#and threw it out using a swifer mop | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zzhhbloom · 1 year

Text

demon (or world's best matchmaker?)

≡ᶻᶻ༄ synopsis: a demon from the underworld (read: an owl) has invaded your room. despite your best efforts (involving a lot of running around and deep breaths and textbook projectiles), you resolved to running out of your room after you exhausted your best methods for an exorcism. and unfortunately for you, you ran into hallway crush lee heeseung, who, fortunately for you, was more than willing to assist you in getting your room back.

≡ᶻᶻ༄ genre: heeseung x gn! reader || college!au || acquantainces to friends au || mostly crack and a sprinkle of fluff?

≡ᶻᶻ༄ warnings: cussing and really weird sentence structure that barely make sense im sorry lmao. also y/n is a total scatterbrain and a simp

≡ᶻᶻ༄ word count: ~1.9k

≡ᶻᶻ༄ a/n: i~~~ haven't posted in a while but here we are. a lot of my stories, i'm finding out, are just the most randoms scenarios u can ever imagine translated into a passable reader x [insert character here] fic.

≡ᶻᶻ༄ disclaimer: this does not in any way shape or form represent the real people whose names are mentioned, this is just a deranged kpoppie trying something new :)

“There’s...an owl in my room.”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Yes, that. It sounds exactly like that.”

You were never going to keep your window open ever again.

It had been approximately two (2) months and three (3) days since you moved into the boarding house a block away from your school. Two (2!) months and three (3!!!) days of living on your own for the first time in your life. It was going well, as you had assured your dad that morning. What a naïve fool you were.

Nothing was fine anymore.

Not with the foot-tall demon spawn with bright yellow eyes fluttering around your room as if it owned the place and was looking to clock in after a long day.

You ducked in between your bed and bedside table, praying that it would fly back out the way it came. But after several stretched-out minutes of attempted breathing exercises, you had had enough. You scanned the floor of your room, which was usually pristine but was presently a mess thanks to your frenzied panic. You took hold of your biology textbook, prepared to use it either as a shield or a projectile depending on what the situation called for.

“You can do this,” you hissed at yourself. All you had to do was shoo it back out the window. Simple. “Just think of it as a...a ball. Yeah. A big, easy-to-hit ball. With wings.”

You took three steady breaths. You stood up. You caught sight of it in the corner of your eye, glaring at you with the full force of hell. That was all it took for you to abandon ship without a second thought.

You ran out the door, a silent scream stuck in your throat. You slammed the door behind you on the way out, adrenaline coursing through your veins like ice.

“Are you...okay?”

You looked up at the only other person in the hall at this unholy hour, considerably more sane-looking than you. You knew Lee Heeseung--he was one of the other dozen students that lived in the same boarding house. It was impossible not to notice whenever he walked in a room, much less impossible to avoid looking at him, because JEEPERS did he win the gene pool lottery.

However, at this particular point in the evening, Lee Heeseung was not somebody who you wanted to see you in the middle of the hall wearing the worst pair of pajamas the world had ever seen. So what if you’d only spoken to him a few times? You still wanted to look normal.

“Are you alright?” he repeated. God, how bad did you look?

“Yeah, yeah,” you swallowed, now having to battle through two (2!!!!) completely different shocking situations. Frankly, you felt like a lot like y/n in one of those cringe imagines people write online.

"There's just a..." you gesticulated vaguely in the direction of your closed door. Way to make a new impression. How the hell were you going to explain...THIS.

"Did somebody enter your room?" Heeseung asked apprehensively, lowering his voice to a whisper and pitching forward so you could hear. He made it sound like you were hiding some saucy secret behind those doors.

"Um..yes? In a sense, I guess you could say that--"

Heeseung looked around and reached for a Swifer mop that so conveniently leaned against the wall like a piece of modern art (and, living in a house with a few fine arts students, it might as well could have been). "So someone is in there? Do you know who?"

"Yeah. That's exactly what they sound like."

"I'm sorry?"

"I think it's better if I just..." you took hold of the door knob and held up your textbook-turned-shield. Heeseung took that as a warning signal and tightened his grip on the neon-green floor mop. You swung the door open as quietly as you could.

A swoop of wings and scrapping of talons burst out of nowhere, heading straight for at you.

BAM

You slammed the door shut. You looked up at Heeseung as if to say, "Do you see my problem?"

"Holy shit," he stared at the wood of the closed door before turning to you. "How long were you trapped in there for?"

You shivered. "Way too long."

Heeseung set his jaw, pulling his hood up over his head like it was a helmet that could do anything against a set of very sharp claws. He tightened his grip on the mop.

"You don't need to do this," you said apologetically. "I can ask someone else."

"I doubt any of the housekeepers are up right now," he extended the mop handle to its maximum length, locking it in place with a click. "So unless you'd like to spend the night in the common room and hope to God it's gone by morning..."

You shook your head vigorously, turning to face the door, your knuckles white around its knob. It was like a spider. Better get it out of the house before you lost sight of it. But even spiders were better than an imp from the underworld.

"On the count of three," he whispered to you.

"Slowly," you nodded. "One..."

"Two,"

At your unified whisper of "Three-!", you twisted the knob creaking the door ajar as quietly as you could. Heeseung peaked in over your head.

"It's on the blinds," he whispered. You could feel his breath ruffling your hair. Snap out of it, you hissed at yourself. Deciding to panic about this scandalously close proximity another day, you creaked the door further open.

The owl perched itself rather uncomfortably on the blinds above your open window. It had its head tucked underneath one wing but looked relatively unharmed. You noted, with immense relief, that your room was also in a better state than you imagined. You guessed it hadn't really done much while you were out except to fly around in a confused circle, and you had been the one at fault for recreating a crime scene.

"It's right there," you hissed at it, gesturing at the wide-open window half a foot away from its talons.

The owl untucked its head and gave you a steely glare. You let out something that sounded a little like "meep!" and held up the textbook up to your face. Psh. Like you could scare it away with diagrams of cell membranes and respiration cycles.

"Let me try," Heeseung stepped in front of you, taking the door knob from your hand and pushing it open micrometer by micrometer. You stared at the owl from under his arm. It stared back at you. Everything about it was unflinching.

Heeseung took a slow, cautious step into the thresholds of your room, holding the mop at the ready. (Some part of your schoolgirl mind was screaming at the fact that the infamous hallway crush Lee Heeseung was in your bedroom!!)

You fell into silent step behind him, clutching your own weak excuse for a weapon and closing the door behind you. The last thing any one of you wanted was to have the owl fly out into the hall and wake up everyone in the house (and risk getting kicked out now that you've finally made contact with Lee Heeseung. Of course that's not what was really important).

The two of you crossed the room, holding your breath and freezing up your joints whenever the owl so much as blinked. At one point, it stretched its neck to an unnatural length and lifted its wings. Heeseung took an instinctive step back, nearly knocking you over. And like in all those cliché y/n moments, you would have promptly fell over on your behind if you hadn't caught hold of the back of his hoodie. Thankfully, Heeseung wasn't as much of a klutz as you were, and he braced himself to keep you both from falling over, reaching an arm back to steady you if you needed it.

The owl was so close now. Heeseung extended the Swifer's mop end. Slowly, carefully, he lifted it until it was inches away from the owl's talons. It flapped its wings and your heart almost stopped permanently.

"Hey, buddy," Heeseung murmured soothingly in a voice that would have put babies to sleep in seconds. He poked the mop carefully against the bird's scaly talons of death. "Need a ride outta here?"

Somehow, the owl decided it quite liked this human with a weird stick it was shoving in its face. It shifted its weight onto the stick, offering one, slow, inquisitive blink.

You pinched the corner of Heeseung's hoodie, ready to pull him backwards to safety or offer him as a sacrificial offering depending again on what the situation called for. You needed to be ready for anything.

Soon, he began to lift the Feathered Thing with Eyes of the Highest Hatred away from the blinds. Slowly, carefully, steadily, hushing soothing nothings all the way. You knew it was meant for the bird but damn, was it working a little too well.

The mop was now low enough that all the owl had to do was turn around and fly out. But it kept its gaze fixedly on the two of you, as if two humans had gone and flown into its bedroom.

"Don't you dare fly at me," you told those all-seeing eyes.

"You heard them," Heeseung warned, voice slow and deep as he slowly inched the mop--and its passenger--out the gaping window. "Don't. You dare. Fly."

The mop was now hanging a foot outside the window. You wondered how the scene would have looked like to a passerby below--a bright green Swifer mop poking out of an open third-story window at a ridiculous hour with--heaven help them--an OWL perched ever so precariously atop it.

The owl stared at the two of you, as if to say "What now?". The two of you stared right back at it, unflinching.

A stale eternity passed. Dust particles could have been heard resting lightly on the tabletop.

Then, without warning, Heeseung shook the mop vigorously, sparing no profanity in exclaiming, "Good fucking night to you, sir!"

The owl flew majestically off into the night as if it hadn't just been thrown off a mop head. You ran to the window and slammed it shut. You didn't realize you were laughing until you tried to say something and choked on the words. Heeseung was laughing, too, pulling his hood back and looking up at the Swifer in equal parts disbelief and reverence.

"I ca't believe that worked," you managed in between bouts of laughter.

"This is going on my list of greatest life achievements for sure."

"You could start a business."

"Of throwing owls out of windows?"

"Oh, for sure," you pointed at the Swifer. "You could even get sponsored by them."

Heeseung laughed, and your face warmed. "Would you testify to the quality of my services as my first client?"

"Sure," you piped. "Cute, extremely efficient, but nearly threw the mop out the window. I demand 5% of the profit, by the way."

Heeseung was still hung up on the second word you said, a smirk spreading across his face and eyes sparkling. "I should get going. It's late. You probably want to fix up." He waved at the crumpled sheets and scattered books littered across your little room.

He picked his way through the obstacle of your belongings, turning around at the door to say. "I can't guarantee you 5% of my smashing new start-up," Heeseung went along with the bit. "But how about we hang out some time instead? Preferably without any feathered wildlife present, if that's...cool with you?"

You were laughing a lot today. "Yeah, yeah," you leaned against the door frame. Maybe that owl wasn't such a demon after all. "I'd really like that."

---------------------------

bonus: From the trees, the owl watched the exchange between the two humans happen with a smug expression. Or at least, as smug as an expression an owl can muster.

Mission accomplished. With a triumphant "whooo!" it pushed off from the branch and flew off into the night.

66 notes · View notes