#this is probably all over the place Im sorry but Im just tired (as in I haven't had a good night of sleep)

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[indigodawns]

.

[thisismeracing]

hi friend, you still have the potential to be sued here in the US, even if you’re not using images. That’s a big part of why authors likes Anna Todd, scrubbed After (with all references to Harry’s name) from the internet when she started charging for it and before any publication would take an interest. (Before anyone comes for me, I’m sure the original has been saved by some third part somewhere. This is the internet after all. But the point remains if she were to be sued, she is able to claim that she did her due diligence by removing any and all content with any reference to Harry Styles from the internet BEFORE she received any payment.) The US is currently starting to crack down on copyright and intellectual property infringement. In large part due to the fact that so many people have received huge payouts over the last ten years. Unfortunately they’re not choosing to go after the ones that have actually gotten rich from the issue. And while the drivers might not care. Their management most certainly will. If you’re choosing to charge for your fiction it might be best to at the very least change names so you might have some form of deniability.

this was an interesting ask, thanks for the heads up again!

I'm not trying to go against your word, but rather wondering about the topic myself because it seems to me it's a huge gray area, so feel free to reach me on my private messages or on anon again if you want. But speaking about Anna Todd, technically she could still be sued even after scrubbing Harry's name from the story because there was still proof on the internet that it was a story about him, if we're talking about defamation it doesn't need to involve the monetization aspect, it's still defamation without it. This would mean that ANY RPF fanfiction is illegal and could be sued (which is not necessarly the case because theres the whole fair use thing).

We're talking about huge payouts, but I'm getting less than fifty dollars a month with Patreon lol would their team really come for me (a poor grad student) on behalf of a billionaire for getting less than fifty dollars a month to help pay school and medical bills? this would need a huge pr work too to make them seem good after doing something so crazy like this.

Talking about defamation, let's say I change names, but this Tumblr would still be up and everything else would easily show that it's about pilot X, this could still be considered illegal because you can tell who it is about. The reason why nobody comes for rpf is because 1) the money people are talking about is just a few bucks most of the time, and 2) it's exactly this real people's FICTION, there's not much to talk about defamation of a worldwide artist when the content you're sharing is for a nich of less than one hundred people, it's not reasonable. I haven't found a past decision about something similar in the US court, if there is, please send it in, but other than that it's a huge speculation thing in my head, which only a judge could clarify.

Patreon and monetizing fanfiction is quite common in fandoms like Chris Evans', for example, and I haven't seen anything legal come from it yet. again because it's unreasonable for those artists to go after their own fans for taking less than a hundred dollars in content that clearly sets a fictional character that just happens to look and have the same name as them because more often than not it's set in an alternative universe.

[emypony]

.

[s0urte3th]

i mean, im not saying im.. bad i guess?

[whorelaud]

꒦꒷ 𓈒 𓈒 𓈒 hushed fantasies ¡

pairing brother's best friend¡nicholas chavez x fem¡reader

summary thinking you were messaging your friend, you accidentally sent your brother's best friend a thirsty paragraph about him, with Nicholas opening it before you get a chance to delete it. what you were not expecting was the leading conversation, causing realization to wash over you as he hints your desire is not one-sided after all.

contains suggestive, sexual tension, a bit of dirty talking, a brief kiss, flustered reader, cocky nic, hes also very freaky (uhh???)

a/n this is the silliest thing ive ever written i was giggling the whole time while writing it. likes and reblogs are v much appreciated!!!

word count 1.7k

You: the amount of self control i have is insane because why do i not have this mans dick in my mouth rn please i need nic so fucking bad its not even funny anymore he is everything i want in life id let him use me any day morning afternoon n night im available ugh i dont even get the ick when its him he was acting like a dad earlier yelling at us to grill the meat right and it was so adorable ill call you daddy u want me to call u sir i dont kink shame im down for whatever king omg stop he got hurt earlier and he GROANED???? i almost fell to my knees YAHOOO he definitely whimpers #needthat 10/10 i just know its thick ooh tip pink shade #d97e77 thats insane till my knees are bruised and my throats scratched my panties fell tears are rolling down my thighs OMG PLS can you feel my pain hes so bodangshis how does my brother look at him and not wanna fuck him id be all over him if that was my friend gahhhd!!! hes actually so sweet he kept speaking to me earlier so i dont feel left out of the conversation and i find that adorable do u think he slaps it before he cums oh my his girlfriends so lucky im ab to put her in a headlock ahaha this is gross no man should have this much of an impact on u unless their dick is big and the sex is absolutely amazing yooo what he probably knows how to please a lady id be hard if i had a dick rn STOPP he has a happy trail im gonna lose it hahah lets find out where it leads i dont wanna think ab that im going crazy literally pulling my hair out that should be u baby GIVE ME A CHANCE?!!!! thinking ab him makes me so nervous this is getting a little too srs ahaha okay im sorry hows life?!? i miss u :(

Sending that message, you were anything but expecting the response you got in return, not from the man himself, that’s for sure.

nic: oh?

nic: i think you got the wrong person

You audibly gasp, realization washing over you as you read over the message. That was, in fact, not for Nicholas, nor was it for anyone but your friend to see.

You panic, putting your phone down to process what happened, needing a moment before responding. Right, you needed to do that.

But why did he see it so fast? He didn't even give you time to comprehend your message, the text switching to read in an instant.

Hell, it was midnight, and it’s been a long, tiring day for the both of you, having been out the whole afternoon, merely to come back to the hotel and spend more time with your other friends.

Everyone decided to end the night off early; early being a bit before midnight, with you heading to your room afterwards. Your brother and his best friend shared the room taking place next to yours, making it easy to reach out to him.

And for that, you were grateful since Nicholas was with him; meaning you got to see more of him throughout this trip.

You’ve had a crush on Nicholas for god knows how long, with it starting the moment your brother befriended him. You’ve technically gone through all the phases he experienced, hell, you saw him more than your own parents.

He was sweet, a little too sweet, perhaps it bothered you. Nicholas was very known among women, he knew how to attract a lady, showering her with praises until he eventually got what he wanted.

That made you extremely jealous, knowing you couldn't have him. He was forbidden, off-limits, someone you could only admire from afar.

And that stupid crush of yours led to this conversation, one you didn't want to discuss.

You: i didnt mean to send that to you

The text switched from delivered to read right away, causing your breath to catch in your throat.

nic: clearly

nic: i dont have a gf btw

Why did he feel the need to clarify that, and why were you relieved over hearing it?

You buried your face in your pillow, feeling heat reduce from your body. You’ve never been this embarrassed before, not around Nicholas. While you were weird sometimes, it was never this bad.

He wasn't supposed to know about this, nor discover it the way he did.

You: cover your eyes pls

You: this wasn't for u

nic: you sure?

nic: are there any other nics in your life?

Your stomach twisted at the message, hand coming up to cover your mouth as an audible gasp escaped your throat. How could he say that?

You felt all sorts of emotions wash over you, unable to process each one of them as you read the message over and over again.

You: what if there is

The question was risky, it could either end with him telling your brother, or him teasing you over it and brushing it off. Either way, you couldn't have him, so why not just fuck it and go with the flow?

nic: then that would be disappointing.

Your breath caught in your throat, vision going blurry as Nicholas’ bubble kept appearing and disappearing.

nic: id really hate that you feel this way about someone else

Oh my god, were you dreaming?

You could not believe your eyes. You turned off your phone, letting the dimness of the room seep through for a moment before you unlocked your device once again, heart skipping a beat when you realized it was real.

Nicholas, your brother’s best friend, might have been flirting with you, but that’s just in your head, right…?

You: ??? wdym

nic: you first

nic: was this about me, doll?

The pet name made you weak to your core, spiraling you over the edge as you put your phone down for a second. You took a deep breath, feeling your face heat up at how suggestive the boy sounded.

He sounded so desperate, you weren't sure if it was the tiredness, or him being genuine. Either way, you’re fucked, because you’re willing to do anything for him, even if it means breaking your heart.

You: what if it was

You: what will you do ab it

You felt nauseous as you waited for a response, groaning when the boy disappeared for a minute. Did you say something wrong? Why did he suddenly leave?

nic: then id risk it all

Speechless. Your mouth hung open, chest filling with lust as a breath heaved out of you.

You: are you saying this because you’re tired

nic: no

nic: god no

There was no ounce of self control in your body left. You almost screamed, overwhelmed by a new sense of emotions.

Is this how it felt? Because fucking hell.

You: it is

nic: it is what?

You: this is so embarrassing

You: why are you making me admit it you know exactly what im talking about

nic: baby

nic: jus tell me

You: no you suck im going to sleep

nic: WAIT no come here youre so cute

You blushed at the message, unable to suppress the smile forming on your lips. God, he’s such an idiot. And you were totally swooned for him.

You: i literally just sent you a message talking ab how much i wanna suck your dick what about that is cute

nic: oh? so you do admit it

You: …

You felt nervous, realizing how serious this has gotten. From a silly message turned into you contemplating whether this was a good idea. The last thing you were anticipating while typing that message was a confrontation, one from Nicholas; at that.

nic: you couldve told me yk

You: do you hear yourself

nic: ? what

You: nic you know this is wrong

You: youre gonna wake up tmr and forget all ab it

nic: you knkw

nic: yoirw so fucjinf hot

You came to a halt, noticing the amount of mistakes the boy was making. Your mind wandered somewhere else, feeling heat crawl past your neck, all the way to your face.

You: what are you saying

nic: fucking hell

nic: take the hint baby

You froze in your spot, tongue coming out to wet your lips, suddenly feeling heat travel to in between your legs. Don’t give in, don't give in, don’t give in.

You: what

nic: you couldve asked me if you were curious

nic: i wouldve happily showed you

That sent you over the edge. Your mind went fuzzy, unable to process the last few texts you received from Nicholas. He was being serious, dead serious, you were sure of that.

The texts you exchanged always revolved around your brother; usually Nicholas asking whether he was home or not. However, this one was different.

He was hinting something, something very risky that you were unable to resist.

You: dont say that

nic: what, you don't believe me?

You: nic

nic: give me five

You stared at the message on the screen, confused on what he meant. Your eyebrows furrowed with puzzlement, awaiting a message, merely to get nothing in return.

As you were about to shut your phone and go to sleep, it pinged, the notification startling you awake. You clicked on it immediately, mind going hazy as you read the message over and over again.

nic: open the door

nic: im outside your room

You didn’t hesitate as you got up, swiftly walking your way to the door. You unlocked it with haste, vision going blurry as you caught sight of Nicholas, who was standing inches away from you now.

He looked just as desperate as you were, maybe even more. And that was it, it was all you needed to pull him by the collar and cease the distance between you two.

The moment his lips collided with yours, you realized that maybe it’s worth ending up with a broken heart, because Nicholas tastes fucking addicting, and you found every way to make good use out of that obsession.

The possession of knowing he’s off limits, yet here he was, eagerly kissing you numb.

[gyuswhore]

Statistically Speaking...

part of the svt TA collab

kim mingyu x reader

word count: 21k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

masterlist

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which was little to none. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

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

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

Nothing. 

You knock again.

Silence. 

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

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

Except he’s asleep.

No, that’s not the professor. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could’ve sworn you heard a snore. 

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

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

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

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

“Um, it’s office—”

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

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

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

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

“But—”

“It’s on the portal.”

“No it’s not.”

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

“How—”

A loud slam! of the door. 

“—long…” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday

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

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

Regards, YN

Dear YN,

Wednesdays and Thursdays. 4 to 6 PM.

Kim Mingyu, T.A. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you here to see him?”

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

“Are you here to see him? Mingyu?”

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

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

“Yeah he’s a bit…unorthodox.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Right. How can I help you?”

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

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

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

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

It stumps you regardless.

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

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

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

“You marked them?”

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

“I thought the professor marked the lab reports.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dr. Cho—”

“Is no help.”

“I understand—”

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

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

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

Help, he did. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pardon?”

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

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

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

You smile, “No problem.”

Thursday

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

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

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

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

“I’ll see what I can do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help, he does.

Monday

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

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

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

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

Something isn’t right. 

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

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

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

“...Morning.”

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

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

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

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

To Do:

Call mom

Shoot myself

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

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

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

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

What the fuck?

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

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

“Good thing it was just you. Yeah.”

Just you.

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

“Have you seen the time?” 

“Not a morning person?”

“Nope!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And that isn’t happening because…?”

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

“You—”

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

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

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

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Excuse me for doing my job.”

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

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

“PSYCH101?”

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

“Oh. So you’re a fan.”

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

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

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

“Don’t tell me you offered.”

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

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

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

“Four.”

“Four?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart is in your fucking throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Majority of the class would beg to differ.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday

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

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

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

“I’m not ready.”

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

“How do you know that?”

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

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

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

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

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

“But—”

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

“Only the—”

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

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

“I’m assuming…” you start. 

“Hm?” he looks over to you.

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

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

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

“What did you say?” Mingyu smirks. 

“Nothing,” you huff.

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

“Who said I didn’t.”

“Well then, stop being such a worrywart.”

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

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

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

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

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

You sniffle. 

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

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

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu…did you sleep at all?”

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

“Sleep? Rest?”

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

“And you were replying?”

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

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

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

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

“What’re you trying to say?”

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

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

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

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

“Mingyu—”

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

“You have, you’ve been amazing but—”

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

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

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

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

Why on earth do you care so much?

Right. Why do you? 

“Are you asking me that?”

“What?”

“Are you asking me why I care?” 

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

His eyes are bloodshot. 

“I have to get the exam pack.”

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

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

Delusive. Chimeric. Cruel.

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

The null hypothesis of your most elaborate nightmares.

Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything. You tried everything. 

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

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Estimation cannot be perfect. 

[_]

It’s Thursday

Class. Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Friday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

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

[_]

It’s Saturday

Eat. Drink. Work.

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

              ——————

                     P(B)

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

 it gets less complicated

 promise :/ 

[_]

It’s Sunday.

Eat. Drink. Work.

The page is blurry. Your eyes hurt. 

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

you’ve got this!!! < 3

You give up.

It’s Monday.

8:14 AM. 

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

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

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

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

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

Bright pink sticky note. 

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Wednesday.

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

It’s Thursday. 

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

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

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

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

You freeze like you’ve been caught. 

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

You’re off centre. But it’s fine. 

It’s Monday.

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

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

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

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

It’s Tuesday.

Midterm Results for Statistics in Psychological Research.

—  92/100

It’s Wednesday. 

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

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

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

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

“Did you feel bad?” you spit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bright red 92/100 marks the front page.

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

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

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

Because you know you’ve lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Friday.

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

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

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

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

[Mingyu]: switch to bF10 

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

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

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

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

Do you not miss me?

Do you not want me around?

Talk to me

I miss you

Please talk to me

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

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

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

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

It’s Saturday. 

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

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

“Latte, please,” you voice. “Iced.”

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

“Um, no thank you. Just one, please.”

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

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

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

“He has time to hook up?”

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

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

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

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

“Unless he flirts in variables.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bayesian inference…z scores…null hypothesis…

Wait. 

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

no null hypothesis in bayesian approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regards, YN

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

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

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

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

SEND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RE: Tutorial Error from Kim Mingyu

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

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

Clicking on the notification, the email opens. 

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

Kim Mingyu, T.A.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I–no, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

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

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

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

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

“You were hurt because I hurt you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not in a TA way.”

“Tutor way.”

“Um.”

“Friend way? A human way?” 

“No.”

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

“You know what?” he rasps. 

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He snorts, “Dressed up for it too.”

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

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

“How adorable.”

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

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

“That might’ve been a little better.”

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

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

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

You give him the satisfaction of an eye roll. 

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

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

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

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

“Who?”

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

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

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

“Hm?”

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

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

“Do you?”

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

“Is it because of the TA-ing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“D’you think they’ll be okay?”

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

“Like we did?”

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

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

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

“This is getting weird,” Mingyu breathes. 

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

“For fuck’s sake.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re paying attention to me.”

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

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

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

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

There’s a ding in the background. 

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

Another ding. 

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

Ding. 

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

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

“Gyu…” you whisper. 

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

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

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

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

The ringing stops. 

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

There’s a ding. 

“Mingyu, I really think—”

His phone begins to ring again. 

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

“You should answer.” 

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

“It might be important.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Go on.”

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

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

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

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

You have to stifle a snort. 

“Is it…plugged in?”

“Of course it is, I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it showing up on your files?”

“Disk…is not…formatted.”

“Erm, it might be corrupted.”

“How did that happen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I…I don’t know how, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I need a shower.”

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

“Do you wanna come in too?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can figure it out myself, Gyu.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm? I think so.” 

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

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

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

“Gyu,” you shuffle closer. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm? Has to be what?”

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

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

“For the love of—”

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

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

“What’s that again?”

“You little shit.”

You move your mouth forward to kiss him.

“Analysis of variance.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I might love you too. 

You hide that as well. For now. 

Smiling into the skin of his temples, you sigh.

“Feel free.”

[Mingyu]: class ended early 

[Mingyu]: be there in 5 

[You]: ???

[You]: wdym ended early

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

“It’s on the bedside table, baby.”

“No, it’s not.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good thing I came back early, hm?” 

“Shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that for?!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a pillow fort.

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

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

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

[You]: where are you

[Mingyu]: where im meant to be?

[You]: office hours?

[Mingyu]: mhm

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

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

[Mingyu]: DONT KILL ME

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

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

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

“Whatever for?”

“For lying.” 

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

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

“Him too.”

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

“Rumour has it,” he starts. 

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

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

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

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

“Take a hike, Kim.”

“...Sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mingyu was beautiful either way. 

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

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

“More than okay,” you mumble. 

“Good. Thought I lost you there.”

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

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

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

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

“How happy are you?”

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

“The recommendation? You deserve it.”

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

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

“Not just yet.”

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

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

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

“Girlfriend duties,” you quote solemnly. 

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

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

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

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

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

You can only grumble in mild annoyance. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I think I might love you too.” 

[clandestineloki]

miguel o'hara x shy crybaby housewife!reader

cw: non-graphic mentions of violence, suggestive bit at the end lmk if u want an nsfw of this!!

ok but imagine shy lil missus o'hara who's a stay at home wife while miguel goes off to either alchemax or to fight some bad guys

and miguel comes home stressed all the time but just a touch of her hand on his shoulder grounds him after all that fighting

and miguel is tired but happy, grateful for his little love taking such good care of him :)) giving you a forehead kiss before he goes off to the bathroom, settling in the perfectly warm bath prepared for him before indulging in his little wife's amazing cooking 

but one night when he comes home a little bit more tense than usual

she's very tense

she's heard him yelling at his subordinates over the phone and yelling at dumb-ass cops who get in the way of him stopping some thief

and while miguel has always been soft and kind and gentle with her, she's scared that she'll accidentally do something wrong :((

so miguel walks past her, exhausted, and almost smiles at the smell of dinner

no forehead kiss for her :(( poor baby

sitting at the dining table head in his hands as he mumbles about not getting the chance to grab a snack, let alone a break in spanish

and she knows he's hungry, but she knows his whole body will be aching if he doesn't take a bath to regulate his body temperature

but poor baby doesn't know how to say it without him possibly snapping at her :((

she's standing on the other side of the table nervously fidgeting with the dish towel and finding the right words to say

"y-you... you gotta t-take a bath f-first..."

miguel sighs into his hands. "i know, but im really hungry, cariño..."

"b-but... if you don't... you'll be s-sore..."

he looks up, brows furrowing. "what?"

he was genuinely confused why you seemed so scared of him, but his voice came out a bit more bluntly than he meant it to.

your eyes widen and you look down. "n-nothing," you mumble, tears beginning to well up in your eyes. "sorry."

"hey, hey, baby..." miguel stands up, walking over to you and pulling you into his arms. "what's wrong? did i say something?"

"no..." you sniffle, "jus thought i made you mad..."

"no, no, no, i'm not mad," he kisses all over u: your teary eyes, your wobbling lips, your forehead, the tip of ur nose

miguel kisses you deeply and then hugs you close to him. "im not mad, i promise. i'm just so so tired and hungry and the food smelled so good i'm gonna die if i don't get to taste it," he whispers, laughing when you giggle at his declaration.

"the bath can wait," he caresses your cheek with his hand.

"b-but you're gonna get cramps tomorrow if-"

he cuts you off with a big smooch to your face. "it doesn't matter. im staying home tomorrow."

"wh-what?!" you look up at him as he sits down, pulling you into his lap. "but you have work- and- and you're spiderman- and-"

he shakes his head, running his fingers through your hair.

"i'm your husband first, and all that other shit second."

miguel sighs, pulling you closer.

"i know i haven't been taking care of you the way i should be."

before you can interject about how he's doing so much already, he presses a finger against your lips.

"ssh. and alchemax and the cops don't really give a shit about me, can probably last every other day without me there. they'd probably have a field day without this jackass there," he chuckles. "but you, baby, i need to return the favor- ah, ah! let me finish, gatita- return the favor for keeping this place a safe space for me."

a kiss here, a kiss there. "entiendes?"

you nod, hugging him. "just glad you're home," you mumble, nuzzling into his neck.

he spends the rest of that hour enjoying the food you made for him while also feeding you and rattling all about the thugs he stopped that day.

then he pulls you into the bath with him, despite your protests, and laughs as he splashes you with the soapy water, making you squeal and threaten to spray him with the shower nozzle

then the two of you dry up and snuggle in bed, not bothering to put on any clothes. miguel smiles down at you and you smile up at him, before he rolls you on your back and crawls over you to make the sweetest yet roughest love to show you just how thankful he is for having a sweet lil thing like u to come home to <3

(part 2 is here~)

[lxvebun]

if it's okay could you write something about simon asking the reader to stay the night and it will be the first time they sleep over? no pressure ofc!

Simon "Ghost" Riley x gn!reader. Fluff! i'm yearning for fall/winter so it's written with that in mind. The heat is getting to me🥲 not proofread im nervous. Eng isn't my first language so I'm sorry for any mistakes!

“I should probably go."

It took you an embarrassingly long time to finally get those words out. Every minute ticking by only making you more and more nervous to actually say them. You truly don’t want to leave just yet. Don’t want to pull away from your place next to him, tucked into his side, soft, warm. A strong arm wrapping around you keeping you nice and close to him, occasionally his hand traces invisible heart shapes and silent i love you’s into your skin. 

(a habit that has shifted into his love language. Simon Riley loves quietly, but deeply. And moments where he can get his hands on your skin to spell out his devotion to you, fingertips burning pleasantly, leaving behind a trail of falling stars, is something he makes time for often)

It feels all too safe and domestic to leave just yet, but the colder months are approaching and it’s well into the evening now. The sky has already completely settled into a deep dark blue with clusters of stars and a bright full moon. The streets however are still lively, early sunsets and longer nights having no affect on most people's schedule. People are coming back from a long day at work, couples are running their last errands at the corner store and old grannies are coming back from their weekly bingo night down the street at the community center. Right now, it still feels safe enough to walk back home on your own. Without a doubt, Simon would offer to walk you, but he’s barely made it through your annual movie night and you’d rather not keep him from his much needed and well deserved sleep.

(it would not be your first time walking home alone at night, don’t tell Simon, but you prefer not to. Being so hyper aware of every movement and every sound is tiring and your 15 minute walk back home feels like you just finished a marathon)

He shifts next to you, the haze of sleep laced in his movements, a groan of disagreement falling from his lips as he throws a glance at his watch.

"T’is only eight, sweetheart. You never leave this early. Something wrong?" A twinge of worry coursing through his voice, brows furrowed at the thought of you being uncomfortable. His hand changes from tracing shapes to rubbing comforting circles into your side, albeit a bit frantically.

(he’s so attentive it honestly makes you wanna cry sometimes)

"No, nothings wrong," You begin. Smoothing the crease between his eyebrows with your thumb and placing a gentle kiss to his jawline. "I just don’t want to walk alone at night. Nor do I want to keep you from your sleep"

You’re quick to add the last bit, practically hearing the words "I'll walk you " escape from his mouth already.

He doesn’t make an attempt to remove his hands from your waist, or sit back up straight. On the contrary he’s taken it to melt into you a little more, pull you a little closer and you think he’s doing this to convince you to stay

(it's working)

even months deep into your relationship, every sweet touch and gentle kiss still manages to cause your heart to soar and flutter in your chest.

He takes a moment to just look at you, and it makes you avert your eyes at its heaviness. Too sweet, too piercing, you feel like he’s looking into your mind and soul, breaking it open like a book and taking everything in. Usually, he coaxes you with delicate words and a warm hand on your jaw to keep looking at him but he’ll let you look away for now. You who’s so sweetly tucked into his side, you who feels so warm and peaceful against him it makes him wanna squeeze you to his chest and never let go. How could he possibly let you go when you look so content and so safe in his arms. From the look in your eyes and body language alone he can tell you feel good here, that you want to stay. He’s right but It’s the nerves, the shyness and not being sure where his boundaries lie that make you pull away from this moment

"You could always stay the night." He whispers, honeyed and soothing. Making sure you know there’s no pressure behind his request. It makes something warm curl in your heart

He’s been thinking about it often, what it would be like to wake up next to you. Seeing you first thing when he opens his eyes all angelic and soft in the golden morning sun rays, sleeping in his bed, draped in his sheets. Would you have any special night routines, would you like to use a nightlight or do you prefer complete darkness, do you move around a lot, are you cuddly. It honestly takes over the majority of his thoughts when he goes to bed himself. Finds himself imagining in detail what it would be like and he swears that he sleeps best on those nights. He can only imagine how good he’ll sleep next to you.

Your silence would worry him if he wasn’t able to read you so well. A hitch in your breath, eyes looking everywhere but him, a shy smile tugging on your lips

(you’re so cute)

"I’d like that." Your voice comes out soft, a little vulnerable but you know you’re safe. Taking a deep breath to calm your nerves.

You’ve been thinking about it too. Spend many nights imagining what it would be like to curl up in his arms and drift off to sleep. Waking him up with a plethora of kisses to his face. Making your respective morning drinks in the kitchen together, stealing kisses in between sips. Thinking about it always leaves you feeling a little dizzy.

His response comes in the form of a wet kiss to your forehead that trails down to your cheeks, then the corner of your lips before finally pulling you into one. You'll choose to spare him and not comment on the flush on his cheeks, just this once

"I’ll go grab a hoodie and some sweatpants, you can use those to sleep in"

reluctantly, although motivated by the image of you in his clothes, he stands up, warmth slipping away for a moment before it’s contained again by the blanket he drapes over you.

"I’ll grab the clothes, you pick another movie"

With that he makes his way to the bedroom to retrieve said clothes. Before you can pick up the remote to pick a movie however, his voice booms out of the bedroom

"Do not pick twilight. Can’t stand that edward fucker."

Perhaps the Notebook will be more to his taste then:)

thank you for requesting nonnie! and thank you for reading angels!

[sexilene]

jj x reader cockwarming!! ⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ #03 (sorry bout the spelling mistakes!)

jj often takes you with him when he goes fishing, he basically does all the work and you sit there flipping through a magazine or sunbathing. and just like all the other times, watching your boyfriend’s veins form his arms stand out as he lifts buckets of fish and what not, looking all manly. and sure he’d smell a little salty and his hands a little fishy but you couldn't care less, all you could focus on was the throb of your clit and the need to have your tired boyfriend’s dick inside you asap.

at some point he dramatically stretches and leans back on into the car seat, a joint held tightly to his pursed lips. you both are seated in the front of a dingy little truck you found for him at some junk yard car place, you had surprised him with it for his birth last year and though it needed some work jj was still entirely greatful.

jj inhales, his eyes closed while you’re seated sinked on top of him, your fingers tangle in messy blonde hair, his cock pulsating warming inside you.

“jay? please put it out…im so tired and i really wanna cum!” you whine, rocking your hips slightly. you pout and lay your cheek down onto his shoulder as he continues to hold you down with his hand on your hip. you too had been like this for about 30 minutes now, just cock warming him and you had tried to fuck yourself on his cock, but nothing seemed to work to ease the need for him to just slam you down on his dick.

“baby, how could you be tired, you literally did nothing the whole time hmm?” he coos, before inhaling again and then blowing out smoke from his nose.

“keep tellin ya, if you wanna cum, you jus’ gotta wait till papa j s’ready…” he speaks with a soft growl, squeezing the flesh of your hip. you whine again to get your point across, rocking your hips again against his. the wet sounds of your cunt and the feeling of your clenching pussy finally made him give in and help you out,

“gimme a sec baby cakes, i’m almost done” slurs, finishing off the joint and stubbing it out in the ashtray in the cup holder. he grabs your face to make you look at him, the strong grip on your jaw probably is going to leave a mark from his rings. he blows the last of the smoke out of his nose again and then pulls your face in to give you the sloppiest kiss.

“really wanna get fucked, really bad…” you pine, all these smells overwhelming your senses. the earthy saltiness of your boyfriend, the smell of his joint and the smell of your wetness…

“imma take care of you now, kay?” he smiles before his other hand finds your other hip, lifting you up effortlessly and then slamming into you from underneath. “iv’e gotchyou babe, just take it.” the force of that singular thrust has your eyes closing shut and your nails to dig into the skin of his neck.

your boyfriends cock hitting deep into your soaking cunt at a bruising pace, up and down up and down, against your sweet spot over and over again.

“like a pretty little sex doll you know that?- cept your warm…” he jokes,

your head lolls into the little spot under his jaw, drooling on his shoulder, your eyes clenched shut as you whine,

“don’t be funny right now! im- oh! you’re being mean…” the tight coil in your belly starts to snap as he continues to slam you down on his dick sloppily, your clit rubbing against his skin giving you little shockwaves of pleasure.

“m’sorry- fuck! love you, you know that….” he grunts, fucking up into you as you start to feel the way his cock starts to throb sending you over the edge. you squeal into jj’s mouth in an attempt to kiss him while you creamed all over his cock. he just continues to groan and fuck up into you through your orgasm, and eventually his.

after coming down from both your highs, you continue to sit there impaled on his dick, his hand rubbing soothing circles on your back. you try and sit up and move back to the passenger seat but jj hold you down on him and shushes you.

“no no angel, you wanted to cum that bad? were gonna keep goin till you can’t take it,”

[puppywilliams]

could you write about streamer abby 🥺

streamer abby

a/n: i literally love this au so much. i kept thinking about this req so i wrote this quickly even though its 2am °՞(ᗒᗣᗕ)՞° sorry if its lazy or it has typos!! lmk if u want more of streamer abby because id rlly love to expand on this au! im so tired so thank you for reading <3

warnings: Could be taken suggestively, size difference.

you have a simple life now that you’re in your early twenties, which is way earlier than you thought you would, but when your wife is loaded from twitch money whos to complain? abby takes care of you, you take care of abby.

she buys you pretty clothes and dainty jewelry. loving to see you spin around for her in a new outfit she had picked out and paid for herself. eyeing you up, asking herself how she got this lucky. if you needed something it was taken care of, if you wanted something, it was yours. sometimes she would buy you gifts just because she wants to treat her gorgeous wife. setting a gift bag down on the table and watching your eyes light up with curiosity.

when abby gets recognized it public it normally doesn’t bother you, it happens so much you expect it at this point, but that doesn’t mean you don’t watch where someones hand is placed, or how comfortable they immediately get with Your wife. putting you in a sour mood for the rest of the outing. abby watches you sulk the whole way home knowing you’ll get over it.

you often bring her dinner while shes streaming, knocking on her office door waiting until she lifts up one side of her headset and calls out “come in!” you walk in and set her plate on down carefully on her desk

“thank you, baby” she says softly and kisses you on the cheek. her chat floods as normal, not-so-painfully forcing you to sit in abby’s lap looking pretty and talking to her rambling chat while she queues up for her next quick play on overwatch. answering questions, saying hi to people you recognize from other occasions, thanking donators, all while abby mindlessly stares off onto the screen resting her head on your shoulder and wrapping her arms around you. her chats probably more obsessed with you than they are abby, but definitely not more than abby’s obsessed with you.

on some nights its late, and you’re watching a show in your shared bedroom. abby’s “working late” which is essentially her just screaming at the top of her lungs as she streams a horror game for the 5th night in a row. it echos the walls from behind you. it does bother you sometimes when you’re trying to sleep and she wont shut the hell up. but its worth it when she crawls into bed nearly 30 minutes later smothering you in kisses and apologizing for keeping you up. you love it, you’re addicted to it even. you’d let her scream every night until the sunrises for her to talk to you in that sweet raspy voice of hers you keep telling her shes gonna lose if she keeps it up.

she wraps her strong arms around your frame, molding you like putty. lazily kissing your neck. “i know its late…i’m sorry..” she mumbles into your skin so delicately. abby was always so Gentle with you, for a woman who could bench press you, she sure did treat you like you were made glass, like if she hurt you, she Herself would bleed. “‘s kay..” you mumble back to her. she kisses your forehead one last time before closing her eyes. fingers running through your hair as you both fall asleep. it was a routine, a beautiful one you loved. you’d do it all again tomorrow, and thank a higher power that it was possible.

[daenysx]

lovely Hii

Can i get poly!marauders x fem reader where maybe she has been exhausted and busy lately and maybe they’re giving her some space cause they dont know if she wants affection now but she sees them all lovey dovey with eachother all the time and she feels sad cause she wants to join but feels too shy to ask so she tries to discreetly slip back and one of them notices?

Im sorry if that is a bunch of gibberish but i have been awake for over a day now and my brain is fried (i hate uni)

thank you for requesting, i hope you enjoy <333

(comments are always appreciated and i literally need to see what you think to keep writing, angels. of course i can't force you to send me anything but it would be amazing if you take two seconds to tell me what you think. it's not always easy to keep doing something without getting any feedback about it ♡)

poly!marauders x fem!reader

the relationship between james and remus has always been somewhat chaotic.

they have huge chemistry, maybe something like opposites attract situation. remus is calm when james is bubbling with excitement, remus loves with silent kisses when james loses his breath as he makes love, remus likes rationality when james swims deep in his emotions.

you watch them flirt as they sit on the couch. you're at the table across them in the living room, staring at your laptop screen with exhausted eyes. it probably would be easier to complete what you've been writing if you could have more energy, but sadly you sit all tense and cold at your place. your arms get the chills, you avoid looking at your lovers.

if you leave the table to join them, james and remus would welcome you with open arms. the mere thought of james's lips against your forehead and remus's fingers rubbing your neck makes you want to cry loudly. it's just torturing yourself, but you don't think you're strong enough to ask for love. you need to get this done. you need to think about the classes you gotta pass.

james kisses a line on his boyfriend's cheek, so warm, remus practically loses his mind. "where's sirius?" james asks, remembering sirius leave for the kitchen minutes ago. "is he burning up our kitchen, do you think?"

"we would've notice."

"no, we wouldn't." james whispers. "you're too damn distracting."

remus melts. autumn always brings starvation for touch and loving, two things james is the best at giving. he looks at your way briefly, your droopy eyes worry him.

"she seems so tired." remus says, his lips kiss james's knuckles mindlessly. "should we say something to make her give a break?"

"she said the essay has a deadline, moons." james answers. "i mean, she clearly needs a break, but i'm not sure if we should interrupt her."

it's hard to decide because you get nervous with breaks sometimes. you complain about not controlling the time good enough when you're spending your free minutes with them and being unable to finish stuff at time. you say most of this teasingly, but the boys know there's always some truth in it.

sirius walks into the room with a big mug in his hands. he carries it carefully to your table. james and remus watch the scene, their hands together and legs tangled.

"here it is." sirius puts the mug on the table. "a perfect cup of hot chocolate for my gorgeous girl."

you look at him with the widest eyes. you can't cry. fuck, he's so sweet. he smiles, he looks so handsome with his old t-shirt and messed up hair. you close your laptop, curve your lips to stop yourself from crying.

"this is so nice, siri." you say to him, unshed tears clog your throat. "thank you."

"um- can i get a kiss? i spend fifteen minutes for this."

you nod with a smile, he leans down for you. you only mean to kiss his cheek, but he smells so good and he's so kind- your hand shakes as it touches his shoulder. it doesn't take sirius long to understand what's going on. he manages to hug you before you start crying.

"oh, baby, no-" he says with a sad voice. he attempts to make a joke. "you can't cry for hot chocolate- i'm sure it doesn't even taste that good."

james and remus sit straight with worry. "dove?" remus leaves the couch. "what's wrong?"

"are you okay?"

you nod, they probably won't believe it. you hold onto sirius, he lifts you up from the chair. it's a proper hug now, your skin tingles with the sensation. it feels so good to be touched.

"it's okay." sirius kisses your head. "you're just overwhelmed. you're okay."

you keep your head on sirius's chest. he's warm and his arms are strong, he supports your body to help you stay on your feet. remus brings his hand on your waist, his thumb gently draws a circle.

"can we go to bed?" you ask. separating yourself from sirius is hard, but it's harder to stay vertical. james extends a hand to you, you hold it greedily. they are all thinking the same thing, you'll calm down but you need to feel safe enough with your surroundings to do that. even though they'd like to keep you stuck in their arms, this might not be the best idea.

the bed is cold. it will pass in a few minutes. remus takes you under the blanket, james adjusts the pillows. sirius has a wrinkle between his eyebrows, he gets behind you on bed and wraps his arm around your shoulder. you sniffle softly, suddenly embarrassed by all the attention.

"sorry." you offer, your voice sounds sincerely sorry. "i don't know what came over me."

"i think we should be sorry." remus says. "jamie and i were talking about whether we should tell you to take a break but- we didn't wanna distract you. we should've distract you."

"it's not your fault that i can't manage my time doing stuff i've been doing for years." you say, weakly. "i'm just sick of being tired. i guess i- missed you."

sirius gives you a generous kiss on the side of your head. "you can jump on us any time you want, you know that, gorgeous."

"i think my head doesn't work like that when i'm exhausted."

"it doesn't have to." james says. his voice is like honey. "you don't have to ask for anything. we should be giving you everything before you even have to ask."

"he's right." remus agrees. "it should be like this for all of us, i think."

you nod. your eyes have a grateful look in them, they are undeniably tired, but still pretty to your boys. the bed is warmer. you force yourself to stop counting down the minutes for deadlines. james puts his head on your chest, hugs you as your back touches the bed, his arms are tight around you like you'll run away.

it's good to be touched. it's amazing to have contact with their hands, safe and secure, you can do anything you want if you always feel like this. remus kisses your fingers. his eyes are gentle. they are all so gentle, kind with you, you feel like you'll never break as long as you have them.

sirius's kisses help you fall asleep at the end. he's always bold with his affections, this time he manages to be softer with his lips and more tender with his hands. long fingers in your hair, chapped lips on your skin. he whispers how much he adores you, the tone of his voice hits your mind so well. you are okay. you think you'll be okay, and that's a nice beginning to get things done.

[reidmania]

control | spencer reid

summary; reader has a hard time with eating habits due to lack of control, thankfully Spencer notices everything.

warnings; details of eating disorders caused by lack of control, feeling the need to control the amount & what you eat, starvation, reader is avoidant and a little tiny bit mean, hurt x comfort, angst, happish hopeful ending, female reader.

i think this is around 3k?? im not sure tho bc i cbf checking 💯💯 tags; @i-live-in-spite

an; please don’t hate me, thats all i have to say when publishing this. please.

Your pen hit against the wooden desk momentarily— repeatedly as you stared at the paperwork in front of you. Although your mind was focusing on a hundred things other than the paper you we’re supposed to be finishing.

It wasn’t until the sound of your name being called that you were pulled out of your trance, looking up you noticed Penelope Garcia standing in front of you.

She repeated your name when you met her eyes, “Sorry” You muttered softly, bringing your hand up to your face, pushing hair off of your forehead as you leant back against your desk chair. “Whats up?”

“I said your name like ten times honey. Wheres your mind” She asked softly, tilting her head slightly to the side. There was a hint of jokingness in her tone, which gave you the leverage to laugh off the question.

“I brought donuts!!” She said excitedly. Which was when you noticed the pink box in her hands. You also realised that you were insanely out of it — for not noticing sooner.

You raised your eyebrow as a slight frown hesitated over your lips, before you just pulled it back into a smile. “Thats sweet pen!! Im okay though, Thank you.” You said, smiling up at the blonde women.

She hummed, not even half convinced of your dismissal of her offer. She reached into the box pulling out your favourite donut with a wide smile on her face. “Are you sure? I got your favourite!” She said in a singsong voice as she waved it around.

You realised the chances of you getting out of taking the donut were insanely slim, probably close to none.

“Alright.” You gave in, watching her already wide smile grow impossibly wider as she placed your donut on a plain white napkin, leaving it on your desk before she shuffled away to deliver the rest of the donuts before you even got the chance to thank her.

The donut sat untouched over the course of the next few hours as you returned to your work.

“Don’t let Garcia see that you didn’t eat it. She almost assaulted me when I tried to decline” Spencer spoke from behind you, making you jump slightly, before turning your head to face him.

You were confused for a moment, eyebrows furrowed as you looked at him. He seemed to sense your confusion, causing a small chuckle to pass his lips as he nudged his head slightly towards your desk. Your eyes followed where he head nudged towards, eyes landing upon the uneaten donut sitting there.

You sighed. “Its probably no good now anyways” You said, looking back at him for a moment. Pushing a smile to your lips before turning your head back to your work.

Spencer was easily your best friend. Not just inside the BAU but outside as well. You guys had usual outings, going to coffee shops, libraries, little cafe’s, watching doctor who together in his living room which always ended in you staying a little too late and falling asleep in his bed.

Maybe a little more then best friends, but neither of you cared to address it.

“Do you want me to get you a new one?” He asked, a slight frown tugging at his lips as he noticed your unusually dismissive behaviour. Avoiding his gaze, keeping conversation short, the way you were rubbing your temple.

He had been watching you all day, you did minimal work instead spending majority of the day staring at the paper work, then excusing yourself to the bathroom way more often then normal.

It wasn’t just today either, it had been building up slowly for ages. Spencer noticed all of it. Your tired eyes, disoriented mind and how you had grown more and more quiet as the days went on — spending too much time in your own mind.

You shook your head, not looking up at him as you started tapping your pen over and over again. “No thanks, spence. Im alright.” You muttered, your free hand coming to rub your eyes.

His frown deepened as he walked around to the side of your desk to get a clear look at your face — it was much prettier to look at than the back of your head, not that there was anything wrong with the back of your head. Your face just had much more endearing features.

“Have you eaten today?” He asked, but he knew the answer.

There was no point lying — you knew that. Spencer had been around you all day. The only time you left your desk was to go to the bathroom an abnormal amount of times an hour. “No, Ill get something later” You answered, your words falling nothing short of a lie.

He raised his eyebrow as you kept your gaze on the desk. “Did you eat yesterday?” He asked. His tone wasn’t daring or malicious in any sort of way. Pure concern laced every word.

You nodded but the words to confirm never followed, making a the pit in his stomach only deepened when the reality of what he thought was going on felt a little more confirmed.

“Do you want to come over tonight?” He asked, his voice was quiet as if he was scared if he spoke to loud you would break, scatter along the ground into a million little pieces, shards flying, only for them to prick you and leave you bleeding if you tried cleaning them up.

You turned your head slightly at his quiet request, you searched his face for something — anything that may give you any sort of reason to back out of his offer, but how could you say no to him?

“Sure. Ill come after dinner” The pit deepened.

He shook his head “No, no. Let’s cook something.” He suggested, you only laughed at him, eyes widening slightly.

“Me and you cooking? Come on spence be serious” You laughed, he almost wanted to feed into the joke just to continue to see the smile on your face, but he knew it was ingenuine. He couldn’t be upset about it.

“I am being serious.”

Your head tilted to the side as you looked up at him, you could see on his face — he was waiting for an answer. You finally gave in, sighing. “Fine, do you want me go to the shops on the way there?” You asked.

He shook his head, “I’ll go, all you have to do is show up” He said, a smile lacing his lips — it almost made you smile back. “Okay” You agreed once more before.

He smiled, before returning back to his desk.

Normally you would be ecstatic to hang out with Spencer — on any other occasion. The idea of having to cook and then feeling too bad to deny the food after the effort you both put in didn’t exactly strike your fancy all that much.

Your hand knocked on his door and moments later he was opening it with a soft smile on his face. He stepped aside letting you walk in wordlessly as you set your bag down by the door, taking in the warmth of his apartment that soothed the cold of your skin slightly, not enough, nothing seemed to sooth that.

“I got the stuff to make pasta.. I figured it was simple and easy enough for us” He mumbled as he took your hand in his, guiding you to the kitchen, you let out a small laugh, following him.

Although the feeling of discomfort remained in your chest and all over your body, not because of his hand in yours or anything to do with him, but the idea of food make your stomach twist, which the knowledge you’d have to be around it constantly with no chance of an escape or way out, it made your blood run cold.

“Awesome” You mumbled out, much more enthusiastically than you felt. His hand pressed softly against your back as he moved to stand on the side of you before his hand left, instead pressing against the counter as his eyes stayed on your face.

He hummed softly, looking down at the ingredients he had brought after asking rossi for a recipe he could use, the simplest the elder man had was given.

Spencer began by boiling the pasta, although you teased him about buying store brought pasta instead of making it yourselves like the recipe recommended, you had mixed opinions on it.

On one hand, the store brought pasta saved you both a lot of time and energy and probably mess, knowing if the two of you attempted to make it yourselves it would end up being a big mess and probably take about three different tries before you got it close to right.

On the other, heavier hand, your mind seemed clouded with the knowledge of how much sugar and fats were in store brought pasta, how processed it was seemed to take over the space in your mind. It was silly, you knew that deep down it was such a little thing and it didn’t make that much of a difference— to anyone else.

To you it was everything.

“I think the water is boiling” Spencer mumbled as he looked over the water in the pot, a laugh slipped through your lips as his half convinced voice pulled you from your mess of a mind. You walked towards where he was standing to look over the water in the pot that was in fact boiling.

“Well it’s bubbling and extremely hot.. so yes, I think you would be right” You nudged him slightly as he placed the pasta into the pot, your stomach clenched.

The two of you worked to cut vegetables together, in your mind you were working up the math of how many calories was in all of this combined, Spencer noticed your distracted glance, the way your mind seemed to be a hundred different places at once, anywhere but there with him.

He frowned, “What’s going through your head?” He asked softly, dropping his gaze back down to the zucchini he was cutting into thin slices, each one a different size to the other but he figured it didn’t matter.

You turned your head to look at him, aching at his question entirely. You wanted to tell him the thoughts running through your mind, the concern and doubt that had been consuming you for weeks but it all died on your tongue when his hands reached into the bag to bring out a jar sauce.

You hated the way that a stupid jar of sauce was what caused the most reaction from you, instead of answering his question your eyes widened and your head immediately was shaking. “We can’t use that.” You muttered.

He furrowed his eyebrows in confused and concern as he looked between you and the jar of sauce for a moment, wondering if maybe there was something you were allergic too or if this was the chance he had to confirm his idea of what had been going on with you.

“Why not?” He quizzed.

You huffed out, hands stilling on the knife and tomato you were cutting, before the knife was placed on the cutting board and you were reaching out for a tea down to wipe your hands. “We just- We can’t.” You settled on.

He raised his eyebrow, placing the jar on the table. Spencer wasn’t stupid, not in the slightest, although he knew pushing on this was either the smartest or dumbest thing he could possibly do in this situation.

“But why?” He pushed anyways.

You dragged your hands through your hair, “Do you know how much sugar is in that? Thats like so insanely processed and unhealthy..” You muttered out.

It all kind of settled in for Spencer in that moment, he had known you for years, you were never a crazy health freak. He had seen the signs come and go over the last few years but they were always subtle enough, until more recently, they came and they just didn’t seem to go.

“Does that bother you?” He challenged quietly.

You could see it in his eyes and feel it in the air that he exhaled that seemed to fill the space between the two of you, he knew.

“Yes- Spencer. Obviously it bothers me or else I wouldn’t tell you we couldn’t use it.” You stated, obviously growing frustrated. Spencer would normally double down at this point, not wanting to argue but he knew you, he knew this. There was no real other way to get you to break.

If he approached it softly, you’d deny it. He tried that before.

“Why? Why does it bother you?” He asked, raising his eyebrow. His tone was still laced with concern and slight challenge. It made your stomach tense and your arms line with goosebumps.

“Spencer seriously” You mumbled out, looking up at him, “Just drop it.” You sighed out, “Use the sauce- but I’m not eating it.”

He hummed, of course he wasn’t going to use the sauce if you had a real issue with it. He knew you had a real issue with it. Obviously. “Just tell me what’s wrong. Tell me why you aren’t eating” He pushed lightly.

“I am eating.” You huffed out, dragging your hands down your face.

He just hummed again, obviously disinterested in hearing your weak arguments and defence. “I know you’re not, I just don’t know why.” He argued back, he wasn’t going to drop this, not when it was something so concerning to your health.

“Spencer” You tone was a warning he chose to ignore. You could feel the tears burning their way behind your eyes and the tingle in the bridge of your nose which gave you enough of a warning of how this was going to go.

“Talk to me, sweet girl. I want to help you, let me help you.” He said breathlessly, his tone much softer than it had been previously, he stepped close to you, hands reaching out to grab onto your wrists. His fingers dug gently into the pressure point of your wrists, you’d die before you’d admit it helped regulate the emotions coursing through your body, even though it did.

You cursed his beautiful smart brain.

“I just- Cant.. I can’t eat.” You admitted, the tears now blurring your vision as the made way to the waterline of your eyes, your voice was shaky and cracked in every other syllable of your words.

His expression softened, he figured the words he wanted to say could wait. Instead his hands tugged you closer to him gently as he pulled your body flush against his. His hand cradling the back of your head as his fingers threaded through your hair to hold your head in place against his chest, his other hand resting on your upper back as he held you tightly.

Your arms instantly wrapped around his waist as your head found home in the fabric of his shirt over his chest, you chose to focus on the rhythmic beating of his heart rather than the thoughts that swarmed your mind, the doubt and the lack of focus all being forgotten for a moment as you melted in the feeling of Spencer’s arms.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He whispered softly into your hair after a moment, as his head rested on top of yours. The words making your heart skip a beat, and a sigh to pass through your lips, the tears continuing to roll down your cheeks.

You pulled back slightly in order to look up at him, voice shaky and quiet as you spoke. “It’s- Its not about that” You admitted. Sure you had days where you didn’t feel the greatest about yourself but that wasn’t the cause of your lack of eating.

He furrowed his eyebrows, leaning down to nudge his forehead against yours softly before leaning his head back, fingertips running gently over your scalp, soothingly. “Then what is it about?” He asked, genuinely wanting to understand.

You sighed, your hands leaving his waist to instead rest against his biceps as you lacked the words to explain your thought process. “I- I just-“ How were you suppose to put the million different thoughts running through your mind into simple words. “I don’t know how to— Say it”

He hummed, understanding. “Word blab, just say anything you feel, everything. It doesn’t have to make sense.. I’ll make sense of it. Im good at puzzles” He mumbled out the slight joke yet his tone was still soft and serious, you had to ignore the way your eyes threatened to roll playfully.

You were silent for a moment before another deep sigh left your parted lips, eyes moving away from his as the words left your mouth in a ramble;

“Its- Everything is so much— Like constantly so much and I feel like everything is moving so fast constantly.. I can’t breathe half the time— And work- god work, everything is happening; people are constantly getting hurt and dying, people are dying and theres nothing we can do about it ever— We can’t save everyone I know but I hate it - everything feels like a mess, im a mess and I just- The amount I eat.. and what I eat is the one thing I have control over; full control.”

The tears were flowing and your voice came out shaky and breathy. Along with a few hiccups that broke through the sobs that ruined the flow of your sentence as you blabbed out everything you couldn’t quite make sense of yourself.

Spencer frowned as he listened to you, taking in every word and every half finished sentence as you just broke down, he took in the way your voice broke and you ended up back against his chest in tears. He didn’t say anything for a moment as he instead held you tightly.

When he did speak, his voice was gentle and warm, like a big hug after a bad day. “I understand — As much as I can. I understand what you are saying. Its normal to want to control things especially when things feel so out of control around you.. But this isn’t a healthy way of coping with that feeling. And i know you know that, sweetheart.” His fingers smoothed out your hair.

You didn’t reply so he continued. “I know you feel like you are making yourself feel better, like you have control over the amount your eating but this is how a cycle starts and I’m pretty sure you also know that, since i am almost positive this isn’t the first time this has happened— Am I right to think that?” he asked softly.

Your breath shook as you nodded into the fabric of his shirt. He hummed in response. He knew that — he had seen it before.

“So you know that when it gets to a certain point you are no longer actually in control of it, instead you actually have the least amount of control. Eating disorders are like an addiction and a disease.. It takes control of you before you even realise it’s happening — and then you actually have less control than you did originally.”

You huffed out as you leant away from his chest to take a deep breath and meet his eyes. You knew he was right, but it made your chest ache to hear aloud. To be told so directly the thought you tried to ignore.

“I just- Everything is a mess.” You mumbled. He nodded.

“Everything is a mess.. But it doesn’t have to stay that way you know? Theres ways to cope with when things feel a little too messy around you, and little too messy up here” He mumbled as his hand came to tap gently against the side of your head. “Theres other things you can control that don’t put your health at risk”

You let a little smile break way onto your lips. It was hard not to smile at the sound of his sweet gentle voice he had reserved for sensitive moments like this. You hummed, shaking your head slightly.

“You’ll help?” You asked softly, looking up at him.

He nodded immediately, “Everyday.” He promised silently, moving down to press his forehead slightly against yours, offering you a small smile.

You returned it, “Thank you.” You breathed out quietly. You knew this wouldn’t be an easy process, you knew it would be a lot of back and forth and take a lot out of you. You would have to rewire the way your brain chose to cope — but—

“Don’t thank me, Sweet girl. Thank you, for trusting me. We can fix this up yeah? Get your pretty mind better, huh?”

— it all seemed a little bit lighter knowing Spencer would be there along the way.

[takeurexam]

guard down, because im safe around you

-sylus x gen! reader

>sylus is usually known for his cold demanour, his deal-addict dealings and being the leader of onychinus. he's known having his guard all the time, but when he meets you under the moonlight with fireworks, its as if he's a whole another person.

a/n: this can be mc or not :) i didnt think of mc, but if you want to, then sure

-inspired by nightplumes sylus like i love him that card is so good, and sorry if hes a little ooc

After your return to Linkon from the N109 zone, it feels awfully weird not seeing the dark skies, or the redish hue around the place. Linkon was... bright, compared to the N109 zone.

And you cant help but remember the oh-so annoying leader of Onychinus. You even feel yourself roll your eyes everytime you think of that man, although he was pretty much fine- he was annoying.

But you felt awfully bothered without him. You felt that the world lacked a little without the leader of onychinus teasing you, or making deals with you or some other people.

Well, he wasn't the only teasing man known to man, or unfazed.. and cocky, along with overpowered... but why was it that he felt different if you looked for someone like him? There were a lot like him in Linkon, yet he's the only one you wish to meet.

"Hey, you okay?" Tara bumps your shoulder as you stood there by the coffee machine, "You've been staring at the machine for like... two minutes straight." She tilts her head, with concern on her face.

"Huh? Oh yeah. Im fine." You honestly hope you were, because you dont wanna even think about the man anymore who scrambled across your thoughts.

"Sure? Well, see you." She shrugs and skips away from you as you blink into reality, remembering you still had work to do for the afternoon.

You sit down your desk, scrolling down your computer to see Linkon's latest news, chirping into the articles. A few more hours of work to go, then.

"Take a break." Tara nudges you, "Im gonna head over to the snack bar, you should get some air at the balcony." She points towards the snack bar, as you nod at her suggestion.

"Sure, eat well." You wave to her while she walks away. You prepare to stand up, along with a stretch and a yawn as you bring your phone and some snack to relax at the balcony for a while.

You make your way to the balcony; you push open the door to the balcony to reveal a snowy balcony with snow still pouring from the sky. You hug your coat tightly as you head over to the rails and admire the view.

The view was just the dark nights of Linkon, with the white snow dropping all around the bright city. You take a bite of your snack as you admire the view, taking in some fresh air, and not some from the office.

A caw suddenly interrupted your moment, as you see a familliar bird.. or crow, clawed over at the rails, staring at you.

"Mephisto?" You tilt your head, as you look at the mechanical bird, "Why are you here?" You touch it to confirm if it really is the mechanical crow, which indeed, it was.

"Sylus probably sent you out for an errand. You probably just noticed me over this balcony." Chuckling to yourself, you were reminded of the man you just mentioned.

You look over to the crow, "Its nice having company. Even atleast if you're a mechanical crow, its still quite comforting somehow."

The crow just caws as its head tilts, keeping its eye on you.

"I wonder, how is Sylus doing?" You stare back into the city view, "Its been a while since i've returned to Linkon. I haven't talked to Sylus in a while, which oddly feels weird." You start mumbling out.

"Its as if a part of me is still used to the N109 zone." You chuckle, "Im speaking nonsense now." You look over to the crow, "I'll be heading back in, Mephisto. Continue your errand." You walk away, but you dont forget to wave goodbye to the crow.

The time was currently 9:00pm, and you did your weekly overtime today. It was quite a tiring day, and you still had to drive your way home, despite being tired.

You grip the wheel of your car, as you start the engine; your phone suddenly rings unusually. But once you read the name, you dont hesitate any longer as you answer the call.

"Sweetie." There he was. The person your heart somehow missed- the one who your mind declined yet your heart was accepting, the Leader of Onychinus. His deep voice lingered around your ear.

"Sylus? Its about nine, what do you need?" You reply, gripping your phone in your hand.

"Meet me at the city lake." He suddenly announces, as your heart beats, "Huh?" You keep your voice normal, pretending that your heart was drumming hundreds per second.

"I thought a part of you missed me?" He chuckles against the phone, as you feel yourself go red, "No I dont- it was the N109 zone-" You pause. "How do you know I said something like that? Wait no-" You stumble with your words, with Sylus just laughing at you.

"Just go, Sweetie."

So here you were, driving 70km as you drove over to the designated location Sylus requested for you two to meet. Its as if you were late to work, and you drove so fast than you usually would, just for Sylus.

You find somewhere to park the car, as you notice his motorcycle parked nearby, which indicated that he was just somewhere close to you.

And there he was, his back facing you as he leaned over to the rails nearby the lake, he was wearing a brown coat which fit him perfectly.

His white hair was full of snow, which you let out a quiet snicker.

You approach him as he notices your prescence; oddly, you notice him flinch a little, which you assume his guard was down.

"You're fast." He comments along with a chuckle, as he adds, "There was a firework show in Linkon today, Luke and Kieran told me, and I suppose I needed a break." He looks at the sky.

"Did Mephisto tell you?" You cross your arms, he laughs, "I watch Mephisto fifty percent of my time. Of course, it would not go unnoticed that it saw a beauty like you, sweetie." There he is again, with his teasing.

"I didn't know there was a show today." You mumble, as you watch the sky in anticipation, "I've been so drowned lately." You sigh, breathing in the nice cold air.

As you anticipated, the fireworks suddenly erupted into the sky as you watch them, with your eyes sparkling.

Sylus dosent even bother to look at the sparkling fireworks. Why would he look at something else thats bright, when the brightest thing he could see was you?

When he notices you about to look back at him, he looks back into the sky, diverting his gaze from you.

"You really are dedicated." You giggle, as you notice the snow again on his hair, "Let me remove the snow on your hair." He smirks, leaning closer to you with his eyes closed.

Your mittens brush the snow from his hair, as he smiled with his eyes closed softly.

"Done!" You pull away as he does so too. He looks at you silently, a smile plastered around his face. "You could've just told me that you missed me, Sweetie." He brings up the balcony topic once again, as you feel your ears go red again.

"I dont miss you." You look away, embarassed.

"But I do." He blurts out.

You feel yourself slowly turn back to him, with your eyes widened, with his oh-so looking geniune smile around his lips. You feel your heart beating loudly that it would soon explode from your ears, and you feel your face fight the cold as you heat up.

"The N109 zone feels a little empty with you," He mumbles, awfully quiet. "I dont like feeling empty." He walks over closer to you, leaning towards you.

"So, let us fill that gap, right now." He leans closer to you as he presses his lips onto yours, snaking his hands over your waist, feeling your warmth.

You dont even process anything anymore except for his lips on yours, as you close your wide eyes, engulfing yourself into his lips, feeling the warmth of his lips cover yours.

Your arms wrap around his neck, as he deepens in further. The fireworks pop up once again, as two people stand under it, sharing their moment together.

bonus:

"What a nice kiss shared by those two." Captain Jenna, Xavier and Tara watch from the side, turning their gaze from the fireworks to the couple nearby.

"If only _____ was here. What a shame." Xavier crosses his arms.

"Wait."

The three pause, looking at the couple.

a/n: i usually write txt but i love this man so much bro 🙏 anyways, hope you guys enjoyed <3

see you soon, @takeurexam

[moviecritc]

hii could you write something about lestappen x reader? maybe taking care of max because he is sick? thank you 💕

sick days ⋆ lestappen

pairing: lestappen x reader

summary: after going on a long run in the morning, max ends up sick, but he doesn't accept it

word count: 1.5K

a/n: ok im in love with this, if you guys have more lestappen requests do them!! bc i love writing em <3

english is not my first language, sorry for the mistakes and poor storytelling.

masterlist | wattpad | letterboxd

Another day, Charles and you woke up feeling the absence of a body in your bed.

"Has he gone out for a run again?" you asked as you approached Charles's bare torso.

"I think so," he nodded, his voice sleepy. You leaned against Charles's chest to see the clock on the nightstand, eliciting a groan from one of your boyfriends.

"It's seven in the morning," you said, almost in a groan yourself.

You collapsed onto the bed, planting a kiss where your hand had rested before. You stretched out, and Charles slipped out of bed, putting on one of Max's Red Bull t-shirts. Before leaving the room, he kissed you on the forehead and then on your bare collarbone. You stayed in bed a little longer, dozing off while Charles prepared breakfast, as he did every morning. The winter break was your favorite time of the year. After being stressed all season with work, going back and forth, and spending weeks without seeing them, these months were the best gift.

Your days revolved around having breakfast together when Max returned from his run. Then, you would make love leisurely and shower together. If you felt like it, you would go shopping or play paddle tennis, then return home to cook together. The boys would then train in the sim or at the gym, and you would usually go for a walk with your friends or even train with them. Although when that happened, it often ended up in a long cardio session in bed. And to end the day, you would go out for dinner at some fancy place in Monaco and then drink and dance at a club.

That morning, Max took a little longer to arrive, but when he walked in, it seemed like a cold smoke followed him. It was mid-December, and it had been a cold winter in Monaco.

Max entered the kitchen and kissed Charles and then you. You noticed his outfit. "Aren't you cold, love?" You looked him up and down, with his short shorts and tank top clinging to his body from the cold sweat.

"Nah," he denied, brushing it off and wiping the sweat from his forehead.

You didn't think much of it until you went to open the window in your room and received a gust of cold air from outside. You were attentive to your boyfriend's behavior for the rest of the day, noticing how he had sneezed several times in the last hour or how, after the shower, he seemed even more tired than usual.

At noon, while Charles was preparing pasta for lunch, you went to Max, who was lying on the couch.

"How are you, love?" You sat next to him, intertwining your arm with his, and noticed - or rather heard - as Max sniffed his nose.

"Fine, why'd you ask?" Max furrowed his brow, feigning confusion.

"Oh, no reason," you shrugged, running a hand through his hair. "I just notice you seem tired."

Charles had an ear on the conversation, also noticing that Max was probably brewing something and hadn't mentioned it for some stereotypical nonsense he thought.

"No, no. Don't worry, schat," Max assured. "I'll go help you now."

He leaned in to kiss you, but at that moment, he started coughing heavily. You let out a sweet laugh and went over to Charles.

"Char, I think our Max is getting sick," you nodded, while Charles put an arm around your waist.

"It can't be!" Charles exclaimed, pretending to be surprised.

"No!" Max jumped in immediately, stood up, and practically ran towards them, swaying a little. "I'm not getting sick."

Max let out a heavy breath and leaned on the counter, catching his breath that he had lost in the four steps he had taken.

"I see," Charles commented, walking past him and giving him a gentle pat on the butt.

"Max, why don't you go lie on the couch? We'll take care of this," you suggested with a comforting smile.

Max rolled his eyes in a very exaggerated way and crossed his arms as you and Charles looked at each other and smiled knowingly.

"I'm going to the sim, I can see I'm not wanted here," he said, with a somewhat sad look.

When Max left, Charles and you looked at each other. "Is he mad?" you asked, leaning on Charles's shoulder and hugging him from behind while he cooked.

"Nah, he just thinks he's the strong one in the relationship," He gave you a soft kiss on the forehead.

In all the time you had been together, you had never seen Max weak. You had seen Charles cry and complain countless times over any little thing. But Max? That man seemed like a piece of iron when it came to feelings. He hadn't even cried at the end of How To Train Your Dragon, and although to some extent the image of a strong guy and the pillar of the relationship was fine, you were dying to see his softer side.

Twenty minutes later, Charles had finished cooking the pasta, and you went to the room where the sim set was.

"Charles, come see this," you called. He came immediately, finding Max totally asleep in the chair, with the car crashed in the first curve of the Monaco Grand Prix.

"Do we wake him up?" Charles whispered, looking at him lovingly.

"Wait," You approached him carefully, taking a picture of him. "Okay, wake him up," you smiled.

Charles began to leave soft kisses on Max's cheek and lips, even lightly biting his earlobe. The sleeping man let out a loud gasp and practically jumped up from the chair.

"Hey, easy, easy," Charles said, putting his hands on his shoulders.

"How you doing, sleeping beauty?" you said.

"I wasn't sleeping,"

"Oh, sure not," Charles said, with a little smile. "Wanna come eat with us?"

"Yeah, just give me a minute," Max nodded, stifling a yawn.

Both Charles and you heard him blowing his nose for almost two minutes straight. Max appeared in the living room, trying to pretend he was fine, but his reddened nose gave him away.

He helped set the table. "What are we going to do this afternoon?" the blonde asked before blowing his nose.

Charles and you exchanged glances, knowing that if you didn't do anything, Max would keep insisting he was perfectly fine.

"I don't feel like going out today," you commented calmly.

"Yeah, me neither," Charles agreed.

Both saw the look of relief on Max's face. "Oh, okay. Well, nothing then," he pretended.

"We can watch a movie," you suggested, shrugging.

After lunch, you cuddled up on the couch, and you chose the movie. You noticed Max moving closer to you, resting his head on your shoulder, which was usually the other way around. Towards the end of the movie, you heard Max sniffling repeatedly, and you didn't even consider that they could be tears until you saw Max wiping his face.

You glanced at him. "Are you crying?"

"No…" Max muttered with a thin voice.

Charles looked at them. "You're crying!" he exclaimed, and quickly changed positions, with Max now in the middle.

"It's just… he found someone who loves him," he said between tears, pointing at the TV. "Like I love you guys."

Charles and you looked at each other with a pout, immediately showering him with kisses. You were watching Shrek.

"Wait, wait, I don't wanna get you sick," Max said, denying the kisses.

Charles backed off a bit in surprise. "Are you admitting you're sick?"

"Of course I'm sick, look at me,"

They chuckled a little, and you got up to get some cough syrup and ibuprofen for your boyfriend, finally. It barely took a minute, but when you returned, Max was lying on Charles's chest while he stroked his hair.

"Did he fall asleep again?" you whispered.

"I think so, come here," Charles stretched out his hand, and you wrinkled your nose a bit.

"I don't want to wake him up,"

Charles rolled his eyes. "Come here, mon ange," he repeated.

You stretched out on the couch, under Charles's arm and covering Max with a blanket. From where you were, you could see Max sleeping perfectly.

"It's so cute to see him like this," you whispered to Charles, while he gave you kisses on your jaw and ear.

"Isn't it?" Charles agreed. "And get ready for tomorrow because he's going to be clingier than ever."

"It's like he's been waiting for this moment all my life," you said, with a radiant smile.

Charles chuckled slightly, causing Max to move a bit, letting out a moan and falling back asleep immediately.

[cranberryjuice-posts]

- possession -

Pairings - Clarisse La Rue x fem! Hekate! Reader

Synopsis- you sick of people underestimating your relationship with clarisse

Tw - slightly suggestive, not smutty just heavy make-out

An - im currently working on another clarisse request but I got this idea and had to write it

You were tired. You heard the rumors from people.

‘Why is Clarisse dating a Hekate Girl? She’s probably only staying with her to not get cursed’

‘A Hekate kid— really I hear that their creepy poor clarisse must be scared’

‘ I hear that the only reason clairsse is with her is to have better chance at winning at capture the flag’

All the rumors were starting to piss you off. You weren’t holding clarisse hostage, she definitely wasn’t scared and you weren’t threatening to curse your girlfriend.

“Common? really babe your seriously upset over those stupid rumors” clarisse laughed trying to dismiss your insecurity. Putting your shirt on you glared back at her, upset mainly because she ruined the intimate moment ignoring her frown at the lost of your in your bra.

“Yes I’m upset over them, you do realize it’s not as easy here for me then for you. You have the reputation of being an ares kid, and also to add your a cabin counselor.”

“And you have the reputation of being my girlfriend and a strong ass witch so I really don’t see what the problem is”

Going to standup clarisse grabbed your waist pulling you back down onto the bed. Yelping from surprise, you turned and hit her softly on the shoulder. She leaned up kissing your neck softly. “You know I didn’t mean it like that” she muttered against your skin.

You rolled your eyes while leaning back into her shifting some to better face the stronger girl. “You have a shitty way with words” running a hand up her body, taking in her Nike sports bra and camp pj pants.

“I still try though” she smiled kissing you once again.

——

You stood in front of a mirror in the Aphrodite cabin, looking at your outfit you shifted the shirt off your shoulder to better suit your outfit.

Silena walked up behind you grabbing your waist making you jump. Laughing at your reaction she hugged you, looking over your shoulder. “You Look Perfect Why Are You Pressuring over your outfit”

Your silence spoke volumes. “Clarisse told me about the rumors, everyone who says them are just jealous” with that silena kissed your cheek “Common hot shot, bonfire is waiting for us”she chuckled before leaving the cabin.

Letting out a deep sigh you followed the raven haired girls lead. Walking towards the campfire you stopped, looking around for your girlfriend.

Catching you eye you saw Kira one of the other Aphrodite girls being just a little to touchy with clarisse.

—

“I’m serious how pretty do you think I am~” Kira flirted, placing her hand on clarisses shoulder while letting her other graze her body.

“Again I have a girlfriend” she grumbled taking Kira’s hands off of her, throwing them aside she stepped back some to create space. “Forget about her, we both know you’d much prefer me— I mean not to gloat but a daughter of Aphrodite versus a Daughter of Hekate.. it’s hardly a competition”

“First of all—“. Clarisses insult briefly interupted by you Pushing her back, pulling her into a kiss. Tangling a hand into her curly hair you forced the kiss deeper.

Parting only for a second you kissed her once more. Clarisse who had a shit eating grin placed her hands on your hips while pressing your bottom half against hers.

Pulling back you looked over to the now angry Kira. “Sorry didn’t see you there” You looked her up and down with a face of disgust, not letting her respond you grabbed clarisses Hand dragging her towards the ares cabin.

Once Inside you pressed clarisse against the door quickly pulling her into a kiss. Hands gliding under her shirt you gently rubbed her toned stomach.

Her body flinched in response, clarisses hands going straight for your thighs. Bringing one of your legs to her side. She tilted her head while sliding her tongue into your mouth.

Pulling away abruptly slightly pushing clarisse back into the door you scoffed. “Flirting? With an Aphrodite kid low blow”

“Don’t be like that I wasn’t flirting with her” she rolled her eyes walking up behind you.

You however were going to be like that. “Yeah Well how it looked to me You Sure as hell was”

walking towards the mirror in the cabin you leaned forward, fixing your makeup you felt clarisse place her Hands on your hips while leaning in to kiss your neck. She muttered something into your skin making you turn around to lightly hit her arm.

Clarisse grabbed your hand with a smile, turning you around and kissing you while pressing your body against hers. “Have I ever told you.. how hot it is when you get jealous”

“Your a bitch”

“Maybe” she sarcastically responded kissing you once again. Giving into her you chuckled giving her a slight groan. “You are so full of yourself” you panted against her lips.

“I’ve been told worse” she chuckled.