#why is it whenever my flatmates have people over they always insist on sitting and vaping in the fucking kitchen

[lazy-toad]

btw if you come into someone else's kitchen and start fucking vaping in there without even standing by the window I should be allowed to hunt you for sport

[fanfictionfansmiction]

Hot Chocolate

Here is a cute Remus reader insert. Sorry if there are any mistakes and that it ends a little abruptly. But basically it’s an au where you and Remus went to school together and you bump into each other twice. word count: 2638

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I’ve never been in a relationship. I point blank don’t like vulnerability and not being in control. I never go on dates with people I like. I don’t actually think I’ve ever fancied someone enough to want to know them. Or to get close enough to them to get hurt.

That was until I saw him. All golden and bright. When we first met properly, I remember his ears went pink when I bumped into him. I could not understand why because he steadied me and prevented me from falling on my face. Something I thanked him for with a cup of coffee and a box of chocolates. I knew I recognised him. Which was perhaps why I was so bold in insisting on repaying him. It wasn’t in his face which had become stronger and more defined since last I saw him. It was his kind nature and in the way he spoke. Soft and smooth like a cup of hot chocolate.

“I’m sure I know you.” I said, attempting to be heard in the bustle of the crowded café.

“I feel the same, I’m Remus maybe we went to school together or something.” He said gently placing his mug down but still managing to spill some on the saucer.

“Yes! That’s it we were at secondary school together; I think you were in my English class. You sat with that loud group of boys who really pissed off our teacher.” I said loud and thankful that I wasn’t going insane.

“Oh, good old Minnie, you know Sirius is still in touch with her.” He said giggling.

“In some strange way that makes so much sense.” I said reaching for my cup laughing.

We sat in that small golden café until they closed. Something neither of us had intended to do. Remus asked if he could walk me home because it was getting dark too early for his liking these days. There was something in the way he asked as though he’d been waiting to ask since he stabled me. Or maybe the way he said my name in such a way I felt a blush creeping up my neck. Eyes wide and a smile breaking it’s way onto my face I accepted.

“It’s not too far from here don’t worry I won’t keep you for long.” I said with a look that suggested I wanted to keep him. Ridiculous I know considering we’d spent a few hours together and here I was wishing he’d ask if he could come in. The walk to my small flat above a corner shop wasn’t long enough for my liking. Although the walk was nice, we’d bumped into each other and exchanged small smiles that lit something in me. Like I’d just drank whiskey.

“I suppose this is goodbye for now,” he said followed with my name again, “I hope to see you again soon.” A smile broke out on his face that made its way to mine. Grinning at each other like idiots I kissed his cheek and said I wished the same. He looked at me intensely like all day long he’d been trying to not really see me. Hazel eyes that now I couldn’t make myself look away from even if I tried. But why would I want to look away. So, we stood together in the doorway to my flat taking each other in. The air changed and it felt thick and warm. This closeness, the smell of coffee and chocolate, his entire being. I felt drunk. Until my flatmate opened the door. Walking between us, she kissed my cheek said she was going to meet her girlfriend and just like that the spell was broken.

“I do hope to see you again Remus.” I said touching his elbow. A smile that told me I would see him.

Predictably I dreamt of him. He was golden. A halo ordained by the winter sun. Truly magnificent. I’m not even sure what happened in the dream just that he was there. Standing tall and smiling at me.

Two weeks went by until I saw him next. Completely by accident. This time it was my chance to stop you from falling.

Me and Marlene stopped by the local for a drink. Marlene and her girlfriend were in an argument and history told us this was the way to get her mind off it. Sitting at our usual booth I was on a mission to buy as many of the rounds that night as I could. So far, I had gotten three rounds of cider and I was working on getting the fourth. Before I spotted Remus I saw the boys from my year 9 English class who were no longer boys. James had a mop of curls that flicked around his neck and ears pushed away from his strong face which his glasses took up most of. Sirius almost as tall as Remus but not quite. His hair much longer than before which was pulled back, so his face took centre stage. Much angular than before but his eyes were as piercing as ever. Then Peter, who hadn’t grown much. His blonde hair once straggly and poorly cut now shaved close to his scalp. Still a little chubbier than the rest but now it filled his face well and he seemed surer in himself. All of them laughing. They were always laughing. As I approached the part of the bar, they were stood around Remus began walking backward as though animatedly telling a story. All his friends wide eyed knowing what was about to happen but offering Remus no warning. His foot caught on the carpet that started a few meters away from where his friends were stood. Just as he was about to fall back, I stopped him. Grabbing his arm and stabilising him causing his friends to laugh even harder. James and Sirius doubled over having to hold each other up and Peter threw his head back laughing manically as he did.

This time it wasn’t just his ears that turned pink, but his entire face turned beet red. Stumbling over his words shooting murderous looks at his friends and a soft apologetic look to me. I’m not sure he even recognised me at first. But when he did it seemed like he was confused asking himself: does it being them make it worse or better? The boys answer that question for him when they addressed me by name. Which is funny because I’m not sure they ever learned it in school.  

Looking shyly down at me Remus said my name with a smile. Ruffling his hair and shoving his hands into his pocket all fidgeting and nervous. “I think now I owe you a drink.” He said with a lopsided grin.

“How about we call it even.” I say to him feeling a little embarrassed myself though I didn’t know why. I got the attention from the barman and order for me and Marlene completely intending to leave the group alone and return to my booth. But James attempted to drag me into the conversation.

“Remi here was just telling us about his date he had last week.” He said before taking a swig of his drink.

“Yeah apparently Remi here is in love. Though whenever anyone says they’re in love with someone other than me I’m always sceptical.” Sirius joked.

Remus stayed red and stumbled over his words, “I didn’t say I was in love.” He says to me in a way that suggested he thinks that bothers me. Which it does but I won’t tell him that.

“Well do invite me to the wedding Remus. Sorry boys but I have a friend to get back to. Have a nice night.” I say as I sway back to my table simmering with hot vile jealously. I put the drinks down with a little force causing a spill that I mop with my sleeve leaving it sodden and stinking of cider.

“What was that all about?” Marlene ask peering at me over her drink.

“Oh, just some idiots I went to school with. Nothing important.” I say downing my pint.

“Oh, okay I sure do believe that” she says sarcastically then her face changes, “wait, isn’t that the guy who walked you home?” She asked like she already knows the answer. Then she puts the drink down and stares at me like a mother about to scold her child. “Is that why you haven’t brought anyone home these past weeks. Jesus, I thought you were a found again virgin or some shit. Now I know you’re just hung up on some guy I feel a lot better.” I lightly whack her arm.

“I didn’t bring anyone home for two weeks I think born again virgin is a bit of stretch don’t you Mar.” I whack her arm again for good measure. “And he’s not the reason I just haven’t been into anyone recently and the date I went on last week with that weirdo Lucien or whatever his name was, was awful because he was a raging tory not because of some old school friend I ran into.”  I say with a little bit too much annoyance because I know that she is a little right but who cares.

“Someone’s a little defensive.”

“Well someone else is being a little- “

“Sorry to interrupt.” I hear him say. Marlene and I snap our heads at him because we love a good drunk argument to get it out of our system. There Remus stands with two ciders in his hands and rosy cheeks, smiling widely at us. Completely unaware of what we were arguing about.

“Don’t apologise,” Marlene says changing her tone, “we were just chatting, talking, you know conversating.” She smiles like she thinks she’s gotten away with something.

“Oh right, um I brought over these because your friend here stopped me from falling on my arse in a very crowded room, so I decided I owed her a drink.” He says placing them down on the table.

“Oh, so this one isn’t for me.” Marlene says pouting as if she hasn’t got half a pint in front of her (that she didn’t even pay for)

“It can be, if you want but I was wondering if um,” he said my name again and it regrettably still made something glow inside me, “you wanted to go and have a bit of a chat.” He looked at me with big soft eyes and an even sloppier smile.

Is this the version of Remus I want to talk to? I ask myself. Is this weirdly jealous and angry version of me who he really wants to talk to? Before I have a chance to answer Marlene decides for me.

“Yeah actually I have to go,” she says hastily grabbing her stuff, “Dorcas just texted me, I have to go now.” She says kissing my head and I see her sly grin as she leaves.

“Well I suppose we don’t have to go anywhere for that chat a seat just opened up.” I smile at him sliding one drink to me and the other to the space next to me. He sits down and shuffles along to sit beside me knocking knees as he does. He gets comfortable in the seat taking off his dark denim jacket and takes a sip of his drink. As he puts it down, he spills a bit and wipes it up with the beige sleeve of his jumper.

“So, did seeing the boys make you realise that we’re even louder than you remember?” He says nervously looking over at them. They were looking back until I too stared and suddenly they were extremely interested in James shoe.

“Yes actually. I am a little shocked they even know who I am. Beside the point though it seems like you’re always having fun which is nice.” I say eyes still trained on them. A girl around my age approaches them, tall and radiant. Her auburn hair twisted up on the top of her head, she looked like she’d just come back from work. She kissed James on the top of his head. He looked up at her with big warm gooey eyes and kissed her cheek. A moment so tender and intimate I want to look away.

“Who’s the lucky girl?” I ask intending to be told who James beautiful girlfriend is.

“There is no lucky girl those gits were just trying to wind me up.” Before I can interrupt he continues, “They knew that the girl I was talking about was you and they knew your name because I used to have the biggest crush on you in school,” he stop momentarily to rehydrate, “So much so they were sick to death of me talking about it which is why they were such a pain in English. I didn’t say I was in love you by the way I just said that I couldn’t stop thinking about you and was beating myself up because I cannot believe I left without asking for your number or without kissing you. I mean I truly am the biggest moron I know. Although sometime in school I probably did say I loved you. I was a little dramatic back then. Evidently not much has changed.” He looks at me with half lidded eyes. We stare at each other for a while because I’m not sure he knows what he’s said. I see him slowly figure it out because his eyes widen and suddenly looks entirely sober. “Oh god.” Is all he says as though he’s about to rest his head in his hands. I intend to show that I feel the same by taking his scarred rough hands in mine, but he’s obviously committed to throwing his head in his hands because his head hits the sticky table.

“Remus.” I say all high pitched and concerned. Then his friends follow it with a chorus of laughter.

“Oh god.” He says again.

“Come with me.” I say taking his coat and his hand.  A chorus of high pitched ‘oohs’ follow from his friends.

I lead him to my flat knowing Marlene will be MIA for a few days. I turn on the lamp and Remus looked like he wanted to curl up into a ball and be forgotten by the world hunched over on the patch work sofa. Still dramatic.

“Remus,” I say sitting next to him on the old sofa, “look at me you idiot.” He swings his head up but his eyes are closed and his hands covering most of his face.

“I don’t want to.” He says grumpily.

“Look at me,” I say taking his hands in mine noticing a small cut on his head, “you got to do most of the talking in there and no offence but if I were to declare my feelings for you I’d rather it not be with your friends eavesdropping.” He groans again. “I did have a really nice time with you, and I did feel jealous when your friends made up that girl. I really want to be a hopeless romantic, but we don’t really know each other. I did have fun with you, and I would go out with you again. But next time please ask for my number because this is rather dramatic.” I say smoothing his hair and holding his cheek in my hand.

Remus looks at me with big eyes warm and gooey like James. A smile playing on his lips like I somehow said the right thing. Then he says my name again. Smooth like hot chocolate. “Can I have your number?”

“Of course.” I say and smile playing on my lips. Then he leans in and kisses me softly like a whisper.

[queernarchy]

Statement of Elizabeth Williams, regarding a box of tapes found in the basement of her student house. Statement given October 18th, 2018, 105 Hill Top Road, Oxford.

[INT. OXFORD, 105 HILLTOP RD, UPSTAIRS BEDROOM]

[TAPE CLICKS ON]

[SOUNDS OF BETH STUTTERING, APPARENTLY SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING TO SAY]

[A SHAKY INHALE]

BETH

Right. Um. I, uh. Right.

[PAUSE]

BETH

To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I- I found this. It’s the only one I’ve found in the box that’s blank. You know, I’ve never actually seen a tape recorder, like in real life? It’s quite - Well, I’m not even sure I know how to use it. Except … I do. Because I turned it on. I hit the button and now I’m talking to it, like it’s a person. Like I’m crazy, which … I might be. God, I might be. 

[BREATH]

BETH

I probably am. In fact, I hope I am. I hope I was just dreaming it all up. Another sign of an overactive imagination. Spending too much time with those books and not in the real world, as mum would say.

[PAUSE]

Even if it was real, there is no reason for me to be talking to you - no, to this. [TO HERSELF] It’s a tape recorder, Beth, it’s not a person. [BACK TO NORMAL] But I am. It feels right to, to tell you. So I’m going to. I’m going to tell you what happened and then it’ll be over. And I can go back to my life. 

BETH (STATEMENT)

I’m not great at this. The talking, the explaining, the storytelling, it’s not really my thing, at least not anymore. 

When I was a kid it was easy, you know? I was always latching onto one thing or another, letting it consume my brain and then going on and on about it to whatever poor soul I could corner long enough into listening. My parents didn’t let me use a computer until I was well into my teens - something about them making nightmares worse? It was all bollocks, really, how would they know that if they never actually let me use one? But, anyways, before that I used to spend hours in the Wokingham library touring the sections. Once, when I was twelve, I read a book on oceanography: Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World, and spent a solid week scouring the corners of every bookshelf for anything I could find on ancient supercontinents or vanished fault lines before giving my report to the first unlucky and unsuspecting librarian who happened to be out in the open. [LAUGHS] Poor Mike.

I never cared what the genre was, nonfiction, mystery, fantasy, that was never important to me. I just loved the pursuit, and the compelling joy of walking through a new world. It was like a secret between me and the writer, something that we knew that nobody else did. 

I always dreamed of being a writer too one day, but like I said, the storytelling part never actually came natural to me, no matter how many books I consumed. I suppose it must have been that lack of skill that bugged the people around me to no end. My father spent most of his time at work and I didn’t really get along with my brother or sister, but let’s just say that my mum was never as ... enthusiastic about my new interests as I was. 

It wasn’t her fault, I was deeply, deeply irritating. But to my credit, the minute I realized that, well, that’s when I finally started to shut up. Thinking back, I think that’s where it started. I had always kind of been afraid of pretty much anything and everything. But when I got old enough, I started to routinely feel a gripping terror bubbling up through my stomach, my chest, shaking my limbs and rooting me to the spot whenever I spoke for more than a minute at a time. 

All this to say, a few years ago I graduated secondary school with absolutely no skill in writing, the one thing I actually enjoyed, and a lot of anxiety. It seems inevitable that I would end up studying library sciences, doesn’t it? It’s practically what I’ve always done anyways - sorting and researching. And a future as a librarian with a couple cats and a cozy cottage, surrounded by books, well … there are worse things. Much worse. 

I moved into student housing right before my first term started at Oriel. I call it student housing, but it’s not, not technically. The actual dorms were a bit out of my price range, so when I saw an ad looking for flatmates in Cowley, only a 20 minute bus ride from the college, it seemed meant to be. There were ten living here all together, to start. George moved into his boyfriend’s place last year, leaving nine of us. [DARKLY] Well, eight, now, I suppose.

It was a proper house, renovated a few years back, I think, but it was already thoroughly  trashed by the time I showed up. It was one of those places that, the minute you walked through the door, you could just feel the grime lurking between the worn couches and stained mattresses, that musty smell of overuse. I tried to ignore it, I did, but one Friday night a couple weeks after I’d settled in, I waited until everyone had gone and walked to the closest shop to buy a blacklight. It went about as well as you’d expect. I spent that entire weekend scrubbing this house from top to bottom. I even cleaned Sam’s room. It’s not like I’m a germaphobe or anything, I just like to know where things have been. And if they dirty again, well, at least I know it’s the slobbery of my friends rather than that of strangers. 

I didn’t touch the basement, though. None of us ever did. I’m not sure why, it was always just an unspoken agreement between us. I must have asked about it when I moved in. I must have. I mean, it would be one thing if it just never came up, if it was just an unfinished and unsafe part of the house we didn’t go down to and that was that. But, you know, thinking about it now, we didn’t even mention it, not once. It’s amazing, isn’t it, what you can ignore. Right up to the moment you’re devoured by it.

I don’t remember the exact moment things started to feel wrong. Can’t have been more than a couple weeks ago. It was subtle, at first. Doors swinging closed on their own, misplaced items, shadows that didn’t really ... fit. All things that could be chalked up to the mind playing tricks out of boredom, or fatigue - just a consequence of one too many sleepless nights. I didn’t really think about it too hard, even when Sam brought it up at breakfast, started insisting the place was haunted. That was easy to dismiss, she’s always going on about some supernatural this or that and I don’t believe in ghosts, but even that would have been easily digestible as an explanation. 

It was like that for a few days, and all the while, that feeling of wrongness lurked in the background, pulsing beneath us. I honestly don’t know if I would have even taken notice if Milton hadn’t started behaving the way he did. Milton is - was - every bit the hipster film student of your wildest imaginations. I swear, I saw him wear a beret once, completely unironically. We’d been friends, as I was one of the few people who would listen to him ramble on about whatever arthouse film had caught his attention that week. We got on fine, well, actually, for flatmates at least. That’s not to say that I always liked him - I’d acted in a few of his student films, just by convenience, and he wasn’t exactly the most easy to work with. Everything always had to be just the way he wanted it, down the most minute detail. I swear, if he could have tied strings around our limbs and puppeted us from afar, he would have. [PAUSE] Sorry, that’s … that’s poor taste. 

It had to do with the cassettes. You see, Milton had always insisted on using magnetic tape for his recordings, refusing to even entertain the idea of a digital camera. Something about being more authentic - I never understood it, but far be it from me to get in between a film major and their precious ‘analog charm.’ He loved those tapes, and we all got used to seeing dozens scattered throughout the house at any one time. Which is why it struck me as odd when last week, they vanished entirely. When I asked him about it, he just said that he'd been editing a new project that he needed them for. I wasn’t sure what kind of project would require that many cassettes all at once, but he certainly spent enough time working on it. He’d be locked away in his room for hours, sounds of whirring machinery coming from behind his door. When he did come out, he was exhausted, gaunt. I tried talking to him about it, you know, but he’d just ignore me.

It was strange behavior, sure, but not supernatural. Perhaps I would have chalked it up to stress, just a bad week, but that’s when the nightmares started. I had always had them, just a side effect of my anxiety, but they’d died down a couple years ago, after I moved to Oxford. One sleep after this started, though, I saw Milton. He was sat at a desk, a mess of cassettes unspooled into piles of thin black magnetic tape scattered across it. He was tangled in tape as well, almost every limb bound by it. He stared at the pile in front of him with dull eyes, completely still. 

I didn’t realize until the tape began to lift his arms that he wasn’t just tangled in it. The long, metallic strands were embedded directly into his skin. The strands controlling every movement, he grabbed a spool, and, very slowly, raised it to his mouth. His jaw unhinged, farther than anything natural, and he began to stuff the tape down his throat. Again, and again, and again, until the entire pile was gone. I had never felt relief the way I had when I finally woke from that dream. I didn’t know that was only the first time that I would have it.

I woke from one of these nightmares late one night, heart beating fast and body sticky with sweat. I climbed downstairs, trying to clear my head, and found Milton sitting in the living room, staring at our small television screen playing his movie. At least, that’s what I assumed it was. There was no coherence, no audio, just rapid, violent black and white images that flashed across the screen sporadically and bits of static that faded in and out at random. Occasionally, I’d see the corrupted and disjointed image of my own face cross the screen, along with the other actors. The pattern was hypnotic. Every few minutes, the images would perfectly align, shaping spindly, bony legs that almost seemed to reach beyond the glass face of the TV.

After a while, I finally managed to ask him if he was alright, if the cassette had become corrupted somehow, if there was any way to fix it. He had always been so fiercely protective of his tapes, and with the state it was in I expected him to be furious, or devastated, at least concerned. But when he turned, there was none of that written into his face. Just a calm, blank expression. He studied me carefully for a long moment, before finally speaking. ‘We should feed our guest. She’s so happy to have arrived, and she is very hungry.’ He smiled after he said that. When he did, I could have sworn I saw that thin black film tape weaved inside him - webbed in the back of his throat and threaded right through the fleshy center of his tongue. I went back up the stairs immediately and locked my door, sat in bed until the sun came up.

I managed to avoid him the days after that. I thought about telling the others, trying to explain it to them, but I knew it wouldn’t end well. They wouldn’t believe me, why would they? I wasn’t even sure that I believed me. I thought about moving out, of course I did, but I had nowhere to go. No money, no real friends outside of the ones I already lived with. And who knows if I was just overreacting, imagining it all. So I decided I’d just ignore him as much as I could until he went back to normal or I’d saved up enough money for a new place.

It didn’t last, though. It was three days ago that it happened. It was late, and I had carelessly lost time sitting in the kitchen, studying for my history exam. I was alone when he walked in. He didn’t say a word, just, met my eyes with that calm look, like an invitation. Then he turned, with a finality I had never seen before, opened the door to the basement, and vanished down the stairs. 

I shouldn’t have followed him. I could have just walked away, went upstairs and buried my head in my pillow. But I didn’t. I had to know. To see. 

So, I walked down those old stone steps, dodging cobwebs. I don’t remember if I closed the door behind me, or if it did that part on its own. The cellar was warm, far too warm for October. It was unfinished, and empty save for an old, lidded cardboard box that sat neatly in the center of the room. A long, jagged crack ran through the floor and up into the far wall, as though the foundation had been damaged in an earthquake or something. Milton stood facing away from me, towards the crack in the wall, whispering something I couldn’t quite make out. I called out to him, and he turned to face me, expression wild with … something. Excitement? Panic? He had started to say something before, all at once, dozens of shadowy, spindly tendrils, adorned with what looked like coarse hairs crept from the crack and began to wrap themselves around him.

I felt that familiar terror bubble up, running cold through my veins, stronger than I’d ever felt it before. I wanted to run or scream, but I couldn’t. He didn’t scream either, but I could see the fear growing in his eyes, silently pleading. He didn’t move, not even as the tendrils began to … unspool him. They reached into him, breaking into his body like plaster, and pulled. He was hoisted from the ground, his limbs yanked in different directions and elongated. They just dangled there, arms and legs and head only still attached by threads of dark, magnetic tape, like an old, torn doll hanging together by string. And then the tendrils began to move him. They took their time puppeting him, and at the end, they pulled up his head, forcing his gaze to meet mine. His cheeks were strung up into a grin, but I saw the tears that flowed freely down his contorted face. 

I don’t know how long I stood there, watching him stripped him apart, piece by piece, slowly and deliberately. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I felt hot tears roll down my cheeks, although I couldn’t tell if they’d come from the terror of it all or simply because I no longer possessed the ability to blink. I watched and watched. And when it was over, and he was gone, I waited. I waited for them to take me, a part of me just relieved that I didn’t have to watch anymore. I had already shut my eyes tightly before I understood that I could. I felt my hands twitch, regaining their will. When I finally opened my eyes again, I was alone, in that old, dank basement, with nothing but that long dark crack, and, in the center of the floor, the cobweb covered cardboard box, now open, and filled to the brim with tapes. 

I don’t remember the rest of the night with any real clarity. I know I stood there for a while. I know at some point I calmly bent down, picked up the box, and walked it upstairs. I spent most of the last two days just staring at it. I’ve missed all of my classes. Sam has come to see me a couple of times, to ask how I am. This morning she actually brought me a plate of spaghetti. Imagine that, spaghetti for breakfast. I do appreciate the thought, even if it makes no practical sense whatsoever. Must be an American thing. She did mention that a man stopped by yesterday. Short, greying hair, lots of weird scars, asking about ‘strange happenings’ in the house. Sam told him about her hauntings, and apparently he had been, less than impressed. He told her he was sorry, and that she should move out, and then left without another word. [LAUGH] Creep.

I finally got up the nerve to look into the box. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin: Tapes and stationary. And cobwebs. So many goddamn cobwebs. 

Nobody has said anything about Milton. I expect in the next few days someone will notice he’s gone. How do you explain something like that? I’ve been seeing it again, though. My nightmares … my nightmares have been getting worse. I keep ending up back there. I just watch, and watch, and watch, and I can’t turn away. 

BETH (POST STATEMENT)

Statement ends, I suppose.

[STATIC RISES]

[STUTTERS, CONFUSED]

…. Statement? I, I don’t, I didn’t -

[STATIC FALLS]

[A SHORT SIGH]

I don’t feel better. I really thought I would. I don’t know why. Why in the world did I think that telling my stupid story to this thing would make me feel better? 

The box is still sitting at the foot of my bed. I want to get rid of it, I do. So why don’t I just toss it? It would be so easy. Just … throw it out. But I can’t. 

[RIFLING THROUGH THE TAPES]

Oh, huh - 

[STATIC RISES]

This tape’s blank as well. I thought I’d sorted through them all, but I guess I missed one. Hm. 

[TOSSES THE TAPE ASIDE]

They’re quite interesting, you know. I haven’t played any of the tapes yet, but I glanced at a few of the written accounts. Some of them are so illegible I can’t even read them but others are. Compelling. They make me feel, right. Scared, but [SIGHS]. I don’t know how to explain it. 

I did some research on them, the ones I read anyways. I say research, I mean some quick Googling, a bit of asking around. They’re not real. The Magnus Institute, that’s the logo printed onto the stationary, isn’t a real place. And, as far as I can tell, these people … these people don’t exist. Anywhere. I mean, I found a few names that match but nobody who lines up to the descriptions and when I reach out to them they claim to know nothing about any of it. One of the people I called, Timothy Hodge, his name is, actually gave me the number of his psychiatrist. [LAUGH]

So maybe it’s fiction. A collection of short stories about fictional people and fictional suffering. Just a practical joke. Except, I know that it’s not. I can’t explain how, I just … Know. 

I should probably move out. Only an idiot would stay in this place, after something like that. When I leave this room, I’m going to have to walk by that basement door. Every single day.. I should leave. I want to leave. I will leave. Just, not yet. 

I need to understand, to unravel the mystery, and I’m getting the feeling that there is something in this box that’ll help me do just that. I’ll try to record whatever I find out. I do have another blank tape, after all. [HM] End recording. 

[TAPE CLICKS OFF]

[gwoongi]

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 | teacher!hoseok

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 jung hoseok / reader teacher + expecting parents au! genre: fluff fluff fluff (and a lil baby bit of smut) + bullet fic version :) words: 26k (so maybe read this on a laptop but if you insist on a phone then don’t say i didn’t warn you!!!!)

warnings: graphic language, smidge of nsfw content, student/teacher relationship, jung hoseok being the best boyf and parent ever :(

a/n: y/n is legal !!! hoseok is the typical cliche young teacher !!! i love this story a lot (i plan to write it in full soon!!! just whenever i have time teeheehee) ((also im really sorry the balloons look demonic idk what happened and honestly. too lazy to edit it)) (((this fic is a MONSTER!!! i’m sorry in advance!!!)))

disclaimer: as per freaking usual, keep reading does not work on mobile. i am so sorry because this is SO LONG and big but its ok :( because it’s dad hoseok :( 

(gif is not mine!)

happy new year (as a starting note!) i was gone for a long, long time on this blog and did actually consider getting rid of it entirely, however, i’m back to share things that i love and hopefully, you can all enjoy the things i create also. i don’t usually write like this, but i saw a variety of writers adopt a “bullet-list-style” of writing, which i found to be quite efficient. i am the world’s slowest writer and so writing like this actually helps me publish a lot of my ideas without feeling the pressure of writing out like 300k word fics that honestly get ignored. regardless, here’s my first post (technically) of the new year. (this idea has been in my drafts since the “cosykims” days, and og followers will recognise the title.)

now i don’t care what you say, every single school, college or university has that one teacher who is just way too young to actually be a teacher

you briefly remember high-school, with your physics teacher who was just way too young- like borderline could be a student themselves, and yet here they were with their rainbow stationery set teaching you the speed that light travels

and it’s universally known that some people are like child geniuses and end up graduating university aged three or something really bizarre and crazy

(obvs sarcasm)

so, for the love of god...why was there no young hot professor for you to spy on during your lectures

you’re currently a second year uni student, studying visual arts

which, by the way, is awesome

you started off initially very interested in just drawing, but taking modules in sculpting was something you actually found yourself loving and, not to brag, but you’re also pretty good at photography

like as a kid you could probably be found eating crayons and snorting felt fumes like you were an art junkie

kids in your classes were asking for leapfrogs or action figures for christmas but here you were asking for a £300 pencil colouring set along with a “by numbers” colouring book

picasso is shaking rn

like...funny how leonardo da vinci hasn’t released any new artwork since you were born….hm inch resting

“y/n. you, me, some other people, smirnoff and dr pepper, house party, saturday night, is it a yes, or is it a yes?”

jeongguk has been your best friend since your first semester at university; he also took visual arts and does extremely well in all areas, particularly photography and cinema/media study. ever since you partnered together after both being the first ones to turn up to the first class, you’ve been stuck together like glue, even going as far as to rent out a flat together for your second year (along with three other people, just to make the rent easier)

“uh, actually, no, i can’t, as tempting as that whole ordeal sounds.”

“but then when am i gonna see you?”

“i literally see you every day, we LIVE TOGETHER..”

“it’s not the same thing!!”

every saturday for you is the “flat 18 party night” which literally translates to the day that your entire flat go out to any party they can get invited to and just get smashed

it started off as a you and jeongguk thing but then when you moved into flat 18 at the start of your second year, it became a you, jeongguk, haseul, jimin and seunghee thing, and by extension, a year 2 uni student party since the rest of your flatmates found the need to invite all their other friends

basically it was the only day of the week where you were really granted a day off

and jeongguk really fucking loved party night saturdays

“well, what’s the reason then?”- the two of you are currently on your way to your last class of the day; it’s a sort of orientation day for upcoming students who can’t attend the open days next weekend, and so your visual arts professor (who happens to be an actual BEAST) ended up cancelling afternoon classes to help another professor sort out the gym

“family wedding sort of thing,” you explain as you walk. “if i could get out of it, trust me, i wouldn’t. i don’t know if my kidneys can handle another night of drinking. i hadn’t recovered from saturday until wednesday!”

“i’m pretty sure it’s your liver that gets affected by alcohol, but go off i guess...”

“ANYWAYS so yeah i’m sort of maybe like head bridesmaid and i have to be there so….yeah….can't make it :(”

jeongguk then discovers that the wedding is for one of your cousins that you were always really close to, and so even when he’s still really bummed out about you not being there for the “big shindig” he lets it go

especially because he of all people knows that you’ve never been particularly close with all of your family members and it’s only very recently that you got back in touch with them all (just after your first year of uni, to be precise) and he knows how much it means to you

haseul is one of the only other person in your flat who is an “art” major

she actually studies theatre and performing arts but she likes to still be in on the art grind with you and guk

(fun fact: the trio of you called yourselves “art attack” as a funny joke and all have printed art attack door signs in the flat)

haseul always always always tries to wait for both of you after classes because the performance hall and practise rooms are like RIGHT THERE and she’s sort of a little creature of habit and after waiting once or twice it just became a natural thing

today though she’s not waiting because apparently seunghee is doing a biology project and needed help moving it and setting it all up in the labs and haseul was free and so offered her services

usually if you’re free, anyone of you will wait for each other after classes

haseul usually waits for you and guk and then sometimes you guk and haseul go to get seunghee and jimin, especially on thursdays and fridays since they are sort of the weekday party dates

“are we going to see the project after class?”

you glanced up from your canvas stained with reds and blues towards jeongguk who actually hasn’t even looked up from his own drawing, still painting the still life ugly ass vase in the middle of the room

class is actually really quiet today, which makes sense because it’s a friday and there’s always, you know for a fact, a student union get together on thursday evenings and half the uni abuse it and get hammered

and so uni is literally DEAD the next morning

“um yes of course I really wanna see her volcano in action okay i helped make that.”

“technically we all helped make it...”

“well nobody ASKED YOU FOR YOUR OPINION.”

eventually your class ends early because it’s literally just you guk and some other kid who doesn’t talk to anybody and so you and guk decide to head over to the biology labs in the science department

judging by the time, their class should actually be over but knowing seunghee and her stubbornness, her volcano is most definitely still there shooting little rocks onto the floor

rightly predicted because seunghee stands really proud next to her dodgy looking volcano that everyone in flat 18 helped make while off their rockers 

and haseul is awkwardly sitting on a stool to the other side, admittedly on her phone playing zepeto or whatever

“tell me it isn’t the best volcano you’ve ever seen!”

“seunghee, baby, it’s so cute, i LOVE the way it’s literally falling apart!!” jeongguk and seunghee have a super loving friendship, sometimes you sit back and think they’d be the cutest couple on planet earth and then you realise that its GUK and HEE and you wanna erase that thought from your head

guk takes a really quick pic on his phone so he can show jimin, who would definitely complain otherwise because “i literally painted the whole thing brown i think that deserves recognition!”

“please tell me it got a passing grade” 

you sort of need seunghee’s volcanic mess to have passed because you did not have to hear her talk about how excited she was to present her volcano that actually burned things if you put it close enough for six days straight, just for it to flop and get nothing

“i personally loved the reinvented cliche of the volcano model, so i actually gave it higher than passing.”

you turn almost embarrassingly quickly

because

well

you know that voice

everybody with brain cells knows that voice

cause like

professor jung is literally THE biology professor

like he’s the king of biology

you have to admit to yourself that you were secretly so happy when guk made friends with seunghee through jimin (a physics major) because you knew through the grapevine that seunghee was a student in professor jung’s class and everybody and anybody knows that professor jung is the Daddy of biology

like he’s so gorgeous and inventive and creative and passionate and sometimes you just sit there and think “why the fuck didn't i take biology??”

and then you remember that the only thing that helped you get through high school biology was the fact that seo youngho (god bless his soul) sat next to you and gave you all his answers on internal exams

he’s also one of THOSE professors

like he’s one of the cliche fanfiction Young Genius professors

granted he’s still a solid four years older but still, it’s in the legal age frame and he’s still remarkably young to be a uni professor and that’s what you tell yourself when you feel guilty about thirsting over him and the way he looks so damn sexy in that white lab coat and black turtleneck

ANYWAY

when you see him you kind of flush and look away

it’s not obvious that you like him tbh, because you’ve by now mastered to keep it under control unless around flat 18 and incredibly dangerously drunk

that of course doesn’t stop guk from smirking next to you and giving you little nudges which is, quite frankly, annoying as FUCK

tbh flat 18 know you thirst over professor jung and so they waste no time trying to bring it up deliberately, but you’re not obvious at showing you like him in front of him

cause he’s popular and definitely has a group of girls in seunghee’s class who like him a lot and giggle obnoxiously like its high school

you’re not THAT desperate

“oh, good, because i didn’t want it to be a waste of my time.”

he raises a brow

“...becAUse i had to listen to seunghee talk about how good her project was all week. HERS, that she worked on totally alone. like i didnt even know she was doing a project- wow, seunghee, did you make this volcano? wow hahah look at that guys!”

not that professor jung even cares that she got help

seunghee is the only student who respects his crazy biology analogies and jokes so she’s naturally one of his faves

“yeah, and, prof jung didn’t give us homework so im completely free for tomorrow’s big shindig.” seunghee says, still smiling really proudly

“first of all why is everybody saying shindig, second of all i cant go to that so im sorry please don’t post it on snapchat because it will hurt my feelings that you’re having fun without me” and everyones like :) and then like :O :(

bear in mind professor jung is literally still here, he’s just by his desk tidying up only half listening because kids are wild these days and he doesn’t remember having half as much fun when he was in university

“um. WHAT why???? you know saturdays are our days like those are the days we actually get to see you because you’re always in your room sleeping or working”

“that’s not true at all, that’s very inaccurate...”

“you literally watched all 7 seasons of game of thrones in less than three days two weeks ago and i dont think i saw you once during that time”

valid point

“im at a wedding :( and i cant miss it :( even for dr pepper and vodka :( im sorry :(”

at that point professor jung scares you all back into reality. “oh wow that’s so weird because i’m at a wedding too this weekend, actually. wouldn’t that be so weird if we were at the same wedding?”

please be at the same wedding as me “omg imagine that ahhaahha”

but then you realise that’s just not realistic

and even if it was realistic for professor jung hoseok to attend your cousin’s wedding then nothing would happen because weddings are big and busy and you like barely know professor jung beyond making small-talk with him when you’re waiting for seunghee to hurry up and pack away all three of her pencil cases after classes

you actually forgot how stressful weddings are

the last wedding you went to was your aunt’s wedding when you were like five and you were a little flower girl who ruined all the wedding photos by covering her ears and scrunching up her face because the church bells were really fucking loud

which as a kid you thought was perfectly valid, but now that you’re twenty turning twenty one you realise how annoying it must be to have a mongrel child pulling ugly faces at the front of your precious wedding photos

“remind me to never ever get married”

your mom kinda just looks at you and frowns

“i remember when i got married i had my maid of honour and bridesmaids do everything for me so i was actually really relaxed. maybe when you get wifed up you’ll be the same”

wise words from mrs l/n that you’ll probably forget within the next five minutes!

even though it’s so infuriating sorting out the brides big ass dress and making sure that the designated flower girl (who btw is not as good as you were aged 5 dressed in pink and wearing barbie trainers) doesn’t spill all the goddamn petals onto the floor before the aisle, you find that the ceremony is actually really kinda beautiful and touching and yES, maybe the vows made you tear up a little bit

and you bARELY remember the greeting ceremony afterwards which is basically another way of saying “wait for us to get back while we sign these papers” which is also another way of saying It’s time for all the guests to awkwardly wait around and not do anything

you literally haven’t met a single person from the groom’s side of the family and you’re not really interested in doing so until the after party

like most after parties this one is pushed up in a hired out room near the venue and it’s dark and slightly sweaty and hey, at least the food is nice and OMG they have baby sausage rolls

after obviously talking to your family for a little bit, you occupy your time by the snacks and the bar just kind of moving between the two

yknow just minding your own business

“woah, they have tiny sausage rolls, too?”

oh god

you instantly turn around like its deja vu or something

there is no way that professor jung is standing right there at your COUSINS wedding like its no big deal

“...prof JUNG?? omg what are you doing here??”

“i jinxed it! the groom is actually one of my family friends. yeah, he’s been like best friends with my sister since they were in school and so we were close growing up.”

it’s sort of a relief, somewhere deep down inside, knowing that professor jung isn’t like indirectly related to you through marriage

“and, please, y/n, we’re not at school!! please call me hoseok!”

you’re like tearing up inside,,,,on a first name basis with the hot biology professor.,,,,,.....,,, it’s a miracle

also

how does he know who you are

“i didn’t know you knew my name,” you sort of blurt it out as you think it and he starts laughing really cutely and takes like three sausage rolls off the plate on the table

“well, you’re seunghee’s friend! and uh, the bride literally said your name in the speech at dinner.”

“oh. okay well cool haha yeah. wow. this is so weird.”

you actually thought prior to this moment that talking to professor jung- HOSEOK- even when you’re with seunghee in the labs would be really awkward????

because you’re no biologist and the only thing you remember about biology was a video that scarred you for life about a whale's stomach exploding everywhere like the t-rex out of land of the lost

and plus because he’s cute and smart and also a teacher which was. pretty much a big deal...like a big big deal

“okay, but you’re also legally old enough to do it..it’s not like you’re fifteen and he’s thirty,” said the sadistic voice in your head. you liked to ignore that voice a lot

but contrary to popular belief hoseok is actually really really easy to talk to

it’s almost like he’s been your friend for like your entire life and it’s only a little bit weird for you to be laughing your ass off with your friends biology professor at your cousins wedding but hey anything can happen and at least you’re having fun !!!!

naturally…...fun can go…….well…….too far……….sometimes

it’s like quarter to midnight and the party is still going strong and your cousin is like really going for it on the dance floor with your mom and a few of your other family members and oh wow look at this at some point you’ve ended up smushed against hoseok’s side with another glass of smirnoff and dr pepper in honour of flat 18 having fun without you rn

and he doesn’t seem to mind about the way you lean up with your whole cleavage against his chest to talk to him bc its loud as fuck and he can’t hear you from up here

and haha. wow look!

at some point during this fine hour mr jung hoseok has slung an arm around your waist and has his nose in your hair with his lips by your ear because its LoUd As FuCk iN hErE and you won’t be able to hear him

“i said do you want to step outside? its really hot in here” he asks and you have to physically stop yourself from snogging his face off because there’s no way he’s actually looking that good rn

you probably look awful and flustered and sweaty

“oh yes sure yeah ok yeah lets go we can go out to the patio or something”

and of COURSE your poor mother has no idea that the man around your waist is a professor at ur university so she sees you...actually with somebody and smiles really wide and turns away

at this point she’s just shocked that you’re with somebody because lately you’ve only been with flat 18 or nobody at all

you discover very quickly actually that hoseok is stroking his hand up and down the side of your body which okay, alexa, this is epic

“it’s nice and cool out here i thought i was gonna roast to death inside of there.”

hoseok, again with his cute laughter that has apparently become throaty and deep and you almost have to double check it’s still him because it majorly caught you off guard

“right? too many people, it always makes me feel really hot and claustrophobic.”

you hummed. “yeah, and it’s so sweaty and sticky like [cousins name] really couldn’t have opened up a few windows huh.”

he nods and watches you as you just keep talking and talking and talking

“and, let me tell you, this dress is so uncomfortable”

he looks you over. “you look gorgeous. the dress- i mean, the dress looks gorgeous”

“yeah it’s just a shame it’s so itchy and tight”

“mm? wanna go and change?”

“honestly i kind of just want to get out of it.”

you sort of share a look for a solid three seconds

and there’s like a really brief moment where you regret saying it

maybe he hadn’t meant anything by stroking your body and staring at you with a darkened look and holding you tightly when one of your FAMILY MEMBERS said hi to you and smiled and brushing his lips by your ear like maybe all of that was platonic? maybe he remembered you’re a student (although not hIS student) but still!!!!

you’re 0.5 seconds away from blurting out an almost sober apology when he mutters a, “fuck it,” under his breath that you barely even register and then he’s holding your face with his hands and bringing you in for a fat smooch

at first you’re just really surprised because even though you wanted this to happen you weren’t necessarily expecting it to happen

hoseok pulls away sort of dejected because “why aren’t you kissing me back :(” and thats all it takes because you’re pulling him in for round 2 of smooching and it’s almost like you’re not in the courtyard by the patio directly near the windows of the party and it’s not as if people can see you smooching professor jung haha no way! That would be insane!

“i” kiss “really” kiss “shouldn’t” kiss “be” kiss “doing” kiss “this” and he pulls away and then kisses you really really deeply “but” kiss “itsokjustpleasedonttellanybody”

for a moment you both like ruin the mood by assuring each other you won’t say anything and most people at that point would have been like, alright let’s call it a night haha this was fun and awkward

but :( he’s already hard and ur already really in the mood to bone the Daddy of biology so it would be a waste if you didn’t just….continue

hoseok very quickly discovers the perks of being head bridesmaid because your suite is gorgeous and big

“wtf i’m sharing a room with my uncle this really isn’t fair!”

“the many pros of being related to the bride! look i even have a mini fridge and it’s got loads of strawberry milk in because like its my favourite and they really treated me here and-”

not that he doesn’t want to hear you talk because he’d love to but omg he’s hard as heck and would rather get down to it instead of talking about the excessive amount of strawberry milk in ur fucking mini fridge the size of his BED

surprisingly even though you’ve wanted to at least hold professor jung- HoSeOk-’s hand for like an entire year, you haven’t put THAT much thought into having sex with him

well

actually like finger fucking does not count

nor does him between your legs

no they do not count to you in your mind especially when he quite literally helps you out of your dress and strips you to just your underwear

which, BTW, thank FUCK you brought your sexy stuff just in-case the groom had any really hot friends

thankfully he had jung hoseok

y/n: 1 life: 0

rewind like 0.3 seconds

so. hoseok apparently knows this venue like the back of his hand because he manages to direct you to your wing within like three minutes which is pretty impressive considering it took you thirty to find it this morning

regardless he’s really gentle considering he wants nothing more than to plow you into a nearby hard surface and like you know when someone ghosts their fingers over your skin and it tickles but it’s a nice tickle and your whole body shudders

yeah

well

professor jung does that a lot

he takes a liking to sitting on the end of the bed, between the two posts, while you’re firmly seated on his laps with your legs on either side of him, which is the long way of writing You Are Straddling Seunghee’s Biology Professor

“you’re so pretty” his voice is sort of muffled by your hair and skin and you can barely even focus on his voice because there’s so many things happening rn it’s hard to process it all

do you focus on his voice? his one hand on your back? his other hand literally on your arse? his crotch against yours? the little guttural groan he does between kisses?

it all just feels surreal and amazing and oh WOW jung hoseok has a hand between ur legs

he loops his fingers around your underwear and moans (shudders? you can’t tell but whatever he just did like you need him to do it again cause WEEEWWWW) and like lets them go suddenly

and we’re back to before; hoseok moves to dip underneath your jaw and helps you out of your tight and uncomfortable but expensi-

“did. di-did you just . rip my dress?”

“....i swear i didn’t do it on purpose.”

“omg this dress was on loan oh my GOD”

“im SORRY the zip got stuck and so i tugged i didn’t know the whole dress was gonna rip in half this material must be cheap, honey you got SCAMMED”

you realise that you’re not actually going to be the one to pay for it since the bride said she’d cover the prices of dresses and you instantly sort of relax (although, sorry to your cousin that she’s gonna have to pay extra now lol)

“okay it’s fine just” and he clings to you really tightly and affectionately with his chin rested just above your boobs which is honestly cute and actually really weirdly hot “ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵈᵒⁿᵗ ʳᶦᵖ ᵐʸ ᵘⁿᵈᵉʳʷᵉᵃʳ”

he has the nerve to giggle to himself “heeheehee okay baby i will be extra careful”

~~~

basically you make a mental note to tell guk and guk only that you rode professor jung to the stars and back

boi DEFINITELY put biology skills to use like this man must have aced human anatomy and sex ed because mans knows all the parts to look after and touch and kiss and it’s like he digitally downloaded every sex move possible because…..no way in hell u just snagged the best sexual partner in town

“mm fuck i wish i was a biology major” it just sort of comes out, bearing in mind you are like half sober

hoseok kind of laughs from his position and moves his hands to your thighs, “yeah?”

“yes i’m so jealous seunghee gets to see you all the time and i only get to see you when i pick her up”

“you can come and see me whenever, baby”

scoff “i’m an art student wouldn’t it be weird to turn up at a biology lab to see you?”

“i have an office yknow and it’s only open to super important people and i can make you one of them”

you realise shortly after like your second orgasm that hoseok is really good at making mediocre things sound really sexy

at long last you actually look down at him and just grin really widely and at first he’s like “yeah? you like that?” and then you start giggling really weirdly

“best.” down. up. “wedding.” down. up. “ever.”

you consider the possibility that last night was a big fat wet dream for at least four seconds until you open your eyes, see the window, roll over, and see professor motherfucking jung in bed next to you

he hasn’t opened his eyes yet and you think he’s asleep so you roll back over to grab your phone conveniently placed on the bedside table

as it turns out, mr jeon jeongguk has not listened to you and posted every nanosecond of the party last night, as well as leaving you several text messages, as he would, as your bff

from guk: are u having fun? i hope ur having fun. if not, then have fun

from guk: i guess ur dead lmao

from guk: sikegjsfkasljf i madmeout with both seujgehe and jikmin

from guk: ignore the above message

from guk: also good morning did you have fun did u get LAID was it a girl or a guy i need all the juicy details

you have to conceal a groan because you don’t want to wake up hoseok

you haven’t thought of something to say yet because worst case scenario, he could wake up and be like “wtf i slept with YOU??????” and that would not be chill for a sunday morning

to guk: im devastated bc of ur snapchat story that’s real snake behaviour

from guk: omg grow up

from guk: and answer my question horre

to guk: i will talk to you later because i am not talking to u about it over the phone bc knowing you and your monster thumbs and chaotic energy, you’ll screenshot and tell everyone in the flat and im not ready for them to know yet

there’s a few moments of silence

from guk: oh fuck tell me ur not pregnant im not ready to be an aunt or uncle yet (x)

you’re about to reply when

oh

wait

did you use a condom last night

you’ve been off the pill for a couple months because even though not getting periods or pregnant was pretty cool, your skin really suffered and oh hey look at that you’ve put on like 4 pounds overnight

and you can’t really remember if hoseok wore a condom or not

did he?

he must have

like he’s a biology teacher

surely

yeah

to guk: wtf no

to guk: and how would i even know that it hasnt even been 24 hours yet this isnt breaking dawn im not gonna show after like 12 minutes

from guk: you never know

“all i can hear is your nails tapping the screen and it’s literally amongst one of the most annoying sounds to wake up to”

oof

you drop your phone flat on your face

hoseok sort of both reaches to see if you’re okay whilst also laughing

“i’m sorry i didn’t know they were that loud”

he smiles and strokes the side of your face “mm it’s okay. woke up next to a pretty girl so it’s not so bad”

and it’s official he owns your heart

neither of you actually really address the fact that your whole...THING is really taboo until he’s like fishing around for his left sock and you’re moping over your ripped dress

“so like does this mean i can’t come to pick up seunghee anymore because it’ll be weird?”

he pauses. “why would it be weird?”

“idk cause like. idk. you’re a teacher?”

“really? fuck, i had no idea!!!”

“i’m being serious. i don’t wanna be the reason you LOSE your job!! and i’m so bad at keeping secrets what if i tell someone worse what if i tell my MOM”

he’s moved towards you as you were talking and he’s looking at you really closely with a really pretty look in his eyes

“y/n, i’m a teacher and i’m a professional. i can contain my...whatever, emotions, while i’m at work. and yes, please, come by and get seunghee because she’s one of my favourites and i don’t think i’ll see you often because you’re in visual arts and im always in my lab but my office! yes i have an office that you can always stop by when you’re bored and if i’m free i will happily see you :( it’s unfortunate that you happen to be a student but technically….like you’re old enough and it’s not that weird?”

pause

“okay it’s a little weird but if you want it can be just one night. we can ignore it happened.”

you really don’t want to ignore it

like you really don’t want to at all

hoseok easily was the best sex you’ve ever had and ugh he’s so nice and pretty and warm and caring and smart and yeah he made a joke about cells during sex but it was perfectly timed and funny and ugh he’s the perfect guy

but he’s also a professor at your university and above all else, you really don’t want him to lose his job that he worked his ass of for just because you couldn’t control yourself

so you sort of suck in a frown very poorly and you both agree to kind of...let it be pushed under the rug

it was a one time….two-time thing

because he definitely fucked you into the mattress one last time before you walked out the door and acted like teacher and student again

“you look...disgusting, give me all the gossip!”

you’ve barely been in flat 18 for five seconds and jeongguk is already at the door with a glass of water and a bag of what you can only pray is cookies

(nice attempt: it’s actually tiny meringues which is good enough)

as usual jeongguk cradles a hangover right into monday morning and thankfully for you, haseul and himself, arts lectures and classes don’t usually start until the afternoon on mondays

even though haseul is 77% sure she wont turn up because she’s way too comfy in her pjs on the couch in the living room

and honestly the pressure of telling jeongguk about what the hell happened on saturday night is intense because….haseul is there too now

which isn’t ideal to be very very honest

and haseul is literally your Girlfriend like she would be there to wipe your arse if you asked her nicely

but she can also be a little bit judgy and you’re feeling particularly sensitive today

but you also can’t not tell her because she’s one of your best friends and you’re probably definitely going to tell hee and jimin when they’re back so. might as well do it fast

you trust flat 18 with your entire heart and you know they’d never tell anybody

((this is not foreshadowing they are little angels))

“holy fuck you’re literally covered in hickeys, this story is gonna be so good, let me get a cup of tea before you start holy shit-” and so haseul makes three cups of tea and sits back down like ten minutes later

“okay im ready literally LAY it on me im ready”

deep breath

sip of tea

setting the cup down

“so i went to my cousins party. pretty normal right, not expecting much to go down at all like it’s a family wedding and there’s kids around”

“yeah, right, okay, AND”

“and so i’m minding my own business by the snack table and then somebody comes up to me and YOU’LL NEVER EVER GUESS WHO IT WAS”

they both sit there like “how am i supposed to know?”

deep breath

“i turn around and it’s only PROFESSOR JUNG”

pause

“wait wtf why was he at your cousins wedding?” haseul is so lost

“HE did say he was going to a wedding last week,” jeongguk adds. “that’s so weird omg he literally called it wow haha he’s so cool”

“right right, but like how is that the tea,” haseul frowns. “that’s like...cold stale tea. i wanted scorching hot tea. there’s GOT to be more to it”

you sit there awkwardly and wait for them to figure it out because haseul is looking at you really intently trying to figure it out

jeongguk is looking back and forth between you and haseul

he knows she’ll figure it out before him because out of the three of you, haseul has the brain cells

haseul literally just stares at your face until she kinda looks down at your neck

and remembers the hickies

and then looks back up at your face

and then back down

and them back up

...

“oh my fucking god you DIDN’T”

“wait what what what WHAT HAPPENED”

“oh my fuckING GOD. OMG. OH MY GOD??????/ NO, NO.”

jeongguk is like O_O “what omg tell me”

you’re holding your face in your hands rn

haseul is up off her seat and pointing a finger at you with her mouth so wide

she looks kinda like the pikachu meme

0o0

“Y/N SLEPT WITH PROFESSOR JUNG”

jeongguk laughs

“....wait WHAT THE FUCK”

chaos ensues

“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU SLEPT WITH PROFESSOR JUNG I LITERALLY CAN’T BREATHE”

“i didn’t say that!”

“what, so you DIDN’T sleep with professor jung?”

“...okay so maybe i did but you can’t tell ANYONE PLEASE”

jeongguk is literally laughing his ass off rn

because he’s your best friend and honestly that’s what best friends would do in this situation

haseul on the other hand is the responsible friend who’s thinking of the bigger picture

“holy shit, okay. um. wtf he could get sacked for this!”

“we talked it out and we promised to not tell anyone, and it’s not like we’re gonna hook up again so it’s fine!!!! which is why you both cant say anything PLS”

haseul moves to sit by you really comfortingly, “omg baby no i would never!!! it’s not my secret to tell and YES, i’m very surprised right now and i don’t really know what to do because what SHOULD i do??? this has never happened to me before omg this is insane. this is fuckING INSANE”

you end up having to explain the entire night in detail (missing a few details because let’s be real, you were hammered and dick drunk)

jeongguk has calmed down and now realises that this is sort of serious

mostly he’s just finding it funny that you actually ended up hooking up with professor jung, because you and him used to joke around about it all the time

even though he was initially quite childish about it, jeongguk knows that it’s serious and something that is clearly bothering you so he knows when to pack it in and be the supportive friend

because gukkie is a good friend and oh no we’re dropping all the uwus everywhere

“was it good?”

yes, haseul it was good

“was it SAFE?”

you’re about to answer jeongguk and then you pause

“....i don’t know”

and haseul’s off again

“holy mother of hell what do you MEAN you don’t know???”

“i can’t remember!!”

“and you didn’t ask the morning after???”

“im sorry he was too busy rearranging my GUTS it must have,,,crossed my mind”

now haseul has another thing to worry about on top of midterms

to flat 18: IAHUIIGJKSFDLIHGDJKSF Y/N SLEPT WITH PROFESSOR JUNG

from y/n: JEONGGUK WHAT THE FUCK

from y/n: WHY WOULD YOU TELL THEM OVER TEXT I WANTED TO TELL THEM IN PERSON

from guk: IM SORRY I THOGGHT WE WERE TELIJG THEM

from y/n: jesus christ

from jimin: um

from jimin: WHAT

from jimin: PLEATHE tell me its hot biology professor jung and not ugly middle aged literature professor jung because else my reaction is gonna be vERY different

from y/n: wtf why would i want to sleep with literature jung he’s like 50 and married

from guk: wait omg what if hot prof jung is married….did you ask

from y/n: let me move my bang and read that again,,,,

from jimin: i literally cant breathe MY LUNGSSSSS

from jimin: WHAT KINDA FANFICTION IS THIS RN how and when and why did u sleep with him i have SO MANY QUESTIONS i should be studying for my physics midterm rn but whatyueijgn this is too good

from y/n: this is why i wanted to tell u in person

from seunghee: WHATHGRJENS SJF WHAT THE FUCK

from seunghee: I JUST FUCKING SCREAMED IN MY BIOLOGY LECTURE AND HAD TO LEAVE

from seunghee: TELL ME UR JOKING RN

from y/n: :D heehee. um. haha. well haha. uh

from seunghee: I CANT LOOK AT PROF JUNG THE SAME WAY ANYMORE

from seunghee: omg….u had his PEEPEE inside of u….holy shit i need to sit down rn

from haseul: mood

from guk: she did THAT :’)

from seunghee: i mean…..when we joked around and said you should hop on professor jung’s dick i didnt think you’d DO IT FOR REAL

from y/n: it was the dr pepper u guys…..he made me do it

from seunghee: oh god professor jung came out to see if i was okay and i screamed i cant look at him i cant

from seunghee: omg he was in ur GUTS i cant im dropping biology

you dont immediately see professor jung

in fact you try and avoid him because even though you both agreed to not hook up again you’re afraid that the demon inside you will try and jump him and knowing you, a professor will probably end up catching you

and you like uni you dont wanna leave

and you like hoseok you don’t want him to leave and lose his job

flat 18 have calmed down from the initial shock and humour of the situation

i mean they’re all still in disbelief that it happened

and jeongguk and jimin make jokes about it sometimes

but it’s calmed down

it’s actually like a full week before you see him

because all of flat 18 for some reason offered to help on the open day for uni, party night saturday had to be cancelled >:(

seunghee shudders at the thought of being one of the only biology volunteers and having to pretend like she doesn’t know that her professor was balls deep inside her best friend last weekend

jimin and seunghee are together in the science department and haseul is happy performing for families checking out the performance department

jeongguk was asked to help promote the art department

and you were forced into giving campus tours :(

which sucks

because you have to try and pump out your best energy for the day

due to the amount of students doing tours on the same day, you’re only really expected to give one tour before going to your selected department

and you wouldn’t actually mind giving tours if it didn’t mean that you had to go everywhere on campus and by everywhere you mean having to go to the science department and inevitably seeing the brief love of your life

“..and right here is the art department! as an art student i sure have a lot to say about it- everyone is super duper nice and all-well, MOST of the professors are really helpful and critical and i’ve really improved drawing since i’ve been here. we do a lot of still life in this room but next door is the main drawing room and just off campus, we have the drawing labs!!! and oh, downstairs is the photography department; we have a red room and three studios and next door is the cinema”

“do you get to watch films?”

“technically no but when nobody is looking we do watch a film heeheehee i mean. what? no we would never break the rules..,,.”

you give jeongguk a cheeky bum shake before you leave and he laughs

yes an old man sees and scowls but it’s ok

“so yea like i said, the staff are friendly and mostly helpful. i mean, there are obviously some professors who aren’t amazing but hey we have a higher rating than other unis in this area so haha”

“mostly helpful?” a mom says. “can you elaborate on that?”

“not really, karen.”

after hurling your group around everywhere, you FINALLY make it to the science department

which you came to last because you were not prepared to see You Know Who

anyway

you step inside and start listing off things in the department

like Oh yes jackie look that’s called a bunsen burner

Oh michael sweetie don’t touch the gas taps we don’t wanna die now do we?

“our uni has some of the best science professors,” you explain. “they’re incredible and so dedicated to their profession and it’s really a great environment- two of my flatmates study science and they love their classes and lectures. professor min teaches physics and my friend jimin says he teaches it like no other- he’s amazing!”

“and what about professor jung?”

what

“ᵉˣᶜᵘˢᵉ ᵐᵉ?”

“what do you think of professor jung, hm?” WHY IS THE HM SOUNDING A LITTLE CONFRONTATIONAL

you stare at this mom like OoO because this is weird there’s no way she kNOWS how does this mom know omg did you say something dumb how does she--

“i heard he wrote books and went on tv! he also attended conferences at oxford uni,” the mom says, almost annoyed and your heart goes WOOOOOSH out your body. “my son wants to study biology and so we’re excited to see and hear about professor jung.”

“oH yes RIGHT well he’s...well he’s great.”

“can you elaborate-”

“no susan i can’t. let’s just go and meet him, yeah?”

inside the science rooms open for showing, you’re oddly relieved to see another tour group just finishing up meaning that half of the professors are preoccupied already

that includes hoseok in his cute ass lab coat talking to a group of students and parents

suddenly that female student is standing very close to him and you have to look away before you get annoyed for literally no reason

y/n: 1 life: 1

seunghee is actually free talking to jimin and professor min (jimins weirdly hot professor) sees you standing awkwardly in the doorway and he comes to the rescue with a small smile and nods his head at you

wow jimin never told you how pretty he was

scary as fuck

but pretty

“hi! welcome to the science department…”

you kind of step to the side because science is not your subject this is not your element and you dont wanna mess up

while seunghee is so happy showing off her booth and YES the volcano made an appearance, jimin is content with not doing his job and coming to stand with you

“is it just me or is prof jung looking delicious today?” jimin sort of nudges you in the side and you have to give him a sickeningly sweet smile that translates to You’re Getting Your Ass BEAT Later

“...and we do all sorts of projects to help us constantly develop our skills!!! and it’s actually a really good way at making friends and bonds-” a few parents laugh “-and actually, two of my flatmates are here over there--”

oh great eyes are on you and jimin :)

jimin smiles like :) hell yes :) thats me :)

and you’re flushing as fuck because 1) you don’t really do well with being the center of attention like having to speak and tour people around campus is BAD ENOUGh and 2) hoseok has just been made aware of your presence

you’re trying not to look at him like :) i’m not here :)

“-they helped me make this volcano!!!! and it’s so cute!!! look- it shoots rocks- oh, careful sweetie- look!!! it’s so cool y/n helped me a lot and i got a good grade and we do loads of this sort of stuff, haha, prof jung really works us to the bone but makes it super fun at the same time!!!”

braving a chance to look at him you clam up noticing that he’s already looking at you

he does that THING where he smiles and his eyes look really soft and warm and he ducks his head to look at the other parents and stuff

jimin contains a snort and seunghee is like o_o because she had to witness that LOOK as if she wasn’t trying hard enough to forget about what happened

professor min looks between you and hoseok like “-_-” and you wanna DIE

ALRIGHT MICHAEL PUT ON THE GAS TAPS BACK ON LET’S FUCKING DIE TONIGHT

hoseok manages to talk to you before you leave though which is smooth and you can feel your heart in your vagina literally pulsing as he approaches you and jimin

“having fun?”

you smile like :) how is giving tours :) fun :)

“i guess so!!”

“hey thats good!” he replies enthusiastically. “looks like people like the volcano you helped make.”

“....i didn’t make that. seunghee lied i did not help her on her graded project We did not help I don’t know why she would say that”

and he kind of laughs and forgets where he is and his hand touches your back

jimin chokes

you sort of look at him like OoO BRO

he pulls away so FAST like you’re on fire or something

“it’s okay. it’s a pretty volcano.” clears throat. “a-anyways. have a nice day guys.”

he looks like he wants to say something more but cant really afford to, so he sulks away and talks to more parents

“omg….he just had sex with you again” jimin said quietly. “omg. that was wild”

“he literally touched me what are you TALKING ABOUT”

“can’t believe you just did that….right in front of me….”

“literally SHUT UP RIGHT NOW OMG”

again you don’t see prof jung often

you see him a couple of times when you wait for seunghee

its been a hot minute, like a few weeks

he doesn’t speak much but when he does it’s like “oh hi y/n! waiting for seunghee?” or “you can come in for a bit while seunghee packs up” or “plans for the weekend?”

once you dumbly said “i miss you” before you left and both prof jung and seunghee are like “oh hoe you didnt”

“huh?” he asks.

“I said i’ll see you,” you say. “like...i don’t know. see you soon? i guess”

he knows what you really said

he raises his brow’s and laughs and’s like, “me too, y/n. i’ll see you both soon. enjoy your weekend!”

“you’re literally so dumb,” seunghee says whilst walking back to the dorm, “like really so fucking dumb. i MISS YOU??? REALLY? THAT’S ALL YOU SAID??? I’M LIVING OFF CRUMBS HERE”

“wtf do you MEAN???”

“yknow he always asks me, “how are your friends? y/n, the others?” like why would he ask about you...unless he missed you too….and wanted to see you…..omg you’re both really so dumb”

you think about that for a while

back at flat 18, everybody is out of classes for the weekend; jimin is finishing up an essay so he won’t have to do it last minute monday morning, haseul is watching vines on her phone and guk is currently eating the peaches that you were craving and wanted to eat so bought and stored away for later

later as in now

he offers you one but afterwards you feel like…?? weirdly nauseous

“do you need some water?” guk is on alert rn “i swear i didn’t poison you or anything!!!!!”

“i...literally didn’t even think you had but now that you’ve brought it up…”

like this sickness is so sudden you just wanna throw up all your internal organs

“you should go to bed,” haseul says and she’s like rushing to you to push you towards your room. “i will get a hot water bottle ready and blankets and oh- actually no, you can’t risk eating in-case it makes you feel worse. at least try and eat like these bland ass biscuits seunghee brought because then you’ll throw up something instead of nothing. are you okay, did i ask if you were okay? are you?”

the best thing about flat 18 is that they’re like a little tight family and if one of you is sick, they become worried parents and it’s so cute

anyway so you stay in bed for the rest of the day

and most of saturday morning

flat 18 are debating whether or not to really go out on saturday but you groggily tell them to just go and have fun and you’ll stay at home :( crying :( watching peaky blinders on netflix :(

haseul and seunghee decide to stay in with you for a girls night while jeongguk and jimin head to their friend taehyung’s dorm

at some point during a very intense sex scene between tommy shelby and some random woman you don’t care about currently, you feel a very intense wave of sickness

OFF TO THE BATHROOM YOU GO!!

as you’re throwing up you’re thinking over every possible reason for being sick

food poisoning?

flu?

and then you pause mid heave

could…..could you be pregnant?

omg no

wait omg yes you totally could be

you panic so much that you throw up again

seunghee and haseul are right outside the door asking if you need anything and haseul comes in to hold your hair and seunghee is rubbing your thigh like “honey please what do you need?”

sheepishly you look at her and squeak out, “i don’t think im sick.”

seunghee’s like “well obviously you are you’re throwing up like crazy right now, oh, yeah, okay baby yeah let it out let it all out” 

makes mental note to buy air-freshener

after throwing up you just hAVE to ask

“hee...i need you to go out and get me something”

“sure honey, anything. what do you need?”

“......i need you to get me a pregnancy test.”

haseul and seunghee share a look

“are you serious?” seunghee’s voice is really gentle and quiet

“yes i need to be sure,” your voice is croaky and you keep crying in between each word and seunghee just squeezes your thigh assuringly and nods

“y-yeah, of course, wow, oh my god, okay. i’ll go and get one- no, wait, haseul should i get three? is three the safe number?”

“yeah. three is safe. like, you do an experiment three times to get a fair result and the test could read wrong”

“please stop talking about science im actually really scared right now”

seunghee is already half out the flat with her keys when she says, “do you want me to call guk and jimin?”

and you debate it but knowing guk he’d have a meltdown and tell taehyung what’s going on and it’s supposed to be a private sort of thing

and what gives you might not Actually be pregnant

“have you missed your period?” haseul asks

“yeah but i thought” sniff “it was just late :( my periods are always irregular but if i did the math” hiccup “right then it should have come four days ago :(”

seunghee comes back with three pregnancy tests

(“the cashier said, ‘oh, good luck dear! you look like you’ll be a wonderful mother!’ like HONEY IM NOT LOOKING FOR KIDS I’M TOO YOUNG” “s-seunghee-eeEEEeee im also too young what am i gonna doOOooOoooo i cant do this”)

they both promise to be in there with you while you find out because you’re literally sobbing and shaking and lets be real, they’ve showered with you like ten times and they’ve seen all your bits and pieces and it’s just pee! everybody pees

you’re sitting down in a ball shape by the bathtub like TERRIFIED of looking at the little stick

“is it...professor jung’s?” seunghee asks quietly

“he’s the only person i’ve slept with in like three years, i’m positive it’s his,” you reply. “if im even pregnant, that is…”

haseul rubs your arm lovingly. “want to take a look? should be done by now.”

it takes you a few minutes and then eventually you nod

well

here goes nothing!!!!!

you peer over at the stick and like

your heart drops

maybe you wanna throw up again

all three sticks say: PREGNANT: 5 WEEKS

“what’s it say?” haseul asks gently and you set down one of the tests and look back at seunghee and haseul with an unreadable expression

“congrats. you’re gonna be an auntie.”

haseul is the first to crack

it felt weird to have friends excited?? about your second year of uni pregnancy? unplanned accidental pregnancy with a bIOLOGY PROFESSOR AT UR UNI????

but haseul brings you in for a hug with an excited laugh and seunghee braves taking a stick in her hand and looks at it for herself

yep, you’re having a baby all right!!!

everything is fine until you realise the big problem

how the hell are you going to tell hoseok you’re carrying his baby

does he want kids? probs not! and you never asked if he was married?? WHAT IF HE ALREADY HAS KIDS? WHAT IF HE HAS A WHOLE FAMILY??????

then you start crying

“omg, y/n, please don’t cry, it’s okay, we’re going to figure something out!”

“you don’t necessarily have to keep it if you dont want to,” haseul points out, even though you know she’s already planning dates to look after baby y/n when it’s been pushed out into the world

“h-how am i gonna tell h-hoseok that im having his baby….and i dont wanna get r-rid of it i dont wanna hurt this baby i love this baby i only just f-found out about it but i want this baby i wanna look after this baby this is my BABY?? im having a baby holy fuck you guys! im gonna be a mom this is so scary what the fuck am i gonna do????”

seunghee makes a call to jeongguk and jimin asking them to come back with ice-cream because they have things to talk about

jeongguk is worried like “oh god did i leave my underwear on the couch again? i said i was sorry and i thought id moved them this time”

and seunghee says, “um...no but now im going to double check the couch...dont forget the ice-cream BYEEEE”

needless to say that they’ve very VERY surprised to come home and discover that they’re gonna be uncles

and that the baby belongs to the Daddy of Biology

“i………..what did i miss while i was gone wtf you’re PREGNANT?”

“omg i’m gonna be an uncle??????? really?????? reAlly!!!”

of course the big issue right now is telling hoseok about it

like what are you supposed to do? go up to him and be like Hey hot stuff you’re gonna be a dad!! Happy Monday!!

“if he doesn’t want to help look after it, i would be happy being the adoptive dad of your baby,” jimin offers, staring at your stomach for the fifth straight hour. “because i love you and i also like babies.”

“aw, min, i love you too, but if hoseok doesn’t want to be the dad to this baby, i was already planning to ask guk because GOD KNOWS you would be the worst at looking after kids- dont look at me like that, i know you i CAN SEE THE TYPE OF PERSON YOU ARE!”

you decide to skip classes on monday and only head out when you need to

and by “need to” i mean you decided that today would be the day you told hoseok

you had the whole of sunday to think over it and seunghee helped you devise a plan

hoseok has office hours from around 3pm to 9pm on mondays and her class finishes at 2:45pm, and apparently people use his monday office hours on the evening so “you should probably come then, and you and him can talk in his office where it’s more private!”

and thank god seunghee has the brain cells in this friendship because you were about to announce it in the open and you doubt that mr min would be thrilled to hear his colleague knocked up a visual arts second year student

it’s 2:30pm and you leave the flat to make it to campus for around 2:37pm

it doesn’t take long at all to walk across campus to the science department and so you’re a little bit early to seunghee’s class because they’re still clearing up by the time you get there

the science department has chosen to smell like a hospital even more today and you shudder, already mulling over the idea that you could be going to a hospital soon to get baby scans and then eventually labour and holy fucking SHIT you’re gonna have to push this thing out of your vagi-

the class leaves at 2:45 on the dot (because hoseok likes to let his kids out early because he’s a cool teacher and apparently nothing like the grouchy art teachers in your department) and actually, today seunghee hasn’t turned up to class so you’re sort of waiting for nobody rn

just >:) as >:) planned

when everybody else has gone you head inside really quietly

hoseok hears you anyway and looks over really quickly and smiles so wide like :D

“y/n! how are you!”

“haha yeah im just great professor like really Uh yeah doing great”

“seunghee’s actually not here today. i thought you guys lived together, didn’t you know that?”

and you’re like like “uh yeah i knew. i’m, well, i’m actually not here for her. i’m here for you.”

hoseok is vERY VERY CONFUSED

“is everything ok?”

you smile at him as a way of reassuring him

on the inside you’re like oh hoseok sweetie you have no idea what’s coming

“yeah. i asked seunghee what time your office hours were and she said from around 3 to 9? and obviously, its like five to three and so i am early but. look i just- i really need to speak with you.”

he stands up quickly. “is something wrong?”

“i’m not sure yet,” you reply honestly. “shall we. um. can we go to your office?”

he blinks. “oh! yeah, sure, let me get- my coat and yeah let’s go. i’ll lead the way.”

along the way you just so happen to bump into professor min and he smiles at hoseok and then at you and he’s like “oh? miss l/n, what are you doing here? i didn’t know you took science?” (he only knows who you are because of the open day)

“Oh, no i don’t. um. well,” you pause. cause what are you supposed to say???? “i’m just getting some work for seunghee. she’s...sick and bedridden, so, here i am!”

professor min is just like “huh. okay well have fun i’m going to take a nap in my office :D” and leaves

hoseok’s office is surprisingly clean and cute and there’s flowers everywhere and a cute little yellow rug and you stop to just take in how this room is hoseok in Room Form

like a room has never looked so much like a person it’s him as a room and you love it

“i didn’t really clean up because i didn’t expect anybody- especially you- to be coming. uh, here, let me just close the door. want to sit?”

you take up the offer and sit on the couch opposite his desk and he sits on the desk looking at you really worriedly. “is...everything okay?”

he wants to ask if somebody found out, but at the same time, he really doesn’t want to make you think that he was like repulsed by having sex with you because it was The best sex of his life and he’s not afraid to admit that

“yes. i just” sigh. might as well get on with it. “how long has it been since the wedding?”

hoseok pauses. thinks. “well...i mean, like, probably six weeks? yeah, six weeks. why?”

“okay, and usually, what does it mean when a woman misses her period?”

“wha- well, sometimes it could be an irregular cycle. but it’s usually because they’re conceiving...”

hoseok really doesn’t wanna overthink but...like….he’s overthinking rn

“and how long does it take for them to start showing?”

“well someone can know that they’re pregnant as early as four weeks, usually. although 50% of women say they show at five, and 70% said they show symptoms at six weeks-”

there’s a beat of silence

you worriedly look at hoseok and he’s just. quiet

you can see the clogs moving in his head and his eyes are flitting up from your stomach to your face repeatedly and wow he’s gone a bit pale?

“i...what?”

“i’m...i’m pregnant.”

“i…” he starts to speak but literally stops and he’s just really quiet

you can feel your eyes filling up because oh god he doesn’t want the baby you’ve ruined his LIFE

but really he’s just thinking really hard rn

like

omg

a beautiful girl he likes is carrying HIS BABY

A BABY HE HELPED MAKE

and then he’s like but shes a student at my uni is this weird? its weird its wrong but i love babies and ‘im gonna be a dad????? and she’s really pretty????? and i like her?????? and that’s my kid??????????

you’re seriously about to cry and be like its ok if you don’t want it i can look after it alone and my flat are okay with it i just would want some help like maybe a little bit just for the first few months when he moves from the desk towards you and drops to his knees between your legs

“is- is it mine?”

“what- of course it’s yours!”

“i’m sorry! i didn’t want to assume!!!”

“i wouldnt be here if it wasn’t yours!”

he huffs out a laugh and then just starts smiling so wide

“omg are you actually pregnant? really?”

and then you start laughing like “YES omg why would i lie here’s a test for proof i was crying a lot over the weekend.”

now that he has concrete evidence hoseok is getting a bit excited about this

above all circumstances he is gonna be a dad and wow he’s always wanted a family!!

you’re so relieved that he’s happy :)

but then he has to think realistically about this: you’re still a student, probably barely twenty one, and he’s a professor and things will be extremely complicated

he debates whether or not to tell professor min

because yoongi has been his friend forever and he actually helped him get the job at this uni and he probably wouldn’t judge him for it because he had seemed excited when hoseok told him about the wedding night (obviously spared of the details that the best Pussy of his life was miss y/n l/n)

“do...do you want to keep it?”

you look at him like OnO “yes :( is that okay”

“YES omg it’s okay!!! that’s our BABY!!!”

ok he’s so excited

“this is so weird and i never ever thought this would happen but!!!!!! i’m gonna be a dad???”

“yes!!!”

then

“wait fuck are you married or anything?” you have to ask it’s been bugging you all weekend. “because i’m happy with raising a baby with you but i don’t think i can handle telling ur wife or whatever that we had sex at a wedding.”

he finds this really funny

“no, i’m not married. i was drunk at the wedding but not drunk enough to cheat on someone :( i would never do that :(”

well. 

THAT COVERS IT THEN

now he has to make plans to like. get to know you because there’s no way in hell his baby is gonna grow up with complicated parents like he wants his kid to have the best life ever :(

hoseok now also has to come to terms with the fact that seunghee knows he had sex with her best friend and is having a baby with her and now he’s horrified

“you did wHAT”

hoseok decided against his better judgement to tell yoongi about what’s going on

since you told your entire flat about it he figured it was only fair that he could also tell somebody he trusted

he has a couple of friends outside the department who he really trusts, like namjoon and seokjin, two married professors who teach literature and creative writing, and sociology, respectively, who will eventually find out, whenever he’s figured out what he’s going to do

considering everything, yoongi isn’t that put off by the fact that he knocked up a student

i mean, yes he’s shocked that it was you of all students ever and then he pieces together you going into his office and the way he had literally described you as “artistic and fascinating” and fucking hell he should have realised sooner

“i...kind of got her pregnant. which- before you yell at me, isn’t the end of the world because we’re both willing to give it 110%!”

“yeah i dont give a fuck about that- i’m still on about the fact that you came back here after that wedding and told me all the raunchy details about you and y/n and i called it hOT and now i find out its a student i KNOW?????? oh my god i need to lie down again.”

(he takes it well, and congratulates him)

meanwhile you’re already making plans to tell your family about it but you want to do it after the first scan

seunghee has done so much research on pregnancy that she was worried the school would catch on by reading the wifi bill and seeing that all she ever googles is “how big is a baby at six weeks?” or “when should i go for a baby scan?”

she seems to think that twelve to fourteen weeks is a good time to get the baby scan and that you’ll probably start showing by then which is the PERF time to tell everybody about it

at the moment you’re not too worried about telling your family

your mom is pretty understanding and your dad has been out of the picture for a while now, and you’re the baby sibling so at least she still has an older daughter to brag about

because from now on it’s gonna be “yeah this is my eldest she’s a LAWYER and this is my youngest haha she fucked her biology professor”

not that she’d use those words

you’re actually more afraid of what people at uni are gonna think when you start showing because you’re not really up for missing out a whole 9 months just to be a year behind your friends

and morning sickness was so awful this morning that you just couldn’t be bothered to go in for class today

thankfully it was just a free sort of day where kids either did the art marathon or worked for their midterms so you could sort of afford to miss a day

guk went to class for an hour before coming back to the flat and haseul didn’t have classes that day so once again, art attack squad just had a nice day at home

haseul is most concerned about the baby and the baby’s health and so went through a crazy moment of trying to eliminate foods that are bad for you during pregnancy

“where’s all my chocolate gone?” “well i moved it so that you can limit yourself on what you eat! chocolate isn’t great for your skin and you should probably start eating healthy if you want the little honey to be nice and healthy when they arrive!”

haseul has money on it being a little girl

guk and seunghee want it to be a boy and jimin is the type of person to have no opinion until the baby is born and then proceeds to say, “see! i told you it would be a boy/girl!”

since you last saw hoseok, he hasn’t really decided what he’d like them to come out as yet; yoongi wants it to be a girl, though

seunghee actually went to class and ended up waiting behind afterwards to give him all the updates

“is she doing okay?” “yES she’s amazing and the baby is doing so well too!!! i mean it’s only been about seven weeks and so y/n is like barely showing, but he’s about the size of a blueberry! isn’t that cute?”

then she pauses and is like, “wait...we live off campus so like. do you want to maybe come round? and see her? i think she’d appreciate seeing you.”

“ᶜᵃⁿ ᶦ?” hoseok is really excited because yeah he does like you and he’d see you whenever he could but 1) he didn’t know how to contact you and 2) where do you even live because if its on campus he definitely can’t pop round and be like “wassup where’s my baby mama”

anyway he comes round with her and you’re very unprepared to see hoseok and seunghee step through the front door

jeongguk is like midway through kissing your tummy over and over and haseul is on amazon looking at baby clothes because she “has to be ready for any opportunity”

of course anything can happen and she’s praying that nothing bad happens because she just found the cutest bear onesie ever and OOPS its in her cart

“it’s,” gesturing to guk and his lips on your stomach, eyes wide, “not what it looks like!”

but hoseok just laughs and puts down his bag and is like, “hehe i know. how are you!”

guk clears out to another part of the couch and decides that he has to, before he dies, see a y/n and hoseok interaction and he can hardly contain his excitement when hoseok sits down next to you and looks at you with a fond ass expression

“good! i had a little bit of morning sickness, but i’m okay. how are you?”

and hoseok’s like well i’m not currently carrying a baby im fine of course i’m fine i want to know about you

because it came to his attention when he was with yoongi earlier that he really doesn’t know anything about you PERIODT

and he wants to know everything and anything

at that point guk takes his leave and he, haseul and seunghee go to the kitchen to give you and hoseok some of your own private space

“i cant believe professor jung is in my living room right now...”

“I WALKED ACROSS CAMPUS WITH HIM GUK I WAS FREAKING OUT THE ENTIRE TIME!!!”

meanwhile you and hoseok are taking the moment to get to know each other

because in about 9 months time or whatever you’re gonna be parents

so you gotta know everything

hoseok learns a lot of things about you: your love for chocolate, that strawberry milk is your favourite flavour, your favourite colours are natural colours like white and beige and browns, your favourite movie or your favourite song…….

and you learn quite a few things about him in return: growing up he always loved science, he wanted to go into dance during high school but it clashed with science club so he gave it up, his favourite flavour milk is banana and his favourite colour is yellow…...

“mm i knew the yellow already :)”

“oh yeah?” hoseok has an arm around your shoulders, one hand stroking the side of your face and the other brushing against your stomach. “how?”

“the rug in your office. and the fact you like banana milk,” you laugh.

“what? the banana milk has nothing to do with it.”

“it does, don’t lie.”

“okay, but it’s not the main reason!!!”

once again it begins to feel like you’ve known hoseok for years and wow it’s so easy to talk to him and he’s so gentle and nice You’re ready to donate your whole heart to him on the spot

“so i was thinking actually,” you propose suddenly, and at this point the gang have come out of the kitchen and are gathered in the living room (jeongguk said that he’s technically in-laws with hoseok now and so there’s no point avoiding it) “that we should go out together this weekend.”

hoseok grins: “are you asking me out on a date right now?”

“yes,” you nod with a firm look. “yes, i am. i am taking authoritative because you’re slow and i want to go on a date with you. i wanna get to know you and work on this.”

hoseok agrees and presses a warm kiss to your temple. “mm, okay then, honey. it’s a date.”

(jimin gets home late and kicks off his shoes by the door. “GUYS!!! YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHO LOOKED MIGHTY FINE THIS MORNING!! If you guessed Professor Min, then you were RIGHT!! At this rate, Y/N won’t be the only person knocked up by a science professor cause I’m telling you, I’m ready for Professor Min to tell me the exact speed of light whilst balls deep in my a- OH. Uh. Hi, Professor Jung. Nice day?”)

((nobody knows how to move on from that.))

it’s been exactly 9 weeks since your little honey has been conceived :D

hoseok comes to visit more frequently and he now has your number and emergency contact details so whenever he can, he’s asking how you and the baby are and stuff

he texts asking about your day a lot

mostly about the baby though

from hoseok: what are naming it ^_^

to hoseok: hmm i believe we haven’t gone over the names yet :)

from hoseok: i meant like a nickname!!

from hoseok: yoongi has been calling them “squid” because when we became friends we bonded over someone calling a sperm cell a squid cell and i guess it kind of stuck

to hoseok: omg i dont wanna call them squid then :-(

from hoseok: hmm how about simply ‘baby’?

but i want u to call me baby…

from hoseok: but i wanna call YOU baby and it might get confusing...little one? little guy?

to hoseok: haseul thinks its a girl teeheehee

from hoseok: so i’ve been told

from hoseok: okay, how about honey? i know i call you honey sometimes but honey can be exclusively our baby name

to hoseok: hmm

to hoseok: honey is cute :3

from hoseok: haha okay baby, honey it is then!

you’re waiting until week 14 for an ultrasound

seunghee did more research and said 14 is a lucky number and so it just seemed right

and also most women go around 14 weeks and later because by then the gender will be revealed and that’s exciting!!

THANKFULLY you weren’t planning to visit family for christmas because they’re abroad visiting family and so at least you can surprise them when they’re back with a baby scan and hoseok :D

“did you also know that the baby is now the size of a cherry?” guk said suddenly one evening, as he lay next to you in his bed, by the way, WHY you were in his bed when he woke up he has no idea. “that’s so cute. little cherry all snug in there, huh.”

you find that jeongguk is now...abnormally nice

like you loved that you and jeongguk could be brutal to each other and still be fine in the next three minutes

but ever since you found out you were pregnant, he’s been toning it down a lot

truthfully he doesn’t want to overdo it and add any stress on you during the pregnancy, and he just wants to be supportive and be ‘the best uncle in the business’, to which jimin competes

haseul and seunghee are the ideal best friends in this situation: haseul is so ready to be an aunt it’s crazy and she already has an amazon cart full of cute things and seunghee already claimed dibs on helping you and hoseok set up a nursery for the baby

it’s still being decided but there’s a big chance you and hoseok will move in together to raise baby honey together

the house you were eyeing is relatively close to campus and to flat 18, which they’re planning to rent out for the next two years of uni after this one

so it’s close to honey’s aunts and uncles and also close for hoseok to get to work and for you to get to classes

jimin is the friend who still doesn’t really know what to do in this situation

he replaced jeongguk as the annoying younger brother type, even though he’s a few months older than both you and jeongguk, he’s such a brat lmao

10 weeks

“i’m convinced that my boobs have got bigger- haven’t they gotten bigger?”

so it is one of those days where hoseok is free to come and visit you at the Holy flat 18

it’s become his second home because he comes by so often

seunghee isn’t so weirded out by her professor being basically one of her friends, and in-fact she tries to abuse this by trying to get him to give her “in-law special treatment”

(“i gave you special treatment on your ugly volcano!” “OI the mother of your child helped make that volcano!!!”)

he really doesn’t give any bias tho he basically passes everybody

“i mean,” hoseok begins, and you move between his legs for him to get a good angle. considering you two haven’t been ‘together’ long, you’re incredibly comfortable around him. “yeah, actually. wow, they have!”

“rIGHT? none of my bras fit me anymore. oh god, i’m gonna have to start buying granny bras- do you think they’ll get that big?”

“it’s possible. all women increase in size during pregnancy. actually, some can lose weight instead of putting it on.”

“not me.”

“no, but you look healthy and gorgeous and i like it.”

you giggle- the same giggle he remembers you doing on the Big Night- and shuffle into some bigger trousers that you and haseul went to buy a few days ago

clothes just aren’t fitting anymore and so while you’re upgrading to trendy maternity-style clothes haseul and seunghee are super excited to go to town with outfits they can make from your wardrobe

“well, good! because you’re stuck with me for the next….like, nine months.”

“technically, it’s seven months now.”

you glare

“but i’m gonna still be here after those seven months!!!”

“good!!! you better be,” you shuffle over to sit next to him with your legs around him- one behind and one over his lap and he smiles down at you, “because i’m growing fond of you.”

“well that’s convenient, because i’m rather fond of you, too.”

outside the door, jimin starts laughing “wtf it’s 2018 who says fond anymore?”

12 weeks :)

this morning you realise

wow

i’m actually pregnant pregnant

you’re starting to show now and honestly...looking at it, you realise how creepy baby bumps are

“oh my GOD, seunghee come look at it now it’s gotten really big!”

it’s not even that big

but it’s bigger

seunghee is so excited about this fact

the flat have been taking pictures of the bump every week and printing it so they can keep a timeline for when honey is born

jeongguk and seunghee are still dead set on honey being a little baby boy but haseul is trying to convince them otherwise

“we’re calling her honey for now, right? so, what i have planned, is, we buy her a bee onesie. representing both bees AND the bee movie. worlds best dressed baby.”

you started to develop a fear of going to class because you’re unsure on how people will take the news that you’re pregnant

you’re not that much of a popular person but everybody in the class knows you well enough to know that you’re not the type to sleep around

so it would be a valid shock to hear that you’re pregnant

but you have to go because you can’t afford to miss anymore classes

and you also have to….break the news to your professors because at some point you’re going to have to have a lot of time off to pop out a human being

“he’s the size of a plum by now, isn’t he?”

jeongguk is particularly excited about honey this morning and he has literally not shut up about them since you got into class

“yes, THEY are about the size of a plum- did seunghee tell you that?”

“omg no im a good best friend and i did all my research!! it’s so cute that they compare honey to fruits online- next week he’s gonna be as big as a lemon!”

class is….just your luck, pretty busy today

most students are in the drawing rooms and a few are drawing a still life model

jeongguk gets right to work finishing his final project while you head to the office to speak to your professor, who is really lazy and sits in his office all day and doesn’t even supervise

professor choi, the lovely lady who ends up running all classes, is the dearest angel and you’re ready to chat to her next

professor bowen, your grouchy art professor, is literally so :| when you break the news

like he could not give two shits

he puts down his coffee and is like “oh. well, i couldn’t tell. congratulations, talk to the dean about your maternity dates. and shut the damn door behind you.”

like

damn sir okay

professor choi <3 is so <3 excited <3

she immediately goes to touch your stomach and then quickly stops herself like “oops, silly me! i remember when i had my first child i was so picky with who could touch my belly!! heeheehee how many weeks are you darling!!”

she’s already getting so excited and inviting herself to the birth

like please professor choi

we love you but please don’t turn up for the birth

PLEATHE

she keeps making invitations to bring the baby to classes when they’re born because “obviously im amazing with babies and ooh i just can’t wait to see them! jeongguk- don’t tell me you stepped up and did this all by yourself?”

jeongguk nearly throws up

“EWWWWWWW wtf i mean y/n babe i love you but EWWHJFHJKS why would i want to be with y/n she’s like my annoying sister! no the daddy is ho-”

and you’re like BITCH STOP!!!

“....honestly the best man on planet earth? you definitely don’t know him at all.”

14 weeks :)

“okay, miss l/n. it’s going to feel a little bit cold, but we’re going to put some ultrasound gel on your stomach now, is that okay?”

it’s the day of the ultrasound!!!

for you and hoseok this is the Big moment next to birth because it’s almost like final confirmation that there’s a baby in there

at this point you’re starting to show a lot

it’s big enough for you and flat 18 to know there’s a difference

but tbh if people didn’t know you they might just think you’ve got a few pounds on you and nobody cares at all at uni like literally nobody gives a fuck about what anybody else looks like

hoseok got permission of the dean to get the day off (he told them that his girlfriend was going for an ultrasound and so he just had to be there, and the dean, not knowing any better, was all smiles and said, “of course, professor jung! congratulations! i didn’t know you were expecting, or even dating!”)

because the best thing about being jung hoseok is the fact that he’s well known and it gets him out of trouble sometimes

thankfully the dean is old and dumb and didn’t clock on to the fact that you paid her a visit like a few weeks prior asking about maternity dates :)

PHEW!!!

jung hoseok’s job: saved

hoseok is holding your hand reassuringly and is sitting to your left, the other hand on your ankle and his leg is going cRAZY it’s just bobbing like heck next to the bed

a part of him is still really sort of insecure because even though the sonographer and nurse present don’t know that hoseok is a professor at your uni, he still feels really weird knowing who he is and how you could do better and could be doing better and more if it weren’t for stupid him not putting on a condom

he is so excited to have this baby but he thinks about that a lot, about how he’s basically ruined your life by putting a baby inside of you

you look incredibly excited though, lying on the bed with your eyes really wide and expectant because omg this is your baby!!!!

now that you’re here there’s some finality

ever since you found out you were pregnant there had been so many doubts but now that you’re here, with hoseok, about to see honey for the first time…

alexa play Despacito cause this is epic

“okay. let’s see what your baby is getting up to in there!”

this sonographer is really enthusiastic apparently

“alrighty. so, as you can see...oh! always a good sign- we have a confirmed heartbeat. usually that puts parents at ease, knowing their baby is all okay and healthy in there!”

and then she starts listing off various body parts but in all honesty you cant see a thing

hoseok is very interested in the screen and his smile gets wider at every body part she lists off

you really should be invested in the baby inside of you but when he smiles like that :( you just wanna grab him and kiss him really deeply

“everything seems to be perfectly fine with your baby, miss l/n. a very beautiful baby. they’re about the size of a peach right now, isn’t that just incredible?”

hoseok’s grinning like it’s his default facial expression

he squeezes your hand really tight and kisses it three times

“that’s our baby,” you say, still in motherly awe. “they’re real! we did THAT!”

“yeah, we did,” he replies, lips still pressed against your skin. “i’m proud of you.”

“i haven’t done anything yet!”

but really you have

to him you’re one of the bravest people he’s ever met in his entire life and he knows it must be so so hard for you to accept the fact that you’re having a baby aged 20 during uni

not that it’s uncommon but it’s just….not particularly ideal? at this moment in time?

“im so happy right now.”

“me too, baby.” you squeeze his hands, “me too!!!! our baby!!!! honey is the size of a peach already!!!”

he starts laughing

hoseok is just so overwhelmed with emotions he genuinely feels like he might cry rn

“i’m so happy it’s with you,” he says honestly and like the nurse is like :’) and you’re like :’o “it could have been anyone at any point in my life, but i’m so glad it’s with you.”

you look at him in awe

because that’s the most romantic thing anybody has ever said to you

like

ever

you tug him gently by the hand and he brings himself forward and

SMOOCH

you believe this is the first kiss he has given you since the “big shindig” (for some reason, flat 18 are obsessed with calling everything a shindig and so it just sort of stuck)

so it’s a big deal

and it’s also at the place where your pregnancy was confirmed

it’s perfect

the nurse is like AWWWWWWWWW

the sonographer is just like “anyways ! do you want to know the gender !!!”

you and hoseok have talked about maybe finding out sooner

it would put flat 18 at rest knowing if honey is a girl or a boy

but deep down it’s like...if honey is a boy or a girl for definite you don’t want the nickname honey to go away when you start referring to it as a name you both like...and plus like isnt it way too early

hoseok is happy with whatever choice you want because he likes the element of surprise

you two decided a couple of days ago that it could be super cute to have a reveal party

jimin was particularly excited about that idea (“I’M GONNA MAKE THE CUPCAKES”)

“um actually, can you like put it in an envelope!! we want to have a reveal party so it’s gonna be a surprise for now!”

the nurse and stuff are like “omg yes of course!!” and so it’s sealed away in a little envelope

“i can’t believe we’re actually like...almost parents,” hoseok says on the way back to the car.

“i know. it’s so weird. i can’t believe WE’RE having a kid together.”

hoseok helps strap you in because he’s one of THOSE expecting fathers who like as soon as he knows it’s happening he’s cautious about EVERYTHING

literally everything

falling out of bed when he’s staying over? not allowed, he’s making pillow barriers

tripping over rugs? the rug is being rolled up and put away

hotel? trivago

“it’s actually super funny to me because like i always fantasised about boning the Daddy of biology and look at where we are right now!!”

he starts the car- “the ‘daddy of biology’? what??”

and you’re like, “oh yeah oops haha basically i had a fat old crush on you and we all started calling you that.”

“i’m...honoured? well i knew you had a crush on me already, heehee”

as he pulls out of the hospital he glances over and grins to himself. “if it makes you feel better, i remember telling yoongi about the cute friend of seunghee who comes to my class every other day. yoongi made fun of me for weeks afterwards, and now look at us!!”

(yes it boosts your ego a little bit)

when christmas comes around hoseok makes an ultimate surprise

you end up showing off the baby scan like it’s a broken wrist in primary school because everybody wants to see the little honey

jeongguk is CONVINCED he can see a penis and so he’s like 98% sure it’s a baby boy

haseul tells him several times that it’s literally honey’s foot but he’s having none of it

you call your mom and tell her that you’re coming to see her in early january

(specifically january 4th)

she’s weirdly suspicious about it but nonetheless excited

hoseok has made plans for you to meet his family just afterwards so you’re going to be showing off the scan quite frequently

flat 18 don’t like doing gifts at christmas but jimin always bakes goodies for the flat

this year you’re particularly upset because you have yet to taste jimin’s christmas cookies and you already took your recommended amount of sugar by the time his cookies are done

“one cookie won’t hurt honey,” seunghee says

“i’m not taking aNY risks with it!!!”

hoseok makes a stop by the flat after you’ve had your first christmas dinner as a flat <3 aw

he shocks everybody when he walks in because he’s gone the extra mile and got gifts for everybody in the flat

“it’s just a way of me saying thanks for looking after my babies,” he says as he hands out the gifts

you can literally feel jeongguk’s smirk

and of course !!! he got you like three gifts because you’re secretly like the love of his life

even though it’s really not a secret but still

he mostly gets you the typical christmas things like things he knows you wanted (like that sailor moon designer ring that you don’t need really but omg its gorgeous and you want matching)

the last gift is really small and you’re like :O because the small gifts are usually the super thoughtful ones

it’s keys….

you’re almost like “HUH”

then it clicks

“oh...my...GOD?????”

hoseok bought the place you and him went to check out a few weeks back (the one just a few minutes away from the flat and campus)

AND IT DOESN’T END THERE

he’s all giggly and happy when you start BLUBBERING about how you own a house and now you can get a nursery and omg no more listening to jimin and jeongguk screaming over super smash ultimate in the living room

“because i think it’s time we live together, as a family, you know?” he says, holding you in his arms and kissing your face really sweetly. “it’ll be so good, living with my girlfriend and soon enough, my baby.”

“g-girlfriend?”

“well, yeah baby, of course. wanna be my girlfriend? please?”

you cry even more

“wtf yes of course i do :(”

(flat 18 are extremely territorial and are only settled and content with you leaving when hoseok takes them to the house and they’re like :D okay we’re coming over every weekend)

((haseul cries when she sees the room that’s gonna be the nursery))

15 weeks ^_^

“what if your mom beats my ass?”

today is january 4th which means it is the day that hoseok is going to meet your family

and also the day they are going to indirectly meet the little honey :’)

honey is now the size of a navel orange according to the website that everyone in flat 18 has pinned on their laptop chrome browser

which is really cute

jimin is the flat 18 member who likes to call honey everything but honey and recently started nicknaming them after the fruits on the website

so he’s like, “good morning little satsuma!” or “hello navel orange, how are you?” when he sees you around the flat

you’re probably going to be officially moved out by next week which is really exciting teeheehee

“she won’t….probably. my mom is really nice! she’ll like you!”

“will she still like me when she finds out i teach biology to seunghee?”

“yes probably, i don’t think she really knows what that means.”

“what, biology?”

“no, i don’t think she’ll realise that you’re a professor at my- you know what, never mind that. did you lock the car?”

since christmas and becoming hoseok’s official girly, you two have just been closer than ever

hoseok is still really cautious about the baby stuff because this is obviously his first baby ever

he’s that person who thinks having sex will like kill the baby

of course, he did try it once

just to say he’d had sex with a pregnant lady

“that’s one for the bois.”

“what bois, you don’t have any friends, baby.”

“NOT true i have like 3 friends!!”

when hoseok timidly knocks on your mom’s front door he’s so so nervous when a big buff man opens the door instead

inside he’s like wtf i thought y/n’s dad was like GONE

but then you’re like “oh hi daren! yeah, this is my boyfriend, hoseok, hoseok this is my mom’s boyfriend!”

you didn’t tell hoseok just because you got pleasure seeing him look so terrified at the thought of telling ur Dad that he knocked you up

thankfully you’re not close enough to daren for him to have any protective feelings for you

not like a close dad would anyway

when he meets your mom it’s literally like meeting an older You

like

your mom is so nice :(

she greets hoseok really really excitedly and is all for embarrassing you within 5 minutes of you coming home

“did you know that it’s been exactly four years and five months since y/n came home with a BOY? she never comes home with anybody!!! i thought she was joining a nunnery!!!”

like omg…..so funny…...really, like, joke of the year

your sister is also here and she’s looking at hoseok like -_o because…. “i’ve seen you somewhere…”

now you’re shaking

omg does she KNOW

“i mean, he was at [cousin’s name]’s wedding hahahha...that’s probably how u know him….small world.”

“ew what do you MEAN he was there- he’s not family is he?”

o.o

“wtf no he’s a friend of [groom’s name] wtf Why would i be dating him if he was family What is wrong with you?”

you guys have a nice little snack and tea together and hoseok starts to feel really comfortable

but then Mrs y/n puts down her tea and sits back in her chair, slapping her thighs: “alright then. so what’s this big surprise you have for us?”

oh

oh yeah he forgot about the fact that you’re having his kid and you’re about to drop the news

suddenly he wants to throw up the brownies he just ate

and your sisters blue shirt looks like a perfect place to throw up <3

“well, it’s kind of been a surprise to us all, actually,” you begin, and you take hoseok’s hands in your own and your sister narrows in on it and she knows like right away

she thought she saw the bump but didn’t want to mention it because You’re the sensitive sister and if it was just weight gain she didn’t wanna handle you crying everywhere

but now she knows and she sits back in her seat and starts to smile

she wants to say something but hoseok looks at her like owo please don’t say anything sis

(she doesn’t)

“but, me and hoseok are in a very...close relationship-”

“oh god you got married didn’t you.”

“um, no, but, i’m sure that’s in the future, right? y-yeah? right, yeah, um…”

��it’s not something we’re discussing right now,” hoseok blurts out. “but, i mean, i want to? soon? like later?”

your mom is literally there like “well what is it????”

“.....i’m pregnant.”

“...oh.”

...

...

“REALLY???????”

your mom is shook to the core

she really doesn’t believe you until you whip out the baby scan

and she starts sobbing

like full on sobbing like she’s just been punched in the face by bowser

daren is all smiles and is like “wow congrats!”

your sister hugs both you and hoseok and says to hoseok in his ear “can you please sign my copy of “ouch mitosis” because it’s my favourite book and i totally knew you were famous the moment you walked in” and pulls away and is like “im so excited to be an aunt!!! what’s the gender!!! when are they due!!! what are you gonna call them!!!!”

needless to say your sister leaves with a signed copy of hoseok’s big money book

and your mom is now 100% hooked on the baby being called honey

week 17 :-)

you and hoseok are now homeowners officially !!!!!

flat 18 have come down to visit as a sort of moving in house-warming party and hoseok invited his “three friends” (by friends he means work colleagues lmao)

jimin is still weirded out by the fact that professor jung heard him talking about his fantasy of having professor min inside his GUTS and so tries to avoid hoseok and yoongi when they are together

hoseok also cannot forget hearing that :-( his ears :-( are tainted :-(

it’s your first real time meeting hoseok’s friends

like you’ve never really met namjoon or seokjin but you know of them

because everybody knows about the married Gays of your uni like it made the news and everybody was invited to their after party last year

(yes you went but only like for fifteen minutes because you remembered that you had an art history essay due the next morning that hadn’t been done)

for the sake of you and honey, seunghee tries not to be weirded out by the fact that so many members of staff are at your house and wtf hi professor min WHY are you here again

“can i touch?” seokjin asks really suddenly after hoseok is showing yoongi and namjoon the room that will be the nursery

currently it’s empty with like one box and that one box is full of clothes haseul ordered on impulse

“um. yes!!”

“are you sure? i know some moms get really protective over who touches and i don’t wanna overstep-”

“put ur freakishly big hand on my belly right now!”

he does and he gets really excited touching because he’s never actually touched a baby belly before

namjoon is most excited about the nursery and he’s listing off things hoseok could get

like “OOOO you could totally get one of those really big stuffed bears if you’re going for neutral tones- wait, that’s such a good idea? i’ll order one.”

and hoseok’s like mm okay sweetie sure whatever spend your money on me it’s okay

yoongi is really just. in awe of the baby scan

like it’s not even his baby and he’s tearing up like wtf that’s his niece or nephew that’s his mf baby!!!!!! that’s gonna be the person he spends all his cash on!!!!! he’s so excited to be broke and baby whipped!!!

“and so what, you’re like seventeen weeks?”

“yep! i’m almost four months uwu!!! honey is as big as a pomegranate, how cute!! time flies when you’re having fun huh!”

seokjin pauses and asks the big question like “but like what are you going to do about maternity? are they letting you have days off school? because i can totally send one of my sociology kids to take notes in your lectures because i have authority apparently and you’re like. family? i could do that.”

and you’re like “omg pls no that kid needs their own education!!!” and you tell him that your professors and the dean let you have time off near the due date (which should probably be around june!! a summer babie)

“but it sucks because i wanted to have a gender reveal party and invite some people from uni but then they’re gonna find out that hoseok is the dad and he could like lose his job :(”

and then seokjin is like: “wait but you study art and not biology?”

… “what do you mean?”

“well, policy says that you can’t have a relationship between a teacher and their student. but if you’re in completely different departments….and he doesn’t teach you, therefore can’t have bias over your grades or anything like that…..then really you’re allowed to be with him.”

..

what

wHY DIDN’T YOU KNOW THIS????

“since when is that a thing????”

“since like. the day our uni was founded?????”

ob viously when hoseok finds out he’s like O____O “how did you know that omg??”

and seokjin is so done he’s just sitting there with his face looking like this -__-

“it’s literally in the Faculty Handbook that you’re supposed to read before you join the uni as a teacher…”

and hoseok scoffs and grins sheepishly, “yeah well yoongi got me the job so i didn’t read any of that.”

(from across the room jimin groans)

((“so i guess this means i can’t seduce yoongi at a family wedding huh.”))

week 20 :’)

you have somehow adopted the name of “campus milf”

which jimin doesn’t think is that bad of a nickname

“it could be worse, y/n. let that sink in.” and he’s right it really could be worse

nobody actually really cares that you’re pregnant like really they could care less

some students say weird things but it doesn’t really bother you bc like lmao? who even are you Jongin Get out of here!

people aren’t 100% familiar with hoseok being the father but it goes without saying that it will be around campus in less than 15 hours because majority of the art department were present for the gender reveal and oh look

jeongguk invited taehyung and taehyung invited his friends and now there’s a whole bunch of jocks at the gender reveal party?????

the party is obviously at your house

YOUR HOUSE!!!! YES MF THATS URS!!!!

you invited your close family and flat 18 of course and jeongguk invited taehyung who invited his girlfriend binnie and his roomie jackson and jackson, being part of the football team, invited some of the jocks

you would have cared if the jocks hadn’t brought gifts but half of them turned up with a gift or food and so you’re like “okay well come on in boys i’m y/n hi we’ve literally never ever met”

it looks really funny seeing jocks in their fucking JERSEYS (like they couldn’t have changed for this one occasion) standing around your backyard with glasses of wine

oK maybe jeongguk has a vodka and dr pepper but that’s because he did blow up all the balloons from his lungs alone and he deserved a reward

hoseok invited his family too and his friends and that’s about it

your art professor is also here too and she is technically half of the art department (or half of those you care about because weird quiet kid Jisung didn’t wanna show up which is honestly really rude and suddenly you’re not friends anymore)

even though this party technically reveals the gender, you both asked for “gender neutral” clothes and by gender neutral you meant any colour besides the stereotypical blue and pink

because what if honey really likes the colour green? what then

you and hoseok let jimin be in charge of the reveal party and he’s done a pretty good job

for some reason he’s wearing his hoodie up and you’re like “literally what the fuck it’s sunny today?”

and he’s all surrender hands: “that’s exactly why. i don’t...like the sun.”

“what do you mEAN??????? you love the sun don’t lie??!!”

a couple of weeks ago you and hoseok made another visit to the hospital to see if the gender was 100% accurate

the process was weirdly fast and the sonographer was like “lol yeah it’s right” and then dipped

so when you have jimin the envelope he has peeped and done the thing

“haha lol i knew it.”

“no you didn’t??????”

but he did a really lovely job; there’s a cluster of balloons and cakes decorated with the Blue and Pink and there’s like a cute game on like guess the gender or something you don’t really care much about

hoseok’s family really want it to be a boy <3

mrs y/n wants it to be a girl and so does your sister <3

you don’t really care just as long as the baby is okay and healthy <3

when it’s time to reveal the gender jimin has decided that a fantastic way to do that is by giving you and hoseok like one of those party poppers that when it pops it bleeds like coloured confetti and stuff

you actually really like the idea because it’s not as awkward as a cake where you cut and it’s awkwardly long and the reaction feels kind of forced (you youtubed reveal parties)

so this one is really like a quick reaction so hopefully it will feel a lot more genuine!

“are you ready, baby?”

hoseok has one arm wrapped firmly around your waist and oh LAWD

he’s doing the smile

you know the smile

you nod and grin at him like “yep! let’s see who honey really is!!!”

so everybody is ready

so excited

jeongguk is filming like he can feel it in his bones rn that this babie is gonna be a boy

like it’s gonna be his son...half son….almost son….technically his non biological son

everybody does a countdown

“three!”

hoseok smiles super excitedly

“two!”

he kisses your lips super fast and laughs quietly

he’s so excited

“one!”

POP

wait what

you can feel your stomach CHURNING when the party popper releases literally nothing but black and white confetti

what just happened?

what does black and white mean?

you’re looking desperately between hoseok and the popper and then back to jimin who’s faking a :O by the patio doors

jeongguk is like “aw fuck should i restart?”

“omg is it a dud? what happened is this a busted popper please say it is omg is there something wrong with honey? is honey okay? oh my god is honey dead? oh my god why would we party pop that?????”

hoseok’s like “omg calm down it’s just a dud omg it’s okay”

you’re literally like about to cry

then jimin steps forward

“guys!”

and everybody looks

“yall gonna stress me the fuck out”

and in a viral video like fashion

he yanks down his hoodie and

oh wow

his head is a giant mop of blue

blue

BLUE MEANS BOY

ITS A BOY

everybody starts screaming and clapping and jeongguk is laughing his ASS off like this shit about to be the blurriest gender reveal video ever

“omg a boy!!! a boy!!! y/n we’re having a son!!! omg y/n our baby!!! our little honey!!!”

hoseok is over the freaking moon

like he has not been this excited since the first baby scan

you actually start crying now

“i’m not CRYING it’s just the pregnancy…. ok fuck OFF IM CRYING IM SO HAPPY!!! i’m having a son!!!!”

time for haseul to be both happy and sad at the same time

seunghee and jeongguk are like sucking eachothers titties right now like they are so hyped

“TOLD YOU !!!! I KNEW IT!!!!!”

hoseok brings you in for the biggest and longest kiss Ever

like you haven’t had many long kisses with hoseok because it’s been trying to build up a relationship time for the past three months of your life

but this kiss is so loving you almost faint

he brings you in so gently and holds your head in his hands

one thumb rubs across your cheekbone and wow. this kiss...is so good like are those stars???

“i love you.”

alexa...ALEXA PLAY DESPACITO RIGHT NOW

“i love You more,” you whisper against his lips and he makes this really cute noise at the back of his throat (kinda like one of those whines you do where it’s like too good to be true) and he kisses you again

jeongguk zooms in

“look at this….ugh, no respect for any single people here.”

(for a brief moment jimin’s bleached blue scalp goes unnoticed until yoongi compliments him on it)

((he disappears for like fifteen minutes in the toilet and yoongi doesn’t wanna know what he was doing))

22 weeks!!!!

hoseok really probably shouldn’t find you sexy right now

you keep going on and on and on about how un-sexy you are with swollen ankles and stuff

in his opinion you’re looking really good considering and he won’t say it but the weight gain looks good on you and it gives you a nice natural #dewy look that he really loves

he remembers how cautious he was about having sex with you at like. what? 10 weeks

character development time

he’s very aware of the research and the facts and so when you shuffle over to him and huff and act all extra EXTRA touchy he’s just knows

“omg are you horny AGAIN”

“im SORRY IT JUST HAPPENS”

and he doesn’t really care that you’re big and pregnant and yeah actually your ankles are kinda swollen but it’s fine

hoseok discovers that he actually really likes pregnancy sex

pregnancy sex always scared him bc omg what if my dick touches my KID that would be all levels of weird

but he is like a biology professor and knows that’s not realistic (he thinks)

and like he was aware that at some point during pregnancy, your body is gonna be producing a lot more fluid

but my GOD

he nearly bust a nut after 3 seconds because he just slid right in

unlike the big shindig 22 weeks ago, hoseok is so so SO careful during pregnancy sex

like he’s extra loving and strokes your hair and kisses your face and arms and stomach

he loves kissing ur tummy :(

esp after sex because he’s like “im sorry honey :( i know you must be traumatised in there.”

but in the moment he really does take advantage of the fact that your hormones are going crazy and it’s not gonna last forever

you’re a talker in bed and he knows that

you’re very vocal about how things feel and some of the things you say really get to his ego like his head is so big rn

“oh...OH, omg, yep, you found it, oh fuck- yes! hoseok, yes, right there-”

and you sound so fucking hot but he can’t be rough bc like Honey is gonna be SCARRED FOR LIFE

your thing is saying i love you during sex

like a lot

hoseok finds it so endearing that you talk and whine with like every thrust and then spill out a thousand “i love you’s” in under thirty seconds as you cum <3 because <3 that’s his girl <3 that’s the love of his life <3 and she loves him back <3 heeheehee

his heart swells with pride

((hoseok also gets extremely turned on that one time you call him daddy during sex and he HAS to find out how to get rid of that kink before honey gets here))

23 weeks :P

as promised, you invite seunghee to help you and hoseok paint the nursery

jimin came too but he literally did nothing

all he did was sit on the floor looking at baby furniture like

jimin sweetie these walls aren’t gonna paint themselves

you have decided on a cream and beige coloured nursery

because it’s unisex and also makes the room feel really bright and clean and nice for when honey arrives

hoseok loves yellow and since the nursery is primarily your favourite colours, a lot of smaller accessories are yellow around the room

seunghee had so much fun looking for ~yellow~ items because “monkeys totally match the theme and omg this mobile is monkeys and bananas its already on its way i’ve just ordered it.”

the nursery takes roughly around a week to get done completely

alongside your studies, some other art students who are now very aware of the baby and the bump helped paint some of the furniture while you were catching up on some work

example a: you accidentally ordered a dark brown chester drawers and when it arrived you cried for like 45 minutes

jeongguk asked some kids from class to come by your house after class and help paint it so you didn’t feel so stressed and so you could actually finish your art assignments in prep for exams

hoseok and jeongguk helped put up the crib because “this is not a one man job, y/n, this...this is a test of skill.”

yoongi comes around often to look at the nursery and he’s the person who won’t buy anything until the baby is out and in the world

namjoon definitely does buy the huge stuffed bear for the corner of the room and often you catch seunghee asleep against it because she comes by the nursery so often to help you and hoseok make it perfect

because hoseok has a full time job that really requires all of his time and sometimes he can’t be working on the nursery and marking essays at the same time :(

“hee, can you pass me the blankets from that box over there?” you point to a collection of boxes by the wardrobe and seunghee nods, practically running over

you’re both working on the nursery (it’s friday afternoon and classes are over, but unfortunately hoseok had to finish a meeting and he’s currently in his office ((at home)) finishing these essays for the weekend)

yoongi called and said he’d be round later because he wants to check in on honey (and you of course) and he’s also coming for dinner because it’s normal to invite jimin’s physics professor around

it’s totally fine

at this point you sort of forget that he’s a professor

yoongi has become like a permanent figure in your life since hoseok and you moved in

like flat 18, he’s literally always over

seunghee fishes out like three blankets because lord knows you have about three hundred thanks to haseul and namjoon and their impulsive buying

the nursery is basically finished at this point

all you’re doing is adding blankets and a few cute little pillows to the crib and then

hey pasta

it’s done :)

“y/n, i really can’t wait for honey to be here.”

you turn slightly and see seunghee running her hands over the chester drawers, looking at the cute little decorations and pictures on the wall and the monkey mobile and, her favourite part, the little bee wall stickers that hoseok found and thought were cute (“we call him honey, it seems fitting!”)

“me too,” you reply super honestly, setting down the blanket. “if you had told me at the start of september that i’d be here right now, in a house i own, pregnant with jung hoseok’s baby...i would have seriously laughed in your face.”

“i’m just...so happy that everything is working out for you!”

it’s time for seunghee to get especially sappy

“and i know that having a baby at twenty can be really hard and it hasn’t been easy for you- but i’m 100% here for you whenever you need me and i’m so so so so happy that jimin introduced us as friends because i love having you in my life….even though you slept with my biology professor….it’s okay….i love you so much….you’re like my sister and i’m so excited for honey have i said that i’m excited yet? cause i am!!!”

you blame pregnancy hormones because you start sobbing when seunghee blurts out all these lovely things

like how she’s grateful to be helping you in the nursery and how she thinks you and hoseok are such a good match and how she misses having you around the flat <3

“seunghee…” you bring her in for such a tight cuddle

seunghee is definitely that friend who even though she’s older she feels like the little baby sister that you want to protect from all harm on earth

even though she’s the oldest out of the flat 18 gang, you all look to her as like a baby sibling

(minus jeongguk that ONE TIME he made out with her….yes you remember the text message)

so you’re just hugging her in the middle of the nursery

hoseok is just about finished with essays and he refrains from like screaming out of joy

he loves being a professor but fucking hell

some of the GARBAGE his students write because they know he’s the cool professor who takes it easy on his kids

so he’s already packing everything away when he pauses

...is that...SQUEALING??

what’s happening??????

he assumes the worst and ZOOMS out of the office towards the nursery where you and seunghee are

safe to say that he’s so thankful nothing bad is happening

you’re holding your stomach with the widest eyes and smile and seunghee is like SQUEALING LIKE A DAMN PIGLET

“is everything okay???? what happened???? is honey okay?????? are you okay?????”

he blinks so confused when you wave your hands at him and beckon him closer

“HE KICKED HE’S KICKING QUICK QUICK HOBI QUICK--”

HE CROSSES THE ROOM SO FAST

seunghee is like crying to the side of the room and hoseok has both hands on your stomach

honey stopped kicking when hoseok put his hands on there

and he was like :( oh

“maybe he went to sleep?” seunghee doesn’t want hoseok to feel bad about it

you put your hands over his and then stroke your tummy

“it’s okay, honey, it’s just daddy! say hi to daddy?”

hoseok’s like seconds away from crying

like omg R His Eyes Filling Up

but then

honey starts kicking again

VERY ENTHUSIASTICALLY

and hoseok goes from :’( to :’D in like 2 seconds

“oh my god he knows it’s me!!! hi honey!!!! hi!!!”

he drops to his knees so that he can be level with the stomach and around about where honey is kicking

“hi honey! it’s your daddy,” he puts on this really cute cooing voice Like the typical baby talk voice

seunghee is texting the flat like HONEY KICKED ME

“he knows your voice,” you say with a little laugh, one hand on your tummy and the other threading through hoseok’s hair

“this is amazing,” he mutters, and then kisses your tummy and smiles, “did you feel that, honey? can you hear me?”

KICK KCIK CKICKCKCKCIC

“omg yes i think he can hear you holy SHIT-”

“don’t swear in front of honey!!!”

“he HURTS!”

everybody forgot that jimin was still here because he was napping in the living room and so he comes in really late and is like “OMG HONEY IS KICKING? WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME??”

honey seems to be familiar with a lot of voices

he obviously really likes mommy’s voice and when she talks to him he likes to kick every once in a while

honey really loves daddy’s voice because when hoseok does his daily chit-chat honey goes crazy

honey also knows jeongguk’s voice really well

jimin is afraid to go near honey because he kicked him when he went to kiss your tummy

he also kicked haseul but she was like “OOOH HE HEARD ME!!!!” and doesn’t let it bother her because!!! she felt the kick!!!! that’s her nephew!!!!

26 weeks (yawn)

it’s starting to hit

the Pregnancy Pains

up until now you’ve been pretty blessed and actually it’s been a nice pleasant journey

but good grief it’s 4:56am and everything hurts

you physically cannot stay in bed any longer

for a moment you actually get really panicked because oh GOD labour is gonna be so much worse than this

like this is nothing

girl you have no idea what’s coming

hoseok has learned to become a light sleeper

you have a really weird sleeping schedule during pregnancy and sometimes he’d wake up at 6am to go to work and you’re already up doing stuff and he gets home at like 6pm sometimes and you’re flat out, then waking up at 3am to continue the day because you were in agony

so when you wake up at (nearly) 5am on a SATURDAY he’s like already up

his body clock is so weird now thanks to you and your weird sleeping habits

“hurts?” hoseok asks rubbing your back as you’re slumped over the side of the bed. he barely catches a nod and kisses your temple and hugs you, “i read on that baby website that baths can help ease the pain sometimes. should i run one?”

you nearly CRY

“yes yes Yes please omg :(”

so that’s how he got to where he is right now

sitting on the bathroom floor running a bath

he’s so careful to get the temperature right and he spends a good three minutes deciding which lush bath bomb is going to be used

(he settles on “honey bee” which was actually a gift he got you on valentines day but you never got around to using) ((he was skeptical because of the colours but baby is called honey so he thought it would be cute)) (((you loved it)))

you hobble into the bathroom and he’s just about finishing it up, running his fingers in the water to make sure it’s not toooOOO hot

you love watching the colours fizz in the bath and so naturally you have to be there to see it happen

seeing all the yellows was pretty exciting and hoseok’s just like :D watching you get happy by the colours

hoseok helps you get undressed as you just talk on and on and on

honestly

how do you have so much energy at like 5am in the morning…

he can’t help but notice how much you are GLOWING

like he hasn’t really seen many pregnant women

if any at all besides you

but you really look so pretty and natural and just wow he’s full of love

as you sit down in the bath, you grip onto his hand as he moves to get more comfortable and you’re like “do you wanna get in with me!!!”

“baby, i don’t think i’m gonna fit.”

“you will i promise, get in here!”

he’s skeptical

“yea...i don’t think im gonna fit, love.”

oh he does

he fits

if he fits he sits and he FITS

he really underestimated how wide this bath was and he sits with his back near the taps and you’re facing him

you have enough room to put your legs on either side of him and you’re like sitting between his legs and in all honesty the tummy is the only thing between you and him and his dick

but like you’ve seen it before you don’t care

and he certainly doesn’t care about seeing any bits of you bc your his bABY thats his GIRL

“this smells amazing.”

“yeah, smells like-”

“honey!”

with hoseok being like. a full time professor and with you trying to make it to classes in between awful pregnancy pains, it’s hard to find time to spend with you because he’s really busy

sometimes you do actually go to class and end up like falling asleep on the desk and professor choi is like torn between letting you stay there or sending jeongguk to get you and take you home

“thank you for this, hoseok.”

:D “hey, hey, hey...anytime you need anything, i will do it, okay?”

“i know babe and you’ve been so so so so helpful these past few months and i know it must have been hard and a big adjustment but im just so glad you’re here and that we’re raising a family together like this means so much to me that you’re here with me and i just love you a LOT okay like a lot-”

“y/n l/n!” hoseok playfully cuts you off and holds your face in his hands (his signature pussy-throbbing move)

his hands are wet and now so is your face but you really don’t care

“you are,” he continues, “the love of my life. i couldn’t let you do this alone. meeting you, being with you- starting a family with you has been one of the best experiences of my whole life. and i wouldn’t change that for anything!!! i love you so much, and i love you even when you’re cranky, and i love you when you ask for really disgusting things to eat, and i love you when you sing to honey in the mornings. i’m just...so in love with you and honey, i can’t even put it into words!!!”

and he starts speaking so damn fast

like you BARELY catch it

“and you’re thebest thing that has ever happened to me and introducing you to my family was the proudest moment of my life and we’re gonna be the best parents ever and god i love you more than anything i would Die for you.”

…

i…

damn…

“...i think writing a best selling book is probably more worthy of pride than boring old me.”

“books are like a ten man job thing. you and me and honey are a two person job thing and i’m so proud of us, so proud of you :(”

he draws you in with a really soft kiss and its so. soft. and nice.

yep his dick is right up against honey right now

honey, sweetie, im so sorry oh god close your eyes baby close ur eyes

…

“we should get out soon bc this water is looking really ugly.”

“yeah i agree let’s get out”

30 weeks :3

<Y/N has created a new chat!>

from haseul: eye

from y/n: baby shower. 2 weeks time. my house. bring gifts or food

from y/n: preferably mustard sandwiches or sardines :)

from guk: thats fucking NASTY nobody bring that

from hoseok: last week she wanted meatballs and milk………….

from guk: do pregnant women deserve rights? be honest

from y/n: well looks like guk is no longer invited :)

from guk: NO PLS

from seunghee: YEAH BOIIIIII I HAVE SO MANY GIFTS

from yoongi: why did y/n just privately message me asking for blended sardines Hell nah pregnant women dont deserve rights

from y/n: WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN RN :(

from hoseok: so! bring cakes !!!!!!

from namjoon: i have the best gift ever Not To Brag

from jimin: hi professor min how do you like the weather today

<y/n has removed jimin from the chat>

from y/n: can you let taehyung know the date? i dont have his number but he gave really warm hugs when i last saw him and i want another one

from y/n: tell him to bring his girlfriend too she looks like she’ll bring me a good gift

from hoseok: omg im dating a gold digger….

32 weeks !!!!!!!

“baby showers are technically just a way for the mom to get gifts. this is technically baby exploitation-”

“oh my god jeongguk if you don’t shut up im gonna shove this stick of celery up ur ass”

not that you’re ready to admit it to anybody

but yeah you organised a baby shower just to get gifts

it’s really only small

in comparison to your gender reveal party which was quite large

and even though a lot of expecting moms like having “women only” baby showers

you realise that you really want hoseok to be there

he’s been as important in the process as you have and you wouldn’t want him to feel left out

so this baby shower is open to everybody

again it’s only small: attendees are hoseok, yoongi, namjoon, seokjin, flat 18, hoseok’s mom and sister, your sister and mom, taehyung and his gf and professor choi because she was so excited

that seems quite large but in comparison to the gender reveal party this is really quite small and humble

“i can’t believe it’s almost been 8 months already,” haseul says, already starting on the cupcakes

jimin has started baking things more frequently to keep himself busy during exam season

“mhm!!! not long now!!!”

thankfully hoseok’s mom and sister get on really well together with your family and professor choi is like boring yoongi to death talking about something art related

namjoon and seokjin are taking a look at the finished nursery because hoseok’s really proud of how it turned out

it’s time to open gifts uwu!!!

most of the gifts are for honey

thankfully everybody stuck to the cream theme and there’s a lot of cute cream things for honey to wear and use when he’s born

seunghee keeps buying monkey related things for honey meanwhile haseul is hung up on bees

namjoon buys a lot of bear things

you just hope that honey doesn’t grow up as a furry

jimin and jeongguk are the friends who buy those cringey weirdly inappropriate baby shirts that have quotes like, “daddy’s fastest swimmer!” or like onesies that say “my favourite food is titty!”

you sit there like what the FUCK is this

and jeongguk is like “it’s a shirt !!! honey will look so cute in it!!”

“hONEY IS NOT WEARING A SHIRT THAT SAYS THAT WHAT KIND OF MOM DO YOU THINK I AM??”

yoongi is weirdly fashionable with his baby clothes

like he has a thing for those teddy coats and he bought like eight in different colours

“honey might like red, you don’t know yet.”

namjoon and seokjin together :( give the cutest gift :(

“oK so most professors end up writing books and stuff-” side eye at hoseok - “and so i just thought that, well, honey is gonna wanna grow up reading and stuff so i made this book!!! well, we made this book. everyone helped somehow and jeongguk drew the pictures and it’s just a little something for honey to grow up with reading”

you wanna cry

hoseok wants to cry

haseul cries

it’s not even for her but she cries

“its JUST REALLY THOUGHTFUL OKAY?”

you think it ends there with everybody giving gifts

but oh no

no

hoseok has a gift??????????????

“this gift is for mommy” he says with a bright smile and out the corner of your eye yoongi is squirming with a smirk

...what does he know that you don’t….

your sister is also smiling……

where’s ashton kutcher…….

you unwrap this little box and open it and

wow

OOOOOOOOOF

you’re so still staring at this really gorgeously simple ring that you don’t even notice hoseok getting down on one knee

HASEUL IS REALLY CRYING RN

“with honey close on the way, i figured i ought to ask before things get crazy.”

omg you brave looking at him and hes got that look again

THE FOND LOOK

AND YOUR EYES START FILLING UP

“y/n l/n i love you and i wanna spend the rest of my life with you :’) will you marry me?”

there is not a dry eye amongst flat 18 right now

haseul actually has to go outside because omg she’s so happy for you

seunghee teared up a little bit and jimin cried but then started laughing

jeongguk is being so dramatic about it

he’s crying as if his pet dog just died

“i...cant believe….my girl is all grown up….i cant...breathe rn omg…..can someone get me a drink?”

35 weeks :o

finals are here

but since jeongguk and haseul are art (sort of) majors their finals were earlier than other subjects

and so you decide to brave life and visit flat 18 :’)

you see a bunch of people on the way there because apparently a lot of people live off campus and walk at the same time as you

like why is everybody here rn

at this point you get a few more stares because

omg is that y/n l/n she’s HUGE!!!!!

you’re genuinely past caring at this point

you’re huge and your pregnant and you’re confident

jeongguk and haseul are the only ones at flat 18 when you arrive

it feels weird being back but it’s nice because flat 18 was once your home

your room hasn’t really changed much and you discover that . sometimes taehyung stops round and crashes in YOUR ROOM???

and if it’s not taehyung then it can be any one of their friends they invite around

which you’re only slightly hurt about

“jesus CHRIST you’re massive!!!”

“thanks jeongguk that makes me feel soOoooO good about myself <3”

“NO, fuck,” and he pauses because there’s a No Swearing Policy around honey since it’s not apparent that since he can hear everything he can probably hear jeongguk swearing too. “i just meant that! wow honey got really big :D not long now!! five more weeks until due date!!!”

haseul plops down on the other side of you

“i can’t wait until he’s here,” she says. “little honey is already the size of a pineapple- which is really crazy to think about!!”

it’s nice to spend some time with your friends after like weeks of being with hoseok

and don’t get me wrong you LOVE hoseok with like every single cell inside your body

but it’s nice to have some You time

and You time has always involved flat 18 like they’re drugs and you’re the addict you genuinely can’t be away from them because it starts to hit you hard :-(

haseul is like halfway through telling you something when you Feel it

and it feels Disgusting

you freeze and look down at your stomach

and you watch as honey makes a grand appearance

honey sort of “rolls over” and for a moment everyone is like >:O as honey’s whole body is visible moving across your stomach and it’s literally like there’s an ALIEN inside of you

“OMG OMGOGG that was so beautiful!!! honey, do it again for me, we have to film this for your dada!!” haseul runs to get her phone

meanwhile guk is looking at your stomach like “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT”

“i dont know but it felt weird”

“IT LOOKED LIKE YOUR STOMACH WAS GONNA EXPLODE”

you bet that honey is like giggling inside

honey: 1 jeongguk: 0

39 weeks…

at 39 weeks, with the due date so close by, you start to feel like something is really wrong

you did some research and while contractions were normal, this pain doesn’t really feel like contractions?

“baby please talk to me, i need to know what hurts so i can call the hospital and let them know.”

hoseok has never ever had to take a call in lecture before but this time he had to

he is so frantic that he set the lecture to a task and really quietly answered the phone at the front of the class

nobody is stupid and they’re all aware that hoseok and yourself are having a baby and so they really don’t mind that their lecture is being paused by you crying on the phone

“i-i-i don’t know...my body hurts and i can feel h-honey moving but he feels stuck or something...hoseok s-something is wrong i think i need to go to the hospital right now”

hoseok goes into full blown panicked dad mode

seunghee is sitting at the front of the lecture like, “hose-i mean, professor jung, do you need me to go and get another professor?”

he doesn’t reply, obviously distressed, and so she ends up waking up yoongi from a nap saying that she thinks maybe you’re going into early labour???

yoongi lets the head of the department know that hoseok has go to like right now and he enters the lecture hall like, “hoseok you need to go and see if she’s okay, don’t worry, i’ll try and go through the rest of the slides, just go, everything is fine”

and so hoseok BOLTS out of the lecture hall

forgets to set homework

and runs across campus to the car-park whilst still on the phone

(yoongi lets the class go because he really doesn’t know SHIT about Behaviour and Physiology of Organisms)

when hoseok and yourself end up at the hospital you realise that it’s not labour like seunghee thinks but things are equally as worrying

honey is currently in the breech position

“most babies are supposed to have moved at around 36-37 weeks, so it is alarming that your baby is still in breech, miss l/n,” the nurse is particularly sympathetic as she lets you and hoseok know

you’re totally lost but hoseok is holding your hand so tight and is so so worried

it’s not really the end of the world that honey is feet first but it’s problematic and means that labour is gonna be a bit more difficult

“well what does this mean? is he okay?”

“your baby is fine, it’s his position that is concerning. it will be more difficult to birth the baby because of his position in the womb- what is more concerning is that we were aware of this at your last scan. last time we saw you, miss l/n, your baby was in the footling breech position. of course, it was possible that he might shift during the time away, but he is now in the flexed breech.”

“w-well….what does that mean? is he gonna be okay?”

“when you are in labour, we will have two options; we can either go through with a vaginal breech birth, or a caesarean birth, depending on how willing he is to come out.”

when hoseok squeezes your hand you just. cry a little bit

“i dont wanna hurt him omg i dont want to have a c section either wtf i thought i’d just have to push him out oh no”

hoseok is feeling awful :( because what is he supposed to do :(

“so what should we do?” he asks really timidly

the nurse frowns and cleans up her things, “i would only suggest going home and staying at home until due date. it really is not recommended that we induce labour naturally but you need to be very careful. your son is not willing to turn on his own or with our help, so we will see what the situation is like during your very early stages of labour and we can discuss what method we go through with. are we leaning more towards a vaginal birth, miss l/n?”

you’re all snotty and sniffly but you nod. “please :( i really don’t wanna be cut open i saw what bella had to go through and im not doing that”

hoseok scoffs “twilight is not a reliable pregnancy source, baby.”

“i do believe that bella had no real pregnancy equipment and that her vampire husband had to cut the baby out of her without any sort of painkillers. in a worse case scenario, you do have to go through with a caesarean birth, you will be safe and we will do our best to relieve the pain for you.”

well that’s reassuring

when you two get home after a long day of panicking you’re incredibly alarmed to find that flat 18, hoseok’s close friends and your sister are all at your house like ??????? what are YOU DOING HERE

it’s like the spiderman meme

“what am i doing here??? i LIVE HERE??? what are YOU DOING HERE????”

“seunghee and yoongi said you were in labour???”

“well im not!!??? why would you think i was in labour?”

seunghee gets really defensive “UM hoseok was like on the verge of a mental breakdown at the front of the classroom and so it made sense that you were in labour?? im sorry???? at least we’re all here???”

you end up having to explain to a whole bunch of people that you’re NOT about to birth a pumpkin sized baby yet

but it’s really hard telling them that honey is like the wrong way :(

surprisingly it’s jimin and the married kims who are most worried about it

jimin just thinks that this means honey is like in real bad danger and he’s like omg :( my son from another mum :( wtf is honey okay?

and the married kims are never going to go through birth like this and so they do feel really alarmed

after hoseok reassures them that everything is (hopefully) okay everyone is sitting there like

:) ok what now

“....shall we order chinese food?” guk suggests

and so you all end up piled in the living room in weird positions watching hell’s kitchen whilst eating chinese food because :) might as well :)

40 WEEKS

your due date is like 4 days away

and you’ve been lying awake with really bad contractions for like 2 hours

but you’re so indignant like you refuse to believe you could be going into labour

hoseok is awake too and omg he’s doing his best

like he just doesn’t know how to help besides hugging you

and he does hug you like so closely and his hands running up and down your side and he’s like humming in your ear to try and take your mind off it

“i feel like im gonna fucking SHIT myself wtf”

he cant help but laugh sometimes, “wanna try for the toilet, baby?”

and you’re like “yeah im not really in the mood for like POOPINg in our bed is that okay?”

he’s already up and getting ready to help you walk across the room

lately you’ve been really wobbly whilst walking and in a lot of pain so he does whatever he can to help

he’s at the bottom of the bed and you’ve just stood up

….

huh

“i think i just peed myself?”

“what? why?”

“i didnt mean to!!!”

and you glance down

and wow thats a lot of pee

…

OH

“OH MY FUCKING GOD MY WATER JUST BROKE”

and oh my god hoseok has NEVER MOVED SO FAST IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE

he rushes to get all his things and honestly your stuff has been in the living room for the past week just in case

all you need now is to spend at least fifteen minutes trying to decide which book to take because obviously you’re gonna have loooaaaads of time to read

“Y/N YOU DONT NEED THE BOOK COME ON HONEY IS COMING WE HAVE TO GOOOOO”

what makes hoseok more panicked is the fact that yOU’re panicked

“omg y/n please calm down i’m driving as fast as i can please please please omg”

“I CANT WHY IS HE COMING NOW HE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE YET”

hoseok crosses like 2 red lights and he’s freaking out double

“I JUST BROKE THE LAW”

“OKAY AND IM HAVING A FUCKING BABY SO KEEP DRIVING MISTER!!!”

you’re an angry birther

as he drives you decide to call jeongguk through the car because #technology

he answers like immediately

“hi babe whats up”

“JEONGGUK IM HAVING A BABY RIGHT NOW PLEASE COME TO THE HOSPITAL”

“what wha-WHAT OH MY FUCKING GOD HE’S COMING??”

“YES PLEASE TELL EVERYBODY- oh fuck hobi it hurtSSSS i wanna go home im not pushing him out yet-”

in the background guk has dropped his phone and is literally screaming around the house

in the back you can hear all of the flat screaming together because HONEY IS COMING

nobody is calm

when yoongi finds out he literally does not know what to do

when you hang up mid sentence he sits staring at the wall like “....omg”

quite literally everybody is a little stressed out when you’re at the hospital

your room is really nice and you’re like “oh wow hoseok you really spoiled me here, too bad i can’t enjoy it because im pushing out a WATERMELON”

obviously because honey is bum first instead of head first things are a little complicated

you’re actually really far in labour already like your mom said it took her like 5 hours to have your sister but turns out it’s been like 32 minutes exactly since your waters broke at home and the nurses seem to think you’re ready now

“NOW??? AS IN RIGHT NOW!!!”

“yep!! let’s bring your son into the world!!”

you discover by simply listening to the nurses that you’re going to be attempting an assisted breech vaginal birth and immediately you get panicked and flustered

you promised haseul and seunghee that they could be there during the birth :(

you had offered it to guk at first but he was like “i am nOT ready to see your vagina i’m sorry” and jimin said he wasn’t sure if he was up for seeing you in a lot of pain during the birth

and yoongi didn’t really want to be there for it because he’s a bit like both guk and jimin

hoseok didn’t mind at all that seunghee and haseul were asked to be there

in fact he was really encouraging of that fact

because both of them were there since the start

like

they watched u pee on those pregnancy tests

so you’re getting really anxious because what if honey comes before they’re here

“miss l/n i need you to breathe for me- please control your breathing! are miss l/n’s scheduled guests here?”

“...they’re in the lobby right now. they’re on their way, miss l/n. keep doing those breathing exercises- yes, there we go!”

hoseok is being nothing but supportive

he’s wiping down your head and holding your hand so tight

“you’re doing amazing, baby, you’re so so brave, i love you”

FINALLY haseul and seunghee bust through the doors

guk, jimin and yoongi are currently like milling around somewhere and your parents and hoseok’s parents have been told the news by guk and yoongi

you’re really fucking scared to have this baby

you did the stupid thing of googling what happens during a breech birth and it made you have a full blown panic attack after reading that honey could die during delivery

now that everything is ready for birth you’re really so scared that honey might not make it

before the midwives prop up your legs on the stirrups you take a good amount of gas an air

an epidural was suggested but hoseok knows that it’s not going to make that much of a difference for honey

and you just want to get him out of you quite honestly Nobody has time for an epidural like just get him out

hoseok feels AWFUL when you’re literally screaming in agony over honey

seunghee and haseul are being so encouraging but all hoseok can do is like stare with tears in his eyes because oh no WHAT HAS HE DONE

the midwives encourage you also with a hands off approach until honey’s bum and bottom half is out

their so vocal and warm like “you’re doing amazing, y/n, just keep pushing!! i can see his feet!!!”

and so you just go for it

you’re mentally praying you don’t like pass out from pushing too hard or worse, shit all over the bed because apparently THAT’S A THING

you’re too busy crying to notice that the midwives look really shocked when honey’s bottom half is out

hoseok gets curious and decides to make sure honey is okay

and he looks and is like “oh WHAT THE FUCK?”

only he doesn’t actually say that

actually he doesn’t say anything

“keep pushing, y/n, h-he’s almost out.”

why are they so hesitant

oh god it hurts so bad

you want to die

you don’t want to have a baby anymore

and then finally

RELEASE

you feel like you can’t breathe but oh my god

the sound of honey SCREAMING is like music to your ears because

HE’S OKAY

but why is everyone acting so WEIRD

you peer up over your legs and take a glance at honey like squirming in the midwives hands

and

oh

Oh WHAT THE FU-

“oh my god his penis fell off!!!!!!!”

honey is a GIRL???????????

HOW DID THIS EVEN HAPPEN???????

you don’t really care that it’s not a boy but like. YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS A BOY

regardless the midwives do their thing and hoseok is back next to you like :O

“you did so well i’m so proud of you i love you so much- you did it! you did it you’re okay honey is okay!”

“honey is a GIRL?”

haseul is torn between being sad and happy because she wanted it to be a girl she kNEW FROM THE START THAT HONEY WAS DESTINED TO BE A GIRL

it turns out that the sonographer was never 100% on it being a boy and all this time the “penis” was probably just a toe or something or a glitch

because honey is definitely a little girl

a precious beautiful little baby girl

hoseok’s baby girl

he totally cries

no

he WEEPS

there are no dry eyes in the birthing room rn

honey is so gorgeous

she definitely has hoseok’s features like she has his eyes and his nose and his ears :(

the midwives let mommy hold honey for a little while

“skin to skin is very important!!! she’s not a little boy like expected, but she’s a perfectly healthy baby!”

if she wasn’t covered in disgusting gloop you would have kissed her all over

but as a mother that instinct is there

you kiss her forehead and her hands and you’re looking up at hoseok like what the fuck we mADE THIS PRECIOUS LITTLE HUMAN

hoseok is crying as if he just had to endure twenty five minutes of agony and had his vagina ripped open

he’s just so happy right now

thats his kid

HIS

THATS HIS BABY GIRL

HIS TWO BABY GIRLS!!!!!

his emotions have been a big fat rollercoaster like it went from panic when your water broke to major panic when seunghee and haseul hadn’t arrived and then horror when you were like screaming in agony and then shock when he thought that honey’s penis has fallen off during BIRTH because NOBODY EXPECTED HONEY TO PULL THE BIGGEST PLOT TWIST OF THE YEAR

now he’s like over the moon he’s so so so so happy

the nurses help get the placenta out but honestly you’re just numbed like you barely register it shooting out

“okay daddy, wanna cut the cord?”

he’s like “no i really dont it looks like a big weird worm”

he still does it anyway

it’s a weirdly fulfilling experience

when it’s time to clean up little honey, you finally break the news to everyone outside

they’re in a mild state of utter confusion

guk is like “well what happened? did it like. grow inside? where did it go?”

and jimin’s like “oh. so it was just a toe or something”

guk is really a little bit disappointed because he wanted a boy so badly but !!! a baby girl !!! a niece!!!!!

(he figures honey will like dinosaurs and naruto all the same as what boy honey would have)

hoseok has made the bed his bed also

he’s snuggled next to you and you have honey on your chest and she’s sleeping so soundly :’)

“have you guys picked a name?”

guk is halfway through eating the fruit salad that haseul made before leaving to get here on time (“you were late because you were making A FRUIT BOWL?” “IM SORRY I WAS HALFWAY THROUGH MAKING IT AND I COULDN’T JUST LEAVE IT”)

you and hoseok hadn’t thought much about it to be honest

although you had talked about it a few weeks earlier

(“i like the name jiyun for a boy” hoseok had said one evening. the two of you had decided that honey should have a korean name like their daddy and you were a-okay with it!! for the sake of your family you were willing to give him or her an english name that you were still undecided on.

you tested out the name. “jiyun. jung jiyun. omg it sounds really cute! what does it mean!!”

“hmm it can mean many things usually, but its usually meaning happiness and posterity, soft sleekness.”

“oh, so it’s one of THOSE names where it has like three meanings.”

“yeah :D”

you laugh. “okay, and how about a girl?”

“how come I’M the one making the decisions???”

“i’m saying yes or no, i’m helping!!”

hoseok huffs and hugs you closer. “uhh, okay. well. me and yoongi had talked about this, and he agreed that yeojin is a cute name. jung yeojin. it means beautiful and precious.”

you...fall in love with that name

“ngl i kinda want honey to be a girl now.”

“omg just for the NAME??? thats cheap”)

you nod at guk sleepily

the room is actually sort of filled with people

because hoseok wrote a book and was on tv he’s Hashtag special

flat 18 are in the room rn because yoongi had to run to pick up namjoon and seokjin and your parents are still like. not ready or here

hoseok’s family couldn’t be here because they were vacationing in europe and their flight got cancelled

“jung yeojin!”

everyone is really satisfied with that name

“are you giving her an english name, too?” seunghee asks, sitting next to the bed with her finger tucked in yeojin’s grasp

you have this twinkle in your eye as you smile down at yeojin and then up at hoseok

“i think the name honey has quite a ring to it, don’t you think?”

hoseok can’t smile any wider holy fuck

“mhm. i couldn’t agree more.”

(seokjin and namjoon arrive later than expected, but seokjin cries as if he was there for the entire thing.)

this. took. so . long. to. upload. but. i . love /. it

+ for visuals and more info please visit here!!

[parkkate]

Hey!!! I reallyyyy love your writing it's so cute and I just really like it!!❤️I was wondering if you could write one where dracos rly eccentric/weird and he's really funny to be around but everyone's like ://?? But harry finds it rly cute!!! Thankssss xxx

Thank you so much, sweetie!! ❤️️ Maybe you already forgot you sent me that ask because it took me sooooo looooong to answer it lol. I’m not sure if this is what you had in mind but maybe you’ll still like it? Anyway, thank you so much for sending me that prompt :) I had loads of fun with it :) ❤️️

“No, no, not this one!”

Harry watched as his flatmate rushed over to the kitchen cabinet and wrenched the mug Blaise was holding out of his hands.

“What’s wrong with this one?” Blaise asked, raising an eyebrow. Draco bit his lip, while cradling the mug like it was his most prized possession.

“You just can’t use this one, okay?” he snapped. “What if you break it?”

Harry silently sipped his tea as the two Slytherins in his kitchen started bickering.”No, not that one either!” It wasn’t exactly unusual behaviour. And Harry was used to it by now. He and Draco had been flatmates for over a year and Draco always seemed a bit touchy about his things. Curiously enough, he never snapped at Harry about it. Only at his friends. And Harry’s friends.

“You’re being a brat, Draco,” Blaise muttered. “I just want some tea but apparently that is too much to ask.”

“Here, you can take this one,” Draco announced, pointing to the only mug left in the cabinet. “I don’t care much for that one anyway.”

“Hey! I gave you that one!” Pansy entered the kitchen with a scowl on her face. Draco just shrugged, flicked his wand once to set the kettle on the stove and to send the mugs flying back into the cabinet.

“You’re spoiling him,” Blaise said to Harry, sitting down at the table opposite of him.

“What? What do I have to do with any of this?” Harry protested.

“You’re spoiling him,” Blaise repeated. “You’re allowing this… this behaviour.”

“Allowing?” Harry echoed. “Excuse me, but what exactly do you think we are doing here? We’re just flatmates. I’m not the boss of him.”

“He most certainly isn’t,” Draco chimed in, plopping down on the chair next to Harry.

“Right,” Pansy snorted. “Say, Potter, have you fought with Draco since you moved in together? I mean a real, full-on fight .”

Harry thought about it for a second, an obvious ‘Yes’ on the tip of his tongue. But the more he thought about it, the more he realised they hadn’t had a big fight at all. Sure, they had argued about a few things here and there but it had been nothing like their fights in school.

Pansy seemed to take Harry’s silence as the answer she had been expecting and smirked.

“See? You have Draco wrapped around your little finger,” she said in a sing-song voice.

“Pansy, will you shut up?” Draco growled. “That is preposterous.”

“Oh, is it?” Blaise grinned.

Draco ignored him and went over to the stove to prepare their tea. While the blond was out of earshot, Blaise leaned closer to Harry.

“You really shouldn’t encourage his OCD.”

“OCD?” Harry’s eyes widened.

“Obsessive-compulsive-”

“I know what it means,” Harry interrupted Pansy. “Draco doesn’t have OCD.”

Pansy and Blaise exchanged meaningful looks before turning their attention back to Harry.

“You can’t deny he’s totally obsessed with you,” Pansy smirked.

“And you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how he freaks out whenever something isn’t in the place he’s intended it to,” Blaise remarked.

Harry frowned, not sure he had noticed.

“You really are thick, Potter,” Blaise sighed. He looked around the room until he spotted something on the shelf. With one nod of his head, the clock he had fixed his eyes on flew across the room and landed on one of the windowsills. Grinning to himself, Blaise leaned back in his seat and winked at Harry.

“Now just wait and observe.”

“He’s not going to freak out,” Harry insisted.

He watched Draco closely as he returned to the table, levitating three mugs in front of him. When Blaise made a grab for the dark red one, Draco slapped his hand away.

“I told you, not that one. That’s mine.”

Blaise rolled his eyes and took the white one, hovering beside his head.

“What’s so special about the red one?” he muttered darkly.

“I bought that a month after we moved here. It makes me think of Ha-” Draco stopped abruptly, his body going rigid. “Um… Halloween! It makes me think of Halloween!”

Blaise and Pansy started snickering, elbowing each other. Harry wasn’t sure what was going on.

“Yeah, of course it would have such a special meaning to you, if it reminds you of Ha-lloween,” Blaise said teasingly.

Draco quickly looked away, wrinkling his eyebrows.

“Shut up, Blaise, you- Hey! What is the clock doing on the windowsill? That’s not where it’s supposed to be!” He whirled around in his seat. “Which one of you two did it?” he said, zeroing in on his Slytherin friends.

“What makes you think we did it?” Pansy said, her tone as sweet as sugar.

“Harry would never do something like that,” Draco announced decisively. Harry blinked at that.

“Never mind who did it,” Blaise said with a dismissive gesture. “The question is, can you leave it there? I bet you can’t.”

Draco bit his lip. Harry saw that his right hand was twitching. He obviously didn’t want to leave it there but he probably wanted to prove to Blaise that he was wrong.

“Come on, stop being so childish,” Harry murmured to Blaise and levitated the clock back to its original place on the shelf. Draco let out a little sigh of relief and gave Harry a grateful look.

“See, Blaise, this is why he’s my flatmate, not you,” Draco snapped.

“Sure, that’s the only reason,” Blaise snorted. His eyes wandered over to Harry, scrutinising him. “I really have no idea how you put up with him.”

Harry barked out a laugh and shook his head.

“He’s a great flatmate. It’s always clean, I never have to worry about the fridge being empty, he always makes sure I have my favourite tea… One time, he yelled at a salesperson because they didn’t have it in stock.” Harry chuckled to himself while Draco slid down in his seat, looking slightly embarrassed. “I thought it was rather sweet. I mean, sure he has a few quirks. He always insists I use the blanket he got for me when I’m on the sofa, although we have, like, five. But I don’t mind. It’s a nice blanket. It has little Snitches on it. Sometimes he massages my shoulders, but he never lets me reciprocate. I keep telling him I’m not as clumsy as I was in school but I guess he doesn’t believe me.”

Harry was so lost in thought, he didn’t notice the raised eyebrows, the looks the Slytherins were giving him or the way Draco had turned beet red.

“Oh, and I have to be at home on Thursdays by seven o’clock, because he cooks dinner and doesn’t like it when I’m late. But, I mean, the one time I was late was only because there were so many people in the pastry shop when I wanted to pick up these little cupcakes Draco likes so much.” When Harry’s words were only met with silence, he finally looked up and realised he had been babbling. “Oh, I’m sorry, Draco, I didn’t mean to-”

“So,” Pansy said, drumming her perfectly manicured fingers on the table. “How long have you two been secretly dating? And why didn’t you tell us?”  

Harry’s mouth fell open as he gaped at Pansy.

“What?” he spluttered.

“We’re not dating,” Draco muttered darkly. “If we were dating, we would be kissing and… stuff.”

This time, Harry didn’t miss the undertone in Draco’s voice, although he wasn’t exactly sure how to interpret it.

“Do you want us to kiss and… stuff?”

The kitchen went completely silent as three pairs of eyes fixed on Draco, who kept staring at the mug in his hands.

“I… um… Well, I guess I wouldn’t be completely… Um, that is to say, I-”

“Hold on, is that why you wouldn’t come out of your room for a week, after I told you about that date I had with a Muggle a few months ago?”

Draco didn’t answer but kept staring at his mug.

“Oh, is that why you haven’t been dating at all while we have been living together?” Harry thought about other signs there might have been that hadn’t seemed strange at the time. Wait, there was one thing that had seemed very strange. “Oh my God, is that why all the towels seem to magically disappear from time to time when I come out of the shower?”

Draco let his head fall back and made a strangled noise, while Blaise and Pansy keeled over with laughter.

Harry ignored them and got out of his seat, never taking his eyes off Draco. He pulled the Slytherin into a standing position in front of him and gently cupped his cheek.

“Won’t you look at me?” Harry whispered. Draco’s eyes darted up to his, glimmering with apprehension. Harry stepped closer until their chests were touching, placing his other hand on Draco’s hip. “I guess we kind of have been dating for a while, haven’t we? I just didn’t realise.”

Draco shivered under Harry’s touch and tentatively brought his hands up to Harry’s shoulders.

“You never were the most observant type,” he murmured, his eyes flickering over Harry’s face. A smile tugged on the corner of Harry’s mouth as he leaned forward. He unconsciously held his breath as he let his lips brush over Draco’s, savouring the warmth and the silky feeling of his mouth. He barely noticed the loud cheers and wolf-whistles behind him.

“Hmmm, I guess I finally understand your obsession with lip balm,” Harry breathed amusedly. He stroked Draco’s cheek with his thumb and brought their foreheads together, suddenly feeling really dizzy.

“You know, I have an obsession with really, really soft and comfortable beds as well,” Draco said, wiggling his eyebrows and leaning in to kiss Harry once more.

When they broke apart several minutes later, Harry’s heart skipped a beat and he was sure he had never seen anything more beautiful. The way Draco was looking at him almost made him topple over. This was how he wanted Draco to look at him from now on, with the biggest smile on his face Harry had ever seen.    

[actuallyadhd]

ADHD Awareness Month:

Due to numerous factors my ADHD wasn’t picked up until 20. My parents thought ADHD was kids (boys) bouncing off walls, they were shocked and kinda guilty they missed it when I told them about my diagnosis. A breakdown of my symptoms and what delayed my diagnosis: -Fidgeting. Idk why the fact that at 18 I couldn’t sit remotely still in a cinema wasn’t concerning to anyone. -Talkative and talking at a fast pace. People just assume I’m talkative, I don’t notice I’ve talked for too long. -Interrupt people when they speak. To be fair my entire family is awful for this. If there’s than three of us in a room and you don’t yell across someone no one will listen. -Refusal to make social plans without a lot of coaxing and help. I couldn’t verbalise that I had no idea how to pull everything together and the thought of trying scared me and it my Mam numerous “just text and ask if they’re free” and her telling me where to meet them and what time to get my weekend plans sorted. She had no idea planning issues can be ADHD. -Late to everything. My parents always ensured I was on time so my poor time keeping skills didn’t present until I was in my teens and weren’t an issue for school or work as my parents got me there on time! -Memory issues. My Dad has a weird memory so we assumed I was just like him and had a randomly selective memory that opts not to remember to bring my sports kit home or take my keys with me when I left the house. My parents formed a habit of verbally and visually confirming I had everything I needed for the day before I left the house. -Losing stuff due to forgetting where I put it. It was assumed I just lacked respect for my possessions. -Difficulty with verbal directions or instructions. Didn’t present until I started needing to walk places, my parents just used visual landmarks or drew maps. My driving instructor just gave up and assumed I’d take a wrong turn. Long verbal lists of tasks quickly became my parents asking me to do one task, waiting for me to do it and then asking me to do the next. -Daydreaming. I was just called creative. My doodling in school was seen as disinterested and rudeness. -Unable to sustain concentration in school/ on school work. I caught up on my work and always managed to meet deadlines. I aced class tests because I had less work to revise (normally just one topic) and it was fresh. My poor exams results were seen and nerves affecting performance as I was always studying. I didn’t notice how much faster other students did work thanks to no daydreaming and I didn’t notice how much I daydreamed. -Aversion of crowds and loud noises. Not necessarily ADHD but I can’t process crowds they overwhelm me and noises are very distracting for me and loud ones I just hate tbh, they hurt me more than they seem to hurt others. -General overwhelming. A list of five things for my brother to do right now= him whining but doing it. That list for me= internal panic, that’s not on my mental schedule for the day, how will I have time for my school work that will take half an hour and do these chores that take half an hour when there’s only five hours before bed-time. Basically I end up just stood there, trying to figure out which tasks to start on and if I can say I have homework and most importantly trying not to cry from confusing. -Forgetting to eat. Whenever my parents left me home-alone on a weekend it was only when they came home and asked if I wanted dinner that I realised I forgot lunch and probably hadn’t drunk much. But I didn’t say that I’d get a concerned lecture about eating disorders or responsibility depending on the day.

So, how did I end up diagnosed? I moved out for uni, overcompensated for my poor attention and burnt out repeatedly in my first year and started ruining my mental health. Summer came just at the right time. Then in second year, as my “pacing around my room in halls/ my house” became “going to bug my flatmates” it was finally evident how short my attention span was. My vocal stimming became more prominent (idk why) but I was still fidgety. Add to that my flatmates saying they don’t really daydream and us running the ‘experiment’ of me writing a list (during a lecture) of every unrelated thoughts or daydream I had and the fact I was always seen as “weird” with no one able to pin point why (I think it’s because my thoughts move faster so I make different and stranger conclusions faster and don’t stop myself making weird inputs to convo) and I hit up google. I’d consider ADHD before but now I was starting to believe it. I was managing, but struggling to keep my life on track. I was late to everything. Ate late because I forgot. Mixed up deadlines (but figured out early on I had the wrong date). Was always on the go just trying to stay afloat, I was still over-compensating my disorganisation by having an emotional attachment to my diary and still hated changes to my daily plans but I couldn’t find the extra time to make up for the fact our work was harder. Whilst most students saw their grades rise as they finally started to revise I saw mine fall as I was already at my coping limit and still spent more time daydreaming at my desk than working.

I knew I wouldn’t pass third year. I was at my limit and couldn’t fix my issues no matter how hard I tried. I just couldnt focus. Couldn’t get to bed on time or to lectures on time. All the issues I had growing up were suddenly impacting me because my parents weren’t there to help. I wasn’t close enough to my flatmates from first year for them to notice but it got picked up on in second year and the change of living environment allowed some issues (like leaving my chair and zoning out in conversation or lectures) to be more noticeable to me too.

If someone had noticed the combination of smaller issues and the work I put in to overcome them before uni…a lot of concern for my mental and physical health (and the reasons for those concerns) could have been avoided. And I could’ve grown up not thinking I wasn’t as smart as we thought I’d be and that I was actually pretty stupid and should work hard so I could keep passing but shouldn’t bother aspiring to achieve anything impressive. My uni course and career choice were made on those assumptions and I’m lucky I let myself risk applying for the course I thought would be too hard for me. Because it trains for an easy job I decided I could do (but one lecturer insists I’ll get too bored because it’s too easy and now I think that maybe he’s right- I can do more, I just need some help and there’s nothing wrong with that) but it allows gives really good openings to further training for the jobs I actually want. So I haven’t sabotaged myself just yet.

So yeah. I talk (and write) too much but this time it’s needed. ADHD awareness is needed. The stereotype needs to fade away. Because the route I had to take to be diagnosed at uni was painfully expensive and I’m lucky I survived academia this far without failing (like one cousin, also diagnosed at 20/21) or lasting mental health issues (like my other cousin, diagnosed at 18).

[your-brother-crutchie]

Anxiety

Race has terrible anxiety and has a panic attack every time he gets a vague message from Spot. Davey convinces him to tell him the next time he sees him.

Race and Spot met through Davey. They became friends pretty quickly and it didn’t take long for them to start texting each other nightly, spending hours in their respective homes just laughing and smiling over whatever stupid thing the other had said.

This was fine for a little while, however, Race had a pretty severe case of anxiety and when Spot starting messaging him things like:

Spot Conlon: Can we talk?

Before launching into a long winded conversation about how much he loved snakes, it meant that Race had been sent spiralling into a major panic attack for no reason.

Race loved talking with Spot, probably a little too much, he just couldn’t handle the vague and misleading text messages. They sent his anxiety into hyperdrive and Race had had more panic attacks in the couple of weeks that he’d known Spot than he’d had in the whole seven months before hand.

Spot Conlon: Can I ask a question?

Spot Conlon: I have something to tell you

Each of these had sent Spot off on completely mundane tangents but had sent Race on a thirty minute panic attack, each.

It took one of his flatmates to calm him down, usually Davey but occasionally Crutchie. Jack was never allowed anywhere near the situation. Davey, on the other hand, was incredibly good at calming Race down. His logical approach and comforting nature pulled him just slightly ahead of Crutchie’s general sunshine persona.

Pushing door shut behind him, Race heaved a sigh of relief as he slid down the back of it and onto the threadbare carpet. He knew that his friends wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours so he could mope behind the door if he wanted to.

Race loved hanging out with Spot, it was often the best part of his day, but it was extremely tiring trying to hide your crippling anxiety from a boy who wanted to illegally climb fire-escapes for fun. Also, Race refused to disappoint Spot. He was a little too in love with him for that.

Although Race had learnt to accept it, he didn’t exactly want to admit it too often. He certainly couldn’t, for example, admit it to Spot. In the midst of a panic attack, Race had blurted it out to Davey when he asked why he was having so many panic attacks all of a sudden, not even thinking about it yet regretting it afterwards. All Davey ever wanted to do was talk about Race’s little crush and help him get things sorted.

Race didn’t need to talk about it. He knew that, if he told him, Spot would hate him for it and that was enough to know that he would never tell him. Eventually, Race would just learn to get over it.

Lifting himself from the floor and grabbing a random juice carton from the fridge on his way to his bedroom, Race rubbed at his eyes as he scraped his feet along the floor. He knew that he probably shouldn’t take the juice cartons that Davey kept for when Les visited, but he was tired and they were the easiest thing to get his hands on. Also, people really didn’t appreciate how good those small boxes of fruit juice were.

He dropped onto his bed with a sigh, careful not to spill his juice as he placed it carefully on the bedside table and rolled his face into his mattress. Race was just about ready to sleep for a couple of days when he heard his phone go off from where it had fallen on the other end of his bed.

With a loud grumble, Race pulled himself up and onto his stomach to find his phone. He clicked the home button and froze, his breath locking in his throat as he saw Spot’s name come up, along with the words underneath it.

Spot Conlon: Call me

It didn’t take long before Race’s breath was passing through his lungs at about a mile a minute. Although the air kept flooding his lungs, he still felt like he was suffocating and there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it.

Race had dropped his phone immediately, scuttling backwards until his spine was pressed as tightly against the headboard as he could manage. Fingers still tingling as if the phone had sent an electric current through his body, Race shook like a flag in autumn. He couldn’t move. His muscles would not work.

Melting into a puddle of leaves, Race felt his entire body sink against the mattress as he simply lay there, riding it out until the end or until one of his flatmates came home.

Thirty minutes later, Race heard the sound of the front door sliding into its frame. Someone was home early.

There were footsteps in the living room for a second, only pausing once they reached his door before walking away. It was definitely Davey. Whenever Davey came home and Race didn’t come out to meet him, Davey would rattle around in the kitchen for a bit to give him time, coming into his room five minutes later to see if he was okay.

Recently, the answer to that question was a constant, ‘no.’ If he wasn’t pining after Spot, Race was having a panic attack about something that Spot had said.

Eventually, the footsteps returned and Race heard a soft rapping at his door. He wiped at his eyes furiously, only making them redder as he sniffled quickly and called for him to come in. He knew that he shouldn’t but Race didn’t like to appear vulnerable and wanted to hide his panic attack as best he could.

Which was not very well.

Davey pushed the door open slowly, brows folding in on themselves as soon as he saw Race’s face crumble, “Hey, are you okay?” Race knew that Davey knew that he wasn’t but the boy insisted on jumping through the hoops.

Joining him on the bed, Davey slid his arm around Race’s body and held him tightly against his side, calmly quieting the boy’s desperate, gasping breaths. It took a few minutes but, eventually, Race started to calm down. Although his breath still rattled through his lungs, it was not quite so violent.

The dark-haired boy scooped Race’s phone up and glanced quickly at the screen, seeing what Spot had said and allowing a sympathetic glance at his shaking friend, “Do you want me to call him and see what he wants?”

Race nodded quickly, pulling himself up and onto his knees as Davey used the fingerprint slot that Race had added for him to unlock the phone and scroll through the contacts.

As Davey lifted the phone to his ear, Race couldn’t help but think that this could be a mistake. What if Spot blurted something out that only he was meant to hear? What if Spot didn’t want to be friends with him anymore? Although Race would rather be with him, he’d rather be friends than nothing.

“Hello? Spot? It’s Davey. Race is just finishing a Mario Kart game with Jack, yeah, Jack’s home early today. He’ll be done in a second, was it important?”

There was silence for a moment as Race waited for a sign from Davey. Either he would wave him off to the bathroom to finish calming himself down for a minute or two or he would tell him that Spot never wanted to see him again.

Race knew that he was being ridiculous. He hadn’t done anything to make Spot angry but he couldn’t help but worry.

“Oh? That’s fine. I can stay on whilst Race beats Jack?”

Breath leaving him in relief, Race quickly bounded from the bed and into the bathroom down the hall, where he could pat his face dry. He could just hear Davey making idle chit chat as he made sure his breathing sounded normal, smiling slightly as he imagined Spot waiting for him on the other end of the line. Then he frowned as he imagined Spot waiting for him on the other end of the line.

Race hated speaking on the phone. He did it when Spot wanted to but it was one of those things that kind of freaked him out. It was like texting. You could say something and if they didn’t reply, you’d just be left standing there, unable to see their face or how they’d reacted.

Slipping back through from the bathroom, Race nodded to Davey and they cheered together. May as well make the story believable.

“Well, that’s Jack sent to lick his wounds for a few hours. You can have Race now. I’ll see you next week, Spot.” Davey smiled at Race as he passed the phone over to him, raking his eyes over him to make sure he really was okay before leaving him alone.

Race spent a little while making himself comfortable on his bed before taking a deep breath and raising the phone to his ear. He paused when he heard Spot humming, smiling softly as he breathed out, “Spot.”

“Race!” Spot’s enthusiasm was infectious and it didn’t take long before Race had a grin painted across his face in fat strokes of the brush, laughing as Spot just talked through all of the things that were going through his head. Most of which, by the way, revolved around his snakes or whether Race had found someone yet.

Spot had always been obsessed with Race’s love life. He always wanted to know whether Race was talking to anyone or seeing anyone.

“Race, are you playing with your hair?“ Laughter seemed to ring down the phone as Race subconsciously pulled his fingers free from his sandy curls, “Oh my gosh, Race, I can hear how flustered you are and you haven’t said anything! You’re so cute when you’re flustered.”

Spluttering suddenly, Race struggled to pull something to say together in a couple of seconds, “I’m not- um, I’m not flustered.”

Spot was impossible to read and Race hated it. How was Race supposed to distance himself from his feelings when the Brooklyn boy made comments like that? Quite frankly, it was shocking.

After another few minutes of casual chatting and Race trying to shut out any even vaguely flirty comments from Spot, the two boys hung up the phone. Race threw his phone to the other side of his bed again and flopped back onto the pillow from where he’d been sitting rigidly upright.

Looking up when his door creaked open, Race took in Davey slipping through his door and joining him on the bed. The dark-haired boy rolled his eyes as Race twisted to rest his head on his legs. A sigh escaped Race’s lips as he let his eyes drift closed when he felt Davey’s fingers running slowly through his curls.

Davey allowed the quiet to settle for another minute before speaking up, “Race, you’ve got to tell him. It’s not good for you if you have a panic attack every time he texts you.” When Race pulled himself up and away from Davey, the taller boy furrowed his brows and tried to reach out for him, “I know it’s not your fault but if you talk to him, you could ask him to be more careful with his messages so that you don’t get stressed.”

He knew that Davey, ever the diplomat, was, of course, correct but Race would much rather just leave it. He didn’t want Spot to leave because, whether he was willing to admit it or not, Race was a little too in love with him for his own good, “I don’t want him to think I’m dumb.”

Scoffing, Davey reached out and pushed at Race’s shoulder as he struggled to stop himself from laughing, “Race, you met him through me. If he can be friends with a Jewish grey-ace with a superiority complex, I think he can be friends with an anxious Italian.”

Once again, Race knew that he was right. Davey was alway right.

“Thanks, Davey.”

It was only a few days later when Race was at Spot’s apartment. Race had completely blocked out the idea of telling Spot about his anxiety and but was trying to keep it that way as they sat in silence, watching yet another Disney movie.

Although Race was trying to push the idea as far away from his mind as possible, he kept thinking of Davey telling him that Spot wouldn’t hate him for it and wondering about whether he could really do it. Unfortunately, this was only pushing Race further towards actually panicked as he kept glancing at Spot, who, as ever, looked as relaxed as anyone could when hanging upside down from a sofa.

It didn’t take long for Race’s breath to start coming quicker, rattling through his lungs without actually providing him any support. Race still felt like he was suffocating.

After a couple of minutes of this, a quiet moment in the film came along and the only sound running through the apartment was Race’s sharp breathing. Spot glanced across at this moment, frowning when he saw Race and pausing the film, “Race? You okay?”

Race’s face blossomed as the blood ran to his cheeks and his eyes widened drastically. He let his eyes lock with Spot’s before regretting the decision, knowing his terror was visible through his irises when Spot rushed to kneel on the floor in front of him, and trying to sink as far back into the sofa as physically possible.

Flinching violently as soon as he felt Spot’s hand on his knee, Race folded his arms in front of his face to hide himself from Spot trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He wanted to tell Spot. He didn’t want Spot to see it.

“Race? What can I do?” Spot’s voice was soothing but Race couldn’t help but associate with the reason that he was panicking in the first place.

As he sniffled slightly, Race tried desperately not to let on that his breathing was only getting worse as he could feel Spot getting closer, “D- Dav- Dav-ey.”

Race heard Spot leaving and sighed slightly, relaxing his arms so that he could see Spot finding his phone and calling someone through the gaps. He heard Spot asking for Davey and he heard the worry in his voice but he still couldn’t force himself to calm down.

It took about half an hour but, soon, Davey was by his side. Race cuddled into his side, burying his face into the boy’s neck, purely for comfort, as his breathing slowly returned back to normal.

Having never had much physical affection from his family when he was younger, it was really all Race ever craved. It didn’t mean anything but all Race ever wanted was someone to hold him and stroke their fingers through his hair.

When Race was almost asleep, completely wiped out but with his breathing back to normal, he caught Davey gesturing Spot over. The short boy came through from where he had been stood in the kitchen, watching nervously with his thumb nail between his teeth.

Davey gestured for Spot to sit down on the other side of Race before tipping him slightly, until he was cuddled into Spot’s side instead. After all, Race was far too exhausted to care that he was so close to the reason for his problems and the boy that made his blood flutter.

Speaking with his voice soft, so as to not disturb Race too much, Davey smiled tightly at Spot, “Give him a few minutes. I’ll make coffee.”

As Spot nodded, Race could feel his heart pounding in his chest and, suddenly, felt horrible for worrying him. However, he was far too spent to start panicking again, simply having to leave it as he felt Spot’s short fingers running carefully through his curls.

Race stirred when Davey came back, scooting along the sofa so that he was as far away from Spot as possible and accepting the coffee. He missed the connection with Spot already but he didn’t want to scare the boy, he knew that he didn’t really like physical contact anyway, let alone when people were around. It didn’t matter how well Davey knew Spot already, Spot wouldn’t be comfortable with him there. Taking the armchair opposite them, Davey took a long sip of his coffee before nodding at Race.

Waving his hand lightly over his mug, Race tried to prolong the inevitable by distracting himself. He winced at the heat of the steam hitting his palm before turning it over to examine the water droplets that had formed already.

“Race.” Looking up to see Davey nodding at him, Race sighed before setting the coffee mug on the side next to him and turning to face Spot on the sofa. He didn’t want to do it but he was going to have to.

He quickly took a deep breath before locking eyes with Spot and almost whimpering under his intense stare, “Right, um, so. Spot-”

“Yeah?” Spot interrupted him quickly, making Race jump and glance to Davey with a pained expression. He knew that Spot wanted to know but he couldn’t do this if he was going to keep interrupting him.

Sighing before continuing, Race fiddled with his fingers as he muttered the words under his breath, “Um- Davey thinks-”

“Race.” This time it was Davey interrupting him. He knew why but it didn’t make it any easier. If he was going to tell Spot then it had to be because he wanted to and he did want to! It was just a case of actually doing it.

Another sigh passed between Race’s lips before he steeled his expression and turned towards Spot one last time, sitting on his hands to stop himself from looking nervous and fumbling, “Um. I have- I have pretty bad, um, anxiety and, um, when- when you text m-e, it’s, um, it gets really bad.” He knew that he’d done it wrong as soon as he saw Spot’s expression crumble but all that mattered for the moment was that he’d got the words out.

When Spot continued to say nothing, Race started to think that he had, perhaps, ruined everything. He was beginning to panic that Spot was going to kick him out and never see him again until Davey interjected into the silence.

“What Race is trying to say is that, although he does enjoy messaging with you, he would appreciate it if you could consider wording your messages differently. For example, whenever I text with Race, I always make sure to involve the topic that I want to talk about in the question.”

Thankfully, Spot was nodding. He seemed like he was really trying to understand, which gave Race about a second of relief from the looming weight on his lungs, “Of course! I’m so sorry, Race, I didn’t know. If you still want me to message you, I can definitely change how I word things.”

Race couldn’t keep the blush away from his cheeks as Spot shuffled across the sofa to take one of Race’s hands in both of his. Although Race had larger hands and it was a slightly strange fit, all of a sudden it felt like nothing had ever been more comforting. He nodded quickly, not wanting to leave Spot hanging as he glanced up to look into his eyes.

The dark-haired boy sat across from them simply smiled before smirking and standing, taking his empty coffee mug and placing it in the kitchen. On his way back through, Davey paused behind the sofa, “Glad to have been of assistance, boys.” He flicked his eyebrows up at Race before laughing and letting himself silently out of the apartment.

When he had left, Race and Spot returned to cuddling on the sofa and watching the rest of the movie that had been playing before the whole situation had started. Race was barely paying attention to the film as he pushed his nose into the skin of Spot’s neck, smiling as the shorter boy held onto him tighter.

He frowned, however, when Spot leaned forward the pause the movie. Pulling himself up as Spot seemed to position himself across from him once again, Race raked his eyes over his friend for any sign of being uncomfortable with the situation. Spot knew that Race was interested in boys, he thought he was bi but that wasn’t exactly the case (Race had just been trying to keep females a possibility for his family, it hadn’t worked). What worried him was whether Spot had put two and two together and figured out about Race’s feelings.

“I just wish that you’d told me, Antonio.” That surprised Race. Not only because it wasn’t what he was expecting him to say but also because they never used each other’s real names. They just didn’t. Race didn’t particularly mind his first name but it still reminded him of his parents, who were the only people to ever use it. It was jarring to hear it from someone else’s mouth but Race had to admit, he kind of liked the way that Spot stumbled clumsily over the Italian name.

Pulling his knees up to his chest, Race tried to avoid Spot’s gaze as he considered his answer, “I thought you’d hate me.” He considered adding Spot’s first name onto the end before realising halfway through that he didn’t even know it.

He vowed to figure it out by the end of the week.

Spot merely laughed, pulling Race towards him again and squeezing him in a tight hug, “Oh, come on, Race. I’m friends with Davey!”

[booksncoffee]

how you get the boy - one

“You usually sleep with more than one girl at the same time?”

“What?” His face mirrored my shocked expression and he began shaking his head. “No, Jesus, no.”

read below // story page

I believed the universe was on my side.

Though saying that after snogging a guy whom I couldn’t remember even if it killed me at Shiloh’s New Year’s party was a bit of an exaggeration, saying that after finding out that Louis was looking for a new roommate wasn’t. As well as finding out that he had recently gotten out of his four years relationship with Beth.

From what I had gathered, they broke up about three weeks ago and only during new year did they finally decide to make it public. They didn’t announce it, no, but Beth unfollowed Louis on Instagram, deleted all of their pictures together and didn’t show up to Shiloh’s party with Louis like she usually did to any other party. Those were more than enough for people – me, particularly – to figure out what went down between those two. Besides, they were hardly seen together anymore.

And as much as I wished I could say that I felt bad about their separation, I couldn’t.

In fact, when I found out about their split, I was overjoyed. Which was totally wrong because no one in her right mind would be thrilled upon hearing that someone was going through a tough time. I knew for a fact that if I were going through a breakup, I wouldn’t want anyone to be happy; I wanted everyone to be sad as well.

Granted, when I heard that Louis was looking for a new flatmate to replace Beth, I was, once again, overjoyed.

Long ago, I had accepted the fact that I would never get to be with Louis. Whenever I saw him, Beth would always be by his side. I had grown to believe that they were a package; if you wanted to hang out with Louis, you would have to hang out with Beth too. I had also believed that perhaps one day when we’re all graduated, those two would be the first ones to get married. So, I kept my feelings for him to myself, certain that there was no way in hell he would be mine.

Not even in my wildest dreams.

But now with Beth out of the equation and with one room in his flat opened for someone, came an opportunity for me to finally get a taste of the forbidden apple, which I didn’t hesitate to grab.  

“I’ve never seen you smile so much,” Shiloh mentioned, a smirk evident on her lips when she caught me smiling at the living room ahead of me.

Louis had told me earlier that he wouldn’t be around for when I moved in and had decided to leave the key under the mat outside his flat. Though I was itching to tell him that it wasn’t safe to put the key there, he sounded like he was in a hurry, so I told him that I would see him later. Which had woken up the butterflies in my stomach when he told me that yes, he would see me later too.  

“’m happy, is all,” I said with a shrug, taking one more box from her hand and putting it down on the floor. “Thank you.”

“S’fine,” Shiloh waved her hands around as she walked towards the couch and flopped herself down. A sigh escaped her lips – probably from how comfortable the couch was – before she opened her mouth and asked, “Hey, what did you tell Nina?”

Nina was my ex-flatmate whom I had lied to before coming here. Instead of telling her that I was going to move in to Louis’ place, I told her that I was moving in with Shiloh who had an extra room in her flat. She was sceptical at first, wondering why would I want to move out all of sudden and why would Shiloh suddenly want a roommate when all these while she’d been living by herself. Safe to say, it took me almost a day to convince her that I wasn’t lying to her when I was, in reality, lying through my gritted teeth.

“Told her I’m moving in with you,” I answered, taking up the space beside Shiloh.

Jaw hanging, her brown eyes widened, “Why do you have to get me involved?”

“Because you’re the first person that came into my mind,” I replied with a shrug.

Shiloh rolled her eyes, pushing her feet up to the coffee table. Just as I scowled at her, another question escaped her lips along with a throaty groan when I pushed her feet down to the floor. “And she believed you?”

“Nina always believes me.” I stated. It wasn’t exactly accurate because there were times when she didn’t, but those times when she did outweighed those when she didn’t. Although I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was using her kindness for my own sake, I also couldn’t shake the excitement bubbling inside of me when the realisation finally dawned on me. I was officially Louis Tomlinson’s new flatmate. Lips pulled into a wide smile, I turned to Shiloh and asked, “Isn’t this place nice?”

Shiloh let her eyes wander around the place, her head nodding in approval every now and then. It was much bigger than my previous flat, which could only fit one couch and a small dining table. This place, on the other hand, could fit more than that.

I was taken aback by how tidy this flat was when I unlocked the door to get inside. I had braced myself for the worst only to realise that I didn’t have to. Everything was put in its place, except for the one cup that was sitting on the coffee table. I could only assume that Louis must have forgotten about it before he up and left in a hurry because there was half of his tea left in the cup still.

“There’s one more box,” Shiloh mumbled, her eyes slowly drooping when she leaned her head against the couch while her hand reached out for one of the many pillows next to her. I felt bad for dragging her with me, but she had insisted on helping and I couldn’t say no to an extra pair of hands. As she brought one pillow up to her chest, hugging it, she mumbled out her words, “Think it’s in the backseat.”

I nodded, though I knew she couldn’t see it with her eyes closed. A smile was plastered across my lips even as I had made my way out of the flat and the cold wind was nipping at my skin. Normally cold weather put a scowl on my face because I was never a lover of this sort of climate, but not this time.

Today was a good day for Tenley Beckworth and nothing could ruin my mood.

While humming to the tune of the song that I had listened to in the car on the way here, I didn’t notice the man walking my way. He was shoving his arms into the sleeves of his jacket, muttering something under his breath about being late again. And since I was too deep in my own thoughts and he was too focused on being quick, neither of us noticed that we were in each other’s ways.

Everything that happened next went by far too quickly for my brain to register it. Only when the box had been knocked out of my arms along with my things in it did I become aware of what was happening. ‘Shit’ automatically made its way past my lips as I bent down to pick those things up, followed by a couple of apologies coming from the man who was also dropping down to his knees to help me.

Even though he was apologising profusely under his breath while picking some of my things up and handing them to me, I could tell that he was somewhat irritated at the hindrance. As much as I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault that he wasn’t looking while walking, I couldn’t say so because I did the same thing. Therefore, I apologised as well, in which he disregarded it with a wave of his hand before he continued to help me.

My cheeks flushed furiously when I noticed that his absurdly large hand hovered over my collection of knickers that had also jumped out of the box when it hit the floor. I quickly snatch them from the floor, stashing them away so he wouldn’t see it. Why I thought it was a good idea to pack my knickers in a box instead of my bags along with my clothes was beyond me. But this definitely wouldn’t happen again.  

Looking up, I was about to tell him that he could go, but words refused to come out of my lips. I wasn’t tongue tied, no, I was just slightly taken aback by the familiar bloke in front of me. And it didn’t take me longer than ten seconds to remember because as soon as a lopsided smile along with a set of dimples was etched onto his face, I knew.

“Ah, you’re Tenley, yeah?” He asked, scratching the back of his neck while fixing the beanie sitting on top of his head.  

A frown found its way up to my forehead and soon enough, a jut of my bottom lip followed. “You know my name.”

“Of course I do,” he answered matter-of-factly like it’s no big deal that he knew my name.

He could’ve fooled me, though, seeing that he had been messing up my name each time I came to The Cup to get my coffee fix in the morning before I started my day. At first, I thought he didn’t get my name, for the coffee shop was crowded and my voice wasn’t loud enough, but when he kept spelling my name the wrong way even when I had spelt it out for him and even when I visited the place everyday, I knew he was just messing with me.

Because of that, Shiloh and I created a nickname for him. One that suited him best out of all the nicknames that existed.

The Jackass.

“I’d love to have a chat with you, love, but I’ve got to run,” he said when I remained silent, the previous grin was still adorning his pink lips. He stood up on his feet then, brushing his palms against his thighs and winking at me before he left me alone on the floor, still trying to register what had just happened.

Seeing that I had never really talked to him, apart from telling him my order and my name which he’d never failed to mess up, I was taken aback by the little nickname he had chosen to use just now. The only person that had ever called me love before was Louis. Though it only happened once and he was drunk at that moment, I could still remember the butterflies that erupted inside my stomach upon hearing the ‘L’ word. I didn’t think I could ever forget that.

“What took you so long?” Shiloh inquired as soon as I stepped inside the flat, closing the door behind with my foot since my hands were full. Holding up my mobile phone, she waved it around in the air and said, “Louis called.”

“He did?” I brightened up instantly at the thought of Louis calling me, possibly wondering if I had settled in. Ever since I told him that I would love to move into his flat, we’d been communicating a lot through text messages and sometimes he would call me to ask if I needed anything or if he needed to get rid of anything before I moved in. It was such a sweet gesture that had gotten me smiling for days.

Noticing that I was struggling with the box, Shiloh walked up to me and lifted the heavy weight from my arms, emitting a relieved sigh from me. Once she had put it down on the floor next to my other boxes, she returned to the couch, this time, not putting her feet up on the coffee table. Good. When she saw that I was checking my mobile, she tutted, “You’re so gone for him, do you know that?”

Glancing through my shoulder, I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out at her, to which she simply replied with a shrug of her shoulders. In spite of the fact that she supported me in nearly everything that I wanted to do, going after Louis was excluded. It had been that way since day one. She constantly reminded me that there were plenty of better blokes out there.

I didn’t believe her; there was no one better than Louis Tomlinson.

Not in the mood to tell her that she’s wrong, which would undoubtedly lead to a petty argument with her, I chose to change the topic. “Remember the Jackass?”

“Yeah,” Shiloh nodded her head though I could tell that she didn’t like the idea of me changing the topic abruptly.

“Ran into him at the hallway,” I replied, picking up the remote control from the coffee table to turn on the telly. I could feel her gaze burning a hole on the side of my face as she waited for me to continue. I, of course, took my sweet time in continuing as I flicked through the channels until she eventually nudged my side with her elbow, urging me to continue. “I think he was late for work or something and get this – he called me love.”

That earned a scoff from Shiloh who then proceeded to muttering the word jackass under her breath. She’d been to The Cup with me a number of times before and although not once had The Jackass messed up her name, she still found him irritating – mostly because I found him irritating so she felt the need to feel same way too. “To think! We used to find him cute!” Shiloh exclaimed, shaking her head as a small laugh escaped her lips. “You used to think he’s cute, said he’s-”

“Hey now,” I held my hands up in front of my chest, stopping her from further embarrassing me. No one should ruin my good day by embarrassing me. “That was all before I found out he’s a jackass.”

“But you still think he’s cute,” she added slyly. I didn't say anything; I simply rolled my eyes because I couldn’t exactly deny the statement. I might have once or twice called him The Cute Jackass in front of Shiloh and that hadn’t slipped out of her memory up to this day. But then again, she had a good memory so I should’ve seen it coming.

“Shut up, Shi.”

“Come to think of it,” Shiloh continued, ignoring my order as she stroked her chin thoughtfully. I got a feeling I wasn’t going to like what she’s going to say next. “He’s cuter than Louis.”

And I was right.

Those four words were enough to elicit a rather dramatic gasp from me who immediately turned to face Shiloh. I furrowed my eyebrows, my lips opening once before closing. Knowing that she didn’t like Louis was one thing, but knowing that she thought The Jackass was better than Louis was another. It took me at least fifteen seconds to regain my composure and to squeak out my words, which only made her laugh. “You did not just say that!”

Patting my thigh, Shiloh nodded her head, a mischievous grin sketching her lips. I knew without a trace of doubt that she loved the fact that she had just succeeded in riling me up. “Oh love, I just did.”

“One day, Shi,” I held up my pointy finger, lips pursing into a thin line, brows furrowing even deeper, “You’re going to change your mind about Louis.”

For a moment, I thought she believed me when I saw her brows furrowing. But I thought wrong. Shaking her head, she said, “I doubt that, Tee.”

&& 

Soon after Shiloh had left, claiming that she had some errands to run, I received another call from Louis. And this time I was able to pick it up, for as soon as I saw his smiling face lighting up the screen of my mobile phone, I stopped what I was doing and answered the call.

“Hey, Tee,” he greeted from the other end of the line and though his voice was muffled by the noise in the background, I could still feel a smile instantly tugging at my mouth. “Have you finished unpacking?”

My eyes automatically darted to the clothes that were mounting on the floor, waiting to be folded and hung in the wardrobe. Thinking that it wouldn’t take long to sort them out, I had chosen to put on the sheets and tidied up the room as well as the living room instead before tackling the clothes that, I was quite certain, wouldn’t fit the wardrobe in front of me.

“Almost there, yeah,” I answered as I rubbed my sore neck. I had nearly forgotten how tiring the process of moving in was. If I had turned down Shiloh’s offer to help, I was certain that I would still be struggling with the boxes.    

A few seconds passed before he finally replied, the noise in the background had lessened, “Fancy Chinese food for dinner?”

If it was possible, my smile widened, making me feel like my face was going to split soon. “That sounds fantastic actually,” I replied, a groan escaping my throat at the idea of having Chinese food for dinner.

“Okay,” he chuckled and the butterflies in my stomach began to stir to life. “I’ll see you at home, Tee.”

“Yes,” I said, my head bobbing up and down regardless the fact that he couldn’t see me. I was surprised to hear how calm and collected my voice was, seeing that my heart was beating so fast at the idea of him coming home to me.

Pull yourself together, Tee.

Once Louis had ended the call after telling me that he would be home in thirty minutes, I quickly jumped off the bed and began sorting out my clothes that had been on the floor for the past one hour. Normally I would colour-code my wardrobe, but when I noticed that I had only ten minutes left to shower and clean up, I decided to do that later.

Besides, it’s not like I was going anywhere.  

True to his words, Louis arrived thirty minutes later. Or maybe, it was thirty-two minutes later.

I was putting on my sweatpants when I heard the front door clicked open and within seconds, I heard his voice calling out my name. Taking one last look at the long mirror ahead of me, I took a deep breath before walking out of the room. Why was I so nervous to face him, I hadn’t a clue. Especially since I saw Louis almost everyday. Perhaps it was because this time, there was no Beth with him. Or perhaps it was because there were just the two of us in this flat and it would be that way for.. Well, for as long as I lived here.

Louis was setting down two bottles of beer on the coffee table when I walked into the living room, hands clasped in front of me. “Oh hey,” he waved with a smile as he noticed that I had came out of my room, prompting me to come forward. Jesus, how could someone still look and smell so good after being out for the rest of the day? Only him. “Beer?”

“Yes please,” I nodded, accepting the beer he was offering to me before taking a seat next to him on the couch. After taking a sip of the cold liquid, I asked, “So, how’s your day?”

“Long.” His answer made me choke on my drink, but I was quick enough to cover it with a cough as he gave me a questioning look. “How’s yours? ’m really sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“It’s fine,” I replied, putting down the beer on the coffee table. “Shiloh helped me.”

“She was here?” He inquired with a kink of his eyebrow. Unlike Shiloh who wasn’t too fond of Louis, he was actually quite fond of her. Whenever he threw a party, he had never failed to invite the both of us. Why Shiloh didn’t like him, I didn’t know.

“She was,” I nodded. When I saw that he still had an apologetic look in his eyes, I pointed at the Chinese food in front of us, “At least you brought some food for me, yeah?”

He nodded, a smile returning to his lips. “Yeah, I did.”

Louis and I were having a rather pleasant dinner until all of sudden the sound of constant thumping interrupted our conversation. What started out as a noise that could be ignored turned into a noise that made me frown. I could hardly hear what Louis was saying for God’s sake.

“What’s that?” I inquired, my eyes darting to the wall, which was the source of the loud sound. As soon as that question escaped my lips, I heard a very loud moan coming from the same place. For the first few seconds, I refused to believe that it was a moan. However, when the noise was repeated every five seconds, I knew that that was, unmistakably, the sound of a girl moaning.

My eyes instinctively looked around for a clock and much to my surprise it was only 10pm, which was considerably early. Neither the time or the thin wall could stop the guy next door, apparently, who was already getting laid.

“That’s Harry for you,” Louis mentioned as he put down his beer and tried his best to keep a straight face.

When the noise got louder, Louis simply chuckled and muttered the word bastard under his breath, shaking his head as he did so. He grabbed the remote control and increased the volume of the telly, which didn’t do much in drowning the noise. I could still hear them – most probably going for the second round.

Ah bollocks.

“Ignore that. He’s just getting back at me.”

I was so close to asking him why when I remembered that Beth used to live here with him. Which meant.. No, I wasn’t going to go there, let alone think of that. Feigning a smile, I nodded my head while an ‘oh’ escaped my agape lips.

“I’ll tell him to stop it,” Louis assured me when he saw – what I could only assume – the discomfort look on my face.

He must have thought I was a prude since that mere noise could make me uncomfortable. But I can assure everyone that I wasn’t. If anyone needed a proof, I had Nina who had to cover her ears with pillows each time I came home with a bloke. Though she told me that she was used to it, she would still knock on the wall and tell me to tone it down. I would, of course, ignore her command.

“S’fine,” I said with a nonchalant shrug, “You don’t have to do that.” If this occurred every night, only then I might have to take up Louis’ offer to tell the lad to stop it. Or, I might tell him myself; besides, I was curious to see how he looked like.

The noise eventually ceased a few minutes later and I couldn’t be any more grateful. Finally, I could hear Louis’ voice clearly. Not that I was even listening to what he was saying.

Whereas my eyes were fixated on his lips that moved rather fascinatingly as he spoke, my mind was elsewhere. Perhaps it was the accent, but I wouldn’t mind hearing him talk for as long as he wanted.

Louis, after all, became talkative when he had alcohol in his system.

With him sipping his beer every now and then and me doing the same thing, I let him talk for hours while I listened to him. He told me about his Christmas break, leaving out the part where he broke up with Beth and he also told me about his twin brothers who had grown up and could walk now. He told me all about his family until eventually, he stopped and apologised for talking too much.

“I need to stop talking,” he said with a chuckle, snapping me out of my trance. “It’s late. You’re probably tired.” I was about to tell him that I wasn’t tired at all – maybe a bit – when he patted my knee and got up from the couch, leaving me alone in the living room as he went into the kitchen to throw the empty beer bottles away.

When he returned, he shot me a glance through his shoulder, his lips pulling into a genuine smile. The one that could wake up the butterflies inside of me within seconds. “Have a good night, Tee.”

My lips reciprocated his smile. “I will,” I gave him a nod, “You too, Lou.”

Another smile was thrown my way before he turned around and made his way to his room. Once he was inside and his door was closed, I went into my room, leaving the door slightly open like I usually did. It bothered Nina how I never closed my door completely and although sometimes she would close it for me, I would always wake up in the middle of the night to open it back. I didn’t like feeling like I was trapped in the room.

I was just about ready to go to sleep after having finished colour-coding my wardrobe when I heard the door being pushed open not so quietly. Seeing that people had always told me that I had a good hearing, even the tiniest sound in the room could be heard by me.

Heart threatening to jump out of my chest, I sat up, my eyes instantly moved to the door that, just as I’d expected, had been opened wider.

Had I not recognised the bloke standing by the door, I would have screamed my lung out, would have woken Louis up from his slumber as well.

“What the fuck are you doing, jackass?” I hissed, startling The Jackass who had just stumbled into the room in nothing but a white t-shirt and a pair of black Calvin Klein briefs. I had to refrain my eyes from looking at anything but his face and if I had to be honest, it was quite difficult.

A crease formed between his brows for a couple of seconds before his lips were slowly being pulled into a lazy smirk. “Ah, why am I not surprised?”

“You haven’t answered my question,” I demanded. My arms were now crossed in front of my chest, my brows furrowing in confusion. How did he get inside?

He rubbed the back of his neck as his eyes looked around the room that most probably looked different than before since I had moved my stuff in here. Then, his eyes found me and he said, “This is my room.”

I must have heard him wrong. This couldn’t be his room because if it were, Louis wouldn’t have let me move in. “What?”

“I mean,” he cleared his throat, “technically, it’s no one’s room-“

“-it’s mine-“

“-but I come here whenever they end up sleeping or refuse to leave my place.”

Quirking a questioning eyebrow at him, I asked, “They?”

He shrugged, “The girls that I slept with.”

My jaw dropped open and my eyes widened. “You usually sleep with more than one girl at the same time?”

“What?” His face mirrored my shocked expression and he began shaking his head. “No, Jesus, no.”

I rolled my eyes at his answer. Somehow, I didn’t find that very convincing, but whether it was true or false, I didn’t care. He was in my room and I needed him to leave. “Well,” I paused, realising that I didn’t know his name. All those trips I had made to The Cup and not once had I bothered to find out his name. I was fine with calling him The Jackass. “This is my room now.”

He muttered something under his breath, rubbing his chin with his hand as he did so. “Okay,” he nodded after a few seconds of silence. Just as he moved towards the door, he glanced through his shoulder and said, “Hey Tenley?”

“What?”

“My name’s Harry, by the way.”

A kink of an eyebrow was the only response I gave to him. That piece of information was useless; I still very much preferred the nickname Shiloh and I gave to him. Seemed more fitting.

Then, just when I thought he had nothing else to say, he stopped and turned around, facing me. A smirk was adorning his lips, dimples indenting both sides of his cheeks. “One more thing,” he held his pointy finger up, the intensity of his smirk told me that I wasn’t going to like what he’s going to say next. “Honest to God, I’ve never pegged you as a lace kind of girl.”

“Fuck off.”

With that being said, he walked out of my room and left the door slightly open just the way I liked it. It wasn’t until he was out of my sight that I finally realised that he was Harry. The bloke who made the thumping noise earlier.

What a jackass.

[jazelock]

It is 11:40 pm as I begin this piece. I wanted to go to bed at least 40 minutes ago, but I knew it would be futile as I am still shaking from... And that is where I hesitate, as I struggle to characterize what exactly it is I am feeling. Anger to some extent. But the bulk of it is this nameless mass of complicated emotion that is making me physically nauseous. I eventually put a name to it in an astonished moment in which I realise I can remember the last few times I have felt exactly like this.

It’s a fairly standard flatmate clash, or perhaps it’s not. I was the one who set up the WiFi and am paying for it. We agreed at the beginning that I was the one who wanted it (as a gamer) and as he did not want to pay for WiFi he did not need as he already had his own mobile hotspot device, I would pay for it myself. This was fine with me. I was also initially fine with allowing him access to the guest WiFi, until I noticed several alarming things.

One, it quickly became clear that there were many things I considered common basic skills and knowledge needed to operate as an adult in the 21st century that he simply did not possess or did not care about acquiring. When he asked me to help him with his homework, in a subject I knew nothing about which I had made quite clear from the beginning, I realised he had no idea how to perform the most basic of queries using a search engine. “What does this word mean?” he asked. I had no idea as it was an economics term I was unfamiliar with. “I don’t know. Look it up on Google.”

“What do I type?”

I blinked. “You can just type the word.”

He could at least follow instructions. But sparing barely a glance for the results, he instead looked at me expectantly. “What does it mean?”

“Did you ask me to sit with you to help you with your homework or to do your homework for you?” I did not say. This was one anecdote of many. Numerous small incidents where he would ask me the most basic of questions, demonstrating a lack of familiarity with the digital world. He locked himself out of his Gmail account and could not recover it. He continued to ask for help searching for the most basic of things, such as the definition of the word “stencil.” He did not understand how Google Docs worked. (”Why is this text appearing?” “That’s your group mate typing.” “I can see what they type?”) I am aware internet literacy is a skill. I have also met several people who needed help performing what I would consider the most basic of queries, although never quite to this extent for people my age. But I never had a stake in those situations. I either helped them or not, and that was the end of that. And it would have been the case as well here, but for other factors.

One of them was his numerous projects that he came up with seemingly whenever a new idea caught his fancy. He wanted to become an internet music celebrity. He wanted to produce a movie. He wanted to open a kava bar. He wanted to start a kava-to-your-door business. Fine. So long as he didn’t try to recruit unwilling people, such as myself, for his projects (which he did and I opted out). But the way he went about things showed a lack of understanding of, well, I hesitate to classify this so broadly but it really seemed that he simply did not understand how the world works. My own understanding of some of these things, I admit, is also rather basic. But for instance, I understand that to import and then sell food and drink, particularly as an official business, one needs licenses. Inspections need to happen. Proper sanitation needs to be ensured, for one, and I’m sure there are other procedures involving taxation, registration, liability. Not to mention all these regulations would perhaps be more strictly enforced in this case given the controversial status of kava. I and other people brought these matters up to him as he expounded the virtues of his endeavor. He did not seem to understand their import. “Ok, but why can’t I just sell drinks to people without a license?”

I, with my own rudimentary understanding of the business world, replied, “It’s illegal. If people found out about your business not being properly licensed, they could report you.”

“I could start with my friends. They wouldn’t report me. And then I could expand from there.”

“Ok, but if you expand, eventually you’re selling to people who aren’t friends, and you’ll need a license then.”

“Would you report me?”

The entirety of the conversation relied on the implicit assumption that he simply would not get a license. There had been talk about how to acquire one early on, but after conversations with other people, he seemed to have come to the conclusion that it was not worth the trouble. And therefore the logical conclusion was to figure out how to proceed without one.

Other less potentially illegal conversations occurred regarding his other projects, not always with me, but thin walls and his insistence on putting most of his conversations on speaker for some reason I can’t fathom made me very aware of many of his doings. They never quite reached the level of raised eyebrows that the kava conversation did, but still revealed a bewildering tendency to push plans forward without any concern for procedure. (I’m sure he would take great offense to this comparison, but it really did bring to mind the behavior of the current occupant of the Oval Office.) He wanted a friend who was a tattoo artist to give him temporary, but intricate, tattoos across his entire torso. She informed him that the designs he wanted would require her to make customised stencils. He said that was fine. She told him her rate would be, I may be misremembering but I seem to recall it was, $50 an hour. At most it was $100 an hour. He then called another friend to complain about how he was being cheated and that, given he was only asking for temporary tattoos not permanent ones, he should not be charged as much as she was asking. In another instance, he invited two people over to talk about the film he wanted to produce and wanted their help with. They were very enthusiastic and asked him if he had written a treatment yet. I watched him stare at them blankly and say, “Well, I only just had the idea this morning.” Things like this.

Alright, but so what? Why should I care? It was in the middle of a conversation with my mother that a thought suddenly occurred to me. You constantly hear about people who aren’t well-versed in the ways of the internet, young jedi, clicking on the wrong links, sending emails to the wrong people. Usually, they are folks of the older persuasion, who did not grow up alongside these technologies and are unaware that an email from a Nigerian prince may in fact not be an email from a Nigerian prince (and that Nigeria is actually a republic). Alright, so people closer in age to myself, such as the flatmate, who appear to somehow be not well acquainted with how the Internet works exist then. Fine. This would not be entirely worrisome on its own. If he clicks a link he should not have clicked, it, I was pretty sure, was extremely unlikely that would affect anything other than his own device.

Given recent dialogues regarding internet piracy however, I remembered something I had read about the liability of the people under whose name WiFi services were registered for the actions of those using their WiFi. Given his penchant for these “projects” of his and his demonstrated willingness to “bend the rules,” as it were in his pursuit of his ambitions, what if he were to use my WiFi to, say, begin advertising an unlicensed kava business? What would be the likelihood of his getting caught? What would be the likelihood of my being liable for his actions, given it was my WiFi he used? Probably not that high. Still, the seed had been planted and it concerned me enough that I began asking around. People who had heard my retelling of the anecdotes recounted above immediately agreed with me. Don’t risk it.

Now I did not mean to go on for so long about what is essentially background for what I’ve been contemplating today. Long-windedness is a habit that dies hard in me. I turned off the guest WiFi. It quickly became clear that he had become quite dependent on it, despite his initial insistence that he was perfectly fine with his hotspot device. He constantly pestered me to turn it back on “just for an hour.” This finally culminated in his offer to pay for half of the monthly fee in exchange for use of it. I was leery of this. At this point, I had become ever more convinced both that he did not know what he was doing when he went online and that he also did not know nor care to learn about the proper and legal ways of moving forward with each project du jour. Also, behind the scenes, other flatmate drama had been occurring that had been making me admittedly less and less inclined to do him any favors and more and more convinced that many of his quirks stemmed from too coddled an upbringing without cognizance of his own privilege. (I won’t get into this as this would become a novel if I did.) I told him no, and that was the end of that, I thought. Even if all of the things I have explained above were not true or were not cause for concern, it was still my right to refuse him access to a service I alone had set up and which we had agreed at the start that he did not want to use (until he decided he did). One could call me a bitch for refusing maybe, but at the end of the day, I was not obliged to allow him WiFi access. (Trivia: Even in 2019, landlords are not required by law to provide internet access to their tenants, as I found out during a prior search for housing. It behooves them to do so, but they’re not required to.) He could set up his own if he wanted to.

Which brings us to today. I receive a text message from him asking to use my WiFi for fifteen minutes to download a movie from iTunes. I don’t see this text message immediately and in the meantime, the texts become more frantic, going from “Do you mind” to “Please” and from “fifteen” to “just five minutes.” When I look at my phone finally, I consider these messages reluctantly. I know what I want to say, but cultural politeness that has been trained into me holds me back from simply refusing. I contemplate simply ignoring the messages as a compromise that really was no compromise and merely avoidance of confrontation, and sigh as I remember I have been trying to be more assertive, as encouraged by many who mean well. I mention out loud to my mother, with whom I am video chatting, the contents of the messages.

“Tell him no,” she immediately responds. I start a little, as this was unexpected from my mother who tends to err on the side of civility and compromise. But bolstered by this validation of my own feelings on the matter, I was already typing and sending, “No.” Well, I thought, setting my phone down. He’ll be displeased and I’ll probably be met with a sulky expression when I head to the bathroom to brush my teeth later, but he did ask if I minded and I did, in fact, mind. I minded quite a lot. My mother has been continuing to speak in the meantime. “You don’t want him to use the WiFi, right? If you tell him yes this time, he’ll do the thing he did before. He’ll take it as permission to keep on asking after that. Head it off at the pass.”

“I know, Mum. I told him no already,” I sigh.

A few minutes later, I look at my phone again and see more text messages. I open the app and read them. My hands begin to shake.

For the next hour and a half, I am engaged in a furious argument via text. He insists he’s the one who does all the cleaning for the apartment (false) as an argument for why my refusing his use of the WiFi is unreasonable. I refute each claim as they come. I don’t wash the floor mats (I do). I don’t wash the floor mats in actual washing machines (I concede this point. I don’t as it seems horribly wasteful to wash a single towel and a bathmat in the washing machine. Hence why I handwash them.). I don’t vacuum the living room (It’s true. I again sweep the old-fashioned way. In large part because the vacuum cleaner is hidden away somewhere in his room at all times. I am not in the habit of wandering into other people’s bedrooms, particularly when they’re of the opposite gender and particularly when they’ve demonstrated that they like to lounge about in just their underwear. Also, he is the only one who uses the living room. I have literally not sat in the living room for any period of time since my first week here, so my contributions to any dust or debris in the living room are only from my passage through it. Meanwhile, he basically lives in the living room, including sleeping there much to my annoyance.). I don’t clean the toilet or the sinks (I do. More than he does, actually.). All of these are touted as reasons for why I should be more gracious, more helpful, and pay him back for being such a good and considerate flatmate. Also why I should smile more. I kid you not.

All the while, my mother is anxiously watching my grim expression, continually asking, “What’s he saying now? What’s he saying now?” When I can muster the words, I give her terse summaries of the messages as they come. I should be grateful as he set up my moving appointment with this guy he knew (Which he kept insisting I use even after I pointed out there were other services I could use for the same price.). I should be grateful as he brings me gifts from Taiwan (Which I specifically told him not to bother with.). I should be grateful to him as he “saved me” from my former living situation (for which my lease had run out anyway by the time I moved here? Hence why I was looking at housing and flatmate ads to begin with?). I should be grateful as he was generously only having me pay a third of the rent (This pissed me off to no end. I never asked him to lower the rent. In fact, the post that he put on Facebook advertising this room listed from the moment I saw it the price I’m paying now. His explanation at the time was because this room is very small and he felt it was not fair to whoever rented it to make them pay half. This room is indeed very small. It is, in fact, 36 square feet smaller than he claimed it was. I don’t mind it; it’s cozy, but this was something he lied and continued to lie about when my mother and I called him out on it.). One after the other for why he should be allowed to sleep with me, oh, I’m sorry, use my WiFi.

I did not idly throw the comment about sex in there as a cheap jibe. Even disregarding my own experiences with sexual assault and multiple instances of being pressured to provide sexual favors, the messages I was reading all brought to mind many many accounts I have read describing the manipulative strategies used by emotional abusers, and even people who have simply been socialised to believe this is an okay way to go about things and never been informed that this behavior was not right. Obviously, my WiFi connection does not reside inside my vagina. They’re in fact not the same thing at all. Is this comparison of his behavior throughout our argument via text to sexual manipulation too far of a stretch then? Perhaps. I’m certainly not the only one who has thought both that his behavior often resembled emotional abuse tactics at least. One of the first things my mother said to me after I had described some of our interactions was, “He sounds like your father.” Something she also observed was, “He sounds very sexist.” Indeed, I had thought this before, but this was quite something coming from my mother who grew up in Taiwan during the 1960s and has found it hard coming to terms with some of the more modern views of what constitutes sexism. She reminds me constantly, “Please lock your door at night. He sounds dangerous.” If he constantly displays this sense of entitlement in every matter, she tells me, who’s to say he won’t or hasn’t already decided that you owe him sex to repay his self-perceived generosity?

Too far? But then again, here was a situation where I believe I have every right to refuse something I own, something I do not owe the other person, something that I can freely give but can choose not to and, in this case, did not want to freely give, regardless of my reasons. And my reasons were: He did not pay for it. I thought it dangerous for me to provide him with it. And I plain just did not want to. So I said no. And he refused to take no for an answer. Not only refused to take no for an answer, but then proceeded to argue with me, using all the classic arguments one hears, well, most frequently in the context of demands for sex. I do all these things for you. I give you gifts. I rescued you. In summary, you should be grateful for all these things I provide and you should show your gratitude. It’s particularly egregious as he began with, “Do you mind,” and ended with the sentiment of “You ungrateful bitch.”

After our argument ended abruptly with him simply refusing to “discuss” the topic further, something he had said more than once throughout the course of the argument and always followed by, “This is silly. Let’s just stop arguing and you let me use your WiFi,” everything was quiet for a good several minutes. I figured out how to download an archive of the conversation and sent it to my mother, who had requested it. She frantically searched for other places for me to live while I tried to calm her down. I could hear him talking to someone on the phone in low tones.

When I next looked at my phone, he had sent me more messages. I grit my teeth and opened them. Sorry for overreacting, they said. Yes, it was my WiFi, and I had a right to restrict access to it. “Well,” I said to my mother. “I’m ever so grateful for his validation.” “He must have started complaining to a parent or somebody,” she guessed. “And they told him he was the one in the wrong.”

I was silent for a few moments. “You don’t think he’s apologising and expecting me to then also apologise and offer him use of the WiFi?”

“Don’t do that.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

I reassure her some more. She is deeply apologetic about everything even though none of it is her fault. We eventually bid each other goodbye and I hang up, sit back, and blow out a breath, trying to calm my racing thoughts. I’m not going to be able to sleep for a good while. There’s a tangle of nausea in my stomach and in my throat, and I spare a moment of irritation for it. It’s due to this thing I’ve had my whole life, a trait my mother shares, which causes us both to feel guilty for even things that we are very obviously not at fault for. It makes us easy to gaslight and it’s something I actively fight against each and every day. But it’s more than that. And an idle stray thought, no, a memory, drifts by.

“Come on; I even bought you roses.”

Vishante kaffas, I think, that’s what it is, and I begin to type.