#they were so worth it all đŸ„čđŸ„čđŸ„čđŸ„čđŸ„čđŸ„čđŸ„čđŸ„č
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majoryeager104 · 23 hours ago
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LovEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee ur writing AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
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could i request cuddling hcs for Shigaraki or Keigo?
eeeee ok don’t mind if I do I love writing these sm 👌😭 ill do a lil section for both of em cos I got time to kill
Tomura Shigaraki
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He’s definitely terrified the first time you ask for cuddles
“What if I disintegrate you?” Was definitely his first response
He was reluctant as heck
The most important person in his life dying by his hands?
NO. 
He’d definitely argue 
And dramatically gasp when you shrug off his concerns
“Just wear your gloves-“ “WHAT IF THEY FALL OFF AND YOU DIE”
He’s so concerned 😭😭
But when you finally convince him
And he settles in to cuddle
He’s got his gloves on tight
And he’s like barely touching you
He’s all tense too
He aint risking anything
But slowly
As time goes by and he gets more comfortable doing it
He adores cuddles
He’ll totally fight tooth and nail to make sure he gets to cuddle with you
Or else atp he probably won’t sleep
And don’t try to sneak off during the night
He doesn’t care if you need to use the bathroom
He’s offended
“Do I smell bad or something”
“No I just needed to use the bathroom”
“Do you not love me anymore”
With the biggest pout 
But when he needs to use the bathroom
He throws you off of him like a ragdoll
Smh
But then he gets snacks from the kitchen on the way back
And gives you a kiss on the forehead 
And all is forgiven 😌
Keigo Takami
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This man is the KING of cuddles
Touya, Tomura and Spinner in my hc’s were all reluctant as heck
NOT KEIGO. 
He’s already in
Zipping under the covers with you before you could say anything
He probably initiated the first time you cuddled
Like “babe babe babe babe babe BABE-“ “WHAT” “cuddles ☝đŸ„č”
But honestly he’s such a good cuddle buddy
Wraps the both of you up in his wings
Who needs blankets when you got them FEATHERS 😭
And he’s so proud like “you like my feathers? Thanks I like to keep em soft you know” 
Tells you the shampoo conditioners and other products he uses
And it’s a lot. 
Ofc. 
But dayum is it worth it
Especially when he’s laying on top of you with his head on your stomach
Bc he doesn’t like laying on his back bc his wings get in the way
And he’s rubbing your sides and leaning up every so often to shower you with kisses
Bc ur just so fine đŸ«”đŸ˜Œ
And he tells you that REPEATEDLY every time you cuddle
Bc he adores cuddles 
And adores you even more
Sometimes he’ll just use cuddles as an excuse to just love on you
But sadly he probably doesn’t get a lot of time to cuddle 
Being the number 2 hero and all
“Fastest man alive” 😭😭😭 slay ig
But when he does have time for cuddles
He’s like the best cuddle buddy EVER. 
OMG ITS SO FLUFFY IM GONNA DIE ANYWAYS ENJOY IT WAS SO FUN TO WRITE HEHE
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zhuoyichenpretty · 2 days ago
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Eps 30-33 Commentary
No meta, just reactions! I have less to say about some eps so I'm combining several episodes worth. To make up for my head-emptiness and lack of meta, I've included more pictures lmao. Spoilers under the cut!
Ep 30:
"You really are pitiful." Li Lun waking up thinking of ZYC's words oooh they did that opening line for Li Lun/ZYC lovers (me)
What a homoerotic way to give the Truth Eye
ZYC and ZYZ having their first drink(s) together here, ZYZ and Li Lun having one last game of chess here. Gay ppl will go “I know a place” and take you to a damp cave and a little stone table in the Wilderness
Oof. The apparent inherence of winning/losing in their activity of choice compared to the drinks that took place here between ZYC and ZYZ. Even with a draw, it’s competitive by nature. If Li Lun knew about the three (very intense, very intimate) toasts that came before in this very spot, I wonder how aggrieved he’d feel.
Ah well there goes the date spot /:
I’m so happy to see LZY (Bai Jiu’s actor) get to fight! His fight scenes in MTJY were awesome and he continues to impress here as well. It’s so fun to watch!



..to revisit my question from previous commentary about when the grievances against Ying Lei will end, the answer is never ;-;
Damn
For ZYC to promise to spare Li Lun after all that Li Lun has put him through specifically and personally. ZYC really fucking loves ZYZ doesn’t he.
I’m so fucked up over Ying Lei’s last words jesus christ.
ZYC sobbing and feeling the fleeting warmth of the rock Ying Lei was just leaning against
when will the world stop taking away his family members??? His brothers???
That scene of everyone looking at Bai Jiu after Ying Lei dissipates. The fact that he's right there. And it’s like they traded one life for another. The two babies of the group. Goddammit.
Do NOT hit me with Bai Jiu’s actor singing “Broken-Tailed Bird” right now oh my god
So like
regarding ZYZ losing his demonic power, does he still count as the most evil demon of ZYC’s time? Can someone ring Ying Long and ask?
ZYC crybaby oh no I can’t believe he’s crying over ZYZ being so weakened aw I love him
My god, Bai Jiu running after Ying Lei and into ZYC’s arms has to be one of my favorite sequences in the whole show. So so good. So so painful. Between this scene, all the flashbacks, and ZYC’s reaction when he died, I’m at least glad the show is spending so much screen time and significance on Ying Lei’s send-off, even if I’m heartbroken that he’s gone. We couldn’t even have the whole family reunited for one moment.
Also have you ever seen a man so mother?
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No but seriously "Cry if you want...[tears] have to do with our hearts" ZYC my healthy masculinity king!!!
This song fucking hurtssssssssss this cheese (it's buttermilk) hurts everything hurts
I’m glad PSJ gets time and space to react. Her lines about being a mortal and not being needed are so good but also ow!!! And oh WX always knows exactly what to say to her đŸ„č
I love everything ZYC says to Bai Jiu about each family member (like yeahhh WX is unlucky 😭 and yeaahHH PSJ does need support too) but MAN the way he says ZYZ’s name is so fucking good. The fact that it gets so much emotion across without saying a single word further as he gets interrupted. His voice and his expression both collapsing a little in that moment. Efficiency of acting strikes again.
Is it even possible for ZYC to cherish this little family more?
Yo this dramatic ass lighting on ZYZ and ZYC standing in the doorway. Why y’all need so much drama just to talk? Also oughhhh ZYC’s gaze is a mess looking every which way while discussing WX’s poison. He is such a bad liar (but he looks so good doing it). Is that why they gotta talk about this like ten feet apart so ZYZ can’t see him lying? Lmao
Okay also tho if ZYC's coming around looking like this I am not hearing a single thing he's saying:
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They flashed back to the previous time ZYC held his hand out but cut away from ZYZ taking it this time. Is it bc the absolutely unfettered tension between them can’t pass censors anymore? Haha god but that shot of ZYC slowly meeting ZYZ’s eyes from ZYZ’s POV whewwww we don’t got the skinship but their gazes are kind of insane??? TJR in blue contacts is too powerful I'm shaking somebody needs to stop him.
Ep 31:
Trying so hard not to be driven a little crazy by the lapses in continuity in this show (‘: It’s just tonal and costuming stuff that are a little difficult for me to ignore, just the fact that it’s kind of apparent which scenes were filmed in what order based on their costume/styling changes + the sets, and how sometimes the tone from the previous events don’t smoothly carry over because of this. But it's momentary, I just gotta. Power through.
YO the Pei siblings sparring was so cool and for what. They should have had WX spectating instead of staring at nothing in the previous scene (-:
Damn how long has it been since they played the fun music. Also feels kind of wrong without Ying Lei though fml
Awwww Qing Geng I missed her she’s so cute!! I wasn't doing ep commentaries during her arc so I gotta make up for it here. Her actress is so talented and adorable, and her costuming in this show is stunning!! Her lashes!! Her colors!!
THE TREE BRANCHES lmfaooo ZYC what happened to being worried for ZYZ’s weak body?? We really haven't had a moment like this in so long though (':
Well I do like the reason why WZY had a fake out death, that’s pretty clever and narratively sound, but also oh god what in the AOT??? The inner cores hidden in the medicine is some odious fucking work dear lord
I also like that the endgame is coming about from what initially seemed like another small-time case. Of course the evil physician's huge scheme at the end weaponizes plague and poison and medicine.
Ayeee fun that they used the teleporter on WZY instead of as a getaway
Lmfao ZYC just standing there taking a huge hit of the poison smoke. Poor baby doesn’t watch movies and doesn’t know smoke from a bad guy always means some kind of poison
Why does poisoned!ZYC have such an incredible smokey-eye siren look I’m shook
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After knowing the poison is about indulging in your greatest wishes, the first moment ZYC woke up and approached ZYZ they sure looked like they were about to indulge in something sorry ignore me
The way this is so similar to ZYZ’s imaginings where he and WX always turn around and look at the camera. The show wants censors to believe they’re looking at ZYZ but we've known all along who the third POV is here
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Also why aren’t ZYC’s bro and dad in the wish illusion?
Ohh the eerie instrumental rendition of the OST when ZYC draws his sword is too good. And yesss we were so due for some more crazy dream fuckery like is this real? Is this real??
Ep 32:
The team is spread so thin )-: One man (mountain god) down and a whole town to save and an immortal villain to vanquish.
WZY's eagerness in trying to goad ZYC into killing himself while poisoned is so so sinister goddamn. I love how disturbing it is to slowly realize what he wants without any lines at all
ZYZ shielding ZYC from a huge fucking fireball with just his hand is adorable and sad:
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I already normally love Li Lun's whole leaf-swirly entrances and exits but you know I cheered when he deus ex machina-ed his way here!!! With that bgm too!!!
Li Lun came back to accept ZYC into their throuple. He's had some time to think and yeah he's decided ZYC's kinda hot and maybe shouldn't die or else ZYZ will be sad.
):
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ZYC's soft and anguished, "Qing Geng" when he realizes she gave him her inner core. That's my bleeding heart hero ;-;
Throuple of the fucking yearrrrrr:
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Spoiler for ep 33/34 but—watching Bai Jiu watch the three of them and realize he can't do anything to help here... It would have been dangerous for him to stay, but I wonder if things could have ended differently ):
Ep 33:
Oughhhhh Pei Siheng ))): The cruel fucking poetry of PSJ, the most emotionally closed-off character, having her heart, her brother, made into her armor. And then to lose him once more.
ZYC proving time and again that his heart is entirely boundless and he'll shelter anyone from the rain and he just wants everyone to live:
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LI LUN/ZYC LOVERS HOW ARE WE FEELIN'?!?
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Did not expect MORE ZYC choking now that they're on the same side but yeah Li Lun is not one to let go of a good thing I get it. I'm screaming but I get it. "I'm giving you half my demonic power" yeah right just admit you like doing this dw Li Lun this is a safe space.
Literally what am I watching and also no don't mind me, keep going. Feral over ZYC dropping his hand and letting it happen.
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But lmfao the way Li Lun did not need to be doing all that, like he sends his power out to ZYZ without even making physical contact. He could've just grabbed ZYC by the shoulder.
Can't believe I just keep winning:
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ZYC didn't even know what Li Lun was doing putting his arms around him and he just let it happen. That's some next level trust.
Ah goodbye Li Lun, presumably another victim of the "(ex-)villains can't have good endings" brand of censorship
Oof I love that the initial horror after the seeming victory is reserved first for the simple fact that ZYC and ZYZ are separated, that ZYC can't go to him the way he was intending to. Even when it's unclear yet that WZY is still alive, just the wrongness of them being divided this way is so poignant. ZYC has such a helpless look about him when he says ZYZ's name.
Goddammit WZY saw Li Lun choke ZYC and got ideas.
Oh I love the uncertainty of whether the One-Word Spell works on ZYC or not. ZYZ's sudden and intense fear. Also though WZY tries to use ZYC dying as a deterrent for ZYZ blowing up the barrier but he's literally choking the life out of ZYC as we speak
Bai Jiu's completely unrestrained screaming and crying in pain is so brutal to listen to. His scenes go on forever. Also, the choice of having some of his flashbacks be blurred and vague in the background, once again something privately kept for the character
ZYC holding out his hand to ZYZ a third time ;-; The utter relief of being able to reach each other again paralleling that previous horror of separation.
ZYC physically feeling Bai Jiu's death oh god. We do not get a single moment of happiness and victory in this drama everything is bought with pain and returns pain I hate it here.
Also another post-finale thought (spoilers for the end of the drama)—If ZYZ remained in his weakened state, I really am curious if he would have still met the conditions of the prophecy (ZYC being cursed to kill the most evil demon of his time, if the prophecy is indeed conditional like that, of course). If that could have been a technical loophole, did Li Lun giving both of them his power and then ZYC giving ZYZ his as well basically fulfill it again? I mean, logistically speaking, without that extra power, I'm not sure if ZYZ would have been able to trigger the Baize cycle again (or whatever it is he did to save the town). So the show's final tragedy can be traced all the way back to these moments of giving out of love and protection, just as Bai Jiu being in the perfect place for his final sacrifice came about because ZYC, ZYZ, and Li Lun were trying to protect him and get him out of danger. The way love and grief are so helplessly, inevitably intertwined that one begets the other. They were all just trying to save each other.
On that completely painful note, that's 30-33! And it'll be downhill from here for the next one (-:
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arislary · 3 days ago
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TAKE - Han Jisung x (f) Reader Short Drabble
Pairing: Han Jisung x (f)reader (but also gn reader)
Genre: Fluff (very lightly suggestive)
Warnings: just overall fluff and cuteness with Jisung and reader.
WC: 455
AN: I have been craving kisses and what better way to ease said crave than to write about Jisung. Also this is my first time posting a fic so please be nice to me đŸ„č. Unedited.
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Jisung likes to take. Whether it’s bites of his friends’ food or even their clothes. He doesn’t know why, but he’s not selfish! At least that’s what he tells himself, he just likes the attention and normally taking things came with attention.
But his favorite thing to take is you. Take whatever you were willing to give him. Specifically, he likes taking your kisses. 
“Can I have a kiss, baby,” Jisung whines as he leans down into your space, lips pursed. You turn your head up and quickly press your lips to his, a fond smile spreading across your face as you both separated. His cheeks flushed lightly as he beamed at you. 
It’s not always that sweet, sometimes it’s more.
“Kiss me,” is murmured lowly in the dark room as Jisung scoots closer to you in the bed. Noses brushing each other softly before the light presses of lips that lazily glide against another. Not seeking to stop or to press for more, but to just touch each other. 
And there were times when it would be
 more. 
“Give me a kiss,” Jisung’s hand tightened in your hair, where he gripped the strands, maneuvering your head to where he wanted. Not allowing you a chance to breathe, his tongue licking in your mouth, teeth scraping against your lips. You whine, your hands groping, desperate to touch any part of him as your tongue met his in a dance. Messy only for each other. 
Jisung loved all your kisses. Any kiss he could get from you was worth it to him. 
“If I eat this entire pot of ramyeon, you’ll have to kiss me!”
“Jisung, I’d kiss you now!” You slapped a hand over your mouth, giggles come spewing out as Jisung rubbed his hands up and down your thighs as you sat on the counter while he cooked. 
“Yea, but tell me it doesn’t feel nice after spicy food.”
“You don’t even like spicy food!”
“But you do!” He squeezes your thighs, his face digging into your neck, “And I wanna taste good for you.”
You tighten your legs around his waist, arms wrapping around his neck, gazing fondly at him. Your fingers scratching lightly at the back of his neck.
“Okay, Ji, I’ll give you a kiss if you can do it. But if you lose, that means you have to give me a kiss then.”
Jisung grinned and bumped his nose against yours.
“Deal!”
Because you also loved to take, especially Jisung. He was your favorite thing that you’ve ever taken. 
And he did finish the whole pot, determined to prove to you that he could, especially after the messy kiss he gets from you as you lick his lips clean. You had to admit he was right, he tasted sooo good. 
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azrielgreen · 2 days ago
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I wanted to write this before I read today’s surprise (đŸ„č) chapter of SS to say
 
I’ve spent the last couple years knee DEEP in interdisciplinary trauma theory, with a focus on literature (suffice it to say, ya girls read a looooot of trauma depictions) and I just wanted to let you know- your depictions of trauma hit such a sweet spot for me both academically and personally. 
I’ve read and lectured on multi-award winning novels that deal with trauma in such a careless way that I have lifelong vendetta’s against their crusty-ass authors and the lectures I gave were essentially a 45 minute roast. It’s a pretty open secret that people who’ve experienced trauma are drawn to study it/depict it/explore it through art so
also suffice it to say, I’ve got some personal dogs in this fightÂ đŸ«Ą. 
You write undoubtedly graphic and challenging trauma but a big key difference is that, for me, there’s a palpable and rich seam of care that runs through all your work. There is a lack of authorial judgement meaning you can craft fully realised characters that, despite sometimes grotesque actions, never completely escape feelings of empathy or sympathy. 
Have I finished chapters and had to go outside and do a lap of my building to work off the feeling I might puke? For sure. Did I also feel that way the entire time I was falling in love with my partner because big feelings make me pukey? Also 100% accurate. Do I LOVE reading shit that makes me feel that way KNOWING there’s the Jane Austen safety-net of happy endings? Absofuckinglutelyyyyy 
I love that you write purely for an audience of one, I think that makes your work that bit more engrossing. It lacks that self-consciousness so much writing has where you can feeeeel the writer is always trying so hard to convince the reader it’s worth reading
you don’t need to convince YOURSELF so you save a lot of time and awkwardness and we all benefit besides. 
Basically, you’re a babe of the first water. I felt compelled to tell you all this because I think everyone could always do with hearing what a gift they are, especially when they share something so rare and special with strangers. 
Thank you xx 
Please everyone take a second thread this if you can because this is the encapsulation of why I share what I write. This means the fucking world to me. Today was so hard for me, I've been sick and couldn't write and had no sleep at all but this really truly made me feel warm inside. Thank you, darling. Thank you so much💜💜💜
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j-restlessgeek · 1 year ago
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My hÀÀrijĂ€ merch order arrived yesterday and wow, its all so freaking soft and warm, as if they turned hÀÀrijĂ€ into a fabric, so nice. Freaking love it. The shirt is soft and the print is so neat and it fits very nicely. Same about the hoodie, big and soft, with the softest fabric inside. The absolute highlight to me were the sweat pants. Damn these are the best sweat pants i ever bought, they have (no idea what the english word is) BĂŒndchen (picture below) around the ankles and middle that make them fit very snug but in a comfy way.
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Which is nice cause pants rarely fit me, either they are too tight or too loose in places. But these ohhhh these fit so well and the pockets are deep too. :3💛💛💛💛💛
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(Added a picture of the tag (same size in hoodie and sweat pants)
And i got a card too :3
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manicgoblin · 8 months ago
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skitskatdacat63 · 1 year ago
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Fernando Alonso × Unconventional Drinking Implements
#if i had a nickel for every time nano drank out of a trophy id have two nickels. that's not a lot but its weird it happened twice#dont ask me if theres more i didnt have the mental capacity to look up all his podium pics...theres 20 years worth#but if you do have more somehow miraculousy do of course hit me up#this is one of these things i think that youd have to experience by watching a lot of races bcs finding it by keywords is impossible imo#though i did look up various trophies and now i want to make a tier list of trophies by drinkablity ïżœïżœ#but yeah some people in the tags of the pics i posted were like 'he did exactly what i wanted to do![drink from the big cup basically]'#so this is like: hey! not the first time hes done it đŸ€­#but like if these are the only two times hes done it thats hilarious#bcs its been 18 yrs so was he suddenly like 'oh my god wait i just remembered what i can do with this'#but like the 2005 is the wcc win so it makes sense why he did smth so over the top#but this one i really really feel like he let the impulsive thoughts win and was just 'this looks like a giant cup....'#not pictured: flavio also drinking from the trophy. he was so indulgent of his boy đŸ„č#also i wonder if theres footage of him pouring in the champagne in 2023 cause i didnt even know he drank from it until i was looking at pic#cause thats my fav thing about the 2005 one is watching him trying to aim and pour it from way too high hahaha#oh also there is the brazil 2005 gp as well but he doesnt directly drink from it so i dont think it fits well here#but at the same time he really is looking at trophies like 'hmmm how well would this work as a cup'#f1#formula 1#fernando alonso#2023 dutch gp#2005 chinese gp#fa14#we do a little bit of f1#formula one
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acourtofquestions · 1 month ago
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“She had no magic to wield, save for the keen eyes of the goddess at her shoulder and an uncanny ability to remain unnoticed, to play into expectations.”
#Chapter 23#Kingdom of Ash#Sarah J. Maas#Lorcan Salvaterre#Elide Lochan#Elorcan#no spoilers please first read to read along with me#more notes quotes annotations & reacts in the tags spoilers for the chapter & book in post & tags of course pt 2 of 4 perspectives#Lorcan had never felt the weight of the hours so heavily upon him-I FEEL IT 2poor Rowan must feel this 247HURRY where’s Elide?hold on Aelin!#And to send Elide into Maeve's clutches--it had taken all of his will to let her walk away.😭#If Elide was captured if she was found out he wouldn't hear of it know of it. — you’d know cause she’s your mate idiot (I love you idiot#without proving their worth they could still visit--briefly. — ugh Maeve why does everything about you suck so much#If she emerged. — COME ON ELIDE — I CANT HANDLE ANOTHER CAIRN-NAPPING#the Prince of the North and the Lion the protector and the ever impatient in love idiot we all love Lorcan#He knew some of them. Had commanded them. Were they now his enemy? — they are all having some inner morality battles#What manner of birds? Raptors mostly — none from the House of Whitethorn — they fought for him on the other borders
 for herđŸ„č😭them#why so many guards if no Aelin hmm???? SHES HERE GUYS#though Gavriel kept glancing to the tattoos inked on his hands. How many more lives would he need to add before they were through?#Aelin had been trained to endure torture. Elide... He could see those scars on her from the shackles. — how about we save them both?đŸ˜­đŸ–€#She had endured too much suffering and terror already. He couldn't allow her to face another heartbeat of it--#Rowan and his random hatchet now😅😂 it’s giving my wife is gone unhinged in the woods with the bros might become a horror movie vibes#But then a two-note whistle echoed and Lorcan's legs wobbled so violently he sat back onto the rock where he'd been perched-OH MY ELORCANđŸ˜­đŸ–€#also Lorcan
 perched??? isn’t that bird boy Rowan’s thing?đŸ˜…đŸ˜‚đŸ€Ł#her cheeks rosy in the cool night air. — cheeks pink in the twinkling lights tell me bout the first time you saw me (shipping in insanity)#She was fine. She was unhurt. There was no enemy on her tail. Elide's eyes met his. Wary and uncertain. I met someone.#THANK GOD — but also wait WHAT-when?WHO?HOW?#also this quote posted is like one of the reasons I love Elide#another grand Maasverse enterance is on its way?#the fact the opening line shows that being sold out to Maeve is the same as death — OH GET TO AELIN ALREADY PLEASE#no more tattoos guys — what’s with Maeve’s wolves — isn’t dark haired beauty what Elide called the girl in the caravan so maybe it’s her
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watchyourdigits · 1 year ago
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real mush face hours
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weezerlvr228 · 2 months ago
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Hello!!! I want to talk about weezer but im too shy! I wish i had more weezer friends
AWW ANON NO WORRIES!!! i was like that too!! best thing ive found is to just comment + interact w weezer fans on tiktok, like maladroitlover579 is super duper nice! :D people r very very nice on tiktok , but of course u could always dm me and we can talk abt weezer all you’d like !
#weezer#ask!#this goes for all followers!!! i love chatting in dms :)#SORRY FOR LACK OF PISTS TODAY I WAS W MY BOUFRIEND CUZ KT WAS OUR 1 YEAR !#will add details soon!#OKAY HAI this is hour later! i was practicing for ohana! my school has a team and hopefully i’ll be able to join it :)#am real religious (catholic) because of my grandma#and though i don’t always do long prayers; just short ones before i sleep; i did a long one today praying i can get into the ohana team!#it’s so fun and i feel very pretty when i do it + my boyfriend will do haka#but anyways! today was our anniversary and k got him bunch of candy + chips + coke + a photo of us + a booklet i made for him! it had a note#word search; crossword; math equation (he’s a real math whiz; he’s in ap calc bc as a junior! im in pre calc for ref)#and yeah!!! i drew me and him also in the scott pilgrim art style since he likes it a lot; but ya! he loved it but i ordered this knuckles#keychain on etsy; but it won’t get here for a while; but that’s okay! i’ll surprise him with it! he got me a TON OF MR GOODBARS OMG GUYS#LIKE 55 PIECES WORTH OF MR GOODBARS#they’re my fav candy; so he got me lots of those chocolates :D and he got me a HUGE BOUQUET OF FLOWERS TJAG MAKE A HEART!! and it says#‘te amo lyss’ LIKE AWWWWW đŸ„čđŸ„č and he made me a little box that he had coded n such that said happy anniversary and that he loves me n all#i can show the picture if you all would like! it’s super cute but i look silly LOL#i love my boyfriend#needing weezer friends is kinda why i started this blog LOL#maybe anon u start a blog n we could interact !#what if we were tumblr blogs who interacted
. us in a diff universe#OR THIS ONE IF U WANT 🌞#anyways ya!!! hope you all had a good day#thank you and goodnight#weezer reference
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fleurmatisse · 10 months ago
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there are a number of reasons why arts & crafts might be inaccessible but so many people act like you’re chosen by some creative god to either Be Artistic or never touch an art in ur life and in that case, my friend, the barrier is you. you can choose to be artistic or crafty or whatever word you think could never apply to you. you just have to be willing to learn (which does mean failing. it’s okay. as long as you don’t fail catastrophically with some dangerous supply you will live through it.) and you, too, can Be An Artist. and it’s really really fun to be an artist. please let yourself have fun.
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thewispsings · 4 months ago
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Heloo can I request a smau where the reader and lando are dating and they always do date nights but its not really a date night cus oscar is always with them everytime lily isnt there and he just becomes their child 😭 thank you thank youu
just us, and your friend steve | lando norris
pairing: lando norris x reader
summary: at first you were annoyed by oscar being at all of your dates, until you started to miss him when he wasn’t.
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liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri, and 572,016 others!
yourusername: date night with my boyfriend <3
and his boyfriend!
view comments below!
user1: oscar the certified 3rd wheel
user2: that picture is so cute
landonorris: i love you :)
yourusername: haha simp
landonorris: oscar give my girlfriend her phone back
yourusername: fine 😒
yourusername: i love you too lan :D
landonorris: there she is!
user3: man i would KILL to be a third wheel in this relationship
user4: i would be landos boyfriend 😏
user5: is lando oscar’s only friend??
landonorris: yes!
oscarpiastri: it’s not nice to lie lando
landonorris: im not lying?
oscarpiastri: i have other friends!
landonorris: oh
then why don’t you go hangout with them instead of 3rd wheeling with me and my girlfriend?
oscarpiastri: 

landonorris: that’s what i thought!
yourusername: that was not nice lando.
landonorris: it wasn’t meant to be nice, it was the truth!
yourusername: still, it was mean.
oscarpiastri; yeah lando. it was MEAN.
landonorris: don’t gang up on me??
user6: LMAOO they hang out for one night and they become like this đŸ€ž
user7: i need more of this trio
danielricciardo: and why wasn’t i invited?
maxverstappen1: i have the same question?
landonorris: because you guys have other friends! for osc it’s just me and yn
oscarpiastri; I HAVE OTHER FRIENDS.
landonorris: shhh, shhh, shhh baby it’s okay. it’s okay.
yourusername: baby đŸ€š
landonorris: omg it just slipped out
user8: that’s
interesting!
user9: yn and lando are so cute together
user9: and oscar cute too ig?
user10: you guess?? that man is gorgeous
user11: the “
and his boyfriend” is TOOO funny. yn i love you
user12: she’s seriously so funny
user13: how can people hate her?
user14: they’re most definitely just jealous
maxverstappen1: oh but when i want to make a heart shaped pizza with you it’s weird?
landonorris: yes!
maxverstappen1: double standard much?
landonorris: she’s my GIRLFRIEND
maxverstappen1: AND WHAT AM I?
user15: i feel like im interrupting something
yourusername: how do you think i feel

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liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, and 528,058 others!
yourusername: paddle and golf with my baby <3 and my baby đŸ„č
view comments below!
landonorris: why does he get the cool picture and i get that?
yourusername: i think both pictures summarize you guys perfectly!
landonorris: so he’s cool while i’m a loser?
yourusername: i didn’t say that but

landonorris: WOW, already favoriting the child. i can’t believe this.
yourusername: my child will ALWAYS come first.
oscarpiastri: :D
user16: we went from “my bfs bf” to “my child đŸ„č”
user17: WE DID IT GUYS
user18: yn and lando adopting oscar agenda is HAPPENING
charle_leclerc: are you trying to steal my child from me?
yourusername: it’s not really stealing if he willingly comes with

charles_leclerc: it’s just stockholm syndrome, don’t worry oscar i’ll get you away from them soon
oscarpiastri: im actually having lots of fun :)
charles_leclerc: OMG WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM
user19: we got lando and yn adopting oscar
but we lost this during
user20: totally worth it
danielricciardo: when is it my time to be adopted?
maxverstappen1: you are a 35 year old grown man.
danielricciardo: 😐
user21: why is max coming for daniel??
maxverstappen1: i’m bored. since APPARENTLY i’m not landos paddle partner anymore
landonorris: max
i can explain

maxverstappen1: save it. don’t call me. don’t come by my house. we’re done.
landonorris: i see you watched diary of a wimpy kid
maxverstappen1: i did indeed..
user24: they’re at it again

user22: max is so funny
user23: i love him
user24: oscar being so quite during all of his is so him coded
user25: he’s just enjoying being out and about
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liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, and 601,958 others!
yourusername: vacation with the boyfie <3
view comments below!
user26: omg lando looks so good
user26: i’m going into heat
user26: WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF
user26: GRRRR
user27: this is the first post in 2 months that doesn’t have oscar

user28: and the crowd
cry’s?
user29; i can’t be the only one who thought oscar would 100% go with them on vacation
user30: i definitely thought so too!
user31: they’ve literally spend all their extra time together
maxverstappen1: how many times did he belly flop?
yourusername: i’ve been swore to secrecy.
user32: she’s so lucky
user33: right? ‘the boyfie’ IMAGINE BEING ABLE TO CALL LANDO NORRIS YOUR BF??
charles_leclerc: guess who’s with me right now 😏
landonorris: charles
don’t.
charles_leclerc: hehehe
yourusername: you’re just his rebound. you’ll never be me.
charles_leclerc: @/oscarpiatsri what do you think?
oscarpiastri: i still like yn better
charles_leclerc: i bought you ice cream

oscarpiatri: you could never be her đŸ€·
yourusername; IM COMING HOME FOR YOU OSCAR
landonorris: see what you did charles?
maxverstappen1: how are you holding up?
yourusername: i feel like my hearts been ripped out of my chest. i have no reason to wake up.
maxverstappen1: oh!
user34: max was NOT expecting that answer
user35: if oscar doesn’t get himself over to that damn island soon istg
user36: THATS HER BOY 💔💔💔
oscarpiastri: did you find any crabs? :D
yourusername: yes. i will put them in my suitcase and take them with me to show you
user37: so this is crazy!
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liked by maxverstappen1, landonorris, and 713,046 others!
yourusername: look who joined us!! my son <3
view comments below!
user38: THEY REUNITED!!!
maxverstappen1: how did she take it? đŸ€Ł
landonorris: she cried.
yourusername: i did not!
landonorris: yeah baby you did

oscarpiastri: yn you know how much i hate agreeing with lando, but yes you did cry
yourusername: I MISSED MY SON, GOD FORBID I CRY??
user39: i get you yn. i really do
user40: omg this is so cute
user41: truly adorable
oscarpiastri: now i can see all the crabs in person :D
yourusername; THATS MY SON EVERYONE
charles_leclerc: he was mine first đŸ„Č
yourusername: #getoverit??
landonorris; can’t believe you cried when you saw him
yourusername: i was EMOTIONAL
landonorris: in the four years we’ve been dating you have never cried when seeing me
yourusername: i see you all the time! no need to cry!
landonorris: i want you to cry! cry for me!
oscarpiastri: you could never be me ;)
landonorris: i will send you back to australia
yourusername: if you send him back, i’m going with him
landonorris: WOW.
user42: we have officially entered the era where yn is choosing oscar over lando
user43: her son > her boyfriend
danielricciardo: does this mean i can hop on a plane and go visit you
landonorris: NO. this is officially a family vacation.
danielricciardo: and i’m not family? 💔
yourusername: you’re that one uncle that you see twice a year and don’t talk to or interact with for the rest of said year.
danielricciardo; yeah that makes sense.
. . .
notes; thank you for requesting!! hope you enjoyed :)
5K notes · View notes
fastandcarlos · 27 days ago
Text
My Little Graduate : ̗̀➛ Charles LeClerc
summary: as you prepare to wave goodbye to your student days, charles is there to celebrate your new role
pairing: charles x student midwife!reader
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by charles_leclerc, carlossainz55 and 31,604 others
ynusername: last couple of weeks of stress before I can finally say goodbye to that student lanyard forever đŸ‘©đŸ»â€âš•ïž
4,058 comments
username1: ngl I’m just insanely jealous of that study setup, yn you must teach us your secrets!
charles_leclerc: can’t begin to tell you how proud I am, I promise that it’ll all be worth it 💋
ynusername: @/charles_leclerc couldn’t have got this far without you 💕
username2: we’re so proud of you yn, you’ve got this 🎉
landonorris: still blows my mind how hard you’re working, I could never do your job!
username3: whoever get you as their midwife is gonna be one incredibly lucky person!!
pierregasly: we can’t wait to see you say goodbye to that student lanyard too đŸ€©
username4: how she does this and support charles so effortlessly blows my mind 😂
carlossainz55: I can’t believe you still have the pin that I gave you when you first started 😂
ynusername: @/carlossainz55 I keep it with me forever I go â˜ș
username5: I wish I had yn’s stamina to study and keep up with her busy lifestyle
username6: I’m stealing that photo to try and convince my parents that I’m studying too đŸ„ș
iamrebeccad: can’t wait to tell everyone how amazing it is to have a qualified midwife as one of my best friends ✹
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by scuderiaferrari, landonorris and 2,948,261 others
charles_leclerc: another great qualifying session, hoping to keep it going and deliver tomorrow after a pep talk with my love 💞
138,605 comments
username7: you were amazing charles, p1 is yours tomorrow ❀
scuderiaferrari: congratulations charles, the whole team is behind you tomorrow ❀
landonorris: I’m right behind you and ready to pounce 👀
charles_leclerc: @/landonorris you don’t scare me 😂
username8: it’s so cute how him and yn always make sure they have time for each other!!
arthur_leclerc: yn is the best at giving pep talks, I mean she reassures enough parents that labour wont hurt everyday 😉
username9: we all know how much of a good luck charm yn is 😂
maxverstappen1: looking forward to another battle on track tomorrow!!
ynusername: so proud of you, I’ll be watching tomorrow 😘
charles_leclerc: @/ynusername good you need to make sure you’re taking plenty of breaks!!
username10: no doubt in my mind that we’ll see you at the top of the podium tomorrow charles
danielricciardo: deliver like your girl delivers babies??? 🙃
charles_leclerc: @/danielricciardo how long did it take you to think of that!?
username11: just think of yn tomorrow and that’ll get you over the line in top spot đŸ’ȘđŸ»
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by arthur_leclerc, oscarpiastri and 37,948 others
ynusername: another weekend spent with my head buried in books and glued to my laptop screen
so proud of you charles đŸŸ
4,069 comments
username12: please make sure you’re getting plenty of rest yn, we don’t want you to burn out now!!
carlossainz55: just gonna forget that the other guy in red got a podium too 😭
ynusername: @/carlossainz55 I’m proud of you too carlos don’t worry 😂
username13: it’s the sweetest how she’s always there for charles regardless of how much work she has to do đŸ„č
arthur_leclerc: I’m coming round to take you out and stop you burying your head into books!
ynusername: @/arthur_leclerc but I’m soooooo busy!!
arthur_leclerc: @/ynusername charles told me to keep an eye on you so stop arguing with me and pack your things up!
username14: once again I’m just here to admire the setup

username15: he wouldn’t have got there if it wasn’t for your pep talk 😉
oscarpiastri: wish I could have brains as big as yours 🧠
carmenmmundt: if you ever need a study partner I volunteer myself to come and rest you!
ynusername: @/carmenmmundt might just have to take you up on that offer soon
username16: I wish I had this level of dedication to things in my life like yn does graduating
landonorris: those notes are making me stress just looking at them đŸ€ŠđŸ»
username17: remember to take care of yourself always yn 💕
charles_leclerc: thanks for your wise words last night angel, you always know what I need to hear ❀
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by lilymhe, carlossainz55 and 48,472 others
ynusername: charles offered to help me study, he lasted ten minutes before insisting he needed to lie down cause his head hurt â˜șïžđŸ’ž
7,941 comments
username18: maybe charles should just stick to racing instead 😂
arthur_leclerc: it’s been a long time since this kid went to school, you should’ve known better than this yn!!
username19: he genuinely looks on the verge of a breakdown in that lost photo bless him
charles_leclerc: I swear half the words you said to me weren’t actually in the english language!!
ynusername: @/charles_leclerc now you know how I feel whenever you decide to talk about cars đŸŽïž
username20: everyone always underestimates how hard being a midwife truly is!!
landonorris: “and it all got too much for little charles leclerc
”
georgerussell63: I think you might’ve actually broken your boyfriend đŸ„Č
username21: he lasted ten minutes longer than I ever would looking at all your notes yn 😂
carlossainz55: can’t believe you thought trying to study with charles was a good idea đŸ€ŠđŸ»â€â™‚ïž
carmenmmundt: sounds like you might need me to come and rescue you next time??
ynusername: @/carmenmmundt no one can do as bad of a job at study partner as this guy â˜ș
username22: we all love a supportive boyfriend, at least he tried 😝
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by maxverstappen1, ynusername and 1,392,058 others
charles_leclerc: visiting the prospective graduate and delivering plenty of treats to the incredible team of midwives down at the hospital 💕
174,072 comments
username23: I love how charles takes care of all of them and makes sure they’re well fed 😭
ynusername: I’m sure they’ve only offered me a job when I graduate because they’re not ready to say goodbye to you and your extremely delicious cake deliveries 😂
charles_leclerc: @/ynusername what you don’t know is they all actually like me more than you 😝
username24: look at yn she looks like she’s born to be a midwife 😍
carlossainz55: and you just so happened to feel the need to share what an adorable boyfriend you are on social media did you???
username25: charles must be the favourite boyfriend on the ward if he’s delivering cakes like those!!
landonorris: us drivers work hard too but we don’t get any cake đŸ€·đŸ»
username26: now wondering what I have to do to get a boyfriend as sweet as him??
maxverstappen1: yn looks in her absolute element there 😍
danielricciardo: I wanna send them some cakes too for all their hard work, gimme an address to send something đŸ“«
username27: yn really is the luckiest girl in the world đŸ„ș
scuderiaferrari: admin here to remind you that you’ve got a team of engineers who also love cake very much 😅
charles_leclerc: @/scuderiaferrari deliveries on their way to montreal 🧁
username28: it’s adorable how charles is just constantly on yn and making sure that she’s taking care of herself đŸ« 
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by carlossainz55, charles_leclerc and 52,921 others
ynusername: all the hard work has paid off
officially a midwife and ready for duty đŸ„‚đŸ‘©đŸ»â€âš•ïž
13,859 comments
charles_leclerc: I wish I had the words right now to express just how insanely proud I am, I love you so much my little genius 💕
ynusername: @/charles_leclerc thank you for being by my side every step of the way đŸ„ș
username28: this is the post I’ve been waiting for for so long, congratulations yn đŸ‘đŸ»
danielricciardo: you should be so damn proud of yourself yn - congrats!!
username29: enjoy the feeling of finally being able to bin those crazy notes!!
scuderiaferrari: from everyone here at ferrari, we’re sending you lots of congratulations ❀
carmenmmundt: secretly think you managed this because you had the best person testing you đŸ€Ł
username30: hands down gonna be the best midwife ever đŸ™ŒđŸ»
username31: no one can try and convince me those flowers aren’t from charles btw 💐
carlossainz55: ik just how hard you’ve worked for this, so proud of you!!
maxverstappen1: simply lovely my friend, so glad you’ve finally completed this chapter â˜ș
username32: there’s no one more deserving yn, so glad your hard work was worth it đŸ«¶đŸ»
arthur_leclerc: I’m honestly in awe of how hard you’ve worked for this, coolest sister in law ever!!
ynusername: @/arthur_leclerc thanks for being my secondary babysitter behind your brother 😂
username33: I hope you’ve got the biggest smile in the world on your face rn!!
iamrebeccad: not only did you compete it, you absolutely bloody smashed it ✅
username34: congratulations on the next step of your career yn 💞
landonorris: hands down my coolest and smartest friend just so you know 😂
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by ynusername, oscarpiastri and 2,037,138 others
charles_leclerc: the day we’ve waited for
no one cheered louder than me in that graduation hall today. the proudest man in the world đŸ„‚
218,504 comments
username35: I’m so glad you were able to be there and support your girl charles đŸ„ș
ynusername: still can’t believe that you were actually there ✹
charles_leclerc: @/ynusername I wouldn’t have missed this for the world ❀
username36: ofc you rolled up looking like the smartest man in the room too!
alex_albon: these photos are adorable, good job yn 🎉
carlossainz55: did you steal someone’s hat to take that middle photo!?
charles_leclerc: @/carlossainz55 I’d never be smart enough to have one of my own 😂
username37: why can I picture him being like an embarrassing dad when yn’s name was called 😂
georgerussell63: congrats yn, you’re incredible đŸ‘đŸ»
username38: can’t begin to imagine how proud you must’ve been feeling charles!
landonorris: be honest
did you cry?!
charles_leclerc: @/landonorris I might’ve shed a tear or two

username39: just when I think you two can’t get anymore impressive, yn becomes a graduate 😂
arthur_leclerc: it must suck to be you when yn has both the brains and the beauty!!
˚*â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™âœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
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liked by charles_leclerc, landonorris and 53,949 others
ynusername: a day of firsts, so happy to finally be fully qualified and welcome my first little one into the world 🐣
12,597 comments
charles_leclerc: so happy for you, this is your moment and you deserve it so much sweetheart 💞
username40: oh yn this melts my heart
look how far you’ve come!!
carlossainz55: hope you’re having the time of your life yn, the team are so lucky to have you â˜ș
landonorris: this is awesome yn, the first of many 💕
username41: I’m sorry but I can’t ignore the fact you’re all in crocs 😂
username42: that baby is so lucky to have been brought into this world by you!!
maxverstappen1: idk which is worse the crocs or the fact charles left our game of padel to deliver cakes 😂😂
ynusername: @/maxverstappen1 one day I’m gonna convince you that crocs aren’t the devil!
username43: you were made for this job, you’re already a natural 😍
carmenmmundt: I think I might’ve just cried a little seeing these and knowing how much you wanted this đŸ„ș
username44: hope you’re ready to be delivering any paddock babies now
iamrebeccad: I hope you know just how proud so many of us are of you đŸ«¶đŸ»
username45: it makes me so happy to see all your dreams come true ✹
˚*â€ąâœ©â€ąÌ©Ì©Í™*˚
˗ˏˋ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ! ®ˎ˗
1K notes · View notes
cashmoneyyysstuff · 1 month ago
Note
another childhood friends to lovers believer???? YES YES YES!!!! can i please request bakugou and reader moving in together, and reader shows him a memory box she's kept since they were kids...like photos, random trinkets he got her, pressed flowers, birthday cards...and he's like one second away from bursting into tears, because this is 2 decades worth of love (and many more to come) 😭đŸ„č💗 thank you, mwah x 💖
memory box !
you take a trip down memory lane..
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a/n : OH. MY GOD. I literally Had to write this this is genuinely adorable anon you are SMACKING. i lub this
cw: literally all fluff, CHILDHOOD FRIENDS TORAGAHAHEHG, katsuki gets emotional quickly and i live by this, lmk if i missed sum !
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“oi !” katsuki calls out from behind you “do i throw this out or not ?”
you look back, only to see a little red box in his hands. your little red box.
you shoot up, dropping the clothes you were stacking in your shared dresser. “no, don’t!” you reach out and hold your arms up, katsuki looks even more confused, eyebrows furrowing harder.
he shakes your box around, bringing his ear to it to hear the rattling and clinking of the objects inside. “what the hell is in this thing ?”
“don’t shake it around like that !” you shriek, ripping the box out of your boyfriend hands and leaving him shocked. you smile to yourself, slowly sitting down on the wooden floors of your new apartment. your new apartment with katsuki.
“i never actually showed you this, huh.. ?” you watch as he follows you after a moment of looking at you like you’ve grown a second head, crouching down next to you with eyes fixed on your little shoe box. you remove the lid and immediately a sense of nostalgia shoots through you, you hadn’t looked at this for a while now.
“this is my memory box, i’ve had it for years.. i think since i was..what, seven ?” you wonder out loud, you’d definitely had it for a long, long time. katsuki sits next to you silently while you excitedly look through it.
“oh yeah, definitely seven—look this is the friendship bracelet i made for us !” you exclaim excitedly. it’s definitely more than a bit worn, that was the main reason you put it in this box, it was the first item you’d put in there.
you’d made one for you and one for katsuki, using your precious loom band box set you’d gotten for christmas. you’d used up all of your orange and black for it and worn yours until it started fraying. you almost cried when one of the bands snapped and you’d gotten too big for it, or it had just gotten too little for you. you refused to throw it away and found a random empty shoe box to put it in, and the rest was history.
“oh, and these are left over tickets from when we went to the fair, my keychain you got me from the aquarium—i remember you begged your mom for it.” you laugh, begged was an understatement. you remember how mitsuki pulled him away because he was causing a scene, you didn’t understand why he was so insistent on getting a souvenir, you had a good day as you all walked around looking at fish and katsuki dragging you around by the hand like he built the place himself. you remember how excited he got when you got to the shark exhibit.
you didn’t get it, until he stopped you when you were ready to leave with your own parents, grabbing you by the back of your shirt and avoiding your gaze as he stretched his little arms out and wordlessly offered you a little penguin keychain, mumbling something about how you looked happy when you saw them, ears pink while his mom smirked behind him, his father smiled down at you both kindly.
that was the first present he’d ever bought for you. with his mom’s money of course, you giggle at your own thoughts. but he’d still gotten it for you because he thought it’d make you happy. it was your treasure and you wore it on your bag for years until it started getting dirty, and you’d hid it in your shoebox to keep it safe.
you suddenly realize your boyfriend’s been awfully unlike himself for the past few minutes, silently blinking at the contents of your box and now at your little keychain.
you suddenly feel a bit self conscious, maybe he thought it was weird..
you blink in surprise when he reaches for your penguin chain and you offer it to him. it’s a bit brownish now, having lost its shine over the years. he runs his thumb over the fuzzy faux fur.
“thought you forgot about this..” he mumbles to himself.
your eyes shoot wide. “wha—no way ?!”
“ya stopped wearing it on your bag so i thought you got rid of it.” he doesn’t look angry, simply observing the chain, letting it dangle in the air.
“i just didn’t want it to get any dirtier than it clearly already is” you joked. you’re in deep now, shuffling around for more items in your box. katsuki joins you this time, pulling out an old picture.
“holy shit.” he breathes. you catch a peek at what he’s looking at only to see the both of you.
“woah, we were so small !” you giggle. it was a picture of your grade school entrance ceremony. you remember katsuki stubbornly refusing to take it and it took his mom about ten minutes to get him to stay put and take the shot. you’re all smiles, waving at the camera like you’d been instructed to and gripping katsuki’s hand. said little boy had an angry, angry frown on his face, sticking his tongue out at the camera.
“you’re cheeks were huge.” you laugh, katsuki sits down properly to nudge your shoulder with a huff. “shaddup,” he says, though there was no real bite to his words. “you weren’t any better than me.” you laugh some more and continue to pull things out. “where’d you even get this ?” he asks.
“your mom gave me a copy.”
“fuckin—of course she did.”
there’s a blurry picture you’d managed to take of katsuki when you’d gotten your first polaroid camera, and some pictures from when you’d convinced him to get in a photo-booth from your first date at the fair. dozens of birthday cards he’d written for you, you’re tempted to read them all right now but you worry katsuki might get embarrassed and actually throw the box out, so you’ll do that later.
the flowers he’d plucked out of the ground one random afternoon at his house, a rock he'd given you because it looked cool, a couple of seashells you found at the beach together, a dried up four leaf clover he claimed would bring you good luck, the container of the lip balm you were wearing when he kissed you for the first time. years worth of memories all in your little shoebox.
“fuck, you really kept all this stuff..” you hear katsuki mutter. you turn to see him still with that elementary school picture in hand, staring at it thoughtfully.
“course i did.” you hum, leaning against his side. “i spent all of my childhood with you suki, that’s unforgettable to me. i wanted to make sure i wouldn’t ever forget how much you mean to me.” katsuki’s eyes fix yours as you continue talking. and you realize how they slowly turn glossier. he realizes when you do and quickly ducks his head, scoffing to himself but a sniffle slips out.
“hey..” he shakes his head, you don’t continue, only reaching to hold him in your palms. he shoves his cheek against one, chuckling to himself.
“shush.” he mutters, voice cracking, his eyes remain shut to not let anything slip. he presses a kiss to your skin, grabbing at your wrist. "you're gonna be the fuckin' end of me, y'know ?" you laugh, rubbing your thumb against his skin, you feel him sigh against your palm.
"love you."
you smile "i love you too" you whisper back. "so, you still wanna throw it out ?" you joke, katsuki's eyebrows furrow.
"fuck, no." he asserts "it's staying here, an' i'll give you more shit to fill it up with."
and you truly couldn't be more excited, starting a new chapter of your life with the boy that had shared it all with you. you want your shoe box to be filled to the brim with more and more memories of you both, all of them just as close to your heart as the last.
"hmm," you hum "can't wait."
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taglist :
@napbatata @andysdrafts @queenpiranhadon @jastoo46 @cecelia77
@katszumi @m-inluv @monchurie @the-hangry-otter @starlostlaiba
@moonshuul @erenstitanweave @katsus-mistress @dondeh-zedonutqueen @liluvtojineteyam
@aspiringwriter1111 @sugurusmoon @redvelvetstan1
@niktwazny303 @nemisimp @kit-katsukii @alphasage @milktea-academia
1K notes · View notes
gyuswhore · 2 months ago
Text
Statistically Speaking...
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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 đŸ„č 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 đŸ€
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
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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. 
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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. 
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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.”
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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.
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. 
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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.
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It’s Wednesday.
After a long day of doing nothing, still sick from whatever plagued your body, you go to bed earlier than usual.
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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. 
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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. 
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It’s Tuesday.
Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.
—  92/100
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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.
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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. 
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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. 
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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.
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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. 
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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. 
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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. 
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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.”
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[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. 
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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.”
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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.” 
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2K notes · View notes
luveline · 2 months ago
Note
hihihihi! đŸ„č💕 i want to let you know that i adore your hotch fics! and i wanted to ask if you’d be ok—but no pressure!!!— to write one with bombshell!reader waking up from anesthesia and forgetting hotch and her are already together and starts flirting with him the way bombshell!reader absolutely would lol? thank you!
thanks for requesting lovely! fem, 1k
You don’t remember waking up, but you’re sitting against a pillow with a yoghurt in your hand. You must’ve been on some sort of auto-pilot
 Are you in a hospital gown?
You put your yoghurt down on the table that’s been wheeled over your lap and stare at the white-blue chequered gown creased between your thighs. Your head feels heavy. 
“You okay?” 
You drag your gaze to the source of the voice. 
Agent Hotchner sits in the chair next to your bed. He has one leg crossed over the other, but he notices your confusion and his nonchalance turns to concern. “You need help?” 
“With the yoghurt?” you ask. 
“Yeah, honey. I can help.” 
You roll that over in your mind. Stern Agent Hotchner just called you honey. 
You’ve been trying to convince him for a while that you’re someone worth being sweet to. Trying to sway him, because there are parts of him you can’t get out of your head when he’s not around. He has not yet been swayed. Honey is a hand held out you’re going to snatch. 
Hotch stands. He goes to pick up your yoghurt. 
“What, are you gonna spoon feed me?” you ask, a clumsy drawl to your voice.
“I was going to
 but I don’t like your tone.” 
Is he flirting back? You must’ve hit your head. “Coward,” you murmur. Speaking of hitting your head, there’s a throbbing behind your eyes, and a dryness to your throat bordering on uncomfortable. The yoghurt was there for a reason, clearly, but you don’t have the energy in you to eat seductively. 
“My head hurts,” you say quietly. 
You close your eyes. 
“I know.” A hand touches your face. You stay very still, though your heart doesn’t. “You don’t feel too hot. Do you want a drink? I can get you anything.” 
“Your hand is so big
” 
“Not so much bigger than your own,” he says. 
“Prove it.” 
He says your name like he knows you well, which sets your racing heart off all over again. But, used to hiding from him, you open your eyes to watch him and wipe all surprise from your face. You raise your hand, and he raises his, and you press your fingers together. Your fingertips don’t reach his, his palm wider, warmer. You thread your fingers carefully into the gaps between his, your lips curling into a satisfied smile. 
Less satisfied when he closes his hand around yours. 
“You’re teasing me,” you say. 
“Honey, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why don’t you lay back properly?” 
“Super, super forward.” You lay back under the pressure of his hand, stricken by the feeling that he’s done something like that before. You rest your head against your elevated pillows and have to give up —you can’t hide how surprised you are at his open touching, his face so close to yours you can see every warm fleck in his dark eyes. 
“You look startled,” he murmurs. 
“I think you’ve been bodysnatched.” 
“I have?” 
“Yes.” You nod. “I can’t keep up. And I’m usually pretty great at that.” 
“At what?” 
“Flirting.” 
“Oh,” he says, taking your hand again, pulling it toward his mouth, “you think I’m flirting?” 
“Is there something wrong with me?” 
“Not beyond the usual. You’re more lucid than they suspected you’d be, actually.” He kisses your knuckles. 
“I’ve hit my head.” 
“No, honey, you were under anaesthesia. Everything’s fine.” 
“You’ve hit your head.” 
He breathes out a laugh. “I don’t remember any injuries, but I’d love to know why you think so.” 
“You’re kissing me.” 
He pauses, lowering your hand. “Yes?” he says cautiously. 
“Would you want to do it again?” 
Hotch puts your hand on your chest. He cups your cheek in one hand, takes your shoulder into the other, and leans down to see you eye to eye. “Are you feeling okay?” he asks. You can feel the love he has for you in each word. 
Weirdly, you can feel it in yourself, too. Like, more than a crush. More than wanting him to spin you around or play with your thigh under a desk. You really love him. 
“I think I forgot you,” you say softly. 
“Amnesia is a very common symptom of anaesthesia, don’t worry.” He pulls your face up to peck you, quick but not without a gentleness that has your hands thrumming with pins and needle. “I thought you were acting strange, but I put it down to discomfort. Sorry, I imagine it’s very disconcerting to feel you don’t know me.” 
He just kissed you. “No, I know you, I just
 I think I love you, but you don’t usually want me back.” 
He rubs your cheek with his thumb. “I’ve always wanted you,” he says, his dulcet tenor another comfort entirely. “And I love you, whether you remember it or not. Should we try to finish your yoghurt?” 
“You really love me?” 
He turns your face to press a kiss into your eyebrow. “You don’t remember?” 
“I do–” You begin before thinking about it, and realise that you’re telling the truth. You remember that he loves you. Agent Hotchner loves you. He’s in your hospital room handling you like thin glass.  
“Well, is there much else to remember?” 
You practically smirk at him. “I can think of some things.” 
“Wow!” He leans down for another kiss. “You’re awful,” he murmurs, his smile soft on your lips. 
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