#monday brainstorm

[la-grosse-patate]

me everytime i open my laptop™

because my brain can't focus on starting something AND finishing it too. it opens multiple tabs.

🧠: you should write this down, it's really good! unless.... heyy, what if we also drew some cover art for your one shot? 😏 it should contain this 🌆, this ✨ and this 💖 and oh! you should mod this outfit for this NPC so you can take some screenshots 😏 also, you're hungry and it's the middle of the night. yeah? sounds good? we have a plan? yeeeaaah you're welcome girl, you know i got you 😗😗😗

[lae-zels]

mr house never being able to replicate his courier six because they never let him scan them, so all he has are a few shoddy recordings he took to recreate the courier from. his replicas of courier six are flawed: none are as perceptive, resourceful and proactive. they aren't good at out-of-the-box thinking or improvising. their problemsolving, diplomacy skills and technological innovation ideas fall short of the original and are just another disappointment every time. they end up hollow shells like jane, marilyn and victor. letting new vegas go, ruin itself in pursuit of recreating his perfect right hand again, hope for another fruitful partnership and bright future of the mojave like they did before is so delicious it makes me sick actually send tweet ✌

[eighthwholove]

I don't know what to call this post (because I am running out of ideas, ahhh!!!) but I do hope this will brighten your McGann Monday!

[wickedhawtwexler]

me after taking my adhd meds for the first time in like 5 days

[rashfcrd]

okay so far my problem is that i can't like sit down and plan out the themed days and mindful music monday (mostly a success thus far!) was like a miracle of a day. but so far i have take it easy tuesday - which is already a theme! i already take it easy every tuesday. gotta for the mental health. so take it easy tuesday can be applied to lack of scrolling too though, i'm thinking maybe take a walk, do some art of some form, a light yoga, take it easy - not too much structure but enough i'm not just scrolling and have goals. and wednesday will be water wednesday - will wash the cats water bowls, i will water the plants, i will clean my water straw cup i use and my water bottle, i will clean my bong (water), i will maybe eventually make a goal to go to a body of water! i am close to the ocean. thursday and friday are mysteries to me now though, and saturday and sunday i want to theme but i'm not there yet either and just want to start with the weekdays. !!!! tuesday is also t-shirt tuesday so lots of options there

omg jenn i love this i wanna do this too! like it’s such a good idea so i don’t just sit and scroll on social media. water wednesday sounds so fun bc you live in cali so going to the ocean is easy right? like even if it’s just sitting by the water and reading or painting etc it counts

what would t-shirt tuesday be?? sorting out your tshirts? designing or making your own tshirts?

[quietlyblooms]

i let myself get too sleepy, but i'm filling your inboxes with tension tomorrow, i promise <3

[jontheredrc]

Well, it's about that time again...and I'm still wiped after yesterday. The closing shift is so long! I've had 8 hour shifts here, but I get two 15-minute breaks and a half-hour (unpaid) meal time on those days. For closing, I'm here for almost 6 hours with a single 15! This will be less of an issue when the store dials back its closing time to 9 PM, but...that's a grueling amount of time to be on my feet on concrete with such a short time left to sit down...

Anyway, have a great day, everyone! Love you! Hopefully you can find some time to sit down and take a nice break from everything today! (It's not easy, but it's good for you...!) 👋💕

[gyuswhore]

Statistically Speaking...

part of the svt TA collab

kim mingyu x reader

word count: 21k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

masterlist

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which was little to none. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

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

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

Nothing. 

You knock again.

Silence. 

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

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

Except he’s asleep.

No, that’s not the professor. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could’ve sworn you heard a snore. 

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

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

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

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

“Um, it’s office—”

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

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

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

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

“But—”

“It’s on the portal.”

“No it’s not.”

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

“How—”

A loud slam! of the door. 

“—long…” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday

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

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

Regards, YN

Dear YN,

Wednesdays and Thursdays. 4 to 6 PM.

Kim Mingyu, T.A. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you here to see him?”

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

“Are you here to see him? Mingyu?”

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

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

“Yeah he’s a bit…unorthodox.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right. How can I help you?”

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

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

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

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

It stumps you regardless.

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

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

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

“You marked them?”

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

“I thought the professor marked the lab reports.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dr. Cho—”

“Is no help.”

“I understand—”

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

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

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

Help, he did. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pardon?”

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

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

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

You smile, “No problem.”

Thursday

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

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

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

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

“I’ll see what I can do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help, he does.

Monday

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

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

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

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

Something isn’t right. 

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

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

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

“...Morning.”

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

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

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

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

To Do:

Call mom

Shoot myself

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

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

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

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

What the fuck?

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

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

“Good thing it was just you. Yeah.”

Just you.

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

“Have you seen the time?” 

“Not a morning person?”

“Nope!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And that isn’t happening because…?”

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

“You—”

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

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

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

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Excuse me for doing my job.”

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

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

“PSYCH101?”

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

“Oh. So you’re a fan.”

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

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

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

“Don’t tell me you offered.”

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

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

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

“Four.”

“Four?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart is in your fucking throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Majority of the class would beg to differ.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday

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

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

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

“I’m not ready.”

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

“How do you know that?”

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

“Only the—”

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

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

“I’m assuming…” you start. 

“Hm?” he looks over to you.

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

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

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

“What did you say?” Mingyu smirks. 

“Nothing,” you huff.

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

“Who said I didn’t.”

“Well then, stop being such a worrywart.”

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

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

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

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

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

You sniffle. 

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

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

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu…did you sleep at all?”

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

“Sleep? Rest?”

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

“And you were replying?”

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

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

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

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

“What’re you trying to say?”

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu—”

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

“You have, you’ve been amazing but—”

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

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

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

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

Why on earth do you care so much?

Right. Why do you? 

“Are you asking me that?”

“What?”

“Are you asking me why I care?” 

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

His eyes are bloodshot. 

“I have to get the exam pack.”

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

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

Delusive. Chimeric. Cruel.

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

The null hypothesis of your most elaborate nightmares.

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything. You tried everything. 

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

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Estimation cannot be perfect. 

[_]

It’s Thursday

Class. Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Friday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Saturday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

              ——————

                     P(B)

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

 it gets less complicated

 promise :/ 

[_]

It’s Sunday.

Eat. Drink. Work.

The page is blurry. Your eyes hurt. 

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

you’ve got this!!! < 3

You give up.

It’s Monday.

8:14 AM. 

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

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

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

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

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

Bright pink sticky note. 

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Wednesday.

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

It’s Thursday. 

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

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

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

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

You freeze like you’ve been caught. 

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

You’re off centre. But it’s fine. 

It’s Monday.

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.

—  92/100

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

“Did you feel bad?” you spit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bright red 92/100 marks the front page.

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

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

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

Because you know you’ve lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Friday.

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

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

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

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

[Mingyu]: switch to bF10 

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

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

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

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

Do you not miss me?

Do you not want me around?

Talk to me

I miss you

Please talk to me

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

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

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

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

It’s Saturday. 

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

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

“Latte, please,” you voice. “Iced.”

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

“Um, no thank you. Just one, please.”

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

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

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

“He has time to hook up?”

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

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

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

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

“Unless he flirts in variables.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bayesian inference…z scores…null hypothesis…

Wait. 

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

no null hypothesis in bayesian approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards, YN

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

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

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

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

SEND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RE: Tutorial Error from Kim Mingyu

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

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

Clicking on the notification, the email opens. 

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

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I–no, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

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

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

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

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

“You were hurt because I hurt you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not in a TA way.”

“Tutor way.”

“Um.”

“Friend way? A human way?” 

“No.”

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

“You know what?” he rasps. 

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He snorts, “Dressed up for it too.”

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

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

“How adorable.”

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

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

“That might’ve been a little better.”

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

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

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

You give him the satisfaction of an eye roll. 

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

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

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

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

“Who?”

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

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

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

“Hm?”

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

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

“Do you?”

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

“Is it because of the TA-ing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“D’you think they’ll be okay?”

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

“Like we did?”

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

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

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

“This is getting weird,” Mingyu breathes. 

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

“For fuck’s sake.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re paying attention to me.”

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

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

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

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

There’s a ding in the background. 

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

Another ding. 

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

Ding. 

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

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

“Gyu…” you whisper. 

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

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

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

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

The ringing stops. 

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

There’s a ding. 

“Mingyu, I really think—”

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

“You should answer.” 

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

“It might be important.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Go on.”

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

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

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

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

You have to stifle a snort. 

“Is it…plugged in?”

“Of course it is, I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it showing up on your files?”

“Disk…is not…formatted.”

“Erm, it might be corrupted.”

“How did that happen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I…I don’t know how, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I need a shower.”

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

“Do you wanna come in too?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can figure it out myself, Gyu.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm? I think so.” 

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

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

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

“Gyu,” you shuffle closer. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm? Has to be what?”

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

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

“For the love of—”

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

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

“What’s that again?”

“You little shit.”

You move your mouth forward to kiss him.

“Analysis of variance.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I might love you too. 

You hide that as well. For now. 

Smiling into the skin of his temples, you sigh.

“Feel free.”

[Mingyu]: class ended early 

[Mingyu]: be there in 5 

[You]: ???

[You]: wdym ended early

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

“It’s on the bedside table, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good thing I came back early, hm?” 

“Shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that for?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a pillow fort.

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

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

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

[You]: where are you

[Mingyu]: where im meant to be?

[You]: office hours?

[Mingyu]: mhm

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

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

[Mingyu]: DONT KILL ME

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

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

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

“Whatever for?”

“For lying.” 

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

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

“Him too.”

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

“Rumour has it,” he starts. 

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

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

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

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

“Take a hike, Kim.”

“...Sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mingyu was beautiful either way. 

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

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

“More than okay,” you mumble. 

“Good. Thought I lost you there.”

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

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

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

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

“How happy are you?”

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

“The recommendation? You deserve it.”

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

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

“Not just yet.”

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

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

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

“Girlfriend duties,” you quote solemnly. 

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

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

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

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

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

You can only grumble in mild annoyance. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I think I might love you too.” 

[egirl-vrissy]

hey sickos what should i get tattooed?  (this is the artist: https://www.instagram.com/pinkcloud.tattoos/ ) 

[attapullman]

Robert's Laundry Service | Neighbor!Robert "Bob" Floyd

Summary: A broken washing machine and a clogged bathroom sink lead you and Robert to explore the next part of your secret relationship.

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: Bob Floyd x afab!reader, no use of pronouns, no y/n, a little angsty, very smutty, 18+ ONLY as always, unprotected PinV, use of sex toys, language, a lot of cum mentions, neighbor!Bob being perfect as usual

A Note From Mo: Did anyone else miss neighbor!Bob? He needed some love, and that's what he's getting today! Thank you to @roosterforme for inspiring this idea that I took entirely too far. If anyone needs me, I'm going to be hoping that he moves into the empty apartment next to mine 🙏 p.s. this takes place before Stupid White Car

It’s hard to pay attention to the bad diagnosis he’s giving when your visual is just those threadbare grey sweats. Painted to his strong thighs, poking out from behind the washer like a personal serving of eye candy. You’re meant to be shining the flash light, but you long abandoned that task in favor of the view.

“…you can borrow mine in the meantime. I’ll call a guy Monday.”

Reluctantly, you draw your eyes from his lower half. Just as his words sink in.

“It’s broken?!”

Robert gives you a kindly amused grin. “Sweetheart, did you hear anything I’ve been saying?”

You grace him with a sheepish smile, caught red-handed.

“The tube disconnected from the wall and needs to be properly - professionally - connected before you use it again. I know it’s not the same, but you can do laundry at mine until someone comes out. I can make you tea and we can watch that undercover dating show you like?” His soft smile is as sweet as his offer.

You narrow your eyes at him playfully. “Hey now, you like that show too.”

Those cornflower blues shine, glad you’re not objecting. “I do, but only because it’s funny when you yell at the drama.”

He wraps his arm around your waist and guides you away from the laundry, back to where the two of you had been trying to decide on takeout over a game of checkers. Allowing him to drag you down to the couch, hips colliding into the soft fabric, you resume a lovely afternoon with Robert. 

Robert, your helpful Mr. Fix It neighbor. And maybe, one day, your boyfriend.

Robert lending you his laundry room for the weekend is so generous. It feels a bit silly carrying your delicates through his back yard (especially when you know a few pairs are crusty from your…sleepovers) but you’ll take his selfless offer if it means clean laundry and a lovely afternoon spent with him. 

As you work your way past the kitchen, you’re caught off-guard once again by how charming his home is. The little bits of personality, the framed photographs and handmade trinkets. While you know he can’t get any more perfect, his home makes a compelling argument.

The laundry room is fairly unremarkable - washer, dryer, large farmhouse sink for the unsavory jobs too nasty for the kitchen - but you do like his view of the neighborhood from the window. You’re almost curious if anyone will walk by and notice you standing in the wrong house, lacy balconette bra in hand.

Already regretting the amount of folded laundry you’re going to have to haul back through the gate after this, you begin prepping a load of lace and satin. Brainstorming ways to expedite the process, you overshoot pouring detergent into the water-filled drum and spill the cobalt goo all over your hand. Shit.

You rush over to the sink, subjecting yourself to freezing water to wash the detergent off your fingers. Once sufficiently clean, you reach for a cloth to dry off. And that’s when you see it. 

Oh. You’ve never seen one in real life before, just in porn and the odd naughty ad while scrolling. It almost feels as if you’re being punk’d. Like if you sliced through it, it would actually be cake.

A cock ring, soft silicone and all. Casually sitting on the sideboard, freshly cleaned.

Every muscle in your body freezes as the implications of seeing something so private wash over you. Something meant between lovers that you had never seen in the weeks since that fateful night you let him in for a cup of tea. 

It’s been a few days since you had last slept over. A scary sinking feeling fills your gut…was there someone else? 

You had been so focused on the neighborhood not knowing. Staying in your homes, using the back gate. It wasn’t like you had ever verbalized your intentions with him. You couldn’t blame him for thinking the two of you as casual, as much as it twisted your insides.

As your thoughts spiral, there’s motion in the doorway and Robert is suddenly there, big shoulders and a soft smile on his face at seeing you in his space. Exactly where he wants you.

“You get it going in here? Find the detergent okay?”

Those kind cobalt eyes follow your gaze to the sink, where you can’t break your focus on the dark silicone device. The one he meant to put away before you came over. His cheeks flush as he steps into the room to attempt to explain why he has something so private sitting out - in his laundry room of all places.

But as he goes to open his mouth, you cut him off. “You don’t have to explain. I don’t need to know everything in your….sex life. You’re obviously welcome to do whatever you like in the privacy of your home.”

His eyebrows raise, unsure why you seem so upset when the only issue is a clogged sink in the ensuite last night. 

You edge around him, desperate to get out of this space - his space - away from everything that reminds you of him as he figuratively slips through your fingers. “We never discussed being exclusive, so I get it.”

“What are you-?”

Tears threaten to spill over as he follows you toward his back door. “But if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with us seeing other people, so-”

Robert’s eyes bug out of his head. Seeing other people? His blood pressure rises as the dots connect behind those pretty eyes, and suddenly he’s racing to cut you off. You’re faster than you look, but before you can turn the handle of the back door he’s plastered his body against the wood, effectively blocking you from leaving.

The pain behind your eyes begs him to move, to let you run back to the safety of your own home so you can cry and despair over not locking him down sooner. Of course there’s someone else. Of course you’re not the only one who can see how great Robert Floyd is.

“Robert, I need to leave. I need a moment alone. Please.”

But he holds his ground. The second you walk through that door he knows he’s lost you. His eyes are cautious behind those thick lenses, wanting to obey your wishes but the risk of losing you making every nerve stand on end. Whatever is wrong, he can fix this. He will fix it.

“Sweetheart.” His fingers reach into the space between you, hand clenching into a fist when he’s unsure whether he’s allowed to touch you right now. “There isn’t anyone else. I promise, you’re…you’re the only one.”

You eye him hesitantly, wanting to believe his words. But that cock ring has never made an appearance in your sleepovers. Never once brought up when he’s standing between your parted thighs, lips slotted against yours.

“I really want to believe you, I do. But why else would you be cleaning your, erm, toy?” You can’t bring yourself to say cock ring without bursting into frustrated tears.

It’s now that the fight within him drops, and immediately his shoulders release. Embarrassment floods his features and he drops his gaze, no longer able to look you in the eye. This is not how he anticipated bringing this dynamic into your relationship.

“That…it’s…I-I use it when I’m alone. I like to, uh, edge myself.”

His cheeks are flaming and the burning despair inside you dissipates into intrigue. A flame traipses through your abdomen, curious and hungry.

“You use it…alone?”

He desperately nods, tentatively reaching out to grasp your hands, needing to feel you. Those thick, strong fingers rub against your knuckles soothingly. Despite the whiplash of emotions conflicting inside you, his presence immediately soothes and you lean into his touch.

“The nights you can’t come over��I prefer to save my orgasms for you. Only you.”

His blush reflects yours as you look into those ocean-deep eyes, the desperation clear across his features. He’s being honest, laying out every last secret he’s got to keep you here.

“So, there’s no one else?” Your voice feels so small, barely a whisper in the kitchen.

He shakes his head definitively, using his grip on your hands to bring you closer as he stares deep into your eyes. “There’s no one else. And the fact you would even think that means I’m not doing a good enough job proving how much I care for you. Because I like you so much, sweetheart, so, so much.”

The tension in your body breaks, and you allow yourself to lean into his strong body. His panic dissipates as he holds you to him, one arm flush against your waist as his hand holds your face to his chest. He’s never letting you go, of that he knows for sure.

He can’t believe there would be any doubt in your mind of his intentions. The sleepovers, the dinners in, the way he’s made a home between your thighs…that makes you official, doesn’t it? He’s never been one for the right words, but he was pretty sure his actions proved he was in this for the long haul. 

You’re too important to mess up. To allow any seed of doubt to spread. 

His nose traces along your temple, warm breath kissing the delicate skin. “Can I take you to bed, sweetheart?” 

Your face lifts from his chest to take in his honest face. The loose tendril of sun-lightened brunette that’s escaped his neat hairstyle. The thin lopsided smile you trust in. Eyes behind corrected lenses that are serious and playful in the same breath. 

In lieu of an answer, you mold your lips to his, drinking in his taste you’ve deprived yourself of for days. His kindness and sincerity sink into you, surrounding you the pleasantly overwhelming way his body does as he wraps around you. Holding your hips as he swallows your tongue, shifting himself to feel every dip and curve of your body.

As his lips find your neck, the laundry room comes back into view. A delicious thought swirls in your mind and the words burst from your mouth.

“Can I see?”

He nuzzles against your jaw, grinding his erection against your thigh. 

“See what?” He’s distracted by how good you smell, how soft your skin feels beneath his fingers.

“I want to see you with the cock ring. Show me, please?”

Arousal floods his mind, images of you naked beneath him while his balls throb with cum just for you. No words needed before he’s pushing you in front of him to his bedroom. He’s ready to show you just how devoted he is to you.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, it feels like the first time with him all over again. Anticipation of the unknown, drowned in heavy lust. 

His eyes rake over you as he enters the room, lust darkening those soft blue eyes. You’re exactly how he wants you always - in his bed, eager for his touch. Right now, he’s yours.

Taking the spot between your legs, strong fingers stroking along jean-clad thighs, his broad frame bends toward you to rest his forehead against yours. That button nose knocking into yours. 

“There’s been no one else since the day you moved next door. I’m yours, only yours.”

The build up of emotions behind your eyes threatens to spill over as he presses his lips to yours. Cups the back of your head as he leans into you, applying the softest pressure. Pouring every ounce of his devotion into his kiss.

Your legs wrap around his slim hips, needing to feel his security and care. He’s the most helpful man to exist, and you know he’ll guide you through this dynamic. 

Kisses turn sweet to frantic to passionate as Robert holds your face. Your lips are chapped when he finally pulls away, strong chest rising and deflating. You know you mirror his disheveled aroused appearance. His hand reaches behind to his back pocket.

He holds the black cock ring between you, freshly washed, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight peeking through the curtains. “Are you sure about this?”

Your apprehensive eyes meet his, although a slight smile plays along your lips. “Play dirty with me. Please.”

Condensation beads on the lower rims of his glasses as he dips his face to kiss you, his skin flaming hot. The kiss is sinful yet curt, not wanting to lose himself before practicing restraint. You run your tongue along the seam of his lips, savoring his flavor. He hums against your mouth as your hands find his waist, heart picking up speed as your fingers find the button of his jeans. 

Robert clenches the cock ring in his fist, already struggling to hold his load as the softness of your skin wraps tightly around his hardening cock. 

His eyes are lidded, thin mouth already agape from the pleasure of your fist stroking firmly up and down his shaft. Can barely keep focus between the way you squeeze his deep pink tip and the spectacular view down your top, his mind running wild at the all the skin he needs to touch. He’s practically forgotten the reason for his view until you lick your lips sweetly and ask.

“Can I put it on?”

Fingers unfurl and present the silicone ring to you, warm from his clenched fist. You press the ring between your fingers, taking in the smooth design and thick circumference. Glide your thumb along the little button that makes it vibrate. 

He’s panting above you, already wrecked at the vision. The only two things he deems worthy of his cock, right in front of him. 

Bringing the ring up to your lips, he watches as you run your tongue along it, gathering your saliva to glisten along the silicone for a smoother glide. Your fingers effortlessly slipping along the edge before you touch it to the sensitive tip of his cock. 

His fingers curl around the nape on your neck, holding the hair there, grounding himself. Between your ministrations and the pressure of the ring slipping down his length, he’s dizzy with stimulation. His cock immediately swelling in response. Lip between his teeth to contain the gruff moans you’re desperate to hear.

Your eyes are focused on the firm grip the ring has on the length of him, sliding down until your thumb is brushing his heavy ballsack, pulsing with need. 

“Sweetheart, I’m not going to last.” He’s panting against your forehead, trying so hard to be patient, but wanting nothing more than to thrust into your fist and chase his orgasm. 

You tilt his chin to press a chaste kiss to his lips. A promise to take care of him, because you and you alone are responsible for his pleasure. Always.

Sliding back onto the soft coverlet, you raise your hips to remove your jeans. Skin growing warm at the wanton look of need in Robert’s eyes as you unbutton your top. His voice but a whine when you sit in front of him in nothing but the delicate chain around your neck. 

“So beautiful.”

It’s impossible to tell whose whimpers are more desperate as you run the shiny-slick swollen head of him against your core. Moaning as it catches on your entrance, ready to sink deep into those velvet depths. Voices becoming one as you impale yourself on the thick shaft that’s all yours.

He can’t believe anything could be better. This is Nirvana. Until you reach between to where your bodies meet and hit that tiny little button.

“Fuck!” He never swears, and yet that filthy word streaks through the room with a bite. Yelped loudly as he buries his face into your neck. The combination of vibrations and warm, tight pussy sending him into a spiral. Groaning out praises into your neck like it’s his last day alive.

You can’t help the grin on your face as you experience him come undone. How had you been denied the pleasure of watching him like this? The salt of his neck, the wayward curl stuck to his forehead? It’s a toss up if you’re getting off on being stuffed with his engorged cock or by watching the way his chest heaves for breath as he fights off his orgasm.

“Are you going to cum for me?” You’re drunk on power watching him like this, rutting his hips into you over and over for a pleasure that won’t come until you decide. His nod so desperate it goes right to your clit. His swollen cock stretching you beyond what you thought possible. The frisson of skin on skin, those tiny yet powerful vibrations, and his affection for you is overwhelming. 

The ring fully still in place, your orgasm wracks your body, convulsing over the sheets. Barely able to notice his soft lips brushing the arch of your breasts as he consumes your satisfaction. Drinking in the sounds of your moans as they mix with his wet thrusts. 

Your sleepy eyes are all he focuses on as he chases his orgasm, fighting past his usual routine of stopping here when he only has his hand. Right now he gets to have it all - the constricted blood flow, the vibration, and you. Perfect, wonderful you. His hands fist in the bedding, rooting himself, as sinks his hips deeper with precise strokes. 

He can do this. He will show you you’re the only one for him.

Body quivering, his face is bright red as he thrusts, exertion bringing the vein in his forehead out with a matching bead of sweat. Robert feels his body take on a new consciousness as you ask for his cum once more.

His grunts are filthy - animalistic and deep. The first stream of cum he’s ever experienced with the ring on filling your stretched pussy, claiming you as his. Head fuzzy, he takes a moment to pull himself from your soft embrace and jerk his engorged cock, shot after shot of cum pumping out across your body. A painting only he gets to witness.

His tank now empty, you feel the soft thump of his body fall beside yours. Hear him catch his breath in the quiet afternoon air.

Exhausted, his face knocks into yours - glasses already lost to the coverlet - as he comes to reality once again. Strong arms reaching to pull you to him. Lackadaisical kisses to your cheek before risking a glance down and laughing abashedly.

“T-there’s so much cum. It’s everywhere.” Another kiss. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” 

The carefree yet sheepish grin he gives you melts your heart. You kiss him back, not needing to look as you feel his seed dry on your skin in the golden hour light. He very truly marked you as his, just as he is yours. 

Smoothing your fingers through his hair, memorizing every little detail of his face - what a handsome face - you ease his embarrassment. “It’s not a big deal. We’ll just throw the sheets in the washer and enjoy dinner. It’s fine, really.” 

His washer currently filled with your delicates complicates things, but your big, sweet smile soothes his self-consciousness. He returns the grin back, holding you closer. 

That night is spent eating Robert’s lasagna and playing cards until every light on the street went out. It’s far too late when the sheets are finally clean and dried, and even later when they’re successfully on the bed. But it’s worth it to him when you crawl under the duvet and beckon him closer, needing one last kiss from your boyfriend before sleep.

taglist: @bella-maria2018 @berryvanille @bobfloydsbabe @bobgasm @bradshawsbaby @comishkat @cosmoeticss @creatchie8 @desert-fern @drxgxnslxyer @erospecies @hauntedduckdefendor @hangmanapologist @hiireadstuff @himbos-on-ice @jessicab1991 @just-in-case-iloveyou @kmc1989 @littlemsbumblebee @livingoutsidethetardis @mariaenchanted @maryelizabeth13 @melsunshine @meg-ro @midnightmagpiemama @nerdgirljen @nouis-bum @petersunderoos96 @pinkdaisies9285 @primroseluna @rhettsluvr @roosterforme @seitmai @senawashere @sometimesanalice @sorchathered @sweetwhispersofchaos @sydsommersss @topherwrites @unpretty-reader @whoeverineedtobe @xoxabs88xox @yuckosworld

join the taglist for any fic

[art]

Greetings, fellow gremlins and gremlin fellows.

This year, we’re bringing back the classics for a little fun around spooky season: A ghost and his skeleton chum (affectionately dubbed Hewie and Bones by us, but you can call ’em what you want).

Right now, all you have to do is choose your fighter (or lover), as it were. You can, of course, create your own character for this challenge. We’re not the boss of you. You’re the boss of you. 

Once you’ve chosen your little charge, take a look at the prompts below, and brainstorm, moodboard, or headcanon to your heart’s content. Do some sketches, write a character sheet, and generally get a little bit excited.

In the final full week of October (Monday 23–Friday 27 October), we’ll be running the following prompts for you to “dress up” your chosen buddy daily:

Monday 23: Best baddie of ’em all

Tuesday 24: Your favorite Barbie or Ken (or just Allan)

Wednesday 25: Pirates!

Thursday 26: Tour costume

Friday 27: Shape-shifter

Use the tag #cursed costumes for a chance to be included in our Halloween parade dashboard tab or on a Tumblr Tuesday post on 10/31 (a reminder to use your reblog controls if your Hewie or Bones prefers to dance in the dark).

So, come. Create some frightening, flamboyant, fiendish, or downright funny frippery. Enter if ye dare, and join us in building a nice, friendly masquerade ball of pallid pals to dance across the dash. 

[jburrgf]

About you ||| — The Love Trope Series.

“Do you think I have forgotten about you?”

• pairing: ¡lsu!joe burrow x ¡ex situashionship!reader

° summary: second change trope, college relationships, slow burn love, right person wrong time.

o description: you and joe had a thing months before, but the things ended in a bad way. now, you see yourself stuck in something that requires you to be close to him every single day.

• playlist: About You - The 1975, Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Golding, Like Real People Do - Hoozier, I Bet You Think About Me - Taylor Swift, Called You Again - Lizzy McAlpine, Tolerate It, ImGonnaGetYouBack, Clean - Taylor Swift

PART THREE: I BET YOU THINK ABOUT ME

The fluorescent lights in the classroom buzzed faintly as I slipped into my seat at the back of the room, pulling my hoodie tighter around me, hoping to disappear into the fabric. Mondays were bad enough, but after the party on Saturday, the mere thought of facing the day made me want to crawl back under the covers and stay there.

Especially now, with the nagging suspicion that my life was about to take another unpredictable turn.

The group of students gathered for Media Strategies in Sports was small, a core requirement for my degree, and one of the few that worked directly with LSU’s athletic department. Normally, I loved it—brainstorming campaigns, creating social media content, and pitching ideas to actual professionals. But today, the room felt stifling, like the walls were closing in.

I sank lower into my seat, Maddie, seated beside me, shot me a knowing look.

“Morning, sunshine,” Maddie chirped, sliding into the chair beside me with her usual energy that somehow thrived even at 8 a.m.

I grunted in response, burying my face in the collar of my hoodie.

“Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad,” she teased, nudging my arm. “You left before anything interesting happened.”

I shot her a glare, and she held up her hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll stop. “You’re being dramatic,” she whispered, nudging me with her elbow.

“I’m being cautious,” I muttered, keeping my voice low.

Professor Reynolds entered the room, a stack of papers tucked under his arm. He was a tall, wiry man with a gruff demeanor, but he loved his job. This class was his pride and joy, a hybrid course designed to give students real-world experience working with the university’s rising athletes

The professor, Dr. Reynolds, stood at the front of the room, a stack of papers in his hands and an overly chipper demeanor that felt out of place this early in the week. “Alright, class,” he began, his voice cutting through the low hum of chatter. “As you all know, this semester we’re diving into a hands-on project with the athletic department. Each of you will be paired with an up-and-coming athlete to develop a personalized media strategy. This is a big opportunity—LSU takes its athletics seriously, and these athletes are the faces of the future.”

I already hated this.

“Pairs will be assigned at random,” Reynolds continued, adjusting his glasses. “These are some of LSU’s rising stars, and this is your chance to prove you can handle the pressure.”

Dr. Reynolds began reading off the pairings, his voice steady and matter-of-fact.

“Anna, you’ll be working with Derek Stingley Jr. Jamie, you’ve got Clyde Edwards-Helaire…”

The names blurred together as I stared at my notebook, pretending to take notes. Maybe, just maybe, I’d luck out and get someone I could handle—a name I barely recognized, someone who wouldn’t make me feel like the walls were closing in.

“Justin Jefferson,” Dr. Collins called, glancing up. “Maddie Carter.”

Maddie lit up like a Christmas tree, her grin practically splitting her face. She turned to me, barely able to contain her excitement. “Oh my God, Y/N. Justin Jefferson. Can you believe it?”

“Lucky you,” I said flatly, my heart sinking further.

She didn’t notice, too busy already envisioning her project.

“Y/N L/N,” Professor Hart continued, scanning his list. “You’ll be working with Joe Burrow.”

I didn’t respond, hoping for some kind of cosmic intervention. Reynolds’s gaze found me anyway, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he looked at me.

“Joe Burrow.”

My blood ran cold.

Maddie audibly gasped beside me, clapping a hand over her mouth to muffle her reaction. I couldn’t even look at her. Instead, I ducked lower into my hoodie, practically melting into my chair.

My heart plummeted.

Maddie turned to me, her eyes wide. “Oh no.”

The words hit me like a freight train, and my body instinctively tensed. My heart sank, my pulse quickening as the room seemed to close in around me.

I slid further into my hoodie, wishing the fabric could swallow me whole.

“Of all the people,” I muttered, my voice muffled.

I didn’t respond, instead pulling my hoodie up over my head and practically disappearing into the fabric. My face burned as the rest of the class murmured, a few curious glances thrown my way.

Maddie leaned closer, her voice low. “Y/N, this is fine. It’s fine. You can handle this.”

I peeked out from the safety of my hoodie, glaring at her. “This is not fine.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re overreacting. It’s just Joe.”

“Exactly,” I hissed. “It’s Joe.”

Before she could respond, Dr. Reynolds clapped his hands together, pulling the class’s attention back to him. “Remember, this project is about collaboration. You’ll be working closely with your athlete all semester, so make sure to establish good communication from the start. Now, if there are no questions, class is dismissed.”

I stayed rooted in my seat as everyone began gathering their things, my mind racing. There was no way I could do this.

Maddie stood and slung her bag over her shoulder, leaning down to whisper, “Go talk to him. Maybe he’ll switch you with someone.”

“That’s the plan,” I muttered, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

I shot her a point and Maddie shrugged. I waited until the room had cleared out, then made my way to the front where Dr. Reynolds was organizing his notes.

“Professor?” I said hesitantly.

He looked up, offering a kind smile. “Yes, Y/N?”

I shifted awkwardly, clutching my notebook to my chest. “About the project… I was wondering if there was any chance I could switch partners.”

His brow furrowed, and he set his papers down. “Switch partners? Is there a specific reason why?”

I hesitated, my mind scrambling for a professional-sounding excuse. “I just think… maybe someone else would be a better fit. Joe and I… we don’t really have a lot in common, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to… um, connect with him the way someone else might.”

Dr. Reynolds studied me for a moment, his expression thoughtful. “Y/N, part of this project is about stepping outside your comfort zone. Learning to work with different personalities is a crucial skill in this field. Joe Burrow is one of the most promising athletes at LSU right now, and I believe you’re more than capable of handling this assignment.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he held up a hand. “I understand this might feel challenging, but I’m confident it’ll be a valuable experience for you. Give it a shot, and if there are any real issues, we can revisit this conversation later in the semester.”

“Right,” I said weakly. “Of course.”

“Besides,” he added with a small smile, “working with someone like Joe is an incredible opportunity. I’m sure you’ll do great.”

I forced a tight smile, nodding as I backed toward the door. “Thanks, Dr. Reynolds. I’ll, uh, do my best.”

As I turned to leave, Maddie was waiting just outside the door, her arms crossed and a knowing smirk on her face.

“Well?” she asked.

“No luck,” I grumbled, pulling my hoodie back up.

She shrugged, looping her arm through mine as we walked down the hallway. “See? The universe wants you two to work this out.”

I groaned, leaning my head against her shoulder. “You’re not helping.”

She laughed, giviI glared at her. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” she replied, linking her arm through mine as we started walking. “Come on, Y/N. You’ll survive. He’s just a guy. A very cute guy who just so happens to be your ex, but still—just a guy.”

But as we walked across campus, her words felt far from reassuring. Because deep down, I knew this wasn’t just about the project—or about Joe. It was about the way he still made me feel, no matter how hard I tried to forget.

“You’ll thank me later.”

I groaned, pressing my hands to my face. “Why do I feel like this is going to be a disaster?”

“Because you’re overthinking it,” she said, looping her arm through mine. “Come on. Let’s grab lunch. You’re gonna crush this project, and if he tries to make it weird, I’ll personally set Justin Jefferson on him.”

Despite myself, I laughed. Maddie always had a way of making things feel just a little bit lighter.

But as we walked out of the building, I couldn’t shake the sinking feeling in my chest. Joe Burrow wasn’t just any project partner. And no matter how much Maddie tried to convince me otherwise, I knew this was going to be anything but simple.

“When are you guys going to meet?” Maddie asked me, walking by my side down the streets of the campus. We were doing our way to Malone’s.

“Probably still this week. Joe has the hardest schedule, but I know he has some free days this week. I kinda Remember.”

Maddie gave me a quick look, but she didn’t say a word. And it was ok, cause I know her enough to know what 's going on in her mind. And it was the same way with her: she knew what was going on my mind right now.

"You are not going to do that," she told me, as if her demand would change something I had already decided in my mind.

I didn’t answer, my mind already spinning with ideas to get out of this. There had to be a way to switch partners. Maybe Jamar could help me—he was Joe’s best friend, and I’d worked with him before — kinda met him when I was with Joe. He was always good at reading Burrow, especially. Maybe, just maybe, he’d pull some strings for me, cause I know that half of the girls from my class would kill to be paired with Joseph Lee Burrow.

I pulled out my phone, dialing Jamar’s number quickly. The phone rang once, twice...

“Yo, Y/N, what’s up?” Jamar’s voice came through the speaker, relaxed but friendly.

“Hey, Jamar,” I said, trying to sound casual but feeling the anxiety creep in. “Look, I need a huge favor. You know that media project for class, right?”

“Yeah, I’m in that class too. You got paired up with someone tough?” He asked me. “I wasn’t in the class today, got early practice this morning.”

“Well,” I hesitated, glancing over at Maddie who was watching me curiously, “I got paired with Joe.”

There was a brief silence on the other end, and then Jamar laughed. “Oh, man. That’s gonna be fun.”

I didn’t share his enthusiasm. “I don’t want to work with him, Jamar. It’s... it’s complicated, you know? Any chance you can make a switch for me? Just... I don’t know, talk to the professor or someone? Talk to the girl that got you!”

Maddie, still walking beside me, leaned in with a mischievous grin. “You’re not seriously asking Jamar to pull strings, are you?”

I shot her a glare, but she just laughed, clearly knowing what I was about to do.

On the phone, Jamar chuckled again. “I get it, I get it. But nah, I can’t really do that. You two gotta work it out. Besides, Joe’s a good dude. You’ll be fine.”

I felt my shoulders slump. “You’re not helping here, Jamar.”

“Hey, I’m just saying, you’ve got this,” he replied, his tone warm but firm. “But you’ll need to face it at some point, right? Might as well be now.”

I groaned, my frustration mounting. “You’re all against me, huh?”

“Not against you, just keeping it real,” Jamar said, laughing lightly. “But look, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Besides, you’ll have some good stories to tell after, right?”

I wasn’t ready to accept that yet, but before I could say anything else, Maddie swiped the phone from my hand, holding it to her ear before I could protest.

“Chase! It’s Maddie. We’re going to Malone’s now, you in?” she said, all casual and confident.

“Maddie!” I protested, grabbing at her, but she pulled the phone further from me.

“Don’t worry, Y/N. You need to face Joe,” Maddie continued to Jamar, ignoring my complaints. “We’re going to make sure you do, and I’ll be there to back you up. You’ll be fine.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Maddie just gave me that look—the one that told me she wasn’t about to let me off the hook.

Jamar’s voice came through the phone again. “Malone’s, huh? Yeah, sure, I’ll swing by. Should be a good time.”

Maddie grinned at me. “See? Jamar’s in. Now you just have to deal with the whole Joe thing, and we’ll all go get a drink. It’ll be a good distraction. You’re welcome.”

I sighed, defeated, knowing she was right. There was no avoiding Joe, and it seemed like I wasn’t going to get out of this project. “Fine,” I muttered, sinking into the nearest bench. “But you’re buying me a drink tonight, Maddie. I’m gonna need it.”

Maddie smiled, her arm linking through mine. “Deal. But remember, you’re facing your ex like an adult. No running away this time.”

I rolled my eyes, but there was no escaping it now. "You’re relentless, you know that?"

She just winked. "That’s why you love me."

[…]

The atmosphere at Malone’s was a mix of low chatter, clinking glasses, and the occasional burst of laughter. It was the kind of place where everyone on campus went to blow off steam, whether it was for a burger or a beer. Maddie, Jamar, and I had been sitting at one of the wooden booths for over an hour, nursing drinks and nibbling on fries while we talked about the media class project.

Jamar had been surprisingly helpful, giving me tips on how to navigate the project with Joe—though he seemed to enjoy teasing me about it at every opportunity. Maddie, as always, was in her element, sipping on her drink and chiming in with her unsolicited (but not entirely unwelcome) advice.

“I’m just saying,” Jamar said, leaning back in his chair. “Joe’s not that bad to work with. Once you get past his, you know... personality.”

I shot him a look. “Oh, you mean his stubbornness? His perfectionism? His tendency to completely ignore other people’s input?”

Jamar grinned. “Exactly.”

Before I could retort, the door swung open, and in walked Justin Jefferson. His easy confidence turned a few heads as he made his way toward our table, spotting us immediately.

"Well, well, well. Look who it is," Jamar greeted, sliding over to make room for him. "What’s up, Justin?"

Justin slid into the seat directly across from Maddie, his eyes flicking to her before settling on the rest of us.“Not much. Just got out of a meeting with Coach. You know how it is." Justin said, His eyes flicked to her drink. “You already started without me?”

Maddie smirked, raising her glass. “You’re late. That’s on you.”

Justin chuckled, settling in as if he’d been there the whole time.

Maddie perked up immediately, smiling at Justin as if the rest of us had disappeared. "Hey, did you see the assignment? I got paired with you for the project."

Justin leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Yeah, I saw that. Guess we’ll be spending a lot of time together, huh?" His tone was casual, but the way he looked at Maddie made it clear he wasn’t just talking about work.

I couldn’t help but smile a little at their interaction. It was nice to see Maddie’s confidence in action, even if I wanted to shrink into my hoodie at the mere thought of working with Joe.

Justin turned his attention to me after a moment, his eyebrows raising. "So, who’d you get stuck with, Y/N?"

I hesitated, glancing at Maddie and Jamar for support. Maddie was quick to jump in. "She got Joe," she said with a grin, as if this were the most entertaining development of her week.

Justin’s eyes widened slightly, his smile turning into something more curious. "Wait, Joe Joe? As in, Joe Burrow? Your Joe Burrow? Didn’t you two have a thing?”

“He’s not my Joe,” I said quickly, my face heating up.

Jamar chuckled, and Maddie smirked into her drink, clearly enjoying my discomfort.

“It was a long time ago,” I muttered, wishing the ground would swallow me whole.

Justin leaned back in his chair, clearly amused. “Man, this just keeps getting better.”

“Look,” Jamar said, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m just saying, if you don’t want to work with Joe, you better have a solid plan. Dude’s serious about this stuff when it comes to football, and he’s not gonna let you off easy.”

I groaned, stirring my drink with the straw. “It’s not about him being serious. It’s about—”

“History,” Maddie interrupted with a sly smirk. “We all know the elephant in the room.”

I shot her a glare, but Jamar chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. History aside, you’ll be fine. Just keep it professional. Joe’s not the type to hold grudges.”

Before I could come up with a response, Jamar’s phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up, his face lighting up when he saw the name on the screen. “Speak of the devil,” he said with a smirk. “It’s Joe,” Jamar announced, holding up the screen for us to see.

“Put it on speaker,” Justin said immediately, leaning forward with interest.

“No, don’t—” I started, but it was too late. Jamar had already hit the speaker button and placed the phone in the middle of the table.

“Yo, Joe, what’s up?” Jamar said.

“Hey, man,” Joe’s voice came through the phone, low and steady. “I just got out of practice. What’s up with this project? Do you know who I’m paired with yet?”

Maddie and Justin exchanged glances, their eyes twinkling with amusement. I sank deeper into my seat, pulling my hoodie over my head in a futile attempt to hide.

“Not yet, huh?” Jamar replied, grinning at me. “Man, you’re gonna love this one.”

Joe groaned on the other end of the line. “I swear, if it’s someone who doesn’t take this seriously, I’m gonna lose it.”

“Don’t worry,” Jamar said, his voice full of mock reassurance. “Your partner’s... super dedicated. Really invested.”

Maddie coughed, barely stifling her laughter. Justin was no better, leaning forward with his hand over his mouth to muffle his amusement.

Joe sighed. “Great. Anyway, where are you? I’m starving.”

“We’re at Malone’s,” Jamar said casually. “You should swing by.”

There was a pause before Joe replied. “Alright, be there in ten.”

When the call ended, the table fell into a quiet buzz of excitement. Justin leaned forward, his gaze flicking between Maddie and me. “This just got a whole lot more interesting.”

I shot him a look, then turned to Maddie. “You’re not helping.”

Maddie shrugged, clearly unbothered. “I told you, you need to face him. Now’s your chance.”

I glared at Jamar. “Why did you invite him?”

“Because,” he said, leaning forward with a grin, “I live for the drama.”

Maddie nudged me. “Relax, Y/N. It’s just Joe. You’ll be fine.”

I didn’t respond, my mind racing as I tried to mentally prepare myself for what was about to happen.

A few minutes later, the door swung open again, and there he was. He looked like he’d just come from practice, a hoodie slung over his shoulders, hair slightly disheveled, but his sharp gaze swept over the room like he was always in control.

I froze in my seat, trying to shrink into the background as his eyes roamed over the tables.

“Oh, this is going to be good,” Justin muttered under his breath, leaning forward with a smirk.

Jamar casually waved him over. “Yo, Joe, over here!”

Joe’s head turned toward the sound of Jamar’s voice, and then his eyes landed on me. He stopped mid-step.

He froze when he saw me.

His gaze locked with mine, and for a moment, everything else faded away. The noise, the people, the world—it all disappeared as we stared at each other.

Joe walked over slowly, his expression carefully neutral, but I could see the flicker of surprise in his eyes as he took the empty seat directly across from me.

“Sup,” Joe greeted. The space felt smaller now, the table between us an insignificant barrier.

“Hey, man,” Jamar said with a grin, clearly enjoying the tension that had settled over the table.

Joe’s gaze flicked briefly to Maddie, then Justin, before landing back on me. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, his voice neutral, but his eyes betrayed a flicker of something—surprise, maybe.

Justin, ever the instigator, wasted no time. “So, Joe, you know who your partner is for the big marketing project yet?”

Joe frowned slightly, his eyes narrowing in curiosity. “Not yet. They haven’t told me.”

“Oh, really?” Jamar said, feigning surprise. “Man, that’s weird. I thought for sure you’d know by now.”

Maddie stifled a laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. I shot her a glare, but she just winked at me.

Joe glanced at Jamar, then at Justin, and finally back at me. His expression shifted subtly, realization dawning as he pieced it together. His eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment, the rest of the table seemed to fade away.

“You’re kidding,” he said, his voice low and edged with disbelief.

I looked down at the table, suddenly fascinated by the condensation on my glass. “Nope,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Not kidding.”

Joe let out a quiet, humorless laugh, leaning back in his chair. “Of course.”

Justin chuckled, clearly enjoying the drama. “This just got a whole lot more interesting.”

Joe ignored him, his focus entirely on me. “So, it’s you,” he said, his tone unreadable.

“It’s me,” I replied, finally meeting his gaze.

The air between us felt heavy, the unspoken history lingering like a storm cloud. Maddie broke the tension with a cheerful, overly chipper tone.

“See? This will be great! You two already know each other. It’s a head start!”

Joe shot her a look, and she just shrugged innocently.

Jamar leaned forward, grinning. “Come on, Joe. Don’t look so worried. Y/N’s great to work with. She’ll probably carry you through the whole project.”

Joe didn’t respond immediately, his eyes never leaving mine. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, quieter. “Yeah. We’ll see.”

Maddie cleared her throat loudly, cutting through the tension. “Alright, this is officially too much brooding for one table. Jamar, let’s order another round, yeah?”

Joe leaned forward slightly, his attention still on me, even as Jamar and Maddie launched into a debate about appetizers. “We should figure out a schedule for the project,” he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear.

“Yeah,” I replied, my throat dry.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he added, his tone leaving no room for argument.

“Fine.”

Maddie shot him a look, then turned to Joe. “Look, it’s just a project. You’ll survive.”

Joe didn’t respond immediately, his eyes still on me. There was something in his expression I couldn’t quite place—like he was trying to figure out how to handle the situation without making it worse.

“Yeah,” he said finally, his tone resigned. “I guess we don’t have a choice.”

“Exactly,” Maddie said, her voice overly cheerful. “It’s gonna be fine. Right, Y/N?”

I forced a tight smile. “Sure. Fine.”

Joe’s lips pressed into a thin line, and he reached for the menu in front of him, clearly ready to change the subject. But the tension lingered, thick and unspoken, as we all sat there pretending this wasn’t as uncomfortable as it actually was.

Jamar, of course, seemed determined to make things worse. “Hey, Joe,” he said, grinning. “Remember that time we talked about working with people you had... history with? Funny how life works, huh?”

Joe shot him a glare, and I kicked Jamar under the table, but he just laughed, unfazed.

Joe nodded once, then glanced at Jamar. “You’re paying for my drink, by the way.”

Maddie leaned over to whisper, “You’re doing great, sweetie,” and I resisted the urge to groan.

Jamar laughed, but the awkwardness didn’t fade. I knew this project was going to be a challenge, but sitting across from Joe now, with all the unresolved tension hanging in the air, I realized just how difficult it was going to be.

I couldn’t take it anymore. The awkwardness, the stares, the weight of his presence—it was all too much. Pushing my chair back, I stood abruptly.

“I need some air,” I said, not waiting for a response as I made my way toward the door.

Behind me, I could hear Maddie murmuring something to Joe, probably trying to smooth things over. But I didn’t look back. I couldn’t.

The cool evening air hit my face as I stepped outside, my breath shaky as I tried to collect myself. Working with Joe was going to be harder than I thought.

I leaned against the brick wall outside Malone’s, the faint buzz of conversation and clinking glasses filtering through the door behind me. The cool air helped calm the heat rising in my chest, but it didn’t quiet my thoughts.

What were the odds of being paired with Joe? It felt like the universe was playing some cruel joke on me, forcing me to confront something I wasn’t ready to face.

The reality of it settled in my chest like a stone, making it hard to breathe. I shouldn’t have reacted like that—I knew it. But seeing him, sitting across from me, brought back everything I’d tried so hard to bury.

The door behind me creaked open, and I turned my head slightly, expecting Maddie.

Instead, Jamar stepped out, his usual easy grin replaced by something softer, almost concerned.

“Hey,” he said, leaning against the wall beside me.

Hey,” he said, leaning against the wall beside me.

I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to look unaffected. “Hey.”

For a moment, neither of us said anything. The quiet between us was heavy, filled with everything I wasn’t ready to admit.

“You okay?” Jamar finally asked, his voice low.

I let out a shaky breath, my eyes fixed on the parking lot in front of us. “I’m fine.”

“Come on, Y/N,” he said, tilting his head to catch my gaze. “I’m not Maddie—I know when someone’s not fine.”

I hesitated, the words caught in my throat. Jamar wasn’t the kind of guy who pried, but he also didn’t let people off the hook easily.

“It’s just… a lot,” I admitted quietly, my fingers gripping the sleeves of my jacket.

He nodded, like he’d expected that answer. “Yeah, I figured. That’s why I came out here.”

He gave a slight nod, his face serious again. “Just don’t shut us out, alright? If you need to talk or need a distraction, we’re here.” He glanced back toward the door of Malone’s, then added, “Joe left, by the way. Said something about needing to clear his head. I think you both just need some space.”

I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or frustrated. Joe leaving only added to the uncertainty swirling inside me. “I guess that’s for the best,” I muttered, pushing myself off the wall. “I don’t know how much more I can handle right now.”

“Yeah, he’s complicated like that,” Jamar continued, his tone light, but his eyes were sharp, watching me closely. “He pretends he’s all chill and collected, but deep down? He’s just as messed up about this as you are.”

I laughed bitterly, shaking my head. “That’s comforting.”

Jamar bumped my shoulder lightly, his grin returning. “Hey, I’m just saying—he’s not some robot. You’re not the only one feeling weird about this.”

I didn’t respond, the weight of his words settling over me.

Jamar studied me for a moment, then sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I get that. I do. But listen, you don’t have to do this alone. You’ve got Maddie, and you’ve got me. And if you need me to keep Joe in check, I got you.” He smirked lightly, trying to lighten the mood. “He may be a little too quiet for his own good, but I’ll make sure he doesn’t make things awkward for you. And honestly, Joe’s not as scary as you think.”

“Debatable,” I muttered, earning a chuckle from him.

“Fair,” he said, stepping away from the wall. “But seriously, don’t let this eat you up. You’re tougher than you give yourself credit for.”

I watched as he walked back toward the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. “Oh, and Maddie’s probably in there plotting how to cheer you up, so brace yourself.”

Despite everything, I smiled. “Thanks, Jamar.”

He winked before disappearing back inside, leaving me alone with my thoughts—and a small, fleeting sense of hope.

As Jamar started to head back inside, I stayed a moment longer, trying to steady myself. I knew I couldn’t run away from this forever. Sooner or later, I was going to have to face Joe. And when that time came, I hoped I’d be able to handle it without letting everything fall apart.

But for now, I took a deep breath, and when I walked back through the door of Malone's, it felt like stepping back into a world where the past was waiting to meet me.

[dnrarepairweek]

Death Note Rarepair Week is happening on March 17th, 2025! 🥳🎉

Calling all Death Note rarepair lovers! This is your time to shine 💫 DN Rarepair Week will be running this year from Monday, March 17th until Sunday, March 23rd, with late submissions accepted until the beginning of April. Prompts will be released exactly one month prior.

Please see the rules and FAQ, and don't forget to follow @dnrarepairweek for updates! Questions about the event can be sent here or directly to @empressofthewind.

Special thanks to @twinknote who designed all the beautiful graphics, and @lightningblade who helped out with brainstorming/writing the text! I couldn't have done this alone :')

[rebelliousmuse]

Is it true? - M.S.

Warning: oral (male receiving).

---------------------------------------------------------

Papers with crossed-out video ideas littered the table. You leaned back on the couch. "Guys, it's Sunday. Relax, you have all week to brainstorm."

Nick ran a hand through his already ruffled hair. "But tomorrow's Monday! We need a banger for Friday." Matt sprawled on the floor; phone glued to his face.

Chris burst out dramatically, "She's right! We can think tomorrow! It's already too late and I'm STARVING!" He threw open the fridge with a groan, only to be met with several cans of soda.

"How can it be empty?" Nick shrieked, peering into the fridge with disbelief. "I don't know, but I'm not going out this late," Matt mumbled, already anticipating Chris's next move.

"Fine, then we'll Uber!" Chris declared, already pulling out his phone. His stomach rumbled ominously.

"I'll come with you," Nick whipped his head towards you, "Are you coming?".

"Actually, I think I'll stay. What if we do a poll on your Instagram?" You looked at Matt, seeing him give a small nod.

"The fans could decide what you guys do next! Matt and I could pick out a few funny or interesting ideas." You explained your plan.

Chris yanked on a hoodie, shoving his phone into his pocket. Leaning over Nick's shoulder, he announced, "Uber's a few blocks away, dude.”

Meanwhile, Matt had his brow furrowed as he typed out the poll story. A low murmur escaped his lips every now and then, presumably internal commentary.

Nick, however, remained glued to the brainstorming session. "Giant Jenga in the park? We’ve done that on tour. Ghost pepper challenge? Nah, too basic… Mystery food taste test?" He trailed off.

Just then, Chris poked his head back in. "Car's here, let's go!" he crowed, before disappearing down the stairs.

A comfortable silence settled in the room once they were gone. You glanced at Matt, still engrossed in his phone. A slow smile spread across your face as you remembered his peculiar fondness for pineapple. There was a mischievous glint in your eye as your mind went to something it shouldn’t.

Matt finally tore his gaze away from his phone, a satisfied smile playing on his lips. He glanced at you, then stopped short. Your face was practically glowing, a spark in your eyes. A silent giggle escaped your lips, and you quickly clamped a hand over your mouth, only making your smile stretch wider.

"What are you smiling about?" he asked, his own smile faltering slightly in confusion.

You peeked out from behind your hand. "Nothing just remembered something," you mumbled, trying (and failing) to appear innocent.

"Would it be a good video idea?" The question sent a fresh wave of giggles cascading through you. You buried your face in your hands, your shoulders shaking with laughter.

Matt's smile vanished completely, replaced by a furrowed brow. He leaned closer, "Well?" he asked, completely lost.

After a while trying to regain your composure, you finally managed to look up, a single, choked chuckle escaping your lips. Matt just rolled his eyes.

"Fine, don't tell me,” He muttered, about to turn back to his phone.

But you couldn't resist. Leaning forward, you lowered your voice to a dramatic whisper. "Is it true?"

"What?" he asked.

You leaned in even closer, eyes twinkling. "You know… the thing with the pineapple and…" you trailed off, waiting for the light bulb to flicker on in his head.

Matt's brow furrowed even deeper. "What about the pineapple?" he repeated, completely at a loss. "The fact that I like it?"

"No, silly!" you exclaimed, barely containing another giggle. "You know what… about the thing it does…" You trailed off again, hoping he'd catch on.

He repeated, "What about the pineapple?" this time with a hint of exasperation in his voice.

Your cheeks flushed a light pink as you fidgeted with the hem of your shirt. "You know…" you mumbled. A playful smile tugged at the corners of your lips, but you quickly looked down at your lap, overwhelmed by a sudden shyness.

Matt groaned dramatically, throwing his hands up in the air. "Oh my god, Y/N, just say it!" he exclaimed with exasperation. "You're killing me with this suspense!"

Taking a deep breath, you leaned in. "Is it true that pineapple makes it…sweeter?" you finally blurted out.

Matt stared at you for a moment, his brow furrowed in confusion. Then, slowly, a blush mirrored yours creeping up his neck. His eyes widened in realization, and a gasp escaped his lips. Oh. That's what you were talking about.

A wide grin split his face, revealing a dazzling display of white teeth. He leaned back, letting out a hearty laugh. "I don't know, Y/N," he said, staring at you.

Matt's eyes locked with yours for a beat longer than necessary. A playful glint danced in their depths, and a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Was he… teasing you? The heat rose in your cheeks, and you quickly looked away.

He cleared his throat, breaking the unexpected tension. "Why are you asking?" he continued with amusement.

"Well, it's just…" you stammered, cheeks burning even hotter. "I've seen some things online, you know, about pineapples and… well, let's just say I was curious."

Matt nodded slowly, his gaze still lingering on you for a moment too long. Finally, he seemed to tear himself away, but just as he started to look away, you blurted out, "Alright, alright, show me the poll options for your Friday video" You forced a laugh.

He chuckled and started walking over to you, phone in hand. "Here you go, curious one," he said, a playful smile on his face as he sat next to you on the couch.

You scrolled through the answers given by their fans, but your mind kept wandering back to your question.

Your thumb hovered over the screen, scrolling. You stole a glance at Matt, finding him already gazing at you. His eyes crinkled at the corners, a playful smile tugging at his lips. A blush crept up your neck, a shy smile mirroring his before you quickly looked away. But the question burned on your tongue, and you couldn't resist another peek.

"Can I find out?" you whispered.

Matt's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Find out?" he repeated, his voice was low.

You nodded shyly, biting your lower lip as your doe eyes flickered back to his. A blush stained his cheeks, mirroring the heat rising in your own. Taking a slow, deliberate breath, you began to turn towards him.

Matt instinctively leaned back, resting his back on the couch. His legs fell slightly apart as you reached out, hands brushing against his thighs. You knelt between his legs, your heart hammering in your chest.

"Is this okay?" you asked softly, your voice barely a whisper. You couldn't miss the way his breathing hitched, how his eyes darkened with desire, and a faint blush painted his cheeks, as his gaze devoured yours.

His nod was a curt movement, his eyes never leaving yours. Your fingers trembled slightly as you reached for his belt buckle, the cool metal sending a jolt through your hand. Taking a shaky breath, you unfastened the leather, the click echoing in the sudden silence of the room.

You tackled his denim jeans next. As you peeled the fabric down his legs, you noticed a subtle shift in his posture. He hitched his hips upwards ever so slightly, making it easier for you to take his pants off. The denim landed on the floor, revealing a bulge that strained against the thin fabric of his boxer.

The sight stole your breath away. Heat flooded your cheeks. Tentatively, you reached out, fingertips brushing the soft cotton. Matt inhaled sharply. With a growing sense of urgency, you decided to see it all.

Slowly, you peeled down the last remaining barrier. The sight that greeted you was both breathtaking and intimidating. Your mouth instinctively watered in anticipation. Licking your lips unconsciously, you prepared to finally explore with your mouth, seeking the answer to the question that had consumed your thoughts.

His gaze locked with yours, his tongue nervously darting across his bottom lip, as you spitted into the palm of your right hand. A slow smile played on your lips. Deliberately, you mirrored his action, wetting your own lips. Matt's breath hitched, his pupils dilating as you drew your hand up, finally meeting his gaze again with a provocative glint.

As your hand glided across his skin, a low moan escaped his lips, his body tensing slightly with anticipation. You massaged his cock up and down repetitively, his response was immediate – a sharp intake of breath, his eyes fluttering closed momentarily. The pace quickened, fuelled by his growing moans and the deepening furrow of his brow.

"Need that pretty mouth on my dick," he rasped, his voice thick with desire. A smirk tugged at your lips. You leaned closer, the heat of his body practically radiating against your skin. Following his plea, you trailed a wet line down his length with your tongue, finally swirling around his tip, sending a tremor through his body as you put his whole dick into your mouth, beginning to pump your head up and down.

His right hand reached out, his fingers weaving into your hair, in a desperate tangle. As your head bobbed up and down, the loose strands brushed against your flushed cheeks, his moans grew ragged, each one punctuated by a sharp intake of breath. “Fuck… good girl, yeah… just like that” His head laid back, eyes squeezed shut, the strain evident in the clenched jaw. "So close, baby," he rasped. "Cum for me, Matt." The urgency in your voice seemed to spur him on. And so, after a few more movements from your mouth, you felt his sweet cum releasing into your mouth. You licked his dick, cleaning him up.

You bit down on your lower lip, the question finally answered. A burst of juicy sweetness flooded your mouth, the tang of fresh pineapple lingering long after you swallowed. A genuine smile spread across your face, your eyes sparkling with amusement. "Next time you get more pineapple," you teased, your voice in a low purr, "let me know. You taste absolutely delicious." He threw his head back with a groan, eyes fluttering closed as if struck. A low moan escaped his lips when you lowered your head, the warmth of his skin welcoming your mouth once again. Your touch sent shivers down his spine, his legs trembling with pleasure as you continue to suck his dick, making him cum for a few more times until you heard a noise at the front door downstairs.

You licked your lips one last time, savouring the lingering taste of Matt. He was a mess, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes glazed with a satisfied exhaustion. A tired smile tugged at the corners of his lips as you playfully passed him his boxers. The soft cotton felt cool in your hands as you helped him dress, his muscles relaxing with each article of clothing. The sound of his ragged breaths filled the air, punctuated by the jingle of the belt buckle as it slipped through your fingers. "You look incredibly handsome right now," you murmured, leaning in to brush a kiss against his cheek. A blush crept up his neck as a tired smile appeared on his lips.

Just then, downstairs the door creaked open, and Nick and Chris burst in, carrying a large bag. When they reached upstairs, Matt was sitting on the couch again, and you smiled at them.

"Hey, we brought some tacos!" Nick announced in a singsong voice, his smile faltering slightly when he saw Matt's flushed face and dazed expression. "Are you okay?" he asked concerned.

Matt cleared his throat, his voice raspy. "Yeah, I'm just really tired."

"Okay, have some tacos and then go to sleep, bro," Chris said, clapping Matt on the shoulder.

As the bag crinkled open, releasing the enticing aroma of spicy ground beef and seasoned vegetables, you brought some sodas for the four of you. You settled in around the table with Matt, stealing smiles and glances at each other filled with a shared sense of intimacy. Across the table, the boys were engrossed in their phones, scrolling through the endless suggestions flooding their Instagram story.

[nottivagos]

Hello, it's me again! Welcome to Notti's "Not So Innocent" Notebook where I write some filth to make your Monday a little bit better <3 || 18+ mdni pls and ty

an: he's finally here! sorry for the long long wait but he's finally here! a massive thank you to @emchante for brainstorming him with me a while back (definitely wasn't the 16th jan...) <3

Introducing... Art Student AU : DR3

Art Student!Danny who’s a nervous wreck the first time you talk to him in class. You complement the piece he’s been working his ass off silently whilst standing at the back of the classroom? He’s sure to be a mumbling mess, murmuring a low “thank you” as his ears go a burning red from being so flustered at your kindness <3.

Art Student!Danny who’s the quietest in the class for the semester. He’s always keeping himself to himself by any means, and to be honest, you find it cute and endearing. When walking past him in the corridor one day, you flash him a friendly smile and a wave. He quickly responds with the biggest grin, his braces reflecting the strobe lights of your campus as he walks past.

Art Student!Danny who’s ultimately the biggest sweetheart. Need a new pot of clean water when you’re painting in the studio? He’s on it straight away. Need someone to sharpen your pencils when you’re doodling in your dorm? You can bet he’s already gotten his pencil sharpener just so he can help you as soon as possible.

Art Student!Danny who’s literally an encyclopedia of everything art. Imagine you’re both at an art museum, gallery or fancy exhibition for a project and you just watch his eyes light up at the paintings. His pupils widen behind his glasses, before he adjusts them ever so slightly so his focus is better and he can appreciate the work in front of him. When he’s done ogling over the artwork, he’s definitely the type to bombard you with little niche facts about the art, artist or artist’s technique whilst walking around the other booths.

Art Student!Danny who just needs to get out of his shell. In the first few months of knowing him personally, he’s not very outgoing. You don’t mind, it’s a breath of fresh air from some of the people on campus. He’s always shy when he asks you to pose for a new piece or sketch he wants to work on, just in case you decline. spoiler alert, you’d never decline on him, he’s just overthinking :(

Art Student!Danny that when he’s finally out of his little bubble of nervousness, he’s a little pervert. Sure, the first time you sat on his lap naked after a little session with him, he was jittery and sweaty as hell, unsure on where to place his hands or anything like that. But after that, the image is so etched into his mind that he jerked off to the memory of you bare in his lap whilst alone in his dorm.

Despite Art Student!Danny being too anxious to ask you out straight away, you for sure become his secret muse fast. That sketchbook his mum gifted him for Christmas? You can bet there’s numerous nude sketches and doodles of you in there.

That sketchbook of nudes I mentioned? You can bet Art Student!Danny is jerking off to those drawings helplessly whenever he’s got the time, especially when you’re off campus. When you come back however, you find it hidden underneath a pile of dirty laundry in Danny’s apartment. Upon inspection, you can’t help but wonder why some of the pages are stuck together?

Art Student!Danny that’s so touch starved that he’ll ruin pieces on purpose just so you’ll touch his thigh and give him soft reassurances as you clean up his mess. One time Art Student!Danny messes up badly, however. He spills water all over your watercolour and now he’s freaking out badly. Little did you know that those soft words you speak to him are actually being recorded as he has his phone hidden away snugly in the back pocket of his trousers. In the evening, he’s humping his pillow desperately, listening back to your words as he imagines you talking him through his first time <3.

Art Student!Danny who finally goes out of his comfort zone. Upon his request whilst hanging out, you’re posing for him like you usually would, but little did you know that Danny slipped a remote controlled vibrator into your panties that he wanted you to wear. Dark eyes watch you intently as he watches you squirm and struggle whilst you try your hardest to keep posing for him.

Sometimes Art Student!Danny can get way too frisky. One time he’s painting a picture of you for your birthday and he runs out of glazing halfway through. Being the disgusting pervert he is, he uses his cum instead. How would you know any difference? But also, let’s be real here, he’s probably hard already whilst drawing you in the first place, he may as well relieve himself and use it for good use…. right?

like art student!danny? fancy sending me an ask in my inbox so you can be included in my notebook! - notti <3

[burntheedges]

Pas de Deux Chapter 3

Din Djarin x f!reader | 2.2k | fic masterlist | main masterlist | ao3

chapter summary: You talked to Din and he complimented you, and so you felt like you needed to return the favor.

a/n: welcome back! what's up in our favorite ballet company this week? See my notes at the end and on the masterlist about reader in this fic and ballet in general. Thank you @katareyoudrilling for being the best beta, as always!!

chapter tags/warnings: gen, ballet terms (see end notes and the masterlist for definitions and videos), a bit of angst, a bit of fluff

Chapter 3

The next day you weren’t sure what to expect when you entered the studio for class. You glanced around the room and found most of the company there, with Din warming up alone as usual. When he saw you he met your eyes and nodded. You nodded back, surprised. 

You quickly slipped your shoes on and stood, rolling your shoulders back and stretching. Maybe it was time to break up the routine of Din being so separate from everyone else. You nodded to yourself and walked across the room towards him.

“Good morning,” you greeted, trying not to sound nervous. You took up a position near him and started to stretch.

He looked over at you, face expressionless as always. “Morning.”

You breathed through a stretch while you considered what to say next. “How was rehearsal yesterday?”

He turned towards you fully and tilted his head. “Good.” You waited, but he didn’t continue. You weren’t sure what to do or say next. 

You opened your mouth to say something, you weren’t sure what, when Adrian stepped up next to you. 

“Good mooorning,” he greeted, drawing out the first syllable of morning with a smirk on his face. “I’m Adrian, by the way.” Din nodded at him and he nodded back. “Breaking down barriers, are we?” He elbowed you and you felt your cheeks heat as you rolled your eyes. 

You were saved from any further awkwardness by Alexa’s arrival, and you and Adrian moved to your usual positions at a different barre. 

Before she started the music Adrian leaned towards you, eyebrows raised. “What was that about? Are we brave, now?”

You shrugged. “I figured now that I’d talked to him once, maybe I could do it again? Make the whole vibe in here less awkward?”

He glanced back at Din, whose back was turned to the two of you. “How did it go?”

You shook your head. “Not sure. We didn’t get very far.”

Alexa started the music, and you sprang apart. You spent the rest of class trying not to be obvious as you watched Din at the barre and later going across the floor, wondering what he thought about it all. It was impossible to tell.

As usual, he was the first one out at the end of class, disappearing quickly down the long hallway.

…

You thought about it on Sunday, your only day off in non-performance weeks (which you usually spent trying to relax, stretching, doing PT, running errands, and recovering from a long week). You resolved to try again on Monday, and even brainstormed some questions for Din to try and break the ice. 

You weren’t totally sure why you were feeling so compelled to do this, other than the surprise that Din had noticed you and your dancing. And complimented you. With details. It felt like returning the favor, to try to make it a bit easier for him in class.

But your plans were interrupted on Monday morning when Karga intercepted you outside of his office.

“Ah, just the person I was looking for! Come in, let’s talk for a minute. Don’t worry,” he continued when he saw you start to gesture down the hall. “Alexa knows you’ll be a little bit late.”

You blinked, surprised. Being late to morning class was generally not encouraged, to put it mildly. But you followed behind Karga into his office and took a seat across from him at the desk.

“Now, this shouldn’t take long. Tell me – what do you think of Din?”

You opened your mouth and then closed it again. “Um,” you started and wished you hadn’t. “What do you mean?”

“When you talked, and in class – how is he doing?”

You weren’t sure why Karga was asking you about this, but you tried to answer anyway. “Oh, fine I think. It’s hard when you’re new, but I mean, his dancing is beautiful.”

Karga nodded. “It is. Well, I thought it might take some time. Anyway, that’s not the main thing I wanted to talk about.”

You straightened in your chair, unsure of where this could be going. You thought things had been going well for you. You hoped that wasn’t about to change.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you wait. We’d like you to dance the pas de deux with Din in the anniversary gala.”

You blinked and this time your mouth dropped open completely against your will. “You…” You had no idea what to say. “What?”

Karga smiled and leaned forward on his elbows. “I think you’re the ideal choice, to be honest with you. You’ll balance each other in all the right ways. And you have so much to learn from each other as well!” He tapped his fingers against the table and considered you. You were sure you still looked shocked. “You can say no, but I’d like you to at least give it a try first.”

You shook your head, startled into a response at last. “No! I mean, yes. I mean, I’d love to.” You winced. “I’m saying yes, not no.”

Karga grinned. “Excellent. Din already knows, I spoke with him this morning. We’ll post this with the final changes to the other programs this afternoon before rehearsal.”

You swallowed nervously. “Um, alright. What about the quartet?” You had no idea what the reaction would be when the others found out that you had been given this role. 

Karga nodded. “We will also announce who will join the quartet, since you will be doing this instead. Go on to class. We’ll discuss more details later, and you probably won’t start regular rehearsals until after the show this month. Until then, I’d like you to try to talk to Din a bit more. I know he can be…” Karga trailed off, and smiled wryly. “A bit closed off.” You smiled a bit, hesitant. “But give it a try.”

You nodded. “Alright, thank you.” You stood up, but stopped short. “Thank you for the opportunity. I– well. I am grateful. Um, can I ask a question?”

Karga nodded and spread his hands out in a welcoming gesture. “Of course!”

You worried the strap of your bag. “Well, um. Why me?”

Karga leaned forward. “As I said, you complement each other.”

You nodded. “I mean, I’m sure others could balance his style, too. I just…”

“Ah,” Karga nodded and sat back in his chair. “Well, I do think you’re the ideal choice, that was the truth. You have a perspective on ballet that Din could learn from, and you from him.” He paused. “You’re also the first person in the company I’ve seen Din have a conversation with since he arrived. The first person I know of at all, outside of the staff and instructors.”

You felt your eyebrows rise in surprise. You weren’t surprised to hear that he hadn’t talked to many people in the company, but you were surprised that you were first and apparently only one. “Oh.” You nodded. “Thank you again.”

“No, thank you – I know the pas de deux will be lovely.”

…

Adrian shot you a questioning look when you arrived late to morning class, but you shook your head. “Later,” you whispered as you joined him at the barre, and he narrowed his eyes but nodded.

You settled in before looking up, but when you did you almost froze in the middle of a fondu. 

Din was looking at you, and when you looked up your eyes found his like they were magnetized, drawing you in.

You only faced each other at the barre when you were working your left sides, and it just so happened that you were facing each other now. And he was looking at you.

You didn’t know how long you held his gaze, even as you felt the awkward tension growing between you. But you couldn’t look away, and his face was as expressionless as always. Your body continued through the exercise with little to no input from you. You were suddenly glad that you could fall back on your training, and that Alexa had you do the same practice almost every day.

You didn’t tear your eyes away until you turned to face the other direction. But then you were facing the mirror, and you found yourself tracing the lines of Din’s shoulders and the length of his neck as he moved. You could see how strong he was.

Karga had said he told him this morning, and clearly it was on Din’s mind. Why else would he be looking at you?

You tried not to outright stare for the rest of class. You tried to put it out of your mind and focus, but every glimpse of Din drew you in. You found yourself tracking his movement across the floor more than once and shook your head, looking away.

When class finally ended, you closed your eyes and shook out your shoulders. You barely had a moment to breathe, though, before Adrian crashed into you. He threw his arm around your shoulders and almost spun you in a circle.

“And just what was that all about?” he asked, squeezing you. “First you’re late and Alexa doesn’t bat an eye, and then Djarin can’t keep his eyes off of you during class?”

You felt your cheeks start to burn. “I– what?”

Adrian nodded and leaned closer. “He kept looking at you, at the barre. And then he watched you go across the floor every time.”

You blinked. “Um, well,” you started, and glanced around to see if Din was still there. He wasn’t, he’d probably left quickly like always. “Karga offered me the pas de deux.”

‘What?!” Adrian exclaimed, and you elbowed him when several people turned to look at you because he was so loud. He lowered his voice to a shouting whisper. “Oh my god! What!”

“I know!” you said, tucking your arm through his and leading him to your bags. “I said yes, obviously, but fuck. He wants me to dance with Din Djarin?” You could hear the anxiety and fear in your tone and you knew Adrain could too when his face softened. 

“Hey, no,” he said, pulling you into a hug. “He offered it to you because you’re fucking amazing, ok? Now that you said it I can see it. You have all the right skills to make it something amazing. If Djarin can just pull that classical stick out of his ass you’ll to light that stage on fire together.”

You laughed, despite your worries. “Karga said he thinks we complement each other.”

Adrian looked thoughtful. “You know, I really can see it. I think he’s right. And shit, this is huge!” He grabbed your upper arms and shook you. “There’s no way you don’t make principal, not after this.”

You shrugged. You didn’t want to get your hopes up. You’d only just made first soloist. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Adrian scoffed as the two of you started to head for the door. “Maybe, she says. As if you weren’t just chosen for a freaking brand new, world premiere, three-part pas de deux with Din Djarin.” 

You laughed at his lofty, teasing tone. “Ok, ok. I mean, I’m not going to think about it like that, because I’ll get way too nervous. But ok.”

He shook his head at you, smiling. “Hey, wait. I never said – congratulations. You fucking deserve it. And I can’t wait to watch my best friend blow everyone away.”

You grinned and ducked your head. “At least it’s with Kuiil.”

He rolled his eyes playfully. “Yeah, yeah, we all know how you feel about Kuiil’s choreo.”

“Hey!” You bristled playfully. “His choreo is amazing.”

You kept going down the hallway together, arm in arm, with Adrian teasing you about your ballet-crush on Kuiil’s choreography (he was right, you loved it), and you teasing him back about his secret love of the classical style above all else, even if he did love the more character-driven roles, too.

When you reached the hall of rehearsal studios, you had to split up. Adrian hugged you one last time before darting into his practice. You turned to continue towards yours when you were brought up short by a tall figure, all in black, leaning against the wall next to the studio door.

“Oh!” you said, stopping just inches away from him. “Hi, Din.”

He nodded at you, but didn’t respond. He had his arms crossed and he was wearing his expressionless mask. You started to feel nervous.

“Um, Karga said– he said he spoke with you this morning?” you cringed internally at your uncertain tone. 

Din nodded again but didn’t say anything. You floundered. “Well,” you said, searching for something else to say. “I’m looking forward to working together.” You wanted to take it back immediately when he didn’t react. What if he hated the idea, actually, and didn’t want to dance with you at all?

But Din finally spoke then. “Kuiil said we’ll start rehearsals in the next week or two.” His tone was hard to read, and you couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t responded to what you said, really. He stared at you for a moment, and you wished you could see past his mask. “I’ll see you then.”

Din turned and walked away, and you stood there, frozen in place, wondering why it suddenly felt like this wasn’t going to go well at all.

...

prev | next

a/n: the pas de deux!! how do we think it will go? 👀 some ballet terms:

fondu - to melt - you bend both legs and straighten at the same time, but one extends outwards (watching the video will help lol)

company class - I thought now would be a good time to talk about the company class again. All companies have their dancers attend regular technique-focused classes where they do barre work, center work, and the combinations across the floor. It won't be the same every day but it will often cover the same skills and techniques. NBT is more laid back so the dancers aren't all wearing a uniform for class or rehearsal, necessarily. It's more like this, this or this. Or this. You can see how they start with the barres in the middle of the room - that's how it's set up with Din and reader are diagonal from each other and facing each other when working their left sides.

pas de deux - a dance for two people. Usually story ballets feature these prominently throughout the ballet but there are also pas de deux that are choreographed on their own. A grand pas de deux has 5 parts and a particular structure. There are some particularly famous ones and it doesn't have to be a man and a woman, though it often is. Usually principal dancers get these roles, so it's a bit of a surprise that reader is offered it instead of one of the principals (but not a huge surprise, she is a first soloist). This pas de deux is going to be more contemporary ballet and it's not going to follow the classical structure. I will share more videos to give you an idea of that in the future! Here's part of a famous classical one from Nutcracker, and another from Swan Lake.