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prettywarriors · 4 years ago

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Ok ill bite whats the worst mg series

alright, whats the worst magical girl series in your opinion?

Thanks you two for letting me do some yelling. The obvious guess would likely be one of the recent edgelord shows right? Magical Girl Site or something similar? But nay I say, for while MGS and Day Break Illusion and such and what not generally tell you what to expect right away. Don't like super violence and suffering? Watch something else is the clear message from the get go. One of the bait and switch series then like Madoka or maybe Yuki Yuna? For what faults they may or may not have, at least these series do something and are interesting, even if you're not huge on what goes down in the series. A parody then? They range from affectionate to banned in New Zealand but regardless of quality and their feelings for MGs, it's a parody. It's a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously (plus they're usually short so you can just forget about them forever).

So what makes a series terrible then, I am sure you are asking. IMO? Setting expectations for an interesting and enjoyable series, and then dashing them to hell.

Come with me below the cut, as I talk about Key Princess Story: Kagihime Eternal Alice Rondo!

Spoilers abound so if you care about those for a 15 year old series, click away.

Background: Kagihime was a 4 volume manga that ran from 2004-2006 that was picked up for a 13 episode anime adaptation near the end of its run. The manga is created by a pair (Kaishaku) who you may know for making Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto. Kannazuki no Miko, and Steel Angel Kurumi, and the anime had a script written by the same writer (Mamiko Ikeda) for Tenshi Ni Narumon who also did some script writing for Princess Tutu and Seven of Seven. The anime also had 6 character music videos which are fairly simple but a nice addition to the series for the main girls. Discotek has been publishing the anime in the states in recent years, and the manga was brought over by *squints at book spine* Dr Master Publications.

The Premise: Girls transform and enter weird outside of reality spaces to fight each other with giant keys to take each other’s stories to create a third Alice In Wonderland story.

Well, an off-brand Alice story written by Alternate L. Takion, rather than Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson, that while the series uses all the aesthetic hallmarks of the tradition Alice, the little we see of the in universe Alice story is clearly different. Which is fine, at the end of the day, it’s still about someone who loves the Alice stories and wishes there was more, and even makes his own fanfiction version. His? Oh yeah, while the girls do all the fighting, the main character is Aruto, a teen boy who loves Alice, and for reasons we don’t know till late game, can enter the liminal spaces that the ‘Alice Users’ fight in. He chases a girl who looks like the Alice he sees in his story, who is named Arisu, and gets roped into this fanfic battle royale. He is also the older brother of the very needy Kirihara, who also ends up being and Alice User. As does Kirihara’s bff Kisa. To round out the group of enemies-turned-friends-who-will-work-together-to-collect-the-Eternal-Alice-without-having-to-fight-eachother group is a young genius researcher Kirika who wants to know more about Aruto’s connection that allows him to enter the spaces where the girls fight.

Then there’s all the other girls, some of whom still have real importance to the story and some who have a few panels or 2 scenes total. But with a whole bunch of girls to design, the creators reached out to a whole lot of other people to have them create designs! Eventually the battle gets down to the last few girls, there’s a confrontation with the guy running the whole thing, and while the anime and manga vary quite a bit the whole time, in both version Aruto ends up with Kirihara. Oh and Arisu was created by Aruto’s super imagination powers.

The Promise: Here on is subjective, particularly with what I personally saw as potential from this series. because I need you to understand how much I want to like this series.

~Alice in Wonderland themed: I know some people aren’t alice fans and that’s fine you do you but as a big alice fan this is great. We have a few alice episodes and themed characters amongst series like CCS and MGRP, and even Alice themes in other series like Tweeny Witches and Alice 19th. But damn it I am down for Alice series.

~Giant Keyyyyyyyys: Yeah yeah Kingdom Hearts but these keys are much more staff like for a lot of the characters which ads and air of elegance rather than the KH ones that for me at least feel well designed for big ol props rather than actual weapons. We also get...

~Weapon variety: It counts as a key if it’s a thorn whip that can be shaped like a key right? How about a giant pocket knife? Crossbows can also be keys. Hush. And we have this variety because

~Guest Artists: For magical girl series where we have a variety of outfits designed by different people, we have Kagihime, Uta~Kata, and uhh I guess Magia Record? But that’s a mobile game with a hella number of characters and with how mobile game works I wouldn’t count it just because it’s less the intent of the series to have variety and more the nature of having lots of girls. (Precure doesn’t count because unless I missed a memo each season’s set is still by one designer). If a series isn’t about a team and therefore doesn’t need cohesion, bringing in other artists is a great way for variety and new looks.

~The long term goal: Fighting with other people who love the same piece of media you do in hopes of creating new material that will be viewed as official? That’s just fandom nowadays. But it’s a legitimate interesting concept, and opens up so many doors for a message for the series, be it ‘what you create is no less valuable than the canon work’ or ‘it’s hard to let go when something you love doesn’t have more to it but you can still love it for what it is’ or ‘bond with the people who like the thing you like ya idiot instead of fighting about it’. The concept is interesting and there are so many narrative ways you can take this.

~Gays: Between the anime and manga, we have at least 5 wlw. Is it a magical girl series without some gays? (side note- the manga had a short thing where the MC wears a girl’s uniform and is pretty comfortable in it and while there is no way this was the intent, between that and the emphasis on the stories that live in girls and how the fight zones have no men, I’m just saying, Trans girl Aruto.)

~Greater Fairy Tale Premise: We meet a Little Match Girl based MG who is obsessed with Andersen rather than the Alice books, and touch on a Sleeping Beauty character in the manga. The manga at least implies that classic stories and fairy tale authors uh. Live on in a liminal space as immortals with world warping powers within that world and there could be opportunities for other girls in the real world to fight for Little Mermaid 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The Good: Everything has positive points, no matter how bad it is.

~Character Designs: Some of those looks slap. As do most of their weapons.

~Backgrounds: I have a strong opinion on backgrounds in anime that can be easily boiled down to old watercolor backgrounds good, modern filtered photos as background bad, and as a 2006 series, this might not be Memole nice but they’re quite attractive.

~Splash Pages: Easily my favorite thing after the designs, each chapter’s title page for the manga just has a character standing in a setting. Which is not everyone’s thing I’m sure but it’s a nice simplistic way to let the characters breathe imo. Even if at least some of the settings were deffo traced. But that’s how backgrounds work to some extent? If I ever get to the Met again, I am tracking down this exact photo, but here is a likely candidate for an example.

~Different Versions: I do not understand the need to make an adaptation that tries to be a 1:1. Kagihime had the same ideas and characters and did some of the same beats but very much had a different finale story and a lot of changes in the middle (like the Alice cops in the manga). Again, not something everyone probably wants I’m sure, but I very appreciate this, especially since the Anime kept good pace with the number of Manga chapters (reading the manga again while watching the anime at 3.8x speed just now was very interesting to see the different interpretations of events in a different medium.)

The ‘Fine’: Yeah.

~Anime Visuals: Look 2006 was still early enough into digipaint that I will give it a total pass on these. The colors are too bright but in a very bland way, the lineart is nothing interesting, and the faces are. Iffy. But it’s not total garbage to look at (probably helped by backgrounds and character designs...) it just came out in an era where not enough people knew how to stylize things to account for the weakness of the tools of the time. (It was 4 years earlier but I feel Kagihime is the polar opposite of Chobits with its painfully bland color palette while still being just. Flat. Sorry for the drive by Chii.)

~Music?: There sure were songs. Obviously, they are nothing to me.

The Bad: CW for.... somehow all the big things to an extent.

~Fanservice: Look, I am fine with fanservice, especially for a series that’s, ya know, not targeted at kids, big Mai Hime fan here even if I would recommend skipping the panty thief episode. And honestly the series generally isn’t fanservicey, at least by the modern standards of having the camera choosing under the skirt rather than an over the shoulder shot like I’ve seen plenty in other shows. Even the sexier outfits like the rose whip dominatrix aren’t bad BUT. When the girls fight. One takes her phallic key and drives it into another girls chest between the boobs while the loser cries in pain and then her book comes out and when the victor rips out pages, the loser’s clothes also rip. It is very SuperS Amazon Trio assault metaphor-y. There’s also a bit of fanservice with the sister becauseeeee....

~Incest: If you read the premise up there, first wow good job because I’m sure not re-reading that, you might have noticed I said MC ends up with his sister. As someone who is a big mythology fan and watches plenty of anime, I have a decent tolerance for your obligatory ‘oh we’re siblings but actually cousins so our feelings are okay’ or whatever the fuck Citrus has going on I don’t know that series and I don’t vibe BUT. I have limits and boy did this series go beyond that because multiple episodes are dedicated to the sister being in love with the brother? And the brother returns her feelings but knows that they are wrong so he put everything he likes in his sister into his version of Alice who, of course, physically manifests as Arisu who he creates accidentally with his uh. Magic imagination powers. But again in both versions MC still ends up with his sister. Hey, at least the manga eventually said the boy was adopted when the sister was like, 3, so if nothing else no blood relations? The anime did not ad this. -_-

~Under Utilized Characters: Arisu’s gradual revelation that she has no childhood memories because she isn’t a real person is so interesting and they don’t do nothing with it but also? That’s the kind of thing I personally would love to dig into and Kagihime, while touching on this world shattering revelation, easily loops back to So Anyway She Should Fight For The Man and to hell with developing a life or personality outside of what has been written for her. The rest of the main 5 were 2 note characters which. Could be worse? The most interesting character ends up being the child genius who accidentally murdered her childhood bestie (and/or lover? depending on version) and her coming to terms with that (the friend is alive but the version changes how and why she thinks she’s dead). Then the villain has the motivation of ‘i lost my creativity and now have become an immortal living outside of normal space and am getting girls to fight each other because that’s like a story so I’m still relevant right?’. But shoutout to the anime for then taking death of the author literally. The numerous other girls are canon fodder outside of like. The manga version of the dead gf and the little match girl.

~Battle Royale: This is not a thing I have an issue with generally. Again, but Mai Hime fan, I need to read MGRP 11, BUT by not developing the non-main girls there is no emotional connection which makes them just canon fodder and that’s boring as sin for a royale system. The initial main character fights revolve so much around the MC guy being there that they fall flat, and the 2 or 3 final battles in both versions still feel without any stakes. Also for a royale thing most of the characters don’t actually die, which cool! Neat! Except when they do? Some nobodies and a somebody are murdered (at least in the manga) and the tone never feels like it’s supposed to be upping the stakes, it’s just. Some people are dead now. And do you want to guess which of the main characters died?

~Gays: Oh boy the best friend of the brother-complex sister is in love with her and (in the manga) dies. She does apparently get better for the last chapter but the death itself is only felt by the rest of the cast for a page or two before we go back to feeling sad big brother wants to kiss his mentally generated sister clone rather than his actual sister u_u. Bury your gays is nothing new, but I wonder if it was also intended to be justified because Guess Who Is Creepy and a bit Perverted? Oh look the lesbian keeps the used swimsuit of her beloved and manipulates events to get an indirect kiss and when she sees the sister trying to strange Arisu for a moment she decides to do it for the sister? It’s not good. You want bad gay rep in a magical girl series, well here ya go. We also had a nobody in the first(second?) episode whose story pages reveal her having a kiss with a girl, and then we also have the prodigy again and- in the manga- her. Uh. childhood lover who she thought she killed but the girl has been wiping her mind over and over so prodigy remembers ‘killing’ the friend and not the she’s alive so she can keep? fucking with her? Toxic!

~Sexual Content: But wait you say, you already covered fanservice! Ah but that is sexual content for titilation. This is sexual content for dramatic backstory! The red riding hood character was sexually assaulted, another character was manipulated into sex first as a teen and then more often to ‘get into the publishing industry’, and the same writer forces some aggressive kisses on the MC. None of it is gratuitous which is nice, but also, was it necessary? Not making a new point for this but read riding hood’s dog was also murdered so unnecessary animal death gets tossed on in there.

~Male Lead: You can have a male, non magical character as the main character surrounded by magical girls. This is not how to do it. If I can make a vicious and hopefully not understood reference, Aruto is basically Tate from the Mai Hime Manga. If you understood that, I am so sorry. If you didn’t, congrats! Don’t read the manga. Or do and send me asks about the iconic final page of the first volume (18+). Anyway, this dude is boring, everything revolves around him, BUT I’ll be generous and say at least this isn’t a harem series? It looks like it out of context but it’s just a triangle with a fun attached scientist and token lesbian.

~Premise: They didn’t make good use of it. The initial goals of ‘take other girls pages from their soul books because if we get enough we unlock a third alice book’ is good! And then we add the twist that that was never going to happen and either if we get all the pages we can grant a wish, or these fights are just happening for the amusement of and asshole. Either way, yeah okay I guess. But at no point do we ever achieve this forbidden wish granting book and the asshole just. Lives. Nothing happens to him. His peers don’t even dunk on him. The only real changes from the beginning and the end of the series are: the siblings are now chill with dating, and the scientist lady won’t turn into a child in magical spaces. Oh. Yeah.

~Why did we make this adult a child sometimes?: I think we know why. Stop trying to get those types of folks to watch your already meh series. I also could have sworn at points in the past looking up images for this series I’ve seen extra art for Yuuri the Thumbelina-y Alice User that seemed like it would fit alongside anything by POP. You know, the Moetan guy. If you don’t know, god I wish that were me.

Wrap Up: I have definitely forgotten some points and am well within my rights to ad to this whenever I remember more points but uh. Yeah.

Listen you want an alice themed battle royale with nice outfits? Rozen maiden is right there. Battle Royale magical girl series that’s good with fanservice? Mai Hime. Series with different outfits while being based on a classic story? Pretear.

Hope anyone who read all of this at least got what I was saying, even if they don’t agree with it. And thanks for reading because whoops.

#why do ya'll let me write so damn many words #thanks ya'll for letting me write so many words #kagihime eternal alice rondo #long post #text #not fashion #whoops 3k words

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oh-obrien · 5 years ago

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Migraines

Relationships: Dylan O’Brien x OFC

Warnings: Mentions of chronic illness (?)

Word Count : 5,010

Author’s Note: Hey y’all this is something kind of small and kind of cute I cranked out. I deal with chronic migraines and honestly 100% self indulged with this but it has tons of soft Dylan in it!! I kind of hoped to shine some light on what it’s like dealing with chronic migraines with it, mainly because that’s why I’ve been MIA the past week. It’s pretty hard to write when you can only see out of one eye lol.

“Sometimes I just really wonder why I subject myself to this,” Lillian mumbled while she laid down on the ground in the middle of the Beacon Hills Memorial hospital set that they happened to be filming in on that day. “Or at least I mean, why I decide to just let my headaches go when I wake up some mornings,” she cracked an eye open to see Dylan standing above her.

He held a hand out to her and she took it, pushing herself off the ground and closing her eyes once she stood flat so she hopefully wouldn’t notice the room spinning. “I would ask if you wanted anything but I know the answer already,” Lillian fell into step next to him while they got to where they needed to be for the next scene. “If you want to take a break I'm sure you could ask and-”

“I’m fine,” Lillian shook her head and closed her right eye that she currently couldn’t really see out of. She saw Dylan give her a knowing look and shook her head, “I’m seriously fine Dyl. I’m just going to grab some painkillers and coffee on lunch and I’ll be fine for the rest of the day after that.” She quickly pulled away from Dylan and walked over to where Holland and Crystal stood getting ready to film themselves.

Dylan stood off to the side of the set with Tyler Posey, watching the girls film a scene together. Lillian laid in the hospital bed with her eyes closed, the prop heart monitor beeping steadily behind them while their director spoke. “Something is up with Lilly today,” Tyler mumbled while watching the way her forehead was wrinkled in discomfort when her eyes opened.

“She has a migraine,” Dylan mumbled watching the girls again when quiet got called on the set. He saw Lillian close her eyes again while she waited for Holland and Crystal to finish their lines for the scene, everyone on set knowing they were going to lunch once their director felt happy with how the scene came out. “And I told her they would call the day early if she said something but she refuses to believe it,” he rolled his eyes.

Tyler crossed his arms over his chest and nodded, “maybe she just needs lunch to unwind, clear her head,” he watched how Dylan looked on to set with concern. Tyler knew his friend cared deeply about their new cast member, from the dad Lillian had stepped onto the set Dylan and her had clicked. Lillian had grown up in New York, allowing her and Dylan to quickly fall into conversation about their shared interest in some of the state’s sports teams. She had seen Dylan wearing his Mets cap the first time they met and offered him a smirk mumbling something about, “imagine being a Yankees fan,” before introducing herself to the rest of the cast.

“I might just stick back here,” Dylan leaned closer to Tyler to speak so he wouldn’t interrupt filming at all, “just to make sure she’s fine,” he ran a hand through his messy hair. Tyler looked up to his friend and just nodded, not wanting to push the issue of where Dylan’s feelings for their friend currently were at the moment.

When Lillian had moved to Los Angeles, fresh out of college, to join the cast of Teen Wolf for its third season, it quickly became clear that she wasn’t completely comfortable in the new environment. Her audition for the show had been a ‘joke’ of sorts originally and even getting a call back for the part had surprised her.

Lillian had planned on sticking back on her college’s campus for their fall break to attend a tournament for the college’s Ultimate Frisbee team she had played on. Due to weather concerns the tournament had gotten cancelled and with her parents also planning on going on vacation that week, there had been no point in her returning home. A few of her friends who happened to be acting and theater majors, had planned on taking a trip out to LA that weekend for shits and giggles, to see if they could audition for a couple jobs after they graduated college, just to see if they had any shot at getting the parts.

They had convinced Lillian to walk into an audition with zero acting experience to raise their chances, even if would just raise them a minimal amount, it was still something. Upon walking into the audition, Lillian learned that she would be auditioning for a high school student who wanted to be any place other than high school. Something she related to on a personal level. She must have played the part pretty well because a week later on her way to practice she got the call that the producers wanted her to fly out to LA for the final round of auditions.

After lengthy discussions with her advisors and parents the days following the call, she knew that she would be graduating a year early, and would have plenty of time to get out to LA before filming started. Armed with that knowledge and the fact that she would have to drop her dreams of attending law school if she did get the part, Lillian flew out to LA for the final audition for a role on the MTV series Teen Wolf.

Two weeks after graduating from a tiny, central Pennsylvania University with a degree in Economics and Legal Studies, Lillian found herself moving out to Los Angeles to start a career as an actress. She had been able to rent a small house outside of Los Angeles with the help of her parents and moved herself and her dog out there in record timing. Her first day on set she had shown up in a pair of ripped jeans and a long sleeve from her college and felt grossly underdressed and unattractive when she had been introduced to the rest of the cast at the table read.

“You must be Lillian,” A red headed young woman walked up to Lilly with a warm smile and offered her a hug. “I’m Holland.”

“You can just call my Lilly,” she offered a warm smile in return, tucking her keys into her jeans pocket and holding the binder with her first script in it tightly to her chest.

Holland nodded and started to lead Lillian into a building, “Jeff told us not to overwhelm you, and we really didn’t trust any of the boys not to do that,” she laughed lightly turning down a long hallway. “We really are one big family though, I’d say this is the best way to ease into your first job.”

“I honestly never expected to wind up here,” Lillian laughed while she and Holland reached a door labeled ‘Teen Wolf’ within the studio. “I’m fresh out of college on an Economics and Pre-Law degree, before I auditioned I’d say acting was the last thing on my mind when it came to a career,” she shrugged.

Holland looked into the small glass window of the room before speaking, “you’d get along great with Dylan then,” she stated, “Teen Wolf was his first job too! If you’re comfortable enough everyone else is in here, and the boys are quite eager to meet you if I’m honest. They love seeing new people on set.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lilly shrugged while Holland pushed the door open, the room opening up to a bunch of tables in a large rectangle, the remainder of the cast, the show’s writer and some producers sitting around the table also. All the heads in the room turned to face them and Lilly watched as some of the members of the cast pushed their way out of their seats to introduce themselves.

“I’m Crystal,” one of the other girls introduced themselves first out of the group. “That’s Tyler and Tyler,” she pointed to two of the younger guys who were standing up. “Daniel, Gage, and Dylan,” she introduced everyone who was standing. “I’m sure the adults are able to introduce themselves,” she laughed. Lillian saw the adults all talking amongst themselves, most likely not wanting to overwhelm her more than she already was.

“And you know me already,” Jeff Davis, the writer for the show, stood up to shake Lillian’s hand. “I’m sure you’ll be a more than amazing addition to the show.” He returned to his seat and started talking with the other adults, giving the younger actors time to properly introduce themselves.

“Jeff said you were from New York,” one of the Tyler’s spoke up. “That’s pretty cool,”

“Not like the city,” Lillian laughed, “the island though yeah, I lived there until I went to college,” she offered the information. “And at least he’s not a Yankees fan,” she nodded towards the hat that Dylan was wearing. “How’re you a Mets fan?”

Dylan smiled and stepped more into the group, “I lived in Jersey a good chunk of my childhood,” he laughed. “You know how Mets fans raise their kids,” he just shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest.

From that first day on set onwards, Dylan had taken Lillian under his wing and showed her the ropes of being an actress. With Teen Wolf also having been his first acting job, he found a sort of kinship with Lillian that allowed the two to feel comfortable around each other. They shared experiences the others didn't really have in common with them. They had grown close together through filming, and with Lillian’s character taking a liking to Stiles they were both glad they had natural chemistry. On set they were never really far from each other, and some of their castmates had placed bets on when the pair would finally realize the feelings they had for each other.

“What does she think, Jeff’s going to kick her off the show if she takes a break?” Tyler asked Dylan while they watched Lillian rub at her temples between takes. “Because she really isn’t looking fantastic right now at all.”

Dylan let out a long sigh and shrugged, “I’m really not sure, man. You know how hard she is on herself though, so she won’t even tell you how bad it really is.” Once the director called for lunch break, Lillian sat up slowly in the hospital bed, swinging her legs over the end and pulling on her hair at the roots. She said something to Holland and Crystal who gave her sad smiles before nodding and walking over to Tyler and Dylan.

“What’s Lilly not coming to lunch?” Tyler asked the two girls, glancing at Dylan out of the corner of his eye.

Crystal shook her head, “she said she wants to just run through lines for the rest of the day. She said she had food in her trailer, plus she brought Bear with her today,” Crystal pointed out that Lillian had brought her corgi to set for the day and both of the boys turned to look at each other. “Oh you two see Bear plenty, give her a little space during lunch.”

Dylan watched Lillian talk to a few of the producers that were on the set that day, nodding along to what they were saying while she chewed on her bottom lip. Jeff walked over and said something that made her smile, giving a shallow nod to the writer before she walked off in the direction of her trailer, shuffling her feet while she went. “I’m going to stay behind too,” Dylan mumbled, taking off the flannel he had been wearing for Stiles’ outfit that day.

Holland turned to give Tyler a knowing look and he just shrugged, not sure what to tell her. “Dylan, you know how she needs her space sometimes,” Holland pointed out.

“It’s fine, I’m just going to check on her,” he waved the others off while he also started in the direction of the trailers.

Opening her trailer door, Lillian peeled off the clothes she had been wearing on set and dropped them on to the table in the trailer. She grabbed the hoodie she had worn on to set that day, one Dylan had left at her house the week before and a pair of Nike shorts. She bent down to pet Bear who laid half awake on the couch in the room, his stuffed hedgehog under his chin. With a yawn Bear pushed himself up on to his short legs and stretched, going to sniff at his food bowl.

“Oh you’re starving,” Lillian laughed, opening the door to the cabinet where she kept his food, her head pounding while she leaned down. “Here ya go,” she filled his food bowl up and cracked open a fresh water bottle to fill up his bowl before plugging in her coffee maker and starting a fresh pot brewing. She had learned early on in her migraine endeavors that, unlike most people, caffeine fixed her headaches rather than giving her one.

Grabbing a blanket she had folded on the table she quickly unfolded it and sat down on the couch, draping it over herself and closing her eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in her head. She wished that her coffee would brew faster so she could gain back some of her will to continue filming for the rest of the day after lunch. She knew that her and the rest of the cast had planned to go out to lunch that afternoon but couldn't bring herself to go sit in a loud restaurant for two hours with how quickly her migraine had taken its grip. Letting out a long sigh she felt Bear jump up in her lap and rested a hand on his back, running her fingers through his fur.

Lillian had gotten Bear her senior year of high school, he’s a trained migraine alert dog and accurately alerted her to most of her oncoming migraines for the entire time she had him. He had alerted her of her current one the day before, but she had hoped it would have held off until after work that day. With her head tilted back and eyes closed Lillian continued to run her fingers through the dog’s fur, his chest rising and falling steadily under her hand.

A few minutes later, while the coffee started to sputter out the last bits of coffee, a quiet knock rapped on her door and bear let out a sleep growl. Lillian just laughed lightly before saying ‘come in’ as loud as she could. Her head pounding when she did so, a quiet groan falling from her lips. The door opened and Lillian saw Dylan standing on the other side. He was dressed in a pair of sweats and a black tee shirt, his hair messy on his head and his phone in hand.

“He do his job like he’s supposed to?” Dylan asked Lillian motioning towards Bear who had decided to go back to sleep on Lillian’s lap.

She nodded, “he did,” she knew Dylan wouldn’t be happy with her, now knowing the fact that she had an oncoming migraine she had told no one about until it hit. “I knew too,” she just shrugged while Dylan closed her trailer door behind him. She heard the coffee machine beep, signaling it had finished brewing and Lillian let out a quiet ‘yes’, going to move Bear so she could make a cup.

“I got it,” Dylan told her, walking over to the fridge and pulling out the milk and vanilla creamer she had in it. “Do you care if I take a cup?” He turned to face Lillian while he pulled down the sugar from where she kept it.

Lillian shook her head slightly, “be my guest,” she told him. Dylan busied himself making the mugs of coffee, sliding Lilly’s carefully to her before making his own.

“That’s the sweatshirt I left at your house last weekend,” he nodded to the hoodie she had on, “looks good on you,” he gave a small smile, sitting down on the end of the couch. Lillian shrugged in response, holding her mug between both hands and taking a sip of the warm liquid.

She set the mug down again before speaking, “you left it, and it’s comfy. I’ll give it back later.” she closed her eyes while Bear got off her lap, moving to lay on his bed that currently had rays of sun pouring over it.

“I wasn’t missing it all that much,” Dylan shrugged, taking a sip of his own drink. He turned to face Lillian, a serious look on his face. “Why don’t you ever say anything, especially when Jeff tells you to let him know?” He asked quietly.

Lillian just let out a long sigh, opting to focus on her coffee mug instead of answering right away. “Can we talk about it when I can see out of both of my eyes again and can remember more than just my name and where I am?” she let out a small laugh. “I honestly was just planning on taking a nap after I downed a few mugs of coffee,” she added.

Dylan watched as she started to rub her temples, her eyes closing while she did so. “I can go if you want,” he pointed towards her door.

“No it’s fine, you’re here now and I'm awake we can just watch a movie or something if you want to,” she spoke softly, not opening her eyes at all in the process.

“Lilly-”

“Dylan just, stop worrying,” she let out a long sigh. “Pick a movie and we can just hang out, you really shouldn’t have hung back,” she left the, ‘but I’m glad you did’, out. Lillian had a small crush on her castmate since the first day she had stepped on to set. His sense of humor and off the walls energy just appealed to her. Not to mention he always seemed incredibly sweet and cared about those around him in a way not many people could. The pair had bonded over their shared interest in many of the same sports team and one of them would usually host dinner and some friends on nights of games.

He had also been the one to pick up on her migraine triggers first. He tried to avoid ordering food with too much garlic if he would be hosting the games, and he also knew if he planned on getting Chinese he could only order from a couple of places in the LA area. He knew that days on set where there would be flashing or bright lights and a lot of loud noise would also trigger her migraines sometimes.

Off set, Dylan had learned to pay careful attention to Bear and could often notice when the dog was signaling to Lillian that she would have an oncoming migraine within the next day. “We don’t have to watch a movie,” Dylan shrugged and set his now empty mug next to Lillian’s. “You know I share your love for naps,” He laughed lightly kicking his shoes off and stretching out across her couch. “Give me a pillow and if you come lay up here I can rub your head,” he offered.

Lillian pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, thinking the offer over. She knew that it would help her, and Dylan had done it before for her, but she didn’t want to get too cozy with him. Especially with her feelings growing stronger and stronger in the past weeks. “You don’t mind?” she asked quietly.

“No I don’t mind,” Dylan shook his head with a small smile. Now give me a pillow and come share your blanket!” Lillian reached underneath her couch to grab one of the pillows she kept in her trailer and handed it to Dylan who adjusted it on the arm of the couch so he could comfortably lay on it. He sunk further into the couch, hanging his legs over the end, before opening his arms so Lilly could tuck into his side.

Carefully shuffling around on the small couch, Lillian laid her head on Dylan’s chest and tucked in as close to him as possible so she could make sure she wouldn’t fall off the end. Pulling her blanket around both of them, Dylan wrapped his free arm around her back and the other started to gently rub at her left temple. “I don’t know how you balance everything,” he mumbled quietly, watching Lilly’s eyes close.

“I’ve been doing it since like middle school,” she replied, yawning at the end. “You get used to it, trust me.”

Dylan moved his hand so it carded through her hair a few times before rubbing where the back of her skull met her neck, “but still,” he sighed. “I just feel bad is all,” he wasn’t quite sure what to say.

“Well you’re helping right now, so don’t feel bad,” Lillian snuggled more into his side. Her right hand resting on his chest. “Seriously this is more than I can ask for. At home I’ll sleep on a heating pad to try and help a little bit. Having an actual person is more than enough,” he words started to bleed together while she started to drift off.

Dylan let out a small laugh, his chest vibrating against Lillian’s hand and cheek when he did so. He let his own eyes close while he moved his hand again, his thumb gently rubbing up and down the bridge of Lilly’s nose. He remembered her mentioning it the first time he had found them in this position. She had said her mom would do it when she had been younger and couldn’t sleep at night from her migraines.

Opening his eyes when he felt Lilly’s breathing even out completely, he noticed her facial features had relaxed significantly, her brow no longer stuck in a tight crease. Her lips weren’t turned into a frown anymore and her nose no longer scrunched up in discomfort. He continued to rub her temples and up and down the bridge of her nose until Bear decided to use the steps to get up on the sofa to crawl into his lap and go back to sleep himself.

“God,” Dylan breathed out slowly, letting his hand come to rest on Lillian’s hip once he knew she was actually asleep. “I am fucked,” he closed his eyes and decided to make use of the break to catch up on sleep himself.

✧༝┉┉┉┉┉˚*❋ ❋ ❋*˚┉┉┉┉┉༝✧

“Where are Dylan and Lillian?” Jeff approached the group of young actors when they had returned to set from their lunch break. “I’ve been texting and calling both of them and they haven't answered.” He looked around the group for an answer.

“Uhh-” Tyler Posey trailed off. “I know Dylan stayed behind to check on Lilly earlier, he said she had a migraine starting earlier and didn’t really want to tell anyone.” Jeff looked around the group, waiting to see if anyone else had an answer for him as to where the two could be.

Holland grabbed Tyler’s arm and nodded to him, “we’ll go see if we can find them,” she told Jeff with a small smile. The pair started in the direction of the cast’s trailers and Holland let out a long sigh. “This is why she's supposed to mention these things, no one wants her hurt or sick.” She spoke with genuine concern for her friend.

“She told Dylan,” Tyler shrugged while they walked up the lines of trailers until they saw Lilly’s. “I mean, it’s something,” he added.

Holland just nodded and looked at Tyler. “Yeah, she likes him and he likes her, they’re happily oblivious to it though.” Holland approached Lilly’s trailer and looked in the window. She turned around to face Tyler with a smirk and nodded towards the window.

Tyler approached the window and pushed himself up on his toes so he could see in. He noticed the pair curled up on Lilly’s couch together, asleep, and Lilly’s dog curled up on Dylan’s lap. “I bet they're both still pinning though,” He laughed quietly. “Should we see if the door’s open?” He asked Holland.

“Probably,” she walked up the stairs to the trailer and pushed on the door that swung open. Bear lifted his head to watch the pair, but didn’t make any noise. He knew the two and also knew they would often supply him with treats if he behaved. She watched Tyler take out his phone and take a picture of them before tucking it back into his pocket.

“For safekeeping,” he laughed while Holland approached the pair. She reached out and shook Dylan’s left shoulder, trying to carefully wake him up. He let out a quiet groan and opened his eyes, blinking sleepily at the room around him. When his eyes came into focus he noticed Holland and Tyler standing in the middle of the trailer, knowing smirks on their faces.

Dylan cleared his throat before speaking, “she had a headache, I just offered to help,” his voice slightly scratchy from sleep.

“And you are both absolutely oblivious to the mutual feelings between each other apparently,” Holland rolled her eyes. “You’re both supposed to be on set, but I’m sure Jeff wouldn’t mind wrapping early if he understood her situation.” Dylan looked down to where Lilly still laid passed out on his chest.

Dylan sighed, “might be best for the day, I know earlier she wasn’t really able to see out of her one eye. Probably not the safest thing on set.” He watched Lilly turn her face further into his chest and started rubbing her temple again.

“Yeah, man,” Tyler gave him a small smile. “We’ll go talk to Jeff and you see how she’s feeling.” He turned to leave the trailer, Holland hanging around a few seconds longer.

“Trust me Dyl,” she let out a quiet sigh, “just tell her, I know you won’t be disappointed,” and with that she turned to follow Tyler.

Dylan closed his eyes for a second before opening the again, lightly wrapping his hand around Lilly’s shoulder and shaking her. “Lills,” he hummed, “you gotta wake up,” he said. Lilly groaned and he watched her peel her eyes open, blinking at the light filling up the trailer and tucking her face into Dylan’s chest again.

“I know,” he rubber her shoulder, “you still feel shitty, but Holland and Tyler are going to see if Jeff can end the day early-”

“Nope,” Lillian sat up quickly, groaning when she did. Her head still pounded and she wanted to go back to sleep, but she had a job to get done. “I just need to change and-”

“You need to lay back down,” Dylan grabbed her arm and pulled her back into his chest. “I care too much about you to keep letting you do this to yourself,” he added. Lilly just closed her eyes, trying to will her nausea to go away, not wanting to throw up in front of Dylan, of all people. She felt a few tears of pain and frustration slip out of the corners of her eyes and gave up, sinking back into Dylan’s warm embrace.

“This fucking sucks,” she sniffled while Dylan’s thumb started rubbing up and down the bridge of her nose again. “I can’t just not work because I have a headache, everyone gets headaches, I just need a few minutes to get rid of the queasiness,” she mumbled.

Dylan shushed her and used his thumb to wipe away the tears that slipped out of her eyes. “You need to rest more, Lills,” he started rubbing her back with his other hand. “Tyler and Holland are going to come tell me we can leave early and then I’ll drive you and your furry friend here home.” He looked down to Bear who had fallen asleep again.

“I don’t-” Lillian squeezed her eyes shut tighter, “I don’t want to be home alone,” she spoke quietly. “It’ll just last longer and then I won’t sleep and I’ll still have it tomorrow and-”

“I’ll stay,” he cut her off, “as long as it’s okay with you.”

“Dylan you don’t-”

“I want to, Lilly,” he looked down at her, her eyes finally open again. “I care about you,” he took in a shaky breath. “A lot, and I won’t leave you alone like this,” he continued to play with your hair. “I want to help you take care of this,” he leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead. “So please just, let me take care of you for once.”

“I-” Lillian trailed off, looking up at Dylan who watched her closely. “I don’t want to tie you down with this, you don’t deserve to deal with this,” she shook her head.

Dylan hummed in response and shook his head ‘no’, rubbing her temple again with his pointer and middle fingers. “I like this though,” he smiled lightly, “you’re warm and comfortable, Bear is asleep in my lap,” he shrugged, “I’m quite happy where I am.” He watched Lilly look at him, her face stuck in a state of disbelief.

Just when Lilly went to speak again, Tyler, Crystal and Holland appeared in the trailer door. “Jeff said we can stop for the day, it was all just going to be getting a head start anyway,” Tyler said.

“See,” Dylan looked down at Lilly, “thanks guys!” he addressed the others. They all gave Dylan knowing smiles before telling Lilly to feel better and leaving the pair alone again. “Now, let’s get you two home and order something to eat that won’t bother your head more.”

Lillian sat up slowly, a small smile on her face while she pet Bear who yawned and opened his eyes also. “As long as you promise to snuggle more,” she pouted at Dylan.

“I promise to snuggle more,” he laughed sliding off the couch. “Now let’s go.”

#dylan o'brien #dylan obrien #dylan obrien imagine #teen wolf #stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski imagine #anna writes

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veeranger · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Halo Reach's plot and best to worst noble team members?

you know ive actually been a lot more critical towards reach lately because i think it fails on the biggest thing it advertised: noble team. characters have never really been the strong suit of bungie’s writing (idk who destiny is so dont @ me) and while this isnt usually a major issue, it is an issue when a game wants to sell you on this squad of your teammates it wants you to care about or at least be fond of. ODST and Reach both have a cast of characters that could be really interesting but since halo is a shooter and not really a storytelling kinda game series all they really get are a few lines here and there and some cool moments, nothing really solid or anything to get a glimpse at who they are. maybe thats kinda the point though since spartans are all fucked up broken people like inherently. i dont think thats why bungie did that though

as for reach’s actual plot, i think it works well for what it is, a playable tragedy that tells you the conclusion up front. halo fans who are any level above completely casual knew that reach got completely glassed right before the start of halo ce and the advertising of this was very clear. the fact that you’ve never heard of spartan 3′s or noble team before was a pretty clear indicator of what their fates would be before you even turned on your xbox. the game literally opens with your smashed helmet embedded in the ground as a tombstone to your inevitable heroic sacrifice. reach invokes the same kind of feeling as star wars rogue one, you just know things wont end well for our main characters but you know that their deaths will pave the way for the main series protagonist to eventually win the whole damn thing 3 games/movies from now.

so even with this in mind you go through reach and you think “wow things are going pretty well, we’re holding out own against the covies and even striking back at key targets” and maybe you forget whats going to happen or you dont and you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. and boy fucking howdy does it drop. jorge dies thinking he just saved reach and as you fall through the atmosphere you realize how hopelessly fucked you are. thats where the game enters its second phase, the “we’re fucked but still fighting” phase, as opposed to the first half of the game where things were still somewhat hopeful. noble six wakes up like a week later to half the planet burning and civilians being slaughtered as they try to evac. the first level of the second half of the game features you busting your ass hard to clear an evac point for civilians only to see them all get shot down and die. its brutal stuff, especially for halo who had never shown the conflict though that lense.

what follows is a parade of squadmate deaths as your numbers dwindle with every level until its just you and emile, and then just you. unlike in rogue one you actually aren’t immediately told what the key item in this quest is, in this case its cortana, the equivalent to the death star plans in rogue one, the most important thing in the universe since cortana will be the one to slipspace jump to halo 04 and kick off a series of events that will lead to the survival of humanity. but once you get this item suddenly it all makes sense, carter is told this is “what his spartans died for” and to you that means a lot more than it ever would to him.

reach ends with a profoundly impactful epilogue level where you just. are doomed. you can’t hold out forever and even if you could there’s no rescue coming for you. noble six gave their life to save the universe and never even knew it. the fact that their death isnt a cutscene but you actually yourself have to try to stave off death or just take as many elites with you as you can before they get you, it really adds so much to the impact of the final noble team death. nevermind that six isnt a real character it does work in this case because you’re seeing it from a first person perspective.

so overall my thoughts on reach is that despite the major flaw of not making you care enough about noble team (unless you do, this is my personal view) it does its job very well in portraying the desperate struggle of humanity against a threat that they cannot possibly comprehend or rightfully stand up against, but despite devastating loss the small victories they achieved still ended up mattering in the end.

now as for noble team i wont do a best to worst but ill give my thoughts on everyone

carter: hardass commander type, not much to say imo. his death scene was his best moment and i wish his relationship with kat had been fleshed out more because it was so so funny to see her pull his strings to get what she wants. you can tell he has the respect of everyone, especially emile.

kat: the only girl! i actually like cat, im glad they gave her a buzzcut instead of trying to make her sexy or anything even if they did give her that ass in her armor. shes the typical smartass better than you genius character but it works, especially with that accent. i wish i could be friends with her, there was that scene right before she died where she confided in six that this was also her first glassing. her death was kind of shock value to me and i wish she could have at least died with a little more dignity like the rest of noble team but alas :(

jun: probably my least favorite. i cant really remember much of this guy. he’s the only one who got to live and i kind of hate him for that because he was the least interesting of the bunch.

emile: certainly the most iconic of all the noble spartans. he comes off as sadistic but not a maniac, he listens to carter when he speaks and is on good terms with kat even through his obvious inability to really connect to other people. this is certainly because of the fact that he’s a spartan-3, he’s probably the most “inhuman” of the bunch. i wish his relationship with jorge was given a little more, i liked how despite his pushing jorge early in the game he still mourned his death, and yet refused to carry his dogtags because he knew six was the one who was entrusted with them. his death was very iconic i think everyone remembers that.

jorge: the big man himself, his death is what set the tone for the second half of the game and was probably pretty impactful to most people playing. i always thought it was interesting that he was a spartan-2 and not a 3 like the rest of noble, i wonder why that was. his relationship with halsey was interesting and it showed that not all spartans hated the devil woman for what she did to them. his defining characteristic was his big heart and that was especially interesting for a spartan-2, that he managed to hold onto something like that through all the shit he probably went through.

#wow i talked a lot about reach #Anonymous #apple post

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lailannajacobs · 5 years ago

Text

Heart to a Gunfight

Pairing: Bucky x fem!reader (Modern AU)

Prompt: “I’ve missed this”

Warnings: All fluff!

Word Count: 1.5k

A/N: this is for @sovietghoststories writing challenge, congrats for the milestone and thanks for letting me join so late! I kinda got carried away with the story so this is more like a teaser for a larger story i guess? Anyways, love to hear what you think!

You were so late. Over an hour late to be precise, and yet, you couldn’t muster up the courage to get out of your car. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to do to Steve’s cousin’s engagement party, but well… that was exactly it. The only reason you had made the drive was because Peggy had asked you to keep her company and you knew you owed her for all the times she had done the same for you. It didn’t matter that she had Steve for company, this was how you were going to spend your Friday night. You had told yourself that you were doing the right thing, but the guy who had flipped you the bird on your way here did nothing to reassure you of that fact. Maybe it was a sign from the universe that you shouldn’t have come.

Sucking in a deep breath, you pushed the thoughts out of your mind and pulled your keys from the starter. You were here now and there was nothing you could do about it but get out of the car and walk the remaining block to the Brooklyn duplex. Before you knew it, you were standing in front of the house’s side gate. Music and laughter drifted through the air, but the joyous sounds only made you want to turn and walk back to the safety of your car. Small talk with a bunch of strangers wasn’t something you ever looked forward to, but you weren’t about to break your word. You pushed through the gate, following along side the house to a backyard filled with the engagement party.

Trees strung up with fairy lights lined the fences, and small candles in mason jars illuminated the folding tables, decorated with lace table cloths. A makeshift bar was set up at the far end of the yard with a cooler full of beer and a few bowls of punch. Next to it, young children crowded around the buffet table, stuffing their faces with an assortment of little snacks. At least you weren’t late enough to have missed dinner. Peggy might have killed you if you had.

You scanned the yard for a familiar face, but most of the people sitting at the tables were over the age of seventy. In the far end, near a beautiful gazebo where the future bride and groom were taking photos, was a crowded, makeshift dance floor, which was where a waving hand popped up and caught your attention. You let out a sigh of relief.

Weaving around the chairs and tables, you nodded politely to the few people’s gazes you unwittingly crossed and tried not to step on a stray child.

When you finally made it, Peggy enveloped you in a warm hug, “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

“Me? Never. Who else is going to talk you up to Steve’s relatives,” you winked, refusing to let show how seriously you had considered feigning an illness, “Plus, I texted you that I was on my way.”

She shot you an unimpressed look, “If that was true then you would have been here almost forty five minutes ago.”

“In my defence, I got stuck behind the world’s slowest driver and then when I tried to pass him, he sped up like a complete asshole. There was nothing I could do about it. I only managed to get past him about five minutes ago.”

Steve approached, nodding in greeting as he wrapped an arm around Peggy’s waist, but she barely seemed to notice his arrival. She was too busy scolding you. “I know you left late (y/n).”

You thought about coming up with a lie but you knew her bullshit radar was near perfect. “Fine, maybe so, but I really did-”

“Hey Steve,” A deep voice interrupted, “I would have gotten here earlier but some lunatic in a crappy Corolla cut me off and almost ran me off the road.”

Steve broke away from Peggy for a moment to greet the tall, dark haired man who had just spoken with one of those bro hugs. When they pulled apart, you got a better look at the stranger, and although you had only seen him through your rearview mirror, you were damn sure that he was the turtle you had been stuck behind on your way here. There was no mistaking him, even if he wasn’t flipping you off at the moment. It wasn’t like there were too many ancient Corolla’s left on the road at this hour either.

“Hey!” You protested, about to defend your driving, when Peggy mistook your frustrated outcry for an enthusiastic greeting.

“Right! (Y/N) this is Bucky, Steve’s childhood friend and an army buddy, and Bucky this is one of my oldest friends (y/n).” She glanced between the two of you, her brows furrowed, “Actually, I’m surprised the two of you have never met.”

He extended his hand, eyes widening. There was no doubt in your mind that he recognized too.

“Just so you know,” You took his hand, squeezing a little harder than necessary, “It may be ancient but at least it can go the speed limit and not ten below.”

He held on, your hand captured in his large one, “You cut me off doing forty-five in a thirty zone, I don’t call that going the speed limit.”

“At least I didn’t flip you the bird.” You retorted.

He snorted, “You cut me off, what did you expect?”

“Common manners?”

“Common manners don’t include almost running someone off the road.”

You sighed dramatically, “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed this.”

“Miss what?” He demanded, eyeing you warily.

“Being scolded by a complete stranger as if he was my father.”

“All you had to do was be patient.” He growled.

You stared into those piercing blue eyes, the sound of your blood pumping in your ears, and you lifted your chin a little higher. You weren’t about to let this asshole think he could insult your car and your driving because he was handsome and was probably used to getting whatever the hell he wanted. He narrowed his eyes, daring you to contradict him.

Steve cleared his throat, preventing you from snapping at him once more, “Have you two met before?”

“No.” You answered in unison.

He let go of your hand without breaking eye contact, and you shot him a dirty look. The one you got in return was no kinder.

“Then can someone please tell me what’s going on here?” Peggy demanded, hands firmly on her hips.

“He was the reason I was late” You blurted at the same time as he mumbled something that sounded an awful lot like “crazy lunatic that cut me off”.

“Just so you know,” You turned away from Peggy to face him head on, “If you weren’t driving like you didn’t even want to be here, I wouldn’t have had to cut you off.”

Bucky was about to answer when Steve put a hand on his shoulder, “Buck, six o’clock. Don’t look now, but she’s coming your way.”

He stiffened beside you and you took a step back, not having realized how close you had gotten during your heated discussion. The woman Steve pointed out made her way through the crowd, a sheepish look on her face. Every inch of her skin, from her shoulders to the bridge of her nose, was splattered with freckles that matched her fiery red hair. Her brilliant green eyes were accentuated by the emerald sundress that swayed with every graceful step and it seemed like the closer she got, the more beautiful she became. She was the kind of woman that made people stop and stare and you could see why Steve had stopped a conversation to point her out to Bucky. She was stunning.

She blushed as she approached, “Hi James.”

You glanced around, momentarily confused until Bucky, running his fingers though his long hair, replied, “Hi Kira.”

Apparently, Bucky and James were the same person, and you made a mental note to ask Peggy about it later. You could cut the tension in the air with a knife and you watched on with rapt attention. Just because he was a total ass, didn’t mean you weren’t curious as to what was going on.

Kira looked around at your intent faces, Steve and Peggy seeming just as curious as you were, “Do you mind if we go somewhere a little more…private?”

He nodded, but shot Steve a panicked look over his shoulder, blue eyes wide as he followed her toward the gazebo.

“Do you think she wants him back?” Peggy whispered, her tone harsh.

“I don’t know,” Steve whispered back even though Bucky and Kira were clearly too far to hear, “Why else would she want to talk to him alone?”

“What is she even doing here? Is she still with-”

Steve shook his head, unable to peel his eyes away from Bucky, “No, they broke up after a month.”

Peggy sighed, “Then she has to be here to get him back.”

“Maybe…” Steve trailed off, hand rubbing the back of his neck.

“Can someone tell me who that is?” You interrupted, your voice equally as low as theirs.

“That’s Bucky’s ex-fiancé” Steve tore his attention away form his friend, a somber look in his eyes, “She left him at the alter two years ago and he hasn’t seen her since.”

#Bucky Barnes #james buchanan barnes #bucky x reader #bucky fanfic #fan fiction #fanfic #MCU fic #MCU fanfiction #modern au

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angelinarecs · 4 years ago

Text

Updated Pacific Rim Recs

Organized by pairing (or gen) and then alphabetized by title. Summaries (which have been copied from their respective stories) and descriptions are provided. Notation at the end of the description indicates if a story is completed or a WIP.

Gen

Take Up Your Spade and Break Ground - Tendo Choi is a 911 dispatcher because it pays well and because he’s damn good at it. He doesn’t take the job with the expectation of finding a family – but sometimes the people who call end up up meaning a hell of a lot, and Tendo’s never been one to stay detached. Friendship/Family. Tendo POV, very well written and the plot is original. A great AU overall. I really loved following Tendo and his relationships to the Shatterdome people through his work at 911. One-shot.

Hermann, Newton Friendship

All the Colors of the Rainbow - The first thing Newt noticed about Hermann was that he was a neat freak. Well. Okay. Maybe not a neat freak. Maybe just an ordinarily-neat person who didn’t like kaiju guts in his work space. Sharing a lab was going to be a challenge … Drama. Am I reccing this because Newt is autistic? Yes, yes I am. Also, these drabbles do wonders at showing the day-to-day struggles of Newton and Hermann sharing a lab. One-shot.

Hush Now - Hermann is upset and Newt tries to cheer him up. It either goes horribly wrong or horribly right- he’s not sure. Hurt/Comfort. Hermann gets an unfortunate phone call from his father and Newt is there to pick up the pieces. Drabble length, but still sweet. One-shot.

Not Unwelcome - Set directly after the events of the movie. Hermann leaves the celebrations to give himself some space, away from the loud people clapping him on the back, away from the happily drunken crowd, and, maybe, a bit of space away from Newt. Naturally, the moment he disappears, Newt goes after him. Minor angst ensues. Friendship/Angst. Cute, fluffly, indulgent, everything you want out of a feel-good story. An enjoyable read. One-shot.

Tröstung - When Hermann is three years old, his mother gives him a stuffed lamb. Angst/Friendship. Following Hermann through the years in his interactions with his comfort object (an adorable sheep names Oskar). The premise and structure of the story really does a nice job at providing snapshots in Hermann’s life and development as he grows into the brilliant scientist he is. The story also provides a brief insight into Hermann and Newt’s relationship. One-shot.

Hermann/Newton

a ghost will be here in my stead - Hermann is feeling under the weather. Hurt/Comfort/Fluff. Post Uprising. Hermann falls ill after pushing himself too far to save Newton from the Precursors. Newton picks up the pieces. One-shot.

A Hand That Hold No Weapon - On their way back to the Hong Kong Shatterdome, Newton helps Gottlieb adjust to the after effects of drifting together. Drama/Hurt/Comfort. A much needed story after Hermann and Newton drift. Fun story, okay writing. One-shot.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason - It’s Newton’s fault, really. That Hermann is stuck on the floor of the Kwoon, feeling more than a bit useless and broken. Fluff/Hurt/Comfort. Hermann pushes himself too hard trying to physically work out his self-loathing. Newton is there to pick up the pieces. One-shot.

A Not so Simple Cold - Herman is sick. Really sick. He, however, is choosing to ignore how sick he is which Newton does not agree with. Fighting ensues but some realizations about their feelings for one another also come to a head. Fluff. One of those sickfics that’s not particularly original nor well written, but definitely scratched the hurt/comfort itch when needed. One-shot.

A Warm and Gentle Tug - Hermann has a fear of having his blood drawn due to the fact that he always passes out or gets sick while it happens. This time around however, Hermann takes Newt along with him to his appointment to help ease him. Hurt/Comfort. Not the best writing here, but the relationship is fun. Mainly reccing because I have the exact same problem getting my blood drawn. One-shot.

Battered and Bruised - When Hermann comes to Newt’s defense, it doesn’t end well. Hurt/Comfort. Short and somewhat sweet. Newton and Hermann try to fix each other up after getting into a fight at a bar. One-shot.

Blue All Over - The worst one was recorded on a cold dreary day in the autumn of 2021. Hurt/Comfort. One of their many, and possible one of their worst, lab accidents. Herman is a self sacrificing idiot and Newton is at least fast on his feet. One-shot.

Collision - A kiss gone wrong. Romance/Humor. Hermann and Newton being dorky and clumsy. Cute, but short, story. One-shot.

Dehydration Sensation - Hermann doesn’t handle heat well. Hurt/Comfort. Hermann doesn’t take care of himself in the middle of a heat wave and Newt once again has to pick up the pieces. Including obstinate, delirious, and dissaproving Hermann alongside exasperated Newton! One-shot.

Homeostasis - The K-science laboratory stands on its own plane of existence; life within its concrete walls runs in parallel to life in the bigger world of the Hong Kong Shatterdome. Yet even here the laws of physics apply. Whenever Hermann’s body isn’t failing him, Newton’s mind is on the verge of breaking. Hurt/Comfort. The scientists have a rough day in the lab. I really enjoyed the contrast of the mental and physical given that each Hermann and Newt suffer from their own handicaps. Seeing the ailments as both a foil and a complement to each other was a very compelling look into their relationship. One-shot.

Incessant - Hermann’s physical limitations frustrate him to tears. Angst. Newton tries to help Hermann after a fall, Hermann is frustrated that his body won’t cooperate with anything. Poor Newt has to make this situation at least bearable for both of them. The selling points for this story is mostly domestic science boyfriends and an accurate depiction of the frustrations that come with being disabled/handicapped. One-shot.

Keep Your Mouth Shut, Keep Your Guard Up - Hercules Hansen does not understand why Hermann won’t just tell him why he got in a fight with the new J-Tech. It’s obvious who came out worse for wear. Hurt/Comfort/Romance. Hermann just wants to protect Newton, they just keep getting into trouble. So wonderfully in character. I love these two. One-shot.

Laundry Day - “I must have almost popped the question a hundred times, but the timing never seemed…right, you know?” “And you decided nearly killing me in the middle of laundromat was the Platonic ideal of romance, did you?” Aka the one where Hermann launders Newt’s jacket and finds rather more than he bargained for. Hermann/Newt. Romance/Humor. This story is just so cute. I love how the everyday interaction between Newt and Hermann turns into such a touching/adorable moment. One-shot.

Oh, They’re Gonna Have to Fight Me - The Drift makes them realize they belong together. Now that they cancelled the apocalypse, there’s nothing left for them to do but live out their lives in happiness. That is, until Hermann realizes there’s more to the nightmares that Newt keeps having. (In which they don’t spend those ten years apart, and Hermann is there to figure it out and save Newt when the Precursors start taking over him.) Fluff/Angst. They win the war, get married, and live happily ever after until they don’t. If you were anything like me, the sequel really disappointed on the whole “haven’t seen you in ten years” bit. This is the fix-it that we needed for our science husbands as Hermann has to navigate his relationship with Newt while realizing exactly how compromised his husband truly is. Complete.

Pride - Newmann oneshot. Newt takes Hermann on a date to his first LGBT parade- fluff through and through, except for a little reference to acephobia. Romance/Friendship. Am I reccing this entirely because Hermann is asexual? Yes, yes I am. Also features cute relationships, Newton coming up with a bunch of “queer” orientated pet names for Hermann, and some good points about sexuality. One-shot.

Somewhere, Something - Newt and Hermann start dating in the rush of change the end of war brings. Each of them is frightened that the other doesn’t realize what he’s in for. Hurt/Comfort/Angst. The science boyfriends help each other out as they grow closer in their relationship. I really appreciate the take on both mental and physical health issues. Two-shot, complete.

strange perceptions - The most essential question to pose, obviously, is why is Hermann presently finding himself contained in a shut-down emergency decontamination unit with only his lab partner as company, having forgone not only the process of actual decontamination but also the process of being noticed by anyone at all. The answer is frustratingly straightforward: because Newton. Angst/Hurt/Comfort. In which feelings are shared and realizations come to. I really love the dialogue, character introspection, and use of flashbacks in this story. I also love the fact that it literally took getting stuck together and completely helpless to force them into a conversation about feelings. One-shot.

Strong Enough - the Precursor in captivity, nobody knows exactly how to get Newt back to his old self, if that’s even possible. But Newt was always stubborn, and damn if Hermann would ever give up on him, or, worse yet, let him give up on himself. Emotional Hurt/Comfort/Angst. Hermann is going to get his husband back, even if he has to fight the entire Shatterdome, the alien possessing his love, and his own nightmares to do it. Another precursor!Newt fix-it, but we need all of those that we can get because I want my science husbands to end up happy. One-shot.

Taken Care Of - Newt helps out Hermann when he’s having a bad day. Hurt/Comfort. A short and fluffy slice of life story that follows the companionship of Newt and Hermann through a rough day. One-shot.

The Ghost and Dr. Priestly - Newt is pulling an all-nighter in the university library studying for a chemistry test, when he begins to hear strange sounds. Good news: it’s not a ghost. Bad news: he only finds out after giving his lab partner, Hermann, a mild concussion. Drama/Romance/Hurt/Comfort. Newt is an unbelievable idiot and poor Hermann suffers the consequences. Or, Hermann is concussed and is probably not thinking properly, but he still kisses Newt even after the daft man nearly brained him with a book. One-shot.

Tricks and Treats - Seven fics for the seven days of Gottbleed week (Oct. 5th-11 2015). Each story: 1. Is Gottbleed 2. Fulfills an OTP prompt from tumblr 3. Is newmann and 4. Is Halloween related. Trick or treating, costumes, haunted houses, ghosts, too much candy - and much more! Cute, funny, with a side of seriousness. Humor/Drama. Hermann and Newton make such a fun couple and these somewhat Halloween themed shorts perfectly show off their characters. Complete.

You and Your Dog Teeth - Desperate to find ends and solutions, Hermann wears himself out to exhaustion looking for answers, especially his already lame leg. Being around as his usual working late night companion, it’s up to Newt to help take Dr. Gottlieb home. What seemed entirely like a normal night only ends with two scientists realizing there’s a lot more between them than they thought. Angst/Humor. Such a fun story, this has a good balance between emotional tension and moments of hilarity that only the K-science boys can fully pull off. The awkward approach to romance in this story works very well for the characters and give an authentic feel to the whole thing. Two-shot, complete.

You Know I Love You: I Wrote It Down - Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb’s relationship goes back almost ten years. We know this because the paper trail goes that far back, too. Romance. Where do I begin with this story? It’s so well done and amazingly written. I can’t get enough of it. The idea to follow the relationship of Hermann and Newton through their paper trail was brilliant and well executed. The sheer nerdy romance is amazing. I don’t even care if it has smut in it, it’s still well worth the read. One-shot.

#Pacific Rim #pacific rim fanfiction #hermann/newton #hermann gottlieb #Newton Geiszler #romance #hurt/comfort #angst #so much fluff #science husbands

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five-wow · 5 years ago

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i’m watching 10.21!!! [insert excited but apprehensive noises]!!!

by the time you’re reading this i’ll be done watching, so as always, thoughts under the cut:

i opened up the episode, steve’s voice said “previously on ha-” and i paused it because i actually need some food before i do anything right now.

food (and coffee that is 90% milk) acquired! the previously on is just the last few seconds of the previous episode, and oof, it reminded me how hilariously evil this micheal claypool sounded with that intense british accent they gave him (surprise twist: the h50 finale is actually the new bond movie), but now he just showed up on steve’s doorstep and he looks like a really kind somewhat older man, gosh.

steve: “please uh, come on in and make yourself at home.” danny, wherever he is right now: “NINE YEARS. I HAD TO WAIT NINE YEARS AND THIS GUY JUST SHOWS UP AND-”

mr. claypool comes in, sits down, hands a still standing steve a letter and then gathers his coat and briefcase and is immediately back out the door, fdjkfd. also, omfg, i don’t like that doris is still causing drama from the grave, but i have to say, it’s impeccably in character, at least.

steve looks a little disbelieving and unhappy about the contents of the letter, which is not great. it couldn’t have been just a nice “hello my son, sorry you’ve had to live without me for these past four months, i wanted to tell you one last time that i love you and hope you’re doing well”, could it? (for that matter, does mary get a letter??? it always feels like mary either got out in time by not going into anything like law enforcement and therefore not getting pulled into her family legacy of dangerous shit all the time, or like she’s just been outright rejected by their parents who keep building all of their mysteries around steve.)

okay so now we’re watching a woman and her son being held hostage by two criminals who probably killed a cop and want her to stitch one of them up, and obviously they’re bad guys, but one of them just said “think bus boy’s got a thing for you” about the dude who just rang the doorbell and hand delivered a toy the kid had forgotten at a diner and yes!!! i agree!!! and it looked super cute so maybe you could just put your guns away and let them fumble around each other for a little before one of them finally asks the other out on a date and then they end up as a really cute little family.

oh SHIT crush guy just burst into the apartment and really, really seems to know his way around a gun and how to hold his own in a fight against armed criminals. oh! ohhhh, this is the new character they were going to introduce that would potentially have become a cast member if the show had continued without steve, isn’t it? ahhh. that makes sense.

while the woman calls the police, crush guy (who heroically saved her and her son and got shot in the process) just. leaves. that’s not suspicious at all!

the intro!!! feelings!!!

we’re at the cemetary where john mcgarrett rests so i expected to be shown steve, but instead we get?? danny rolling up in the camaro to look at steve crouched by the grave? oh my gosh. ten times better.

danny is SO WORRIED. and he is RIGHT because steve is acting very unlike steve.

fdjkfdjk OF COURSE doris’s message is a bunch of symbols. doris!!! you do not write goodbye messages to your son in wingdings!!! be a good mother for maybe once, perhaps, my gosh!!!

!!!!! steve telling danny he just doesn’t think he really cares anymore and wants to be done with doris’s whole thing is !!!!! very good!!!! i am using too many exclamation points and very aware of it but !!!!!!

i just. look. i just. steve has SAD FEELINGS and he TALKS ABOUT THEM with DANNY and this is pretty much a dream come true. YES. not the sad feelings, i’d rather have happy feelings, but after everything these characters have gone through they need to acknowledge that there are sad feelings before happy feelings can be had.

also, omfg, i had a brief heart attack because steve says joe’s name but he says it with an abandoned “and” kind of tacked onto it, a little mumbly, so it sounds like “losing joe’n- and mom” and for a long moment i was like, losing joan?? what?? because that would not be okay, holy shit, no.

on a lighter note, steve: “i’ll drive.” what a suprise!!! truly a shocking turn of events. :p

yes, steve, antagonize the scary-looking dude who is grieving over his dead brother while standing over the dead brother’s body in the morgue. i’m sure that’s a brilliant plan.

wait what, we suddenly see adam and junior who are talking on the phone because junior called adam to give him an update, and then adam goes, right, but the bad guys don’t know the address yet, and we do! and it turns out he is. standing in the apartment both parties are looking for right at that second. uh. communication, adam, dear lord.

there is some team organizing in hq around the case and then they all disperse and danny looks ready to follow steve into his office but then he gets distracted by tani asking to talk to him for a minute, and then they go out onto a BALCONY that i don’t remember ever having seen before? omg. secret headquarters balcony.

tani asks about steve!! she is worried too!! i’m forgetting about the balcony betrayal and having intense feelings again.

fdjkfd danny tells tani that steve has been running non-stop and is getting burned out and tani asks “alright, well, what are we gonna do about it?” and with absolutely zero hesitation danny goes “i’m gonna force the issue.” i don’t even think that’s a bad plan per se! but the quick and determined way he says it has me laughing anyway, like danny’s been daydreaming while the team was talking about their case and thinking, hm, what can i do to help steve? i know! i’m going to push him in a corner and keep him there and make him FEEL his FEELINGS. danny’s solution here is to throw a grenade at steve, but like, one full of love and caring and hopefully pancakes.

danny is telling tani that he’s seriously concerned about steve’s functioning on the job at the moment and meanwhile steve is out with junior interviewing a guy with an axe. fdjkfd.

okay so steve and junior catch the bus boy crush heroic rescuer guy (whose name is cole) and he won’t talk, and then junior arrives back at hq and tani comes out of her office to talk about steve again, ahhh. she is so worried! and junior is extremely uncomfortable because he feels like he has to defend steve and he ends up saying that steve will deal with things in his own way and oh junior, no, sometimes being hurt and pushing it away is not the best thing. even MORE reasons why steve needs to work through this in a healthy way: he’s setting a very destructive example for junior.

meanwhile steve is chilling on the floor of their rendition room “interviewing” cole all on his own, which seems to boil down to psychoanalyzing cole in a way that sounds suspiciously like steve’s pulling apart pieces of his own mind but attributing all of the problems to cole because that’s way safer than admitting that maybe most of these are his own issues, too, that he’s giving voice to for probably the first time ever.

steve to himself cole: “you’ve been here in this hole since [name of place where tragedy happened]. you‘ve put yourself there.” SUBTLE.

fdjkfd i paused at the perfect moment because immediately after that sentence cole goes “you know, something tells me i could say damn near the same thing about you” and uh, yes. thank you for making my point in-universe, cole, gosh.

steve: [gives a hard stare for a second and then switches back to cole’s current situation without addressing cole’s comment at all]

ahhhh there is a shot that starts with lou, tani and quinn around the tech table analyzing a video that shows our Bad Guys of the moment holding the poor diner lady and her kid hostage (again!) and then moves smoothly through steve’s glass door into his office where he and danny are having a heated discussion about the case and twirls around them. that was very cool!

so the bad guys want cole or they won’t release their hostages, cole wants to do it, danny wants him to do it and convinces steve after multiple little scenes of them disagreeing about it, and then military police comes in and takes cole away, preventing them from actually carrying out their plan. oops!

and THEN cole escapes out of a vehicle with three men guarding him, hah. i’m definitely seeing the heavy handed parallels with steve they’re throwing at us, omg.

danny about cole to steve: “i think this guy might be crazier than you.” i kind of love that every time a new intended team member shows up (tani, junior, i'm pretty sure quinn too?), danny has to compare them to steve in some way. it’s a rule. every time anyone says something vaguely snarky steve physically can’t stop himself from saying “ah, did you know you sound just like danny williams?” and every time someone does something ill-advised yet heroic, danny is obligated by the universe and the wiring of his own heart to go “ugh, you remind me of steve.”

cole gets a pass because he did good stuff and is a war hero, steve and cole make friends, and then cole says he noticed the cypher on steve’s desk and we’re back to the thing i thought this episode would focus on way more heavily.

steve HAS been doing research to try to crack it! danny was right about steve not being able to let this go.

cole knows a guy who’s good at cracking codes! i guess that’s a neat way to connect him to steve’s finale plot and move it along at the same time, haha.

steve is still at the office when his phone rings and it’s danny and then steve walks onto his beach where danny is waiting for him in their two chairs with two beers, and i love that, especially because we don’t hear danny’s side of the phone conversation but it was a very short scene so what did he say, exactly? “come home, i’m lonely, i have beer”?

steve: “what’s the face, you got a face on, your face” fdjkfd. eloquent!

SCREAMING. “you think lincoln is my new bff? yo, no one can replace you, you’re my danno!” i am. oh my gosh. this is steve reassuring HIMSELF, not danny, but it is also incredibly sweet and YOU’RE MY DANNO. now THAT’S the kind of content i want. yes. good. holy shit.

danny says to stop doing “that”, by which he means deflecting, and steve just goes “okay” and looks uncomfortable but starts talking anyway and i LOVE THEM. this is a good, healthy friendship.

steve: “i kinda feel like i’ve been protecting everybody except for myself, does that make sense?” YES. YES, STEVE, IT DOES, and i am VERY GLAD you’re saying those words with your own mouth.

i am making very high pitched noises at the moment. a) steve says he can’t take a break “here” because there are too many memories and that SCARES ME because he SHOULD NOT LEAVE THE ISLAND but also really really validates a fic idea i’ve had for ages in a way that i love, b) steve says “i will say this is how i thought it would end for us, couple old guys, sitting on a beach, watching sunsets” and YES oh my gosh, and c) then DANNY GOES, “i mean that sounds great to me, we can still do that” and HELLO YES it is SO GOOD to hear them VOICE these things that they’ve obviously both wanted for literal years and which we’ve been shown through steve’s clinginess when danny wanted to retire and danny’s bringing steve in on the restaurant thing and danny’s literal dream of him and steve sitting on that very beach as old men with steve telling him he loves him. just, my gosh, this is all those things but put into words that they are saying and it is very validating and sweet and necessary and scares me very much about where this is going, but for the moment i adore it.

the episode has two and a half minutes left and i’m kind of feeling like this is enough. let’s just end it here. happy end, guys, let’s all go home! except steve and danny, who are already there, obviously, and should do the opposite of move, ever.

OH. OHHH. steve tells danny he doesn’t know anymore and danny looks sad and then steve continues about how he’s been trying to distract himself with stuff like “a bunch of dating, which was nice, but didn’t help” and the RESTAURANT gets a mention though i’ll admit it’s one that’s very confusing because steve says “when it closed”, which... it didn’t, as far as we had been told until now? isn’t kamekona still running it? i always assumed he’d have turned it into a very successful bussiness venture.

danny looks UNHAPPY ABOUT THINGS STEVE IS SAYING and i relate, while i’m at the same time weirdly very very proud of him for saying these things? i don’t want him to feel this unsure about everything (particularly whether he can stay in hawaii, because it seems that’s what he’s talking about and that’s Bad), but it is a needed breath of fresh air to have stuff that happened and that he’s been bottling up for ages actually impact him emotionally.

okay, fjdksfdjslfs, danny suggests steve should GO TO JERSEY and says that steve has NEVER BEEN and i get that this is mostly kind of a joke but actually YES, STEVE. GO THE FUCK TO JERSEY. that would be perfect! danny can subtly follow you under the guise of an extended visit to family and you can spend time there together exploring danny’s home state instead of steve’s and you can come back home to hawaii when you’re ready and it would be beautiful and a very nice, symbolic way to end the show. we start with danny moving to hawaii to find a home there, and we end with with steve moving to jersey to realize where his home is.

this argument though, it’s giving me life. steve when danny starts suggesting other places, angrily, for no good reason: “now i HAVE to go.” danny, both giving and getting up: “i’m gonna get another beer.” steve, calm again: “okay, i’m gonna go to jersey.” danny: [walks away while steve yells after him about all the recommendations he’ll need for when he’s in jersey]

danny is inside to get the beer, hears a noise, finds a burglar at steve’s desk, fights him, destroy half the living room and is found by steve who also heard noise from the house and suddenly keeps saying “yo” to danny a lot this episode.

of course the burglar was there for the cypher that doris sent steve, because she can never just pop up in steve’s life in a way that isn’t somehow dangerous to him and everyone around him. it was good, though!!! a very nice cliffhanger.

final thoughts: VERY GOOD, VERY INTENSE EPISODE. i liked cole more than i expected for a character that gets introduced as potential main cast in the last two episodes of a show that’s by now already been cancelled (that could have been problematic, but i think the writers handled it well by brick-to-the-face using him to explore steve’s issues) and i love danny being so worried about steve and tani following his lead and wanting to talk to everyone close to steve about how worried she is, too, and everything steve says has ME worried about how they’re going to end this, but so far, it’s also amazing A+ perfect fanfic fuel, holy effing shit. EMOTIONS. FEELINGS. STEVE HAS THEM. it’s literally that easy to please me, fdjkfd.

and i will say that while i’m worried about him and he’s clearly hurting and there are ways the show could take this that i won’t like (steve leaving the island at the end of the show while danny stays, mainly, which would be kind of horrible in all kinds of ways), i do somewhat love seeing steve deal with the fact that he’s older than he was ten years ago, he’s never really worked through all of the incredibly horrible shit life kept heaping on him, and he’s just getting really damn tired of everything. old, tired steve is a good thing; it’s the start of a new chapter, one where he hopefully doesn’t keep clinging to that endless denial of hurt and his tendency to put the job above everything including his own mental and physical health. i just hope, hope, hope that this last chapter that we actually get to watch play out on screen will be one that ends in a place that feels right, because this could either end perfectly or so, so badly. 🤞

#h50 #10.21 #h50 spoilers #i am now VERY SCARED but also VERY HYPED for that last episode next week #*

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lurafita · 6 years ago

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Peter/Avengers, dub/con, captivity, Part three

TAGGING PEOPLE DIDN’T WORK! I don’t know why, but everytime I tried tagging someone, tumblr suddenly redirected me to their blog, instead of just writing down the name. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what the issue is. I have got in contact with support and am awaiting their answer, but until then, I hope you were still able to find this part! Again, so sorry!

Read Part 1: here

Read Part 2: here

People, heed the tags for upcoming parts in this story.

kidnapping, dub/con, captivity, chains, bondage, obsessive Avengers, Peter/Everyone, darkly soft Avengers (in the sense that they hold Peter captive, but only want to love and protect him), non-powered Peter, dark-ish Avengers, 18+ Peter, Clint is not married and has no kids, Tony is not in a relationship with Pepper.

(I feel like a cheat for tagging these things, even though I still haven’t gotten to the juicy bits in this fic...)

Part 3

Peter had long since retired, when the others gathered in the common floors living room, to further discuss the bomb the younger man had dropped on them mere hours ago.

Clint was waving his phone around wildly. “Australia is the most poisonous continent in the world! There are frogs that can kill you! Frogs!”

Bruce was frowning deeply. “The climate is drastically different there. Neither his body, nor his immune system will easily adapt. Petey could develop numerous illnesses because of that.”

Sam was likewise shaking his head. “Pumpkin doesn't have the physicality for weeks long hiking in the jungle. He may be good at parkour, but that is still miles away from the terrain that will await him in the underbrush.”

Steve made a sound like a wounded animal. “Don't remind me of that particular hobby of his, please. I still have nightmares from that video he showed us.”

Tony threw back his scotch. “Six months. Possibly longer. Sweetheart shouldn't be away from us for such a long time. Shouldn't be away at all.”

Bucky was pacing, the Winter Soldier clawing at his very being. “There isn't enough Intel. We don't know the people that would be part of his group. Don't know the terrain. Can't predict the conditions. Can't entrust Doll to strangers. Not safe.”

Natasha was stoically silent, though her face was stormy.

Thor looked contemplative. “...Then maybe we shouldn't let him go.”

The others stilled, all looking at the Asgardian.

“Hate to break it to you, L'Oreal, but I already tried bribing the University's board, in order to make them reject Stoddard's little excursion. No dice. Figures Peter would attend the one university in this stupid city that holds academic achievements in a higher regard than funding.”

A snort of pure disgust left the billionaires mouth, as he stood up to refill his glass.

But Thor shook his head. “I'm not saying to not let other people embark on this quest. I'm saying not to let Peter go.”

Steve wrung his hands. “We can't exactly keep him from going...”

Thor raised a challenging eyebrow. “Why not? He is a lovely creature, but he is not blessed with strength and battle prowess like the rest of us are. I imagine it would be quite easy to keep him here.”

The others looked around them uncomfortably.

“It's not that we wouldn't be capable of keeping him here, Thor, so much as that we... shouldn't...do something like this.” Sam awkwardly rubbed his neck.

“... Why shouldn't we?” But this time the question didn't come from Thor, but from Bucky.

Nervously wiping his hands over his thighs, Bruce tried to give reason to his words, while the Hulk was roaring in agreement with the Winter Soldier.

“It's... We can't... Peter isn't a child. Or a pet. … We have no right to just... keep him.”

Natasha spoke for the first time, her voice even.

“Don't we? Haven't we taken him in? Haven't we taken care of him for the last year? Aren't we the ones most responsible for his safety and well being? You just counted off all the dangers awaiting Lastashka if he joins this excursion. It's not safe. And he is ours to protect.”

Tony slowly set down his glass, eyes going back and forth during his inner debate.

“It's not like we would be doing something bad... He needs us. He can barely remember to feed himself.”

Clint gave him a sardonic look for that.

“Yeah, I'm not gonna comment on how very hypocritical that is coming from you. But you are right. Last week he almost fainted, because he wanted to finish his thesis, and didn't sleep for two days straight.”

Tony's head shot up at this.

“What? Why didn't I know about this? Friday? I thought I told you to keep an eye on my Sweetheart's sleeping schedule.”

“Peter asked me not to inform you of this, when I attempted to get him to sleep. He said it wouldn’t be a regular occurrence, and that after he finished with his work, he wouldn't have to neglect his rest so severely again. Since you yourself have abstained from sleep on far more occasions, I promised Peter discretion on the matter.”

Dammit!

Clint simply pointed to him.

“See? Hypocrite. But this just helps to prove the fact that Pete isn't very good at taking care of himself. And we can't leave him to a bunch of nerdy strangers. Nat is right. He is ours to protect.”

Bucky nodded along with this reasoning, as Sam pursed his lips.

“It's not like there is any guarantee that this plant this professor is looking for will really cure the disease, right? It's not worth it for Pumpkin to risk his health, possibly even his life, on a fools errand.”

Bruce couldn't ignore the words of his friends,and the desires of himself and the Hulk, any longer.

“I have been on such fruitless excursions during my time in university. I remember the hopeful anticipation in the beginning. And the crushing devastation when we came back empty handed. I would like to spare Petey such an experience.”

Steve held up his hands.

“Whoa, whoa, guys. You aren't seriously considering,- what? Kidnapping Peter? Keeping him locked up here with us?”

Bucky spoke before anyone else could.

“He would be safe here. We can protect him. Care for him. Love him.”

Natasha nodded.

“We won't hurt him. He won't understand or like it, at first. But he will come around.”

Tony carefully chimed in.

“It will take some time. Patience. Affection. But... since everyone will be thinking he is gonna be in the depths of the Australian underbrush for at least half a year...”

Clint was already a step ahead.

“The Tower is listed as Peter's official address, and Tony and Bruce as the overseers of his internship. It wouldn't be suspicious if one of them called the university the day of the groups departure, to report that Peter can't make it due to sudden injury or illness.”

Sam hopped right on.

“They will want to catch a very early flight, won't they? It's a bit of a trip to another continent. We could throw a little 'Good-bye' party for Pete. Invite his friends and aunt. Tell everyone one of us would drive him to the airport the next morning...”

A thoughtful crease appeared between Bruce's eyebrows.

“The professors usually tell the students and volunteers in their group to leave things like their cellphones at home. There is rarely opportunity to charge the battery, and if you are deep in the jungle, there is no reception anyway. So no one would be expecting to hear from him before the excursion team gets back. By that time,... surely Petey won't want to leave us again.”

Steve took a step forward.

“Okay, stop. Do you realize what you are talking about? We can't do this.”

“Don't you love him?” Thor's usually booming voice was quite, almost a whisper.

Steve nodded. “Of course I do. But-”

“Don't you wish to protect him? To know that he is safe?” Sam added.

“I do. But that doesn't mean-”

“Haven't things been so much better since he came to live with us? We have all been more careful during missions, taking less risks, causing less damage, because we know Peter is here, waiting for us to come back.” Clint threw in.

“I-”

“Peter was underweight when he started living here, you know? He got some acid on his shirt, and had to change out of it. I could count his ribs back then. His clothes don't look like they are his two heads taller brother’s hand-me-downs any longer, because we have made sure that he eats regularly. Do you think anyone else will do that for him in Australia?” Bruce asked.

“They.. no, they probably wouldn't..”

“You have been drawing more, since Peter found some of your older sketches. It has helped you relax. Been a way for you to deal with the things we have been through. I know half of your sketchbook is full of drawings of him. Do you really think you can go back to before? Capture other motifs on paper? Be without your muse for six whole months, and possibly longer?” Bucky implored.

“I didn't think of that.... I... I couldn't...”

“When I was a child, I have never been allowed to want something. We were weapons, there was no room for wishes. I have gotten to experience friendship and trust since then, and maybe it is selfish to ask for more. But I want more, Steve. I want Peter. I want him to be here with us, not somewhere in some jungle that might take him from us. My trainers kept me from wanting then, will this world's ideal of morality still keep me from wanting now?” She looked at him with eyes fuller of emotion than they had ever been.

“Natasha, I... no, of course you are allowed to want-”

“I don't care if I'm being selfish. We are heroes, Steve. Earth's mightiest defenders, isn't that what they call us? We go out there and fight everyone's enemies. People are safe because of us. But I will tell you right now, the only reason I have been able to sleep through a whole night recently, is Peter. I have seen so much shit in my life, Steve. Before the Avengers were ever formed, and then even more after we got this little superhero boy-band together. I used to tinker in my lab for days on end, because I knew that at one point my body would shut down on its own, and I would get the sleep I needed, with only the minimum of all the delightful nightmares my ptsd ridden brain could come up with. But ever since Peter has been here, it's better. I go to bed thinking about the way his eyes light up, whenever I show him a new upgrade for a current project, instead of the wide open eyes of the dead child we were too late to safe. I'm able to sleep dreaming about the noises he would make, if I bit the nape of his neck just so, instead of recalling flying a nuke through a portal and falling to what was supposed to be my death. Don't try to tell me you haven't had similar experiences with him. Don't try to lie about this. We deserve to be selfish with the person we love.”

“I, I know, Tony. I'm not saying that I don't understand...” The protest was feeble, weak. Steve was already more than halfway convinced.

“In Asgard, Peter would be called a 'Melmir'. A gift. Something to be kept to ourselves and safe at all cost.” Thor had stood, stepping closer to his friend.

“Peter isn't a thing.”

“I did not mean to imply such. A treasure needs not be an object to be called precious. Peter is precious, is he not?”

Steve looked determinedly into the eyes of his taller friend.

“He is.”

Then the super soldier looked at his teammates around him. His friends. And he saw his own feelings reflected in their eyes.

“And he is ours.”

______________________________________________________________

Read Part 4: here

Yeah, so this part was supposed to dive right into the chains and captivity and other stuff that I promised, but then I got caught up in the dialouge and, well....

I do hope you still liked it though. I will try to be faster with the next part.

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vivypotter · 6 years ago

Text

Vivy’s Harry Potter Fic Recs

I’ve had a load of people ask me for my favourite tomarry fics, so I thought I’d compile a fic rec! This will probably be updated as I think of things. However, I have a lot of favourite fics which aren’t Tomarry, so I thought I’d add a few other pairings as well. I think I’ll put up a few recs of other fandoms as well when I get ‘round to it, like Hannibal or the Hobbit (I have weird reading habits okay?) It’ll help me find them too xD.

Tom Riddle or Voldemort/Harry Potter

Consuming Shadows by Child_OTKW (WIP)

On the night of the attack, Lily managed to escape with her infant son, but at the cost of her husband’s life. Distraught and distrusting of her friends, she fled to France with Harry, to raise him away from the corruption in Britain and the rising influence of the Dark Lord. She trains him to the best of her abilities, shaping him into a dangerous, intelligent and powerful wizard.

But when Britain re-establishes the Triwizard Tournament, and Harry is forced to return to his once-home, he finds himself questioning whether he really wants to kill the Dark Lord. Voldemort finds an unexpected challenge in the child, and as his intrigue and amusement grows, so too does the desire to possess the spark in those defiant green eyes.

I feel this is genuinely one of the best Tomarry fanfics maybe ever written, and I’m sure you’ve probably read it since it’s so popular - but I thought I’d recommend it anyway! It’s not finished, but there’s enough of it to really sink your teeth into and action is properly going down right now. Harry is such an interesting character and his cat and mouse dynamic with Voldemort is so entertaining. I anxiously wait for every update!

Set the Sails (and don’t look back) by Terrific Lunacy (Complete)

1724. All Harry wanted to do was to cross the Atlantic and start his apprenticeship under one of the most renowned physicians. Tom Riddle is convinced everything floating in the seven seas belongs to him. That includes ship-wrecked, green-eyed youths. Especially if they tell him to fuck off.

This is a fic that’s really stuck with me. It’s complete (a miracle in the tomarry fandom) and there’s a fun back-and-forth between Voldemort and Harry. Our goodhearted Harry is a doctor! And for some reason, I’ve been really into Pirate AUs recently.

A Thousand Paths Among The Stars by haplesshippo (Complete)

Harry Potter, newly appointed Captain of the Marauder and son of the famous Captain James Potter, was falling apart at the seams. His crew didn’t respect him, he was lost in the empty expanse of space, nightmares plagued his sleep, and his Commander deserved the Captain position more than he did. Good thing multiple attempts on his life and a vicious warlord after his head was all it took to turn it all around.

Alternatively, that space fic in which Harry Potter almost dies too many times, Tom Riddle slowly becomes the most smitten fool on the ship, and the rest of the crew are all just a bunch of assholes with popcorn watching the show. And exploding ships, don't forget the exploding ships.

Another pirate AU, kind of! But this one is in space! And it’s actually more of a Star Trek AU. Okay, it’s not really a pirate AU but I wanted to keep the theme going. This is such a freaking good fic- the relationship between Tom and Harry is very unusual (not as combative as the last two fics) and there are some nice twists, as well as combination of HP lore and what I assume is Star Trek (I’ve never seen it okay). And the extended cast is excellent. I fully recommend!

The Dragon's Mate by Strange_Soulmates (Complete fics but WIP series)

Harry Potter has recently escaped from his dragon-guarded tower. So has his fellow prisoner - the dragon who was enchanted to guard him. Harry's friend is missing, however, and so he sets off to assure himself of his well-being before he finds the person responsible for imprisoning them both. Accompanied by a stranger with a familiar name, Harry finds himself with more questions than answers as he slowly learns about the customs of dragons and the history of the dragon he befriended, the fearsome Voldemort.

I really love pretty much all of Strange_Soulmates’ fics, but this is definitely my favourite (and maybe the only complete one? Don’t quote me on that.) The characters are so well done, and although I love the first fic a little more than the second, they are both excellent reads! Dragons and wizards? Yes, please!

Everything's Fine in the Beast Division by Merrinpippy (Complete)

Harry's lifelong ambition is to become an auror, but as his knowledge of Dangerous Beasts is somewhat lacking, Newt Scamander agrees to take him on as an apprentice. Contrary to the Weasley twins' predictions that Harry would die of boredom, Harry finds his time at the Ministry very interesting, and befriending the very attractive Tom Riddle doesn't hurt at all- in fact, quite the opposite.

This is such a fantastic fanfiction, and a crossover with Fantastic Beasts (a franchise I can’t stand but that’s a conversation for another time). It manages to be fluffy without going OOC which is difficult for tomarry fics, and the supporting cast are adorable!

To Be Set Free by Merrinpippy

Harry Potter, raised and abused by the Dursleys ever since his parents died, lives in the cupboard under the stairs. He has no friends or family who love him and his life is dull until one day a letter arrives arrives for him, written in green ink, that promises freedom. Sounds familiar, right?

King Thomas Riddle's illness combined with his political paranoia pushes him to arrange three royal balls, after which his son, Prince Tom Riddle, must choose a guest to marry, thereby securing the kingdom's future and solidifying their strength in the eyes of their allies/enemies. Tom is convinced that he will be able to defy his father and choose no-one, or at least he is until at the first ball he meets an attractive stranger with dark hair and glasses who won't tell anyone his name...

This is also excellent, and I love a good Fairytale AU. Merrinpippy has some really good stuff. I love all of it!

As Clichéd as Clichés Go by thecrimsonmonarch (One-shot)

Harry Potter wasn't known for his social skills, mainly because they were practically non-existent.

This is a bit random but very fun. Harry is a fucking dork. That’s all there is to say. A thoroughly amusing Lawyer AU.

Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus by The Carnivorous Muffin (WIP)

As the unwitting personification of Death, reality exists to Lily through the veil of a backstage curtain, a transient stage show performed by actors who take their roles only too seriously. But as the Girl-Who-Lived, Lily's role to play is the most important of all, and come hell or high water play it she will, regardless of how awful Wizard Lenin seems to think she is at her job.

This is a still-uploading fanfic and one of my faves. It’s not for everyone- it’s a fem!Harry and she’s so different that she’s really an OC to be honest, and the story is slightly complicated. This is certainly not a fic to go for if you want IC characters. But I really love the writing and the ideas and it’s basically a new, fascinating universe. And even if they’re not IC, I love the characters all dearly. The Carnivorous Muffin is certainly an extremely talented writer- all of her stuff is excellent.

Little Bits by lordmarvoloriddle

Inspired by Cinderella. Only there's no prince and surely no one is singing about their feelings and Harry's life could be a lot worse than having three step-brothers and a father who didn't liked him. He's going to be proven right.

This is such a bloody creepy fic and so so good. The ending is a complete twist and you should definitely read it!

Drarry

Draw a Line from Your Heart to Mine by CreateImagineWrite (Complete)

Being Harry Potter's best friend isn't always fame and beating off raving fans. It's also the anxiety of hearing your best mate's been cursed by another Dark Lord, or love potioned by some crazy woman. Or having his boyfriend you knew nothing about turn up on the Burrow's doorstep.

This is a bit of a random inclusion, but I was just reading this and it is SO GOOD. Perhaps a bit cliched in places, but Ron Weasley’s inner monologue makes up for it.

Turn by Saras_Girl

One good turn always deserves another. Apparently.

This is an also an excellent fic that I read bloody ages ago and has apparently stuck with me. There’s this whole Harry going into an alternate dimension where he’s married to Draco Malfoy plot, but the really beautiful thing is Harry exploring his dissatisfaction with his life- through carpentry! I know it sounds like a crack fic, but it’s not- it’s a gorgeously written fic.

Away Childish Things by lettered

Harry gets de-aged. Malfoy has to help him.

This does the ‘Harry was abused’ revelation so well and really interestingly explores both Harry and Draco’s childhood. The overarching plot is also excellently done, which can’t always be said for character-focused fics!

Jily

#Jily by Chie (Chierafied) (One-shot)

Twitter seemed awash with the hashtag Jily. Lily blinked at in confusion, until she realised it was one of those silly couple monikers people had bestowed on her and Potter. …Though there was a small dissenting crowd following a tweet from Potter’s bandmate Sirius Black: Jily? Hah! More like LAMES.

This is such a fucking cute one-shot. I love social media AUs (if you find any, send them my way), so I loved this!

The Rise and Fall of the Extraordinary Jilysanschilly: Including Excerpts of their Best Collected Works by elanev91 (One-shot)

James Potter and Lily Evans are both wildly successful YouTubers and Sirius cannot believe that people ship them enough to write erotic fanfiction about them.

You might be picking up on my love of modern Jily AUs. This is so cute, Sirius is weirdly IC as he gets caught up in a smut addiction and James and Lily don’t hate each other from the beginning so that’s fun. A very sweet YouTuber AU.

Hit the Like Button by elixirsoflife (One-shot)

YouTube star James Potter is living it up at uni: filming videos, getting drunk and professing his love for aspiring singer Lily Evans to anyone who'll listen.

It’s another modern AU, but this time, Lily is a famous singer! This was fucking adorable, enough said.

The White Album by cgner (Complete)

James poses as an advice charm in Lily's diary. He's really got to start thinking through his shenanigans.

This is the strangest mix of angst and fluff that I’ve ever read, but it really, really works. It’s also kind of a crossover, as it’s written by the co-author of:

Haggis from Algernon by Rude Gus (Complete)

The fic about nothing.

Everything written by both Rude Gus and cgner is brilliant (not a surprise as they’re almost the same person), but Haggis really is a classic. And check out their Bachelor AU fic! It’s surprisingly brilliant.

Gen and Misc

Kid by Anonymous (Completed)

A Potion's "accident" turns Harry into an eight year old. Draco Malfoy begins planning his kidnapping/conversion to the Dark Side. But Harry's a passive-aggressive, revenge-obsessed little bastard. Maybe Draco will wait on that whole Dark Lord thing…

Such a cute fic! A really nice character study of Draco and cute kid Harry is always a bonus. I’m not usually a Draco Malfoy fan, but this is a great fic.

Harveste by kyaru-chan (Complete fics but WIP series - probs abandoned)

He's done it. He's just five years old, but he's finally done it. The Dursleys are gone. And now he's with a new family who seems just as twisted as he is. How strange.

This is a really weird fic series. It’s actually an Addams family AU? Harry kills the Dursleys and gets adopted by the Addams family, and then there’s a separate fic for each HP book up to Half-Blood Prince, where I think they stopped. It definitely still worth a read though. Harry is certainly not IC but it’s a fascinating combination of the two universes with all the quirky Addams family humour. It’s certainly a bit of a crack fic to read when you’re down.

Sarcasm and Slytherin by sunmoonandstars (Complete stories but WIP series)

After ten years of misery with the Dursleys, Harry Potter learns that he has magic. Except, in this story, it's not a surprise-the only surprise is that there are others like him. Including his twin brother, Julian Potter, the savior of the Wizarding world.

This isn't the Harry you think you know.

This is WBWL kind of story (although we don’t know if Harry actually is the BWL yet. Harry is a really interesting character and his relationship with his family- especially Jules - is very well developed and nuanced. Harry’s friendships and the authors interpretation of Slytherin house is also a new twist on old tropes- it feels very fresh! I’m eagerly waiting for updates!

So there it is. Just some of my HP faves. I’m considering doing one for Hannibal, Yuri on Ice, The Hobbit, Labyrinth (my tastes are so weird) etc, so let me know if you’re interested!

#fanfic #fic rec #harry potter fic rec #tomarry fic rec #jily fic rec #tomarry

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jikook-love · 8 years ago

Text

E[Love]

PART 1 | calculate the expectation of love.

student!jungkook + tutor!jimin = math!jikook ;)

alternatively, 16k+ of self-indulgent romantic crack, unnecessary dialogue and really bad math humour as reluctant math major Jungkook sets out on his quest for love.

Happy Valentine’s Day~! ♥ This is for @gracefulweather! She should know I probably destroyed my midterm mark thanks to her.

read the full story on AO3

“ARGH! I don’t wanna study anymore! Why am I even in this program?!”

The sudden outburst from second year Mathematics & Statistics major Jeon Jungkook startled some of the other students in the library, some of whom threw him the dirtiest look.

“Pipe down, won’t you?” Kim Seokjin—4th Year Honours Statistics and Vice-President of the Math Council—whispered, looking embarrassed for the younger, bespectacled boy. “Second year isn’t that bad. You’ll get it soon.”

“Says you who has the fucking smartest boyfriend in the entire university, probably,” Jungkook snapped, pulling off his glasses in frustration.

“He’s definitely not the smartest, and are you suggesting I leeched off him?” Seokjin scoffed. “It’s not like he wrote my exams for me.”

“Whatever,” Jungkook pouted as he slammed his head down into his books. “I don’t think I can memorize another probability distribution. Not that it matters anyway. I’m not passing that damn course.”

Seokjin sipped his coffee nonchalantly as he stared at Jungkook. “Tell me. Why are you even in this program anyway? Did you even like math in high school?”

“No,” Jungkook groaned, as he slumped further into papers.

“Well…you’re certainly not very good at it,” Seokjin said bluntly. “So why math?”

“I DON’T KNOW!” Jungkook blurted, eyes wide. “I honestly don’t know!”

Seokjin sighed. “So in the end you’re one of those people,” he spoke. “You have no appreciation for this art of numbers, the poetry of proofs…nor the satisfaction of solving an arduous problem late after midnight.”

“More like finally finding the answer on Google,” Jungkook muttered under his breath.

“I’m serious,” Seokjin said firmly. “Why do you think math professors are all like ‘I would wed the numbers if I could’? There’s just something about it, man. How do you think I managed to stay single for so long? That pure pleasure from drawing the complete of proofs square or writing QED at 3 a.m.…it’s more than enough.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Jungkook gaped, disgusted by his older friend’s descriptions.

Jungkook would never appreciate math. Never. Ever. Even if he was in this program, there was always that inner part of him that wanted to scream “nerd” and laugh at every aspiring math major who walked by. He hated that sense of elitism that they all seemed to have—Seokjin and his overachieving, go-hard boyfriend Namjoon included: so what if you can calculate a triple integral or memorize the equation for a Gamma distribution? It really shouldn’t make you any better than other people.

“Oi, did you hear me?” Seokjin’s voice came back into his mind.

“Sorry. I was trying to remember things that should be better off forgotten,” Jungkook grimaced.

“Like your midterm marks?” Seokjin snorted. “Anyways, I was saying you should try getting a tutor for your courses.”

“That’s not going to work though,” Jungkook whined, adjusting the collar of his hoody. “At this point, I don’t even know what I don’t know.”

“And that’s where the tutor comes in,” Seokjin said. “I know this guy—you may know him too actually. You know Taehyung, right? He’s in your classes.”

Jungkook snorted. “Do I know Taehyung?” Jungkook repeated mockingly. “I tried studying together with him once. Somehow, we ended up at a park somewhere at 3 a.m. eating frozen yogurt and dancing around a tree—we both failed the linear algebra assignment together after that so you might not want him to tutor me.”

“Wow, you’re practically besties,” Seokjin said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not him that I was going to suggest but he has a friend who’s really good at math. The guy’s looking for a part time job right now too so maybe he could help you out.”

“Wait, you want me to pay for this shit?” Jungkook gaped. “Hey, I’m broke, remember? Student life? We don’t all have daddies to take care of us you know?”

“Namjoon is not my daddy.”

“I was talking about your actual father but your guilty conscience seems to be off the walls today,” Jungkook snorted loudly. “You should’ve seen your face when you said that. Such a serious expression. ‘Namjoon is not my—‘‘”

“For a dude who’s supposed to be quiet you sure are talking a lot today.” Seokjin was quite flustered at this point. “So do you want my help or not?”

“Okay, okay fine,” Jungkook grumbled. “I’ll give it a shot…but do I really have to pay for it?”

Seokjin shrugged. “Maybe if he likes you enough, he’d do it for free.”

“…maybe I can pay for it with my body.”

“Jeon Jungkook, ever since you entered second year you keep making jokes like that and it doesn’t really sit well with me,” Seokjin reprimanded. “You used to be so cute and innocent…what happened?”

“This freaking school happened. And who said I was joking? Maybe I really have no alternative at this point,” Jungkook responded.

Seokjin let out another exasperated sigh. “You know what, I think I’m done listening to you for today,” he concluded as he packed up his books. “I’ll message you Jimin’s e-mail and then you can do whatever you want with it.”

Jungkook stared at Seokjin as he pulled his backpack onto his shoulders. “Wait, who’s Jimin?

“The guy who’s hopefully gonna tutor you,” Seokjin answered. “You don’t know him? Park Jimin? 3rd Year Math & Stats? He actually has quite the reputation around here.”

“No…should I?” Jungkook narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “He’s not one of those dudes, is he?”

“Jungkook, I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about 50% of the time.”

“You know, one of those arrogant nerdy pricks that you and Namjoon like to hang around for some reason.”

“He’s nothing like that at all. And we don’t hang around people like that! You just have to get to know them.”

“This is why I don’t trust you.”

“It’ll be fine,” Seokjin reassured. “Just…give it a chance. Who knows? Maybe if you’re not so focussed on just being closed away all the time, perhaps you can learn to be commutative and associative with others as well…perhaps even gain an identity.”

“You disgust me.”

“Now that’s the inverse of what I wanted to hear.”

It was already 12:50 a.m. Instead of finishing up his calculus assignment like he was supposed to, Jeon Jungkook was on Facebook, messaging Taehyung, though it was partly because he’d gotten distracted while trying to search up the solution on Google.

Taehyung: how’s anal going by the way?

Jungkook: it is absolutely painful. i can’t even go to class anymore because it hurts so much

Taehyung: hmm. sucks to suck. i warned you not to take it so early.

Jungkook: i was young and foolish. i get it.

Jungkook sighed as he stared over to his neglected analysis (or “anal”, as him and Taehyung preferred to call it) textbooks, ones that he had bought brand new from the bookstore and hadn’t opened since.

Jungkook: so u know this jimin dude?

Taehyung: ya. we were best bros in high school

Jungkook: wat about now?

Taehyung: i mean obviously still but now he’s involved in a bunch of things and i'm just trying to pass lin alg so…

Taehyung: i mean we still meet up occasionally

Jungkook’s curiosity had been piqued before he could help himself. He typed the words Park Jimin into the Facebook search bar.

Jungkook: what does he look like?

Taehyung: black hair, short. idk how to describe him. i think he pretty plain. compared to me.

Jungkook found himself groaning before he could help it. Ugh, one of those people again. After scrolling through two pages of “Park Jimin”s with black hair, Jungkook decided to give up.

Taehyung: yo, how da fuq do you do question 3? what the hell is he even trying to ask

Jungkook: LOL ur asking me

Taehyung: screw it i'm going to sleep. ill do it in the morning

Jungkook: …it’s due at 9:30

Taehyung: i said. ill do it in the morning

And then he was gone, leaving Jungkook alone to contemplate the mystery that was Park Jimin, along with the massacre that was Question 3.

The Facebook message tone rang out again, and though Jungkook had expected it be to Taehyung, it was Seokjin instead. He opened to tab to see one line of e-mail, which undoubtedly had to be Park Jimin’s.

Jungkook stared at the address for a few seconds. Ugh. Who even uses e-mail anymore?

Deciding he had nothing better to do (mostly because question three gave him a headache just to look at), he opened up a new tab and logged into his e-mail, before promptly entering the address that had been given to him.

Hmmm….how should I word this? He had never really tried to e-mail another student professionally before, nor did he know what level of formality to use when addressing this person. Was he a stick in the mud? Was he chill like Taehyung? Jungkook had no clue, and the more he thought about it, the more discouraged he got: he was actually going to try and get help from a dude whom he had never met before. Was he really this desperate?

Exhaling to release any sliver of useless pride he had left, Jungkook brought his fingers to the keyboard and typed to his best discretion:

J, Jungkook

Tutoring Help

Hey,

My name is Jungkook and my friend Seokjin introduced you to me and said you could potentially tutor me.

Let me know if this is possible and when we can meet up.

Thanks,

Jungkook

Jungkook read it over. Once. Twice. After another deep sigh, he recollected himself and pressed send before he could hesitate any longer.

Deciding he had messed around long enough, he promptly turned his attention back to the dreaded question 3. Despite the dizziness he was already feeling in his brain due to the ungodly hour, he boldly picked up his pencil and decided to bullshit through the problem as best as he could.

Ping!

Jungkook nearly jumped at the sudden noise amidst the quiet.

Who’s e-mailing me at this time? Jungkook wondered as he grabbed his phone to check the notification.

He certainly did not expect to see what he saw.

Park, Jimin

Re: Tutoring Help

Hey Jungkook! I would love to…

That was fast. Before he knew it, Jungkook had already unlocked his phone, eager to read the rest of the message.

Park, Jimin

Re: Tutoring Help

Hello Jungkook!

I would love to try and help! Any friend of Jin’s is a friend of mine!

I know it’s short notice but I’m actually quite free tomorrow if you wanted to meet up.

What times are you free tomorrow? We could discuss things over coffee if you’d like!

Regards,

Park Jimin

Jungkook scrunched his nose up in annoyance, feeling turned off by the formal grammar and perfect mail syntax and lack of spelling errors and what kind of person even signs their mail with “regards” anymore? Jungkook scoffed at himself. This was only getting more and more hopeless. Despite that, Jungkook wasn’t really in the mood to hurt the guy’s feelings (yet) seeing as Jimin was so eager to respond. He decided to go along with it for now.

J, Jungkook

Re: Re: Tutoring Help

sounds good. how about 11 at the math café? and do you have facebook or something that I can add you on to make this easier?

He barely had to wait a minute to hear the notification ping again.

Park, Jimin

Re: Re: Re: Tutoring Help

That’s perfect!

And I’m really sorry but I don’t have Facebook. The only thing I use is e-mail so you can feel free to send me any questions or messages here! I’m usually fast at replying. I apologize for any inconvenience.

I’ll see you tomorrow then, Jungkook! I’m off to bed now, have a good night!

Regards,

Park Jimin

“That loser doesn’t have Facebook?!” Jungkook couldn’t help blurt aloud for no one but himself to hear. He was really, really regretting this now. This person clearly seemed like the most stick in the mud nerd in the world. He was still using perfect punctuation in his message, went to sleep early (well, 1 a.m. but still), and evidently still used e-mail as his main form of communication.

Needing an outlet for venting (and realizing it was now past hour of proper comprehension for question three), Jungkook decided to vent in the form of a single lined message to Kim Taehyung who was probably asleep by now and would probably see the bright, uplifting message in the morning:

Jungkook: ugh. leave it to kim freaking seokjin to hook me up with the number one virgin nerd lord in the world.

Jungkook sat patiently on one of the tall chairs at the Math Café, waiting for his nerd tutor to arrive.

It was barely 10:40 a.m., but he’d decided he had nothing better to do after handing in his assignment. Plus he wanted a good excuse not to start the next one. As Jungkook casually sipped his coffee, he could sense quite a lot of dirty looks being thrown at his direction, and he knew exactly why.

If he had to be completely frank with himself, Jungkook really didn’t want to be taught by this person, and he didn’t want to have to say that aloud at any point during their meeting. So instead, he resorted making himself look as unappealing as possible. So there he was, decked out in his old rotten sneakers that had a toe poking out of the right shoe, his old black shorts that he found stuffed between the wall and his bed that hadn’t washed in god knows how long, a pair of black, thick-rimmed fake glasses and a bright, blazing red hoodie that seemed to engulf him. As a bonus, he hadn’t even bothered to take a shower nor brush his hair after he had forced himself to wake up at 7 a.m despite that he only managed to finish the assignment at 4 a.m.

In other words, he looked like a very unfashionable zombie.

And honestly, he loved it. Jungkook was truly in his “fucks-I-give-none” element now.

The minutes started ticking by, and Jungkook kept his eye on the entrance for any sign of a preppily dressed nerd lord, potentially carrying a suitcase. He could only be complete with ugly glasses and maybe even a receding hairline at this rate.

Before he knew it, it was already 11:05 a.m., and no nerd lord in sight.

Jungkook felt slightly disappointed. So nerd lord isn’t as lawful as I thought he’d be.

Ding!

Jungkook’s Facebook messenger notification went off. He swiped to find out that Kim Taehyung was finally awake:

Taehyung: shit. i forgot to do the assignment.

Taehyung: and wait. who’s a virgin nerd lord?

Jungkook was about to respond when another message popped up.

Taehyung: oh. you mean jimin? ya he’s a nerd alright.

Taehyung: maybe not a virgin but definitely a nerd ._.

Jungkook snickered to himself..

Jungkook: he seem like such a by the book guy dough :o

Taehyung: he is. have fun with him. LOL.

Jungkook: thanks L (he’s late btws)

Taehyung: lmao. still? dat boi never shows up on time to anything.

Jungkook sighed. It was now 11:07 a.m., and still no nerd lord in sight. Jungkook was starting to tap his foot in impatience, contemplating if this was a good enough excuse to storm out and call it quits on this whole attempt.

However, his attention was abruptly piqued when something suddenly caught his eye.

Or rather someone.

Jungkook grabbed his phone immediately.

Jungkook: yo. dude. there's a really cute guy walking in rn. omg. were there even cute guys in math?

Taehyung: LOL. and r00d. and i'm in math, remember?

Jungkook: oh shiet. he's coming in here

Taehyung: talk to him.

Jungkook: he seems busy. he’s …dressed up all nicely.

Taehyung: white button up?

Jungkook: ya.

Jungkook: with a black tie.

Taehyung: L.O.L. might as well offer him your ass to him now.

Jungkook: he’s talking to people. he looking for sum1 MAYBE HE ON A DATE

Taehyung: who the fuck would go on a date at the math café

Jungkook: oh shiiiettt he getting closer. w/e I’m just gonna watch. he so out of my league lmao

Taehyung: oh kookie. no one’s out of your league. u just gotta believe

Jungkook: u don’t know what I look like rn. ._.

Taehyung: if you talk to him, i’ll give you five bucks

Jungkook: nah man, I’m gud. I’ll just be happy staring at him.

Jungkook: why the fuq is he so close now. he still talking to people. is he still looking for sum1. O.O

Taehyung: you wish he was looking for u LOL ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Taehyung: by the way. wat happened to ur tutor? no show? LOL.

Jungkook was in the middle of typing “yeah I have no clue” when he suddenly sensed the presence of someone standing by his table.

“Excuse me?” The voice was nice. Smooth yet approachable.

He looked up.

His heart nearly jumped out of his throat.

It was the guy. The guy was at his table. And he was talking to him.

If Jungkook thought the boy was “acutey” from afar, he was freaking beautiful up close. He had silky black hair that draped nicely over the porcelain skin of his forehead. His lips were plump and pretty and pink and Jungkook’s mind was already going to indecent places upon seeing them up close. And what’s more, his slanted, brown eyes were captivating as anything, soft and gentle and the way they were slightly widened in expectancy made Jungkook want to grab him right then and there. And what’s more, he was dressed completely in the style that Jungkook was totally weak for: white shirt, black tie…and the way those form-fitting black pants hugged his…

But instead of letting all the beauty overwhelm his senses and distract him completely, Jungkook suddenly became extremely aware of what he personally looked like, and immediately regretted all of his life decisions.

“Um…can I—uh, like, help you…or something?” Jungkook managed to stutter out very awkwardly.

“Are you Jeon Jungkook by any chance?” the boy smiled.

Jungkook felt his breath catch in his throat. How does he know my name? Jungkook’s brain (slightly abnormal from the lack of sleep) was spinning. Destiny, it has to be destiny, he concluded.

Jungkook coughed. “Yeah. I am.”

The boy’s smile widened. It was blinding.

His brain was running haywire. This is it. This is my reward for suffering in this program for so long. He’s gonna tell me I’m the only sin of pi over two for him. I finally get a sexy boyfriend. Yes, yes, YES—

“I’m Park Jimin, your tutor?” the boy said, still smiling. “We emailed each other last night?”

Jungkook’s smile disappeared as he suddenly lost balance and fell out of his chair in surprise. He crashed harshly to the ground—much like the reality surrounding him at that moment.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU HAD A HOT BEST FRIEND?” Jungkook screamed immediately upon bursting into Taehyung’s room.

Taehyung groaned from his bed. “Why do I feel like—wow, you look ratchet—this has happened before in some alternate universe?”

“What does that even mean?” Jungkook blabbered. “Anyways, I totally made a fool of myself.”

“How bad could it be? It’s you after all,” Taehyung grinned.

“I fell out of my chair.”

Taehyung blinked. “How—”

“It just got exponentially worse, ok?” Jungkook sighed. “I was already tired from the three hours of sleep and then he came up to me which was already not okay and then he just throws the bomb—”

“I think you meant ‘drops the bomb’,” Taehyung mumbled.

“—and I’m lucky I didn’t die, okay? I thought my heart was going to stop. And what nerd lord? I’m sorry, but that ass alone—I’m telling you it has like…no upper bound if ya know what I’m saying.”

Taehyung glared at Jungkook. “What does that even mean? That doesn’t even make sense. His ass is a freaking parabola, of course it has an upper bound—why are you even fast tracking third year analysis—anyways, first of all, you assumed he was the nerd lord. I only told you what I honestly think of him…besides, did he agree to tutor you in the end?”

Jungkook couldn’t help but allow a slight smile to crack onto his face.

“Yea…” he said quietly. He promptly received a pillow in the face.

“Ew. Quit acting like a smitten maiden, it’s grossing me out,” Taehyung grumbled. “But now that I think about it you two should totally date. He’s like your complement: you two complete each other.”

“Ha, as if I have a chance now,” Jungkook sighed. “I’m lucky he just laughed it off. But he probably thinks I’m a loser.”

“Well, he’d find out you’re a loser eventually anyways so it’s better now than later,” Taehyung noted.

Jungkook threw his friend the dirtiest look.

“Anyways, I love how you didn’t even bother putting two and two together: he was obviously your tutor. Why else would he go up to you? You think you’re cute or something?” Taehyung snickered.

Jungkook returned the pillow back to Taehyung with an aggressive throw (but missed). “Shut up. Unlike you, I didn’t have enough sleep last night.”

“Excuses. When do math majors ever get enough sleep? When do we even get anything? We’re all here because we secretly like the pain.”

“Last time I checked I wasn’t a masochist like you.”

“Check again, brother. We all are to some extent,” Taehyung grinned. “Anyways, when are you seeing him again?”

“Friday night,” Jungkook muttered.

“Where?”

“…my place.”

“Ooh.”

Ding dong!

The sound of the doorbell caused Jungkook to jump in his place, accidentally popping his collar up too high as he tried to adjust it.

“Omg, he’s here,” Jungkook muttered to himself, as he practically scampered over to the door and whipped it open.

“H—hey t—there…I mean…uh, sup?” Jungkook sputtered smoothly the moment he caught sight of his spiffy tutor.

Park Jimin blessed Jungkook with a pretty close lipped smile.

“Your grades should be after I’m done with you,” Jimin winked, brushing past Jungkook as he stepped inside.

Jungkook blinked, clearly too slow to get the quip. “What?”

“Where should I hang my coat up, Jungkook?” Jimin asked while Jungkook fumbled with the door.

“Uh—um, I can take it,” Jungkook said quickly, trying not to stare awkwardly as Jimin peeled off his coat. To anyone else, the familiar dress shirt, black tie and tight slacks may not have been the most arousing costume to reveal underneath, but Jeon Jungkook sure as hell tried to hide his gulp as he took the coat from Jimin.

Would it weird if I suddenly just buried my face into this and—yeah, yeah it would. Never mind. Jungkook shook the thoughts out of his mind as he quickly hung the coat in the closet.

“So, where do you want me?” Jimin asked.

“My bedroom,” Jungkook blurted.

“Excuse me?”

“Uh—I meant that we’d be studying i-in my room…y’know, cause there’s a desk and I-I cleared up a space f-for us,” Jungkook stuttered like the absolute value of a loser that he was. Oh my god, this speech issue needs to STOP.

“Oh okay,” Jimin nodded. “Sounds good. Lead the way.”

Jungkook nodded eagerly, and practically leapt two steps up the stairs as he took Jimin to his room. He’d spent the entire morning attempting to clean it up in order to potentially impress his evidently immaculate tutor.

Jungkook opened the door and showed Jimin to the sitting desk that he’d set up.

“You can set up here,” Jungkook gestured. “D-do you want some tea or something in the meantime?”

“It’s fine, let’s just get right to it,” Jimin smiled softly. Jungkook thought he felt his heart skip a beat when Jimin said that. He was weak. So, so weak right now.

And whether or not Jimin noticed, he did manage to say some comforting words: “Relax, I’m not here to make you feel incompetent or anything. I remember struggling insanely in my second year as well, so I’m the last person who’d make fun of you.”

“What year are you in now?” Jungkook asked as he settled down across from Jimin.

“Third,” Jimin smirked. “I’m not saying it gets better, but at this point, at least you’re used to it.”

“Wait…are you taking third year Real Analysis?”

“Yeah, why? Are you planning on taking it next year?”

“Well…things happened…and I’m actually taking the course right now…”

Jimin’s face lit up. “Actually? That means we’re in the same class! What are the chances…wait, how come I’ve never seen you before then?”

It’s because I never go to class, Jungkook thought shamefully. But he couldn’t let Jimin know. Fortunately, Jimin beat him to an excuse.

“Hmm…it’s probably because I always sit alone at the very front row, which is why I don’t see you,” Jimin noted.

“Y-yeah, that’s it,” Jungkook quickly agreed.

“Hey, we should totally sit together from now on!” Jimin blurted suddenly. “I could help you understand what the professor is saying and you…you can keep me company.”

Jungkook was speechless. It hadn’t even been ten minutes and he had already been offered a seat next to his tutor/eternal crush in lecture. For someone in the math program, that was like getting to second base…right? (At least that’s what Taehyung told him all the way in first year.)

Jimin suddenly let out a slight chuckle at Jungkook’s lack of response. “I’m sorry, you must think I’m such a loser,” he confessed awkwardlty. “The nerd that sits at the front of class. Alone. All my friends didn’t want to take the course because they thought it’d be too difficult.”

Jungkook immediately felt a surge of guilt for all the “nerd lord” comments.

“No! No way! Not at all!” Jungkook blabbered in a hurry, waving his hands everywhere. “I-I’ve always thought it was the cooler kids that sat at the front. You know, the ones that truly care and have connections with the prof and stuff.” The latter part, at least, was his genuine thought.

“If you say so,” Jimin smiled. “What about you? Why did you take the course early? You must’ve really liked second year analysis.”

“Um…well…” Jungkook shuffled uncomfortably in his place.

“It’s fine to admit you like it,” Jimin said. “I find it really interesting, personally. Even though I know it’s not exactly the easiest thing.”

“I…I was kind of pranked into taking it…”

“…what?”

Jungkook sighed. “One of my friends told me it would be an easy course to take a minute before course applications were due and…I believed him. I haven’t even taken the second year analysis. I’m just really lost and confused.”

Jimin appeared stunned. “You…you actually believed Analysis, an entire proof-based course, would be an easy course?”

Jungkook nodded unwillingly.

Jimin remained silent for a few more moments before he recovered enough to speak:

“Wow, Jungkook, you really are going to be a handful, aren’t you?”

Jungkook screamed, shoving his head into his papers.

“I don’t get it!” he yelled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! We’ve already spent so much time and I just don’t understand. It’s a knot in my mind and I just—”

“Jungkook, relax—” Jimin tried as he reached out with his hands in an attempt to calm Jungkook down.

“—I knew I didn’t stand a chance. I’m totally gonna fail this course. I accept it now.”

“Jungkook, calm down….it’s only been five minutes.”

Jungkook’s head perked up. “What? Oh.” He scuffled away, looking embarrassed. “It felt a lot longer than that…”

Jimin laughed at Jungkook’s antics. “I’m sorry you felt that way,” Jimin smiled encouragingly. “I must’ve been a bad teacher then.”

Jungkook’s eyes widened. “No! No, no, no! That’s not it at all! I’m clearly just stupid, that’s all.”

“Don’t say that about yourself,” Jimin scolded. “I wouldn’t be teaching you if I knew you were hopeless.”

“But like you said, it’s only been five minutes,” Jungkook mumbled.

“Exactly, now flip back to that first lecture and let me teach you.”

Jungkook reluctantly flipped Jimin’s pages back to where they were before, trying to hide his blatant disregard for the topic.

“Don’t look so bored before you even started,” Jimin said as he hit Jungkook lightly on the shoulder. Though he didn’t want to admit it, Jungkook definitely felt a tiny shiver where his attractive teacher’s fingers had lingered.

“But…it’s such a dull topic,” Jungkook groaned, staring at the page of symbols that ought to have been familiar to him…but were not.

“Really? I don’t think so. Difficult to wrap your head around maybe, but definitely not boring,” Jimin stated.

Jungkook shuffled again. “Yeah, well…”

“I’ll do my best to persuade you by the end of all this,” Jimin grinned.

“You seem so passionate about this.”

“Well, of course,” Jimin said at once. “It’s learning how to rigorously prove why we do things the way we do: why we count the way we do, what numbers truly are, why things defined are the way they are. I mean, we only scratch the surface of it all by the end of the course but it’s still quite a beautiful concept. Just like all of math. It’s more abstract than you think. It’s like its own form of art.”

Jungkook couldn’t help but be drawn in by the genuine smile on Jimin’s face as he spoke all of these things that seemed worlds away from how Jungkook felt.

“Wow…” Jungkook uttered dumbly. “I never really thought about math that way…”

Jimin’s smile temporarily disappeared from his face as he turned to look at Jungkook.

“Really?!” Jimin seemed shocked. “Aren’t you in second year?”

Jungkook gulped.

Jimin tilted his head upwards in thought. “Hmm…well I guess it still hasn’t gotten too specific in second year. You still have time. Anyways, I think I’ve rambled on enough. Let’s go ahead and teach you how to prove two is an irrational number…”

Jungkook’s heart throbbed for Jimin as he diligently wrote out the proof for Jungkook, annotating verbally and in detail as he went. After seeing Jimin’s full dedication towards the field of math, Jungkook really didn’t have the heart to tell him that he didn’t feel the same way at all.

But as he continued watching Jimin scribbling out the proof, his handwriting neat and clear, each number crisp and pristine on the sheet of lined paper, Jungkook couldn’t help but become slightly intrigued. The way the tutor’s wrist was poised as he scrawled out his “there exist”s and “such that”s; the way his eyes lit up as he subtly sped up in excitement towards the end…

“There! All finished!” Jimin announced, as he drew two diagonal straight lines to signify the end of his proof. Jungkook said nothing, and merely sat there quietly, carefully observing Jimin’s vibrant and pure expression which had arose from something as mundane as demonstrating a proof.

It was obvious that Jungkook didn’t have the same amount about of passion when it came to math…

…for now.

The feeling of going to a class you hadn’t been to in so long was definitely not a good one.

Despite that bothersome feeling, Jungkook’s lips couldn’t refrain from quirking upwards, knowing who was waiting for him inside.

“Hey, we should totally sit together from now on! I could help you understand what the professor is saying and you…you can keep me company.”

The words echoed repeatedly in the void that was Jungkook’s mind. He tried to hide the wide smile that was cracking onto his face by covering it up with his phone. At the same time, he also kind of needed to check the room number of the lecture hall that he hadn’t been to since the first day of class.

At long last, the doors were in sight. Jungkook practically burst inside, his eyes scanning past the tall, lanky prof and the various cliques of well-dressed Asians and bespectacled over achievers to search for his one and only target in the front row.

As he was wondering whether or not to call out, Jimin noticed him first and waved excitedly, mouthing his name. Feeling slightly embarrassed and not wanting to attract any further attention to himself, Jungkook slightly ducked as he ran over to Jimin.

“Hey, did you have any classes before this?” Jimin asked effortlessly, as if he naturally started conversations all the time (a trait that was foreign to Jungkook).

“No, this is my earliest class,” Jungkook responded stiffly as he arranged his bag below his feet. It was strange to sit in the front row—there was a surprising amount of leg space.

“Lucky~” Jimin drawled, tapping his pen on the side of his tiny desk. “I had an 8:30 this morning. I almost fell asleep.”

“You seem like the early bird type though,” Jungkook commented.

“Really?!” Jimin gaped. “What made you think that?”

“I don’t know...” Jungkook trailed off when he suddenly noticed that Jimin looked…different. Gone were the tie and button-up, to be replaced with a casual black hoodie and a pair of ripped, denim jeans. He looked like any other regular college student.

Well, an extremely cute regular college boy.

“You look different,” Jungkook opted to say.

“Hmm? From what?” Jimin asked, confused.

“From last night.” Jungkook thought he sensed a few people throw questionable looks in their direction as they heard the phrase without context.

Jimin burst into a vibrant laugh. “You didn’t really think I’d come to class in a tie and slacks, did you?”

“Well…I—”

“That was because I didn’t know what kind of student you’d be, so I wanted to show up professional,” Jimin grinned.

Jimin suddenly leaned over the chair arm separating them, ending up much closer to Jungkook than he expected. Another brilliant smile. Jungkook was going to die of a heart attack at this rate.

“I take this as I won’t have to anymore?” Jimin asked, dragging his words out deliberately. “Are you more comfortable with me like this?”

Jungkook stared blankly, having been rendered speechless. Oh my god, how am I going to deal with this? Is he flirting with me? I can’t tell. Do math people even flirt? They have to right? I mean, professors are all married so they must—

“Jungkook?”

“Y-yeah?”

“You dropped your pen, by the way”

Jungkook blinked, only to realize that Jimin was suddenly holding a battered blue pen in his hand.

Oh. So that’s why he leaned over.

“Oh, um, thanks…” Jungkook muttered quickly, grabbing his pen and averting his eyes at once.

“Good morning everybody!” the professor called out. He let out a sigh under his breath. Phew. Saved by the prof. For once.

The professor continued speaking with his thick foreign accent. “Today we will be continuing with the definition of convergence and divergence…”

Jungkook immediately zoned out. Nope. It didn’t even matter that he told himself he’d actually try and pay attention in order impress Jimin for once—neither his heart nor mind seemed to be truly up for it. It was all gibberish, foreign gibberish to him (and some of it even looked like the written script of some language he didn’t know—what the hell was ∀n∊N ∃ x > ∞ supposed to mean?)

The professor was trying to ask questions again, something about a diverging function and Jungkook only sank further into his seat. Why did professors even bother trying sometimes? They should know after so many years of teaching that the only response they’d be getting was a long, uneasy silence.

“Jimin?” The professor called the familiar name, his eyes suddenly directed towards Jungkook’s direction.

Wait, what?! Jungkook bolted upwards from his slouched position under the professor’s eye and swiftly glanced beside him to catch Jimin just lowering his hand having just raised it.

Jungkook stared with widened eyes, almost veering away from the sudden shock.

Oh my god. The prof knows his name. He’s literally that guy.

“That’s false because even when you have two divergent functions, their product isn’t necessarily divergent as well,” Jimin answered with the most confident smile on his face. “Like (-1)n and (-1)n.”

The professor appeared flustered for a moment, but immediately restored himself with a proud smile.

“You’re going a bit ahead but that’s ok, Jimin,” the professor acknowledged. “So as Jimin said…”

But Jungkook wasn’t even listening anymore. Did he even understand a word of what Jimin just said? Not really. He could only stare at Jimin, speechless, and not even trying to bother to hide the slight smile on his face. His heart throbbed violently in his chest. He thought he had sensed it last night, when Jimin completed solving the problem, but after witnessing what he’d just seen, it was all the proof he needed.

The eloquence in which Jimin spoke his words; the confident aura that radiated when he answered the professor without batting an eyelash; the correct and overachieving solution that he’d provided; the thoroughness of the response that proved he knew what he knew; and the numbers and words that spilled out of his mouth as he spoke with that proud and knowing smile…

That was just so…so…

Jungkook gulped, trying to hold the thought back but couldn’t.

..so sexy.

So when Jimin turned to face him, he nearly jumped in his seat, forgetting that as brilliant as Jimin was, he still couldn’t read minds.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Jimin grinned, not noticing Jungkook’s expression as his mind still appeared to be caught up in all the deductions.

Yes you are, Jungkook wanted to say.

“Yeah…totally,” Jungkook responded dumbly. “You’re so good…at this.”

For the rest of the class, Jimin intently watched the prof while Jungkook intently watched Jimin. His heart welled up every time Jimin raised his hand to answer a question. Each and every proof sounded more and more eloquent as they came from Jimin’s lips. He could see the girls in the row behind them rolling their eyes and whispering to one another as Jimin kept raising his hand over and over again but he couldn’t care less.

Jungkook caught himself smiling again before he knew it. He gazed endearingly at Jimin’s profile, who was bent over and scribbling something detailed in his notes. Jimin’s eyes had never seemed this lovely before, not without that spark of excitement within them. And his lips were prettier like this, parted in anticipation as he focussed keenly on the numbers before him.

Jungkook’s heart raced faster and faster as he kept staring dumbstruck at Jimin. As he realized something, Jungkook merely sighed to himself, leaning his hand into face as he continued gazing.

So this must be the beauty of math…

Jimin had class after analysis so Jungkook had to reluctantly part ways with him. Jungkook immediately headed to the familiar Room 441 in the math building, which was the lab where Namjoon worked. Luckily for them, the supervising professor was extremely easy-going, and apparently didn’t seem to care when (his favourite student) Namjoon let all his friends hang out in the lab. Thus, their little group would usually be found hanging out in Namjoon’s lab whenever the prof was out of office.

When Jungkook opened the door, he found the guests of the hour to be Seokjin and their friend Jung Hoseok from Math & Computer Science.

“Hey, Jungkook,” Namjoon waved from his desk. Seokjin and Hoseok didn’t seem to notice as they appeared to be in a deep debate over something.

“Hey,” Jungkook responded, slightly airily as he settled down and pulled his lunch out of his bag.

“Can you at least greet your friend?” Namjoon glared at Seokjin and Hoseok as he chomped down on an apple.

Seokjin’s eyes lit up when he saw Jungkook. “Oh my gosh, finally! A third person! Get over here.”

Jungkook scrambled over and sat next to them, slightly flustered “Why? What is it?”

“You know Dr. Pae, right?” Seokjin asked, almost urgent.

“Yeah, the one who’s popular with all the girls?” Jungkook nodded. “Why?”

“Okay, so you know how he has a girlfriend, right?” Seokjin continued. “The really attractive blonde one?”

“…sure?”

Seokjin slammed his fist down the desk, startling everyone in the lab.

Namjoon tried negotiating between mouthfuls of apple. “Yo, dude, can you like calm dow—”

“Well this boy here—“ Seokjin paused dramatically, pointing at Hoseok. “—claims to have seen him holding hands with a brunette the other day. And guess what? Guess what? He was guiding her with his hand while she was walking over a stone path. Can you believe it? The man’s got game. Man I didn’t know that was what game theory was really about, because if I had known, I would have taken that course.”

“For the last time,” Hoseok grimaced, also placing his hand firmly on the table. “Just because he was holding hands with her, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in a romantic relationship.”

“He was walking her over a stone path though!” Seokjin argued. “That’s so romance! Who even does that?”

“Maybe she was his sister or something. You don’t know that,” Hoseok asserted.

“Would you hold hands with your sister and guide her over a path for no apparent reason?” Seokjin snarled back, getting more and more aggressive.

“…no.”

“Exactly!”

“But that’s just me though!” Hoseok blurted, on the edge of his seat to fight for his argument. “I’m sure there are brothers out there who would hold hands with their sister.”

“Yeah, if you’re like weirdly close,” Seokjin frowned. “Anyways, Jungkook, we wanted to wait for you to come. What do you think? Romantic or platonic?”

Jungkook stared blankly as he took another bite of his sandwich, trying to avoid the assertive gazes from the both of them as they awaited an answer.

“Um…” Jungkook dwelled as he chewed on his sandwich. “Why don’t you ask Namjoon?”

Seokjin waved his hand dismissively. “You know how he always is. All provisos. He’s always like—“ He dropped his voice three pitches lower. “—everything is situational. We cannot place assumptions until we have more evidence. Blah blah blah—”

“I do not sound like that,” Namjoon interrupted.

“Be quiet, do your work,” Seokjin snapped. “Jungkook, just answer it. Which do you think?”

“Uhh…I agree with Namjoon,” Jungkook replied quickly.

Seokjin threw his hands up in defeat while Hoseok slammed his head on his keyboard.

“Freaking useless. All of you,” Seokjin groaned, stabbing his fork angrily into a piece of chicken. “We’ll settle this now. I can’t handle all these scandals in the math department. First Dr. Lee’s sugar daddy scandal with Dr. Choi and now Dr. Pae. That’s why you get a PhD in math: so you can gain an unbelievable amount of game. Let me market this program, please. I’ll show you what true exponential growth is. “

“Do you even hear yourself right now?” Namjoon groaned from behind his computer.

“Oi, where’s Yoongi? Call him. I need to finish this,” Seokjin commanded.

“He has class,” said Hoseok. “He’s coming in like half an hour though.”

“Darn it, I have class then,” Seokjin sighed. “It’s ok. You can ask him and I’ll ask some of my other friends.”

“Why don’t you guys sample for something that might actually be worthwhile data for once?” Namjoon asked cynically.

“Because then I’d have to do more work analyzing it,” said Hoseok. “And I ain’t about that life.”

Seokjin checked his watched, frowning to himself. “I really don’t wanna go to class…” he sighed to himself.

“Yo, we’re math kids,” Hoseok said. “None of us ever wanna go to class. But we have to.”

“Namjoon does,” Seokjin scoffed. “Always.”

“So does Jimin,” Jungkook mentioned subsconsciously, without thinking.

Silence.

“Um…who’s Jimin?” Hoseok asked.

“The guy that’s tutoring him right now,” Seokjin answered. “Thanks to my brilliant suggestion, of course. Well, unless it’s not going well. What’s he like, by the way, Jungkook?”

“He’s like…um…” Jungkook struggled to find the proper words to describe his new tutor.

It suddenly struck him out of nowhere.

“He’s like…Euler’s identity.”

Namjoon dropped his chewed up apple. Hoseok spilled all of his rice while Seokjin merely stared.

“Oh my god, he thinks he’s unworldly and irrevocably beautiful,” Seokjin gaped.

“Jungkook, since when did you even know what that meant?” Namjoon asked.

Hoseok grinned. “It looks like he’s finally got a crush.”

“On Jimin though?” Seokjin gaped. “I mean his grades may be way above average but his looks…they’re a minor fraction of mine. Not even close.”

“What? Are you blind?” Jungkook blurted as he couldn’t help it.

The three others in the room exchanged confused looks (though Seokjin’s was marginally more offended).

Hoseok was the first one to break into a mocking smile. “I think you’re the one who’s blind here,” he said. “Blind for lurve~”

“Shut up!” Jungkook retorted. “I mean, I just met him so…”

“But you do seem awfully smitten already,” Namjoon noted objectively, to which Jungkook had no response.

Seokjin sighed from the side. “Well, there’s really no reason for me to prevent this from happening…for now. But you better not get distracted. He’s there to help your grades. Not…anything else.”

“Like Namjoon helped you back then?” Hoseok cackled from the side, after which he received a wad of napkins in the face, courtesy of Kim Seokjin.

“Anyways, I want to see your grades improve,” Seokjin stated firmly. “Otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of you meeting Jimin.”

Jungkook nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure they will. He’s a good teacher. He’s been very helpful.”

“I’m sure he has,” Hoseok snorted, clearly not giving up the opportunity.

“Can you not encourage him?” Seokjin scolded. “He’s clearly side-tracked enough as it is. Please don’t alter my good intentions.”

“Yeah, I’d never let him live it down,” Namjoon murmured gleefully from the side.

“Can you be quiet? It’s better than you! You just sit there all day and let them do whatever they want,” Seokjin retorted.

“But if he falls in love and gets distracted, I’m gonna’ be right and you’re going to be wrong,” Namjoon considered.

“…are you seriously contemplating the possibility of your junior’s undergraduate career being ruined just so you can be right?”

Namjoon shook his head defensively. “Of course not! Jungkook’s a smart kid…well, he’s passing everything. So I’m sure having a healthy, fun relationship with an intelligent guy wouldn’t hurt anybody. So go get him Kookie.”

“No. The only thing that he’s getting from Jimin is better grades,” Seokjin asserted firmly, seeming completely satisfied with himself.

That is, until Hoseok decided he really, truly could not resist:

“…what if he ends up getting a D instead though?”

For the first time that entire morning, Namjoon had to stand up. And that was only to hold Seokjin back from throwing a chair at Hoseok.

Jungkook crawled into bed earlier than usual that night, feeling strangely enlightened. His chest felt lighter than usual, as if just seeing Jimin for just that hour alone made it all worth it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for all that chaos in Namjoon’s lab, he might have felt completely at ease for the first time in a while.

He couldn’t help but smirk to himself as he cozied under his covers. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t like math up until now…

Jungkook sighed, arms tucked under his head as he stared at the dark ceiling. Park Jimin. The only thought that seemed capable of occupying his mind. He wanted to witness it again: that eloquence, that beauty when Jimin solved problems.

When he could no longer resist that aching feeling in his chest, Jungkook reached over to his bedside table and grabbed his phone. His finger hovered over the mail app, almost longingly, before he touched it completely on impulse.

Jungkook straightened up to write his message.

J, Jungkook

Hey jimin,

r u free at all tomorrow? I only have one class

I could use some help

sorry if ur busy it’s fine

Unlike the first time, Jungkook couldn’t press send fast enough. His hands quivered as the email was confirmed to be sent. And hopefully, if it was anything like before…

Ping!

His heart nearly dropped in his chest. His mind was ahead of his body as his fingers fumbled to open the message.

Park, Jimin

Lunch Date?

Jungkookie!

Don’t be sorry, I’d always be glad to hear from you ^^

I’m free around lunch time so is there anything you’d like to eat?

uhjdugv

Jimin

He felt like a complete loser, smiling from ear to ear all alone in his bed as he read Jimin’s message. Jungkook could hear Jimin’s encouraging tone of voice in his head, and it was more than gratifying.

And also…what was this about a date?

Jungkook’s heart did a bunch of flips and turns just speculating about what may-be-but-not-really a date with his dreamboat of a tutor.

It’s a…study date. Yeah. That’s all it is. Jungkook tried to calm himself down with the reassuring conclusion.

First thing first, he needed to answer Jimin’s question, with eloquence and tact, as Jeon Jungkook would always do when approaching a crush:

J, Jungkook

Re:

yeeeeeeee totally down.

And also correlating to Jeon Jungkook’s regular behaviour, he only realized how rash and stupid his decision was after he had executed it.

Jungkook buried his entire body beneath his blanket and kicked around violently, not realizing how dumb he sounded until now that the message was declared to be “sent”.

Down? What the hell am I? He’s not Taehyung. I can’t just say whatever I want! Oh my god. What is wrong with me.

The morbidity was too much for his partially unscathed soul as he continuing abusing his blanket and bed, slamming his fists and kicking his legs. That’s it. It was all ruined. His one chance to get a nice tutor and even potentially, with the slimmest probability, a cute boyfriend and he had to ruin all those confidence levels in a heartbeat.

Another ping sounded from his phone, momentarily pausing his rampage as he poked his head out from the bottom of the covers near his bed’s footboard (god knows how he ended up there). He immediately blazed the LCD glow directly into his eyes.

Park, Jimin

Re:

Haha. You’re cute.

I’ll see you tomorrow :3

uhjdugv

Jimin

Jungkook’s eyes widened, after which they blinked slowly in disbelief. Luckily it was dark and there was no one else in the room, because he felt himself turning as red as his hoody from that morning.

Oh my god…did he just call me…cute?

He was frozen in shook. This can’t be real. Not already. Since when did he deserve good things? If the Park Jimin thought he was cute, surely karma didn’t exist.

He countered the negatives in his head, though he did it by adding alternative negative thoughts.

Maybe he just says that to everyone. There’s no way he could think I’m cute, not already.

Jungkook swivelled around on his bed like a confused tortoise, bringing his chin back to rest on his pillows. He pursed his lips into a pout, wondering how to deal with himself. Jimin was slowly but surely corrupting his mind—not that there was much left to corrupt anyways—and this probably wasn’t the best timing. Seokjin was probably going to kill him.

Jungkook sighed to himself, finally flipping himself over into a sleeping position at last. He tucked his arms behind his head, closing his eyes and trying to put himself to sleep after what felt like a long day. Tomorrow was a different day, and sleeping it off was the only thing he could do now to calm his nerves.

When his eyes finally fluttered shut, Jungkook found himself having rather sweet dreams about Jimin that night.

By 2:30 p.m., Jungkook was already waiting in the lobby of their school library.

Despite how eagerly his heart was thumping in anticipation, he tried to maintain a casual appearance. Jungkook had pulled out brand new, unworn shirt and jeans from the closet for this occasion, and he’d already fixed his hair for the nth time that morning (despite that it was near impossible for a strand to be out of place because he’d checked at least another hundred times before he left the house). Needless to say, he wanted Jimin to be impressed for once.

Jungkook bit his lip in anxiety as he checked his watch again (he also never wore watches so the action itself seemed extremely foreign to him). Jimin was late. Again. And he couldn’t help but feel impatient about it.

“Jungkook-ah!”

Jungkook nearly dropped his phone as he heard the voice that he’d been so anxiously waiting for. His eyes lit up as he saw Jimin heading towards him with the brightest smile, black hair bouncing pleasantly as he ran.

“Sorry, I’m late!” Jimin gasped, catching his breath. “The professor kept me overtime. Did you wait long?”

Jungkook returned what he thought to be his most encouraging smile. “No! Not at all! I just got here as well,” he said convincingly.

Despite that he’d spent hours getting dressed in the morning, Jungkook still felt far from worthy of comparison to Jimin. Even though it looked like he wasn’t trying at all, Jimin had to be at the very, very least an 8 out of 10 in his glasses, bomber jacket and ripped jeans.

Jungkook held back a sigh. Their little date hadn’t even started yet and he already felt discouraged.

“So, where did you want to go?” Jimin asked.

“Nowhere in particular, as long as it’s with you,” Jungkook answered, the last part coming out a lot more honestly than he’d intended.

Fortunately, Jimin’s smiled only widened. “That’s good. I had a particular place in mind. And you look like you could use a little sweetness in your life.”

Jungkook blinked. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he frowned, blatantly confused. Is sweetness supposed to code for something?

Jimin laughed, seeming embarrassed.

“Nothing. I just wanted to…joke around a little…”

Moments later, Jungkook found himself sitting with Jimin at a nearby desserts café, with a giant strawberry and chocolate waffle sitting in front of him, topped with insane ice cream and whipped cream quantities that could only be considered outliers.

The cringing agony arrived much too late for Jungkook. Oh my god, he was trying to tell a punny joke and I was too busy trying to analyze whether or not he was flirting with me that I didn’t even bother laughing. This is already going wrong. So. Horribly. Wrong.

But all this time, Jimin hadn’t seemed to notice. He was just pleasantly sipping on his customized hot mocha beverage that had a cute latte heart design in it, humming slightly as he flipped back and forth through the notebook he was holding in his hands.

“Um…Jimin?” Jungkook spoke up.

Jimin looked up from his pages, meeting eye contact with Jungkook as he adjusted his glasses.

“What’s wrong?” Jimin asked, mildly concerned. “Did you not like it? My friend swears it’s good.”

Jungkook gulped, trying not to let himself be distracted by the glory that was bespectacled Jimin. “You really didn’t have to buy this for me…”

Jimin dropped his notebook, reaching up to push his glasses onto his nose bridge before looking directly at Jungkook (whose heart skipped a beat with 100% certainty) as he spoke:

“We’re all poor university students,” he said rationally, with a gentle smile. “You know better than to give up free food. Now eat up before it all melts.”

It took a few moments for Jungkook to even process what Jimin was talking about—he had been distracted by glasses after all. Surprisingly and spontaneously obedient, Jungkook nodded promptl as he swiftly picked up his fork with a shaky hand and pressed through the soft cream and pastry.

“Now,” Jimin continued speaking as he leaned his pretty face into hand and looked at Jungkook through his glasses. “Should we start going through these notes or should I wait until you finish eating?”

Jungkook wanted to slam his head into the wall. His mind was clearly not in the right places, not after seeing that upward gaze that appeared much too sultry for no reason in particular.

“Feel see to fart!” he blurted. Shit. “I mean, feel free to start!” The idea of stabbing himself with the fork to end it all was slowly becoming more and more attractive.

Curtly, Jimin ignored Jungkook’s little stumble and proceeded to go through how to calculate expectations and variances of a distribution. Jungkook tried hard to listen, he really did, but he kept slipping in and out of a distracting mood. He continued staring at Jimin, the way his bangs slightly fell over the frame of his glasses as he was bent over and writing on the paper.

Jungkook sucked on his fork, eyes slightly lidded as he watched Jimin. Hmm…this waffle tastes so, so much sweeter than I expected it to…

“Do you get it, Jungkook?” Jimin asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

Jungkook tried to not choke on the whipped cream. “Hmmph, what?” he garbled unattractively.

“Do you get what the difference is between an expectation and a variance?”

Jungkook stared blankly. “Uh, well…”

Jimin shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. “If you don’t get it, Jungkook, you can just tell me,” he said. “Honestly, don’t be afraid, despite what you’ve heard about me.”

Jungkook’s attention was suddenly caught. “Hmm? What? What have I heard about you?”

Jimin smiled. He added an unexpected shrug before saying, “Well I don’t know, Jungkook. Last I heard someone thought I was a ‘nerd lord’, didn’t he?”

Jungkook froze. I’m gonna kill that lanky asshole, he thought ominously, as the mental image of Kim Taehyung’s best trolling face floated into his mind.

He laughed nervously, scratching the nape of his neck as he spoke next. “Well, that was like…before I knew you. And stuff.”

“Really?” Jimin asked, leaning forwards slightly. “Well…what’s changed since then?”

Jungkook felt like he’d been pushed into a corner, not sure how to answer this. Especially when Park Jimin was looking at him so expectantly, with a slight curve on his lips like that.

“Um....you’re…you’re actually a good teacher?” Jungkook said stiffly, trying to say anything but the things that were a bit more easily retrievable within his conscious mind.

“Oh,” Jimin pursed his lips, barely looking disappointed. He sank back into his seat, flipping quickly through his notes as Jungkook was left alone to contemplate what he had done wrong.

“Why don’t you try this problem for me?” Jimin said, pushing the notebook towards Jungkook. Jungkook took the pages hesitantly, and wondered if he was only imagining that Jimin’s tone had become slightly colder than before.

Deciding to ignore his qualms, Jungkook grabbed his pencil and kept his head down and focussed in determination. Regardless of how it would turn out with Jimin, he should probably focus on the real reason why he was there in the first place.

But much to his dismay, he found that the distractions had been too much, as always. He kept writing and erasing, scratching out answers and replacing it with others. Before long, his page was a mess, and he wasn’t any closer to the answer.

He gritted his teeth, erasing yet another line. C’mon Jungkook, focus. If you want him to not be discouraged of teaching you, you gotta try harder.

But it seemed hopeless. The overcrowded page seemed to mock him with ridicule, questioning why he was starting to confuse his variables and miswrite his numbers. It was starting to give him a headache just to look at.

He heard Jimin shuffle from across him. Oh no, he’s leaving. Crap. Why do I have to be so stupid? His eyebrows scrunched in annoyance as wrote down something that seemed to be right, but he had already seen before.

“Need help?” Jimin’s voice asked suddenly, right next to him.

Jungkook finally let out the sigh of frustration he had been holding in for so long. He turned towards the direction of Jimin’s voice.

“Yes! I’m sorry I—”

Jungkook stopped midsentence as he found that Jimin’s face was right in front of him, as Jimin was bent over his shoulder and looking intently at the problem in front of them. He leaned back slightly in an instant, though it was still close enough for him to realize how smooth and soft-looking Jimin’s poufy cheeks were.

“You’re actually on the right track, Jungkook,” said Jimin, as he gazed knowingly at Jungkook’s messy work. “Besides…”

Much to the dismay of Jungkook’s poor, soft and fragile heart, Park Jimin had to turn at that very moment so that their eyes and lips were less than centimetres away from each other.

“I’ve never seen you try that hard before…” Jimin said. It was as if his voice was coated with sugar.

Jungkook visibly gulped, not even bothering trying to hide it. He tried to lean back some more but there was no room left to go.

“You were really cute,” Jimin murmured as his smile widened. “I’ve never seen you like that before.”

Ba-dump.

It was a miracle Jeon Jungkook didn’t faint right there and then.

end of part 1!

part 2 coming soon on tumblr OR read the full story on AO3 ^^

A/N: ...yeah. Part of me hates myself for doing this can you tell? XD Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it at least a little~ and saw a new perspective on math through this :3

Anyways, I neglected my midterm to squeeze this out in time for VDay so I hope it made you smile, somewhere, somehow :D

#jikook #so many bad math jokes #and bad jokes period #jimin #jungkook #bts #regrets?#yeah all of them tbh #fanfic #vday fic

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jwillia1961 · 7 years ago

Text

Best-Teacher Awards Are Bunk

They distract us from colleges’ systemic failures.

By Jacques Berlinerblau AUGUST 21, 2017 Chronicle of Higher Education PREMIUM

Each year, the journal The Literary Review bestows the Bad Sex in Fiction Award upon an author who produces coital-themed prose of exceptionally poor quality. I’d like to rejigger the prize for the professoriate and honor the Most Unrealistic Depiction of a College Class in American Cinema. My nomination, hands down, goes to the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts. The actress plays Professor Katherine Ann Watson, an art-history instructor teaching on a one-year contract at Wellesley College in 1953.

There is so much askew in Mona Lisa Smile’s classroom scenes that I don’t even know where to start. How do we account for students who have memorized the entire textbook by the first day of class? How could a bunch of 20-year-olds know enough about scholarly mores to throw shade at Ms. Watson for not yet having her doctorate? I’m also confused as to why, by semester’s end, each student presents the professor with a well-executed painting of flowers. I mean, I get the allusion to their burgeoning, agentive, feminist consciousness and all. But when did "History of Art 100" become a studio class?

Not everyone at Wellesley offers heartfelt gifts to the freewheelin’ Professor Watson. The administration renews her contract only on the condition that she tone down all the liberal stuff in her lectures (and personal life). Professor Watson refuses to compromise her integrity. Upon her bittersweet departure, crestfallen students escort her taxi past the campus gate on their bicycles. As they complete their rolling salute to pedagogical greatness, they tear up over the loss of an Instructor Who Makes Us Think. And Love.

The question for me is not why a Hollywood depiction of college life is so off the mark. We humanists — who’d struggle to properly position and align our pipe cleaners in a shoebox diorama — ought not cast aspersions on the artists who produced a movie as pretty as Mona Lisa Smile. No, the question for me is why narratives about great teachers abound in hype and sentimentality.

Students have a lot going on in their lives -- and not much of it has to do with us.

This tendency is certainly not restricted to cinema. Even serious academic studies of pedagogy traffic in this sort of hyperbole. I think of Ken Bain’s 2004 book, What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press). This thorough and well-intentioned study set out "to capture the collective scholarship of some of the best teachers in the United States, to record not just what they do but also how they think, and most of all, to begin to conceptualize their practices."

Bain admirably deploys multiple metrics to identify his best teachers. His research abides by rules of rigorous scholarly inquiry. Yet even this trained academic can’t avoid excessive praise. "How does Ann Woodworth, a professor of theater at Northwestern University," he asks, "lift her acting students to heights of thespian brilliance?"

The Harvard professor Michael Sandel, teaching a class of 700 students (!), is commended extensively. According to Bain, Sandel helps undergraduates become "good political philosophers" by asking them to imagine "fundamental issues of justice and understand their own thinking." Bain is equally unconcerned about massified classes when he lauds another best teacher for asking pre-class questions of his 200 registered students.

Although Bain concedes that even the best instructors have bad days, his analysis loses sight of that truth. The educators he writes about appear to consistently elicit epiphanies in their young charges. The scholars are rarely shown to stumble during lectures. They never arrive late for class or lose their tempers with insolent seniors. Grade disputes, a fact of life for any college teacher doing his or her own marking, are nonexistent. The students themselves play but a supporting role in Bain’s analysis. They exist as fans. An audience. Reaction shots.

This sentimentalization of Best College Teachers strikes me as misguided and even a bit sinister. It fails to take into consideration how undergraduates today typically interact with their professors — just as it turns our attention away from those obvious structural factors that make it so hard for scholars to actually focus on their students.

Abook that helps us pump the brakes on over-the-top depictions of inspired college teaching is the 2005 My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (Cornell University Press). This eye-opening study was published by an anthropologist, Cathy A. Small, a professor at Northern Arizona University, writing under the pen name Rebekah Nathan. For any scholar, the premise of My Freshman Year is the stuff of night terrors. The author, a tenured ethnographer, matriculates (undercover) at the age of 52 as a student in the college at which she teaches. She even takes up residence in the dorms. This feat of derring-do reminds us that anthropologists are the professoriate’s last remaining daredevils, stuntpersons who will launch themselves off a 13,000-foot cliff in a wingsuit in quest of knowledge(s).

Small provides a sobering counterpoint to the treacly narrative of inspirational college teachers. "Most professors and administrators," she writes, "overestimate the role that academics plays in student culture, and as a result they magnify the impact of teachers and classes on student life and decisions." One reason undergraduates are impervious to our influence is that they’re incredibly busy. They are cross-pressured by jobs, club activities, internships, romance, social obligations, and other classes. Put simply, students have a lot going on in their lives — and not much of it has to do with us.

A recent analysis obliquely buttresses this point. It argues that college students spend significantly less time studying than do high-school students (10.9 fewer hours per week). They show roughly equal commitment to educational and work-related activities. If we look at 50-year trends, full-time students are spending less and less of their day preparing for class.

Reflecting on her own discoveries in the field, Small raises a concern that speaks to the reality of contemporary scholar/undergraduate relations. "As an anthropologist," she laments, "I was humbled to see how little I, as a professor, knew of my students’ academic world." I think the converse of Small’s observation is equally true: Students have no idea who we are. They have no clear sense of how or why we became professors. They know little of what our job entails outside of the sessions we spend with them. They couldn’t distinguish a provost from a postdoc.

Prizes draw attention away from the fact that educating an undergraduate is a collective, not an individual, enterprise.

The bitter and undeniable truth is that most professors and students in 21st-century America are cordially estranged. The two groups lead parallel lives on campus, their only point of intersection being the occasional classroom spaces they happen to inhabit concurrently. As far as a professor is concerned, the students arrayed in front of him or her could just as well be a flash mob that assembles twice a week and takes notes as part of its performance. Professors and students do not necessarily think ill of each other. The truth is that they hardly think of each other at all.

The developments that resulted in this cordial estrangement are complex, and I certainly can’t expound upon them here. My best guess is that things started shifting in the 1980s. Maybe it was the increased emphasis on research that drove scholars away from the more avuncular relations they may have maintained with students in earlier generations. Maybe housing prices rose and it became more difficult for professors to purchase properties near campus. Maybe the spread of contingency made it hard for underpaid and undervalued academics to concentrate on mentoring. Maybe it was the expansion of the administrative class that inserted itself as a firewall between professors and students. Maybe economic trends forced more kids out of their study carrels and into low-paying jobs. Or maybe a growing awareness of sexual harassment in the 1980s had the positive effect of neutralizing campus predators, and the negative one of giving nonpredatory professors reason to distance themselves from undergrads — all the better to focus on research!

No matter what the reasons, the consequences are dismal. What has been lost, in both theory and practice, is the idea of meaningful and sustained relations between faculty members and those they teach. The student-professor encounter has become increasingly transactional. Office hours are perfunctory; students who do attend come only to discuss finals or to offer excuses for late papers. Mentoring has become a lost art, like the mid-range jump shot or album-cover design. That some schools advertise their "experiential learning" or "student-professor research initiatives" as perks and selling points indicates how rare these types of interactions have become.

Finding exemplary instructors in this context is at once hard and easy. Hard because we care so little about training and cultivating skilled teachers. Easy because the field is not exceedingly competitive; few scholars are actually vying for this honor.

Can I be perfectly frank with you? The whole discourse of Best College Teachers strikes me as bunk. Whether it’s Baylor University’s Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching (with a cash prize of $250,000), or those "Faculty of the Year" honors that are dispensed at every college according to a body of work that is, literally, inscrutable — it all seems off to me. I don’t doubt that there are some truly phenomenal instructors out there who have deserved these accolades (just as I don’t doubt that some duds have received them as well). Yet this system of tribute undermines a lot of what we aim for as educators.

Let me first say a word about inscrutability. How does any professor, let alone a panel of judges, really know what goes on in another professor’s class? Longstanding academic convention dictates that we rarely cross the threshold of a colleague’s classroom. We are seldom invited to one another’s lectures and seminars. It goes without saying that an unannounced "pop in" is strictly out of the question.

The door to a lecture hall could just as well be a police sawhorse — if that sawhorse stood behind a moat and was outfitted with a gun turret. Herein lies an unrecognized truth about American higher education: The inner workings of college teaching spaces are more or less unknown. Outside of that 60-minute theatrical set piece known as a "peer observation," and the metric anarchy of a SET, or "student evaluation of teaching," how does any nonregistered citizen know anything about what transpires in any college class? What goes on in there? Line dancing? Capoeira? Face painting? With the exception of a matriculated undergrad, nobody is in a good position to witness the commitment, or excellence, or inspiration of a college teacher.

Then again, even if we possessed high-def video of every college lecture ever given since the foundation of the University of Heidelberg, how would we achieve any consensus about what constitutes teaching excellence? Ronald Berk, in his inimitable Thirteen Strategies to Measure College Teaching (Stylus, 2006), identified, yes, 13 rather distinct instruments currently used to draw conclusions about a professor’s effectiveness. What I find fascinating about the tools that Berk elucidates for us is how so many of these indices are likely to yield radically different conclusions about who excels. One measurement is based on a professor’s self-assessment of his/her work in a class. One relies on student evaluations. Still others turn to external evaluators. Those could be very different from a metric that looks at, say, how much students learn across a semester or perhaps through the length of their college stay.

Which brings us to another problem with Best Teacher rhetoric: These types of prizes draw attention away from the fact that educating an undergraduate is a collective, not an individual, enterprise. The type of knowledge we impart in college is sequential. It is pointless to take a specialized course on "The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu" before you’ve taken "Introduction to Sociology," "Social Theory," "Stratification," and maybe "Cultural Sociology." The concept of an academic major implies the existence of a reasonably well-ordered curriculum. One great teacher cannot teach an entire curriculum. That takes a team.

I once had a colleague who taught a 200-level class. She loathed the fellow who taught the 100-level that was a prerequisite for her own. The latter was a campus legend. He was a flamboyant character who gyrated and twerked as he lectured. By the time his students cycled into her class, they knew exceedingly little about the subject matter. Her 200 regressed into a 100, because the guy in the 100 was teaching — well, she had no idea what he was teaching. He did win many Faculty of the Year awards, though.

The team metaphor reminds me of another thing that irks me about Best Teacher banter. Individuals on teams have different skills and strengths. Yet conversations about great instructors never seem to recognize that professors are better at some things than others. It’s as if great college teachers are always exemplary on all levels. You just rush them into any auditorium on a palanquin, press the start button, and they’ll start dishing wisdom around the class like an NBA point guard.

I sincerely doubt this is the case. Not all schools, classes, and learning contexts are the same. I don’t know if a popular professor at Yale would necessarily be a hit at quirky Marlboro College, in Vermont, or vice versa. I am a capable undergraduate teacher, but graduate students don’t dig the cut of my jib. Some professors have a knack for working with freshmen. Some don’t. This is actually a really important thing for a college to know about its faculty, because first-year students are at higher risk for adversity, like depression and dropping out.

Best Teacher awards ask us to gawk at those who somehow overcame immense, and correctable, structural obstacles.

If we thought seriously about teaching, we’d pay more attention to putting scholars in positions where they excel. We’d assess who was good at what. We’d know who works well with at-risk students or kids with learning disabilities, and we’d staff our departments accordingly. We are, I regret to say, a million, billion eons away from even starting a conversation of this nature.

But the most insidious thing about Best Teacher talk is that it conveniently distracts us from what truly ails American higher education: We have a lot of scholars who are too poorly prepared, poorly motivated, and/or poorly paid to properly educate undergraduates. This is a structural problem. Graduate schools fail to provide the necessary training in pedagogy. Administrations subject tenure-line faculty members to promotion criteria that render undergraduates an afterthought. Exploited, overworked contingent professors are forced to teach ginormous classes.

The likelihood of great college teaching actually happening on your campus is infinitely lower than the likelihood of great research being produced. This has much to do with the fact that administrations won’t make the financial investments required to facilitate good teaching. A report by Steven Shulman, of Colorado State University’s Center for the Study of Academic Labor, echoes those sentiments, arguing that universities "do not seem to care about anything other than driving faculty costs to the lowest possible level."

Seen in this light, Best Teacher chatter assumes a more sinister countenance. It asks us to gawk at those who somehow overcame immense, and correctable, structural obstacles. It turns our attention away from the manner in which contingent instructors are treated. A Faculty of the Year award is a laurel wreath that a college places on its own flaxen hair. Christening a Best Teacher is like a lily-white company congratulating itself on its diversity after hiring one African-American executive VP. It’s like a catastrophe-inducing oil conglomerate releasing an ad about how it installed a dozen wind turbines in the name of sustainability.

Tributes to Best College Teachers do to professors what high fashion does to women — enslaves them to preposterous and unhealthy expectations of what constitutes the beautiful in pedagogy. I still don’t have an answer as to why conversations about best teachers trigger exaggeration and confetti drops. That sort of hyperbole, in any case, is inimical to the type of balanced analysis that educators value and impart. I, for my part, could just as well do away with the entire vainglorious discourse. Less noise about best teachers might let us finally concentrate on the challenge of producing lots of good ones.

But let me be clear about something: On every campus in America, you will find good teachers. These are contingent or tenure-line professors who are skilled, inspired, and committed educators. What is my metric for gauging their quality? First and foremost, I look for scholars who actually want to be in a classroom with undergraduates. That noble impulse is mercilessly assailed, and usually ruthlessly expunged, after a decade of graduate school. I’m always intrigued by a scholar who could endure that experience — which does everything it can to assassinate one’s passion to educate — and emerge with their love of pedagogy intact.

Good teaching, however, is not like religion; it takes more than faith. Solid instructors are individuals who (somehow) develop real pedagogical skills. And I’m talking about banal stuff: crafting a smart, challenging, ideologically balanced syllabus; sticking to that syllabus; always being on time (a perennial challenge); pacing a class session properly; developing that weird teacherly inner siren that starts blaring when your students (1) have no idea what you’re talking about and/or (2) have not really done the reading.

The teachers I admire render really complex ideas with clarity — that right there is the heavy lift of college instruction. They find pedagogically sound ways to piss off their students. And one other thing: They inspire thoughtfulness. They actually manage to get otherwise distracted 18- to 24-year-olds to think about matters they’d never have thought about otherwise. Good teachers aggressively infiltrate young minds. The trespass extends for years, and not necessarily in ways that those infiltrated minds find pleasant. That’s my preferred "learning outcome."

I’m sure I could conjure up a dozen other attributes, but then I’d end up mimicking the florid cadences of the folks I am criticizing. So let me just add that good college teachers endure semesters in which everything inexplicably and catastrophically goes wrong. Having stuff go up in flames — all good college teachers experience, and even solicit, conflagration.

In any case, for now I’ll repeat that scholars such as the ones I am describing may be in the minority, but they really do exist. They exist in spite of the absurdities of the tenure system. They exist in spite of the collapsed job market. They exist in spite of thoughtless and frugal college administrations. These people share one psychosocial characteristic: They exist in a tensile relationship with their own profession. They do not share the priorities of their research-obsessed colleagues and managers. Good college teachers, then, don’t necessarily do what is in their own professional interest. They do what’s in the interest of their students. That, at least, is something Mona Lisa Smile intuited accurately.

Jacques Berlinerblau directs the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. This essay is adapted from his new book, Campus Confidential: How College Works, or Doesn’t, for Professors, Parents, and Students (Melville House).

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