convenience store chain when he first finished high school, and it was the same one you worked at for your first job after starting university. And you both had worked there for exactly a year and two months before quitting. You then told him about how you ended up attending this university after your top three choices turned you down, and his choices were the same as yours. And just like you, he also got rejected by his top three options, which led him to attend the same university as you.

You two couldn’t hide your bewilderment, eyes widening and lips bursting into laughter as these linked facts kept spilling out during your conversation. It was strange, you thought, but in a comforting way. It was almost as if you two had been living weirdly similar lives, all while having no clue about the other’s existence.

The two of you approach the small coffee shop while talking about your degrees. You try your best not to bore Minho with your ‘existential crisis-inducing psychology talks,’ as Hyunjin always put it, and you mostly listen to him as he talks about programming. He tells you that his dream is to develop cozy games that people can jump into without much thought, simply to relax. He says he knows how stressful life is and that people sometimes need something they can mindlessly do to get their minds off of shit. You resonate with it more than you care to admit, as cozy idle games are one of your favorite things to do while locked inside your room.

“So I do these freelancing gigs to make money but I’m actually set to start my first quote-unquote real job in two weeks,” he beams as you two stop in front of the coffee shop. Minho’s eyes lit up the moment he started speaking about his degree, and although you didn’t understand most of the terms he used, it is always endearing to watch someone talk about something they’re so passionate about. “There’s this guy who’s graduating soon who recruited me and a friend for a project he’s working on, so it’s not technically a job and we’ll work in his living room. I’ll still get some money and the chance to actually develop something, though, so it’s better than nothing.”

You smile at him. “If you like programming as much as your words led me to believe, I’m sure it won’t even feel like a job.”

Minho’s ears turned a faint shade of pink, and he scratched his head. “Sorry, I talked your ear off about shit you don’t even understand.”

“I think everybody likes to hear people talk about things they like,” you assure him, “It was a good talk. I still can’t believe we have so many things in common. It was kind of funny how they kept coming up.”

Minho chuckles, bouncing on the heels of his feet. “Guess the universe is giving us signs that we should be friends.”

“It seems like it.”

That day, you work with a persistent smile engraved on your lips. You can’t remember the last time you felt so good about meeting someone new. Despite your awkward first encounter, you found that talking to Minho was as easy as talking to an old childhood friend. It felt refreshing. The last friend you made was Hyunjin — whom you were so grateful to now for pushing you out of your comfort zone — and after that, you had unknowingly closed yourself off.

Minho had managed to open up your mind to the idea of letting someone in almost comically fast. And you loved that.

It’s been a month since you’ve been attending Japanese classes, and your studying sessions with Minho — which always turned into long conversations on what now had really become your favorite bench — were a weekly appointment, much like having him walk with you to work twice a week.

Today, however, Minho stopped you with a hand on your shoulder as you made your way toward your usual spot. When he asked you if you would like to study at his favorite bakery today instead, his eyes rapidly blinking as he looked at you through his bangs which had grown to slightly cover his eyes since you met him, you just couldn’t say no. He stammered as he promised that the place was even closer than the one where you worked, so you wouldn’t be late for your shift.

You smiled at his apparent nervousness, finding it endearing. You knew all too well how stressed you felt when offering something new or initiating plans with a new friend, and Minho seemed to be the same.

“Good thing you made this offer today, on my day off,” you bumped shoulders with him. “It’s almost like you knew.”

You begin walking, and Minho gently pushes you to the side so that he’s the one walking on the edge of the side of the sidewalk. You shoot him a questioning look, and he blinks at you again.

“Sorry, force of habit,” he chuckles, “My mom taught me a guy shouldn’t let a girl walk on the street side. I know it’s old-fashioned and probably made me seem like an ancient guy who wouldn’t let his wife work or something. Sorry.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s kind of sweet. I never had anyone do that with me.”

You feel the pinwheel twirl inside your chest again.

The two of you approach a familiar building together. You furrow your eyebrows as you take in the floral curtains on the windows and the pretty font adorning the store sign of your favorite bakery. You think about how it would be nice if you two came here on another day. Maybe you could use that opportunity to finally introduce Minho to your other friends.

You only realize Minho has stopped walking when he calls out your name. When you turn around, he’s standing in front of the bakery with a smile.

“This is the place.” He points toward the white door with a nod as you return to where he’s standing.

No fucking way.

“This is your favorite bakery?” You ask, although it is a stupid question. Minho nods. You play with the strap of your bag. “Okay, this is starting to sound ridiculous, but I swear I’m not lying. This is my favorite bakery, too.”

Minho’s eyes widen at your words, and his lips curl into a smile again. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I will not,” You chuckle.

Minho opens the door and the two of you walk inside, the familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods bringing back great memories you made in this place. You often come here with your two roommates; it’s close enough to both your house and university that you can skip out on taking the bus, the atmosphere is always relaxing and comforting, not to mention the delicious cakes they sell. You smile to yourself as you remember Eunha scuffing down far too many slices of their chocolate cake after a nasty breakup a couple of months ago, tears streaming down her face so violently that the poor little old man who owns the shop appeared to check up on her.

“Their lemon cake is my favorite.”

“The lemon cake is what made me—”

You and Minho speak concurrently, with you unable to even finish your sentence before you both freeze for a couple of seconds in front of the only small table available at the crowded shop.

He’s the first one to move, pulling out his chair a bit awkwardly. “We should…” He trails off before clearing his throat as you sit down before him. “Should really make a written list of things we weirdly have in common.”

“At this point, I think it’d be easier if we made one of what we don’t have in common.”

You two settle for the obvious choice of two pieces of lemon cake with a cup of coffee for him and a glass of cola for you. Minho almost looked offended when you informed him that you hate coffee, wondering out loud why you even worked at a coffee shop before ensuring he could change your mind with just the five amazing facts about coffee he thought about off the top of his head. You shrugged him off with a grin. You couldn’t deny the irony of being a barista and having to make endless cups of a drink you despised daily, but you were sure Minho could never change your mind about coffee.

You two talked about your improvement in Japanese in the last month until the waiter returned with your order. Minho insists you’re a natural and could be on his level in a couple of years if you tried, but you roll your eyes at his compliments. You’ve never been naturally good at anything. That wasn’t about to change now.

“You know,” Minho begins once the waiter steps away from your table, looking around the coffee shop. People slowly started to leave as it got later in the day; the place was now much quieter, and the atmosphere even more cozy. “I used to think I would meet somebody in a place like this.”

“Like, in a romantic sense?”

Minho hums, still looking out to his side. You notice his side profile is really pretty, and you have to hide your smile by sipping your drink.

When he returns his gaze to you, he’s the one smiling. “Yes, in a romantic sense. Like being destined to meet someone.”

“Look at you, a hopeless romantic,” You roll your eyes with a chuckle. You never thought of Minho as someone like that. He seemed rather methodical, always following a routine and too engrossed in his codes to be preoccupied with something like love.

Minho furrowed his brows. “Why the eye roll?”

“I just don’t believe in that stuff,” you shrug with a small smile, “Stuff like destiny, soulmates, love…” You trail off, taking your spoon and poking the slice of cake in front of you. “Love has the awful tendency of being bad.”

Of course, you once believed all those things. Doesn’t everybody? But love has shown you time and time again that those are things reserved only for some people. And, clearly, you are not one of them. So why believe in it?

“It’s the most amazing thing in life,” Minho’s voice almost startled you as you were so deeply entranced in your thoughts.

You don’t lift your head to answer him, instead drawing mindless shapes on the icing on top of your cake.

“What is?”

“Love,” He replies in a soft voice. When you finally look at him, you’re surprised to find Minho’s deep eyes already looking at you, a small smile adorning his lips. “Love is the most amazing thing in life.”

You freeze.

You tear your eyes away from him, gaze focusing on the plate in front of you again.

You were careful with your rules. No parties, no bars, no talking to your male co-workers unless absolutely necessary, and no male friends unless they were in a relationship or proved beyond a reasonable doubt to only be interested in you platonically — which was what Minho was. So, why did him bringing up love make you feel so nervous?

Under the table, you unwittingly bounce your leg. This was stupid. Minho has been your friend for a month now; you see each other twice a week, and you talk for hours, always so comfortable around each other in a way that is still so new to you. He has never flirted with you or treated you in any way that led you to believe that he wanted anything more than to be your friend. You will not let your foolish trauma ruin what was proving to be an amazing friendship. He was simply sharing his thoughts on a topic. That’s all love was: a conversation topic.

You force out a chuckle as you snap yourself out of your senseless panic and look up at Minho once more. “We can just agree to disagree?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds, something you can’t quite pinpoint swimming in his deep eyes as he looks at you. Instead of breaking the silence, he scoops up a piece of cake with his spoon and raises it like a glass. You shake your head with a giggle as you realize what he’s doing, toasting your spoons together at the center of the table before you both eat your spoonfuls of cake.

“You know,” He speaks as soon as he’s done eating, his eyes having never left yours. “Love can never be bad. I don’t think so, at least. It never makes anything worse. It can only ever make things better.”

You hum and shift in your seat, lowering your gaze toward the table. The truth is, you hate talking about love. That — coupled with your shame regarding your past relationships — is the reason why you never indulge in this type of conversation, even with your own mother. But years of swallowing down your thoughts and opinions whenever the subject was brought up only caused a buildup of emotions in your throat. So much so that you only realized you were talking once you were midway through a sentence.

“Love can make so many things worse,” you affirmed, your eyes following the polka-dot pattern on the tablecloth, “Losing someone is bad enough, but put love into that equation, and it just worsens tenfold.”

Minho nods. “By that logic, you can say that having someone by your side is always good, but if it’s someone you love, it makes it better tenfold, right?”

You let out a chuckle as you realize you two could go back and forth about that subject for ages.

But it felt good to finally speak out your feelings on the matter, so you continue, “Love can’t be that great if people can so easily fall out of it and for so many different but equally stupid reasons. You’re suddenly not attractive to them anymore, or you have different opinions, or they love picking fights but hate it when it’s the other way around…” You trail off, swallowing down a lump in your throat as you speak out of experience. But Minho didn’t need to know that. You lift your eyes. “Not to mention falling in love with a new person all while supposedly already being in love with someone.”

“That’s not genuine love,” Minho shakes his head with furrowed eyebrows, as if it was his first time hearing of such things happening. “Real love is unconditional and understanding. Real love makes the person you love beautiful simply because they’re them. Real love doesn’t allow you to hurt the person you love because it feels like you’re hurting yourself as well.” His expression softens, and his eyes lock onto yours. “And real love makes it so that you can only see the one you love. You can’t possibly fall in love with someone else if you’re truly already in love.”

You gnaw on your bottom lip, nodding slowly. You hate the fact that part of you is desperate to believe that what Minho said was true. And you hate it even more that an even bigger part has already dismissed every single word that left his lips.

Desperate to shift the subject from Reasons Why My Exes Left Me — which only leaves you feeling sad and pathetic — back to Love Is Amazing, you decide to try and lighten the mood.

“Okay, but then explain to me how love is so great when you can just have sex with anyone, and it feels the same either way?” You question him with a teasing grin on your face. Minho shakes his head with a smile and eats another bite of his cake. You continue, “Be it a stranger at a party you met ten minutes ago or the love of your life, sex will always be sex. Therefore, you’re wrong, mister Love-Makes-Everything-Better.”

Minho chuckles around his mug, eyes closing as he almost spits out his coffee. His eyes are like crescent moons when he looks at you again, clearly amused by your words. “Well, yeah, of course, sex will always feel good no matter who you’re doing it with. It’s sex, and sex feels good,” He shrugs dismissively. “But sex with love is different. You aren’t just fucking, just fulfilling your own desires selfishly. Love makes sex better because you feel good simply by making the person who’s so important to you feel good. It makes you want to melt into the other person and become one with them because close isn’t close enough when you’re in love.

“Touching them feels like a gift, like heaven. Tasting them feels like heaven. Hearing their voice in their most blissful state feels like heaven. The trust and connection you feel in that moment is heaven, and that’s only possible through love. You can have sex with anyone, but you can only make love to someone you love, and those are two different things. That’s how love makes sex better. Therefore, I’m not wrong.”

As you take in Minho’s words, spoken so casually, like it was common knowledge, they leave you speechless. You watch him as he smiles triumphantly when he realizes you aren’t going to refute him — because you can’t refute him.

You berate yourself mentally as you notice the familiar feeling of arousal wash over you as you repeat his words inside your head. Not because it was Minho who said those things, but simply because that kind of sex sounded so good. Good in a way you had never once experienced before. Like heaven, as he had put it.

Your experience with sex has always been simply about fulfilling desires. You thought that was all there was to it.

Until now.

And even so, with your ex-boyfriends, it was always unbalanced. Ninety percent about their pleasure and only ten percent about yours. The first time you had a guy go down on you was the first time you had sex with Hyunjin, and by that point, you had already had five boyfriends. It felt weird when it happened, and you remember Hyunjin whining about how you didn’t have to ask him every five minutes if he was really okay with doing that. It had always been different with him, the good kind of different. He had never been selfish during sex; if anything, Hyunjin was too much of a giver, sometimes forgetting about his own pleasure in order to focus on yours. You thought that was the best sex you could ever have.

Until now.

Because, even with Hyunjin, there was never a genuine connection. It never felt like a gift to touch him and have him touch you. It was never anything more than sex, more than something you both did because it felt good and it was easy. He slept in your bed, and he cuddled you until morning came, but it had never once felt anything close to what Minho described.

You can’t help but wonder if Minho has ever experienced that. You desperately want to ask him, but you two aren’t close enough for that yet.

You also can’t help but wonder why you spend the rest of the evening raging a war against yourself as your mind is consumed with thoughts of what it would be like to experience that kind of sex with him.

It’s late in the night on the following Saturday, and your phone incessantly vibrating under your pillow rudely demands your attention just as you’re about to fall asleep. You squint your eyes as you type in your password. You sigh as you see Hyunjin’s name on your screen because of course it’s him.

Hyune: I’m outside open the door Hyune: please open the door? quick? Hyune: mrs. choi is gonna kill me if I use the intercom pls I don’t wanna die Hyune: I’m in my pajamas do you know how humiliating this is

Hyune: and I’m highkey pissed off Hyune: I WILL sleep on the bench outside your house if you don’t let me in and then I’ll die and who’s gonna live with the guilt? Hyune: you Hyune: OPENM TEH DOOR

You roll your eyes at his dramatic texts, stepping out of the comfort of your bed and padding across the floor as quietly as possible so as not to wake up your roommates. You open your front door and speed past the hallway and Mrs. Choi’s home, reaching the outside door in record time. It’s something you’ve done more times than you care to admit in order to let Hyunjin into your house. Your tenant was a sweet woman, insistent that she was modern and understanding of ‘young people’, but she despised people coming into your home any later than midnight.

You step outside, finding Hyunjin pacing back and forth like a creep in front of your house. True to his words, he stood in his checkered pajama pants and a black t-shirt. His hair was in a ponytail, the strands messily sticking out everywhere like he had tossed and turned in bed before coming here.

“You look like shit,” you speak up, causing him to jump and let out a gasp. You chuckle as he scowls at you, climbing the few steps to reach the door.

“I had a fight with Mingyu,” he grumbles as you two walk toward your front door. “He told me I spilled paint on his favorite shirt, which is fucking impossible since I don’t even paint anywhere near his shit.” 

“I mean, you are a messy painter.”

Hyunjin shoots you a look as you close your front door behind you. You take off your shoes and walk toward your bedroom in silence. This was routine. Hyunjin knew the rules: no knocking on the outside door, no buzzing the intercom, no shouting from outside, keep your voice down in the hallway, no talking until you reach your bedroom. It was all automatic at this point.

His voice is louder when he speaks again inside your locked bedroom. “First of all, I am not a messy painter. The paint is messy, not me. Second of all, if Mingyu wasn’t a fucking idiot, maybe he wouldn’t leave his favorite shirt on the floor of the living room right by my art corner,” Hyunjin huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, “If that’s how he treats his favorite shirt, I feel bad for his girlfriend.”

You let out a chuckle, which is cut short by him pulling you into his arms. “Hyunjin, that analogy makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. You treat your favorite shirt like shit, you treat your girlfriend like shit,” he states matter-of-factly before pulling you into a kiss.

This was routine. It was all automatic at this point.

Hyunjin kisses you like he’s angry. Because he is, and that’s one of the reasons why you two do this. You let out your frustrations during sex. You complain, and you let off steam until you both feel okay again. It’s been this way for a year and some months now, and you never once thought anything of it. It was beneficial for you both, so why change or question it?

But that was before your talk with Minho. Before you were awoken to the truth that you’d been having meaningless sex your whole life.

When you’re pulled away from your thoughts, you’re already laid in your bed with Hyunjin hovering over you. His lips and hands wander through your body as he mumbles things you can’t quite understand; you can only make out your name and Mingyu’s mixed with curses. You try to bring yourself back to the moment, bringing your legs to wrap around Hyunjin’s waist and bring him closer to you.

He stops kissing your neck and yanks his shirt over his head, his hair untying in the process and falling on his face like a curtain. You giggle and try to fix it with your fingers. Hyunjin pouts.

“Don’t you think I’m right?”

You frown and hope he can’t see your confused expression in the dim lighting. You truly weren’t paying any attention to what he had been saying, too engrossed in your thoughts and too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Hyunjin’s tendency to tell you about his frustrations during sex always left you a bit puzzled, but it was also oddly sweet. It was like he trusted you so deeply as a friend that he believed he could share anything with you, no matter the time.

So you nod, lightly pulling at his hair. “Of course you’re right.”

He hums and buries his head on your chest, grinding his hips into your clothed core. “Of course I’m right,” he mumbles under his breath.

Everything is a blur after that, your mind insistent on repeating Minho’s words like an annoying echo. When Hyunjin’s tongue fucked you hastily, and he murmured something about you tasting so good, all you could hear was Minho’s voice telling you how tasting the person you love feels like heaven. When Hyunjin pushed his cock into you, his hands gripping your thighs and head buried in your neck, all you could think about was how this sex paled in comparison to what you could’ve been having — what you could have already had — if only you weren’t so damn unlovable. 

You knew that Minho didn’t intend to make you feel bad with his words. They weren’t targeted at you. But that didn’t stop your mind from sabotaging and putting yourself down. It was one of your biggest talents, after all.

Your body was present and responsive the entire time; you moaned because it felt good, and you kissed Hyunjin because you wanted to. But you were mentally somewhere else.

And the worst thing is, you’re a hundred percent sure Hyunjin doesn’t even notice it.

Because this wasn’t love. This was only sex.

And this was all you had ever known.

Time flies by faster than your brain can comprehend; before you know it, another month goes by. You only managed to go to your favorite bakery with Minho one more time before your work hours were changed, your shift now starting a mere thirty minutes after your Japanese class ends. He still walked you to work twice a week, but you would be lying if you said it didn’t upset you to have to let go of your weekly talks.

Minho also became busier due to his own job. With so little time to see each other face to face outside of class, most of your talks took place over text. He talked about his job with so much adoration it made you a little jealous; his partners were now simply friends he worked with, and his joy over finally being able to create a cozy game made it so that he pushed himself over his limit, often sleeping on his friend’s couch after working until four a.m. and getting through the next day on excessive amounts of coffee.

That was how you two came up with the idea of Minho dropping by the café where you work to pick up coffee for him and his friends. He would drop by at least twice every day, his friend’s house — which also served as their office — only one bus stop away.

The first time Minho came by, he had his wallet and phone in one hand, a sharpie and a block of sticky notes in the other. You eyed him curiously as he scribbled on the piece of paper while your co-worker prepared his coffee. When he was done, he stuck the note to the monitor in front of you on the counter. You furrowed your brows as your eyes shifted from the Japanese words on the bright yellow note back to Minho’s smug face. You were certainly grateful he at least had the courtesy of including the romanization of whatever he had written down. Not that it helped you in any way.

“Since our studying sessions after class were rudely taken from us, this is your extra homework. It’s all words we already learned. You just gotta think a little bit, and you’ll figure it out. You’re smart, I know you can do it,” He assured you.

Expect you weren’t that smart and ended up giving up by the time you got home that night. The piece of paper was no longer sticky on the border due to you carrying it around all day, boring holes into it as if that would magically give you the answer. You snapped a picture of it as you got ready for bed and sent it to Minho, begging him to put you out of your misery and simply give you the answer. ‘I want to drink coffee,’ he replied. You slapped your hand over your forehead with so much force you were sure the entire house had heard you. He was right; you did learn that in class. Curse the Japanese language for being so difficult.

After that, it became a routine. You waited expectantly for Minho’s visits daily, but you are extra excited today. It’s a Friday, and your birthday is tomorrow. After much pestering from Eunha, you agreed to have a small gathering at your house. It only made sense to invite Minho; he’s become one of your closest friends in the two months you’ve known him, after all.

As he walks into the coffee shop, sticky notes and sharpie in hand, you chuckle to yourself. You two chat about the development of his game, with Minho kindly using layman’s terms when explaining it to you. He also tells you about how one of his friends got so frustrated with a code that he threw his phone at a wall before immediately regretting it and crying on the floor next to Minho’s desk. Before you can get worried, he assures you that it’s just an ordinary day at the office, and the three of them end up laughing everything off at the end of the day.

After taking his order, you watch as he begins writing down your homework for the day on the small piece of paper in his hand. As you look around the coffee shop, most tables are empty, and the sun is starting to set outside the glass doors.

“You wanna come over this Saturday?” You ask Minho, who looks up at you before adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. That was one thing you learned about Minho since he began coming over: he wears glasses. Not every day, but enough times for you to notice how good he looks with them. But friends find each other attractive all the time, you justify it. “You never came over to my house, and my roommates really want to meet you. Plus, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”

Minho’s eyes widen. “Your birthday? And you save that information to the end?”

“It’s not a big deal. I usually never even celebrate.” You shrug lightly. You’ve never been big on birthdays, as you just don’t see the reason why it’s supposed to feel different from any other day of the year. “But my roommate pestered me to do something this year, so I agreed to have a party.”

Minho shifts on his feet. “I… really hate parties…” He trails off.

“It’s not a party party. I promise!” You hold up your pinky finger. “It’s more of a get-together, just my roommates and my only two other friends. And, you…” You trail off, “If you come.”

Minho blinks his eyes a couple of times before tearing the piece of paper he was writing on from the pad and crumpling it in his hand. He quickly jots down something new and sticks it to your forehead.

“Minho!” You scold him, to which he laughs, his nose scrunching and eyes crinkling. You advert your gaze from him as your persistent thoughts regarding how unfairly pretty Minho is begin to flood your brain once again. You take the note and analyze it:

はい (Hai)

You smile as you understand the word, looking up at him.

“I’d love to come to your birthday party,” He beams. “Thank you for inviting me.”

To say Minho is nervous would be an understatement.

He gets out of his car twice, ready to march back inside his friend’s apartment like a coward and pretend that nothing happened both times. Only when he thinks back to how you smiled at him when he agreed to your invitation does he find the courage to start the car and drive to your house. He’d noticed for a while now how much he likes you. But it was when he agreed with the idea of going to the café you worked at to pick up coffee that it truly dawned on him that he really liked you. Minho hated taking the bus, he hated doing anything other than zoning out on the couch during his breaks, he hated bustling shops, and he hated how his co-workers both managed to have such intricate coffee orders.

Yet he agreed to that idea, even suggesting he drop by two times a day.

He noticed he’d felt a familiar small whirlpool inside his chest whenever he was with you, when he heard you talk about something you liked or saw you smile. He’s also noticed that this tiny whirlpool has been growing bigger and bigger the more he’s been around you.

But that doesn’t scare him. Minho loves love. He loves to be in love, to love someone, and to make that person feel loved. It’s his favorite thing about life. If he was honest, he missed it so much he didn’t know how he was able to live without it.

Just down the block from your house, he parks his car and gathers his phone and his present for you — clearly clumsily wrapped, even with his co-workers’ help. He feels another wave of nervousness wash over him as he approaches the house; he’s an hour late and needs to mentally prepare to socialize with people he’s never met before. Minho chuckles as he realizes a silly party makes him more nervous than the prospect of possibly falling in love.

You open the door almost as soon as he rings the intercom, and he walks down the hallway into your house door; the crooked box he’s been holding makes his hands sweat. The first thing he notices as you open the door is your styled hair with a big white bow on the back, looking much prettier than the ugly bow he and his friends managed to stick on top of his present. He smiles at the sight and scratches his ear in a futile attempt to stop them from turning red.

God, he really liked you, didn’t he?

“Thank you for coming,” you tell him with a smile. Minho notices the quiet music playing inside the house, the simple decorations, and the cake on top of the kitchen counter. He mentally sighs in relief. This truly wasn’t anything like a big party. “You’re wearing your glasses again,” you point out as Minho walks inside and removes his shoes. He subconsciously reaches his left hand to touch his wire-rimmed glasses that sit on his nose bridge. He grimaces and curses at his friend for making him stay later than he was supposed to today.

“I had no time to go home and change,” He apologizes, fingers now toying with the stupid bow on top of the box. “I usually wear contacts, but they make my eyes dry if I stare at the computer for too long, so I just… wear my glasses at work…” Minho trails off, suddenly feeling stupid, his eyes looking anywhere but toward you.

You chuckle, lightly touching his glasses for a second before moving away again. “You always come to the coffee shop wearing them, and I think you look really good,” you assured him. His eyes quickly met yours, only for you to advert your gaze this time. “You should wear them more often.”

Minho only hums, lightly nodding his head. He feels stupid all over again as the image of himself throwing his contact lenses down the drain crosses his mind.

Clearing his throat, he finally hands you your gift. You giggle at the mismatched wrapping paper and poor excuse of a bow, which makes Minho let out a chuckle and murmur an apology. You open the box, and your eyes light up when you spot the stuffed bunny you have been raving about since you two met. It was the only animal missing from your collection, but you couldn’t find the right time to save up money to buy it. Minho didn’t need to ask if you liked it as he watched your smile grow bigger as you looked at the brown bunny.

“Come, I gotta put him in my bed now,” you beamed and took Minho’s hand in yours, leading him to the living room. There, five people sat on the couch and on the floor. Minho furrows his brows as he takes in a head of light brown hair covered by a familiar beanie. “These are my friends. Eunha’s the girl with short hair on the floor, and Soojung’s the one with blonde hair next to her. They’re also my roommates,” You point at them as you speak. “That’s Jisung sitting next to Soojung; he’s also her boyfriend. And then Hyunjin, with the long hair, sitting next to Chan on the couch. Everyone, this is Minho from my Japanese class.”

With that, you pad off to your room with your bunny in tow. As Chan finally turns to look at Minho, his shocked expression mirrors his. They stare at each other for a while before Chan finally breaks the silence.

“What the fuck, that’s my co-worker.”

Minho narrows his eyes. “So this is why you had to leave an hour earlier today?”

As you come out of your room, you chuckle. “Chan is your co-worker?” You ask Minho, “I can’t believe this. He’s been our friend for longer than I’ve known you. He came like a package deal when Jisung began dating Soojung.”

“Damn, dude, you hate me so much you never talked about me to your friend?” Chan gasped, a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt.”

Minho rolls his eyes but is unable to stop a small grin from forming on his lips as the entire living room erupts in laughter. “Of course I talked about you. I talked about you and Seungmin all the time. It’s just I…” Minho shifts on his feet, shrugging. “I never said your names.”

More laughter seeps out of the group of people, including Chan, and Minho finds himself laughing along this time, shaking his head at his own stupidity. 

He sits beside Chan on the couch while Hyunjin heads to the kitchen with you. He quickly asks him how he came to be friends with you in the first place. Chan explains that he’s been in a class with Jisung for almost two years, and the boy had always pestered him about ‘old people’ needing to hang out with people their age. That’s how he ended up meeting Soojung as soon as she became Jisung’s girlfriend. You and Eunha were an inevitable addition, seeing as you were not only roommates but also great friends.

You offer Minho a beer, which he declines. As much as he wanted to, no beer was worth having to take the bus back home. He silently sips his cola as he watches your group of friends chat. You end up sitting beside him on the couch, your friend Hyunjin to your right.

Minho finds that he missed getting together with people like this and didn’t even realize it. His only friends were left behind back at home, and although they were less than an hour away by bus, their busy lives prevented them from meeting in person. Minho’s favorite memories from his teenage years were having his friends over and just doing nothing for hours, talking about stupid shit until their stomachs hurt from laughing. Eating takeout on the couch with Chan and Seungmin after work came close, but they were always too tired and too stressed to entertain the idea of making jokes. Those were times when Minho realized he had really become an adult.

Jisung’s loud voice suddenly booms through the living room and startles an already drunk-looking Eunha, who murmurs something about the younger boy giving her a heart attack one day. 

“I’m bored,” he grumbles, draping his body over Soojung. “Let’s play spin the bottle.”

Soojung rolls her eyes at him, flicking his forehead. “Are you a teenager?”

Jisung pouts, sitting up straight once more. “We’re in university. University students play this fucking game all the time,” he states matter-of-factly. “Don’t make me regret falling for an older woman.”

“Jisung, I’m only three years older than you, I’m not—”

“Don’t make me call you noona.”

Soojung inhales deeply before turning to face the people sitting on the couch, placing one of the empty beer bottles scattered around her feet on top of the coffee table. “Let’s play spin the bottle. But let’s do dares instead of kissing, that’s too boring.”

Jisung beams, cuddling close to her like a needy child. Minho chuckles at the sight.

Eunha scoots closer to the couple so the group is seated in a circle around the coffee table, half of them on the couch and half on the floor. Minho never had the chance to play spin the bottle, which seemed to be such a staple game of one’s teenage years. By the time his friends were off sneaking into clubs and drinking behind their parents’ backs, he was already in a committed relationship and well aware of the fact that he didn’t enjoy parties.

It seems silly, but he’s glad he won’t live past his youth without experiencing such a trivial thing.

Soojung spins the bottle, and the neck stops facing Chan while the bottom faces Jisung.

“Take your shirt off,” Jisung waves a finger at Chan, who looks somewhat disoriented. Minho chuckles under his breath just as you do the same. You two face each other and let out a hearty laugh, your arm coming to rest on his bicep before retrieving back to your lap faster than Minho hoped it would.

Soojung squishes Jisung’s cheeks and places a small kiss on his lips. “You’re such a fucking chaotic bisexual,” she giggles, “Y’know, Chan, Jisung has had the biggest crush on you since you two first met.”

Chan shakes his head with a stifled laugh and proceeds to remove his shirt, neatly placing it on his lap.

Jisung is next to spin the bottle, this time landing on Soojung, who you dare to show her most embarrassing text. After showing the group a string of texts showing raunchy screenshots of a manhwa she’d been reading at that time, all sent to one of her class group chats which included some professors, she lets out a heavy sigh and orders Eunha to spin the bottle before any questions can be asked.

This time, the neck faces you while the bottom faces Eunha herself. With a smile, the short-haired girl dares you to kiss Minho.

He feels his smile drop at the very second the words leave her lips. This was not what he had in mind for tonight.

“What?” You sputter, “Why?”

Eunha shrugs, adjusting herself so she’s seated upright and staring right at you. “Well, he’s the only one here who would be actually fun to see you kiss. Jisung and Soojung are okay with each other hooking up with other people, so that’s no fun,” she explains, using her fingers to list her reasons, “I’m not into girls, so that’s no fun for me. Hyunjin is too obvious. We all already know Chan, so it would also be boring. Minho is like fresh meat. That is fun.”

Minho’s brain begins finding a suitable excuse for why you two can’t kiss, because he’s certain you have no interest in doing it. Not only are you friends, but your reaction didn’t exactly exude excitement at the prospect of kissing him. Just as he’s ready to lie through his teeth, you turn to him and place your hand on his shoulder, a touch so soft he’s barely able to feel it through the fabric of his shirt.

“Is this okay with you?” You ask him, the tone of your voice so sweet Minho feels like it melts his every thought until his brain is nothing but a sugary pool filled with only you. So he nods because god, yes, this is okay with him.

You gingerly place your right hand on his cheek, bringing your faces closer until your lips press together. The whirlpool inside his chest spins fast, like a vortex dragging every sense of his body toward you and only you.

You remain still for a few seconds, Minho’s eyes opening slightly to search for any sign of regret on your face. Before he can even properly look at you, your lips begin to move against his — gently and carefully, like you’re not sure if this is what he wants. Minho deepens the kiss and hesitates three times before committing to placing his left hand on your waist. The giggles around the two of you nothing but a muffled murmur to him. He presses another kiss to your lips, his body shifting until he is all but caging you against the back of the couch. But just as he swipes his tongue across your bottom lip, you push him back with a smile, Minho chasing after your lips.

He blinks a couple of times, eyes zoning into your smudged red lipstick. He subconsciously bites his own bottom lip, wondering if any of the color transferred to him. The surrounding murmurs bring Minho back to the moment this time, awkwardly clearing his throat before lifting himself off of you and sitting upright on the couch. He tunes out every comment regarding the kiss to the best of his abilities, focusing his energy on slowing down his heart rate. When he catches you giggling while looking at him, your arm touching his bicep yet again, he nods, grabbing his cola bottle from the floor and taking a sip.

Minho can’t remember the last time kissing someone got him so worked up. He entered a long-term relationship at such a young age that he’s only now realizing how unaccustomed he is to kissing someone new, to the rush that comes with having your lips pressing against the ones of someone you like. It was exhilarating and a bit terrifying all at the same time. He was awkward, unsure where to put his hands, uncertain if you were enjoying yourself. He was also greedy, wanting the moment to last for much longer than it had.

This had cemented the fact that he does, in fact, really like you.

After kissing you, the whirlpool living in his heart had now fully transformed into a tiny hurricane — with great chances of growing even bigger.

Minho only notices the game has continued upon hearing your voice complaining beside him. He watches as Soojung shrugs.

“It’s the only thing I could think of, sorry.”

“But why?” Hyunjin asks, placing his cup on the coffee table. “It’s a stupid dare.”

The blonde girl scoffs. “No, it’s not. I’ve had to basically live with you two for the past year, and it’s common knowledge how easily you get a boner for her.”

“Not true,” Hyunjin retorts, although it sounds more like a question than an affirmation.

Eunha blurts out, “You once got a boner watching her stir a cake mix.”

Hyunjin opens and closes his mouth before groaning, pulling you into his lap by the waist. You apologize to him quietly, to which Hyunjin shakes his head with a small smile.

Minho feels as if he’s intruding on something private.

You sit on Hyunjin’s knees, almost falling off his lap as you clearly try to keep some distance between the two of you. Hyunjin clicks his tongue and pulls you closer to him until your back is pressed up against his chest. He whispers something in your ear, to which you lightly slap his arm as his lips upturn into a grin.

Minho is definitely intruding on something private.

At some point, you turn so you’re sitting across Hyunjin’s lap, your body now facing Minho. He can’t help but watch with dark eyes as the younger boy’s hands wander through your body; playing with the buttons on your blouse, squeezing your thighs, and caressing your skin a little too close to the hem of your skirt. He furrows his brows as he tries to understand your relationship with Hyunjin, seeing as you’re obviously not put off by his hands on your body.

Minho is so transfixed by the sight and his racing thoughts that he only realizes the game has ended when someone taps his shoulder from behind the couch.  When he looks back, Chan is holding a cigarette and motioning towards the stairs that lead to the house’s terrace.

In the chilly open space above the house, they sit on a bench behind a tall vertical planter. Minho wonders who tends to the garden as he observes the various flowers, as well as some vegetables and herbs scattered around him. The terrace is small; the garden taking up all the space, an old wooden railing that overlooks the quiet street the only other thing in his sight.

He and Chan chat about school and work, as they often do nowadays. After Chan recently broke up with his girlfriend, Minho found that his friend had become much more closed off, so the list of subjects they would talk about became minimal. Chan bites his thumb before taking a long drag of his cigarette. He chuckles when he mentions being scared of graduating next year. Minho bumps his shoulder with him, arguing that being in his situation is worse. He admits that he regrets starting university late and that being in his first year when he should already be in his third is discouraging. Chan dismisses his worries, reminding him of how Minho is often the one to fix broken codes and come up with ideas for their game whenever Seungmin gets stuck.

“A degree is just a piece of paper,” Chan says, throwing his cigarette butt at a nearby trashcan. “You’re already a fantastic programmer, Minho.”

“You’re just saying that because I saved your ass today.”

Chan shrugs. “You’ve saved my ass basically every day since we started working together.” After a beat of silence, he asks, “Why did you start uni so late, anyway? You never told me.”

Minho hums, digging his brain for a way to sum up the entire story. “It’s complicated—”

He’s interrupted by footsteps on the stairs leading to the terrace. A loud giggle echoes through the open space before you and Hyunjin step into their field of vision. The long-haired boy holds you from behind, and you two stagger toward the railing.

“Wish everyone would go home already so I could just fuck you,” Hyunjin whines as he turns your body around so you’re facing him. Minho almost chokes on nothing at those words, and Chan stifles a laugh with his hand. He curses the small space as they’re able to so clearly hear everything you’re saying.

You playfully kick Hyunjin’s shin. “Don’t say it like that, Hyune, what the fuck.”

“It’s true, though,” Hyunjin continues, pressing you against the railing. He towers over you, so the only thing Minho can see from where he’s seated is your white skirt floating in the wind behind the tall boy. “I had a stressful, terrible, awful, dreadful week. All I kept thinking about was coming over and relaxing with you.”

“See, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so awful.”

Hyunjin clicks his tongue. “There’s nothing awful about fucking. I know how much you like it, don’t act so coy.”

Minho watches as your hands clench around Hyunjin’s gray shirt, pulling him closer and kissing him softly, much like you had done to him a few moments before.

Minho presses his lips into a thin line. He connects every dot available to him inside his head and suddenly feels pathetic.

Hyunjin being too obvious of a choice for you to kiss, his hands all over your body, his words about fucking you, the way you kissed him like it was a habit.

If you had a boyfriend, why did you agree to kiss him?

The words swarm Minho’s brain. He vaguely recalls you and Hyunjin eventually walking out of the terrace. Chan starts a one-sided conversation about one of his classes, with Minho humming after every couple of sentences to appear like he’d been listening when his head is too busy wondering how to feel about everything.

Minho recalls Eunha walking up the stairs and shouting for the two of them to come downstairs to sing you happy birthday. He recalls Hyunjin’s hands wandering through your body throughout the song, his lips pressing small kisses on your face and lips as you smiled. He recalls feeling confused, stressed, jealous, and pathetic.

Minho is only truly back to the present moment once Chan’s voice bids him a loud goodbye, and the door slamming behind him makes his senses finally return to him. As he looks around, he notices that the only people left in the living room are Jisung, Hyunjin, and you. Beside him on the couch, Hyunjin stretches with a loud groan.

“I’m gonna take a shower. D’you have any of my clothes in your room?”

You sigh from where you’re sitting on the floor, resting against the television stand. “Of course, I do. You’re always living shit behind, you’re like our third roommate at this point.”

Hyunjin chuckles, walking over to give you a small peck on the lips before disappearing into your room. Minho gnaws on his bottom lip with a bitter smile as he realizes Hyunjin will sleep over at your house. The ugly feelings return as he remembers his thoughts about you these past few weeks when he unknowingly cultivated too big of a crush on you. Even on his way here tonight, when he had chuckled to himself at his lack of nervousness in the face of potential love.

Love.

Minho can’t help but wonder why your view of love is so negative when you’re in a relationship. And, at the same time, he doesn’t dare to think about it for too long, fully aware that his foolish affection-filled brain will come up with a myriad of reasons — all where your boyfriend is the sole culprit for your distaste — and Minho knows better than to let those thoughts linger for too long inside his mind. He knows himself all too well, knows only awful shit would come out of assuming things about your relationship; the urge to beat Hyunjin senseless for being a shitty boyfriend and making you think that way about love being the worst of them.

“I’m too drunk to go back to my dorm,” Jisung suddenly speaks, his eyes glazed over as he stares ahead. “Gonna crash here tonight, too.”

Minho takes that as his cue to leave.

You walk him outside, a small smile on your face the entire time. He feels guilty not being able to reciprocate the gesture. As you tell him goodbye, thanking him for coming, you pull him into a hug. You hadn’t hugged much since you met, and Minho foolishly wants to draw you closer to him, to feel your body pressed against his just as it was pressed against Hyunjin most of the night. But he can’t do that.

“Are you okay to walk back by yourself?” You ask him as you pull away.

Minho nods, forcing out a small smile. “My car is parked just down the block.”

“That’s why you didn’t drink!” You exclaim with a giggle, “I forget that most people our age already drive. My anxiety didn’t allow me the chance to even try and get a license, so I just accepted my fate of taking the bus.”

“I could drive you…” Minho trails off. There he goes again, being pathetic. “If I have the time… You can give me a call and I’d be happy to drive you anywhere.”

You smile at him, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into another embrace. Minho smiles genuinely as he buries his head in your hair.

The drive back home has Minho feeling stupid all over again as he thinks about how you’re probably in bed with Hyunjin by now. The whirlpool is back inside his chest, but it isn’t good or welcome this time. It’s agonizing and painful.

Love had never been painful. Love had never been bad.

But he had never experienced love toward someone who already loved somebody else. Although you brazenly state that you don’t believe in it, you must feel some type of love toward Hyunjin if you’re willing to be his girlfriend.

As he silently drives home, Minho finds himself agreeing with you.

Maybe love can be bad, after all.

Minho feels stupid.

This has become a constant in his life.

He had always thought of himself as a logical person. Programming had taught him that everything is predictable and fixable if you work on it hard enough. A broken code? It may take him six hours of staring at the computer to figure out it was nothing but a missing semicolon, but he will get there in the end. It was annoying and frustrating, but it was always something easily fixed.

He thought love was like that. It had always been like that with him.

Until he fell for you.

Minho was coming to terms with the fact that maybe love and programming were nothing alike. Love isn’t predictable. Loving someone who is already in love with someone else isn’t easily fixed. He can’t backspace and delete your boyfriend from the equation.

It’s been a little over six months since you two first met. Minho has consistently gone to the café you work at every day, and you two still had endless talks over text messages. You talk about everything and anything, from silly things like sharing pictures of both your growing plushie collections or your love of that particular coffee shop’s lemon cake to more serious topics like how Minho learned how to cook when he was twelve so his mom wouldn’t have to do it by herself, and now his roommates take advantage of that, or how sad you are that next year you will have to leave the house you’ve grown to love so much.

But, whether it is in person or through text, you still avoid the topic of love. You don’t ever bring up Hyunjin unless he’s part of a story you were already telling, and Minho feels his heart heavy as he slowly allows himself to imagine what it could be that led you to hate love so much.

He desperately wants to ask you, know your reasons, and make sure you’re happy with your boyfriend. But he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries and doesn’t know how to go about it without scaring you. So he never does anything, like a coward.

Minho finds himself coming over to your sharehouse on most weekends since summer break ended. Your countless get-togethers at that house have become a hard-to-break habit. Hyunjin, Jisung, and your roommates are always assured to be there, with Chan joining whenever he isn’t overwhelmed with work or school, which was rare.

Minho had always been a hopeless romantic, always doing things for love that people repeatedly warned would result in regret. This time, it was forgoing visiting his parents and friends back home just to spend most of his summer with you. Despite not being able to pursue you in the way he truly wanted to, Minho still wanted to be your friend. You were still a fantastic person he loved to have around; that didn’t change simply because you had a boyfriend. Although he could feel a bit of his heart cracking every time he had to see you, all while knowing he couldn’t do anything about his feelings for you.

He couldn’t change your perspective of love if he weren’t allowed to love you.

In all the time he spent at your house during summer break, he ended up becoming good friends with Jisung, as you tended to stick next to Hyunjin most of the time. Minho didn’t mind it; he is your boyfriend, after all. At least, that’s what he repeats to himself every night he comes over like a mantra as he almost masochistically forces himself to watch how Hyunjin kisses your lips and caresses your skin or how you play with his hair and snuggle with him on the couch. He also endures the countless nights he’s left your house knowing all too well that Hyunjin would be spending the night with you in a way that Minho can only ever dream about.

Tonight, in particular, Hyunjin seemed to be all over you like bees on honey, buzzing around you everywhere you went, his hands never leaving your body as he pulled you closer to him every time you even slightly pulled away. Because god forbid your bodies not be touching in some way for even a split second. Before he knows it, Minho is downing his third bottle of beer of the night.

From where he’s sitting on the couch, Minho rolls his eyes as discreetly as he can while he watches Hyunjin pull you to sit on his lap on the floor as you all get ready to play a game of cards. He gnaws on his lower lip because he knows he’s being petty and borderline childish. You’re Hyunjin’s girlfriend. Of course he’s all over you, of course he wants to be close to you, of course he wants you on his lap. Minho concludes with a bitter chuckle that he is, indeed, pathetic when it comes to you.

He gulps down more of the awful-tasting cheap beer.

The night comes to a close after far too many rounds of Cards Against Humanity, with Jisung winning more than half of them. His ethics and morals fly out the window the moment the cards are handed to him, as he manages to create the most absurdly offensive phrases known to men every single time. Minho found himself groaning and yelling at the younger boy as the alcohol took over his system. He doesn’t know how much of it was simply his annoyance at Hyunjin clinging to you like a koala throughout the entire game disguised as competitiveness.

He doesn’t think he’d like to know either.

Like every night he comes over, Minho is the last person to go home. He has to call an Uber, far too buzzed to want to sit at a bus stop all alone at this time of night. He hadn’t even noticed how he kept downing his drinks until he felt the familiar buzz of inebriation wash over his body a while before the game ended. Although slamming his fist into the coffee table with a whine about how he had only been given lame cards should’ve been a sign.

As he waits outside your house by the fence, he suddenly hears the door shut behind him and your voice calling out to him. He smiles at the faint slur of your speech and the way you drag out the last syllable of his name like you always did when you were a bit drunk.

“I told you to wait for me!” You reprimand, opening the gate to stand next to him. “Look how lonely you look here all by yourself.”

Minho just shrugs with a smile, shaking his head. He did wait. He waited almost half an hour after announcing he should leave as you disappeared into your room with Hyunjin. He was still waiting, in fact, only mindlessly scrolling on his phone for the past ten minutes instead of finding a ride as he hoped you would come outside when you saw he wasn’t in the living room anymore.

You poke his shoulder, bringing his attention away from his phone to your smiling face.

“Tonight was fun, wasn’t it? Especially that last round when Hyunjin won after being tied with Jisung for the whole game,” you grinned, “Seeing Jisung make a whole damn case about how much better his card was really made my night. Think that’s the first time I’ve seen him act like a law student since I met him.”

Minho chuckles, bringing his attention back to his phone. Seeing your smile and how your eyes light up while you talk about something you like brought back the whirlpool inside his chest, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling any longer. It made him glum to think how a once beautiful feeling had turned into nothing but discomfort simply because he was lovelorn.

He hums. “You must be proud to have your boyfriend put an end to Jisung’s annoying winning streak.”

“What do you mean?”

Minho looks up from his phone, eyes wandering through your puzzled face. He furrows his brows for a second. Maybe you’re both drunker than he’d thought.

“I mean, it must’ve been nice to see Hyunjin win after Jisung basically made us all want to quit the game,” he explains, watching as your expression turns from confusion into shock before you let out a loud laugh.

Minho’s eyes widen, worried your laughter might wake up your neighbors. He gently shushes you, his arm grabbing your shoulder, but your smiling face only makes his lips stretch out into a grin. He suppresses a giggle as you catch your breath, shaking your head.

Minho smiles at you so fondly he’s certain he looks like an idiot. “What’s so funny?”

“Hyunjin isn’t my boyfriend,” you explain like it’s obvious. “We’re just friends. I thought you knew that.”

Minho only then realizes he had never once heard you refer to Hyunjin as a boyfriend, nor had any of the people around you. But his assumptions weren’t so ill-judged, either. You two acted like a couple. It wasn’t so absurd to assume that you were one.

He finds himself staring at your amused face for a few seconds before forcing himself to turn his attention back to his phone.

You acted like a couple, but you were just friends. Minho groaned mentally.

“So, you’re like friends with benefits?”

“Yeah… I don’t particularly believe in love anymore, Minho. I thought you knew that from our talk a while ago,” You chuckle, shifting on your feet. “Hyunjin is one of my best friends. We just hook up ‘cause it’s convenient.”

Minho hums, his fingers ghosting over his phone screen. “Sounds like you’re running away from love.”

He blinks a couple of times as he takes in his own words. He would have never said such a thing if it hadn’t been for the liquid courage flowing through his veins.

You shrug, moving to sit on the white bench just outside the house. “Well, yeah, that is what I’m doing. Love hasn’t been kind to me at all. I have no interest in going after it, only to be hurt again. It’s a movie I’ve watched before and I hated the ending every time.”

Minho bites the inside of his cheek, finally clicking the button to find a ride, his thumb pressing on his phone screen more forcefully than he intended. He felt angry. You didn’t deserve to settle for a friend with benefits due to convenience. Had you wanted to be in that situation, it was your every right to do so, but you were in it out of fear of being hurt.

He felt sad. He wished you didn’t equate your past experiences with love to everything it could be. Bad experiences in love were possible for everyone — even for him, who used to believe unwaveringly that love could never be hurtful — but that didn’t mean it was all there was to it. Minho desperately wanted to show you that. The good side of love, the side that made him put it above everything else in his life on so many occasions, the side that made him crave it even now when it hurt more than it felt good.

And, strangely, Minho felt relieved. It was a small percentage of the chart of current emotions he was experiencing, but prevalent nonetheless. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he felt happy Hyunjin wasn’t your boyfriend and, most importantly, that you weren’t stuck in an unhappy or toxic relationship, as he had so often feared.

His ride arrives, and he’s overcome with a wave of courage. Minho would much rather live with regret than with a constant ‘what if’.

Shoving his phone inside his pocket, he offers his hand to you, who looks up at him curiously from where you’re sitting on the bench before taking his hand. Minho pulls you to your feet and hugs you. With his hand on your waist, he pulls your body closer to him, finally holding you tightly the way he’s always wanted to do. He presses a kiss to your head, bringing his lips to your ear and whispering, “I’m gonna change your mind.”

He feels your body shake with a chuckle, but he only tightens his hold on you.

“What?”

“About love, I’m gonna change your mind,” He answers matter-of-factly, “You deserve to feel love without being afraid.”

Minho pulls back from the embrace just enough to see your face, and he’s surprised to find you smiling up at him. He smiles back.

“I will change your mind.”

Minho had just dropped you off at your house, ready to drive around aimlessly until he absolutely had to go back to his dorm, when Seungmin texted him.

Kim Seungmin: hey my sister’s engagement dinner is tonight Kim Seungmin: and i might have fucked up something in the code i was working on so now there’s a chance that you fish 100 rare fish at once 🤪 Kim Seungmin: pls pls do me a solid and fix it before chan sees it and kills me? Kim Seungmin: love you hyung 💚

Minho initially groaned at the messages, thinking of the many ways in which he could murder Seungmin and get away with it. But, ultimately, he didn’t want to go back to his dorm anyway, so he gladly turned his car around. If he was lucky, this would take hours and he would have a valid excuse to crash in Chan’s cramped living room.

He punches the code to the front door and his friend greets him with a puzzled expression.

“I forgot to do the, uh, troubleshooting for this week,” Minho blurts out. It’s the first lie he can come up with, and he hopes it’s convincing enough. Chan nods slowly. Seungmin might have saved him from having to endure his roommates on a Saturday night, but he still owes him.

“It’s all good,” Chan says with a sigh, “I’m most likely gonna pull an all-nighter designing these new characters. Anyway, how did you waste your time today?”

Minho has been taking you on what he likes to call Subtle Dates for a month now.

Chan affectionately calls them Waste of Time Dates.

Minho rolls his eyes, sitting down on his own desk. “We went to Han River and walked around till sundown, then watched the Banpo Bridge water show.”

Days like today were rare, so Minho was happy. Most weekends, it seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against anything he planned with you.

“Oh, how romantic of you,” Chan gasps, feigning amazement. “Did you at least kiss her this time?”

“You know I can’t just kiss her like that. I know she’d freak out if I tried to do anything romantic with her,” Minho taps his fingers on his desk, knowing he sounds ridiculous. But he has a plan. He just hopes this plan actually works out soon. “I don’t mind being patient.”

He hears Chan scoff. “So, you took her on another one-sided date and then drove her home so Hyunjin can fuck her?”

Minho’s fingers stop tapping on his desk, his hand coming down to slam on it before he can stop himself. He lets out a heavy sigh, and Chan mumbles an apology. But, the truth is, he knows his friend is right. Just last weekend, Minho dropped you off straight into Hyunjin’s arms, the younger boy waiting for you to come back in front of your house.

And Hyunjin wasn’t the only inconvenience that rendered it almost impossible for the two of you to spend time together. Minho had to cut most of your dates short due to Chan calling him about something urgent that only he could fix at work, or you canceled altogether because your roommate was upset and you didn’t have the heart to leave her alone like that. There were also times when Minho was too tired to even go out at all, like on the day of his birthday, which resulted in you coming over to Chan’s apartment and eating cheap takeout food with him and his two friends.

Minho found himself dealing with countless bumps in the road when it came to finding a way into your heart.

“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Chan says hesitantly, “You clearly like her a lot.”

Minho repeatedly opens and closes the code he’s supposed to fix. He sighs. “I like her more than a lot, and I don’t even know when that happened.”

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” His friend explains, his face disappearing behind his own computer screen. “I just can’t see what will change if you go on dates with her when she doesn’t even know they’re dates and if she’s just gonna go home and have sex with someone else. I don’t get it. What difference does it make?”

He can hear Chan scoffing, although he tries to disguise it by clearing his throat. Minho shakes his head.

“It makes all the difference because that’s not love. I wanna show her what love is, and that it isn’t always bad. I promised her that I would.”

Chan sighs, sliding his chair toward the mini-fridge by the couch. “Agree to disagree?” He asks, grabbing a bottle of water and tossing it in Minho’s direction. He grabs it mid-air, just before it hits him in the face, and clicks his tongue.

“Agree to disagree.”

Minho plugs his headphones into the computer, drowning out the noise of Chan’s pen sliding across his iPad with his brown noise playlist. But he can’t drown out the obstinate thought ringing inside his head, screaming at him that Chan is right.

Taking you out on dates — which you don’t even know are dates — doesn’t really make a difference if you’re just going to go back to your convenience with Hyunjin at the end of the day. If you think you’re just friends going out together, and you go back home at night to the comfort of sex without the love you’ve been running away from for so long, what Minho is doing truly is useless. 

It’s just like when he argues with Seungmin through their codes, screaming at the younger boy in all caps about something that’s broken, even though he knows he’s going to be the one who will end up having to fix it.

Minho’s fingers come to a halt on the keyboard.

Closing his work, he opens up Google and finds the first flight he can to Japan. Almost as if he’s on autopilot, and his brain is completely shut off. He books the flight and the cheapest hotel he can find, using almost all the money he’s saved up to move out of his hell of a dorm. It might be the most idiotic thing he has ever done in his life, but he’s so in love it hurts him. And he loves love, and love with you — the thought of that alone has his heart beating at his throat. He doesn’t want to keep on with these futile attempts at trying to make you see that love is good and that, maybe, love can be good with him.

The truth is, he feels scared. Maybe even more scared than you do. He is terrified of knowing the answer, of finding out that maybe he could change your mind about love but that it would simply lead you to someone else’s arms and he would have to endure the pain of unrequited love until it inevitably faded away with time.

Minho would gladly live with that pain if it meant you were happy.

But he needed to know.

He adjusted his glasses — a childhood nervous habit that returned after he started wearing them more often since you complimented him months ago — and retrieved his phone from his backpack.

He typed and deleted more times than he’d like to admit.

Me: Hey, it’s late sorry  Me: Just wanted to know if you’d be up for a trip to Japan? Me: In two weeks Me: For study purposes Me: We’d finally have the chance to use what we learned in class lol Me: Chan was supposed to go with me but he has a family thing so he can’t anymore Me: Everything’s already paid for and he said he doesn’t mind if you go in his place Me: Lmk what you think

Minho’s fingers typed as his brain came up with excuses and lies, sending more messages than he needed to. He couldn’t tell you he booked a whole damn trip with you just to see if maybe, possibly, you have feelings for him too.

He all but throws his phone across his table after turning on Do Not Disturb. He’ll need to muster up the courage before reading your answer, and having his phone buzz for anything that wasn’t your reply would just be torturous. He felt stupid, would feel even more so if you turned down his invitation. He almost doesn’t want you to answer, wants to pretend he never even sent anything.

Because it was stupid.

But love is stupid, and he is in love.

Worst-case scenario, he’s stuck with Chan in Japan for a weekend while he laughs at him.

Best-case scenario, he spends a weekend with you in Japan. No letting you go back to another man at the end of the day, no more hiding that he is taking you out on dates, no more distractions, no more inconveniences of your daily lives.

Minho opens the code he was working on again, quickly typing out:

// NOTE: Minho will fix this.

[luveline]

grumpy!joel and sunshine!reader? like he is very gruff and short with people until his girl comes around and tess is like wow are you soft now?

tysm for ur request! disclaimer: I am not an expert in tlou I just think Joel is very fit and also scary ♥︎ tess and joel are roommates here (and also no hate on tess at all I tried to make her a realist rather than a pessimist but she may sound a little jaded) idk lol pls enjoy! fem!reader 

Joel's asleep when you come around. Tess is stirring her drink, small spoon bouncing against the sides of her mug with a metallic tap-tap-tap as your familiar knock raps the door. She doesn't bother yelling, just opens the door to let you in. 

"Hello," you say, though you wince when you spot Joel dozing on the couch. You drop your voice to a whisper. "Nice shiner, Tess." 

"Thanks." She steps aside to give you free reign, rolling her eyes when you toe off your shoes. 

You're not right in the head, in Tess' opinion. You're too soft for this life, and your continued survival feels like luck and nothing more. You know how she feels about you, and you know what she thinks: that to be vulnerable is to kill yourself. You don't feel the same. 

Joel's flat on his back. You push him against the cushions of the couch to make room, perching at his hip with a small sigh. He couldn't have been with Tess when she got hurt, his face clean of contusions. No speckled bruising, no scabbing cuts. 

You place your hand over the solid plane of his stomach and lean forward just a touch. You could kiss him. 

"Joel," you murmur, hand sliding to his waist. His jeans are rough under your palm. "Wake up. I have good news." 

He never wakes gently. His eyes scrunch, his lips tug down into a scowl. When he sees you, it takes a good long second for his agitation to fade into a more neutral expression. 

"Hey," you say, smiling. 

He doesn't smile back. "Where have you been?" he asks succinctly, voice rough with the lingering dregs of sleep. 

"Why should I tell you?"

He almost pushes you off of the couch as he sits up and swings his legs to the side. His shoes touch the floor, and of course he sleeps with his shoes on, he's ready for everything.

"Don't play games." 

You hum in delight at his dark tone and stand up before he can grab you, shivering at the feeling of his fingertips scratching your thighs. You backtrack through the room for your bag thrown haphazardly by the door. You pick it up, excited and scared at once, and scrabble to procure your promised 'good news'. 

"I wasn't far." 

"Your definition of far isn't one I trust," he says. 

"She's a big girl, Joel," Tess says, sipping her drink. She winces at the taste but isn't deterred. "She can take care of herself." 

And if you can't, who cares? You shouldn't be anybody else's problem, and to your credit you aren't. You take care of yourself. You take care of Joel, too, whenever you can, which is why you've brought him the book you found. 

"Here, handsome," you say, holding it out with little ceremony. 

Joel stands up to take it. He stares at the cover in silence. 

"It's a shame they can't include a snippet on every page," you lament. "Like when they used to put perfume samples straight on the paper. I don't know what half of those songs sound like. Which is weird, right? The biggest Billboard hits and I can't remember them." 

"And this is for…" 

"Your codes. Your radio codes?" Your beaming smile starts to shutter. Maybe it isn't useful after all.

Joel knows better than to ask what you want for it. You never ask for anything, ever. You give and you give and at first he'd thought you were stupid, just plain dumb. Generosity is a myth and everybody has their motives. He'd been suspicious of your angle, rejecting you, talking down on you, practically spitting at you to get lost. And you'd listened, for the most part, but then he'd see you in line after shifts for cards, around dark corners talking to dirty FEDRA officers, and you'd always impossibly feel his gaze and pin him with a smile. You've eroded his reluctance over time, and now you're here, sprightly and pretty in his too-big apartment filling every inch with light. 

He reaches across the gap and takes your hand. He squeezes, savouring the warmth of your smaller hand. You have delicate fingers compared to his, and they look smaller still enveloped in his grasp. 

"I'll make you something to eat," he says. 

You nod once, a pop of movement. "Thank you." 

You're not the one who should be saying it but you're the only one who's willing to. Thank you has become synonymous with I owe you. 

Tess lets her gaze flick between your two bodies, clearly startled. Joel drops your hand and it's too late, far too late, she's already gearing up to make fun. 

"Is this how it's gonna be now?" she asks. 

Joel huffs quietly. Tess talks with a brittle kind of love, the familiarity of knowing someone for a long time softening what would otherwise be ridicule. She thinks, without malice, that you and Joel are a bad idea.  

"Hasn't it been like this for a while?" you ask, turning to face her, your usual sunshine attitude worsened by Joel's affection. 

"You're fucking up my guy." 

"Don't get stiffed so often and you won't need a bodyguard," you say lightly. 

Joel snorts, tossing your catalogue of songs on the counter. He doesn't know if they have anything worth eating here, but he's gonna damn well try and find something. 

"You're soft," Tess says to Joel, quick and quipping as she dumps what's left of her drink into the sink. "I'm going out." 

Not much changes when she goes. You come to stand beside him at the counter, your elbow brushing his arm. He doesn't move away. 

Joel doesn't understand why you stick around. Doesn't know what it is that makes you so sweet on him. The first time you met, outside the old meat market on the edge of curfew, he'd been standing watch as Tess made a deal. You'd slunk up on him from the right, and said, "You look unhappy," with your usual softness. 

He'd turned to you in wonder. Wonder in the very worst sense of the word; what could possibly possess you to approach him? Agitation struck like the powdery head of a match against its box, fuck off on the tip of his tongue, and you'd said, "You ever hear that Bill Withers song? 'Ain't no sunshine without rain?'" 

He'd thought you were a wannabe member of the resistance, and that fuck off had rolled right out of his mouth with ease. Your smile hardly wavered. 

"It's 'when she's gone,'" he says now.

You look up at him, he looks down at you. His thick brows relax, and his brown eyes calm. It suits him, and you'd tell him, but you're confused. 

"Huh?" 

"That Bill Withers song. It's 'ain't no sunshine when she's gone,'" he corrects you, the you from the past. He's trying to tell you something without saying it out loud. 

"Oh," you say. Your eyelashes kiss in the corners as you smile. "Right. What am I thinking of?" 

"How should I know?" He doesn't sound mad, smiling at you very briefly.

"I don't know, I thought you knew everything." 

That's not true. He can't know everything, because he doesn't have a clue in the world what he did to deserve meeting you. 

—

please forgive any inaccuracies, I only played the game a little when I was much younger, and so this was made of my watching the first episode twice and some help from people / the wiki!! it's just for fun lol so I hope you enjoyed <3<3<3

[ktownshizzle]

Wild & Free (Teaser)

Min Yoongi x Reader

Summary: Everybody says they want to marry Min Yoongi. But what if he only wants to say 'yes' to you.

Alternatively: While on the last leg of their PTD tour, Yoongi discovers there was such a thing as drive-thru weddings in Vegas, something that his pretty little brain can't seem to process having lived the last decade of every second of his life being planned by his management team, which includes you. When he goes down a rabbit hole of Youtube videos about The Little White Chapel (Omo! Michael Jordan got married there!), he starts getting all sorts of ideas - all of it starring him and you.

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Eventual Smut, Childhood friends to lovers, Idol!au, Coworkers to lovers (reader is a HYBE employee)

Notes: What can I say? We got all the tropes in this bad boy, because I don’t know when I can write again, so let’s put everything in this sucker and call it a day! This is canon-ish. I included some real-life events during this period, but it may or may not be loosely rearranged to fit the narrative - just go with it. Ginger Yoongi, because this is the LOOK I don’t give a damn what haters say. I have not written in a decade and this is me attempting to pick things back up, I hope you like it xo

BTW, the teaser scene is inspired by that leaked video of the BTS tour crew’s  private party in Vegas. It’s here if you want to see it. Enjoy! xo

Read the teaser under the cut!

!!!! Edit: Read Part 1 here !!!!

P.S. Leave a comment to be part of the taglist 🙂

***

"Yoongi, marry me!" You shout at the top of your lungs, earning laughs from the people around you. On the other side of the room, a couple of other people shout the same catchphrase, including Taehyung, who seems to get the most kick out of it out of all the members.

Coerced to do one of those Tik Tok dance challenges, Yoongi stands in front of the room, hides his face behind his hands and you watch in delight as he awkwardly sways his hips side to side. More cheers erupt and two seconds after he decides he was done.

"Hajimaaaa!" Your friend says to no one and everyone, cheeks burning as he stalks back to the chair he was occupying across yours.

You push his beer bottle towards him, "Good job, gramps."

"Fuck off," he says with no real bite, taking a long swig off his drink to cool off his reddened cheeks.

It's great to finally get some down time with the crew. After such a fast-paced, high production tour, everybody needed to blow off some steam. This Korean BBQ restaurant off the Strip was the perfect venue to get the team together for samgyupsal and drinks. The vibes were, as the kids say, immaculate.

You are already sufficiently buzzed so you sit down as Seokjin takes his turn to do the challenge. He really seems to be more into it than the man currently giving you a look.

"I heard you." He narrows his eyes at you, a small smile playing on his lips.

"What? It's the new viral catchphrase," you shrugged. "Everybody and their grandma is saying it these days."

"Not their grandma."

"You should be flattered."

Stop, you thought he would say. But his response catches you off guard.

"Only ‘cause you said it."

And he has the audacity to lick his bottom lip, a ghost of a smirk forming.

Fuck. Your throat dries up. When did it get so hot here?

“And in case you were wondering…” he leans forward, a dopey-ass grin now on his face. “The answer is yes.”

***

WHAT DO WE THINK? Join the taglist by leaving a comment so I can let you know when this story drops.

Tag: @jajabro @yooglefics

[ssparksflyy]

hello! can i request jason grace or leo valdez x child of hypnos reader ? (gn) 🫶🏻🫶🏻

ask and thou shall receive ༉‧₊˚.

jason grace dating hcs! ٩(ˊ〇ˋ*) ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

pairing: jason grace x child of hypnos!reader warning(s): none!! js fluff :) a/n: i love children of hypnos, u stay sleepy ! also me writing this running off five hours of sleep ( the most ive gotten this week ) yikes..

mr gets up willingly at six am nd his sleepy lover ♡

there are times where u literally have to beg jason to go back to bed cause omfg what r u doing. its six am. no u r not going to go run. no the early bird doesnt get the worm. go. back. to. sleep.

hey nd most times it works cause the thought of holding u close and a sweet sweet dream is enough to get him back in bed

but other times noooo he goes running 🙄

what is bro running from? sleep???

omg but then literally knocks tf out by like nine

one of the times when you had a sleepover planned together

you were running a little late cause ur cabin's ac wasnt working nd everybody was tweaking out

so you had to stay behind and help fix it

by the time you finished and ran over to cabin one , jason was already passed out nd lightly snoring 😭

mind you it was like 9:15 pm

its ok tho u were tired asf too , who knew fixing the ac could be so hard ??

he apologized sm in the morning tho

but u were like its okay el oh el

he cant help it bro he needs his sleep almost as much as he needs you

its better that he falls asleep early than stay up super late tho

cause like when he was helping plan out the new cabins, it was impossible to convince him to go to sleep

he wouldnt stop working nd u were like 😠 fool 😠 go to sleep 😠

nd he was like no thank youuuuu ♡

so you used your powers on him cause he hadNT SLEPT IN DAYS

u were both mad at each other in the morning and things were painfully tense

but you sat down nd talked it out like mature ppl ♡

he srsly hates fighting, he already does it with monsters nd shit so much, he doesnt want to do it w you :(

he apologized for being ignorant and promised he would be better about taking care of himself instead of burying himself in work

you apologized for using your powers on him without saying anything first, and promised you wouldn't do it again ( unless its necessary ) :))

to this day, youve still kept your promises ♡

jason is SUCH a sucker for when you touch his hair

the most relaxing thing everrrrr

i will die on this hill ppl dont play w me

his hair would be soft asf bro

best believe he uses a good conditioner !!

he lets u play w his hair nd do wtv u want with it cause like ~relaxing~

so best believe you have a 0.5 of him with all his hair tied up and looking like a palm tree

0.5s of jason would literally be flawless asf but scary

cause ur like omg by bf is so cute- god DAMN somebody get this man contacts

he looks amazing but THEM EYES

terrifying. staring into ur soul.

theyre cute tho ♡♡

you OBVI have matching pjs

i cannot decide if jason would go to sleep w just pj pants nd no shirt or if would have light blue and white striped pants, a button up shirt, slippers, a cap with a little fuzzy ball at the end, nd a candlestick

jason grace is a SPECTRUM OKAY

but he buys u so many plushies ugh

you own so many jellycats im so jealous

he helps u name them nd their literally ur children like

u have matching build-a-bears !!!

the voice memos are messages u made for each other :(

his to u is a quick ramble about how much he loves u but gets cut off cause he only had 20 seconds ♡♡

nd u get matching outfits for them!!

urs is named 'sleepy' and his is named 'sparky' ♡

i feel like jason gets some real bad nightmares

like yea every demigod does but he gets his more frequently nd their more graphic bcs of what he's seen and gone through :(

most of the time they arent even messages from his dad, theyre just really bad flashbacks of horrible times in his life

but ever since you started spending ur nights together, theyve toned down so much

now he even gets dreams abt your future together sometimes :((

he really wants to tell you about those dreams cause they feel so real but hes scared that youll think its weird or get uncomfortable

little does he know you get those exact same dreams ♡

and on the same nights as he does...

CAUSE UR MEETING IN UR DREAMSSSSSSS

nd thats how ur dad shows his love to you !

zeus doesnt gaf. wtv we dont like him anyway

i mean sometimes hes like erm gtfo my cabin 🤨

but doesn't actually do anything

u literally dont care for anybody's thoughts tho cause you bagged a baddie as sleepy as you ♡

an two: ik i didnt talk abt sleepovers together but like ive got a jason fic called sleepover (thats also gn!) if u wanted to read that :DD but i hoped u enjoyed and have a good day/night!! GO STREAM THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT.

peace from manhattan,

percy jackson ♡

[harmonicakai]

Be Around Me

Part 1 of the "Love is Embarrassing" series

Pairing: Gyuvin x Reader, Ricky x Reader (one-sided), Haobin crumbs, Jiwoong x Reader teeny tiny crumbs 

Summary: Gyuvin is the type of guy to get flustered over everything, but little does he know that you secretly think it makes him even cuter.

Tropes: basketball star!gyuvin, journalist!reader, college AU, basketball!zb1, frat!zb1, secret admirer, fluff, slow burn, crack, unrequited love, mutual pining, gyuvin is a LOSER

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Ricky is annoying lol, mentions of masturbation and sex (mdni!!!)

A/N: y’all will have pry zb1 college basketball au from my cold dead hands!!!!!!!! also for once in my life, y/n is not super insecure we cheered!!

FIC INSPIRED SPOTIFY PLAYLIST <3

“It's obvious she's so out of reach And I'm finding it hard 'cause She makes me feel, makes me feel Like I try, like I try, like I'm trying too hard” —Try Hard, 5 Seconds of Summer

On the court, Kim Gyuvin is the star player of the Wakefield Roses. With his long limbs, he handles the ball with ease, capturing the hearts of everybody in the crowd every time he grins after scoring a basket.

Off the court, he’s an awkward mess. Combine that with the fact that you, the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, are usually the one covering games for the school news, and he’s a goner.

As if it isn’t hard enough for him to make eye contact with the camera, he also has to make sure he doesn’t stare too hard at your shiny hair or glossy lips. His teammates would never let him live it down if he was caught being an absolute creep on video.

What started out as a little crush has grown into a deep admiration. He reads every article that you put out into the school newspaper, sometimes even cutting out the ones you’ve written about him and his team. Everybody makes fun of him for being too scared to just ask you out.

He’s never been one to flirt with girls, but the way you make conversations so easy during interviews, even when he’s stumbling over his words, makes him feel at ease around you. Still, he wonders how much of it is just your journalist persona versus you actually liking him.

Sharing a double with Ricky means he gets exiled a lot in the name of his roommate getting laid. Sometimes, you come back from getting your morning coffee and catch him sleeping on one of the lounge’s couches.

One morning, when your arms are full of pastries that you intend to hoard in your dorm for the upcoming week, you spot him curled up yet again on your way back to your room. 

Without much thought, you stop to leave a muffin and a little note next to it on the table in front of him, conveniently forgetting to sign your name.

It began with cutesy but vague things, like “breakfast for a champion,” but quickly escalated as soon as Gyuvin started leaving notes back for you. 

After a couple exchanges, he even wrote that you didn’t need to be leaving him food at all and that he just wanted to know who you were. Truthfully, you had a really big crush on Gyuvin, but didn’t everybody?

Despite being a bit camera shy, he was always so sweet before and after your interviews, doing his best to make small talk and smiling his smile that could make anybody swoon. 

Plus, you’ve seen how much more comfortable he is with other people, even the cheerleaders, who are all super pretty. He must just be really nice.

So, you continue to leave the notes unsigned, despite each one growing in flirtation. You like the thrill of being mysterious, but you’re mostly just scared of getting rejected since he’s never given you a reason to think he likes you back.

It isn’t until Ricky catches you one morning, a sly grin on his face when he sees you leaving a whole stack of notes on the table.

When you lock eyes with Gyuvin’s roommate, you know the jig is up. Surely, he’ll tell him it’s been you all along.

“Y/N,” Ricky nods when you approach him, his arms crossed. “I have to say, I had my suspicions.”

“Listen, Ricky, I would prefer if we could keep this between us.”

“Gyuvin’s been going on and on about some secret admirer for weeks now. It’s cruel that you won’t tell him who you are.”

“He’s welcome to stop writing back if he doesn’t want to,” you shrug, although it would probably devastate you if that actually happened.

“Oh, trust me, he wants to. Especially if he found out it was you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that every time he finishes an interview with you, he might always run home and lock himself in our bathroom because you get him so riled up. If you know what I mean.”

Your eyes go wide at the revelation. Ricky is surely just messing with you. “That’s—that’s not funny, Ricky. You shouldn’t joke about those kinds of things.”

“I’m not joking,” he chuckles. “Listen, Zeta Beta Omega is throwing a party tonight and the whole team will be there. You should come.”

“I don’t do parties,” you scoff. “Why would you even want me there?”

“Because maybe after a few drinks, you and Gyuvin won’t be so scared to tell each other how you feel. Then you guys can knock off this silly game and he can stop whining about not knowing who his mystery girl is.”

“And go back to whining about how all his roommate does is kick him out every night so he can fuck whoever he lays his eyes on?”

“Exactly. See, Y/N, you get me,” he practically purrs. “So, you show up looking all pretty and talk to my poor, lovesick roomie, and I won’t spill your little secret. Deal?”

“Ugh, fine, I guess. I can’t believe you’re blackmailing me. Deal.”

“Trust me, it’s for your own good, sweetheart.”

You cringe at the pet name. “Is this how you talk to everybody?”

“Yes. Why? Is it working? Are you going to start leaving me notes too?”

“Enjoy the rest of your morning, Ricky. I’ll see you later,” you say, walking past him. Even if he’s annoying, it’s genuinely impressive how he managed to brush off every insult you threw his way.

“See you, Y/N.” You don’t even have to look back at him to know that he winked as he said that.

—————-

Gyuvin knows that staying up all night waiting around for his mystery girl would be an invasion of privacy. At least he thinks the person who keeps leaving him baked goods and notes is a girl. Or maybe he’s just being hopeful that it’s you.

He’s never seen your handwriting before, but he’s been close enough to smell your perfume and he swears he can catch hints of it wafting off the sticky notes.

In fact, he’s started looking forward to Ricky kicking him out of their shared bedroom just because he knows he’ll be waking up to the sweetest surprise when he sleeps in the lounge.

Tonight’s party should be a good distraction from all of the wondering. Maybe, if he’s drunk enough, Ricky will be more embarrassing than alluring and Gyuvin will get to sleep in his own bed. Still, he can’t get this morning’s notes off his mind. 

You’ve left him clues, little doodles of your favorite things. Your coffee order, favorite color, favorite animal, and so on. He’s hoping you’ll be at tonight’s party so he can see if you mention any of the stuff drawn out, but you never show up to these kinds of things.

That was before Ricky got involved. You stood outside the ZBO frat house wearing your worst sneakers and a baby pink minidress, as suggested by one of your suitemates.

If only you didn’t show up by yourself. There were a few familiar faces from class, and of course, the entire basketball team, but nobody you were really friends with. All you could focus on was how sticky the floor was and how much you needed a drink.

“Hi,” you say, finally making your way over to the bartender. It’s the team’s captain, Hanbin. “Just give me whatever tastes the best.”

“One rum punch it is,” he smiles, his whisker dimples making your heart flutter. Why was everybody on the team good looking? “Y/N, right?”

“Yep,” you say, taking the plastic cup from him. “You’re Hanbin. You know, I’ve been meaning to interview you, but you always seem so busy with other things at games.”

“Don’t worry about it. It wouldn’t be nearly as cute as when you interview Gyuvin,” he laughs, eyeing the line of guests waiting for their drinks. “I’ve got a job to do, but I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Thanks for the drink,” you say, holding it up in a sort of cheer before walking away. You take a sip and savor its sweetness, the liquor’s flavor blending in perfectly to the juice. Hanbin’s words stick with you. Were you and Gyuvin cute together?

Sure, he’s so tall that he practically towers over you, but he refuses to ever make eye contact and always keeps his replies so short and polite. Then again, he sure seems to write a lot in the notes that he doesn’t know are going to you.

For a second, you start to consider that you might actually have a chance with him, until you spot him with a beautiful girl touching his arm and whispering something in his ear. Before you can mope for too long, someone is tapping you on the shoulder.

“There you are,” a familiar voice calls over the music. You turn to see Ricky grinning at you, his hair looking almost white under the lights. “You look good.”

“Thanks, I guess,” you huff, crossing your arms over your chest to prevent him from checking you out any further. He glances past you at his roommate.

“Don’t worry about her,” he assures you. You don’t know whether or not to believe him. “Gyuvin has never taken a girl home from these parties, let alone kissed one.”

That’s a relief. “Don’t you have a hook-up to hunt down?” you ask Ricky. He cocks an eyebrow at you, sipping his drink.

“Oh, Y/N. I keep my girls on speed dial,” he chuckles. You cringe at his playboy persona and for once in his life, Ricky is embarrassed. He shuts his mouth, hoping you can’t see him blush.

“Wow,” you say, tilting your head at him. “Don’t tell me young and rich, tall and handsome Shen Ricky can actually feel shame. I really wish I had a cameraman with me right now.”

“Like I said, it works on most people,” he attempts to reason. “You’re just immune to my charms, I guess.”

“Guess so,” you smirk, downing the rest of your drink. You glance behind your shoulder to see Gyuvin still talking to that girl, then back at Ricky, who’s deep in thought.

“Do you want to meet the rest of the team?” he asks, surprising you. You give a slight nod, and that’s all he needs to see before grabbing your wrist and pulling you through the crowd.

At first, Ricky lingers as you make small talk with Matthew, Taerae, and Gunwook, and explains to you that Yujin is actually at home because he’s still in high school. You feel like a horrible journalist—have you been so preoccupied with Gyuvin that you didn’t notice there was a literal child on the team?

By now, Ricky’s abandoned you to go find something, or someone, more entertaining. He’s dropped you off with Jiwoong, the oldest player, who is as aloof as he is annoyingly handsome. The way he eyes you makes your stomach do cartwheels, and you’ve had enough to drink that you can’t see the harm in flirting with a cute boy.

He’s spewing some bullshit about meditating when you cut him off. “I like your hair,” you blurt out, catching him off guard. He turns and smiles at you for the first time since you started talking.

“You do?” he asks, running a hand through it. “I think it’s a little long. I might get a haircut soon.”

“Keep it like that,” you say, not taking your eyes off of him. “It looks good.”

Jiwoong is grinning now, but he remembers that you’re Gyuvin’s crush, and it would be totally wrong to kiss you no matter how badly he wants to. He eyes the crowd, searching for someone to save him from the tension. 

“Hao!” he says, grabbing a boy passing by and pulling him into the conversation. He looks familiar, but he’s certainly no basketball player. “Y/N, this is Zhang Hao. He’s our equipment manager. I’m gonna run to the bathroom.”

“Hi, Y/N,” Hao says, clearly caught off guard. “You’re the one who does the interviews, right?”

“That’s me,” you confirm. Jiwoong’s departure right when you thought he was going to kiss you was beyond bizarre. “I didn’t realize how many people knew me.”

“You’re basically a celebrity to the team,” Hao laughs. “They all think you’re pretty.”

“Makes sense,” you smile, sipping on your third drink of the night. “I am, in fact, very pretty.”

“Agreed. So, which one do you have your eye on?” he asks, leaning in to hear you better. “Or should I guess?”

“Go ahead and guess,” you say, eager to know what he thinks.

Hao takes a second to gather his thoughts. “Well, it’s clear that you’re into Gyuvin based on the way you giggle at his seriously unfunny jokes, but you were also just eye fucking Jiwoong. Then again, wasn’t Ricky dragging you around earlier by the hand?”

“By the wrist,” you correct him. “And yes, I do like Gyuvin. But he’s been talking to some other girl the whole night.”

“He only has eyes for you,” Hao says immediately. This is the second time you’ve heard this tonight, but the first where it’s coming from a trustworthy source.

“And you?” you ask in return, shifting the conversation onto him. “Which one do you have a crush on?”

Hao’s eyes widen. “I–I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not—I don’t—”

“Hao,” you cut him off. “You’ve glanced at Hanbin at least six times since this conversation started.”

He swallows, knowing he’s been caught. “It’s that obvious, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Why don’t you go talk to him?”

“We talk all the time,” Hao mutters, looking down at his shoes. “I’m basically his personal assistant.”

“Do you talk about anything other than basketball?”

“No.”

“Do you even like basketball?”

“...No.”

“Hao,” you say, gripping him by the shoulders and turning him towards the drink station. “Go over there and get your man.”

—————-

As if it weren’t enough of a shock to Gyuvin that you actually showed up to a ZBO party, he’s had to spend all night watching you chat up the entire team except for him. 

They’ve no doubt let it slip to you that he has the biggest crush on you on campus, maybe even the entire world. But he’s way too nice to tell one of his classmates, who attends every game just to hold up a sign with his name on it, that he isn’t interested. 

That’s how he ended up nursing his drink with a tight lipped smile, listening to what’s-her-name ramble on about things that would be more interesting to probably anybody else, all while keeping an eye on you as you bounce around the party.

Your interaction with Jiwoong made him jealous beyond belief, and he makes a mental note that while he’s made his crush on you very clear to his teammates, you’re technically not his and free to flirt with whoever you want.

He watches as you grasp Hao and shake him, muttering some words of encouragement before sending him over to the bar. Finally, you’re alone again. It’s now or never.

“I have to go walk my dog,” Gyuvin lies, not even bothering to let the poor girl react before making his way over to you. You’re wearing pink, his secret admirer’s favorite color. Surely, it’s not just a coincidence. 

“Y/N,” he says a little too loud, startling you. You jump, accidentally knocking yourself into him. Both of your drinks go flying and suddenly, you’re covered in sticky red liquid. 

At this point, Gyuvin might as well just die alone. How did he manage to only spill his drink on you and not himself? He peers down at you, guilt written all over his face, as you take in what’s just happened.

“Here,” he says, reaching into his hoodie’s pocket and pulling out wadded tissues. “They’re clean, I promise. I have, uh, I’ve got allergies, so I carry around a ton.” 

He unfolds one and gently pats the liquid off of you without so much of a second thought. Your silence makes him panic even more, and he’s so focused on drying you off that he doesn’t even notice he’s basically rubbing the tissue on your cleavage.

Gyuvin freezes once he finally notices where his hand is, immediately pulling away and putting a good distance between the two of you. “I am so sorry. Holy shit, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not a pervert! Please don’t think I’m a pervert.”

“Gyuvin,” you finally say, your voice just as sweet as always. He’s pacing as much as he can with everybody packed in so tightly, his long legs taking tiny steps. “It’s okay. I don’t think you’re a pervert.”

He stops and looks down at you. “Really? You’re not just saying that?”

“Really,” you reassure him. “Although I might think you’re a klutz. Who knew Wakefield’s star basketball player was so clumsy off the court?”

“Technically, you bumped into me,” he asserts, his smile returning. “But you’re also the one who got soaked, so let’s just call things even.”

“Deal,” you agree. Sure, it’s fun when boys are obviously flirting with you, but the way Gyuvin has no clue what he’s doing is just so charming. It feels natural when you’re with him, a nice departure from the overused pickup lines and generic compliments that are usually thrown your way.

Gyuvin takes in your stained dress, the red punch seeping into the pink fabric like blood. You look straight out of a horror movie. 

“Here,” he says, shrugging off his varsity jacket and wrapping it around your shoulders before taking in the sight of you. “Wow. You look so…”

“Silly?” you answer, the expanse of material wrapped around you like a tent. 

“Cute. You look so cute.” Gyuvin meets your eyes for a split second before looking away again, his ears now feeling even hotter than when he saw you with Jiwoong. “I can get you a new shirt, if you want. My room isn’t far from here.”

“You want me to go with you to your room?” you giggle, enjoying how flustered you make him. Hearing his teammates talk about how much he likes you has taken a weight off your shoulders, and you don’t know how you ever thought he wasn’t into you before.

“No! Well, yes, but only if you want to. And I’m not using this as an excuse to bring you back to my room. I just know you like pink and I have this one pink shirt that shrunk in the wash and I think you’d look really good in it. Plus, I can start a load of laundry and get your dress all clean.”

This is the most you’ve ever heard him talk, his voice a few pitches higher than usual when he’s rambling. Plus, if he knows how much you like pink, he must be following your clues. “Let’s go to your room, then.” 

—————-

While Gyuvin’s side of the room is much neater than you expected, Ricky’s side looks weirdly perfect. Not a single thing is out of place, with every item labeled or color coordinated. You’re shocked that two basketball players can manage to keep such a small room so tidy.

“Sorry, it’s kind of a mess,” Gyuvin apologizes, moving to make his bed. “You can sit here.” 

“If this is what you think is messy, you don’t want to see my room,” you say, taking in all of the decorations. Usually, when you’re in a guy’s room, it’s all navy blue and manly movie posters, but Gyuvin’s walls are so colorful and covered in photos of his family and friends. 

One piece of paper catches your eye—the very first article you wrote about the basketball team. You scan his wall, catching more and more newspaper clippings, all penned by you. Gyuvin’s too busy putting things away and rustling through his drawers to notice you staring at them in awe.

“Here we go,” he calls out, turning and holding up a shrunken pink t-shirt and a pair of sweats. His grin fades as soon as he catches you reading one of your own articles, which have been on his wall for so long that he’s forgotten they’re even there. “Oh. Uh, please don’t think I’m a creep.”

“It’s not creepy. It’s sweet. They’re all about you, anyway,” you say, turning to take the shirt from him. It has a picture of a silly looking greyhound on the front of it.

“Right,” Gyuvin says, shrugging off the interaction. He pulls himself onto the bed next to you, sitting cross legged and making sure to leave a gap between you and him. “That’s my dog, Eumppappa.” 

“Eumppappa is an amazing name,” you muse, turning to smile at him. Your faces end up being so close that Gyuvin thinks his heart has stopped beating. In his attempt to scoot back, he ends up tumbling off of his bed.

“Fuck,” he says as he lands on the ground. You peer down from the lofted bed at his long limbs sprawled across the rug. If you didn’t think he was a complete loser before, you probably do now.

“Are you okay?” you call out, watching as he sits up and rubs his head.

“I’m good,” Gyuvin assures you, taking a breather before getting to his feet and heading towards the door. “I’m going to step out and let you change. Let me know when you’re decent.”

“Will do,” you smile, giving him a thumbs up. You strip your clothes off, throwing on the t-shirt and sweats and pulling the drawstring until you know they won’t fall off of you. “You can come back in, Gyuvin!”

He stumbles in, practically waiting with his body pressed against the door for the moment he could see you again. God, could you really not tell how much he liked you before tonight?

Gyuvin eyes you drowning in his clothes and he knows that he’d move earth and heaven if it meant that you’re who he got to wake up to for the rest of his life. 

“I’ll go throw this in the washer and then we can head back to the party,” he stammers, snapping out of his daydream and grabbing your dress. Your smile is so pretty right now, even after all of his awkwardness, that it takes everything in him not to get hard just looking at you.

By the time he gets back from the laundry room, you’ve decided you don’t want to go back to the party, especially not dressed like this.

“Oh,” Gyuvin says, disappointed that his time with you has been cut short by his clumsiness. “Do you want me to walk you back to your place?”

“I live down the hall,” you remind him. You hope he doesn’t realize you could’ve just as easily grabbed your own change of clothes.

“Right,” he grimaces. He knows that. He’s always trying to time leaving his room perfectly so that he runs into you on the way to class.

Just like whenever you interview Gyuvin, there’s an awkward silence, except this time it can’t be edited out. He’s back to looking everywhere in the room except at you.

“It’s not even midnight,” you say, glancing at your phone’s lockscreen. “Do you want to watch a movie?”

“Like, together?” Gyuvin asks in disbelief. You nod, an amused smirk on your face. “Duh, of course you meant together. Yeah, sure, let’s watch a movie.”

Moments later, you’re sitting in the dark with Gyuvin, your legs pulled close to your chest as you watch Amélie projected onto the wall above Ricky’s bed. 

Every once in a while, Gyuvin lets himself relax, his arm or his leg brushing against you by accident. After spending half of the film pulling away out of fear that he’s bothering you, he finally settles for having his fingers barely touching yours. 

“You know,” he starts, his eyes still locked on the movie. “I kind of have my own mystery going on right now.”

“Really?” you say, feigning shock. “About what?”

“Someone keeps leaving me notes when I sleep in the lounge. Sometimes treats, but mostly notes. They don’t sign their name, but today they left me some little doodles as clues and I’ve been trying to figure them out.”

The way you’re reacting makes his stomach turn. How could it be you when you have a look on your face that says you have no clue what he’s talking about?

“Well, I’ve been meaning to work on my investigative journalism. What if I helped you track your secret admirer down?”

If you aren’t going to fall for him, he’ll at least settle for being friends. “That’d be awesome, Y/N.” 

Suddenly, Ricky comes crashing into the dorm room, his lips attached to some girl’s face. He pulls away from her for a second, barely registering that you’re even there, before pulling out his wallet and throwing a couple hundred dollar bills at Gyuvin. “Get out. Now.”

Before you can protest, Ricky’s already unbuttoning his shirt, and you’ll gladly evacuate if it means you don’t have to watch whatever freaky shit is about to go down.

“I didn’t know he pays you to sleep in the lounge,” you laugh, your arms full of Gyuvin’s comforter as you walk down the hall. “With that kind of money, he could just buy an apartment.”

“He could,” Gyuvin starts, holding his pillow in one hand and the stack of notes—your notes—in the other. “But then he wouldn’t get the true college experience. Plus, he only throws money at me when it’s a last minute thing.”

“How much was that, anyway? Like $300?” you ask. He stops and takes out his wallet.

“$400. Pretty standard,” he shrugs, counting the bills. Your eyes widen at the total.

“Are you going to share?” you pout. “I got kicked out too.”

“You can have it,” he says, handing you the money, his brain short circuiting at the way you bat your eyelashes at him. You marvel at the crisp bills. “This is just another Friday night for me.”

“Okay, young and rich, tall and handsome Kim Gyuvin. Thanks for buying my dinner for the rest of the semester!” You don’t know this, but if you asked him to, Gyuvin would buy you whatever you wanted.

Before you can get down to helping him figure out the doodles, or throwing him off your trail, the two of you are fast asleep. Instead of the lounge’s couch, Gyuvin curls up on the oversized bean bag on your bedroom floor. It’s much too small for his frame to actually be comfortable, but he somehow feels more content just being around you.

—————-

Taglist: @orangesodafoam @theresawtf @nerezza123 @gyvnexe @xiurmy-everything @wollycobbl3-blr @cloudgyubi @yunnie-11 @wheatrice

[perlelune]

Tag, You’re It | Ethan Landry | ii.

Happy, carefree college days meet their abrupt end when every guy who approaches you mysteriously turns up dead.

Warnings: NON-CON, Stalking, Bimbo!Reader, Clueless Reader, Loss of Virginity, Incel Ethan, Cheerleader Reader, Skin Carving (w/knife), Canon Typical Slashing, Voyeurism, Kidnapping

This is a dark story. Heed warnings before reading under the cut.

𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

The party’s already in full swing when you arrive at the OKB house. While getting ready, you lost track of time. Putting the finishing touches on your hair and nails took longer than you planned. 

You dodge the bodies swaying to the loud music to make your way to your friends through the swirling blue lights. 

Mindy spots you right away and waves at you. 

"Not bad, freshman," she praises as you twirl in front of her and Mindy to show off your nurse costume decorated with splashes of fake blood.  

They’re both sprawled on the couch, limbs twined. Expectedly, only Anika made the effort to don anything resembling a costume, a pumpkin-colored hat with a bloody knife poking out of it sitting atop her head. 

Mindy even bothering to come considering what happened the last time she attended a frat party is already a huge effort on her part. 

You chat for some time, sharing the latest news regarding your friends. 

 You learn that apparently Tara got into it with her sister…again.

A lot of tension has built between the two of them lately, Sam’s protectiveness clashing with Tara’s craving for independence. 

Maybe Sam’s been overdoing…but who can blame her?

Those two have been through hell and back. 

"Have you guys seen Connor?" 

While you attempt to sound casual, even tossing a shrug, Mindy sees right through you and flashes you a teasing grin. 

"One-track minded, huh?"

Your face warms. "Sorry, I just…I really looked forward to seeing him."

Anika gives your hand an encouraging squeeze. 

"It’s okay, babe. To be young and in love."

"And horny," Mindy adds, dragging a quick eye over your outfit as her smile broadens. 

Her comment sparks more heat in your cheeks. Sure, things between you and Connor are growing steamier. But you don’t want to rush anything. You like him, and you want your first time to be special, romantic.

"I’ll see you guys later."

"Have fun," Mindy says, waving her beer bottle at you.

Your search resumes and you grow nervous, pondering if Connor is even in attendance. Maybe you missed him. Downsides of running late. 

Damn you and your tendency to spend hours dolling yourself up. 

 As you wander across the room, you nearly crash into a familiar broad, muscular back.

An easy smile creeps on your face when your friend turns to face you. 

"Hi."

"Hey, looking good."

"You too, cowboy."

You’re pretty certain Chad’s never looked bad a day in his life. There’s a reason why he’s the most popular player on the team, and one of the most sought-after guys at Blackmore. Well…several, starting with the fact that his hotness is only matched by his unwavering kindness to everybody he meets. 

You suppose if you hadn’t known him for so long, you’d harbor a crush on him too. But you’re too familiar with Chad to see him in that light. You still recall when he insisted on wearing a Pokemon onesie for nearly a year. You used to watch cartoons with him and Mindy as children, play together. He’s even tried to get you into Magic: The Gathering at some point but you couldn’t understand how the game works so he gave up. He’s like the brother you never had. 

"So I hear you've met Ethan. He's cool, right?" He throws his muscular arm around Ethan’s neck affectionately. "A whole snack he is. Look at him." An endearing tinge of red decorates Ethan’s cheeks, his gaze fleeing yours. 

It draws a smile from you. You’re glad they’re getting along. 

You tilt your head, gauging his appearance. Confusion fills you.

You’re not exactly sure what Ethan’s costume is supposed to be. A knight perhaps? Either way, it’s original and it suits him.

"Hey again," you greet. 

He lifts two bashful fingers as a response, returning your smile.

"Yeah. I appreciate him helping me out."

Ethan’s chestnut gaze widens at your words. 

College’s busy enough for everyone. It’s incredible of him to offer some of his free time to help you out when it doesn’t benefit him in any way. 

Ethan opens his mouth as if he were about to say something but, before he can speak, someone taps you on the shoulder, beckoning your attention. 

You pivot in your high heels.

Your chest floods with warmth at the sight welcoming you. 

"Hey, gorgeous," Connor hums, giving you an appreciative onceover that turns your legs into jelly. His voice lowers as he approaches you. "I’ve been looking for you all night. Where have you been?"

Your heart skips a beat at his closeness, the scent of his masculine cologne and his mesmerizing blue eyes overwhelming you. 

"Just ran a bit late," you mumble. 

His hooded gaze takes you in as he suggests, "Well, you’re here now. Wanna go hang out in my car?"

Pursing your mouth, you hesitate. 

"I…I don’t know. Is that safe? Mindy says it’s always best to stay in crowded-"

He halts your explanation with a hand under your chin. Bewildered, you gawk at him. 

His pearly whites shimmer in the dusky blue and green hues saturating the room. 

"Do you trust me, gorgeous?"

You blink up at him, dazed and lost in the sea of his gaze. 

"Y-Yes, I do."

"I’ll keep you safe. I promise. Come on."

His hand engulfs yours as Connor begins to drag you toward the exit.

Chad’s deep, concerned voice interrupts the abrupt getaway. 

"Are you sure?" His forehead creases as he inches closer. "You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You know that, right?" 

At first, you’re a bit confused. 

Then you remind yourself he’s just being protective. Both he and Mindy share that trait. In fact, her attentive eyes carve a searing dent in your skin from the other side of the room. 

Usually, you adore that about them, how caring they are. But right now, you find it a bit much. 

Connor isn’t a threat. He’s just the guy you like, not a serial killer. 

You place a placating hand on Chad’s arm. 

"It’s fine. I trust him. Catch you later, okay?"

He gives a belated nod, his jaw clenching as he stares Connor down, before letting you walk away. 

You wave Ethan goodbye but are somewhat dejected when he stares at you and doesn’t reply, his blank expression unreadable.

Both you and Connor step outside. 

Moonlight bathes the damp pavement in silvery light as you trail behind him. 

He wastes no time once you’ve reached his expensive sports car, pinning you against the hood and kissing you senseless. 

"Fuck, been dying to do this ever since I saw you in that slutty costume," he purrs against your temple. His hands begin to roam over you, impatient fingers fondling your curves. 

When he sneaks under your short dress and tugs at the waistband of your panties, you push against his chest. 

A sudden tide of discomfort swells inside you. 

"Connor…wait. This is going a little fast for me," you giggle.

Ignoring your protests, he keeps kissing you and even turns things up a notch by grabbing a fistful of your ass. You gasp. 

"Just relax. I won’t hurt you, gorgeous."

His weight presses against you, a sizzling cage of need you can’t escape. Tears prick at your eyes. 

"Connor, please…" you whimper.

Annoyance ripples in his tone as the grip on your rear gets firmer. 

"How you’re gonna be a fucking cocktease then give me blue balls, come on, gorgeous."

His tone is light but your chest is heavy. This isn’t how tonight was supposed to go. You hoped Connor would be gentle and nice. 

This isn’t nice. 

And you’re starting to feel a little scared. As the taut bulge in his crotch rubs at your front, your stomach knots.

But things don’t get to wander any further.

In fact, they hit a sudden stop as Connor stills against you. Your brows knit. 

As he chokes on his own breath, blood gushes from his mouth, painting the front of your costume crimson. 

Your eyes widen as his head lolls before he slumps to the pavement with a heavy thud. 

Time stands still when your gaze lifts. 

Your heart slams against your ribcage.

A tall figure clad in black and donning a Ghostface mask is now standing before you.

The blood rushing in your veins makes your ears ring.

The stranger cocks his head, studying you for a few seconds before pouncing on Connor’s prone form like a starved hyena. 

Horror-struck, you gawk as the stranger rains vicious stab after vicious stab upon Connor's writhing body. Each strike draws a shudder from you, more violent than the last and causing scarlet rivers to flow from every part of Connor. 

The world becomes red. 

A scream bubbles in your throat but remains trapped in it, shock striking you mute. 

When Connor's body stops moving, the sickening squish of the blade twisting out of his mangled flesh reaches you. 

With the knife in his hand still dripping blood, its crimson hue catching the moonlight, the killer rises to his feet. 

His focus travels to you. Your insides coil, deadly anticipation gripping you as tight as a fist. 

A gravelly, distorted voice rises beneath the mask. 

"This is the part where you run, princess."

Right…

It’s what happens in those horror movies Mindy had you watch with her, you think. The characters run away, fighting whatever’s chasing them with all their might. 

It’s the sensible thing to do. 

And you want to move. You should move. But you can't. 

Even breathing is toilsome, stilted whimpers and gasps spilling from your chest instead. 

All you can do is peer into the pupil-less gaze of the mask as you crumble into a quivering, sobbing heap onto the pavement. 

The killer inches closer and it's as if your heart jumps out of your chest. 

His blade kisses the trembling flesh of your throat, right above your racing pulse. 

Languid tears roll down your face as he traces your jugular. 

Cool metal slices past your collarbone, to your rapidly heaving chest. 

The song of the night yields to the symphony of fear echoing in your ears. Every scattered heartbeat. Every uneven breath. Every desperate sob.

A sharp stinging blooms in your delicate flesh as he carves oblong patterns on your breast with his knife. 

His motions are slow and focused, as if your skin’s the canvas and his blade the brush. 

Paralyzed, you don’t move. His cloaked figure bends and blurs in your misty vision, more monster than man in the scarce light provided by the street lamps.

He slants his head when he’s done, admiring his handiwork. 

This must be it, you infer, the moment all of it ends. 

Your eyes quake shut as you wait for the inevitable blow. 

You wait… An eternity it seems. 

For the blood. For the agony. For the darkness. 

Yet nothing comes. 

When you open your eyes, Ghostface is gone, the only nightmarish vision before you being that of Connor's body lying unmoving on the pavement. 

You pay no attention to the chaos around you as you pull the thin blanket closer to your frame.

The lights of the ambulance twinkle in your hazy sight. 

Amidst the chatter of shocked students standing in the street behind the yellow tape, the whispers of reassurance of Mindy and Tara fade to white noise in your ears. 

Numb, you gawk as they drag Connor’s body away on a gurney.

For some silly reason, you keep expecting him to rise again, to not be dead.

Because this cannot be real.

This cannot have happened. 

The police ask you a barrage of questions and you give mechanical answers. None of them help and they grow frustrated with you, sparking a heated argument between your friends and the stubborn cop. 

"I’m just doing my job," he insists, raising his hands when Chad gets in his face.

If it weren’t for Detective Bailey vouching for you, you’re not entirely sure you wouldn’t be sitting in the back of a patrol car right now. 

"Can’t you see the kid’s traumatized. She doesn’t know anything," he berates one his co-worker who seemed unwilling to accept your version of events. 

The one where you froze and Ghostface somehow let you live with only a strangely shaped scar on your chest as a souvenir. The one the medic commented looked a little like a heart. 

Absently, you pat the gauze covering the healing wound. 

It's weird…but it hurts your head to ponder why this occurred. The only emotion you can process is the crippling guilt consuming you. 

You’re alive while Connor's cold body is on its way to the morgue.

Your friends gather around you, their warmth chasing away the night’s chill. While Tara and Mindy sit next to you on the pavement, Chad stands protectively in front of you. 

"I-I didn’t do anything, Tara. I just let him…" Your voice cracks, withering into a sob. 

The arm around your shoulder gets tighter.

"Hey, don’t talk like that. It’s not your fault," she feverishly responds.

You open your mouth to argue but close it once it dawns on you that all the energy’s been drained from your body. There is none left in you.

Still, you can’t help but disagree. If it were Tara, her sister, or even Mindy, you bet they’d have fought tooth and nail instead of shrinking and crying like you did. 

You’re the weak link in your group. Not smart enough, or strong enough. 

The thought makes you sob harder. 

Mindy rubs circles on your back. 

You cast a quick glance around before your tearful gaze finds hers. 

"Where’s Anika?"

"She went home. She’s not great with blood. She sends her love though."

You nod at that. If you could, you’d be home too, hugging your stuffed bear and trying your best to forget this awful night ever happened. 

Chad’s irate tone startles you out of your fog. 

"Speaking of people not being here… where the hell is Ethan?" 

You blink up at him, confused as he and Mindy trade a pointed, heavy look.

You don’t get it. 

Sure, Ethan’s new to the group, and the twins are slow to give their trust. You know that. But Ethan? He’s entirely too sweet and kind to have anything to do with this…Right?

Ethan wouldn’t. You’re sure of it. 

~

[peaxhygirl]

𝙰𝚁𝙼𝙰𝙽𝙳𝙾 𝙰𝚁𝙴𝚃𝙰𝚂 𝚇 𝙵𝙴𝙼𝙰𝙻𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳𝙴𝚁

: ̗̀➛𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝙱𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝚏𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝙾𝙲

: ̗̀➛𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢: On the final night of an AMMO investigation their bust is blown up by an unexpected party.

: ̗̀➛𝙰𝙽: Hey y'all! This is my first time writing in a while, so it hope it doesn't suck lmao. Let me know if you guys are interested in this series cause I got lots more to come!

AMMO's newest addition to the team was Armando Aretas. That's right, the same Armando Aretas that had been a convicted drug dealer, cop killer, and fugitive.

It took some serious string pulling but Rita and Judy managed to get Armando amnesty due to his help with bringing down Lockwood and McGrath. It took a while, but they managed to get it done. In exchange, he needed to work with Miami PD.

Armando was a dangerous man, that was true enough, but he was also an asset. Better to have him on your team than to be against him. Plus, it helped everyone keep an eye on him. He hadn't quite earned the trust of those in his new life.

There was a part of him that didn't care. He'd lived this long without the approval or validation of others, so what was different? Then there was a part of him that wanted to put that behind him. His previous life was a tiresome one.

AMMO had been steaking out a night club for about a week. They'd finally gathered enough proof for them to carry out their raid. Tonight was the night, they just needed to get the green light from their UC.

"Yo, Mike. You think we could stop at that hot dog shack on the corner after this?" Marcus attempted to whisper but the small space in the truck provided no privacy. "Hell no, Marcus. Teresa just said your cholesterol was sky high and you gained about three pounds this month."

"Uh.., now, see. Did you have to put my business out there like that, Mike?" Armando shook his head. His father and surrogate uncle were admittedly the best part of his new life, even if they were annoying. "Will you two shut up?" He muttered.

Kelly and Dorn's smirks of amusement always seemed to be present whenever they were with the three men. "Hey hey hey. What's happening?"

Armando's eyes locked on the commotion breaking out on the scene. The place was getting swarmed. Their UC hadn't sent the signal so it sure as shit wasn't them. A woman appeared on screen gun drawn and shouting for everybody to get down. "Who the fuck is that?"

After the raid ended, AMMO exited their van. Armando charging over to the woman who was speaking to who he could only assume she was debriefing to. This woman was clearly police, but she wasn't with them, so as far as he was concerned-- She was out of line. The area was lit up with flashing red and blue lights, cops littered throughout the parking lot, but he was zeroed in on her.

"What the fuck was that and who the fuck are you?" His accent thick in anger at this woman who'd just blew up his mission. His first big chance at showing the team he was really with them.

"Excuse me? You better back the fuck up that's who the fuck I am. Who the fuck are you?" She was feisty that's for sure, responding to him in the same way he'd come at her. In all honesty, it'd taken her a moment to register he was speaking to her because, what?? His hostility towards her was at an all time high for someone who she'd never laid eyes on before.

"Your little raid fucked up our cocaine bust." His nostrils flared in anger as he stepped to the woman a few inches shorter than him. "Or maybe your cocaine bust got in the middle of my prostitution bust." She shot back. "Again, who the hell are you?" The low rasp of his voice was venomous. "I don't answer to you, I don't even know who you are. Let's start with that before charging over here like you hot shit or something."

Armando opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by Marcus. "Hey! Ok, everyone. Let's just calm down." Marcus laughed nervously, stepping between the two of them. "Miss, I'm so sorry for Armando. You know, it's that Latin fire in 'em. Hard to turn off. Um, I'm Marcus and We're AMMO. You are?"

"Raven." Her tone softened but her eyes still blazed with anger in the direction of the young male, who was admittedly cute but clearly had her fucked up. "Vice."

[antimony-medusa]

Writing Stronger Female Characters

Whenever you start diverging from canon, you have to make some decisions about how to characterize people. You can no longer pull directly from canon, you have to fill in the gaps yourself in whatever way supports the characters and relationships you want to highlight. And the further you get out into AU territory, the more you have to fill in the scaffolding for the story yourself, from creating interactions between characters who haven't interacted very much, to placing characters within a pantheon, to creating new dialogue or interactions to support the new beats for the story you're telling.

And a thing I see fairly often when people are writing female characters is that people want these characters to be celebrated, right? They don't want to throw their female characters under the bus, they don't want them to be forgotten— and especially here when we're drawing from canons where so often there are few female characters, so they want them to stand out. So as part of this au-construction, these writers give their female characters all the positive attributes. They're super strong, or super beloved, or super badass— but that's kind of all they are.

And while as with all writing things there is a way to do this successfully— there isn't a writing rule that can't be broken if you come at it in the right angle— this can unfortunately backfire and end up making shallow or unsatisfying female characters in a way I think people aren't intending— so I thought I'd point it out!

To use an example I see fairly often, people will be writing Kristin with SBI, and they'll go "oh and all the kids love kristin way more than phil, they think he sucks but they just love her!" or they'll be writing phistin and they go "and kristin is just so powerful and awesome and phil is just her lame husband, haha, don't know why she likes him" and then, importantly, that's as far as the characterization goes. They make Kristin awesome and or beloved, but that's where they stop, and so they never get any characterization beyond "popular and powerful".

Writing a woman as a beloved mother or a powerful force/badass wife is not inherently a bad characterization, but if you just leave it there, that's just basically all that sitcom characterization does, and I'd like to think we can do better than a tv show with a laugh track. If you think about real people in your life, even if you go "oh man everyone loves [name]", you wouldn't describe them in just that way. You'd go on and talk about their sense of humour, or they're really into pokemon, or they also have two cats that are badly behaved, or they work in an office and can do a really scary customer service voice— you'd have other things to say about them! Or if you think about how someone is a badass in your real life, you'd say about how they're a black belt in two martial arts and a scary lawyer, but you'd also talk about how they bake really well, and they do tutoring for kids, and they can drink like a fish if you get them out to the bar, and they have no spice tolerance, and just more aspects of their life, you wouldn't stop there. Putting a character on a pedestal as better than the other characters actually cuts them off from the characters you're letting have flaws and woes and enemies. It makes them less vivid and less real as characters. If we were talking about real people that we were treating like that we'd say it was dehumanizing— you're not seeing them as a real person— but when you're talking about characters, it's just shallow characterization, and it plays into some tropes that we've probably seen too often from weak writing like sitcoms or comedy that doesn't really care about its side characters. So it's a pitfall to avoid that I think that some people aren't aware they're falling into. This doesn't mean that you have to make everybody dislike your female character, or you can't make them awesome, but beloved or powerful is where you start characterization, not where you stop. You also need to throw in an ability to let them say their piece, or quirks or flaws, or someone who *doesn't* like them, or something more that lets them come alive more. You gotta take them off the pedestal and consider them as a real character, you gotta rotate the blorbo just a little bit more— flip the scene a bit in your brain and think about the scene from their POV, consider it a bit longer.

Or to take another example, I read a bunch of Syndicate fic, and I read one the other day where Niki was the Blood God (awesome) and specifically was written as better at fighting than Techno, he normally couldn't beat her in a fight. Now while in isolation that's awesome, because your reader is probably also familiar with canon, they start to compare this characterization to canon. In canon Niki was not better at PVP than Techno, so this change stands out. And the reader starts to go "wait, what victory condition is being messaged here", and the message that is being sent is that being good at PVP is good, that's the victory condition, that's what makes you awesome, and the canon characterization was kind of weak, you had to fix it.

Now if you meant to message that, that's one thing, but the impression I get from these fics is that they want to celebrate the character that they like from canon, they don't want to tear the character down. But by trying to pile awesome things on this character, they ended up undermining the character accidentally, and you run into the same issue as what was happening with Kristin, where the characterization is "badass", putting the character on a pedestal, and nothing else. I'm sure we've all seen action movies where there's a whole bunch of guys and one girl and they make the girl really awesome (cause you don't want to be sexist) and her characterization is "badass girl", full stop. And well, that's awesome, I love a badass girl, but if that's all you've got, you didn't write a very well rounded character, you wrote exactly the same character as five hundred Hollywood writers who went "oh shit I forgot to add any women" and threw someone in at the last minute.

So what, does that mean that you have to write niki as bad at PVP, or being beaten in PVP, to respect character? Not at all! The trick here is to focus on other things, spend more time with the character. Okay, so PVP wasn't one of the canon character's strengths— what were her other strengths? Cause there are *always* other strengths— with c!niki maybe you go to her force of conviction despite opposition, or her survival stubbornness when she was abandoned in a hostile world, or her desire to build and create, or her will not take nonsense attitude— even doing PVP despite not being strong in it, getting up and trying again. There's lots of things, I'm not gonna call myself a c!niki expert, but you can do it if you spend a little more time with the character. AND that doesn't mean that you can't write badass women— Hannahxxrose absolutely should give any guy on the server a run for their money when it comes to PVP, on any server she's on. That's just fucking canon. Just also you need to take it a little bit further, beyond being a badass— what makes them tick? What are their struggles? What are their quirks? What do they worry about, or laugh about, or do for fun? Maybe you just have a scene to characterize them, maybe it's a short fic— how do you make them have a life outside of this scene, how do you make them come alive? If you were writing this scene from their POV, if they had a life beyond this scene or this story, what would they say, and can you include that even when someone else is the POV character? Or heck, flip it and DO a scene from their POV, let them have the spotlight in a story and see how the character acquires depth and quirks.

There's a joke in writing where a worried male writer goes to an experienced writer who's known for writing women and goes "but how do I write women" and the experienced writer goes "pretend they're people" and goes back to writing. And that is kind of a bitter joke about how society is bad for treating women (or any other group— disabled people, autistic people, people of colour, disabled people, non-christian people— the list goes on) like they're incomprehensible and alien. But it is also just that simple, when you are writing someone who isn't from the dominant paradigm. You do your research, if it's someone from an experience you don't share, but mostly the important thing is to remember that you're writing people. They have just as many hopes and dreams and quirks and flaws as you do, and any time you boil them down to only one attribute— even if it's a positive attribute— you end up with a weaker character and writing than you might mean to.

So that's how, obliquely, to get a stronger character, you need to make sure that your character is more than just strong (or beloved, or powerful, etc), they also need to have more character traits— they actually need weaknesses and quirks— and that's gonna take you one step closer to your female characters feeling like real (awesome) people.

[lie-lacdreams]

Thermodynamics and Turmoil (Curly x Reader pt. 1)

Hello! I'm putting out my very first piece ever and I'm so excited to feed the masses as much Mouthwashing content as they deserve :) This game has a lot of sensitive topics to it and as such I'll try my best to bring them up as appropriately as possible. The story is gonna start off slow and elaborative because I love all of the Tulpar crew so much (except for Jollof rice, Jimneva convention) and they all have such interesting personalities that I couldn't help but to explore their wants and aspirations. This story will feature an alternative ending to the game because I cannot stomach sad things they make me very sad </3

Next

engineer! reader x curly TW: a bad word or two, I think word count ~ 1.9K

Curly was back in the medical bay for his routine psychological evaluation with Anya. With all of the questions answered and out of the way, the both of them were just chatting before he had to go back to the cockpit and finish up his duties for the afternoon.

“You’re all good to go, Captain. Seems like there isn’t much change from your answers like last time, as usual.” Anya let out a tired sigh. 

“That should be a good thing, given we’ve already been on this trip for almost two months now. We should all be used to the routine around here at this point. Has everybody else been adjusting alright?” Curly stood up from his chair, Anya following suit as they moved towards the door. 

“For the most part, everyone’s been well but I wish they would open up or take the assessment seriously. I mean, at least Daisuke has been making my job a little easier – he just talks and talks.” she mused. Curly gave a little chuckle in response, thinking about the last-minute intern that the Pony Express decided to add on board to their journey. He wasn’t exactly the most helpful – at least according to Swansea – but he brought an air of lightheartedness that they all needed in a cut-corners, shitty working environment like the Tulpar. “Oh, actually, have you seen (Y/N) lately?”

Curly thought for a moment. Along with Daisuke, (Y/N) was another late addition to the crew. The Tulpar has started showing its age and as such, there were increasingly consistent problems with the water pipes, life support, and fuel usage. However, instead of giving the crew a new ship, they handed the responsibility of keeping the ship up and running to the passengers. After their previous trip, Swansea went straight to the higher-ups and ripped them a new one, stating that “he couldn’t be expected to perform miracles”. When the crew was assigned this trip, they were all surprised that corporate had listened to Swansea’s complaints and granted them with another engineer. (Y/N) was self-sufficient, only really needing to work with Swansea to consult him on how best to move forward and with Daisuke when Swansea needed a break from his overzealousness. As a result, Curly saw and knew very little about her. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. Why?”

“She’s due for her check-in as well but I haven’t seen her these past two days to tell her that. Go figure. We share a room yet recently she’s been waking up earlier and sleeping later than I have. When I went to ask Swansea and Daisuke if they’d seen her, they said that they haven’t seen her at all today.” 

“Huh. She’ll show up eventually. This ship only has so many places a person can be. If I see her, I’ll let her know to go straight to you. Thanks, Anya.” He patted her shoulder lightly before heading out, making his way back to the cockpit to fulfill his duties. 

In the evening, the crew convened at the table for dinner. Curly always looked forward to this time of day, where everyone had finished all of their tasks and could open up with light hearted banter. With only the six of them on the ship for over a year, all they had were each other, and he cherished all of his crew members. Anya and Swansea were chatting to the left of him about Swansea’s kids back on Earth. To his right, he saw Jimmy get increasingly agitated as Daisuke tried convincing him to swap dinners with him. That’s when he spotted the empty chair across from him and realized that (Y/N) was still missing. 

No one was concerned by her absence; it was a common occurrence, and he trusted Daisuke and Swansea to be in the loop about what she was up to and would report to him if anything happened. During the work day, everyone was so consumed with their jobs and couldn’t afford to worry about the whereabouts of the others, unless they needed to lend a hand. Curly wasn’t an exception to this. As the captain it was his responsibility to make sure his crew members were okay and that things were moving along nicely, and so far there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that indicated otherwise. With everyone finishing up their dinner, clean up began before people bid each other goodnight. 

In the middle of the night, he woke up parched. Debating whether or not to get a glass of water, he finally got out of bed and made his way to the lounge where the kitchen was. Leaving his room, he could hear a faint clacking noise grow slightly louder the closer he got to the lounge entrance. Opening the door to the lounge, he was finally met with the sixth crew member whom no one had seen all day. Sitting at the dining table, (Y/N) rested her feet on the seat of her chair and had her knees drawn up to her chest. All around her were books and loose papers scattered about. Her hair was messed up, likely a direct cause of the hand she kept on her head, fingernails digging into her scalp. Curly gently cleared his throat, trying to make her aware of his presence. Shooting a tired glance his way, her eyes widened a bit before immediately sitting up straight and tidying her hair. She looked guilty, like she was caught in the middle of doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing. 

“Finally, we get to see her. Where have you been, Miss Absentee?” He sent a small smile her way, walking over to her.

“C-Captain! What are you doing up? It’s quite late.” (Y/N) nervously fidgeted.

“Just up for a glass of water. What are you doing up so late is the real question.” He crossed his arms. 

“Just doing a bit of work. Can’t get enough of it.” She joked dryly. Curly frowned and pulled the chair next to her to take a seat. She sighed and leaned back, finally relaxing from tensing up after seeing Curly enter the room. (Y/N) didn’t know her captain well, and as such she always tried her best to save face and remain professional with him, but at this hour of the night, she was too tired to keep up with decorum. 

He leaned on the table, facing her. “I know we may not be as close as you are with Swansea and Daisuke, or even Anya, but as your captain I care about how you’re doing and I want you to open up to me.” Her expression became hesitant as she shifted in her seat. “We’re all busy and even though it’s common for you to go missing during meal times, seeing you like this now is making me worried about how you’re doing.”

(Y/N) kept quiet for a second, looking like she was mulling something over before picking up the object right in front of her.  “Do you know what this is?” 

“An abacus. Interesting that you have one.” he said. 

“Yeah.” she sighed. She moved her gaze from Curly to the plastic Polle statue in the corner of the room. “Before I got on the Tulpar, they had given me all of the supplies I needed to fulfill my duties and do what they asked of me. I had met Swansea only briefly before so he could give me manuals and maps of the ship’s layout. I got the uniform, the steel-toed boots, notebooks, writing utensils, and a solar-powered calculator.” (Y/N) shook her head. “You’d think that would be enough to prepare me to be here, but no . If only there was a way to have a bit of sunlight in outer space in a ship with no windows. They gave me something so crucial but useless out here. I had brought the abacus on board with me for sentimental reasons, but ironically enough it’s the only thing here that allows me to do my job.” She glanced back at him. “I’m not sure if you were aware, but Pony Express lied and said this was an internship for graduate students. Little did I know I’d be thrown into something I wasn’t going to have much guidance in. I needed a break from my PhD and even though the pay wasn’t that great, I was desperate for some sort of escape from academia.  I thought going to space would give me that, but every day I wake up is a constant reminder that I’m so underqualified. Swansea is an expert with the mechanical side of the ship and he’s helped me a great deal, but the fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of it all are things he knows nothing about. So I’m here, trying my best to play catch-up and praying that I figure out a solution so that this ship has enough fuel, enough air to last us an entire year, and that the Tulpar doesn’t pop like a pressurized soda bottle while we’re out here.” 

“(Y/N)...” Curly’s voice died at her name, shocked at this revelation and disappointed he somehow didn’t know about her struggle sooner. “I had no idea what you were going through. You always seemed to have a grasp on your tasks and Swansea always praised the work you did, so I just assumed you weren’t having a hard time adjusting. Have you told any of this to Anya during your evaluations?”

“No… I really wanted to believe that I could do it and stick it out, and so far, thank God, I’ve just barely made it every time. I really wanted you and the rest of the crew to believe I was capable and worthy of being here.” He cautiously put a hand on her shoulder, testing the waters on how he should comfort her. 

“You are worthy of being here. The fact that we’ve been having such a smooth trip with no complications so far makes that obvious. I really appreciate you opening up to me now. I want to do everything I can to make sure you aren’t stressed about your work. You need to get rest and eat like the rest of us. Sure, none of us are a chemical engineering smarty pants like you, but you can always ask for help, even if it’s just for something like bringing you food or running errands around the ship.” He smiled at her, and she weakly reciprocated the gesture.

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Thank you, Curly.” Too tired to remember formalities, (Y/N) let out a big yawn, much to his amusement. 

“So are you gonna go to bed?” He asked. She threw her head back and groaned in defeat, murmuring a “yes”. “Good! I hope I get to see more of you around now that you’ll be asking for help, yes?”

“Yes, of course, Captain. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The both of them stood up, (Y/N) to head to her quarters and Curly to finally get his glass of water. Before completely leaving, she paused and turned back. “Oh, and Captain?” 

“Hmm?” He raised his head up to look at her again.

“I know you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders looking after all of us. Please, rely on me too.” She smiled gently.

“Goodnight, (Y/N).” He called after her as she slipped through the door. He felt content that he was making good progress to gaining the trust of the crew member he knew the least. It always made him feel good to be the reliable captain he hoped everyone viewed him as. Having that conversation with (Y/N) made him a little more relaxed now that she had opened up to him for the first time.