#well there's one way to fix that... ◉⁠‿⁠◉

[dedalvs]

Today is my 44th birthday. I was brought to my mother’s arms as Ronald Reagan was being sworn in and then went to the airport to welcome the Iranian hostages home—a meeting we now know was pre-arranged, as Reagan’s team negotiated to keep the hostages in captivity a little bit longer just so it could be Reagan, as opposed to Carter, who got the credit for releasing them.

Every four years my birthday falls on a US presidential inauguration. Some of those days are good; some are bad; some are terrible. Today is certainly one of the worst.

My birthday also sometimes falls on the day the US honors Martin Luther King, Jr.—or, when it doesn’t, always on a day very close to it. I always spend some time on my birthday thinking of him, too. Like all of us, he wasn’t perfect, but more and more what I think about regarding his legacy is how some of the things he said have been cherry-picked and stored like prize possessions in jeweled boxes for admiring every so often while the rest has been buried. MLK was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, of income inequality, and of capitalism. Of all things I remember the first time I heard anything by him about that was in college when I happened into a record store in San Francisco and heard one of his speeches (not the “I have a dream” speech) remixed in a song.

Often you will hear that you should focus on what you can control. This is true, when it comes to your own personal well being—your state of mind. I feel like there should be a balance, though. Sometimes your well being is well enough that you can spare the anguish that comes with worrying about the state of the world—the many injustices you can’t fix, either by yourself or right away. We need that to push us to actually fix these things, either in small individual ways or collectively, through both direct and indirect action.

Each of us at different times in or lives—or on a micro level, at different times of the week or year—goes in and out of phases where we must focus on self-care and phases where we can look outward. Today I hope we can treat ourselves and each other with a little kindness when it comes to recognizing where it is we need to be in a given moment. Looking around on social media, it may seem that some are always on—always fighting, always pushing for change—and some are always off—cat memes, shipping, fandom. But that’s nothing but a small window into a person. First, that’s simply how that person interacts with one social media platform; it’s not their entire life. Second, it may be that this is the place they come to unwind—or, alternatively, this is the only place in their life where they can share the rage inside of them. Whoever they are, however they are, let them be, and offer them kindness. It’s going to take all of us to fight back.

[reiding-writing]

Cold!reader who defends Spencer when’s someone’s making fun of his autistic traits, and the teams like “what?????”

STAGNANT — SPENCER REID!

why would someone ask spencer a question if they didn’t want to hear the answer?

spencer reid x cold!reader | 1.2k | fluff? | cold!reader masterlist.

main masterlist.

a/n — the cold!reader roster i have atm has me kicking my feet and twirling my hair, stay tuned

You step into the cramped precinct in a town that barely makes the map, the smell of stale coffee and old paper immediately hitting you.

The air hums with tension—murder cases tend to have that effect on a room. Your team disperses, each member diving into their respective tasks like clockwork.

You stay near Spencer, keeping an eye on the board he’s already scouring, his sharp mind undoubtedly miles ahead of everyone else’s.

It doesn’t take long for the local officers to start asking questions. You’ve seen it before: their curiosity morphing into disbelief as they’re confronted with Spencer Reid in full form.

This particular case involves a peculiar type of soil found on the victim’s shoes, and when one officer, a grizzled man named Officer Moore, offhandedly asks about its significance, Spencer lights up.

“It’s fascinating, actually,” he begins, his voice picking up with enthusiasm. “The soil contains traces of montmorillonite clay, which is common in areas with volcanic ash deposits. This specific type is unique to the western side of the county, and based on the composition—” He gestures to the samples bagged on the table, oblivious to the officer’s quickly fading interest.

Spencer continues, lost in his explanation, his words flowing like water over smooth stones. You watch the officer shift uncomfortably, his expression hardening into impatience. The moment Spencer pauses to breathe, Moore cuts in, looking at you with a smirk.

“Is he like this all the time? Never shuts up, huh?”

You freeze. The room, bustling moments ago, seems quieter now. Your team is too far off to hear, but you’re right here. Close enough to feel the sting of the comment.

Spencer doesn’t notice. Or maybe he pretends not to. Either way, it doesn’t sit right with you. The dismissive tone, the condescension dripping from the officer’s words—it sparks a heat under your skin that you don’t bother to hide.

“Are you stupid?” Your voice is sharp, like a knife scraping metal. Moore’s smug expression falters.

“Excuse me-?”

“You heard me,” you continue, stepping closer, your gaze fixed on him. “If you can’t keep up with what Dr. Reid is saying, that’s your problem. He’s giving you answers—solutions—that you clearly wouldn’t find on your own. So maybe try listening instead of running your mouth.”

Moore blinks, taken aback. His hand hovers near the cup of coffee on the table, forgotten. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah, you did.” you interrupt, crossing your arms. “And for the record, if he’s too much for you to handle, then stay out of his way, you’ll murk his IQ into single digits.”

The room is quiet now, the subtle hum of computers and distant voices the only sound. Spencer finally looks up, his expression unreadable. There’s a hint of surprise in his eyes, but mostly he just seems... confused.

Moore mutters something under his breath and stalks off, clearly not willing to press the issue further. Good. You watch him go, your blood still simmering.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Spencer says softly, his voice carrying a note of uncertainty.

“Yes, I did,” you reply without hesitation. “He was being a jerk.”

Spencer tilts his head, studying you. “People say things like that all the time.”

“Well, they shouldn’t,” you counter, your tone firm. “And if you wont put your foot down about it then I will.”

For a moment, he just stares at you, as if trying to decipher some hidden code in your words. Then, unexpectedly, he smiles—small and fleeting, but genuine. It feels like a victory, however minor.

—

Later, when the team regroups, the tension in the precinct has eased, though you can still feel a few lingering stares from the local officers.

Hotch gives you all the rundown of the next steps, his voice steady and commanding as always. You nod along, but your focus drifts to Spencer, who’s scribbling something in his notebook, seemingly unbothered by the earlier incident.

As the team breaks off to get to work, Emily sidles up beside you, her dark eyes alight with curiosity. “So,” she begins, drawing out the word. “What was that about?”

“What was what about?” you reply, feigning ignorance.

“That little showdown with Officer Grumpy Pants earlier,” she says, smirking. “Word has it you tore him a new one,”

You shrug. “He was being disrespectful.”

Emily raises an eyebrow. “To Reid?”

“To all of us, honestly,” you say. “But yeah, mostly Reid. He didn’t deserve that.”

Emily studies you for a moment, her smirk softening into something more thoughtful. “Awe how sweet,”

“Don’t start,” you warn, but there’s no real bite to your words. Emily laughs, raising her hands in mock surrender.

“Hey, no judgment,” she says. “It’s just... very human of you.”

“I’m not a robot.”

She gestures vaguely toward you. “Oh hush you know what I mean,”

You roll your eyes but don’t bother arguing. Instead, you glance across the room at Spencer, who’s now deep in conversation with JJ and Rossi. The earlier exchange seems to have rolled off him, as if it never happened.

But you know better. You’ve seen the way comments like that stick, the way they fester in that moment f hesitation before he speaks. You’re not sure why it matters so much to you—why he matters so much—but you don’t dwell on it.

—

The case drags on into the evening, the pieces of the puzzle slowly falling into place. By the time the unsub is in custody and the team is preparing to head back to the jet, exhaustion hangs heavy in the air.

As you gather your things, Morgan claps a hand on your shoulder. “Hey, Ice Queen,” he says, his tone teasing. “You did good.”

“Thank you? I was doing my job.” you reply, shooting him a bemused look.

He chuckles. “Not with the case, sweetness. Word is you went full gladiator on one of the locals earlier.”

“Word travels way too fast in this team,” you mutter.

Morgan grins. “What can I say? We’re a nosy bunch. But it’s nice to know you haven’t lost your bite now you’re saddled up to boy wonder.”

He gestures with his head towards where Spencer was sleeping on the jet’s couch, wrapped in a cheap blanket like baby.

You fight back the urge to smile.

“I never changed,” you say dryly.

Morgan laughs, but there’s a glimmer of respect in his eyes. “Sure you did,”

“No I didn’t,”

He nudges your shoulder, a whisper of “You’ll admit it one day,” before he walks off.

[shouyuus]

Hiii, I’m the person screaming crying throwing up every time you post, love ur stuff!

Anyway… I’m thinking mechanic!vi prolonging the time it takes her to fix your car just cause she wants you coming around the shop more and then when she does eventually fix it she kinda worries you’re not gonna stay over at hers as often but u decide to ask her if u can move in or smth like this?!?

Idek tbh my brain is so fried from over consuming Vi content

all you have to do is stay

mentions of sex, but no explicit scenes, car mechanic!vi au oh she absolutely would; there's actually so much stupid domestic bliss in this wow

and sure, the hookup was good in the beginning, but she liked it when you came around, liked it when you'd show up at her shop, all shy and wide-eyed, asking her if you could watch, and who's she to turn down such a pretty girl, right? and honestly, she thought it was kinda cute, how you'd try your best to ask her about this or that, and she'd find herself rambling about her favorite kinds of pinon brackets, or talking you through a chassis restoration for another vintage car that was brought in.

it shouldn't take a whole-ass month to rig a crossflow radiator, especially since the rest of your car's actually in pretty good condition, but she keeps on picking out other things to do, insisting that she's already here anyway, sliding out from under the car with a crooked grin, asking you to pass her another cold beer.

but there's only so many things she can make up before it's obvious, even to you that there's not much else to do. so when the day comes, she's quieter than usual, tallying up the extensive list of repairs that she's both done and made up for herself to do (you'd insisted that you at least pay for the major ones, and if the smaller ones came with a dinner-date and dessert in bed afterwards... well.)

"and... i think that's all of it, sweets."

she hands you the receipt, immediately tucking her hands into the pockets of her light-wash jeans. her shoulders shrug up as you look down the list. it's way less than that she should be charging you for, but you peer up at her, frowning at the pinch between her brows and the tension clear in her muscles.

"vi? what's... wrong?"

"ah -- it's nothin' sweets, don't worry your pretty little head over it."

she teeters forwards and back, as if she can't decide if she wants to move closer or back away. but you're already reaching for her, closing the distance between you with your head cocked, your eyes bright and questioning. and she could never resist it when you looked at her like that, so toe-curlingly trusting. as if there wasn't a thing in the world she could do or say to drive you away or upset you.

sometimes, she'd lay awake and wonder if you knew how dangerous that kind of trust is -- how someone less scrupulous would take it and twist it into something foul. but she'd never let that happen -- at least not while you wanted her around.

"violet... we might not have known each other for very long but... you're not a very good liar," you say, reaching up to cup her cheeks, coaxing her eyes back to yours. she laughs -- it's a tiny, helpless sound; it shakes her open in a way that startles even her, the way her whole body wants to fold over you, into you.

"geez, sweets... that's... that's not really fair of you."

she lifts her hand to press them over yours, hands over hands, petaled around her cheeks, and it occurs to her that perhaps this is what it means to live up to her namesake -- violet. you'd said it was a beautiful name the first the she told you what vi stood for.

"you're not really fair either, vi... but that's never stopped you, has it?" you ask, a mischievous glint in your eyes, your lips twisted up on a fox-hole smile.

vi sucks in a breath. something feels like it's clawing up the length of her ribcage and burrowing through the hollows in her chest till she can taste it pitter-pattering at the back of her throat. it takes her a full three seconds to realize that it's her own traitorous heart, beating so strong she can taste it on her tongue.

"fuck."

and then she's kissing you, pulling you to her, fingers harsh and desperate, her touch lingering like month-old grease-stains the way they dig into your delicate skin. you gasp open for her, against her -- you let her tug you into her till there isn't a part of you she can't reach if she wanted to.

the kiss breaks like a dam bursting open, and a few seconds later, she's got you hoisted up on her workbench, wrenches and old receipts scattering to the floor as she slots herself easily between your legs. it's a familiar place to be, after all -- after all this time.

you hiss, fingers fisting in her hair; it's longer now, than when you first met. and she'd be lying if she said her letting it grow had nothing to do with your offhand comment once (over yet another impossible banana sundae) that you liked it long.

"vi -- vi -- please -- you --"

"hm? what is it, pretty girl?"

"you c-can't just try to distract me w-with sex every time --"

and she can't help the grin that hitches over her lips at the way your chest is heaving, your eyes blown dark, the way your thighs shake on either side of her hips. but she can see the flicker of worry in your eyes and her stomach twists with uncertainty.

"i -- i don't --" she tries, but a breath puffs out of her and she sags against you, "it's... just... now that the repairs are done... there's not really much reason for you to come around... and..."

at her words, you heave a sigh that seems much too big and weary for your body, pulling back to fix her with a surprisingly sharp look.

"you really thought i was coming around here to listen to you talk about my car repairs?"

vi does her level best not to pout; hearing you say it out loud, it does sound... a bit childish. instead, she leans forward and digs her nose into your neck, wrapping both arms around you till she's got you cocooned in her chest.

"what? you weren't interested in the new pressure washer i got just so i could get that really stubborn stain off your back bumper?"

you trail your fingers through her hair, letting your nails graze along her scalp. a shiver washes down the length of her back and you giggle close to her ear.

"sure i did... but you could talk about... dunno... your favorite dish rag, and i think i'd still wanna listen -- because i like listening to you talk about the stuff you like... because..." and its your turn to hesitate, her turn to pull back and fix you with a look -- one that's equal parts pleading and disbelieving.

"because what, pretty girl?" she asks, her voice low and husky, a thumb running across the round of your cheek.

"b-because i -- i like you, vi."

your eyes flicker away and color seeps into your cheeks like dye across clear water -- the shade blooming into you till vi's sure there's no color so beautiful as the one that you are now.

"mm... well, thank god for that cause..." she leans in to press her forehead to yours, "i was starting to wonder, what with all the multiple orgasms and midnight munch sessions and --" she laughs as you squawk indignantly at her, your eyes flashing wild and wide.

"t-that's not what i -- you know that's not --"

"oh? so you don't like those?" she asks, the tease now so obvious in her voice that you flush several shades darker. vi thinks she may have to amend her previous decision on her favorite shade of you. and you're outdoing yourself today.

she lets her free hand wander to the bend of your hips and she gives you a squeeze.

"i --" you steady yourself in the solidness of her, reaching down to lace your hands with hers, "of course i -- i like those things too but i -- i like that you're the one doing them to me and --" you swallow; vi tries not to be to distracted by the hummingbird flutter of your pulse as you struggle to find the words, even though both of you know full well by now exactly what you're trying to say --

sometimes, just sometimes, words speak just as loud as words need to. and the actions are just there to back them up.

sometimes, there are certain things that people just want to -- or need to -- hear said out loud.

"i -- i wanna come over even when there's nothing for you to fix... i..." you steady your breathing and vi nearly drowns in the certainty that settles between the pair of you, an ocean full of of unsaid words (the ones that don't need to be said to be understood), drifting like sunlight over shifting waves -- their brightness made no less real by their shimmering reflections in the water, "i guess i just... wanna be wherever you are. like... all the time."

vi's eyebrows hitch; her breath follows shortly after.

"all the time?"

you bite down on your lips, "yeah but... i know it's only been like... a month or whatever --"

"no, no god -- sweets, i -- i want that too -- more than anything -- it's just --" she motions at the shop, and you nod, catching her hand in yours mid-air.

"it doesn't have to be right now," you say, smiling and giving both her hands a firm squeeze.

"yeah?" she asks, a rare quiver to the shape of her voice.

you nod, "yeah." and your voice is just as solid as she needs it to be. you lean in to kiss her, and she sighs open against you, as you've done so many times for her.

"we'll -- we'll make it work," you say, in between harsh, nipping kisses, even as vi groans and trails her mouth along the line of your jaw. you gasp, letting your head tip back, "w-we'll t-take it s-s-slow -- mmngh -- vi!"

vi hums as she sucks a dark hickey into the side of your neck, feeling savage wanting plume open in her chest. she looks back up at you with darkening eyes and a hunter's smile.

"dunno if i know how to take it slow, sweets --"

"w-what about all those t-times you told me t-to wait --" you keen high in the back of your throat as she drops to pillow her cheek to your thigh, flipping up the bottom of your skirt to dig her nose into the damp triangle of your panties.

vi scoffs, rolling her eyes as she glances back up at you with a playful smirk.

"oh fuck you."

you lick your lips, reaching down to sink your fingers into her hair again, pulling just hard enough for the an ache to gather in her belly.

"thought that's what you were trying to do."

vi stands up, pulling you bodily forward till your ankles are linked at the small of her back, her palms holding up the plush of your ass as she walks the pair of you back into the house and up the thin flight of stairs to her room.

it's a good few hours before either of you are coherent enough to talk about any of this again, but by the time you are, the twilight is budding along the far horizon, and vander's texting to ask vi if he should pick anything up on the way back from the bar for dinner.

"you wanna stay for dinner?" vi asks, twisting to glance at you in bed, her face illuminated by the digital blue of her phone.

your pillow your cheek on your hand, "yeah, i'd love to."

"cool, what do you want?" she asks, her eyes turning back to her phone.

you lick your lips, "how about... you ask vander to pick up some tomatoes? i can make one of my grandma's old soup recipes. you have potatoes and cabbage right? and... i think i saw some pork bones in the freezer the last time i was here."

you cast your eyes up at the ceiling, ticking through a mental list of ingredients.

you only turn to shoot vi a glance when you realize that you can no longer hear the rapid pik-pik-pik of her fingers on her phone.

she's staring at you with what could only be called wonder in the halfway dark.

"you... remember what's in our fridge?"

"well i -- there's not much in there --" you say, almost indignantly.

she laughs, shaking her head, "no, it's just -- i didn't think you'd ever notice something like that, i mean, pardon me for thinking that you've never set foot in a kitchen in your entire life, what with you being daddy's little princess and all," she goads, nudging you with an elbow even as you squirm away from her, pouting.

"i'll have you know that i'm actually a really good cook, okay?" you tell her, "when -- when i was little, and my grandma lived with us, i'd help her in the kitchen all the time. and... after she got too old to make stuff... i was the one who cooked for her, because she said it tasted like stuff she'd eat in her childhood so..."

vi shuffles closer to you under the blankets, nuzzling her nose into your cheek.

"and just when i thought you couldn't get more perfect," she murmurs, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

you giggle, allowing yourself to be tugged back into her chest.

"i told vander to pick up tomatoes... and to invite silco and everyone else he can round up over for dinner."

you squeak, shooting up, "what?!"

vi grins, pushing up with a soft yawn, "you can't just tell me that you've got grandma-level cooking skills and not expect me to invite my whole entire family, right?"

you tumble out of bed, nearly tripping over your panties, still caught around your ankles. you pull them up, scrambling for one of vi's big shirts to toss over your body as she watches you from the bed with an indulgent smile before swinging her legs off and standing up to pull you back into her chest.

"calm down, sweets -- i'll help you, kay? now, tell me what you need."

you nod, pulling on a pair of her jogging shorts and twisting your hair into a haphazard bun out of your face as you start listing off ingredients, hopping the last two steps onto the first floor landing and fluttering into the kitchen.

by the time vi rounds the doorway, it's to find you with vander's massive apron already tied around your waist, an several pots and pans stacked on the countertop.

"i need three onions, and a head of garlic and... a few bay leaves, if you have them. it's okay if you don't --"

vi fights back a grin (it's a losing battle, she thinks, but it's one that she's considering losing for the rest of her goddamn life if it meant doing this every day with you).

"sure, sweets -- whatever you need."

you nod, rolling up the sleeves of your shirt as you set to work peeling the potatoes. a few second later, vi pops up from the fridge, frowning.

"looks like we've only got one onion, but i found some shallots... not sure how good they are though... they were kinda shoved into the back." she holds up the bag with a grimace.

you blink at her, and for a moment, vi thinks that you're going to be angry, or at least a bit frustrated. but then, your face breaks into a sweet, helpless sort of smile, and you reach out to take the shallots from her.

"it's okay," you say, in a voice that sounds just a little too much like coming home, and vi has to swallow passed the peach-pit suddenly caught in her throat.

your fingers brush against hers as you point her towards the half-peeled potatoes, and she gets to work without you even having to ask.

you lean up onto your tiptoes and press a kiss to her cheek, your eyes bright as fallen stars when she turns to look at you.

"it's okay," you repeat, smiling up at her with that smile that just might rhyme with forever, "we'll make it work, okay?"

vi licks her lips; there's an entire ocean of saltwater words caught behind the tombstones of her teeth that she does not know how to say. but she thinks, as she looks at you and you turn back to fussing over the one onion and handful of shallots, that you probably know it all anyway.

"okay," she says, before turning back to the diligent work of peeling the potatoes.

[celestiamour]

‧₊˚✧ ❛[ we're doing better ]❜

ft. the salesman (gong ji-cheol) x f! reader — squid game

╰₊✧ your husband has finally been honest with you, but what now?┊3.0k words; prt one (here)

contains: his pov, lots of perspective and lore, love at first sight, happy ending where the reader forgives him, note that sociopathic/psychopathic behavior has no known cure & that this is unrealistic fiction, he can’t be fixed but he can be here <3

➤ author's note: the long-awaited & heavily-requested part two!! the ending is sucky because i didn’t plan to write a part two and because i personally wouldn’t have forgiven him, but lots of you guys seemed to want to. i wanted to write something exploring their relationship, so i hope this is received well & that you guys will enjoy!

“i love you too, i’ll be back in the morning” were the last words you said to him before rushing out the door and disappearing to your mother’s house. that was last night, but it was now early evening with the sun finishing its descent over the horizon and you were nowhere to be seen. he briefly wondered if you were also watching it from wherever you were like he was through the window, knowing that you adored the beautiful array of colors blending into each other and always pointed it out when you were with him. he never cared for it himself and took the sight for granted until you came along. now he’s aching for your presence asking him if he thought it was pretty when you were always the prettiest sight in his eyes with the orange light reflecting on you.

his hand was itching to call you or send a text, but he decided against it. you needed your space, especially after that fateful conversation which left him with regret weighing heavy on his chest. he wasn’t sure what the regret stemmed from, if it was regret from not trying harder to keep his secret, if it was from not being more careful to hide his tracks from seong gi-hun, if it was from attempting to build a normal life, or if it was leading the type of life had in the first place. it was a mix of everything, and he hated the feeling of it.

gong ji-cheol never regretted anything in his life. he didn’t regret spending his days getting a sadistic kick out of playing judge and jury to people he viewed as worthless trash when they lost against him, whether it was slapping people he was recruiting into games they would inevitably die in or spending his free time messing around with homeless people. he didn’t regret getting tangled up with the mysterious oh il-nam and the activities occurring on that island, starting as a guard and working his way up to a salesman. he didn’t regret firing a gun on his own father in cold blood when he unknowingly begged his own flesh and blood to spare him.

he’s a man who was steadfast and stubborn when it came to his fucked-up morals and ideals, always believing from a young age that it made him better than others. there was never a reason for him to change as he got older when he found himself working for a hidden organization that introduced him to the addicting taste of death, paid well, and protected him from the law if the unlikely situation of getting caught by authorities for his crimes ever happened. he never cared to do the right thing was doing wrong was just so much more suited to him, never minding the strict set of rules he had to adhere to as long as he was allowed to freely exercise his psychopathic tendencies without trouble following him. it made him feel like a god at times who was so high above normal people if he ignored that he was still an employee with a boss.

and now he’s sitting in the living room, disheveled and staring at the floor waiting for your return like a dog awaiting its master.

he couldn’t even be mad at you for storming out like that. he’s surprised about how mellow your reaction was to learning the truth of his occupation and how dirty the cash he used to spoil you was, how you didn’t scream loud enough for the neighbors to hear, and how you didn’t call the police— or maybe you had already called them at some point today and his friends in higher places were working to keep him safe. more than anything, he misses you, filled with a feeling of longing he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before.

at first, he was only trying to look normal. the people around him started to wonder why a man as tall and handsome as he with money that flowed in like water from an unknown source he kept secret was still single. when people wonder, they start to become nosy. he couldn’t have that if he wanted to keep up the lifestyle he had, so he started searching for someone suited to be his wife. 

to others, he seemed incredibly picky, never reaching out for a second date even once or even bothering to send a polite text saying he didn’t feel a connection. to him, he didn’t think he was picky enough. despite carefully combing through his options and sometimes even hiring private investigators to stalk them if needed, there was always something he missed which was a dealbreaker for him in a relationship: ignorance and stupidity, improper table manners when he reserved at a fine restaurant, running more than fifteen minutes late without traffic in the way, and most importantly for him, asking too many prying personal questions which weren’t relevant on the first date. yes, he understands that first dates are all about getting to know each other, no, he doesn’t find it necessary to talk about stupid things. although he would rather not say anything at all, he’s very particular about how quickly he shares information about himself with others and gets ticked off by anyone who tries too hard to learn more about it (he won’t admit it, but he also gets a bit threatened by it).

by the time the day his first date with you rolled around, he was ready for it to be his last before he lived out his life alone as originally planned. he lost his faith that he would find someone who lived up to his lofty expectations and received news that oh il-nam was dead. the next games were canceled to mourn the loss of the founder, and part of ji-cheol wondered if he should cancel the date as well to take the time to pay his respects. he didn’t think you would be the one and believed there wouldn’t be any difference whether or not he actually showed up.

yet there was something in him that refused to pick up the phone and make up an excuse. it was indescribable like a higher power making sure that he followed the path intended for him. he told himself it was nothing but not wanting to be rude when it was only half an hour before the arranged time and because he didn’t want to pay the cancellation fee, nothing more nothing less. he never cared before if he was thought of as rude to people he didn’t intend to keep in his life for long, and he had enough money to buy the entire place if he wanted to.

so what was his problem all of a sudden?

you showed up perfectly on time, a few seconds before the clock struck, looking beautiful. it’s not a word he uses often. pretty, maybe, but not beautiful, yet it was the first word that crossed his mind when you introduced yourself. he found himself enamored by your presence and everything about it from how you carried yourself to the subtle glitter eyeshadow that made your eyes sparkle to the dainty jewelry hanging around your neck, so enamored that he forgot to accept your outstretched hand and to get up to pull out your seat for you at first.

more than easy on the eyes, dressed appropriately, good table manners, well-educated, never pressing too hard on matters he clearly didn’t want to talk about, you were quickly checking off everything on his list as his partner— although what he was really looking for was to draw away suspicions and your likable personality made you perfect for the job, he could even see you as a companion. even if you were visibly nervous, he didn’t mind, your timidness was adorable actually, akin to a little bunny being fed by his hand.

when he finally got home, he realized he was still smiling when he’s usually constantly reminding himself to do so. he also realized that he lost track of time and came back a whopping two hours later than he expected.

it was history from there, gong ji-cheol, a man who saw other humans as unequal trash, had succumbed to love at first sight, which baffled him.

it made him remember a scene from his childhood, one where he asked his mother why she remained married to his deadbeat father after another night of him not showing up in favor of gambling and drinking instead of spending it with his own family. she embraced him with tears, once again reminding him of her own tale of love at first sight, and also telling him that when you’re so deep in love like she was, you’re willing to forgive them for anything.

he thought she was stupid for that. now he knows he’s truly just like his mother just like everyone said.

you were shy in the first steps of the relationship, quickly realizing that you had become a glorified sugar baby of sorts. he didn’t know how to express his affection through words nor did he have the extra time to spend with you during that time of the year, so he spoiled you with lavish gifts and wealth beyond your wildest dreams. any debts you might have were paid off, one of the nicest condos in korea was bought for you to move in together, your parent's retirement was paid off in full to allow them to stop working, and any other money-related issues were quickly covered by him. you could even quit your job if you wanted to, but you didn’t want to become too dependent on him and wouldn’t know what to do with all the extra time in your day.

it soon became clear there was a boundary not to be crossed, which was not to dig too much into his personal life. if he gave you a curt, general answer to your question, you were not to say anything more about the matter. no one you spoke to about this thought this was too strange, even when you were preparing to get married, because what was there to worry your pretty head about? you love him and he loves you, he was treating you better than a queen, and his wealth spread into your circle of people you cared about with friends getting luxury perfumes and parents getting first-class tickets to wherever they wanted. in a way, they didn’t want to ask any more questions if it meant angering him and possibly not having these things anymore.

you never liked it, but he never cared about it. they were just trivial things and he was perfectly fine with sharing what he had, or at least, that’s what he told you. it was mainly to ensure he was well-liked among them and no one would ever try to come between you.

the only people who ever did were a few snakes parading as your friends trying to steal him away from you, trying to seduce him, and getting too close for his comfort. you were too sweet to notice and always forgave it if you did, but he noticed their lingering eyes and was disgusted. it was the one time he allowed his mask to slip, calling them out for being human garbage with a polite smile on his face as they gasped in shock. if they tried to cry to you about how awful he was to them, he simply told you the truth and encouraged you to cut them off which you always did.

the garden he carefully cultivated of a normal domestic life was flourishing. you were so captivated by the colorful flowers he planted and the butterflies pollinating them that you didn’t notice how dirty his gloved hands were when ripping out anything that didn’t belong like weeds trying to sprout through the soil. he was always sure to take them off and discard them afterward, never daring to touch you with the sins of his life outside of you.

then you fell pregnant after months of trying, and while he was overjoyed at first with renovations in mind to turn one of the extra rooms into a nursery, there was an unease in him wondering if the child would turn out like him: a remorseless psychopath who would one day kill his own father as he did his. he would later by a few books about parenting, hoping that he could prevent that type of future.

time flew by and he hadn’t killed anyone in a while although he was still complicit in hundreds of deaths a year. his violent urges slowly calmed and his hand was only raised during ddakji matches, but even then, they were more gentle than before (which meant that they still stung and made their face swell up, but it was an improvement when in the past, he would sometimes hit them so hard that they could taste blood on their tongue). 

the effects of being a husband and soon-to-be father were changing who he was at his very core, but it didn’t change everything he’s already done.

he was stupid to think he could have such a picture-perfect life with the woman he loved after everything. for someone who meticulously plans out things down to each syllable of the words he spoke, he didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do once he was found out.

the law couldn’t touch him, but he didn’t care about the law, he cared about you and your unborn child. 

he ran his hand through his messy dark locks, sighing in frustration trying to think of a solution as he dug around the kitchen until he fished out an entire bottle of wine. he could manipulate himself out of this situation as he had done countless times before, he’s a snake with a forked silver tongue who could easily get his way just by flickering it, but the thought of lying to you again broke his once unfeeling heart. it would never be the same way again with your relationship tainted with distrust. the truth would have to come out eventually.

oh god, but what would he do without you? 

before he could begin to spiral for the fourth time that day about what would happen if you left him, the familiar sound of a keypad being pressed and the front door being unlocked. he froze in place, not expecting you to come back at that very moment— but he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. he wasn’t sure of anything, simply staring at you when you caught him hunched over the counter drinking straight from a bottle of wine and looking like a child whose mom just caught him sneaking a snack at two in the morning.

“oh god, i leave for a day and you’re already a wreck, what happened to the ji-cheol who’s always put together even when it’s raining?” you approached him casually, reaching up to mess around with his hair until he looked more like his usual self. there was an air of awkwardness you tried to hide and was successful for the most part, but he could read you easier than a book. you were nervous around him now, acting with slight fear and carefulness like you were inching around a predator, and even flinched when he hugged you to feel your presence and breathe in your scent. 

you hugged him back after a moment, looking up at him with your voice shaking, “if it’s really… that… then i understand it would be dangerous for you to tell me, so i won’t ask any more questions… i don’t… i don’t want to leave you and leave our child fatherless…”

if you were any other person in the world, he would have smirked at the fact that he didn’t need to bother trying to manipulate you into staying with him. he would have relished his control over you and how you came back in the end, free to continue killing and asking people to play a game with him to satisfy his sadistic desires. 

but you weren’t any other person in the world, you were his wife.

“you really forgive me? after knowing all that?”

“i guess love really does let you look past everything no matter how bad… at least you didn’t cheat on me as my friends suggested, that would be the real unforgivable offense…”

the topic of his occupation never came up again, but he made the choice to resign on account of it no longer fitting with his current lifestyle. the current frontman, who was an old friend of his, looked upon him fondly for his loyalty, thanked him for his service, and was even kind enough to use his connections to find him a new place to work. it was boring by his standards, but it paid well and wasn’t illegal, so he persevered. he now has plenty of things to tell you about his workplace, from the annoying co-worker who keeps showing him the most random unfunny things on the internet to how the coffee shop downstairs wasn’t half bad. mundane things that made you grin when he told you about his day, which was all that mattered to him.

you soon gave birth to a healthy baby girl with his eyes and your smile. the world became a lot brighter, even with all the sleepless nights of her crying and learning how to change diapers. she was a little joy born out of his love for you. 

finally, you’re both doing better, and he no longer has to hide himself away from you.

tag list!! @tric0rd / @solatiiium / @iloveragdollcats / @sugaremedy / @pear-1206 / @orangutanjazz / @boowiththegoo / @knoepfl / @miaasmf / @queenjang21 / @larissa-slays69 / @munch3025 / @qrstarz / @capital-koreasofia / @swiftieee4lifeee / @liliylikescats / @maryyyswift / @vaenys2 / @bane-y-zane / @dynaloy / @chunkzdeluluwife / @everyonelovestay / @tomhollandtoothbrush

there will not be a part three, thank you for reading!!

[eowynstwin]

peristalsis - ii.

selkie!soap x reader. depression. suicidal ideation. strangers to "lovers." . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

You sleep long enough that, when you wake up, you have enough energy to cry.

It’s a big one. The kind of cry that threatens to turn your throat out, with how hard you sob. Alone in the cottage, far away from anything resembling civilization, you wail like wounded animal, choking on your own tears and mucus, losing track of your body buried underneath the covers—

But it happens at a remove. You watch yourself implode from someplace deep inside, not entirely sure why it’s happening at all—but long past trying to figure it out.

This is how it’s been for a while. There’s nothing special about it anymore. Nothing urgent. Most of the time, you are a blank space of a person, a vacuum where joy or rage or fear should be, but occasionally some maelstrom or another kicks up to fill it in, and your only course of action is to ride it out until it ends.

You’ve stopped trying to fix it. And you’ve stopped hoping anyone else can, either.

So you cry, until at last, you’re empty again. Or you’re too tired to continue. The difference is negligible, but functionally irrelevant. Once it’s done, you get out of bed.

The pressure in the shower is as weak as Johnny reported, but the water is indeed warm when you turn it on; you stand naked under the flow, arms hanging at your sides.

The day stretches itself out before you with nothing to occupying it, just as you’d planned. Nothing to work towards; no effort to put forward. Nothing, thanks to your choice of locale, to feel guilty about not seeking out.

A day of peace and utter quiet.

Suddenly—violent banging, somewhere in the cottage. It startles you; you jump so sharply at the noise that you smack your wrist on the soap caddy attached to the shower wall. The banging comes again—annoyed, you realize with no little bemusement that someone is at the front door.

You wrap yourself in a towel and hobble out of the bathroom to answer it, a piece of your mind on your tongue, dart-shaped and ready to fly—

Of course it’s Johnny.

Johnny, big and burly in a sweater, kilt, and pelt once again, two paper cups balanced in one large hand and a grocery bag hanging from the other. Whose dark brows shoot up his forehead as his eyes travel with surprise, and blatant appreciation, down the dripping length your body.

“Well, good mornin’, bonnie,” he purrs.

“What,” you grunt. A cold breath of wind chooses that moment to force its way through the door, gasping across the shower water still running in rivulets from your hair to the rolled edge of your towel. Goosebumps erupt from your bare skin in millions of simultaneous pinpricks—you flinch bodily at the chill.

“Ah, hell’s bells, don’t just stand there,” Johnny says, following the wind. “It’s freezin,’ go on, let me get in, hurry.”

You let him step inside, for some reason, and he shuts the door behind him with the heel of his boot. He wastes no time after that, heading to the kitchen to set down his things.

“Brought breakfast!” he says cheerfully. “There’s this bakery on Barra I thought you’d like, fresh doughnuts and coffee. Dunno how you take yours, but there’s sugar in the pantry and cream in the fridge.”

“I don’t want breakfast,” you say.

“What? ‘Course you do. I’m no’ takin’ you seal-watchin’ on an empty stomach.”

He starts unpacking the grocery bag and setting things on the counter while your jaw hangs open. Several things occur to you to say—I never agreed to that and what the hell is wrong with you, for starters—but your stomach growls at him before you can. The aroma of fresh-baked pastry wafts through the kitchen when he opens one box, and he turns to grin at you, cheeks dimpling.

“Do you get dressed, bonnie,” he says. “It’ll still be here when y���get back.”

It is less polite than he perhaps intends it to be, given that his gaze travels appreciatively across your bare shoulders. You cross your arms fruitlessly over your chest and, nothing else for it, retreat to the bedroom, feeling his eyes on you the whole way.

You return to the kitchen after having pulled on wool leggings and the same fleecy sweater from the day before. Johnny, one hip set against the counter, has a cup of steaming coffee in one hand and a half-eaten cruller in the other, crumbs at the corner of his mouth.

“Got anythin’ heavier?” he asks around a chewed-up mouthful. “Gets cold out there.”

You look down at his bare calves, broad and taut and covered in a down of dark hair. “You seem alright.”

“I’m used to it,” he says, shrugging—the muscles flexing under your gaze.

You purse your lips. “I don’t have anything.” You hadn’t intended to leave the cottage overmuch.

You approach the counter. Johnny does not move a centimeter, forcing you to stand close as you pick through the two boxes of doughnuts and feel the body heat radiating off of him, displacing the scent of fried dough with his musk.

“That’s all right,” he says. You’re close enough to hear the way his voice hums deep in his chest. “I can keep you warm.”

You snatch a plain glazed from the box and take two very large steps away from him. The hair on the back of your neck lifts as you press against the sink behind you. If he notices your reaction, it doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest—he lifts the cup to his lips and drinks, eyes sliding closed with simple, obvious pleasure, dark lashes curling against his cheek.

You take the brief respite from his gaze to stare at him. In the morning light, on a full night of sleep, you can almost believe that whatever you’d seen in him yesterday had been nothing more than a misfire of exhausted synapses. An overlay of a dream; a circadian prompt to rectify nearly seventeen hours of sleeplessness. You’d been cold, and tired, and hungry. That was all.

You bite down on your doughnut, not really tasting it. The nerves along your spine twitch and contract around the memory of his flashing gaze.

His eyes open again, and he smiles at you. “Good?” He flicks a look at the single bite you’ve taken, looks at your mouth, and then waits for your reply.

“It’s fine,” you grumble. Then, “How did you get here? I didn’t hear the truck drive up. Do you live close by?”

“Sometimes,” he says. He looks pleased that you’ve asked, that you’re interested at all, and you immediately regret inquiring. “Live on a boat, me. Moored in the cove right now.”

“A…boat,” you say.

“Aye.” A wisp of dark hair, something he must have missed when he gelled his mohawk this morning, flutters as he nods. “Nice and cozy. Not as grand as all this, mind.” He gestures around with coffee and doughnut at the less than five hundred square feet of the cottage. “But it’s still a sight nicer than some other places I’ve slept.”

He’s likely hinting at his military service. “Okay,” is all you say, unwilling to entertain it.

He smirk—undeterred. “We’ll take her out once you’re ready.”

“I never said I was going.”

Dark brows lift. “Got somethin’ else planned for today?” he asks, incredulous, as if he never imagined you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

“No, I—”

You wrack your brain. You have no intention of explaining to this complete stranger that the last thing you’d wanted to do, when you booked this trip, was really anything at all—and in fact, you hadn’t even considered that that might be something anyone else would care much about.

Much less proactively address.

“No,” you repeat, sulking.

Johnny considers you, chewing. His eyes do not stray, this time, to places they don’t belong; but there’s an insight to them. A sharp awareness. A perception in his gaze that is just as undressing, as if whatever is going on with you is visible to the naked eye.

“I figure,” he says, slowly, as if to coax, “you put your wee shoes on, an’ I’ll pack this back up, and we take it along.”

“You don’t have to do this,” you grouse. “I don’t need you to, like—be my tour guide.”

“Aye, but that doesnae mean I don’t wanna,” he retorts, smiling.

He shoves the last bite of cruller in his mouth and gazes patiently at you as he works it with his jaw, the muscles flexing along his temples as he chews.

Exhaustion, your constant companion, stares you down alongside him. It would take so much more energy to fight him than to go along with whatever he has planned. Energy you just don’t have anymore. And going along doesn’t mean you have to pretend to enjoy yourself—it’s not like you care enough about Johnny’s self-esteem to conjure up a happy face to show him.

You can go, and be a bitch about it, and once you do maybe he’ll realize you’re not at all worth the effort he’s making, and then finally leave you alone.

“Fine,” you say, which is how you end up on a fishing trawler headed south toward, ostensibly, a colony of breeding seals.

It’s an old vessel—that much is obvious. Its edges and corners are dull with the passage of time and constant maintenance, scuffed by innumerable passes-over with cleaner and cloth. Mildew competes with the aroma of fresh varnish as Johnny leads you onto the bridge, which is mercifully closed in from the ocean wind.

The interior is mostly wood of a warm, orangish variety—you can’t tell if that’s a decision made with aesthetics or function in mind. The space comprises a kitchen, surprisingly well-appointed with a stove, sink, countertop, and fridge, and a small sitting area with both couch and booth seating. Surrounding windows allow in the grey light of the morning.

“Bought it off an old bloke on Lewis,” Johnny says, taking his place at the wheel, which is in a little alcove off the kitchen.

If you’d thought steering a boat would have curtailed his chatting, you’d have been wrong—he seems to have no trouble with that and talking, incessantly, at the same time, as he pulls the vessel away from the cove and into the open water.

“All his family moved to the mainland, he told me, an’ this is after generations fishin’ these islands, even makin’ it through the Clearances! No money in it anymore, he said, not like you could make in some office somewhere countin’ someone else’s money.” He checks something on the dashboard in front of him, but it doesn’t distract him for long. “Held on for a while, but people just kept leavin,’ an’ he was gettin’ too old to go out on his own. Got such a good price on it, I think he was just happy someone else was gonna take up the tradition.”

“Did he sell you the cottage too?” you ask, and then dig your nails into your wrist for encouraging him.

“Yup,” he says. “No one else wanted it, but me? I saw somethin’ special about it.”

He turns to smile at you—no doubt pleased you made the connection. You avert your gaze.

“Imagine someday I’ll have my own family here,” he continues. “Good place for it. Nice and slow, not like city living. Can hear yourself think out here. Perfect place to have a few wee ones.”

“If people stop leaving,” you mutter.

He turns to you again. “I’m no’ worried about that,” he replies. He’s still smiling. “You came here, after all.”

You have nothing to say to that.

The trip is a short one—Johnny brings the trawler alongside an island he informs you is called Mingulay, a square mile smaller than Vatersay’s tiny dot in the North Atlantic. Unlike the latter, he says, this island has not been inhabited since 1912, and has been completely reclaimed by the ocean and its wildlife.

After he drops anchor offshore, Johnny disappears down a steep flight of stairs below deck, which he had not offered a tour of, and emerges a short time later with a large, bulky coat.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he says proudly, holding it out by the shoulders. “Here, turn ‘round.”

You pause in the middle of reaching for it. You don’t know exactly why you comply—it occurs to you that if you grabbed for the jacket, he could simply not let go of it, and you would end up exactly where he wants you anyway. So you lower your arm and, resigned, give him your back.

He steps up behind you. Warmth pours off of him, more than you think any human body should be able to generate.

You hear him inhale, deeply, as he brings the jacket to your back. As you slide your arms into the sleeves, you feel his exhale on the nape of your neck, teasing through individual follicles of hair.

“There w’go,” he murmurs, much closer than you expected.

You can hear the low hum of his voice in his chest; his hands linger on your shoulders far longer than they need to, heavy, big enough that his index fingers brush along your collarbones.

When his hands make to slide down your back you step away from him and fumble to zip the jacket up; he chuckles lightly behind you. When you turn to face him, his lips are curled—smug.

“Alright then,” he says. “Let’s get out there.”

He rows the two of you to shore in a small kayak, two pairs of binoculars in your lap as you huddle away from the wind. You’ll be walking to the haul-out, he says—getting too close to the breeding grounds, which he calls a rookery, would spook them, possibly causing a stampede.

“It’s grey seals we’re gonna see,” he explains as the two of you pick your way across the rocky landscape. “Not the biggest haul-out you could see, some colonies get into the thousands, but we’ll have it all to ourselves.”

He insists on taking your elbow every time the two of you cross particularly uneven terrain, even though you don’t need it. You think he takes your attempts to shake him off as proof of your lack of balance, because he grasps you all the tighter every time.

“I’m not a child, Johnny, I can walk on my own,” you finally snap at him.

“Just bein’ a gentleman, bonnie,” he replies nonchalantly. He does not let you go.

As you get closer, you hear the seals before you see them, and when their voices reach you across the open island, you stop dead.

Groaning, grunting, hissing in a cacophonous chorus. Some part of your hindbrain double-takes, reshuffles itself—some ancestral instinct always on the lookout for predation. If you’d been given a chance to guess what a colony of mating seals might have sounded like, you’re not sure you could have guessed what they sounded like.

Certainly not like what you hear now—

Like people.

Johnny grins at you when he notices. “Aye, it’s a right ruckus, innit?”

He leads you up a small rise, where he has the two of you settle belly-down over the machair to overlook the wedge of rocky coast that the colony has claimed for its own.

And when you finally see it—it’s underwhelming.

Perhaps two hundred long, fat bodies, in varying shades of brown and grey, lay indolently along the rocks, in groups of three or four, some heavily galumphing from one place to another while others roll occasionally from side to side. The shifting winds catch their scent and blow it uncaringly into your face; you nearly gag at the admixture of dead fish and ammonia.

It doesn’t escape you that this is a rare thing to witness; you are not wholly immune to the fact that you are only a hundred meters away from something most people only encounter on a screen. It’s just that without a swell of awed music in the backdrop, or a narrator’s breathless wonder at the miracle of pinniped life, what’s left for you to observe is a population of wet, stinking animals, shitting where they lay, vocalizing without cease while they laze about doing basically nothing.

Johnny does not seem to notice your disillusionment; he hands you one pair of binoculars, and directs your attention to activity along the shoreline. You follow to where he’s pointing; one larger seal is hassling a smaller one, which snarls at the aggressor as it thrashes around with its substantial bulk.

“Little one there—” Johnny says, “that’s a female, probably obvious. Big one knows she’s ready to mate, can smell it on her.”

The female bares her teeth and lunges at the bigger male, which flinches back but holds his ground.

“Doesn’t look like she agrees,” you mutter.

“She’s just givin’ him a hard time. She’s all in heat, see? Just makes her cranky,” Johnny says. You feel his eyes on you, and lower your binoculars to look at him. “She’s got to fuss to feel all in control.”

You flush. “Right.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No,” you say. “He’s—he’s just bothering her.”

He gazes at you for a moment, contemplative. Corners of his mouth quirking upward. He does not reply for a long moment, long enough that you have to avert your gaze from his.

“Nah,” he finally says, and you don’t think you’re imagining the low, sultry note in his voice. “She wants it bad as he does.”

You scowl, uncomfortably perceived, and return your binoculars—the pair is still facing off, gurgling and growling at each other. The female is slim, almost sleek, unlike most of the other seals populating the rookery.

“Is she sick?” you ask.

“Hm? Oh, no, she’s alright. The mums lose a lot of weight when they nurse. Takes three weeks, and they don’t eat in the meantime.”

“Jesus.”

“Be nice if the dads ever brought ‘em a bite, aye?” Johnny agrees. “Deadbeats, the lot of them.”

The two of you survey the colony in silence for a moment. As the morning wears on, the cloud covering thins overhead, allowing cool sunlight to filter through. The temperature doesn’t rise in response; begrudgingly, you tug Johnny’s jacket a little tighter around you.

Then, suddenly, his hand lands on your back, between your shoulder blades.

“Got some pups over there,” he says. “Look, by the kelp.”

You find them; smaller bodies, white dinged with wet sand and dirt, lounge near their mothers or wriggle with aimless difficulty. They’re fluffy and round as plush toys, with shining black eyes and noses, and once Johnny’s pointed them out you can differentiate the higher, sweeter pitch of their cries from the overall cacophony.

“Sometimes,” Johnny murmurs, “search and rescue’ll get called out because someone thought they heard a baby crying. Some kid stranded or lost, right? Turns out to be a baby seal.”

“That’s kind of scary,” you say.

“Aye,” says Johnny. “Always makes me think that’s where the old legends come from, about seal people or mermaids.”

A small ways away, some of the mothers lay with their pups far into the surf, letting the waves break over them. You watch as one mother thunks her large head overtop of her pup’s as the water rushes toward them; the pup wriggles, and then, as the wave engulfs them, it begins to thrash, whipping up a panicked froth.

“Time for swimming lessons already?” Johnny muses. “Seems early.”

You’re horrified. “She’s going to drown it!”

The hand still on your back pats you consolingly. “Just watch,” says Johnny.

The wave reaches as far up the shore as gravity allows, and then begins to recede. The pup’s thrashing calms as the air meets its face once again; the cow allows the pup to lift its head, and after a few sputters, the pup seems no worse for wear.

“They’re hardier than they look, bonnie,” Johnny says.

His hand, heavy and warm even over his borrowed jacket, slides down from your shoulders to your lower back, and then he rubs, slowly, side to side, as if to comfort you—but the knobs of your spine contract at his touch.

“Last of the births this season, looks like,” he says. “Mum’s getting ready to leave—probably not the only one.”

Something hard drops into your stomach.

“They leave their babies?” you ask.

“Aye. Once they’re done nursing, they mate, and then they go.”

You look back at the other cows with their pups. One baby has its muzzle to its mother’s belly, quivering and suckling, while she lays with her head on a patch of grass. She looks uninterested—more, she looks disinterested. As if how voraciously her pup is nursing has nothing much to do with her, and she’s bored of even having to think about it.

Bored—and already looking forward to the next part of her life without a baby in it.

“That’s horrible,” you say.

“They’re solitary animals, bonnie,” Johnny says, not ungently. “The only time they’re really all together is for this.”

A line tightens between your stomach and throat, and you feel it start to build between your ribs. A tremor—foreshocks. The wind picks up, bringing a sharp chill off the ocean and up the rise that cuts into your stinging eyes, abrades the naked skin of your hands and the exposed part of your neck.

When you look through your binoculars again, you wonder how many of the pups you see have already been abandoned.

“Aw, bonnie,” Johnny says. There’s a kind of pity in his voice that has your hackles raising.

“I want to leave,” you say, yanking away from his touch and shuffling down the incline. “Take me back to the cottage.”

“Bonnie, it’s okay!” Johnny protests, rolling to his back to look at you as you stand. “The pups make it, they figure out how to fend for themselves.”

You glare at him, vision blurring. “All of them?”

Some part of you knows you’re being irrational—knows that nature is a cruel home, and that many children face worse fates than the seal pups. Abandoning the young, the needy, is no aberration; it is, in fact, far more the standard than the human practice, which lingers for decades—

Most of the time.

Johnny has no response. He holds your angry gaze, brows drawn low, mouth pressed into a thin line. It’s the first time that cocky aura, which seems to rest in every fine line on his face and every angle at which he holds his body, is completely absent.

He isn’t reflecting your anger back at you, though—he’s internalizing it. Letting it hit him, you think, and trying to use it to figure you out.

You do not want to be figured out.

You scoff again. “Take me back,” you repeat, and then you start walking in the direction you came, without waiting for him to follow.

Johnny drops you off in the cove, and thankfully does not linger this time before he departs—he bids you farewell after rowing you to shore, contemplation on his face, and then leaves you to yourself.

You retreat, seeking the cottage’s empty quiet.

As you perch on the couch you listen to the radiator hum—the wind blow over the reeds in the thatch roof—your own heart beating a drum in the arteries of your neck.

Percussive. Quick and hard. Like heavy knockers on a door. Pounding as if to burst through.

You realize you’re still wearing Johnny’s jacket, and you throw it off, disgusted with yourself. You get up and pace, and try to ignore it lying in a heap on the floor.

You do something you swore you wouldn’t do the moment you set foot on the island—you turn your phone back on.

True to Johnny’s word, there’s no signal. You picked this island, this part of the world, for a reason; for the past several years, a slow exodus from the British isles has vacated the need for dedicated cell towers or satellite or internet access, especially given that the only ones who remain are too old now to want it or need it or know how to use it.

It’s isolated. Cut off. Left behind by anyone with better options, and only clung to by those trying to preserve the only way of life they know.

Some kinder part of you belongs with that demographic; the part that was telling your mother the truth, before getting on the plane.

The rest of you holds your phone up and starts walking around.

In the furthest corner in the bedroom, you find a single bar of signal. A tiny chip of connectivity—a thin, frayed thread. Something you lied to yourself about cutting.

It’s a weak connection. Unstable. It could take a while—you stand there, waiting.

The screen dims. You tap it again.

Blank.

You unlock it, look through your apps. Wonder if maybe your notifications are bugged by your new SIM card.

Nothing—

No one.

You whip around and, with a cry, pitch the thing at the far wall—it hits the stone with a crunch, falling to the floor in pieces.

You’re out of the cottage then in a mad dash, door slamming behind you, driving yourself back into the wind. Far away—you want to be far away, far from everything, so far that nothing could possibly reach you. You trudge down the path toward the beach, banding your arms across your chest, shivering in the cold, and yet you hardly feel it.

Not worth it. No point. Waste of your time. Energy. All of it. Stop trying. Stop wanting. Nothing. Nothing. You want nothing.

You’re halfway down to the shore, not really knowing what you’re going to do when you get there, when you catch sight of a body on the sand.

You gasp, a sharp breath down your larynx, and freeze in a dead halt.

The body is completely still.

A swimmer? A diver? It’s dark, like it just pulled itself out of the ocean—or washed up—

Then, it moves. A twitch, a ripple across its bulk, and your chest rapidly decompresses.

A seal. It’s a large seal, lounging alone on the beach.

You stand motionless. You’re very close—much closer than you and Johnny had been at the rookery. You hadn’t contended with the sheer size of the animals, tucked safely up and away from them, but there is no illusion of distance now.

It’s the biggest one you’ve seen today, you’re sure of it. Bigger, you think, than most adult men. Its pelt is a riot of every shade of grey, splashy, like liquid paint thrown across a canvas. Black speckles scatter overtop of marbled white and cool slate, and down the center of its back is a broad, dark line, soft at the edges, which reaches all the way up to the top of the seal’s head.

The bull—it must be male—turns over. It lifts its head, and opens its eyes—

Fear suddenly zips up your spine as it looks right at you.

You stumble backward and trip on your own feet, landing hard on your ass. Johnny’s care with keeping enough distance from the colony rushes back to you, along with the warring couple’s bared teeth.

They can’t move that fast on land, right? They aren’t interested in people, right?

You scramble backward. It’s so much bigger than you ever would have imagined. If it got to you—threw itself over you—it could crush you with its weight alone—

The bull watches you placidly. Unperturbed.

You pause.

Its small eyes are dark and glossy—watchful and focused. The whiskers on its muzzle twitch a little as it takes you in. It breathes, deeply and evenly, huge body expanding and contracting at a slow, calm tempo. Its—his—nostrils flex, widening and narrowing, as he blinks docilely.

Unafraid.

If anything—curious.

Then he snorts, and wriggles in place. It startles a laugh out of you, more reaction than humor. Still watching you, the bull lowers his head back down, resting it again on the sand.

Your heartbeat abates. He doesn’t move again—nor does his attention leave you. Slowly, you sit up.

Wary. No sudden movements.

He doesn’t react; only continues to watch you.

You draw your knees up. Wrap your arms around your shins, and dust a bit of sand from your leggings. Rest your chin in the crevice between your knees.

There’s an intelligence in the bull’s eyes that is fathoms deep. There is a massive gulf between his experience of the world and yours, millennia of evolution separating your species from his—and yet…as you hold his gaze, you recognize the look in it.

Him, seeing you. And seeing you see him. The pendulum swinging between awareness of each other, and recognition of that shared awareness.

An empty space in the cloud cover passes overhead; sunlight touches the earth, warms it briefly before disappearing again. You wonder a little why this bull isn’t with the other seals.

Johnny would probably know.

“I didn’t come for you, you know,” you grumble at him.

The seal blinks. Awareness notwithstanding, you don’t share any language.

You sigh. “I guess you didn’t come to see me either,” you say.

But you don’t move away.

And you stay like that for a long while, you and he—regarding each other as the wind breathes out across the shore.

next chapter early access

a/n: follow for more seal facts™

Also huge thanks to Lev for trawler listings/info. Didn't explore it much this chapter but Soap's boat will show up more soon :)

[traveler-at-heart]

Hot and Cold

Summary: Natasha's playing with fire when a new resident joins the Compound.

A/N: Queen of Angst @esposadejoyhuerta asked for the fluffiest, sweetest, tooth rotting story ever and I was happy to deliver, even after they changed their request to inclue jealousy BECAUSE no one can stop me. Love ya, baby!

Another day, another mission. Since last week’s mess, it seems like Fury’s been finding ways to torture the team.

Yes, at the end they were able to retrieve the drive with the data of over twenty enhanced individuals. But so did HYDRA. And now the Avengers are on a race against time to locate them before the Russians do.

Natasha walks to Fury’s office, not excited at the prospect of risking her life to recruit people who didn’t really want to be found.

“Yes?” she says as soon as Fury turns around. He hands over a very heavy binder. “Is this their criminal record?”

Great, a weirdo with a troubled past. Natasha might not make it out alive.

“No, that’s their academic stuff. She’s a scientist. Crazy smart” Fury explains. “Have you heard of Bio-Thermokinesis?”

“No, not really”

“The ability to manipulate the body temperature of oneself and/or others” he recites, having learned the concept just now.

“That doesn’t sound so bad” Natasha says, closing the folder. It’s certainly better than the last few people she had to chase down.

“Yeah, until she induces a heat stroke or hypothermia” Fury scoffs. “We’ve been failing at recruiting these people. It would be nice to have a win. Plus, she could work in the lab with Banner and Stark”

“I don’t think Nerd Club is worth one’s freedom” Natasha mutters, skimming through the file.

“Well, either way, this mission doesn’t requires strenght. It requires charm. You up for it or should I send Hill?”

As Natasha gets to the picture of the target, she looks up.

“I’ll handle it”

—

As usual, you’re carrying more than you can possibly handle. Books, your laptop, a sandwich from the cafeteria, and correspondence from the main office.

By the time you manage to open the door to your office, half of the things in your arms are dangerously close to scattering across the hardwood floor.

“Oh, shit” you mutter when your keys drop.

“Need a hand?” a voice says and you jump back, the rest of your stuff flying across the room. 

“Uh… can I help you?” you say, because the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen is perched up on your desk, legs crossed and a playful smirk across her striking features.

“Are you Doctor Y/L/N?”

“Yes. How did you…? I’m pretty sure the door was locked” 

Is she a thief? You have absolutely nothing of value, at least not for a conventional burglar. You run every possibility in your mind and then you land on your second least favorite one.

Natasha notices the room getting warmer, probably because of how flustered you got. The file seems accurate regarding your power.

“AC broke down?” she asks innocently, undoing the top button of her shirt.

“Uh… I… I’ll open the window” you say, pushing it and leaning against the window pain. You consider jumping down to escape, but it’s a considerable height. You take a breath, deciding to face the matter head on. “So, which agency sent you?”

“Ever heard of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“Yes, that was my first guess” you admit with a sad smile. “What can I do for you, Agent…?”

“Call me Natasha” she says, hopping off the desk. “I’m afraid I am the bearer of bad news… and a generous offer”

“Mmm” you nod, fixing your glasses. 

“A tactical team was sent to stop the purchase of confidential information for 30 enhanced individuals. We were able to obtain it… and so did HYDRA”

“Listen” you raise your hand, taking off your glasses and pinching the bridge of your nose. “I get it. HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. know about me. The thing is, my power isn’t something you can leverage in a fight. I doubt they’ll be very interested in me”

“I think you’re wrong. And it’s not just your ability. Your expertise in science and your genetic makeup can be used to experiment”

“So, is that what S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to do with me?” you sigh, looking out the window. You’re enjoying the view, vaguely aware that life as you know it is over.

“We want to offer you shelter at the Avengers Compound. 24 hour security, top facilities and technology. You can continue your research” Natasha says, trying to make it sound like a great deal.

It brings her back to that time Fury told her it was either work for the US government or end up in the Raft.

Your offer is slightly better, but a golden prison is still a prison.

“Are there any questions I can answer before you make a decision?” she offers with a kinder tone.

“Yeah. Do I even have a choice?”

—

Academic life is all you’ve ever known. Grants were the perfect way to do your research without having to look for a benefactor and expose yourself. You could learn things about your DNA, your abilities, while doing other stuff without anyone noticing.

Now, you wake up and there’s nothing that drives you. You live with people who have exceptional skills, physical prowess, and military training. Their world is avenging, your world is scientific papers and books.

Sure, their lab is nice, but most of the times you end up leaving early, completely unmotivated and feeling empty. 

Natasha watches from afar, and although this isn’t her doing, she feels responsible. She tries to include you in activities she understands, like training, but you’re very obviously not the athletic kind.

Banner is, as usual, isolating himself and Tony speaks nerd, but is barely around unless a mission requires his presence. 

It isn’t until one day that Peter shows up to the Compound that Natasha gets an idea.

“Hi, Miss Romanoff. Is Mister Stark around?” he asks in that shy tone he always uses when he’s around Natasha.

“Nope, not to my knowledge. Do you need anything?” 

“FRIDAY told me to meet him here. He must have forgotten. I guess I better get back to my Biochem project”

Wait a minute.

He’s a nerd.

“Stay” she says, looking him up and down. Peter reminds her of a puppy when he stops completely, as if he learned a new command. “Wait for Tony at the lab. I’ll try to find him”

“You’re sure? I’m not allowed inside by myself” he hesitates, following Natasha.

“Yeah, it’s fine” she types in the access code, and of course, there you are, spinning in your chair.

As soon as you hear the door opening, you stop your movements, almost falling off.

Natasha finds your blush adorable.

“Hey, Y/N. This is Peter. He’ll be around waiting for Tony”

“Oh, hey. Ok, I was just leaving. I’m kinda stuck either way”

“Ordinary Differential Equations?” Peter says as soon as he gets his eyes on your board.

“Yes. Very impressive” you nod. “This is focused on genetic network. I’m trying to determine inborn errors of metabolism”

“Oh, you know? There’s a brilliant Doctor who’s working on that, maybe her paper would be great for you. She’s Y/N Y/L/N”

“Yeah, that’s me” you say, tapping your chin and examining the board. “What is your ability? If you have any? Maybe I can use a different set of data”

“Yes! I would love to, what do you need from me?” Peter says, a little starstruck at finding out you’re one of the most prestigious researchers in the world. 

“For now, a blood sample” you wink at him, adjusting your glasses.

Natasha sits in the back of the lab as you and Peter work together, and you explain every concept to him. This is the first time since you arrived that you don’t look so miserable.

The Russian takes it as a small win when you join her in the common area for dinner.

--

Since Peter found out about your abilities and your permanent stay at the Compound, you’ve been advising him on his project and college applications. Which is a really nice distraction, but it also makes you miss your own college days.

So, even if you’re in a better mood, it’s still hard to socialize with the team.

One day, you enter the lab to find Rogers, Wilson and Barnes looking at a screen, while Natasha types.

“Whoever encrypted this is slightly smarter than me. Only slightly” 

They look away as you drag a chair to focus on your own stuff, a cup of coffee in your hand and a cookie in your mouth.

“Hi…” you wave at them, feeling intimidated as usual.

“Hey, weather girl” Sam winks at you. 

Natasha rolls her eyes and elbows him.

“Ignore him, Y/N”

You can tell she’s getting frustrated, so you inch closer, looking at the code over her shoulder. Placing your hand on her elbow, you silently ask for permission to take over.

The redhead eyes you curiously, but stops typing and moves the keyboard your way. It takes you twenty seconds to hack into the files.

“How…?”

“I used to hack into databases to make sure my name wasn’t on any watchlist” you explain casually. Natasha laughs at that. “Anyway, there you go”

“Thanks, Y/N. You’re my hero” Natasha says, smiling up at you. Her tone makes you blush and you nod, going back to your desk.

“Nice work. We could use your help if you’re free some other time” Steve says as they leave the lab.

“Of course, Capitan” 

—

An intruder changes your mind about training. The threat is handled swiftly and you don’t even have time to hide before F.R.I.D.A.Y. confirms the suspect has been taken into custody

But you don’t even know how to begin to defend yourself, so you come back to Natasha, asking if her offer still stands.

Needless to say, the spy is more than happy to train you. Not just because it means you’re comfortable asking for things, but because Natasha can teach you something that will help you protect yourself.

You start with two sessions per week, which later turns to four, until you’re comfortable with training almost daily.

The rest of the team joins from time to time, giving you advice and helping you when Natasha’s away on missions.

After a few weeks, Natasha notices how your resistance is better and you’re building some muscle.

Only as a professional observation. It’s not like she finds you attractive, with that nerdy charm and toned arms.

One day, as you’re leaving the gym, she checks her bag, cursing when she notices she forgot a change of clothes. 

“Wanna borrow one of my hoodies?” you offer, handing over your NYU sweatshirt.

“You sure?” Natasha hesitates.

“Yeah, I got tons of these. From all the places I’ve done work or research” 

“I’ll give it back” she promises, taking it.

That turns out to be a lie.

A few days later, when you’re folding your laundry, F.R.I.D.A.Y. requests that you join Tony and Banner in the lab. Leaving the basket in the living room, you think nothing of it, nor do you notice that a couple of your sweatshirts are gone.

It all comes to light a week later, when Natasha comes back from a grueling mission. The only thing that will make her feel better is staying in her room while wearing your UCLA hoodie.

She totally forgets about her attire when she answers the door.

“Huh, so that’s where it was” you tilt your head, smiling.

“I…”

“I’m watching a movie, care to join me? It’s one of your favorites” 

“Ok” she nods, surprised that you’re not mad about the stolen sweatshirt. 

Natasha enters your room, appreciating the combination of books, notes and the board with equations. After you apologize for the mess, you offer a place to sit in your bed.

“It looks good on you” you compliment the redhead. Natasha smiles, trying to be nonchalant about it.

“Thank you” 

It becomes a habit, to steal your hoodies.

“Objectively speaking, you don’t actually need them as you can regulate your temperature” Natasha comments one day, digging through your closet. To her shock, she finds a sweatshirt with a sorority logo on it.

“Not mine. A girl I hooked up with in college” you explain.

Natasha rolls her eyes, throwing the garment as far away as possible while pulling a face. You laugh at her reaction.

“Don’t be jealous, Natty. You’re my favorite” you promise, unaware of the effect your words had on her.

“And yet you never let me wear the Harvard one”

“That was my first” you shrug your shoulders.

“First college or first hook up?” Natasha taunts and you laugh.

“A nerd never kisses and tell. Actually, a nerd rarely kisses anyone to being with” you try to joke, pulling out the Harvard sweatshirt from your closet to put it on.

Natasha eyes it, and you catch her intentions a little too late. She inches forward and you stretch your arm back, trying to place the hoodie out of reach.

“Nu-uh” you shake your head, laughing as she keeps trying to steal it. “Natasha, there are like ten other hoodies you  could take!” 

“I want this one!” she insists, jumping. Her body crashes against yours, and you both stumble, falling in your bed. Limbs are tangled and her laugh tickles your ear as she struggles to lift herself up. After a moment, Natasha smiles, looking at your lips. “Gotcha”

You don’t even know what to say, her intense stare making you feel warm -both literally and figuratively - and your heart beats faster when it seems like she’ll lean forward and kiss you.

“Agent Romanoff, there’s an urgent call for you” FRIDAY interrupts the moment. 

Natasha sighs, standing up and looking at you. 

“Catch you later?”

“Yeah” you nod, trying to hide your disappointment.

—

Natasha was gone for a week, and returned with a very bad injury. You heard the news as Steve and Tony were arguing in the kitchen, blaming each other as usual.

“Where…? Is she ok…?” you try to interrupt them, but they’re in the middle of a screaming match.

“Come with me” Maria says, taking you to a whole different wing of the Compound. Since you’ve never been on missions, you didn’t know about the Medbay.

Natasha’s lying in a hospital bed, asleep.

“She’s ok. A guy threw a knife at her, but it was only a superficial stab wound. Doctor said she’ll be discharged tomorrow” Maria eases your nerves. 

Of course, for her it’s easy to say it’s no big deal. Agents are shot, blown up, killed in the field. A little scratch is nothing, especially for Natasha. But you take a deep breath, leaving the Medbay in a rush.

As you lock yourself in the Avenger’s Lab, you make F.R.I.D.A.Y. a simple request.

“Show me the mission’s footage”

—

Natasha’s had worst, truly. But still, her head is throbbing when she wakes up. The doctor discharges her with the instruction to rest for a week. No training either.

The Russian notices a bag with clothes on the chair next to her bed. She finds your Harvard sweatshirt, which puts a tiny smile on her face.

You are nowhere to be found in the Compound when she returns, so she goes to her room to take another nap, the painkillers making her sleepy.

By the time Natasha wakes up to get something to eat, F.R.I.D.A.Y. requests her presence in the lab.

“What is it?” she says, surprised to find you working on a tablet. It looks like you haven’t slept in the last 24 hours, five or six cups of coffee around the various tables in the lab.

“I created a new technology for your suit” you jump right to it. “It has motion sensors that are triggered by incoming threats. That way, if someone tries to sneak up on you, you can either get an alert or program a defense mechanism that can be shot from any part of the suit” 

Natasha takes the tablet, running the simulation. She’s impressed with the level of detail you’ve placed on this and on such short time. She’s about to thank you, but you’re already asleep in the couch of the lab, clearly exhausted from all the work you’ve done.

The sight of your sleeping form makes Natasha’s heart flutter.

—

Movie night is the one tradition you’ve always been on board with. Coincidentally, it’s Natasha’s least favorite. Depending on her mood, she’ll join everyone on the living room, or talk you into watching something else in your room or hers.

Tonight, she stops by once the movie has already started. As usual, you’re on the couch in the far back of the room, your glasses reflecting the screen as you eat some popcorn.

“Hey” Natasha leans over the back of the couch and whispers against your ear, making you jump. Your eyes follow her as she jumps over to plop down next to you.

“You’re not supposed to be doing that with a hole on your side, Natasha” you reprimand. 

“It’s fine” she lies, grabbing some popcorn.

As the movie keeps going, the woman inches closer to you. At first you think she’s settling in her seat, but then her hand spreads on the back of the couch, dangerously close to your neck.

It’s fine. You can handle it.

Nope, you absolutely can’t. Not when you feel Natasha’s nimble fingers playing with the hairs on the back of your neck, her digits alternating between caressing the skin and scratching your scalp.

“You’re hot” she whispers at some point and you turn to look at her, dazed.

“Huh?”

“You feel hot” she clarifies a second later, her eyes looking at your lips. “Is everything ok? Those powers of yours are acting up”

“I’m fine” you nod, looking back at the screen. Aware that you are in fact increasing the temperature in the room, you take a breath and close your eyes, before anyone else notices.

You’re almost back to normal when Natasha stretches and lies across your lap, her left hand squeezing your thigh as the other one begins to trace patterns in your skin.

All while she's wearing your Harvard sweatshirt.

Your only thought is to take it off, along with the rest of her clothes and kiss every inch of her body.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., is the thermostat broken…?” Tony finally snaps, annoyed at the sudden changes in temperature. “Never mind” 

Everyone follows his eyes as he looks to the back of the room, where Natasha is playing dumb while riling you up.

“Can you two find a room to turn into a sauna and spare the rest of us?” Tony says, which makes your eyes widen, and the room practically turns into a freezer. “Great, now we’re all turning into popsicles. Cap, you’re familiar with the feeling, right?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Tony” Natasha finally stands up, showing you some mercy. “Come on, detka” 

“Uh, ok” you say, your voice barely a whisper as you allow the woman to drag you back to her room.

As soon as the door is shut, she pushes you against it.

“So, tell me” she says with a playful smile. “How hot do you think it will get here?”

You can only shake your head, speechless. Natasha smiles, kissing you softly. All thoughts leave your head, opening your mouth to give her access. You’ll do anything she asks, anything at all.

“I see” she smiles when the room gets hot. “Good thing we won’t have our clothes on” 

It’s the best sex of your life.

So much so, the fire alarm goes off in the entire Compound.

“Fucking worth it” you sigh as you’re both naked in bed, the water from the sprinklers evaporating from all the heat in the room.

[lookingforuravity]

IT'S YOU

bakugou katsuki x reader

word count: 1000 words

IN WHICH you and katsuki grow up together and realize you're a bit more than friends.

a/n: another re-upload teehee

DURING CHILDHOOD.ᐟ

during their childhood, bakugou and y/n met when they were around 5 to 6 years old so around the time all the little kids were developing quirks.

i feel like a lot of people think differently about this but i think he wouldn't treat you any differently than he treats everyone else. he'd give extremely subtle special treatment but i don't think he'd act any differently and this applies to the future as well.

but maybe since you guys have known each other for so long and y/n is one of the few people bakugou can tolerate, you’d be able to soften up his rough edges or at least calm him down a bit.

bakugou couldn't get enough of the fiery cracks that submerged from his palms. his newly manifested quirk was already fascinating enough as it was but the attention he received from it made it even better. especially from the little fly that wouldn't seem to leave bakugou alone, who was you.

you swung on the swing set as you stared at bakugou in pure admiration, your mouth slightly agape at the sight of sparks flying from his hands. “waah! you're going to be so strong katsu!” you exclaimed. bakugou puffed out his chest in a cocky manner.

“i already am strong,” he said with his usual smug grin. you hopped off the swing and ran over to him, grabbing his hand and examining it in curiosity. “i'm going to be the number one hero!” he continued, both of their cheeks puffed up as they shared the same cheesy grin.

“and you'll be the number two, so we can stay together. okay?”

CRUSHING ON YOU.ᐟ

it would take years and i mean YEARS for him to realize he finally has feelings for you. especially during U.A where being in a relationship isn't even on his current list of priorities.

he finds himself more hyper-aware of everything you do. the way you talk, the way you fidget in your seat during class, the way your eyes sparkle when you talk about something you love. he notices it all and it irritates him so much.

bakugou realizing his feelings will definitely change his attitude but definitely not for the better. i feel like he'd be more harsher towards you but i see him doing it as a way to see you improve and not blatantly being rude to you like others.

you will definitely have to confess first because i STAND by the fact that he will not confess anything until you say it. and when you do he will not be easy about it bro will look at you like this and not say a word

sweat dripped down the faces of you and bakugou. the intensity of training as 1-A students was no joke. you lay on the grass, huffing and puffing trying to catch your breath. training itself was difficult, but training with bakugou made it 10 times harder. a sudden shadow blocked the sun from your face and bakugou's face was above yours.

“i told you your form was sloppy. you never fix it.” he grumbled. you scoffed and waved a hand over your face for cold air. “you never give me time to fix it.”

“i told you i'm not going easy on you.” he said with his eyebrows furrowed in frustration. his expectations for you were high, he knew you could do it so he kept pushing you, and he also saw how determined you were. how your jaw would clench, how your eyebrows would furrow, how your hair would move over your shoulders, how the sun would define every curve on your face-

“dammit..” he grumbled under his breath and moved away from you to the other side of the field. “hurry up so we can keep training.”

WHILE DATING.ᐟ

personally, i think dating bakugou would be similar to how you were when you guys were friends but with added affection. everything would still be the same like the bickering and the banner but it'd be so cutesy now because omg couple (≧◡≦)(≧◡≦)

bakugou had always been protective of you years before you started dating. now think of that times 10. he'd constantly be on alert and if anybody did anything to offend you expect them to be at your front door apologizing on their knees.

and his affection would be subtle. he is a D1 hater of pda so he'll only show you intimacy when you guys are alone in one of your rooms with the door locked (real!!). but you two would be curled up together and he'd always keep the same scowl on his face until eventually his features get softer and softer (つω`｡)

it was well past midnight, and you knew that katsuki would be asleep but you didn't know where else to go. you'd woken up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, and though you weren't one to get spooked easily, it still startled you quite a bit. so that's how you ended up at katsuki’s dorm with his arms forcefully wrapped around you and a scowl drawn on his face.

he wasn't the happiest since you did wake him up from his deep slumber, but he knew that if he didn't open the door he wouldn't hear the end of it in the morning. “you're such a scaredy-cat, y'know? who in hell gets that scared from a lame nightmare?” he grumbled.

“i do” you argued back. the two of you went back and forth for a bit, the usual bickering, until the sound of your soft snores filled katsuki's ears. he wanted to be annoyed, he really did, but he couldn't fight the faint smile that tugged on the corner of his lips.

©lookingforuravity 2024 | please do not copy, translate, or repost my work onto other

[pattwtf]

Well, yeah! No drama at all, but now this showed up wanna share something that's been on my mind these days...

This happened to me lately with someone... Loved their blog and I used to like and rb their content (credits in tags and all, I always try to # creators names at least...). Maybe a supportive comment here and there, but that was all.

Haven't interacted in any other way like... ever, so I really don't know what went wrong, I mean it. And I found out they blocked me trying to share one of their posts, already RB by somebody else. If not, I would have thought maybe they took some time off Tumblr or... Yeah, whatever, you feel me.

Spent a couple of days wondering why... I've never had any unpleasant situations with anyone around here... so I did give it some thought. Especially cause I felt terrible thinking that maybe I had made someone uncomfortable to that extent without knowing it at all.🥺

But then I just came to the conclussion that... It's perfectly perfect! If something didn't work for them..... It's totally fine. It just shocked me a bit, since I try really hard to spread love anytime I log in here... (which I don't do so often lately, btw... Been so sick, now I'm tired af and I need to catch up on soooo many things... I feel if I'm not around as much as I did, I'm gonna lose so many of your awesome creations, guys😭)

I still think the talent and content of that account owner are wonderful, in fact, and I feel sorry for not being able to see it anymore and not knowing if I did anything wrong so I could fix it! I promise I try my best to be as respectful, kind and supportive as much as I can and you all deserve, so whatever it was, I can say that I did not do it on purpose, nor was I consciously aware of having done it. I don't intend to get anything out of this post other than to be at peace with myself, not having had the opportunity to discuss the issue directly with this person.🙏

In case any of you ever feel bad about something I post, share, etc. just talk to me! I swear I'm friendly🥹❤️😅

Once I got it out of my system... HAPPY MONDAY! 😜🌹

Sorry for making such a big deal out of a silly thing, but it had to be the first time...!

when you click on the blog of someone who has you blocked and tumblr says “that isn’t anyone” im always like gaggggg that’s right they’re a nobody

[aliyahwritings]

THE CONTRACTED HEART — Rafe Cameron (12)

MASTERLIST | Basketball Player!Rafe & Supermodel!Female Reader

Summary: Rafe Cameron, a basketball star, needs a marriage to fix his image, while Model!Reader needs one for citizenship. They may be the perfect solution for each other.

Warnings: smut, descriptions of violence, jealousy, usage of drugs, talks about body image/ed, angst, and lots of bickering. Reader is confident, a people-pleaser, has a traumatic past, and is a sunshine with an attitude. Rafe is a whore, possessive, cocky, and secretive about his past.

Word Count: 7k words

Aliyah's Notes: me when i come back to life after a month of inactivity ☝️😈 say goodbye to the good times guys we're slowly falling into hell

You stood in front of the full-length mirror, surrounded by a chaotic pile of clothes scattered across the floor. Dresses, skirts, jeans, and even your old sweatpants were strewn about like the aftermath of a fashion war.

Living with Rafe for the past two days had been an adjustment—his penthouse was sleek, modern, and always spotless… a stark contrast to your current state of disarray. It made you self-conscious sometimes, like when you’d spilled coffee on the pristine marble countertop and panicked while scrubbing it clean before he noticed.

Your brows furrowed as you held up a pair of ripped jeans and a plain white crop top. “Too casual,” you muttered, tossing them aside. Next came a flowy sundress. “Too try-hard.”

A frustrated sigh escaped your lips as you sank onto the edge of your bed, arms crossed. Why were you putting so much thought into this? It wasn’t like this basketball game was your debut as his fiancée. Well, technically it was, but it’s not like anyone expected you to look the part. 

Or maybe they did? 

Rafe hadn’t given you any details, just a cocky grin and a, ‘Don’t embarrass me.’ The memory of his smirk made you groan.

You picked up a sweater, holding it against your chest before throwing it onto the growing pile. Why does it even matter? It’s just his stupid game. You’re going because… You paused, biting your lip. Because you lived with him now. Because you were his fiancée. Because showing up wasn’t optional.

Your gaze drifted to the jersey draped over the back of your chair. His number, 13, stood out in bold print. Would wearing his jersey to the game feel too... personal? No, that was ridiculous. People wore jerseys all the time. It wasn’t special. It didn’t mean anything. 

Right?

Right.

You hesitated before picking it up, your fingers brushing over the soft fabric. It smelled faintly of his cologne, and something about that made you pause. You shook the thought away and slipped it on, the material loose and comfortable against your skin. It paired surprisingly well with the black mini skirt you’d put on earlier—a little sporty, a little casual. Perfect. You turned to the mirror, adjusting the hem and smoothing out the fabric.

For a split second, you wondered what he’d think when he saw you. Would he tease you? Would he flash that grin that somehow made your stomach flip? The thought made your chest tighten, and you scolded yourself immediately because you didn't care about his opinion.

Your cheeks warmed despite your internal protest. Grabbing your bag, you made your way to the door, slipping on your shoes with determined efficiency. Your phone buzzed just as you were about to leave. Unlocking it, you found a series of messages from Rafe.

Rafe: You better not be late. Superstition or not, you’re about to be my good luck charm.

Rafe: BTW, try not to drool too much when you see me on the court.

Your lips twitched despite yourself, a reluctant smile creeping onto your face. You quickly typed back:

You: Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just going there for the snacks.

His reply came almost immediately.

Rafe: Liar. You’re obsessed with me.

Rafe: BTW, that jersey on the chair? My idea. You’re welcome.

You blinked at the screen, heat prickling at your neck. How does he know? The man must’ve had a sixth sense for reading your mind. Or he’d guessed—he did that a lot too. Before you could think of a retort, another message popped up.

Rafe: Also, don’t leave without turning off the kitchen lights again. Unless you want me to write you a manual for living here.

Your lips twitched despite yourself, a reluctant smile breaking free. He was insufferable, and yet the thought of him noticing the smallest things—like your mistakes or your outfit—made your chest ache in a way you weren’t ready to admit.

You: Good luck, Rafe. You’ll need it.

Rafe: The only luck I need is you in that jersey.

You rolled your eyes, locking your phone and shoving it into your bag with a shake of your head. His ego was unmatched, but as you stepped out the door, a tiny flicker of anticipation stirred in your chest—a feeling you couldn’t quite name but weren’t ready to let go of either.

The leather seats of the car felt cool beneath you as you shifted in place, fingers tapping restlessly against your bag. Gregory, your driver, glanced at you through the rearview mirror, offering a sympathetic smile.

“Sorry about the delay, Miss. It’s the construction on 5th Avenue—completely backed up. I’ll do my best to get you there on time.”

“It’s fine, Gregory. Not your fault,” you replied with a sympathetic smile.

Outside, the glow of brake lights illuminated the street, a reminder of how hopelessly stuck you were. The distant sound of car horns blended into the hum of the city, making the minutes feel like hours. You glanced at the time on your phone. Rafe’s game had probably started, or was about to.

With a sigh, you opened your messages, typing quickly.

You: Traffic’s insane. Running late.

The reply came almost immediately.

Rafe: Typical. My fiancée can’t even show up on time.

You rolled your eyes, already expecting the teasing.

You: Not my fault NYC doesn’t know how to manage its roads.

Rafe: I’ll pass the message along to the mayor. Very helpful.

You could practically hear the smirk in his words.

You: Be serious for once.

Rafe: I am serious. If you miss me scoring, it’s grounds for annulment.

Your lips twitched despite yourself, fingers hovering over the screen before typing back.

You: Don’t tempt me.

Rafe: Tempting you is, like, my full-time job.

You leaned back against the seat, biting back a grin. The nerve of this man. The audacity. Still, his ability to lighten the mood—even when he was being insufferable—was irritatingly effective.

You: Just play well. I’ll be there soon.

Rafe: Don’t worry, pretty girl. I’m saving all my best moves for when you’re watching.

You locked your phone with a shake of your head, stuffing it into your bag. Gregory, ever the professional, glanced at you again.

“Almost there, Miss. Just a few more blocks.”

“Thanks, Greg,” you murmured, tugging at the hem of Rafe’s jersey. The fabric felt oddly comforting against your skin, a reminder of the strange new reality you were navigating. Living with him, wearing his number, showing up to his games like a dutiful fiancée—it was all so... surreal.

By the time the car pulled up to the arena, the faint roar of the crowd was already audible. You stepped out, adjusting the strap of your bag and smoothing down your skirt. Gregory gave you a small wave before driving off, leaving you standing at the entrance with a mix of nerves and anticipation.

As you made your way through the bustling hallway, you couldn’t help but notice the lingering stares. Heads turned, whispers followed, and you caught snippets of conversations that made your stomach twist.

“Oh, my God! That’s her, isn’t it? YN YLN?”

“She’s gorgeous. I saw her in that Vogue spread last month.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s a weird match? She doesn’t seem like his type.”

“I heard their engagement was super sudden. Like, out of nowhere.”

You kept your head high, forcing yourself to focus on the sound of your heels clicking against the floor. The familiar pressure of public scrutiny was something you’d grown used to as a model, but this was different. This wasn’t about your career. This was about you—your personal life, your choices, your supposed love story with Rafe.

The tension only grew as you climbed the stairs to the seating area. You found your seat with your name on a piece of paper, sliding into the seat and exhaling slowly. The crowd around you was buzzing with excitement, their cheers and chatter filling the air. You adjusted the jersey again, pulling it down slightly as your eyes scanned the court below.

Players were warming up, their movements fluid and confident. Your gaze lingered on Rafe almost instinctively. He was standing near the bench, laughing at something one of his teammates said. Even from a distance, his presence was magnetic—broad shoulders, easy swagger, and that stupid grin.

You were so focused on him that you almost didn’t notice the glances directed your way. A group of women a few rows ahead whispered behind cupped hands, casting subtle looks in your direction. Two men seated nearby exchanged knowing smirks, as if they’d just shared some private joke at your expense.

Your phone buzzed in your lap, pulling you from your thoughts.

Rafe: You better be watching. Game’s about to start.

You glanced down at the message, your lips curving into a faint smile.

You: I’m here. Stop texting me and focus.

Rafe: Can’t help it. You’re too pretty. I can’t look away.

You stared at his reply, the words making your chest tighten. He had a way of saying things that left you questioning whether he was teasing or if there was something deeper hidden beneath the surface. Shaking your head, you locked your phone, determined not to let him get to you.

But as you tucked your phone back into your bag, you couldn’t resist the pull to look up. Your eyes scanned the court, weaving through the blur of players warming up and the steady hum of the crowd. Then, you found him.

Rafe stood near the bench line, towel slung casually over his shoulder, his stance relaxed but commanding. He wasn’t talking to his teammates anymore or listening to the coach’s instructions.

His attention was fixed on you.

The moment your eyes met, it felt like the air shifted. The noise of the arena—the cheers, the clapping, the announcer’s voice—all seemed to fade into the background. It was just him, standing there, looking at you like the game didn’t matter. Like you were the only thing that did.

His lips curved into a small, knowing smile, one that was entirely too confident for its own good. Slowly, he tilted his head, his blue eyes holding yours with a softness that contrasted the cocky energy he carried on the court.

Then, he mouthed the words, “You’re so pretty.”

You felt your breath catch, the heat rising to your cheeks as his gaze lingered. It wasn’t just the words that made your chest flutter; it was the way he looked at you, like he was seeing something no one else could.

Heart pounding, you mouthed back, “Focus on the game.”

His smile deepened, transforming into a grin that made your stomach flip. He shook his head lightly, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “Can’t.”

The unspoken word hung between you, and for a moment, it felt like the space between the court and the stands wasn’t so far after all. There was a vulnerability in his expression, a quiet intensity that made you wonder if he meant more than he was letting on.

He lifted his hand, brushing his thumb across his chin in a subtle motion, but the meaning was unmistakable: he was thinking about you.

The referee’s whistle blew sharply, breaking the spell. Rafe turned back toward the court, tossing the towel to a teammate with a practiced ease, but not before glancing at you one last time. His gaze softened, and for a fleeting second, you could have sworn there was something unspoken in his eyes—something that felt dangerously close to longing.

You exhaled shakily, your hands tightening around the strap of your bag. Around you, the crowd erupted as the game began, but your focus was still on him. The way he moved, so sure of himself, every step purposeful, every pass calculated—it was mesmerizing.

The arena buzzed with energy as the game commenced. The rhythmic dribble of the basketball and the sound of sneakers squeaking against the polished court filled the air, blending with the cheers of the crowd. You found yourself transfixed, your gaze locked on Rafe as he moved across the court with the ease of someone born to dominate the game.

He was commanding a force of nature. Every movement was deliberate, powerful and precise. He wove through the opposing team effortlessly, his presence undeniable as he directed his teammates with sharp gestures and focused intensity. The scorebag flashed: 2-0. Rafe’s team was already pulling ahead, and it was clear who the driving force was.

You couldn’t take your eyes off him. Every time he scored, the arena erupted, but your heart thudded for a different reason. There was something magnetic about the way he played—a mixture of skill, confidence, and an edge that made it impossible to look away. Even from a distance, you could see the determination etched on his face, the slight smirk when his shot landed perfectly in the net, the way he winked at you.

This was Rafe Cameron at his peak, untouchable and undeniably captivating.

Suddenly, the seat next to you shifted. You felt the slight weight of someone standing next to you, but you didn’t glance over. Your attention remained locked on Rafe as he leapt to intercept a pass, the sheer athleticism in his jump drawing another cheer from the crowd.

But then, a familiar voice cut through the noise, low and dripping with condescension.

“Well, this is unexpected.”

Your stomach dropped, and for a fleeting moment, the lively arena seemed to tilt and blur around you. Reluctantly, you tore your gaze away from the court, where Rafe had been dominating with his usual confidence, and turned to the source of the interruption.

There she was, Chiara Romano, lounging in the seat beside you like she owned the place. She looked as impeccable as ever, her designer coat draped artfully over her shoulders, not a single strand out of place. Her lips curved into a smug smile that made your stomach churn, her perfectly manicured nails tapping lightly against the armrest.

“Chiara,” you greeted flatly, forcing a polite smile that didn’t come close to reaching your eyes. “Didn’t expect to see you here... sitting next to me,” you added under your breath, your tone laced with barely concealed irritation.

“Of course I’d be here,” she said breezily, flipping her hair over one shoulder in a gesture so practiced it felt rehearsed. “Rafe and I go way back, you know. I’ve been to more of his games than I can count.”

You clenched your jaw but refused to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. Instead, you turned back toward the court, your eyes automatically searching for Rafe. “That’s nice,” you replied tersely, hoping to end the conversation there.

But Chiara wasn’t one to take a hint.

“You know, basketball games can be overwhelming if you’re not used to them,” she continued, her tone dripping with faux sympathy. “The noise, the energy, the spotlight—it’s not for everyone.”

“I’m managing just fine,” you replied evenly, your voice steady despite the simmering annoyance beneath the surface.

“I’m sure you are,” she said with a patronizing little laugh. She leaned back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other as if settling in for a long chat. “So,” she said with an air of faux curiosity, “how’s life been since we last saw each other? It’s been, what, almost a month?”

You resisted the urge to groan. The last thing you wanted was to engage in small talk with her. “Not much,” you replied curtly. “You?”

Chiara’s eyes sparkled with amusement, as if she relished the power dynamic of the exchange. “Oh, nothing too exciting,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. Then, with a calculated tilt of her head, she added, “But ‘nothing much’ seems like a strange way to describe getting engaged. That’s pretty big, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Chiara’s smile widened, and she leaned in just a fraction, as though to share some intimate secret. You instinctively recoiled, unnerved by her sudden proximity. Whether it was meant to intimidate you or to ensure you heard every word of her next comment, you weren’t sure.

Either way, you didn’t like it.

“I have to admit something,” she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I was surprised to hear about the engagement—” Womp womp, you thought. “—I mean, Rafe never struck me as the settling-down type.”

You exhaled sharply, turning to face her with a calmness you didn’t quite feel. Your voice was smooth, but the edge was unmistakable. “Maybe he wasn’t with the right person to give you that impression.”

Chiara’s eyes narrowed, her lips pressing together in a thin line. The sudden shift in her posture told you everything—you’d struck a nerve. “And you think you’re the… right person?”

You leaned in just slightly, your gaze sharp and unyielding, your lips curling into a smug smile that didn't reach your eyes. “Well, I mean, I’m the one he plans to marry, aren’t I?”

The words landed like a slap, and for a brief moment, her face flickered with a blend of jealousy and frustration, a brief vulnerability that she quickly tried to mask.

“Right,” she nodded, the sound forced. “But you do realize, Rafe isn’t usually into girls like you. He has... a type. Or at least, he used to.”

You raised an eyebrow, genuinely confused by her attempt at a jab. “Okay?” you said, a little too casual.

She laughed bitterly, flapping her hands in the air, clearly trying to backpedal. “I didn’t mean anything bad by that. You’re beautiful, sure, but you’re just not the type Rafe typically goes for.”

Was she serious right now?

What’s so surprising about a white guy only being interested in white girls? Did she think I was born yesterday?

You scoffed, voice dripping with sarcasm. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with that info, Chiara? Am I supposed to fall apart? ‘Oh no, another white guy who doesn’t like brown girls like me. My life is over. I wish I was white.’ Is that the reaction you were hoping for?”

Chiara blinked, clearly thrown off by the intensity in your voice. The color drained slightly from her face as you held your ground, watching her squirm just a little.

“You think you're clever, don’t you?” she said, her voice now tinged with frustration, but you could see the crack in her facade.

“Not really,” you said, shrugging nonchalantly. “Just tired of people thinking they can throw their insecurities at me and watch me flinch. But I don’t play that game.”

Her jaw tightened as she glanced around, searching for a way to regain control. “You know, you’re not exactly what he needs. You’re all—” She gestured to you, eyes sweeping over your appearance, “—flashy, a model, all glitz and glamour. But Rafe needs someone real. Someone who actually gets him.”

You leaned forward just a bit, a challenge flickering in your eyes. “I’m pretty sure I get him just fine. What you’re really trying to say is that you can’t stand the fact that he’s chosen me. And it’s not because I’m not ‘his type.’ It’s because I’m the one who got him. And that’s something you can’t wrap your fucking head around.”

The words landed heavy, and you saw the small twitch in her eye. For a brief moment, she looked almost... vulnerable. Then, just as quickly, the facade slipped back on.

Chiara scoffed, her lips curling into a tight smile. “You’re just a placeholder. He’s going to get bored of you eventually.”

"Listen," you began, stepping closer to Chiara, your voice steady and sharp. "I’m here to watch my fiancé win his match, not waste my time arguing with someone who clearly peaked in high school. So why don’t you take your insecurities and your cheap, high-school jabs and shove them so far up your—"

"Hey, baby," a familiar voice interrupted, smooth and warm like honey.

Your head snapped to the side, and there he was—Rafe, running to you, with that signature cocky grin. His hair was damp with sweat, strands clinging to his forehead, and his jersey clung to every ridge of his chest, leaving very little to the imagination. The gleam of sweat gliding down his forearms and neck made your mouth dry, and for a moment, you completely forgot where you were.

"Did you see that dunk I just pulled off?" he asked, his tone a mix of pride and boyish excitement.

You barely registered the words because all you could think about was how ridiculously good he looked. His muscles practically strained against his jersey, his shoulders broad and commanding. Even the sweat dripping from his jawline seemed unfairly attractive.

Damn it, why did he have to look like that right now?

You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to focus as Rafe jogged up the steps toward you, his eyes lighting up when they met yours.

"Did you see it?" he pressed, still grinning.

"Yeah," you lied, your lips curving into a soft smile as you reached up to adjust the collar of his jersey. "Don’t let it go to your head, though."

“Too late,” Rafe chuckled, leaning in just enough for you to catch the faint scent of his cologne. “That dunk? It was for you. Thought you might like it since, you know, you’re my good luck charm and all.”

You raised a brow, fighting to keep your expression indifferent, though the warmth creeping up your neck betrayed you. “Really? Do I look impressed?”

He inched closer, the grin on his face softening into something that felt almost intimate, his voice dropping lower. “You look hot, actually.” His eyes flickered to your lips for a heartbeat before meeting yours again. “Seeing you out there with my number on your back? It’s driving me insane.”

You opened your mouth to respond, but the words caught in your throat when his gaze lingered just a little too long, sending your heart racing.

“Cameron! Get your pussy-whipped ass back on the court!” JJ Maybank, his teammate, shouted echoed from across the gym.

Rafe groaned, the spell broken, before dropping his head dramatically onto your lap with a low chuckle. He turned his face to press a quick, feather-light kiss to your cheek, the touch leaving you both flustered and breathless, before he jogged back to the court.

For the next 30 minutes, everything was perfect. The energy was electric, Rafe’s team seemed to win and every time he did so he’d send a wink in your direction. You felt good, peaceful. You felt comfortable, almost like you were meant to be here cheering for him. It was too good that you almost forgot Chiara’s presence next to you… until she spoke.

“You know, Rafe and I used to have this little tradition after his games,” she said casually, as though the memory had just occurred to her. “We’d go to this rooftop downtown—he always said it was his favorite view of the city. We’d stay up there for hours, just talking about everything and nothing. It was… special.”

Your grip on your drink tightened, but you forced yourself to keep your eyes on the court. Rafe had just stolen the ball, and the crowd roared as he raced toward the basket.

“You know,” she began, almost lazily, “Rafe and I used to have this little post-game ritual. He’d always say I was his good luck charm—”

Your heart clenched painfully. The phrase echoed in your mind, sharp and cutting like broken glass. Good luck charm. That was what Rafe had called you just today, his lips brushing your ear as he teased you in the stands. It had felt personal, intimate, like a secret between you and him. But now it seemed cheap, rehearsed—just another line he used, a meaningless phrase recycled from his past with others.

You kept your face neutral, though your pulse thundered in your ears.

“He always said he couldn’t play his best unless I was watching,” Chiara continued, her voice tinged with amusement. “It was sweet, really. Afterward, he’d grab my hand, pull me into his car, and we’d drive down to this diner he loved. He insisted the milkshakes there were the best in town.”

You couldn’t stop your eyes from finding Rafe on the court. He was electric, his movements precise and powerful, his confidence unmistakable. But as you stared at him, anger and hurt churned in your chest. You felt foolish, betrayed, for letting yourself believe you were special to him.

“And when he scored that game-winning shot last season,” Chiara added, leaning slightly closer as if to deliver the final blow, “he said it was because I was there. He made me feel like I was part of it, you know? Like we were a team.”

The game’s final whistle blew, and the crowd erupted in cheers, but you couldn’t bring yourself to clap. Your hands stayed clenched in your lap, your eyes locked on Rafe as he turned toward the stands.

His gaze swept across the crowd until it landed on you.

You weren’t smiling. You weren’t even standing. You just sat there, staring at him, your emotions too tangled to mask. Hurt, anger, and disappointment simmered beneath the surface, your expression giving away enough for him to know something was wrong.

Rafe’s brow furrowed, his grin disappearing entirely as he took a step closer, clearly intending to come over. But you didn’t wait. You pushed yourself up from the seat and turned on your heel, weaving your way through the crowd toward the exit.

“YN!” His voice carried over the noise, confusion laced in his tone. You didn’t stop.

He called your name again, louder this time, his footsteps heavy behind you as he tried to catch up. “Hey, wait—what’s going on?”

But you couldn’t face him. Not now. Not with your chest tightening and your mind replaying Chiara’s words like a broken record. Good luck charm. The phrase rattled in your head, mocking you for ever thinking you were something new to him.

Just as you reached the corridor leading out of the stadium, Rafe’s hand grabbed your wrist, halting you in your tracks.

“YN, stop,” he said, his voice firmer now, though there was still a trace of confusion in it. He turned you around gently, his blue eyes searching yours. “What the hell is wrong?”

You yanked your wrist free, your emotions bubbling too close to the surface. “You're such a fucking asshole,” you snapped in your native language.

“I don’t know what you're saying!” he said, confused. “What is this? Why are you walking away from me?”

“Hey!” His tone was sharper now, frustration evident as he jogged after you. You were halfway down the empty corridor when his voice rose again, louder this time. “What the hell is going on?”

Still, you didn’t look back.

Rafe finally caught up, his footsteps heavy as he moved in front of you, blocking your path. “YN, stop!” he barked, his chest rising and falling with exertion. His blue eyes searched your face, desperate for answers. “What is wrong with you?”

You gave him nothing, your expression unreadable as you stared past him, silent and unyielding.

“Seriously? You’re just going to ignore me?” Rafe demanded, his voice rising with irritation.

You crossed your arms, your jaw tightening as you stepped around him and continued walking. He let out a low curse behind you but followed, his confusion giving way to simmering anger.

“You drive me insane,” he murmured as he touched his hair before going back to shower quickly and change.

Rafe stepped into the dimly lit private parking lot, his thoughts tangled in knots as he tried to make sense of your behavior. The tension from earlier lingered, gnawing at him with every step he took. What could he have done to make you this angry? He replayed the events in his mind, searching for answers but coming up empty-handed.

Then, he spotted you.

You were leaning against his car, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself as though shielding yourself from more than just the cold. Your gaze was fixed on the ground, a deep frown etched on your face. Rafe froze for a moment, his confusion momentarily replaced by something softer.

Even now, angry and upset, you looked stunning.

He noticed the way your bottom lip jutted out slightly in an unconscious pout, a habit he’d come to associate with your frustration. It was endearing, almost enough to make him smile if the circumstances weren’t so tense. His eyes softened as he watched you, taking in the delicate lines of your profile and the way your hair shifted slightly with the cold breeze.

But then his phone buzzed in his pocket, the sudden noise shattering the stillness. The sound caught your attention, and your head snapped up to meet his gaze.

The moment your eyes locked, Rafe felt like he’d been struck.

Your glare was fiery, your anger radiating in waves that he could feel even from a distance. It was a look that could melt steel, and for a fleeting second, Rafe thought you might actually set him alight with sheer willpower.

In stark contrast, his own gaze held nothing but intensity, a raw, unguarded passion that made him forget to breathe. He knew you were furious, but he couldn’t stop the way his heart ached for you—or the way you made it race despite everything.

The phone in his pocket buzzed again, but he didn’t bother checking who it was. He pulled it out, pressed ‘decline’ without even glancing at the screen, and slipped it back into his pocket. His focus never wavered from you.

“Can I walk over,” he called out, his voice a mix of humor and hesitation, “or are you going to eat me alive?”

You didn’t respond. Your piercing stare didn’t falter, and the silence felt deafening.

If Rafe was honest, he was a little scared.

Drawing in a deep breath, he willed himself forward. Each step he took felt heavier, weighed down by the intensity of your gaze. When he reached the car, he pulled out his keys, unlocking the doors with a soft beep.

The sound seemed to jolt you, and without a word, you slipped past him and climbed into the passenger seat. He noticed the way you folded into yourself, shrinking away from him as you hugged your arms tighter against the biting New York City air.

Rafe stood outside for a moment, his hand gripping the door handle as he stared at you through the window. You wouldn’t even look at him, your face turned resolutely toward the dashboard. The cold breeze tugged at his jacket, but he barely felt it.

With a quiet sigh, he got into the driver’s seat, the air between you heavy with unspoken words. The tension was suffocating, and as he started the car, he couldn’t help but glance at you again, his chest tightening at the sight of your distant expression.

The car ride was agonizingly silent.

Rafe’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel as he stole quick glances at you, each one more anxious than the last. The occasional flicker of streetlights illuminated your face, but you kept your gaze locked on the window, your expression unreadable.

"YN," he started, his voice quieter this time, almost cautious. "Are you going to tell me what’s going on?"

You didn’t even blink.

Rafe’s jaw clenched. "Come on," he said more firmly. "I’m not a mind reader. Just talk to me."

Still, nothing.

He sighed heavily, his frustration bubbling just beneath the surface. “I don’t know what I did to make you this mad, but—”

“Then stop talking,” you interrupted, your voice sharp and cold.

That shut him up. The rest of the drive was thick with tension, the kind that settled in your chest and made it hard to breathe.

By the time he pulled into the parking garage, Rafe’s patience was stretched thin. He parked the car, cutting the engine, and turned to you.

“Are we really going to keep doing this?” he asked, his tone edged with irritation. “You’re acting like I killed your dog or something. Just tell me what’s wrong!”

You ignored him, pulling open the door and stepping out into the cold. The slam of the door echoed through the garage.

“Great,” Rafe muttered under his breath, getting out and slamming his own door harder than necessary. “This is just perfect.”

He followed you into the building, his longer strides catching up to you easily. “YN, stop,” he said, his voice growing more urgent. “Will you please just stop for a second?”

You didn’t.

The moment you stepped into the apartment, you made a beeline for your bedroom. But Rafe was right behind you, his frustration boiling over as he grabbed your wrist to stop you.

“Enough,” he said, his voice low and firm. “What the hell is going on?”

You yanked your arm free, glaring at him with such ferocity that he actually stepped back. “Don’t,” you snapped, your voice cutting like a blade.

Without waiting for a response, you stormed into your room and slammed the door shut so hard the walls seemed to vibrate.

Rafe stood there for a moment, stunned. His hands rested on his hips as he exhaled a shaky breath. “Seriously?” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. “Are you for real right now?”

From the other side of the door, you could hear him pacing. His voice grew louder, tinged with disbelief and frustration.

“YN, come on! What the hell is your problem? Why are you acting like this?”

You pressed your back against the door, your arms wrapping around yourself as your emotions warred inside you. Chiara’s words played on a relentless loop in your mind—good luck charm—and your chest ached with a confusing mix of anger and betrayal.

When Rafe’s voice came again, it was louder, more exasperated. “I don’t get why you’re so mad!”

That was it.

You flung the door open, your eyes blazing as you stepped out to face him.

“You don’t get why I’m mad?” you snapped, your voice trembling with raw emotion. “Are you serious, Rafe? You really have no idea?”

Rafe blinked, caught off guard by your sudden outburst. “No! I don’t!” he shot back. “One second we’re fine, and the next you’re acting like I did something unforgivable!”

“Your good luck charm!” you practically yelled, the nickname tasting bitter on your tongue. “Every time I think you’re finally getting better, that I can finally get along with you, something comes along and ruins everything. It’s like I can’t trust a single thing you say, Rafe!”

Rafe’s brows furrowed deeply, his confusion palpable. “What are you even talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about!” you snapped, your voice breaking as emotion overwhelmed you. “Chiara. She said it—she said you used to call her your good luck charm. That you couldn’t play without her watching. And then you—you turn around and call me the same thing. Do you have a script you use with women, or am I just another recycled chapter in your pathetic little book of tricks?”

Rafe’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He stared at you, stunned, as if trying to process what you were saying. “I—I never said that to her,” he finally managed, his voice quieter than before. “I don’t even know why she’d say that. I’ve never called her my good luck charm.”

“Oh, so now she’s the liar?” you shot back bitterly, crossing your arms. “Convenient, isn’t it? Blame her, act like you didn’t do anything wrong. But why would she make that up, Rafe? Why would she lie about something so specific?”

“I don’t know!” he said, his voice rising in frustration. “But I swear, YN, I never said that to her. That nickname—it’s yours. I called you that because I meant it. Because that’s what you are to me. I don’t just throw that around like it’s nothing.”

His words were raw, almost pleading, but they didn’t soothe the ache in your chest. You shook your head, stepping back. “How am I supposed to believe you? After everything—after all the lies, the games, the constant reminders that I’m just another person in your long, messy history—you expect me to just take your word for it?”

Rafe ran a hand through his hair, the frustration evident in his every movement. “I’m not lying to you, YN,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “I know I’ve screwed up in the past, and I know I’ve given you a million reasons not to trust me. But this—this isn’t one of those times. Chiara’s lying, or twisting things, or—I don’t know. But I do know that I’ve never felt about her the way I feel about you.”

Your breath caught at his words, but you forced yourself to stay guarded. “And what way is that, exactly? Because it feels like I’m constantly walking a tightrope with you, Cameron. One wrong step, and it all falls apart.”

Rafe took a hesitant step closer, his expression pained. “I don’t want it to fall apart,” he said softly. “I’m trying, YN. I’m trying to be better—for you. I know I’m not perfect, and I know I don’t always get it right, but I care about you."

“If you care about me as much as you say you do,” you said, your voice trembling but steady, “then tell me what happened between you and her.”

Rafe froze, his jaw tightening as the weight of your words hit him. He took a small step back, almost as if putting physical distance between you could lessen the pressure. His eyes darted away, avoiding yours, and you could see the conflict etched into his face.

“Why?” he asked, his voice low and hesitant.

“Why?” you repeated, your voice rising as the flood of emotions inside you threatened to break free. “Why?!” Your chest heaved as you tried to contain the frustration boiling over. “Because if we’re going to have something real, something fresh and healthy, I need to know what happened between you two. I need to understand, Rafe.”

His brows furrowed deeply, and you could see the panic in his eyes. “I don’t… I don’t think I can,” he muttered, his voice barely audible.

The words hit you like a physical blow, and your breath caught in your throat. You felt your heart tighten, the ache in your chest spreading as tears stung your eyes. You blinked rapidly, trying to keep them from falling, but it was no use.

“Okay,” you said softly, your voice cracking. It wasn’t angry or accusatory—it was resigned, heavy with disappointment.

“YN, wait,” Rafe pleaded, stepping toward you, his voice desperate. “I—”

“No.” You cut him off sharply, your voice suddenly firm despite the tears streaming down your face. You held up a hand, keeping him at bay. “I don’t want to hear it, Rafe. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Rafe stared at you, his jaw tightening as he struggled to find the right words. But for the first time, you didn’t want to hear them.

Before he could say anything else, you turned on your heel and walked back into your room, slamming the door shut once more, leaving him standing there in silence.

The silence between you was deafening.

Rafe’s hand hung loosely by his side as he stood outside your door, staring at the wood like it would somehow provide answers. His chest rose and fell unevenly, the weight of your words still pressing on him like a heavy stone. The anger in your eyes, the way you looked at him—he could still feel it burning into him. But more than than, there was something else, something far deeper that gnawed at him, something that felt like it was tearing him apart.

With a frustrated groan, he let himself slide down the door, his back hitting it with a thud. He bent his knees, resting his head in his hands for a moment as he exhaled deeply, his mind racing with confusion. Why did this feel so goddamn difficult?

He had always been good at avoiding things, at keeping his distance from complications, at never allowing anyone to get too close romantically. But with you, it was different. Every touch, every look, every moment felt like something that mattered. More than that, it felt like it was changing him in ways he wasn’t sure he could handle.

He ran a hand through his hair, frustration bubbling up inside him like a storm waiting to break.

What the hell is wrong with me? he thought. Why am I so messed up about her?

The sound of movement behind him made him glance up. You had shifted as well, and now you were sitting on the floor with your back against the door. Your arms were crossed tightly over your chest, your face buried in your hands. It wasn’t a sobbing kind of silence, but more like two people utterly drained from the weight of everything that had happened.

He wanted to say something, anything, to break the tension. But words felt useless right now.

Ten minutes passed. Neither of you moved, both of you stuck in your own swirling thoughts. Rafe could hear his heart thundering in his chest, the confusion churning inside him. He wanted you. Badly. He could feel it—every inch of him aching for you, wanting to close the distance between you, but something held him back.

It wasn’t just the anger. It wasn’t just the words that had been said. It was the fear.

The fear of losing you, of fucking everything up, of showing you the side of him he’d spent so long burying deep inside.

Chiara. The past. His mistakes.

He had told himself that he could protect you from all that. That you didn’t need to know. But sitting here, staring at the door like it held all the answers, he realized how much he needed to open up. He needed you to understand.

“YN,” he muttered, his voice strained, “I… I can’t do this anymore. I’m so fucking lost.”

He hesitated for a second, feeling his throat tighten. “I don’t know how to do this,” he confessed, his voice breaking just a little. “I don’t know how to make it right between us. I just… I need you to understand. I need you to know what happened.”

Behind the door, you still didn’t look up, your face hidden in the shadows of the room, your eyes closed as though bracing yourself for the storm that was coming.

Rafe’s hands shook as he finally opened up, his emotions raw and unguarded in a way he had never allowed himself to be.

“Chiara,” he started, his voice low and rough. “She wasn’t just some ex. She was part of my life when I was at my lowest. When I was 19, I was… I was a fucking mess. I was lost. I was drowning in everything—drugs, alcohol, all that shit. I didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t care. I was just… numb. I needed something to keep me afloat, and Chiara, she was there. She was a part of that world. I don’t know why I thought she was the one who could help me, but she was. And I used her, just as much as she used me. We were a fucking disaster.”

He stopped there, the words tasting bitter in his mouth, but they were true. They were the only truth he had been hiding.

“I went to rehab, and when I came back, everything was different. But Chiara, she was still there, still holding on, and I didn’t know how to cut her off. I didn’t know how to let go. She was struggling, and I felt guilty—so I kept her around. I thought if I just… if I just stayed close, maybe I could make up for all the shit I did. I don’t know. But I wasn’t being honest. Not with her, not with mys I saidelf.”

His breath hitched, the weight of the past crashing into him like a wave. “And when I’ve never called her that. My good luck charm. I don’t know how she knows about it but I promise you, on everything precious in my life, I’ve never called her that… But when I say it to you, it’s different. It means something. You’re not some… replacement for her. You’re not some fucking substitute. You’re real. And that scares the hell out of me.”

He exhaled sharply, his voice barely above a whisper.Rafe leaned back against the door again, his head pressed to the cool surface, his eyes closing as a wave of exhaustion hit him. He was exposed now, more vulnerable than he had ever been, his heart in pieces. He had said everything that had been suffocating him, and yet, the silence still felt like it was swallowing him whole.

He waited, his breath shaky, his thoughts a whirl of regret and hope and fear. All he could do now was wait for you to respond, to open the door—or for you to walk away, to decide that he wasn’t worth the risk.

The waiting was unbearable.

chapter thirteen

INFO ABOUT UPDATES: if you want to be notified about all my fics and updates, follow @aliyahwritings-notifs and turn on notifications!!!

[xoluvx]

necklace; b.eilish ❥₊ ⊹ ᴡᴇᴀʀ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ ɴᴇᴄᴋʟᴀᴄᴇ

sᴍᴜᴛ there was a hunger brewing deep inside. you'd never been one to ask for such things. you were completely satisfied. you'd fallen into a routine and you loved it. your bodies knew how to mold together. your legs knew how to tangle. your lips knew where to kiss, and your hands..

well, your hands knew where to touch, but it was her hands that'd lit the fuel that set the following events in motion.

"please," you whispered gripping her shoulders subtly reminding her of the conversation you'd had earlier. your eyes were pleading as you blinked nervously. brows raising with anticipation. it'd been such a peculiar request. one you'd been so nervous to make, but the words had melted off your tongue like warm butter and now they clung to her every thought like sticky sweet honey.

you weren't afraid to try new things, on the contrary, you were quite comfortable trying new things with her. there was just something so vulnerable about the conversation you'd had that'd built the anticipation as you curiously waited for her next move.

you gasped quietly when you felt her hand on your jaw, eyes opening as you leaned into her touch desperately. a lump formed in your throat as her fingers caressed your cheek. you closed your eyes salivating at the thought. body covered in goosebumps as her fingers trailed down the side of your neck. her strokes grew deeper, rougher; slamming into you as the sound of skin slapping filled the room. your eyelids fluttered open when you felt her lips on your cheek so soft and tender compared to her thrusts.

"i want you to look at me," she demanded with her thumb pressed to your throat. she felt you swallow her command as you nodded; eyes fixed on her burning gaze. you watched her lips slowly part as her fingers curled around your neck. you swallowed the prominent lump in your throat. your body burned with anticipation and desire.

you choked when her grip tightened, eyes growing darker under her hooded eyelids and pouting lips. she took in the marvelous sight; tits bouncing, lips parted, brows furrowed, moans muffled. it was exhilarating. you were crumbling under her fingertips and you'd asked for it. no, you'd begged for it. noises you'd never made before filled her ears and it fueled her own sparkling fire.

"you like that?" she whispered when she felt your fingernails dig into her arms clawing down her biceps until your hands were wrapped around her wrist. her voice was raspy in your ear, repeating her question waiting for your answer. you muttered a breathy 'yes' resulting in a toothy grin when she pulled her body back. her grip never faltering. she admired the way her hand decorated your neck with the most exquisite necklace embellished with pretty ring-clad fingers and dancing fairies as you drooled. eyes rolling to the back of your head; body bursting in flames.

[melminli]

what would it be like to be in a romantic relationship with cho hyun-ju? l headcanons

short summery - a few scenarios about dating the one and only, cho hyun-ju! (w/ fem!reader)

a/n: i’m not a trans person so i obviously can't know what that feels like, but i also never want to ignore that part when writing smth w/ her since it's an integral part of her identity! lmk if there ever is something that i should fix!

dating hyun-ju would probably have to happen either before her transition or quite a while after because she just wouldn't be in the right headspace to meet someone new during the early stages of all that change. it just would be a period in her life where she needs a lot of space and time for herself, so romantic relationships would definitely not be one of her priorities.

however, dating hyun-ju before she starts her transition would give you both several options on how to manage this step in your relationship. firstly, you would have to think about your sexuality a bit, if you haven't already done so. especially, if you would still want to be with her! it would obviously be difficult for hyun-ju to finally decide to come out to you because she loved you and didn't want to risk losing you, but of course, she would still respect any decision you made! sometimes you just have to let go of the things you love, even though it would break her heart if you decided to stay friends. but, either way, she was glad that she could trust you with this!

dating hyun-ju after she came out to you would lead to you helping her as much as you could through the steps of feeling more comfortable in her body and standing by her side after losing family and friends. you were ready for her to share her mental problems and more with you, so that you could support her, but hyun-ju would try to burden you as little as possible with all that stuff. having you by her side was enough for her and she also just didn't like complaining to the one person who made her forget about all the negative things in her life. so, maybe after a while, you two would agree that she should try therapy! it would be something that could reinforce her in a way that she felt more comfortable with when it came to her problems, and it would help her tell you about some things in a way that wouldn't overwhelm you or her.

dating hyun-ju would generally mean that you would always feel safe by her side, not only because she was a very understanding person and a good listener - but also because she was well aware of her own physical strength! there was a time when she was very ashamed of it and it wasn't her fault that society didn't consider muscles and stuff to be 'feminine', but you didn't want her to dislike herself for something that you loved about her. so, you did some research and discovered some great female personal trainers, wrestlers, and the like to show them to her! self esteem wasn't something that could be built overnight, but seeing other women who were like her and confident should still help somehow, right? besides, you two eventually started being fans of these people!

dating hyun-ju would mean that she would unconsciously take care of you in different ways. whether that meant taking you out somewhere or cooking for the two of you. honestly, you would have a hard time returning the favor because hyun-ju would insist that she liked giving more than taking, but she also deserved to sit back and relax sometimes! so, there would be more moments over time when she would let you take the lead and let herself get spoiled a bit.

dating hyun-ju would involve, that you only had to mention something you liked in a conversation once for her to buy it for you. she's pretty observant when it comes to things like that!

dating hyun-ju would mean that when you went to bed at night, you would often have long pillow talks until one of you fell asleep. the length of the conversations always varied, of course, but you both especially cherished the time on days when you were recovering from a busy week. you would just lie close to each other for quite a while, whispering quiet things to each other while the nightlight was on, and find comfort in each other's presence.

[retiredteabag]

Dog-sitter!Toji - chapter 9

last chapter - next chapter - series masterlist

Synopsis: Toji was quite accustomed to objectifying himself for a check. And to be frank, far worse actions as well. Now he’s not sure what to do with himself after meeting the kind and generous owner of the dog he pet-sits for.

read along as Toji learns that you don't need to lose yourself in order to love and be loved.

Toji has never been the type to hold back.

He's honest and dislikes waiting to express his thoughts, even so, he had been holding in these feelings for a long time now.

How could it be that it took working together with you under extreme stress for him to realize that no one had seen him as a human quite like you had.

And for you, in the midst of your anxiety and strain, you consider him, in the small things he does such as ordering food, and in the large, working by your side to fight this battle day and night.

Dark evening nights bled into fresh mornings, unearthing the man who had threatened you had been the both of your main goals but along the way Toji grew more and more comfortable thinking of you as a friend.

In the past, when you had asked him to consider you as a friend, he would mentally roll his eyes. You were his employer, it was out of the question. But now? He found himself wondering why "friendship" seemed too gentle a term. Why is it he was wanting more?

You on the other hand, you had learned long ago to be honest with yourself. Even before, when you felt giddiness at his appearance or when you noticed yourself fixing your hair in the car, you were able to recognize your attraction to the man.

This attraction was not just physical though, he was dedicated and kind, humble and brave. You wouldn't say it, no matter how much your heart melted when you saw his nature.

Especially not now, when you needed to prioritize your dog.

--

Your hands shook as the attorney described the process of what defending you in court would look like. As it had turned out, despite there being a real case against your dog, there was still but a little evidence to suggest that your dog had initiated anything.

You also learned that the plaintiff not coming to you for months after the event was not a good look for them. Each passing hour, the ache in your heart would lessen. The beginnings of your chest easing helped you prepare yourself for the proceedings.

What you had not expected was how the dog that had attacked Toji was an unregistered working animal.

This would suggest that the work the dog was trained for was illegal or nefarious in some other nature.

In all honesty, you had expected the man who had shown up at your door to have been running a puppy mill of some sort.

Far from your realm of possibility was how dark the world could truly be. Toji had taken it upon himself to "do some digging", only to find that the Tosa Inu that had put your dog in the animal hospital over night had been an underground fighting dog.

The more you listened to what that could possibly mean, the sicker you felt. You were even more grateful to Toji though. He insisted that he hadn't hired a PI or anything, simply stating that he "knew a guy" who could uncover whatever had been happening behind the scenes.

Gambling was illegal in all areas of Japan but even worse was dog fighting. Several prefectures, including Tokyo had the act banned and on the level that this ring was operating, it was fair to assume other crimes were occurring behind the scenes. Betting on dog fights merely scratched the surface it seemed.

Even knowing all this, it wasn't until animal welfare organizations got involved, promising to back you in any way, that you began to rest easier at night.

--

You had spent what felt like an eternity yet somehow a blink of time making legal arguments in your office. You worked until your brain hurt and your eyes strained from the light of the computer screen.

During working hours, your attorney would occasionally be at your residence, working with yourself and Toji. Witnesses to Toji's injury, and your dog's behavior needed to be called forth, receipts and bills from the veterinary hospital needed to be located and confirmed for court proceedings, photographs of the scene in which the dog fighting ring was located needed to be confirmed. It all took far longer than you were expecting.

After working hours you would find yourself writing down your thoughts, hoping your lawyer was right to presume a positive fate. With the only companion you had known for years on the line however, it was a challenge to remain calm.

With his constant and unwarranted vigilance, you insisted Toji stay with you at the house. He had stayed in the guest room before and if he was so determined to help, the least you could do is offer him a place to stay.

It didn't take much convincing on your part, he stood by you through the whole ordeal.

One night, after a particularly grueling day of unburying evidence of animal abuse, you sat on your couch, tenderly stroking your dogs neck as tension built within your own.

It was funny to think that not even a month ago taking off this much work would be unthinkable to you. For the first time in your life, you had burned through all of your PTO, vacation, and sick leave. You were lucky enough to have an employer, though unperturbed by your usual overworking nature, was willing to be lenient with your schedule due to the nature of the issue at hand.

You had been mindlessly playing with the dogs ears, staring at the noiseless television before you when the gentle steps of the man you had come to appreciate so much found their way into the living room.

"Care if I join you?" He spoke softly, perhaps worried to startle you.

Attempting a carefree manner, you tried for a grin, "Of course, come, sit down."

He shuffled closer and sat to the other end of the dog, the beast, who had all his life (to your knowledge) been inconsolably frightened by men, did not hesitate to lay his head atop Toji's thigh.

The man laced his fingers through the dogs fur, smiling softly. "How are you feeling?"

Your shoulders jitter slightly as his hand brushes your own. Your dog lifts his head a moment to look at you. Huffing he plops his head back, returning to rest on the man's leg. Your heart races like a silly schoolgirl. "Good, good, everything is really looking up, you know?" You swallow a bit, "Toji, really, I know I said it before but I just wanted to make it clear how grateful I am to you. You really don't have any obligation to be here, helping me-"

The man by your side seems to straighten a bit where he sat. His hand as stopped moving and he just looks at you.

"-ever since that day at the animal hospital, when you put the needs of my boy here over your own, before that really, I have been in your debt. I hope it was never a burden... I hope you know what a comfort your presence has been."

"No." Toji's spine is taught and he takes a gulp of air before continuing on quickly, "no- no its not a burden at all. And...owe me? How could you owe me?" He laughs a bit at the notion.

Before you interject to make some painfully sweet comment, he pushes on, "You must not know-" he stares at you now, only a few breaths away, "how...lucky I am to be able to do this job, to be of some help...to...have even met you."

He's stumbling over his words, he never does that, but you make him weak somehow. You make him want to take care with his words. You make him feel so very human, so very alive.

"Well..." You fiddle with your hands, having long since moved them to your lap to avoid the strange thumping that occurs when your fingers cross. "I feel like the lucky one."

--

After weeks of scouring information, preparing documents, and developing exposé's, the result you could have only prayed for arrived.

The very next morning your attorney practically bounded in through the front door. She was laughing and flinging around a written notice as if it was a ticket straight to the pearly gates of heaven. Upon the address line, in bold letters, was a miracale in ink.

"COURT FILING: DISSMISSAL "

"W-what does this mean?" You smile up at your lawyer, her hoots and hollers were contagious.

"What does it mean? It means that coward of a litigant has withdrawn the charges!"

It took a moment for the elation to fill you, you repeated her words over and over, you gave her one clear look as if to ask, 'does that mean what I think it means?"

She just nodded.

You broke down in laughs. The dog wove in between your legs sensing your joy, Toji came rushing into the foyer, words of 'what's going on?' left him before he saw you grinning on the floor, scratching the dog's neck.

He smirks as if he had been counting on this the whole time, steadily walking your way until he is within arms reach. He displays one arm stretched out to you.

Under the assumption he was going to pull you up from your spot on the ground, you reach a hand to take his own and gasp when he dips to pull you into his arms. Lifting you with a steady grip.

"Toji!" You laugh, oh how it felt good to laugh once more.

The dog circled you, panting and wiggling his butt. The other person present was talking about how you had every means to come after the man with your own counterclaim, having found so much on his name. But it was all background noise. You were too caught up in the grasp Toji had on your waist. His smile. His laugh. All of it.

It wasn't until you were placed carefully back on your own two feet that you noticed the woman awkwardly grinning at the two of you.

You knew that you might still have a fight ahead of you, and it was one you would willingly take. But at this very moment, you felt incandescently happy. Nobody was taking your baby from you, and in all these efforts, it seemed you had made a close friend.

And perhaps even a connection verging dangerously close to something more.

--

Some cheap barbecue spot was not what you had expected when you told Toji you would get him whatever he liked in celebration.

"Honestly, I only started eating well when I began looking after your place." Toji takes a piece of beef that he grilled and placed it onto your plate, taking a spoonful of broth for himself.

"That's funny, I kind feel the same, I got so nervous that you wouldn't have anything to eat that I started planning for my groceries." You look down at the bite he prepared for you and smile.

The man before you narrows his eyes, "Well... I'm glad you started eating better." He spins his chopsticks around and flips some meat over on the grill.

"You know...you never asked for anything-" You start, recalling how you had left a note in the early days asking if there was something he wanted from the store.

"You never had to get me anything." Toji grins, "You've been more than generous."

There's a long pause occupied by the both of you taking bites of your dinner and smiling. You'd been doing that an awful, you realize and compose yourself, slightly embarrassed, "I don't think you know how much I appreciate you, Toji." You point an accusing finger at him.

And you don't know how much I love hearing you say my name he thought but kept it to himself.

"Nahhhh, I think I do. You kinda wear your heart on your sleeve."

You roll your eyes, recalling how he had seen you in so many positions, the awkward early phase, angry, teary, even sick, he had seen it all. Once again, you cringe at how much of you he knows.

"If you knew you wouldn't be calling me generous. Before I had someone I could trust with the house and dog, I was so stressed all the time. Work was piling up and I hated leaving home, knowing he would be anxious."

You recall all the nights before Toji when you tearfully considered rehoming your most loyal partner.

"Well now you're free to overwork yourself from the comfort of your office." He teases.

The two of you went on eating and poking fun at each other. Every little instance of connection between you two drew you both closer. Dark times bring out the true nature of individuals and identify exactly who someone is.

And who you were was everything he desired.

Dedicated, hardworking, kind.

Even Toji was surprised by his own unquestioning nature when it came to helping you. He would do whatever it took to see you happy.

--

Toji had insisted on driving you to dinner. He told you he was taking you to his favorite spot. For a time, he was embarrassed by his car, seeing you sitting in the passenger seat almost felt like a sin but you just grinned at him, and conversed easily.

He felt like a student again, driving as carefully as ever to ensure the safety of such precious cargo.

At the end of the night, when he pulled up your drive way, he told you to stay seated.

Confused, you couldn't help laughing when he came around to get the door for you.

A part of you, however small, hoped he wasn't just teasing. Hoped he might see you as more than his employer. Hoped this connection between you two would not end with the resurgence of the sun.

You tell him he didn't have to walk you to the door but he just scoffs and bares the cold by your side. The celebration was still fresh between you.

You didn't even have your hand on the door yet, everything of the day was weighing on you, the way he had lifted you up and held you, all the smiles you shared, all the easy conversation. You knew it had to stop, or you might end up deluding yourself further than you already had.

"I think it's fair to say you've gone above and beyond dog sitter status, Toji. I'm sure you'll enjoy staying at your place for once."

You had meant it lightheartedly. You really had felt bad these nights when he worked into the evening, staying in your guest room to support you. Pulling out his reading glasses for the first time in years. Despite your blithe attitude, he seemed to get all serious.

He looks at his shoes for a moment, the wind chilled you to the bone but Toji doesn't flinch.

Everything in Toji's mind was telling him to keep his mouth shut.

He was nothing special to you, no matter how kindly you told him otherwise. He had nothing to offer you. He was an ally cat of a man to your show cat of a women. He was never going to be any more than the dog sitter. Why risk the best position he had ever been granted? Why put an end to this dream he had been living?

But Toji has never been the type to hold back.

"I don't think I can keep on like this."

He doesn't look at you, still too occupied by the pavement.

"What?" Barely a beat had passed before you try to bend and catch his eye but he lifts his face to the heavens.

At one point, money was all Toji cared for, he was willing to do anything for it, but now, he was feeling things he hadn't felt since he was a boy, maybe things he never had before.

"This..." He sighs and finally gives you a resolute look, "this is my job."

You're taken aback. Replaying the words a hundred times within a millisecond. Trying to see his meaning. The words hurt, yes, you knew you paid him. Of course none of his actions meant anything more than job security. But as much as you had told yourself to be realistic, his kind and selfless attitude had started to leak into your brain, making you feel special.

You step back, still not opening the door. Wanting now to see him leave. To solidify this moment. "Right. Yes, Toji, of course."

He's still looking at you, pupils blown wide but he doesn't hesitate. "I'm afraid you’re gonna have to find someone else." in stark contrast to before, he never strays from your vision. He shakes his head as if to say, 'no'.

"What?" You repeat. Suddenly afraid of his meaning you try to take a step down to meet him at the landing but he holds up a hand. "What do you mean?"

Had it been too much? The court case? The working together? Had it only been pleasant for you? All those nights chatting on the couch, all those sweet "goodnight's"?

He pulls back his hand, one quick inhalation of the night's air was all the courage he could summon and coincidentally, all he required, "I've got these feelings that aren't exactly appropriate for the workplace."

All to be heard are the whistles of wind on the trees.

"So I think it might be best-" He's shaking his head again, not believing a word, "for you to find someone...less...attached."

It makes him chuckle, as broken as this moment makes him feel. How long has it been since he has been attached, since he has felt like this at all. How silly.

"Toji...Toji what are you saying?"

"All of this" his makes a show of his hands, "all of you, who you are, how you behave, what you do for others. I never want to lose it. It's my job, but deep down...I know it's more than that." He keeps heaving in breath, making wild motions with his hand, begging you to understand, "I want to be there to take care of the dog, I want to stay and take care of you when work is too much, I want to go for walks and eat dinner together, I don't even want to be paid anymore-GOD I cannot believe I just said that-"

He's laughing but your mind is morphing back into the dreamlike notion you had been shoving away. No words escape your lips as you grab hold of his hand, "I thought...I thought you wouldn't think of me like that..."

Now he's looking at you like you've made some ridiculous joke.

"I thought you just... liked taking care of the dog..."

He guffaws. "I do..." he inhales shakily, "believe me. I do. But... I definitely like you more."

You don't even know when his hand went to graze over your cheek but suddenly, your face is feeling warm in spite of the chill.

"I-I just can't believe- I feel...Toji I was talking myself out of this just a moment ago."

His eyes go all soft, you wonder if you had ever missed this look of his, "Is it too good to be true if I guess you feel the same?" "Gosh, Toji, No! I-" You pull his hand from your cheek and use it to cover your eyes.

Not too long ago, you felt like floating, thinking the day could not possibly become greater in importance, but life has a funny way of proving us wrong.

--

For a moment there on the porch, you had thought that he might kiss you. Right there on your doorstep in the cold, with your dog rolling his eyes inside. But Toji didn't, in fact, he pulled himself back. Holding your hand, murmuring that he wanted to "do this right" as he played with your fingers.

And for the second time that day, you have the overwhelming desire to dance around your house. To spin and clutch your heart as impossible hope filled your senses. Only this time, as the door closes and you watch out the window, a hand clutched to your chest. You grant yourself the privilege.

A moment to yourself of pure delight.

Hidden from your view, Toji was experiencing a very similar sensation, palm displayed across his pounding heart, he settles his head against the steering wheel and wonders if this all is a dream.

〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰

Tags:

@sweetpo1son @scorpiosugar @starmapz @toruswrld @your-mum3000 @meow-satoru @animeblr @utarts @roxyyyyy1xx @lilming36 @scandibabeuh @atanasiaaaa @chouzuko @voronii @transsfish @h3llf4iry @lucrea @straewberrysoda @s4m4nth4wrld @storiesbyparadise @pokiona @neiostrike @breenatalle @uwolivia @gothic-fluffycow @luvvmae @justbelljust @voidshoutsback @chaotic-ish @jamzywiththejam28 @definitely-not-leena @kirawyd @kuro-chi69 @smoments @lukabwrry @esmedelacroix @professionalreblogger @yoongluverz @stainednailpolishremover @nappingmoon @lauretsy @noelssprings @bytgefirewbook @koji-ibitsu @wafflefries786 @bearchermer @p1nkfl0wers @sugojosgf @deafeningherofishcash @yeehawbrothers @wil10wthetree @youcantseem3 @poopooindamouf @miakxn @esggs @makosworld @neeshsoodrippedout @momoewn @mooncleaver @avocadomochi @getoisinnocent @femmefatal @lov3vivian @grima4lurking @lemonlimecrystal-blog @icedemon1314

tag list is sadly full! If you ever want to be taken off of the tag list, please just let me know :] (if your name is here but you didn’t get tagged. I think it’s either because your blog is new/blank/empty where you need to check your privacy settings.)

[calebsmuse]

not me haunting your asks in every single blog you own 😈 sooo, do you write parents!au? bc I wanted to request some scenario abt how sylus, caleb and xavier would react to their kids telling u to shut up. I KNOW ITS WEIRD BUT ITS A OLD TREND I THINK?? anyway, love ya babe 💘💋💋

੭⠀ A little prank.

⋆⠀AUTHOR'S NOTES: I love parents!au so much 😭

⋆⠀FEATURING: Xavier, Sylus, Caleb.

⋆⠀WARNING: English is not my first language, so it may contain some mistakes.

Your son’s favorite pastime was annoying his father, and he was certainly better at it than anyone else. Not only that, but he also managed to convince you to help with yet another one of his… pranks.

The boy smiled when he saw his father heading to the kitchen and turned back to his video game. Not long after, you walked into the room with something in hand. “Sweetheart, could you take this—”

“Shut up, mom,” he tried to say in an irritated tone, but a smile was plastered across his face.

𝜗ৎ ⠀⠀XAVIER

Not even five seconds had passed before your son was groaning in pain, Xavier’s slipper lying on the couch beside him after hitting the back of his head squarely. “Dad—”

Xavier raised the other slipper, pointing it at the boy. “Apologize. Now,” he said, his eyebrows furrowing. “Is that any way to talk to your mother?”

“But I was busy, and she—” Once again, the boy didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, the other slipper flying straight at him. Xavier crossed his arms, his gaze fixed on his son.

You widened your eyes and placed a hand on your husband’s shoulder, squeezing it lightly. “Okay, okay, it was a… joke, just a prank.”

Xavier gave a faint smirk, glancing at you. “…Yeah, I knew that.” He pulled you into a hug, sticking his tongue out at your son. “You think I’d stop at that if I saw him disrespecting you like that?”

𝜗ৎ ⠀⠀SYLUS

Sylus prided himself on being an exemplary father. He was patient, fun—or so he thought—and wealthy. I mean, surely his son was already having a better childhood than most people who came from the same place Sylus had, right?

And perhaps it was exactly that freedom and comfort in his presence that made the boy feel confident enough to make that kind of joke.

“I must’ve misheard. Definitely,” Sylus said loud enough for both of you to hear. You turned away so he wouldn’t see your expression, while your son simply grimaced.

“Dad, she could’ve just asked one of my uncles to go—or, I don’t know, gone herself!” the boy said, spinning the pieces of a pistol between his fingers.

Sylus’s steps were almost inaudible; it was as if he had teleported to his son’s side. He crossed his arms, an irritated expression on his face. His son had never seen that look before—at least, not directed at him.

“Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that under this roof,” he said. “I don’t care if she could’ve asked someone else—if she tells you to do something, you do it. She brought you into this world.”

The boy couldn’t hold back his laughter, bursting out in hysterics. Your husband opened his mouth to say something but stopped when he saw you laughing as well. He let out a sigh, rubbing his face. “You too now?”

𝜗ৎ ⠀⠀CALEB

Honestly, your son was expecting Caleb to yell at him or chase after him, but it was even more terrifying to see him stay silent, slowly turning to face the boy.

He froze, setting the video game controller down on the coffee table. Caleb’s eyes stayed fixed on him, and his silence lingered just long enough to make the boy shift uncomfortably under the stare.

When Caleb finally spoke, his voice was strangely calm—and that wasn’t exactly a good thing. “You have five seconds to do as your mother said and come back here, and another five to apologize and explain yourself.”

You let out an awkward laugh before wrapping your arms around your husband. “It was just a joke, I swear.” Caleb glanced at you, slipping a hand under your shirt to give you a pinch. “Ouch! It was his idea!”

He rolled his eyes but let out a relieved laugh, despite his irritation with your newfound way of spending free time. “I should’ve known.”

[morganakang444]

𝑑𝘰𝑛‘𝘵 ℎ𝑎𝘵𝑒 𝘵ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑟 || 𝑙𝑒𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑛𝑔 (𝑝𝘵 1) ౨ৎ

꒰ ꒱ྀི lee heeseung x fem!reader

☆゙ ↳ main masterlist

☆゙ ↳ prev | next

☆゙ ↳ synopsis: you don‘t want me? fine. the two of us can play that game.

the heartthrob of the campus had finally set his eyes on y/n. she was going to be his next victim, to fall for him and assume she can fix him moments before she finds herself ghosted. but y/n knew all too well…too bad she only captures heeseung‘s heart after beating him at his own game. that’s when she learns: don’t hate the player. hate the game.

☆゙ ↳ wc: 6741

☆゙ ↳ genre/warnings: a lil bit smutty, kinda fluff (?) cursing, sexual harassment (not from heeseung), heeseung tries to touch up reader, pining, fuckboy heeseung, y/n is a virgin, a few typos…if i missed anything pls lmk!!

"okay, okay, we‘ve had monica, brittany, and mina this week alone, yeah?" karina snickers, jotting down the names of lee heeseung‘s newest side quests.

the two best friends, karina and y/n, were huddled together in their university classroom (sitting the furthest away from everybody of course), as if they were little high schoolers gossiping about who kissed who.

however, what they were doing wasn’t far from immature, childish gossip. here, they were strategizing who lee heeseung—the school‘s fuckboy—would go for next. it was like a fun little game to the girls, the excitement of seeing how right their guesses could get making them giggle every time.

although it was only the beginning of sophomore year in uni, mr. fboy heeseung had already had his way with nearly half the school, so y/n and karina knew their time would come soon. the only difference between them being karina was open to a night with heeseung. no strings attached, of course. it’s been a month since her messy breakup with her former girlfriend yunjin, and she knew heeseung was the only person who‘d give her a good night with no feelings, guaranteed.

then there was y/n. not to say she’s "not like everyone else," she does find heeseung attractive and well, a little charming—she hates the idea of being with anyone "no strings attached." and heeseung‘s version of adding strings to his puppet was dating them for a week after hooking up before inevitably ghosting them. and unfortunately for y/n, that wasn’t enough.

y/n nods at karina‘s question, holding up three fingers to represent each of heeseung‘s playthings.

"and how about abby? the blonde one with big boobs? classic bimbo," y/n inquiries quietly, "have they gotten together yet?" karina lets out a noise similar to a "pfft" before nodding her head, answering. "a few times, actually. he really likes her.." karina trails off, shaking her head.

"i just…don‘t know who else.." y/n trails off, biting her thumb in thought. "bianca martinez?" karina nods.

"yeji?" karina nods once more.

"damn—minji?" and again, karina nods.

y/n lightly palms her face in disbelief.

"i guess this one will be a surprise, hm?" jokes karina, a playful smile lingering on her lips.

y/n sighs, defeated. "guess so."

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

"remember, guys! tutoring begins 3pm today! if you‘re late then your extra credit points are docked!" spoke mr. glenn as class ended, reminding y/n of her duty she needed to fulfill later on today as a top student. with a groan, she stood up and grabbed her baby pink bag, lightly slinging it over her shoulder.

"oh you‘ll be having fun teaching those dumbasses.." teased karina, tickling y/n‘s side with a grin as the two girls exited class together.

"ugh, i know.." laughed y/n as karina tickled her. "i‘m gonna be stuck here for two whole hours kari.." y/n whined, pouting as she leaned her head on karina‘s shoulder, walking towards their dorm room.

"you‘ll be okay, i‘ll buy you lots of food after, hm?" karina said as she stroked y/n‘s hair, feeling her head nod against her.

a couple hours later, y/n arrived inside mr. glenn‘s dim-lit classroom, ready (but annoyed) to teach a bunch of frat boys and sorority girls who are falling behind.

coming in with a fake smile, y/n shot mr. glenn a small wave as she strutted inside the classroom confidently, sitting down at the table sectioned off to help students with english. pulling out her phone, she laid her head down, scrolling through tiktok to pass time before students came in.

and just as she predicted, a student was already approaching her table for help.

"hey, beautiful.." spoke an almost familiar voice, tone sultry and flirtatious. "wanna help me get this english grade up?"

y/n looked up from her phone to meet eyes with the boy who was seemingly so eager to get his english grade up. but when y/n saw him, her breath slightly hitched and she had to clear her throat to regain her faintly lost composure. because being face to face with lee heeseung was not what she expected.

"um..heeseung.." y/n spoke hesitantly, grabbing her english textbook. swallowing, her elegant hands flipped page through page, trying to find the section they last left on in class.

"do you need help with what we‘ve recently been doing?" y/n asked, trying to ignore that sensual expression heeseung wore on his face.

"sure." heeseung shrugs. "i haven‘t been doing much in class…" he trails off, grabbing the textbook from y/n, his soft, pale hands brushing against hers.

y/n refused to show any reaction to heeseung‘s touch, which he took note of. poor y/n, she has no idea heeseung likes a challenge.

"well i can guide you through the notes we‘ve been taking this week on literary theory and textual interpretation. it sounds pretty difficult but i can guarantee you it’s easy." y/n‘s voice remained fairly monotone and pretty professional, heeseung‘s charm starting to wear off on her. that shyness from a minute ago was no longer present.

y/n grabbed her english notebook from her bag, opening it to a page filled with notes. heeseung scoffs as y/n opens her mouth to speak, interrupting her.

"oh, you‘re cute.." he smirks, laying his hands on her page of notes, tapping up and down with his finger.

"i didn’t want you to actually teach me, my dear." his voice lowers to that of a whisper. "i have a proposal." his lips curl up into a smile in contrast to y/n‘s frown.

"which is..?" y/n questions, her tone a bit irritated. she crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair.

"you do my work…and i‘ll pay you." heeseung speaks confidently.

"how much are we talking?" y/n asks, seemingly annoyed. but that doesn’t break heeseung‘s cocky demeanor.

"oh i‘m not talking about money, love.."

y/n can only roll her eyes at his suggestion, already knowing where this would go.

"i‘ll fuck you for every assignment you do, hm? whatever you want. there‘s nothing i haven‘t done, afterall." he slightly bites his lip, leaning back in his seat, now manspreading.

"and that’s exactly why i won‘t take up that offer…" y/n‘s voice holds a note of offense. "glad to know that’s what you think of me…" y/n rolls her eyes, completely finished putting up with heeseung‘s attitude, starting to pack her stuff up.

"oh, come on, baby. i‘m not saying you‘re a slut—i can tell you‘re a virgin. you‘re so uptight." heeseung gestures his hands towards himself. "i‘m offering you something over half the girls on campus would die for."

"heeseung, you don’t even know my name." y/n retorts, standing up to leave.

"y/n!! leaving so soon?" mr. glenn calls out, noticing y/n ready to leave.

y/n nods, telling mr. glenn she has an emergency at home. but before she walks off, heeseung grabs her wrist gently, but firm enough to turn her around, her eyes locked on his.

with a smirk heeseung says, "now i do, y/n."

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

with a groan, y/n slams shut her dorm room door, back pressed against it as she let out a frustrated sigh.

"damn, they really got you so bad you had to leave early, hm?" karina teases, putting down her phone and sitting up on her purple sheeted bed.

y/n hangs her head down, a vexed smile on her face as she let out a breathy laugh, making a piece of her hair fly slightly forward. she shot karina a knowing look.

"you won‘t fucking believe who the hell i had to tutor for like—five minutes today…"

y/n threw herself down on karina‘s bed, right next to the raven-haired girl.

"who?? oh my god — was it that one guy who practically stalked you last year?" karina lets out an unbelieved laugh.

y/n shakes her head. "no..this guy was somehow almost worse." she scoots ever so slightly closer. "lee fucking heeseung.." y/n snorts as she laughs, covering her giggles with her hands as karina mimics, both of the girls laughing in disbelief.

"no way! i doubt there was much tutoring going on…" karina says behind her hand that slightly muffled her words.

y/n shakes her head. "yeah. for lack of a better word at i least 'tutored' heeseung."

y/n sits up, holding air quotes around the word tutored.

"did he say anything? like…" karina lowers her voice to a whisper as if there were other people around. "does he wanna fuck you?"

y/n‘s eyes widen and she lets out a small gasp, slightly taken aback by the question her brown-eyed best friend asked her. but she quickly fixes herself, answering, "yeah. he offered to dick me down if i did his assignments…" y/n tossed herself back-down on karina‘s soft bed, laying flat as she looked up to the blank, white ceiling, eyeing the spinning fan.

"sooo..? did you take up the offer?" karina asks with the most curious tone, laying down indirectly on top of her best friend in order to pry an answer out.

"nooo.." y/n spoke shyly. "i don’t wanna lose my virginity to an asshole fuckboy." y/n scrunches her nose, disgusted at the idea.

"well if you won’t take him…" karina then slowly pointed to herself, suggesting that she should get a piece of hee.

y/n pushes karina‘s shoulder, causing the pale woman to fall on her back. y/n sits up. "no, karina. you need to get back with yunjin…you guys broke up for a stupid ass reason. she needs to realise you weren‘t flirting with another girl, and move on. with you…"

karina slowly moves her eyes down in the direction of her phone before she picks it up, hand grasping her silver case.

"about that…" karina‘s face shows mischief before showing y/n messages between karina and yunjin.

yunjin: i miss u, rina 🙁🙁 so much.

karina: yunjin, you broke up with me, if you want me back so bad you have me…

yunjin: maybe i do. but what you did wasn’t ok, rina. i hate that stupid bitch heather and you still spoke to her

karina: baby pls…i‘ll do anything to make it up to you, i am so so sorry..

yunjin: then let me come over tonight. then maybe you could show me how sorry you really are.

karina: fine…does around 9 work?

yunjin: yeah. get y/n out of there tho. i wanna be alone.

"oh my god…rina..!" y/n said, a bit shocked. "she misses you! this is good!"

karina curls her lips up a bit. "either that or she wants some pussy tonight."

y/n playfully rolls her eyes. "which you‘ll glady give her, i assume?"

karina hesitantly nods, a smile falling from her lips.

"well, i guess i‘ll be going out tonight.." y/n gets up, going towards her vanity to take her hair out of its pink claw clip, running her cream colour brush through her soft locks.

"maybe you could help out heeseung, hm?" karina goaded y/n.

y/n turned to karina with an unamused look, still brushing her hair. "never. i have better things i could do…" y/n trailed off, her expression softening when she realises that was a total lie. she really put her academics over everything, and outside of karina had a social life of almost zero.

"we both know that’s not true, y/n," spoke karina as if she were reading y/n‘s mind.

karina scoots, now sitting on the edge of her bed. "come on, y/n—you don’t have to fuck him, but you can fuck around with him, right? it‘ll be fun!"

y/n thinks for a moment, considering karina‘s words. "but i‘m not seductive—i wouldn’t know what to do! i can’t flirt.." y/n covers her face slightly, brush still in hand.

karina snickers. "y/n, he‘s already come onto you and gotten a piece of your attitude. if he didn’t want you, would he have approached you? think about it! you don’t have to be some master of seduction to woo heeseung."

y/n removed her hands, knowing deep down karina was right.

"but…i don’t know…how do i do something like that?"

"easy." karina smirks. "remember what i did to that guy dylan?"

y/n nods, intrigued. "lead heeseung on?"

"similar to that. tonight, you head over to his dorm—look cute but not too cute to where he knows you put in that effort for him. tell him that you‘re going to take him up on his offer, come inside and do some work." karina stands up, getting really into describing her plan. "let him tease you; get bold, tease him back…let him touch you, make you feel good, but only! only you get to feel good. as soon as he thinks he‘s getting what he wants…you‘re going to get up and leave, hm? he‘ll be wondering what the hell happened…and he‘ll yearn for you evermore." karina shrugs. "the rest is up to you."

god, y/n wondered why she was suddenly so excited.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

after contacting a mutual friend she and heeseung shared, karina was able to track down where heeseung‘s dorm was, making y/n realise just how real this happening all is.

and so with a five minute walk, y/n had her hair down and pin straight, wearing a matching baby pink, tightly knit matching set, hugging her body just right, her hips swaying so perfectly as she strutted down heeseung‘s hallway in her little ugg slides. with a tiny knock on his door, y/n took little breaths to calm her nerves. *you‘re not going all the way…* she had to remember.

after a small moment, y/n was greeted with heeseung‘s delicate face, a flirtatious smile forming on his lips as his eyes wandered over her.

"so you did want to see me afterall, y/n.." heeseung gazed at y/n‘s beautiful face, she was so stunning even without makeup…just curled lashes and clear lip gloss was all she needed to sparkle.

heeseung leaned against his doorway, his biceps flexed against the frame as he gestured y/n to come in.

without reacting to any of heeseung‘s words, y/n came into heeseung‘s dorm, surprised he was alone and without his friends or a hookup laying in his bed.

she stood near his desk as heeseung strode over to her, sitting at the chair paired with his desk.

"sorry, love…i have no extra chairs." heeseung sighs in mock apology.

"it‘s okay, i‘ll just stand," y/n politely smiles, placing her off-white shoulder bag on his desk, pulling out homework material.

heeseungs tsks, gently placing his hands on y/n‘s hips, gartering her attention.

"or you could always just sit on my lap.." heeseung toyed with the hem of y/n‘s pants, but she quickly smacked his veiny hand away.

"i‘m good." she gave a smug grin when she saw heeseung‘s slightly taken aback expression. he let out a small sigh, clearly growing frustrated.

"you‘re so uptight, you know that?" heeseung leaned back, his tone not angry but teasing.

y/n turned her body to face herseung. "oh yeah?" she placed a hand on her hip with a raised brow.

"yeah. you should relax. don’t you have a vibrator or something? i heard that can help…" he snickers at her shocked reaction.

"i don’t use those things—you‘re so crude!"

"ah..so your hands aren’t doing the job right?"

y/n feels her face heat up, blush creeping onto her cheeks.

"what i do isn’t your business, heeseung."

y/n‘s voice was firm, arms now crossed.

heeseung held up his hands in a surrendering motion, his legs much more visible to show off his manspread.

"you‘re right, you‘re right. i‘m just trying to offer my word of advice to a woman in need.."

y/n rolls her eyes. "i‘m here to teach you, heeseung! keep this up and you won’t get anything." she bends down so she is eye-level with the black haired boy, her eyes meeting his clearly turned on gaze. her voice was brash, and authoritative, her finger pointing at heeseung, her acrylic fingernail poking his solid chest every few words.

heeseung slightly bit his lip once he caught a glimpse down y/n‘s tight little jacket, her cleavage in perfect view. heeseung could only swallow, trying to not make it super obvious where his eyes were locked.

and lucky for him, y/n didn’t seem to notice as she stood back up, towering over heeseung‘s sitting figure.

"sit on my lap and i‘ll be good, hm? i‘ll leave you alone my dear y/n.." heeseung speaks quietly, gently patting his thigh.

y/n hesitates, thinking about karina‘s words—to just tease…make yourself feel good, then leave when he thinks he‘s getting something…

with those words in mind, y/n slowly lowers her round ass onto heeseung‘s thigh, sitting sideways on his lap. his hands immediately gripped y/n‘s waist, slowly caressing her slim sides up and down, fingertips ever so slightly reaching under her little jacket, gliding over her soft, bear skin. she shivered, the foreign feeling of his hands on her ignited something small within her. but she shakes any thoughts of pleasure out from her head, pulling out homework material from her bag, flipping through annotated packets and mindlessly organising them, just trying to distract herself from heeseung‘s hands trailing further up her torso.

"you almost done..?" heeseung asks quietly, his warm breath against y/n as he moved her hair away from her neck, whispering against the soft skin. y/n quivered, letting go of the packets she held. y/n nodded, clearing her throat as she adjusted herself on heeseung‘s lap. she heard a low groan fall from his lips, and she spun her head around with a small gasp, not believing what her ears just heard.

"did you just…?"

"yeah..sorry.." heeseung faintly whispered, sounding like he was holding something back. "that felt nice.." heeseung squeezed y/n‘s sides placidly, like he was giving her a massage.

y/n blinked in response for a moment before she practically scoffed, her assertive facade coming back to her. "fucking horndog…" she whispers, looking heeseung up and down like he was a vermon.

heeseung‘s grip tightened, groping her sides more aggressively in response, sucking in air through his teeth. "yeahhh…just for you, babe." heeseung chuckled breathily to himself.

y/n rolls her eyes, swatting heeseung‘s arm. "and every other girl you make eye contact with. surprised you don’t have an std by now.."

heeseung faintly flinched at y/n‘s little swat, not used to a woman defying him like this. but he didn’t mind. in fact, heeseung likes a chase sometimes.

"it’s called condoms, dude. i don’t go raw on anyone," he lets out that same chuckle from earlier.

"heeseung, i really don’t care," y/n retors, smacking his head with a packet. "now are you going to let me teach you or are you going to touch me all over this whole time?"

heeseung raises a brow, locking eyes with the girl on his lap. "i thought you were doing my assignments for me, babe. remember our deal?"

y/n shakes her head. "i pride myself in my teaching abilities. and i don’t want to fuck you.."

"oh come on, y/n. you‘re almost twenty and you‘re still a virgin…why not lose it?"

"how do you know i‘m a virgin..?" y/n‘s brows furrow in confusion.

"remember earlier in mr. glenn‘s tutoring session? i can just tell. you‘re so fucking uptight."

y/n makes a face similar to disgust. "being an uptight virgin is better than being a chill fucking whore like you."

heeseung only tittered, not offended by y/n‘s remark. "you don’t wanna loosen up?" he pulled y/n closer towards his body.

"not with you…" her voice grows quiet when she feels heeseung‘s arm wrap around her waist, hand snaking down, closer towards her pussy, his fingers trailing the hem of her tight little knit flare leggings that matched her cropped jacket.

her breath hitches as her back is now pressed up against heeseung‘s firm chest, both her legs straddling his left thigh, her ass cheek pressed against his growing erection.

a soft hum leaves y/n‘s lips when heeseung‘s fingers grow braver and dip into y/n‘s pants, middle finger gently pressing down on y/n‘s clit, applying just enough pressure to form a wet patch in y/n‘s panties which didn’t go unnoticed by heeseung, a smirk forming on his lips.

"you sure you don’t want my help?" heeseung snickers, his finger sliding down to feel the warm wetness in y/n‘s panties.

but y/n knew she couldn’t give in. y/n was smarter than to cave in to heeseung‘s smart talk and skilled hands. so she suppressed her moan and reluctantly grabbed heeseung‘s wrist, pulling his hand away from her pussy. she stood up and calmly grabbed her bag and packets, turning to face heeseung, who was visibly confused.

y/n could only smirk satisfactory with heeseung‘s reaction to rejection.

"clearly we aren’t on the same page, heeseung. i‘m leaving now—if you really want my help, get those hormones in check. maybe fuck a girl on your roster before seeing me." y/n politely smiles in contrast to her passive aggressive tone. and saying no more, y/n leaves heeseung‘s dorm, leaving him sitting there, absolutely dumbfounded a girl has actually rejected his advances. he watched y/n‘s figure stride away and leave before he ran his fingers through his hair, chuckling quietly to himself.

that was the first time heeseung didn’t get any action with a girl in his place, and the first time a girl seemed to hold zero attraction to him; and the very first time a girl challenged him, and made him want her more. y/n was more of a chase then heeseung thought. luckily for him he was determined, and a fast runner.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

y/n swung open the door to her dormitory, adrenaline rushing through her veins. she looked over at karina‘s bed and spotted the woman laying down with yunjin under the covers, and it was very apparent the two just slept together. she wasn’t taken aback, however. she had already knew the two would be together tonight.

y/n shook karina awake, not caring if she were naked or not. both karina and yunjin awoke, slightly startled at y/n‘s franticness. before either of the lovers could say anything, y/n spoke up.

"i did it! i did it—but there was barely any action, he sat me on his lap and tried touching my pussy but i left before much could happen!" y/n sounded a bit freaked out with a hint of excitement.

"who is she talking about..?" said yunjin groggily, rubbing her wide eyes.

"heeseung.." yawned karina. "y/n, that‘s good! you‘re probably the first girl in a long time to leave him hanging like that. best him at his own game, hm?" karina smiled, leaning up on her elbows.

y/n‘s face scrunches in slight frustration. "i know…but i‘m just..." she throws her bag down on her bed that‘s only a few feet from karina‘s.

"i‘m glad i did it…it was fun…but—i‘m just…" she sits down on her bed, looking at karina and yunjin. "i don’t know what comes next.."

yunjin and karina exchanged glances before karina speaks up. "you know what happens next?" y/n‘s face grows curious. karina continues. "you wait. you wait for him to chase you…and you‘re going to make him fall for you. and once he does…you leave him for good."

yunjin smirks. "damn karina, what‘d he do to you?"

"nothing. we‘re just bored.." karina looks back at yunjin, but there’s a hint of something beyond playfulness in her eyes.

and with that y/n went to sleep that night, unaware of just how much she had lee heeseung wrapped around her finger.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

one week later — psychology class. the only class y/n shared with lee heeseung.

y/n sat in her usual seat, putting down her bag under her feet after pulling out all her materials. she laid her tired head on her hand, analysing her notes from the last lecture.

and there was heeseung who came in early for once. he was always late (if he even decided to show up, that is), but this time he made sure he was there so he could score a spot next to the beautiful girl who left him so empty that night.

y/n was all that consumed heeseung‘s mind this past week. he didn’t want to be one to admit it, but heeseung hated how she had this effect on him all from not giving him what he wanted. his only goal in mind was to make y/n give in and fall in love with him, then run away just as he did to every other girl…because how dare this little tease leave him empty? nobody defies the lee heeseung like that.

it was only a matter of seconds before heeseung‘s eyes landed on his target. seeing y/n‘s beautiful, long hair flowing over her shoulder and her plump lips pouting in concentration, her slim legs crossed, her grey fold over leggings hugging her body perfectly, the little flare at the end hanging over her cute little winter boots that encased her bouncing feet. her little pink tank top form fitted her torso, causing her chest catch heeseung‘s attention immediately, making him think back to when he got that lovely glimpse down her top that night last week.

and with nothing else on his mind, determination set in and heeseung b-lined it towards the seat empty next to y/n, as more people started to fill the room.

y/n was slightly startled when an obstinate heeseung plopped himself down next to her, his eyes narrowed in on y/n‘s alarmed expression.

"missed me?" heeseung smirks, his voice laced with smugness.

"god you scared me…" y/n placed her hand over her heart. "but no, i didn’t miss you, heeseung."

heeseung leans in a bit closer, his big black jacket scrunching. "call me hee. everyone else does."

y/n shakes her head, her face going back to her notes. "i‘m alright, we‘re not close enough for me to give you a nickname."

heeseung scoffs, changing the subject to the point he originally wanted to talk about.

"why did you leave that night?"

y/n held back a smirk at the hint of desperation in heeseung‘s voice. the question alone enough to make her want to giggle in satisfaction.

"you were being unprofessional, heeseung. i was there to help tutor you, not have sex with you." her tone was pretty deadpan in contrast to the excitement growing inside of her at the thought heeseung was currently chasing after her.

"i could have made you feel good," heeseung says as he leans back in his chair, his hand coming up to play with strands of y/n‘s hair.

y/n ignores him, flipping through pages in her notebook.

"you‘re not any different from these other girls, you know…you‘re not special." his voice grew annoyed.

"what?" y/n turned her head to the side, her irritated expression apparent.

heeseung’s facial expression seemed satisfied at how he was getting under y/n‘s skin. "you‘re not special for not wanting me, y/n…" heeseung leans closer, his hand still on y/n‘s head. faces inches apart, heeseung‘s voice held somewhat of a threatening tone. "…because i‘ll make you want me." an intimidating smile played on heeseung‘s face, his eyes full of malice.

y/n slightly backed up, a small amount of real fear stirring in her chest.

"you‘re crazy…" her voice automatically came out a whisper, her eyes darting all around his face.

he leaned in and quickly pecked y/n‘s cheeks with his lips, his expression now softened, almost affectionate.

"only for you…" and as the psychology teacher mrs. danbury walked in, heeseung settled down along with the rest of the class, acting as if nothing happened.

y/n stayed taken a bit aback, her mind wandering off from the lesson every so often, thinking off heeseung‘s words.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

as class came to an end, heeseung stood up, standing next to y/n‘s sitting figure, and as she rose to walk out of the classroom, she was abruptly stopped by heeseung‘s tall body standing in front of her.

she didn’t need to speak. her confused face was all heeseung needed to start explaining.

"let me take you out." heeseung‘s voice was smooth.

"um…where?" y/n crossed her arms.

"there’s a little café down the street, hm? wanna go there?"

y/n thought for a moment, realising she could use this as an attempt for heeseung to truly fall for her.

"i mean…i am kinda hungry i guess." y/n shrugs, walking passed heeseung. "let’s go."

heeseung grabs y/n‘s wrist, forcing her to come back. he interlocked his fingers with hers, then continued walking.

"people are going to think we‘re a thing if you’re holding my hand…" y/n‘s eyes darted from their intertwined hands then up to heeseung, who only smirked.

"if we‘re together in general people are going to think we‘re a thing." he smirked down at the girl walking with him.

y/n rolled her eyes, "that’s not exactly what i want…i can‘t be seen as one of your little rotations."

heeseung put on a playfully hurt expression.

"that’s really all you think of me, huh? just some fuckboy?"

y/n nodded. "pretty much!" she shot him a soft smile, feigning affection.

heeseung only snickered in response, but when his own umber eyes looked into y/n‘s he couldn’t help but notice just how pretty she was as the sun beamed down on her skin.

entering the café, y/n took note of the strong smell of sweets and coffee blending together in the air, the other university students sitting inside studying under the dimly lit lights, creating a cozy atmosphere, perfect for a break after a day of long, draining university classes.

"this place is so cute…" y/n looked around at the wood panel walls, the faux candles lit all around and the large bookshelf next to the entryway, adding to the library-esq vibe of the café.

heeseung smiled at y/n‘s reaction, her look of awe causing him to feel a small little butterfly in his stomach, but he quickly swatted it away.

"you‘re paying, you invited me out." y/n points at heeseung as she walked up to the register to order, him trailing not too far behind.

"yes, ma‘am," heeseung teased, pulling out his wallet.

"can i have a caramel frappuccino with tapioca pearls, please?" y/n asked in her sweet voice—sounding just like honey.

"i‘ll just have a taro milk tea." said heeseung as he pulled out his credit card.

the cashier said dryly, "that‘ll be $13.85."

and as heeseung inserted his card, y/n slyly peaked over to get a good look at it, which didn’t go unnoticed by heeseung. he just let out a confused laugh. "what‘re you lookin‘ at?"

"your credit card number," replied y/n truthfully. "you said it was your goal to make me like you, and gift giving is my love language." y/n closed her eyes, placing her hands on her chest as she softly swayed her body side to side.

heeseung gently nudged y/n. "yeah, yeah, don’t get too ahead of yourself."

and as their boba was ready, y/n quickly grabbed her drink, placed the baby blue straw inside and immediately took a sip, reveling in the sweet, caramel flavour going down her throat. with a satisfied mmm sound, she started walking towards the door, leaving heeseung in a state of confusion.

"where are you going?" heeseung questioned, his brow slightly raised.

"i‘m going back to the dorm. you took me out like you wanted." y/n shrugged slightly.

"you know i‘m getting real tired of asking you that." heeseung smirked, sipping his tea.

y/n only smiled facetiously. "then give me a reason to stay." and with nothing else, y/n walked out, leaving heeseung once more dumbfounded.

and heeseung didn’t like this pattern he saw forming.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

y/n didn’t walk back to her dorm, though. she was going to hang out with karina at the mall. pulling out her baby pink iphone, y/n clicked karina‘s contact to come ask her to pick her up.

"where you at hoe?" joked y/n as soon as karina picked up.

karina laughed. "at yunjin‘s dorm. i‘m leaving now. where are you?" y/n could hear rustling on the other end.

"near that little café by school—i think it’s called makoko." y/n paused to look at the street name. "i‘m working the corner of rochester street. come pick me up when i‘m done with my next client."

karina playfully rolled her eyes at y/n‘s joke, her car‘s startup engine roaring in the background. "i‘ll be there soon. split some of that cash with me, hm?"

"of course. love ya!" y/n blew a kiss to her phone and karina reciprocated.

opening up instagram to kill time, y/n stood, leaning against the wall of a building while she waited for her best friend.

scrolling mindlessly, mind lost in the depths of liking her favourite celebrities‘ posts and judging her mutuals stories, she hardly noticed a tall male figure approach her rather menacingly.

"all alone?" the deep voice startled y/n, his tone callousing and scary. y/n slightly jumped back, her eyes suspiciously scanning the man up and down. but y/n doesn’t play with scary men like this.

"no, i‘m with somebody. your scary ass can leave now." she spoke sternly, taking slow backwards steps away from the dark haired man.

"i don’t see no one," the man smirked his big lips, a look of lust shining through his eyes as he stepped intimidatingly closer to y/n, following her.

"fuck off nasty ass hoe i don’t know who you think you are because i will rock your shit if you try something!" warned y/n with a fist forming, holding it up in the air like she was going to pop him in his face.

but before the creepy man could vocalise his thoughts, another male came up from behind him and punched the side of his head, making him stumble over, a gasp of shock leaving y/n‘s mouth upon seeing not only the violent action—but the person assaulting the creep—who was…heeseung?

"heeseung wh—" y/n was going to ask him why he was here, why he was defending her—but was overpowered by his aggressive shouting at the big, now less taunting man who was harassing her only moments ago.

"who the fuck do you think you are, hm!?" hesseung yells through gritted teeth, blowing punch after punch, blow after blow onto the man who was laying on the ground, his arms over his face in a defensive manner.

"keep your hands off her and your fucking mouth shut!" heeseung was practically seething at this point, his fists nowhere but the man‘s now bloody face.

y/n wasn’t going to tell heeseung to back off the man—if anything the man deserved it. so she watched from the sidelines, patiently observing, waiting for heeseung to finish.

and for a few more moments, after punching and kicking heeseung spat on the man‘s face as if he were a flithy vermon (which in any sane person‘s mind, including heeseung, that’s what he was equivalent to.)

heeseung marched towards y/n, his face still appearing angry. he aggressively gripped

y/n‘s wrist, yanking her, forcing her to follow heeseung from behind as he angrily started walking.

"in broad fucking daylight, is he insane?"

heeseung scoffed, talking mainly to himself, but y/n could hear.

"heeseung where are you taking me?" she slightly winced at the tight grip he held on her wrist.

"back to your dorm. where i thought you were going." heeseung‘s voice was practically a growl.

"heeseung—i have a ride i was waiting for to go to the mall. i can handle myself." y/n says as she tries to yank her wrist away from heeseung, but his grip only grew tighter.

"clearly you can’t. i wonder what would have happened to you if i hadn’t stepped in, hm?"

y/n only rolls her eyes in disbelief at heeseung‘s words.

"now give me your phone." heeseung holds out his hand towards y/n, still not looking at her.

"why?" she questions, visibly hesitant.

"just—just give it to me. or i‘ll take it myself." there was no indication heeseung was kidding in his tone. so y/n handed the boy in the grey hoodie her phone after opening it, and he went straight to her calls. he clicked on someone’s name before speaking,

"karina?" his tone stayed firm. "yeah, it’s heeseung. look, you‘re the one giving y/n a ride, yeah?" he paused, letting karina respond. "‘kay. i‘m taking y/n to that park not too far from campus. the one everyone hangs out at—pick her up there. something happened she can explain to you later." and without another word, heeseung hung up before opening y/n‘s contacts, adding a number. he handed y/n back her phone, open on the page of the brand new contact.

"my number," he spoke, tone softening slightly. "just to call or text me if anything else like this happens.." heeseung‘s voice held a hint of what y/n could be mistaking as affection…but there was a little bit of something other than coldness. almost like his reasoning was some excuse. she only nodded, murmuring a thank you as they arrived at the park everyone usually hangs out, called "the hill."

heeseung sat down on a cold, metal bench, y/n sitting close to him.

he immediately cupped y/n‘s face, tilting her head in every direction possible, eyes narrowing in on her soft features like he was analysing her. before y/n could protest, he asked, "are you okay? if he laid as much as a single finger on you, y/n, i‘m promising you i‘ll go back there and kill him with my bare hands."

y/n shook her head, a bit taken aback by heeseung‘s sudden protectiveness. her dainty hands stayed with a silent grip on heeseung‘s wrists that softly held her face.

"you should have let me take you home—i should have offered…i‘m so sorry, y/n…" heeseung adverted his gaze from the girl, guilt oozing from his voice.

"it’s alright, really," y/n started with a calm voice, her thumbs rubbing soft, soothing circles on the inside of heeseung‘s wrists, "nothing happened to me." she put on a soft, comforting smile, but it quickly faded when heeseung snapped.

"because i stepped in! y/n who knows what that guy was planning!?" he takes a deep breath to calm himself, voice struggling to stay steady. "what if he hurt you, hm? i don’t…i don’t want that to happen to you." his gaze lingered on y/n, his thumbs caressing the sides of y/n‘s face he was still holding.

"since when have you…" y/n pauses, trying to find the right words. "since when have you cared like that? about anyone?"

heeseung scoffed, his tone coming out offended. "just because i like to fuck around doesn’t make me a bad person, y/n—i would have stepped in and saved any girl that was happening to." his dark brown eyes lock with y/n‘s as if he was searching for something in the pools of her irises. "but you‘re the first girl i‘d go to this length for. the first one i have gone to this length for…if you were anyone else i would have just walked away as soon as i pulled that guy off you."

"why?" was all the stunned girl could manage to get out, her brows furrowed in more curiosity than confusion.

"there’s something about you, i‘ll admit. like a magnet that pulls me in. partly because you left me hanging last week—but just…" heeseung sighs. "the way you don’t want me—it makes me want you even more."

y/n simply laughs. "is this why you‘re being so nice to me?"

heeseung nodded.

"it’s a nice try, heeseung. but you‘re going to have to try a lot harder than give me some speech you‘ve given all your other flings."

and as if she were saved by the bell, y/n saw karina‘s little white toyota pull up to the car, a small honk coming from the vehicle catching both heeseung‘s and y/n‘s attention. she removed heeseung‘s wrists from her face and stood up.

"where are you going?" heeseung wondered, a hint of what almost seemed like panic laced in his voice.

"that really is all you ask me, huh?" y/n teased before walking off towards karina‘s car.

and with another sigh, heeseung slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and slid down the bench so his neck was resting on the edge as he looked up to the blue sky.

it had only been a week since they met and this damn girl already had him wrapped around her finger.

what‘s wrong with him?

[theonewhopoops]

This is 100% correct as someone who has started Just Doing things that I have always struggled to do by following the kind of steps outlined above. I have two additional notes:

1) who cares if it takes forever. OP mentioned that it sounds like it might take a long time, though it "really doesn't take too long." But I just wanna say: even if it takes forever, start now. The time will pass anyway, remember? And even if you still only do one dish a day for WAY longer than you hoped to, you will still be making an improvement every single day the whole time. Your alternative is: do nothing, make no improvements, and stay exactly as stagnant as you are. The time will pass anyway. So you may as well start now, and then keep trying every day.

2) learn to work with your brain. All the ADHD cleaning and organizing tips are a good place to start. For example: if you struggle to tidy up, maybe start thinking about WHY. Is it because you USE an item on one end of the house, but it is "put away" on the other end of the house? Bad! Too many steps means you won't do it! Fix it! Learn to work with yourself, and figure out what hurdles are in your way. Using OP's example: if I keep my bagels in a cabinet I will NEVER remember to eat one for breakfast. But if I keep my bagels next to my coffee canister (on the counter, on the "coffee prep" station) then I will see them every morning and remember to eat one - even if I eat it untoasted with nothing on it. If I have cream cheese on hand, I will likely add some to my untoasted bagel on the mornings I have time. And then eventually, when I wake up earlier, I will have time to toast it. ALL BECAUSE I put the bagels where I will SEE them every morning!!

You are NOT doomed. Think small (SMALLER!!). Work with yourself. Take as much time as you need.

here's some more unsolicited adult advice as someone in her 30s who knows there are a lot of twenty somethings and teens that follow her: if you're trying to build a new habit you really want, and are struggling, you have to break it down to the smallest building block possible. If you're failing, you haven't thought small enough. I know it's possible to hear stories of people who just snapped into new life mode one day by "just deciding", but truly what's happening there is a confluence of events and experiences that force the brain into some sort of epiphany. You cannot will an epiphany. It'll never work. For most times of your life, you will need to build habits intentionally, and that means not working against yourself and to set micro goals. like laughably tiny goals. because once that easy tiny goal is met, you can build off it, tiny goal after tiny goal until you reach your big goal.

so for example, if you want to be a morning person that gets up at ass crack dawn so that you can work out, eat brekkie, shower, and get to work at a leisurely pace, and you're not that person because you will hit your snooze button 800 times, you have to get the big picture goal out of your head. think smaller. "I want to get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do." If you can't do that, make it 5 minutes. "I want to cook breakfast every day" hell no too big. "I want to eat something, anything, before I leave the house" hell yeah, fantastic. When you go to the grocery store to make sure there are things in the house for breakfast, if you keep buying bagels and microwave sandwiches that you ignore, you gotta think smaller. SMALLER. What's something so easy to eat that you'll never say no to. Is it a yogurt? Is it a handful of grapes? Is it a hostess ho ho? is it hot cheetos? FORGET the big picture of the fantasy put-together woman preparing a full nutritious meal that you'd be proud to admit to. Think only of the smallest goal you can achieve. If you know you can't say no to an ice cream sandwich, put a ton of ice cream sandwiches in your freezer and have one for breakfast every day until it's so instilled in you that you gotta get up to eat something you can start diversifying.

It sounds like, from the lack of habit place, that must take forever. But really it doesn't take too long to form the habit once the discipline kicks in. the trick is that you have to give your brain something easy to become disciplined to. If it's too hard, think easier and smaller. No one has to know. Literally no one in the gd world has to know that for 4 weeks when you were 22 you had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast every day. who cares. If it gets you eating oatmeal with fresh fruit in a few months who cares. you did it, yay. smaller, easier. if you can't do it, think smaller and easier. smaller!! EASIER!!! You are not thinking smaller and easier enough. break your brain thinking how small and easy you can go. SMALLER. EVEN SMALLER, SIS.

[maretinelli]

SWEET DISASTERS

Lando Norris X fem!reader

Summary: All the times Y/n was so clumsy and got genuine laughs out of her boyfriend.

Words: 2.7K+

Warnings: Makeout session, broken glass, mentions of injury but very funny, disastrous and cute Lando

Author: English is not my first language, so apologies for any spelling, grammar and slang mistakes that may be in the story. And this could EASILY happen to me, I'm a walking disaster too.

MASTERLIST

Y/n was putting her bags in the trunk of the car, already getting ready to go back to university after a long weekend at Lando's house.

He, always helpful, insisted on taking the larger suitcases from the apartment to the car, while she organized everything in the back.

"That was the last one!" Lando warned, carrying the largest suitcase with annoying ease. He gave his girlfriend a soft kiss on the shoulder.

Y/n, with her head already inside the trunk, tried to adjust each item as if it were a game of Tetris.

"Okay, just slide it in there and you're done!" She said, patting the space she'd just made. Lando put the suitcase in place, then mumbled something about getting something from the driver's seat. She just waved her hand, focused on getting everything ready.

That's when it happened.

Y/n, trying to reach a bag that had fallen to the bottom of the trunk, lost her balance.

"Ops!"

Was all he could say before he fell into the compartment with everything. The impact was enough for the lid, by pure gravity, to close with a click.

Y/n blinked a few times, processing what had just happened. She was literally trapped in the trunk.

"Lando!" She called, her voice a little muffled, but not at all desperate.

He didn't answer. He was probably still in the front seat, distracted. "Lando dear, can you come here real quick?"

Still no response, she tried something more flashy. Somehow, she managed to stretch out her leg and started tapping her foot against the back window.

Lando, hearing the muffled sound and knocking, looked up. "Y/n love, what was that?" he muttered. Getting out of the car and walking to the back, when he saw the trunk closed and Y/n's foot sticking out the side, he froze for a second.

And then he started laughing.

"Y/n, for the love of God, what are you doing in there?" He asked, almost out of breath.

"I went to pack my bags and... well, I got ready too... Now, could you open this before I turn into a statue in here?"

Still laughing, Lando opened the trunk, revealing Y/n curled up, with red cheeks and an awkward smile.

"Are you okay there or do you want me to give you a little more time to reflect on your life decisions?"

Y/n got out of the trunk, fixing her hair, while he was still trying to compose himself. "Very funny, Norris. Next time, I'll leave you stuck in there and see what it's like."

"Impossible. I'm too smart to let myself fall into a trap like that," he replied, winking at her. But still laughing.

Y/n rolled her eyes, but soon started laughing along. "Okay, but promise me one thing."

"What?"

"That you will never tell anyone about this."

Lando gave a mischievous grin. "No promises."

•••••••••••••••••••••

Winter was punishing outside, but inside the apartment, the weather was completely opposite. Y/n and Lando were on the couch, cuddled under a blanket, their cheeks flushed and not just from the heating. The kiss between the two started slowly, but it quickly intensified.

Y/n was sitting on Lando's lap, with her legs on either side of him, while their hands explored every inch of the other. Despite the cold outside, the warmth of the moment made them both forget that it was winter.

Y/n laughed between kisses, Lando's fingers wandering around her waist and up her back, leaving goosebumps along the way. She, in turn, began to run her hands over her own skin, pushing the fabric of her sweatshirt up, wanting to take it off.

But that's when disaster struck.

In her haste and in the heat of the moment, she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, but somehow the fabric got caught.

The shirt got tangled in her hair and completely covered her face, leaving only her arms raised and uselessly trapped. She started to laugh, but the sound was muffled by the sweatshirt that was still on her head.

"Lando... I think I need some help here!" She said, between muffled giggles.

Lando, who was already trying to hold back his laughter, couldn't hold it in any longer. He collapsed on the couch, laughing so loudly that his cheeks turned redder. "My God, you look like a ghost in the hoodie!" He said, his voice cracking with laughter.

Y/n crossed her arms, clearly giving up on trying to take off the piece of clothing herself. Now she looked even funnier, with her face covered and her arms crossed in frustration.

"If you don't stop laughing, I'll be here forever!" Y/n complained, but the playful tone in her voice revealed that she was having as much fun as he was.

"Sorry, sorry," Lando said, still struggling to contain his laughter. He finally leaned over to help her, pulling her sweatshirt down and tugging it back onto her body.

When her face became visible again, it was as red as his.

She got off his lap, adjusting her sweatshirt as she rolled her eyes. "Great. Now all the warm weather between us is gone to the universe." She said, trying to look serious but failing as a smile escaped at the end.

Lando, still laughing, leaned back against the couch and looked at her. "I can't deal with you sometimes. You're the most adorable disaster I've ever met."

Y/n giggled and threw a pillow at him. "Okay, okay. I'll make you some hot chocolate. Do you want some?"

"I do" Norris replied, still smiling. "But please try not to spill anything. The sweatshirt was stuck enough."

She laughed, shaking her head, and went into the kitchen while Lando stayed on the couch, the scene etched in his memory as just another of the many funny stories they would share.

•••••••••••••••••••••••

The night was special. After so much dedication, love and trust, they finally had something huge to celebrate their engagement.

Y/n, with her contagious energy, said that the moment deserved champagne, and Lando agreed, smiling when he saw the excitement in her eyes.

She smiled, her eyes flicking between her future husband and the ring she had received a few hours earlier.

"Today is our day! I insist on popping the champagne!" She declared, as Lando followed her to the kitchen with a smile on his face, taking the opportunity to leave little kisses on his bride's face along the way.

In the kitchen, Lando leaned casually on the marble counter, watching Y/n grab a bottle of champagne from the small wine cellar they had in the apartment.

"Are you sure you want to do this? Remember the last time you tried to open a bottle of bubbly?" He teased with a mischievous smile.

"I'm absolutely prepared!" Y/n replied confidently. While she adjusted the bottle, Lando took two crystal glasses from the cabinet and carefully placed them on the counter, a few inches away.

"Alright, Miss Confident Norris. Do the honors," Lando said, crossing his arms, smiling and watching.

Y/n held the bottle with determination and looked at Lando. "To all the amazing moments that are yet to come." She said with a wide smile.

And then it happened.

The sound of the cork popping echoed through the kitchen. But to Y/n's horror, the cap flew like a missile, hitting the cabinet hard. The impact was so strong that it bounced directly off the glasses hanging on the counter. The sound of breaking glass was immediate - three glasses fell into the sink and shattered.

"OH MY GOD!" Y/n screamed, cowering close to the pilot as the sound of shards echoed through the kitchen. Lando also jumped a little, hugging her from the side, but soon began to laugh.

"I can't believe this happened..." Y/n said, her hand over her mouth, looking at the broken pieces in the sink. Her eyes were slightly watery, and she made a face like she was about to cry. "I broke everything..."

Lando, on the other hand, couldn't hold it in. He was laughing so hard he could barely speak, tears streaming down his eyes as he held the two glasses he managed to save.

"You're... amazing! Who else can turn an engagement celebration into a glass battlefield?!"

"Lando, stop laughing, this is serious!" Y/n complained, but his amused expression was so contagious that she couldn't help but smile a little.

Still laughing, he walked over to her, set their glasses down on the counter, and pulled her in for a quick kiss on the cheek. "You definitely made it even more memorable. I'll never forget our killer champagne."

Y/n let out a laugh, shaking her head. "Next time, I'll leave it to you. You're more used to popping champagne."

"Good idea" he replied, still smiling. "But you have to admit, this was a lot more fun."

They both laughed together as they began to clean up the pieces of glass, turning the disaster into yet another fun memory that they would always carry with them.

••••••••••••••••••••••

Lando was sitting on the couch, his arms resting on the back as he watched Y/n walk around the room, gesturing excitedly. She was telling him about the visit she made to her family while he was out running. His smile was impossible to hide, the passion with which she talked about anything always left him enchanted. seeing her

"And then my little brother...you know how energetic he is, he started teaching me some karate moves," Y/n said, laughing as she imitated the 15-year-old's serious tone. "He said I needed to learn how to defend myself, you know? Because according to him: 'You never know when you're going to need a spinning kick.'"

Lando let out a low chuckle, "Well, that sounds pretty useful. Just in case one of my adversaries decides to show up on the street."

"Exactly!" Y/n agreed, still laughing, as she stopped in the middle of the room and looked at him. "Want to see what the move looks like? It's pretty cool."

He crossed his arms, leaning forward slightly with a fond, amused smile. "Sure thing, love. Show me, Karate Champion."

She laughed, excited that he was interested, and positioned herself in the center of the room, adjusting her feet as her brother had taught her.

"See? First you prepare like this..." She showed the starting position, with her hands raised in guard. "And then you spin and-"

Before I could finish explaining, Y/n did the spin, but her foot didn't meet the air like she planned. The kick hit the side of the TV with a loud THUD, and the force of the impact was enough to knock it to the ground.

"Oh...my...God!" She screamed, her eyes widening as she clapped her hand over her mouth. She looked up to see the TV screen with a huge diagonal crack in it.

Lando froze for a second, but soon burst out laughing, holding his stomach as he fell back against the couch. "You... you just... knocked out the TV!" He said, struggling between laughs.

Y/n was still on the floor, a little scared by the situation with the TV, but also starting to find it funny. "I'm fine, before you ask. But I don't think the TV is." She said, looking at the destroyed screen with an expression of pure guilt.

Lando approached her, kneeling beside her while still laughing. "Are you okay? Didn't you sprain anything in your big epic stunt?"

"No, just my dignity," she replied, rolling her eyes but smiling. "And of course, the poor electronic device..."

He let out another laugh and ran his hand through her hair. "Well, at least the TV was the only casualty. Who knew my couch was a war zone?"

"Oh, shut up" Y/n said, still laughing, as she threw herself onto his chest, pushing him lightly. The two ended up lying on the living room floor, laughing together.

Lando took advantage of the proximity to start giving her little kisses on the face. "My love, you are the sweetest disaster I've ever seen" He murmured between kisses, drawing a smile from her. "And next time, I think it's better not to mix karate and electronics" He finished, laughing, while Y/n shook her head and promised to stay away from the TV.

"Damn, we're going to have to go out and buy a new TV."

Lando laughs and caresses her face. "That's the least of it."

•••••••••••••••••••••••

The end of year holidays were peaceful and full of special moments. Y/n and Lando had decided to spend them with her family, in the cozy country house that her mother loved. The weather was perfect - cold enough to remind her of winter, but sunny enough for outdoor games.

Lando was on the deck, sitting in one of the comfortable chairs and chatting with Y/n's father, her brothers and some of her brothers-in-law. They were laughing and exchanging stories while, on the lawn, Y/n played baseball with her nephews, trying to keep up with the children's boundless energy.

One of Y/n's brothers, laughing, commented as he looked at her on the lawn. "So, Lando, how many disasters has my sister caused since they got here?"

The family knew what a disastrous and energetic person Y/n was. This had been the case since the day she was born.

Lando chuckled, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair and watching Y/n excitedly, holding the baseball bat with an almost childish enthusiasm.

"Oh, more than I can count. But honestly, it's part of her charm, isn't it?" He gave a knowing smile, drawing laughter from the others. "It's one of the things I fell in love with her for..." He whispers, smiling fondly.

Everyone on the deck looked in her direction, just in time to see Y/n positioning herself to hit the ball that one of her nephews threw.

She took confident aim and swung the cue, but instead of hitting the ball, she ended up swinging awkwardly and hitting herself hard in the back.

"AH!" Her scream echoed, and Y/n immediately dropped the bat, leaning over and falling backwards onto the grass.

Lando stood up quickly, as he saw the children run to her, surrounding her with worried expressions. He hurriedly got down from the deck, startled by the scream, but slowed down when he saw Y/n lying on the grass, laughing.

"Are you laughing?" He asked in disbelief as he knelt down beside her.

"I just hit myself with a bat, Lan! What else can I do but laugh?!" Y/n replied, holding her stomach from laughing so hard, even with the discomfort in her back.

Lando started laughing along, relieved that it wasn't anything more serious. He helped her sit on the grass, and Y/n, still laughing, handed the bat to one of her nephews.

"Okay, Auntie's sweet children. Please continue playing without Auntie this time." She smiled. And even though they were scared and reluctant, the little ones started playing again.

Even though his mood was light, Lando ran his hand gently down her back. "Let me see. Does it hurt a lot?"

"Oh, just a little." Lando looks at her. "Okay, maybe a lot." She admitted, grimacing.

"Excuse me, honey," he asked, lifting her shirt a little at the back. A red mark was beginning to form, indicating the bruise that would come. Lando sighed, gently rubbing his hand. "This is going to turn purple... you really are talented at getting hurt, you know that?"

Y/n held back a slight cry of pain, but soon rested her head on his shoulder, enjoying the affection. "And you're talented at taking care of me. I think we make a perfect team."

He chuckled and kissed the side of her head. "My clumsy wonder woman. You are one of a kind."

Lando helped Y/n up, walking with her back to the deck.

Once they arrived, her father laughed, shaking his head. "Lando, I'm sure she does these things just to make sure you never lose the habit of taking care of her."

She rolls her eyes to try to hide the shy smile on her lips.

"Maybe" Lando replied with a smile, pulling Y/n closer. "But I wouldn't change a thing. She makes my days much more interesting."

Y/n laughed, shaking her head and leaning against her fiancé. Even with her clumsy tendencies, she knew that with Lando by her side, she would always have someone to laugh with her and love her unconditionally.

To him, his bride was nothing less than a true wonder woman.