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#and until then i need to focus and keep up with my classes and work

cowboyjen68 · 2 days

Note

Hello Cowboy Jen! I was wondering if you had any advice for me

Here’s the situation- I’m a young lesbian (I’ll be 17 going into college) and I’m going to study geology. I’m assuming my classes and later on my work environments are going to be mostly men since geology is a male-dominated field. Any advice for being in spaces without very many women? And picking a different field’s not a very good option either, geology’s been my obsession since I was five and I doubt I could give any other field as much attention and focus.

When I was DEAD SET on being in the DNR or a Forest Ranger or some kind of Park worker I was in my tweens and early teens. I loved the idea of working with people and animals and outside and getting to use my hands and my knowledge of land and history. Then some Jack Ass at the Corps of Engineers station I volunteered at told me women couldn't really do the job right and it was too dangerous and I lost confidence. I stopped going and didn't reapply for the Mayor's Youth Parks program I had worked at for two years. I just left the idea behind. I see now all the older women park rangers that are around and read stories of women like my current boss who was a naturalist for years in our county. I work at a nature center almost entirely staffed by strong women with the exception of the CEO, the marketing guy and one outreach guy. If I had seen any of these women in my teens i would have said "heck yeah women can do this".

You are going to be that leader, that beacon. That is a thought to keep in your pocket on hard days.

The truth about working with men is, in general, they don't really care and they kinda just feel awkward. They lack social skills around women so they end up saying the dumbest stuff. I am not saying men can't be total pains in the ass or feel threatened by you being around, they absolutely can. At the end of the day we are all human and women are 50% of the population so at some point they have dealt with women in class or at a job.

Mostly just start off with giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. Saying stupid stuff to try and be funny is not the same as harassment or hate. If you don't feel offended or insulted or threatened don't try feel like you are because you think you are supposed to be.

Look them in the eye, do listen to those who have good things to share, teach or discuss. Don't dismiss men for being men. Just as many humans, they want to share what they know and tell you what they have learned. I have been taught so much by the men I work with at the farm but I had to tell myself to listen and not just paint them in my brain as being bossy or mansplaining.

Don't shy away from questions when you need help. Ask when you need to ask and thank them for helping when they do. If you are interrupted by them say "I am not finished, please wait your turn" or something similar. Stand up for your right to share what you know or to get more information when you require it.

Basically, think of men as neutrally as possible until one proves he is to be avoided or ignored. Listen to your gut if you feel unsafe or degraded and keep notes on that behavior. If you must, tell your professor or a dept head if you feel like the bad actor will continue or possible endanger you.

Once you learn your trade you can recruit other women and share your love of your job/degree and some day it will not be more men than women around you!

#trades #women #on the job #careers #college

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taibhsearachd · 1 year

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...ngl, the fact that ADD and ADHD got condensed into ADHD when the hyperactivity specifically is part of the reason so many girls were simply not diagnosed drives me up the wall.

It's not that the whole name isn't bullshit, because it is. It describes the way people outside of our experience perceive us, as opposed to the difficulties that are part of our lived experience. Even from an outside standpoint, it's recognizable that "deficit" is not always the issue with our attention... but that's beside the point.

When psychiatrists noticed that ADD and ADHD were basically the same thing... they chose to favor the typical male presentation in the literal naming of the condition, and in doing so condemned a generation of girls (and other afab people) to suffer through being told they're so smart, they just don't apply themselves enough, that it's a personal failing they can't regularly turn in homework, that they're lazy for waiting until the last minute to work on an assignment... because those girls weren't hyperactive. Those girls just kind of drifted off and daydreamed in classes. Those girls doodled or wrote stories all through their school years, and functioned measurably worse when a teacher noticed they were doing that and tried to stop them. Those girls are now so many of my adult friends who are now being diagnosed with ADHD as adults, because the hyperactive part of the diagnosis almost solely applies to children (CHILDREN, when, I might note, this is a lifelong condition) who are socialized male.

We need a whole other name for the condition, because attention deficit is not our problem at all. But my god, the hyperactivity part actually ruined my life for so many years, because I had no way to explain to my dad why it physically hurt me to be bored, why I had to read or write or doodle in class in order to keep my focus, why I excelled in tests but failed at homework so my grades sucked because of that. No one even considered I might have ADHD, all through my childhood, but earlier this year I had the opportunity to go through all my grade school reports, and they could not be MORE CLEARLY talking about a child with ADHD. "Pleasure to have in class", "assignments not complete", "does not pay attention in class", "Birdie is a highly intelligent child with specific and unique needs" (I would LOVE more follow-up on that one, from third grade, do not have it). But I was a quiet and reserved child, so obviously I couldn't have ADHD.

I'm legitimately angry about it in retrospect. I went off my Adderall for a couple months recently, as an adult who only started taking Adderall as an adult, and it completely fucked up my ability to function. For years I was just out there as a teenager struggling through high school and college entirely unmedicated because as a child I was too withdrawn to be diagnosed. Fucking wild and also infuriating.

#adhd #neurodivergency

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starsstuddedsky · 8 months

Text

Persimmon Problems

jaemin x reader

summary: fantasy crushes are all fun and games until it stops being a fantasy and he’s really talking to you. but what are you supposed to do when he invades every part of your life?

genre: fluff, angst, university au, non idol au, he’s not a frat boy but he’s basically a frat boy, inaccurate depictions of student council, I don’t actually know what this is

warnings: swearing, drinking, implied sex (it’s pg-13), lmk if I missed any

wc: 18.3k (oops)

a/n: ahahaha remember that jaemin dream… yeah. anyways so I’ve looked at this for so long that I don’t even know what this is anymore, all I know is that I can’t keep working on it. also I still don't know what a persimmon tastes like so.. yeah. I really wanted to try one but if this stays in my drafts any longer I will go insane. I hope you all enjoy!!!! as always I'd love to hear what you think :)

You’ve never had persimmon before but you think maybe it’s the best word to describe Na Jaemin. He is a persimmon in your palm, an unknown flavor to be discovered if you dare to bite. It doesn’t help that he chose to wear orange today, the sweater a shade away from pink.

There’s a pinch at your side. “You’re staring again.”

You glare at Renjun, who doesn’t bother to look up from his laptop, working on the graphic for the student council. “Was not.”

“Whatever,” he says. “Just don’t let the pretty boy distract you from paying attention because I needed to finish this yesterday.”

“The only one distracting me is you, and you aren’t pretty.” You pretend his silence is agreement instead of him trying to force you to take notes as Professor Bae closes up the lecture.

It’s not that you can’t focus around Na Jaemin–your perfect notes at the end of class prove just the opposite. Jaemin simply exists in another world. There is your corner, mostly filled with student council responsibilities and never ending university work, and there is Na Jaemin, honorary member of every frat on campus. Not that you’ve been thinking that much about him, but his Instagram shows up in your recommended often enough for you to know that he goes to parties nearly every weekend. The sliver of overlap in the Venn diagram of your world and his only includes Microbiology on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 4, and that’s enough for you. To fantasize about him from here, a fruit you’ll never have the opportunity to try.

Jaemin starts to turn around and you quickly turn to Renjun, resisting the urge to peek at him out of the corner of your eye. You look at the shapes on Renjun’s computer instead.

“That looks like shit.”

“Trust the process,” he says.

“You spent the entire lecture working on this, you are aware we have a lab where you actually have to do things right?”

“You don’t think you can handle it on your own?”

“Stop trying to bait me into doing all the work.” You close your laptop, standing and stretching. You see Jaemin out of the corner of your eye, a blob of black hair shuffling down the aisle toward the door to the classroom. The orange-pink sweater is actually a cardigan, large cream colored buttons keeping it together. That’s when you realize you’re staring again. Shit.

“Are we eating before lab or do you seriously think you’ll finish that thing in the next thirty minutes?” You ask Renjun, who still hasn’t moved.

“You want to be president when you aren’t even pressuring me into posting the election announcements that were supposed to go out yesterday?”

“I want to eat something before we have to stare into microscopes, so what do you want?” You wonder if he’s focused enough to miss you grabbing his wallet out of his bag.

“Whatever you want is fine and if you use my card it will literally decline.” You curse and toss his wallet back into his backpack.

“Should have taken that class with Chenle, his card never declines.”

“That’s because it’s his parents’ black card.” He finally looks up from his laptop at you. “Are you getting the food or not?”

You open your mouth to say something extremely witty and/or smart, but your stomach rumbles. “I’m going to fire you when I’m president.”

“And who else will put up with your bullshit?” he calls as you walk down the aisle. You prepare a mature response (sticking your tongue out at him), walking backwards. Directly into someone—bouncing off their chest, more specifically.

Hands grab your shoulders before you can react, straightening you before you have a chance to fall. “Woah there.”

“Holy shit, I’m so sorry,” you say as you turn around and find Na Jaemin staring at you. Apologies spill out, even as he smiles at you, a true, knees-to-jelly, threat-to-sunshine smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.

“Sorry,” you repeat. Your brain struggles to diversify its vocabulary with him looking at you, smiling with his eyes in full focus. His eyes are so dark it’s difficult to distinguish between his pupils and his irises. Staring, again, the third time in an hour. Why can’t you be normal around him?

“I was blocking your way out anyway, so it wasn’t all your fault.” He steps back, letting you out of the aisle. At least, giving you the space to do it, since your feet decide not to work. He tilts his head at you, sending your brain into a spiral of predictions, ranging from he’s going to ask you out (rather fantastical) to he’s going to tell you that you have something stuck between your teeth (horribly realistic).

Instead, he says, “You’re YN, right?”

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

His smile widens when you say yes. “Student council vice president, right?”

You don’t trust your voice so you nod.

“I’m Jaemin,” he says, extending his hand for a moment like he wants to shake hands but he pulls away at the last second. “Your picture is on the website.”

“Nice to meet you,” you say, mouth going through the motions on its own since your brain’s whiteboard has been wiped completely clean. The only thing left is NA JAEMIN in giant bold letters, bright red marker and all.

“Yes, it is,” he says. Does he know the effect his smile has on people? Legally it could be considered a weapon. He pauses a moment longer, like he wants to say something else but instead he turns away, walking back to his seat, waving at half the class because of course he does.

You don’t have to turn around to feel Renjun staring at you. You don’t feel like hearing his judgy comments, even when they’re only passed on through his eyes. Whoever said eyes are the window to the soul was right—Renjun’s give you a clear view of the most judgmental person you have ever met. You leave the class without looking back.

Very few places nearby campus sell edible food, and even fewer are ever empty enough to be able to grab food and eat before the three hour lab starts. Today is even worse than normal, as if everyone has chosen to be hungry at the same time as you. You end up at a 7/11, grabbing Takis since they’re the only chips Renjun will eat. You grab an iced tea, tapping your finger in line as you wait. Getting the food was enough of a distraction to keep you from thinking about Jaemin but as you wait for the person in front of you try to get a discount using a coupon that expired three months ago, you go over every millisecond of the interaction–and god, you were so awkward. All you really did was apologize to him, you couldn’t even move. You have got to grow up, stop acting like a middle schooler with a crush.

The cashier finally gives up, giving the person a discount and waving them out. You set your food down and smile at her. She does her best to put a customer service smile back on her face, though you can see the exhaustion. You thank her as profusely as you can.

By the time you make it back to the lecture room, there’s barely five minutes left of break.

“Thank god, I’m starving,” Renjun says, grabbing the bag out of your hands. You keep your iced tea on the side farthest from him, glaring at him until he tilts the bag so that you can reach it too. “We are going to make Donghyuck cook tonight, I need real food.”

“Agreed,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand so you don’t spew hot chip dust everywhere.

“And I took pictures of you embarrassing yourself in front of Jaemin, so please try to replace me as your social media correspondent.” He smiles at you over the purple bag.

“You’re horrible, has anyone ever told you that?”

“Music to my ears, sweetheart.”

Unfortunately, Renjun’s graphic does look good, though still not good enough to warrant how much time he spent on it. The messy shapes don’t look half as bad when they’re the right color, and all the information is listed (not in Comic Sans, though it’s only a matter of time before he tries to use it again. You have yet to find out if he actually likes the font or just wants to be annoying). He posts it an hour after the lab, which wasn’t half bad. Your percent error was under 50% for once.

It’s a Friday morning, no classes since your university actually listened to the student requests for a three day weekend, which the student council (you) takes full credit for. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you are responsibility free. Instead you sit in cheap plastic chairs rented from the events and planning committee and under a tent that’s in serious danger of blowing away.

You cling to your ball cap, NCIT STUDENT COUNCIL embroidered on the front. The papers in front of you whip around, the weights on top of them holding steady. At least it isn’t raining, though the thick clouds overhead get darker every minute.

Realistically, there’s no reason for you to be here. All the information about running for student council is posted online and with over 30,000 students, only a small portion of the student body actually care—none of whom are walking around campus at 11 in the morning on a Friday. You pull the blanket tighter over your shoulders. Just another fifteen minutes and then Jisung will relieve you. Mark should be the one freezing his ass off since he’s the one that insists on upholding tradition, but as president he takes advantage of avoiding work whenever he can.

Only two and a half months before that privilege is yours. Assuming you are elected, of course, but there’s no real danger in losing that. You’ve been a part of the council since freshman year, appointed as vice president as a sophomore. Few people have more qualifications, and fewer are actually interested in the position. Usually the competition comes from within the cabinet, but none of the rest of the guys have said anything about the running, though that might be because you haven’t shut up about the position since freshman year. Either way, the position is all but yours, and there is absolutely no reason you need to sit here when you could be studying for midterms.

A strong gust of wind blows from in front of you instead of behind and this time you are too slow. Your cap flies off your head, tumbling across the empty quad. You shuffle after it, keeping the blanket wrapped tightly over your shoulders, which helps protect you from the cold winds. Unfortunately, said cold winds don’t stop blowing, and your hat blows faster than you can shuffle. It reaches to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the squad by the time it finally stops.

Moving as fast as you can wrapped up one dry day away from mummification, you try to snatch the cap before it gets blown away again. You bend down to reach for it but a pair of sneakers appear in front of you and a mitten-clad hand grabs it before you can. You stand up and find Jaemin, wearing bright red earmuffs that have a green headband to make it look like a pair of cherries. He holds your hat out, smiling when he sees you (when he recognizes you?).

“What’s wrong? Hat got your tongue?” He waits, with an expectant smile. The boy next to him, wearing more layers than you, shakes his head. “Sorry,” Jaemin says, “bad joke, I know, but I couldn’t help it.”

Even the most lovesick part of you can’t defend him on that one. You take your hat from his outstretched hand, sticking it back on your head when you realize what your hair must look like after crossing the quad with all the wind.

“It’s Jaemin, from microbio,” he says, as if there’s actually a chance you don’t know him.

“Thanks, Jaemin from microbio.”

He flashes a smile that warms you better than any sun. “My pleasure, Vice President.”

“You can just call me YN,” you mumble.

“Where’s the fun in that?” You swear he winks, though maybe it’s the wind blowing in his eyes.

The boy next to him nudges Jaemin with his shoulder, keeping his hands tucked safely in the pockets of his jacket. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

Jaemin rolls his eyes. “This is Jeno, he’s–God, I guess he’s my best friend.” He glances at Jeno, unimpressed. “The position is temporary.”

“Thanks!” Jeno says brightly.

“Jeno, this is the vice president of the student council,” he says.

“YN,” you say, “I’d shake your hand but…” You show your hands, stuck keeping the blanket wrapped around you.

“It’s alright, I lost my gloves, so my hands are stuck here.” Jeno lifts his jacket with his hands in the pockets, just to prove his point.

“Hey, I didn’t get a handshake,” Jaemin says.

“Did you need a handshake?”

He tilts his head, showing off his jawline, not that you’re paying attention to that at all. It simply calls attention to itself, and who are you to ignore a jawline that could have been sculpted by Michelangelo (not the ninja turtle). He must be cold with so much skin exposed.

“I’ll settle for some advice,” Jaemin says. Right, maybe you shouldn’t be comparing his face to famous works of art mid-conversation (save it for the Instagram stalking like everyone else).

“Advice?”

“I was actually looking for you anyway.” Jaemin glances at Jeno before meeting your eyes again. “The student council election is open to anyone, right?”

“The presidency is open to seniors that are enrolled here, but yeah,” you say. “Why?”

He shrugs. “I’m going to apply.”

You blink at him. “For president? Of student council?”

“Yeah,” he says. Jeno shuffles beside him, stuffing his hands impossibly deeper into his pockets.

President… but that’s your position. If it wasn’t for the senior-only rule, you’d already be president. You rose through the ranks, suffered through a vice presidency with Mark to get here–it’s your position.

“Do I apply there?” He asks, pointing at the table you’re supposed to be sitting at.

“The application is online,” you find yourself saying, “you have to submit a resume and go through a qualifying process, and submit your proposals for campaign policies and a whole bunch of other stuff, it’s all on the application information.” You’re about halfway through your own application, though it’s mostly copying and pasting from the document you’ve been working on since you joined student council.

“You can scan the QR code on this blanket, it’ll take you to the application.” You hold it straight, cursing Renjun in your head for being so creative with marketing. You look like an idiot, waiting for him to scan your shoulder.

“Cool,” Jaemin says, pulling out his phone, but instead of scanning the code, he hands it to you, a new contact profile with your name already in it. You glance between the phone and the smiling boy. “Can I ask you if I have any questions?”

Jaemin is asking you for his phone number. To help with his campaign, against you. Your brain works in overdrive, trying to determine how you are supposed to feel. Your heart doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of the internal turmoil. You put your number into his phone and hand it back to him.

“Sure,” you say, even as your brain screams at you not to. “Whatever I can do to help.”

He grins and your brain fully malfunctions, gears popping, cartoon sparks flying. “Thank you, YN.”

“No problem,” you mumble, knowing that’s not true at all even without a functioning brain cell. You should have let him call you vice president when you had the chance–this is so much worse.

“I should go back,” you say, taking a step backward, a gamble considering your history of walking backwards around him. Trying not to linger in Jaemin’s presence is like a planet resisting the pull of gravity to the sun–no matter how hard you try, you can’t beat physics.

But maybe he isn’t the sun because when you take another step, Jaemin takes a step to follow you. Are there stars that revolve around planets? But Jaemin doesn’t revolve around you, he doesn’t even exist in your solar system. Maybe a black hole is a better metaphor, sucking you in from a galaxy over. You should stop making metaphors based on middle school astronomy.

You peer at Jaemin as he continues across the quad, walking leisurely beside you as you shuffle. Jeno trails behind slightly, risking the cold to pull out a phone.

“Are you following me?”

Jaemin looks at you over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows. “You think you’re that special already?” Before you can answer, he laughs. “But, yeah, I am. I can’t leave you all by yourself out here, anything could happen.”

“As opposed to by myself at the table?”

He shrugs. “There’s two chairs. I could sit with you.”

It’s your turn to raise your eyebrows, looking him up and down. He’s got a puffy jacket (bright red, probably to match with the earmuffs) and jeans. “You’d freeze in five minutes.”

“You could–”

“Are we going to Doyoung’s or not?” Jeno calls from behind you.

“Right,” Jaemin says, “I definitely did not forget about that.” He glances at you. “Rain check?”

“I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities for you to keep me company freezing my ass off,” you say, “but seriously, I wouldn’t let you stay anyway.” You reach the table, turning to face him.

Jaemin pouts. “Why not?”

“For starters, I don’t want to be responsible for the hypothermia you’re bound to catch,” you say, “and it’s a student council thing. You’re not a part of the student council.”

“Not yet.”

Right. The standard, crush-threatening-the-dream-you’ve-spent-three-years-working-toward-situation. “Also, no offense, but I barely know you.”

“Offense taken,” Jaemin says, holding a hand over his chest. “We’ve taken half a class together!”

“We’ve spoken twice if you count today!” You say. Does he really not get it? “At the very least it would be awkward.”

“I take full offense to the idea that I could ever be awkward,” Jaemin says. He folds his arms over his chest, eyeing you. “I’ll prove it to you.” Your gut twists, sending off the warning bells, but there’s no way Jaemin is actually flirting with you. He probably hates the idea that someone doesn’t immediately trust him with their heart and soul. He doesn’t need to know that you already do. That’s why there’s simply no way he’s flirting with you–it simply doesn’t make sense.

“Dude, we seriously need to go,” Jeno says. “Doyoung is spam texting.”

Jaemin wiggles his eyebrows at you. “I’ll see you in class.”

“Bye Jaemin,” you say. You watch him walk away with Jeno, throwing his arm over his friend’s shoulders. He doesn’t look back at you.

What just happened?

Jisung approaches so quietly you jump when you turn around and he stands in front of you. “Was that Na Jaemin?”

“Yes–wait, how do you know him?”

Jisung avoids your eyes, turning to watch the pair of boys trudge away. “Renjun talks.”

You’re going to kill him. But first you need to defrost, so you hand the blanket over to Jisung and jump a few times to warm yourself up, trying in vain to make up for the loss.

“What was he doing here?” Jisung asks, wrapping himself so tightly his feet are bound together. One strong push would send him tumbling over, probably unable to get up. If only it was Renjun.

“He wants to be president.”

“Of student council?”

“Apparently.”

“Huh.” Jisung sits back. “Aren’t you supposed to be president?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.” Jisung stares at you.

“Have fun!” You say. The air without Jaemin is so much colder. Maybe your toes have frostbite. “It’s cold!”

Jisung grunts, huddling down and you don’t spare a second look at him. There’s a solid chance he’s texting Renjun already, since your best friend has decided to be a dirty gossip. You walk along the sidewalk and try to tell your heart that no matter how pretty his smile is, Na Jaemin is bad for you. Your heart reminds you that he saved your hat.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket. You pull it out, fully expecting to see a message from Renjun but instead a string of numbers show up. you better save my number :). You stare at your phone until it fades to black, which is why you know the exact moment it starts to snow. Though it’s March and the groundhog didn’t see its shadow, a snowflake falls on your phone, melting quickly. You walk home in the snow, thoughts of Jaemin piling up a snowbank that no plow can clear.

For breakfast on Tuesday morning, you have an untoasted bagel with a side of impending doom. You woke up with the feeling, a knot in your gut that usually only appears before exams or after you drink too much coffee, but today has chosen to warn you of unknown horrors yet to come. It has to be the dream you had, only you forgot it the moment you woke up.

[Bitch #1] You’re just trying to avoid jaemin.

You don’t know why you expected Renjun to support you. Unsurprisingly, he found out about Jaemin’s intent to run for president before you made it back to your apartment, and dedicated an hour to lecturing you over FaceTime, then spent the entire pregame on Saturday side eyeing you.

Jaemin’s message sits at the bottom of your recent texts. He hasn’t sent anything since Friday, though neither have you. You close your phone and try not to think about him, an impossible task. In the end you can’t think of a valid excuse, and go to your morning lecture. It’s one of your favorite classes (world history of medicinal developments 1200-1600) but today your mind drifts, still trying to figure out why today feels so off. Are you forgetting an assignment? You’ve checked the syllabus for all of your classes and the reminders your professors sent out but nothing has slipped past your the list on your planner. You check your outfit after class to see if you put something on backwards but you look fine. By the time you head toward microbio, you’ve resigned yourself to a day of inexplicable anxiety.

You should have trusted your gut.

You take one step into the room and the knot in your gut twists itself into a mess that spells out leave now while you still have the chance.

In your normal spot at the back of the classroom, sitting beside Renjun, sits Jaemin, grinning and waving at you like he’s been sitting there the entire semester.

You walk carefully down the aisle of desks, stopping in front of him. “You’re in my seat.”

Jaemin doesn’t seem to notice Renjun’s snort, opting to smile at you. “Hello YN, it’s nice to see you.”

“Hi Jaemin,” you say, “you’re in my seat.”

He rolls his eyes, sliding his backpack to the side and slipping into the next seat over. “I was just getting to know Renjun.”

You glare at your best friend, sitting beside him. “I’m sure he’s been lovely.” Renjun smiles innocently, turning back to photoshopping a graphic of the student council.

Jaemin pulls out his laptop, sitting leaning back into the chair. Is he planning on sitting here for the whole class?

“What are you doing?” You ask softly. Renjun continues to click around, not even pretending not to eavesdrop.

“I told you, I could never be awkward,” Jaemin says.

“Speak for yourself,” you mutter, shrinking in your seat. Does he really not notice the class staring at you? Okay, maybe staring is an exaggeration, and it’s not the whole class, but the people he normally sits with keep glancing back at you and whispering to each other.

Professor Bae walks in and they turn back to the front, saving you from (more) embarrassment. From the corner of your eye, you watch the boys at your sides—Renjun doesn’t bother to open the notes doc he shares with you, opting for continuing the edit, which you can’t really complain about because it’s the series of posts you asked him to make. Jaemin pulls up a cartoon series, Teen Titans, volume off with the subtitles on.

“Is this what you do every class?” You whisper.

Jaemin looks away from his fake typing for a moment. “She grades for attendance, not participation.”

“Are you even passing this class?”

Jaemin grins. “Sweetheart, I skew the curve.” Just to prove his point, he pauses the bickering superheroes and pulls up the grade review for the class. True to his word, his scores are well above average, rivaling your own. With the exception of Renjun, you haven’t met anyone who’s gotten similar grades.

Jaemin smiles, switching back to the show. He exudes confidence, and why wouldn’t he? Not only hot and popular, he’s smart too, smarter than you—it takes you hours of studying, exam cram sessions, paying attention in class—he doesn’t even hide that he isn’t paying attention, and from his reputation alone, you know he doesn’t spend as much time studying as you. Does he know what he’s getting into with student council? Even the laziest of presidents put in several hours of work a week.

Jaemin laughs at the show. Renjun finally glances at you, raising his eyebrows at Jaemin in a silent question. You shrug, mouthing, I don’t know either. He purses his lips and turns back to photoshop. You’re sure the second Jaemin steps away he’s going to be on your ass again.

Belatedly, you realize you’ve spent far too much of the class thinking about Jaemin. Professor Bae has already moved on from weekly announcements to new topics, meaning you have a date with YouTube review videos tonight. Thank god Professor Bae actually cares about her students and has recorded lectures. You just have to hope you didn’t miss one of the exam hints she only drops during class.

Jaemin and Renjun stay quiet for the rest of the class period, though it does little to help you actually focus. Between Jaemin existing next to you and the inevitability of Renjun’s judgment, it’s hard to stay focused on virus identification. You take half the notes you usually do.

But can you really blame it on them? It’s you that loses focus, you that is distracted by Jaemin beside you when he doesn’t actively try to pull your attention. He may have disrupted the balance of the universe by sitting beside you, but that doesn’t mean you have to fall off the scale.

Professor Bae announces the end of lecture a couple minutes early. You swear you see her raise her eyebrows at you and glance at Jaemin before disappearing into her office for the half hour break before lab. Is it too self-absorbed to wonder if she’s taking things the wrong way? But what is the wrong way? None of it makes any sense except that maybe Jaemin is too stubborn for his own good. Funny how a week ago he didn’t know your name and now you can say he’s ‘too’ something.

“So what do you normally do during break?” Jaemin asks. “Other than bounce off the chest of your roguishly handsome classmates.”

You roll your eyes to keep him from noticing how flustered his comment actually makes you. “Go over the prelab in case someone forgets to do it–”

“I always do it!” Renjun says.

“–but usually get snacks and do homework. Lately Renjun has been doing a lot of student council work during class, but that’s because he doesn’t know how to manage his time.”

“Says the one who asked me to design a scheduler for them.”

“Just because you’re good at Canva doesn’t mean you’re on top of your work.”

Renjun shakes his head. You can tease him all you want, at the end of the day, you know that it doesn’t really matter. The truth is, he just doesn’t need to study as much as you. Sort of like Jaemin, and absolutely nothing like you.

“What do you normally do during break?” You ask.

Jaemin purses his lips. “Well, my lab partner rarely does the prelab, so usually I let him look at mine.” From the row where Jaemin normally sits, a guy in a striped yellow polo glares back at you.

You glance between him and Jaemin, who turns away from his partner to look at you. “Should you go over there?”

“Probably.” He doesn’t make a move to get up, instead tilting his head and smiling at you a little. “You’re very interesting, YN.”

You cough, breaking eye contact to fiddle with the A key on your laptop which is in serious danger of falling off. “Well, your lab partner is probably going to try and inject you with a virus during lab if you don’t go over there.”

Jaemin laughs. “You’re probably right. I’ll talk to you later.” He stands up and glances at Renjun, who finally looks away from his laptop. Jaemin nods at him and flashes a smile at you, showing perfect rows of white teeth, and finally turns around, backpack half open in his hand.

You tear your eyes away from him, turning back to Renjun, who sits with his elbow on the armrest, chin in hand. He softens his eyes and looks up at you. “You’re very interesting, YN.”

“Shut up,” you say, pushing his elbow out from under him, though he doesn’t fall like you wish he would.

He shakes his head. “I do not like that guy.”

“Really?” You frown. “Why?”

“The fact that you’re even asking me that.” He sighs. “He’s just not my favorite type of guy.” He glares at you before you can tease him. “You seem to exclusively be attracted to shitty men, and then I become associated with them through proximity and it’s overall not a fun time for me.”

“Okay first of all, you barely know Jaemin,” you say, “and second of all, nothing’s ever going to happen with him.”

Renjun raises his eyebrows.

“Seriously,” you insist, “he’s literally Jaemin, and I’m… not his type. You can hate him all you want but don’t do it on my behalf.”

Renjun stares at you a little longer. He doesn’t believe you, and he’s probably right not to. But he turns back to his computer and doesn’t argue back.

“I didn’t do the pre lab, though,” Renjun says, “that was a lie.”

“I’m going to kill you and make it look like an accident.”

Jaemin doesn’t show up to class on Thursday. You stare at your phone, the single message in your conversation with him. Curiosity and something bitter boil together, making it impossible to think logically. He acts so friendly around you it would be easy to mistake him for a friend, but it’s not like you don’t have friends. You wouldn’t have a second thought about sending a text like this to Renjun or Donghyuck–but you’ve never felt butterflies when either of them looked at you.

So when your phone dies, you slip it into the pocket of your sweatshirt instead of trying to fight Mark for a charger (ever since “someone” stole one, he’s been overprotective of the cords). It’s movie night anyways, it’s not like you need your phone.

“Wait,” you say, “since when are we watching Endgame?”

“We literally just voted,” Donghyuck says, “You could have tied it for Lilo and Stitch but you weren’t paying attention.” He glares at you.

Mark throws an arm over your shoulders. “It’s all good, YN can just make the popcorn.”

“It’s hitting buttons on a microwave.”

“Oh, would you look at that, the movie’s starting!” Mark says, pushing you off the couch and towards the kitchen of his apartment. You glare at him, but the guys have made you watch Marvel movies enough times that you are glad for the excuse to escape any part of it. It’s bad enough you can hear it from the kitchen.

The shelves in Mark’s apartment are tall enough that he keeps a stool in the kitchen so that he can reach the highest of them. Of course that’s where he keeps his popcorn, so you jump as high as you can, snatching the box. Except you pull a little too hard and the box flies clean out of your hand, your feet slipping out from under you. You tumble to the ground, narrowly avoiding banging your head on the faux marble countertop.

A moment later, Donghyuck appears standing over you, box of popcorn in one hand. “You could have just used the stool.”

“That’s so much work.”

“And yet it keeps you off the floor.” He holds out his free hand and helps you stand. Your tailbone hurts a little but otherwise it seems you dodged major damage.

“You okay?” Chenle shouts.

“Fine,” you shout back. You wonder what the odds are that they’d let you bleed out to finish the movie—probably higher than what you want to calculate. At least Donghyuck is as anti-Endgame as you.

He sets the box on the counter, pulling the plastic off a bag and putting it in the microwave for five minutes. You would’ve just used the popcorn button but Donghyuck insists it tastes better this way. He turns around, leaning against the counter and studying you.

“So,” he says.

You raise your eyebrows. “‘So’ what?”

“So, Jaemin.” Donghyuck stares at you, eyes unreadable. He’s been like this ever since you met him—pulling people apart with his eyes and extracting the most important bits, all with a smile on his face. He knew Shotaro was going to drop out before Shotaro did.

“He’s…” A friend? A crush? The guy you wish would stay out of your life so you could keep daydreaming about him?

“He’s sort of famous,” Donghyuck says. “Or infamous, depending on who you ask.”

“And if I ask you?”

Donghyuck smiles like this is going according to his script. “He’s lots of fun to party with. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like him.”

“But?” You jump when the first piece of popcorn pops.

Donghyuck pins you down with his eyes. “But he isn’t the boyfriend type. I mean, I’m not best friends with the guy, but it’s pretty obvious, and I talked to—”

“Stop.” You hold a hand up. “I know exactly what kind of guy he is, I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m not saying you’re an idiot, I just—”

“Donghyuck, I get it.” You stare back at him. “I really do, but I promise I know what I’m doing.” Okay, maybe that last part is a lie, but you know what you aren’t doing. You don’t expect a single thing from Na Jaemin.

“I heard he’s running for president.”

“Come on,” you say, “you think he can beat me?” Donghyuck raises his eyebrows. He won’t call you out on it, but he doesn’t have to. Your lie doesn’t even convince yourself. Jaemin has it all—grades, good looks, and, most importantly, popularity. Yes, he can beat you. Easily.

“Why are you helping him?”

“Jisung can’t keep his mouth shut, huh?”

“Renjun was actually the one that told me, but that’s not the point,” Donghyuck says.

“He hasn’t even asked for help,” you say, “and it’s not like I’m going to give up. I just…”

“You like him,” Donghyuck says. He raises his eyebrows, waiting for you to try to deny it but you won’t fight a battle that’s already lost. But you won’t admit it either.

“I know what I’m doing.”

Donghyuck chews on his lip for a moment. “Just be careful,” he says, “I do care about you. A little. Just a tiny bit. And from what I know, Jaemin is a good guy, but I don’t want you to get hurt because he isn’t what you want him to be.”

“Gross, stop acting like we’re friends,” you say.

“Never mind, I take it all back,” he says, “and I won’t be your vice president.”

“Too late.” You shrug. “You already signed a contract.”

“Fine, I’ll veto everything you propose.”

“You don’t have the power to do that.”

He tossed his hands up. “What is the point of being vice president?”

You beam at him. “Doing the shit I don’t want to do!”

Donghyuck opens his mouth to argue back but he pauses, sniffing at the air, and that’s when you realize the popcorn has long since stopped popping. Behind Donghyuck, smoke rises.

He curses, pressing the button to open the door only to take a wave of smoke straight in the face. At least the bag isn’t on fire. You laugh as he waved his hand in front of his face, coughing.

“Dude, what is that smell?” Mark shouts from the living room.

You spend half the movie bickering with Donghyuck while trying to get the sharp smoky scent out of Mark’s kitchen. By the time the Avengers have all the infinity stones again and are in the final battle, you are curled up on the floor with a blanket, the popcorn bowl confiscated by Chenle when he realized how much you and Donghyuck ate while making it (it sort of tastes like smoke anyways). Two Marvel movies later, Mark shakes you awake and sends you and the rest of the guys out.

You’re so tired by the time you get home, you plug your phone in and fall asleep. That’s why you don’t see the message until your alarm goes off the next morning.

[Na Jaemin] you busy?

For the past three weeks, you’ve tried meditation. Renjun swears by it, but you’ve seen him lose it over half a quesadilla, so it doesn’t exactly instill confidence in you. Still, you set aside ten minutes every morning to listen to the podcast he sent you. It’s meant to be calming, to connect you with yourself, and usually you do feel better, at least for a few minutes.

You peek at your phone, checking how much time in the lesson is left (3 and a half minutes). No new notifications.

Jaemin’s message gave you a heart attack when you woke up. He sent it at 8:12pm, probably right after your phone died. So seeing his message first thing in the morning woke you up pretty fast. You sent an apology that you definitely didn’t rewrite fifteen times, and now you wait.

But no, you’re meditating right now. Clearing your mind, not thinking about a single thing except the air that floods your lungs, letting your heart beat twice before releasing the air again. You peek your right eye open. No new notifications.

The narration ends and you sigh, laying back on your bed and checking your schedule for the day even though you’ve memorized it. In half an hour you need to be in the library to meet with your study group, then a council meeting, some space for lunch (which will undoubtedly end up crashed by Chenle or Donghyuck), then more homework in the afternoon. Tonight you’re supposed to go to a party thrown by one of Mark’s friends from grad school—depending on whether Renjun can find out if he’s a poli-sci major or not.

You jump when your calendar disappears and the incoming call screen pops up. You stare at Jaemin’s name for a couple seconds before your brain begins to function again, and you slide the button at the bottom of your phone to answer the call.

“Hello?”

“YN,” Jaemin says. His voice is a little deeper than normal, raspy like he just woke up. “I was starting to think you’d blocked me.”

“Sorry, my phone died last night and Mark doesn’t let anyone use his chargers.”

Jaemin laughs, the phone distorting the quality, sounding choppy and un-Jaemin. “Damn, does the student body know he treats his council like this?”

You laugh a little but can’t think of anything else to say. The silence stretches longer as Jaemin doesn’t speak either. The ceiling of your apartment has a constellation of holes, evidence of the former tenant’s antics. You have yet to figure out exactly what it could be—stabbing the ceiling with a broomstick? What does Jaemin’s ceiling look like? He’s so hard to pin down, like the more you get to know him the less he makes sense. He’s the type to have a messy room with clothes tossed everywhere and a bed that’s never made, yet he’s also the type to keep it neat, put up diagrams to match the college aesthetic of studying even if Jaemin himself is allergic to it.

“So,” Jaemin says, apparently realizing you aren’t going to say anything else. “I actually texted last night because I wanted to see you.”

You shove down the butterflies that spring up. “For what?”

“First of all, it’s cruel that you don’t think I’d want to see you just to see you. But also I was gonna ask to go over microbio together because I heard a rumor that Professor Bae talked about the final.”

“Don’t you have a lab partner?”

“Yeah, he’s who told me she talked about it. Unfortunately he’s worse at taking notes than me.” He pauses. “Besides, you’re much cuter.”

“Oh.” The butterflies breach containment, digging like madmen trying to escape your stomach.

“So are you free?”

Despite just checking your schedule, your mind goes blank. You frown, trying to remember what you’d just seen, and thank every deity that might exist that Jaemin can’t see your face right now.

“I’m free after the council meeting. How is 12:30?”

“Damn, council meetings on Fridays,” Jaemin says, “that works though. Meet you in the library?”

“We can use the council room on the third floor,” you say, “no one else will be there.”

“Okay,” Jaemin says, “see you soon, YN.”

“Bye, Jaemin.”

The butterflies have turned into zombies, rotting in your stomach and spoiling the leftover popcorn from last night. It’s just sharing notes. It’s just Jaemin. He’s just a boy from another world. The butterflies groan and demand chocolate.

Council meetings feel a little bit like the Magic School Bus series. The tagline plays in your head: A normal council meeting? With this group? No way!

Some of the blame can be directed towards having such an eclectic group of majors, Mark as the only true political science major. The rest of the group has been adamant about keeping the council safe from political science majors (how Mark doesn’t see the horrors of his classmates you truly don’t know). Another point towards Jaemin, being biochem and pre-med.

Though being a non-poli-sci major doesn’t mean he can handle the presidency. Mark can barely do that. Not that he’s a bad president. Though it sometimes feels like you do all the heavy lifting for him to take credit for, he does work hard. No, Mark’s problem isn’t his leadership—it’s that he doesn’t know when to give up.

The council meeting is long done but he continues to bicker with Donghyuck, who holds the entire student council hostage.

“It’s a proven fact,” Mark says. “How are you arguing with science?”

“Can science tell me what I feel?” Donghyuck folds his arms over his chest. His laptop has faded to black, the meeting notes long forgotten. “This isn’t about facts, it’s about my experience!”

You check your phone. The meeting has already gone over fifteen minutes. Any longer and Jaemin could walk in on a very not-empty room with Mark committing a crime against Donghyuck for saying that Froot Loops have individual flavors. Maybe it’s time to intervene.

“You’re just gaslighting yourself,” Mark says, “it’s not physically possible!”

“Well, you’re not physically possible!”

“That makes negative sense. I’m getting dumber listening to your attempts to argue.”

“Okay,” you say, standing up so quickly your chair falls back. “This isn’t council business anymore. All in favor of concluding the meeting?” According to the official rules, Mark is the only one that can conclude the meeting, but Jisung’s hand flies up, followed quickly by Renjun and Chenle.

“Cool, majority rule,” you say, ignoring the outrage on Mark’s face. Donghyuck pretends to be mad too, but he was only arguing with Mark to piss him off. He’ll probably follow the older boy around just to ruin his day. The two always have some fight going on—you’re convinced the reason Donghyuck agreed to be your vice president (if you win) is just because Mark would hate it.

Jisung leaves first, eager to escape from Donghyuck and Mark. Donghyuck pauses long enough to write a few more summarizing notes on the meeting but catches up to Mark before he can vanish, continuing to pester him about Froot Loops.

“Going home,” Renjun says, “we’re going out tonight, by the way. Turns out Taeyong is an econ major, and also a former frat president.”

“Huh,” Chenle says, “I can’t believe neither Donghyuck or me know him.”

Renjun shrugs. “I need to finish a couple projects since nothing will get done tomorrow.” He grins. “See you guys later.”

“Bye Renjun,” you say, tapping your phone screen to check the notifications.

[Na Jaemin] in the library [Na Jaemin] lost in the library [Na Jaemin] nvm found the stairs

[yn] need me to come find you?

[Na Jaemin] nah i don’t get lost (yes please)

“You’re texting with Jaemin?” Chenle breathes over your shoulder, making you drop your phone. Unfortunately it’s still open, your messages easy to read and Chenle doesn't hesitate to snatch it. At least the rest of the guys left, only Chenle is nosy enough to wonder who you’re texting.

“This is painful,” he announces. He hands the phone back to you. “You could at least add an emoji. Or, like, send more than one sad message.”

“Why?”

Chenle shakes his head. “You are texting the Jaemin, right? Na Jaemin?”

“Is there any other?”

“You’ve got a chance here,” Chenle continues, ignoring your question. “Not many people—well, I’ve actually heard he’s quite experienced but that’s beside the point, because you have a chance and that’s rare.”

“Genuinely, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” You glance at the door, just in case Jaemin appears. Somehow you don’t think you want him overhearing this conversation.

“Okay, look,” Chenle says, “you’re you. Student council, 4.0 GPA, plans to be the next director of the WHO or whatever—”

“That’s not at all what I want.”

“—never a second you aren’t working, and then there’s Jaemin, and sure he’s a STEM major too, but the he’s type that strolls through life, who has things fall into his lap because he’s hot and lucky but you can’t really be mad about it because he’s Jaemin.” He pauses, like that explains everything. But you already know that Jaemin exists in a realm outside your own. Chenle waits a moment longer then shakes his head. “You know what, you’ll figure it out eventually.” He glances at you with a frown. “Maybe.”

“Good bye, Chenle,” you say pointedly.

He moves extra slow, closing his laptop only after spamming the save button. He once forgot to save a spreadsheet after a two hour budgeting session and you think he’s still traumatized. Still, spending a full thirty seconds hitting CTRL + S is excessive even for him—he’s stalling, trying to be as nosy as ever.

“I’m meeting him at the elevator so you can stop stalling,” you say. You hover over the send button, Chenle’s “advice” infecting your brain. You hit send before you can overthink it any more.

[yn] on the way now 👍

Chenle sighs, returning to peeking over your shoulder. “You’re hopeless.”

You grin and give him a thumbs up. “Thanks buddy. If you hurry you can run into him in the elevators.”

Chenle perks up, grabbing his still-open bag and sprinting out the door. You feel a little bad for lying to him, but he was the one that didn’t read Jaemin’s messages closely enough—evident from missing the fact that he’s on his way up the stairs and how Chenle thinks he might actually be flirting with you. You shake your head at the thought.

Just when you reach the doorway to the stairs and wonder if you should meet him in the stairwell, the door flies open. Despite climbing three flights of stairs, Jaemin breathes normally. A different backpack than usual is sling over his back, bright orange, like… well, an orange. (Persimmon, your brain unhelpfully supplies).

“Hi,” he says. “Sorry I’m late.” You wonder how anyone is immune to his smiles. A smile like that robs you of everything irreplaceable and leaves you missing it as soon as it’s gone.

“You’re not late,” you say, showing him the time on your phone as you walk to the council room. “Exactly on time.”

“Oh.” He glances at you, and when you turn your phone back to face you, you understand the awkwardness.

[Chenle] good luck 🤪🤪🤪

[Chenle] have fun with the hottie 🔥🔥🔥

[Chenle] but not too much fun 😼😼

You clear your throat, praying he didn’t get a chance to read all of the messages. “Chenle’s just making fun of my emoji use. Or lack of emoji use.”

Jaemin nods. “I hate to take the side of someone I’ve never met over you, but he might be right.”

“I use a perfectly respectable amount of emojis,” you say. “Besides, I’ve never seen you use any.”

“You’re just going to have to text me more to find out.”

You’ve never been so happy to see the doors to the council room. It’s nothing more than a glorified study room, with a rectangular table that stretches in the middle of the room, eight wooden seats set around it. A giant whiteboard stretches the majority of the back wall. The only truly special part of the room is the projector that hangs from the ceiling, with a screen that needs a button to come down. The walls that line the hallway are glass, along with the doors, so that anyone can see the council discussions, though tucked away in the back corner of the third floor, only the occasional passerby is subject to the bickering.

Jaemin raises his eyebrows and whistles. “This is nice.”

“Don’t lie,” you say. “The only nice thing about it is that we have full access to it whenever we want.” You point to the sign that reads Student Council Members Only. Truthfully, the six of you use it more as a private study room than for actual council work.

“It is nice,” Jaemin says, holding the door open for you. He pauses in front of the whiteboard. Chenle had been sitting closest to it, apparently spending the final thirty minutes of the meeting drawing out different game plans for the basketball club he somehow has time for.

“Chenle,” you explain, “he thinks he’s a part of the Golden State Warriors.”

“How much council work actually gets done in these meetings,” he says teasingly.

“You catch on fast,” you say. “It took me the full first year to realize how incompetent we are.”

“How come?”

“The president just wanted resume padding. He was incredible at sucking up to faculty and making the right people think he was a great leader, but he would send us fresh-terns to pick up condoms and sent Donghyuck with a fake to get drinks once.”

“Fresh-tern?”

“The freshman interns,” you explain, “since the president is the only elected position and the rest of the council is appointed, the only way to get known is through the ‘internship,’ which technically is open to anyone but only freshman are dumb enough to dedicate that much time to a job that does absolutely nothing—like, it doesn’t pay or even guarantee you a spot on the council in the future. It’s all based on whether the president likes you or not.

“Anyway, our president last year was marginally better, and he tried to abolish the seniors-only president rule but couldn’t get it to pass in time, so we ended up with Mark. Not that Mark is a bad president, though council meetings could be half as long if he wouldn’t go on tangents every two minutes.” You stop, realizing how much you’re talking. You’ve come dangerously close to telling him the truth about the presidency. Jaemin says nothing, probably bored. “Anyways, we’ve got a few new initiatives this year but mostly we try to maintain the annual events and keep Mark’s head on his shoulders until he graduates.”

“Sounds like fun,” Jaemin says.

“Sometimes.” You pause. “How’s your application going, by the way?”

He glances at you, smile fading a little. He turns back to the whiteboard, this time studying the fading drawing Renjun made a month ago of a goat fighting Donghyuck. “Still figuring things out. Mostly working on my campaign goals.”

You nod. A part of you wants to press further, learn more about his plans—but because you want to beat him or because it’s Jaemin? Why is it so difficult to think clearly around him?

You sit at the table and open your laptop, pulling out your notes. He sits beside you, scraping the chair against the tile floors until his knee is an inch away from yours. He must not notice the way your breath catches in your throat when he leans closer. A moment later and your brain is invaded by his scent, a clean smell like laundry detergent or body wash.

“It’s organized by subject,” you explain. “Usually I take notes in class and then Renjun reviews and organizes it with keywords and highlighting and this coding system that I don’t really get but he swears by. Either way it works for us.” You show him the keyword that Renjun uses to signify exam hints, combining it with the past class’s date to cross reference the relevant information.

Jaemin lets out a low whistle. “This is crazy.”

“Yeah,” you say, “Renjun puts a lot of time into it. But when we study for exams, it’s worth it.”

“You know Renjun from student council?” He asks, beginning to type a few notes.

“I guess that’s where I met him first,” you say. “But he’s pretty much my best friend. The whole student council is pretty close, way closer than the group Mark came into. He tells us horror stories about how they made the fresh-terms compete just to turn them against each other, though that’s back when it was filled with poli-sci majors.”

“None of you are poli-sci?”

“I’m public health,” you say, “and Mark is poli-sci, but the rest of the guys avoided it. We swore that the next council would be free of the plague of poli-sci majors.”

“You really hate them?”

“They deserve it,” you say. “But also it’s because I made the mistake of dating one last year.” You shudder at the memory.

“Really?” Jaemin looks away from his laptop, staring at you instead.

“Don’t make fun of me,” you whine. “It was a moment of weakness and he confessed to me with cookies.”

“Not making fun,” Jaemin says. “Were the cookies at least homemade?”

“Well, yes.” You shake your head, trying to stop the next bit from coming out. But Jaemin raises his eyebrows and you can’t help it. “He had his ex make them, actually.”

“No!”

“Yeah, and then dumped me for them after, like, two weeks, and the guys are all convinced that he cheated on me with them,” you say. “So, no, I don’t really like poli-sci majors.”

“A good observation,” Jaemin says. His approval makes your cells glow—scientists could discover a new form of bioluminescence from within you.

Jaemin continues to stare at you, eyes full of warmth. It’s so easy to get lost in them, glancing between the pure dark chocolate and fond smile on his lips. The change in light when your laptop screen fades snaps you out of it.

You eye him. “Do you even need these?”

“Nope,” Jaemin says. He grins at you. “Just an excuse to see you.” He turns back to the laptop and continues to copy your notes into his document. You turn around, giving him no chance to see the smile that creeps onto your face. You seriously need to get a grip. Jaemin needs to get a grip and realize that he can’t flirt with you like this, not without completely upsetting the balance of the universe. But even as the world slides sideways, you smile.

“Nothing special.” That’s what Renjun said when you asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday. But March 23rd falls on a Friday this year, and everything snowballed from there.

That’s how you find yourself wearing an outfit even the most lenient parents would dub inappropriate, wearing more body glitter than exists in the state of Utah, taking your fifth shot.

“Sixteen more to go,” Renjun says, patting your back. Why you promised to match him shot for shot, you aren’t quite sure. You had reasoning, at some point. Definitely before the shots.

At least you aren’t alone—Donghyuck curls his lip after his shot, lime slice snatched out of his hand by Mark before he can take it as a chaser. Mark laughs as he grimaces.

“What’s our motto?” Donghyuck shouts.

“Two and three to infinity!” Mark shouts.

“Nobody goes to the hospital!” You shout.

“To the grave!” Renjun shouts.

“Huh, I guess we should have coordinated that,” Donghyuck says. “I was thinking something more like ‘happy birthday Renjun.’”

“Shoulda said something,” you say. You take a step to the couch, the world tilting to the side, though maybe it’s actually you because you stumble into the wall. It holds you up until you make it to the couch, sighing as you reach solid ground. A couple people sit next to you, friends of friends of Renjun whose names you don’t know regardless of the alcohol.

“You’re YN, right?” The girl closer to you says, making you feel a little guilty for having no idea who they are. She beams when you nod. “I live in Apollo Hall, Karina is my RA, she says you aced biochem.”

“Oh, yeah,” you say. “Who do you have?”

“Professor Ahn,” she says.

“He’s good,” you say, “I had him for a different class and he talks off topic all the time but if you visit him in his office hours once, he’ll remember and be more lenient on the research report. I can send you my notes, too, if you want.”

She smiles even wider. “Really?”

You nod, your brain sliding around your skull with the movement—not a good sign, only five shots into the challenge.

The music changes, a Britney Spears song that Donghyuck must have slipped into the rotation. The girl’s friend drags her up to dance before you get the chance to ask for her name.

Dancing sounds like so much fun, until you stand up and realize that you’ve been hydrated too well. Your bladder announces its need for attention much like the maintenance worker that fixed the leak in your shower—loud and last minute.

You push your way through the people crowded at the edge of the room, making your way to the hallway where the bedrooms and, more importantly, bathroom are. You pass by a semi-familiar face flirting with a girl from Renjun’s study group, but your bladder gives no time for your brain to make connections of recognition, let alone time to wave.

Finally, you break the crowd, ignoring the couple making out concerningly close to Donghyuck’s bedroom door (something you like to call “not my problem”). All your focus is on the door to the bathroom, a piece of lined notebook paper taped on with RESTROOM scribbled in marker. Just as you reach for the handle, the door swings inwards.

You might have caught yourself, two or three shots ago. Instead you tumble forward, the floor coming to meet you fast. And then you aren’t.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Jaemin says, laughing. He caught you by the elbows, your face pressed into his chest. He helps you straighten up, though he doesn’t let go of your arms.

“Jaemin.” You grin at him.

He tilts his head. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re pretty,” you say. Jaemin tilts his head and smiles at you. Endearing. Endearing, that Jaemin has an amused expression on his face. Like he is endeared by you. How funny.

But he really is pretty. He must be hot in the leather jacket, loose over his broad shoulders. Yes, those broad shoulders. He’s hot too. But first, he’s pretty. His black hair falls just above his eyes, loosely split down the middle, framing the perfect angles of his face–the perfect line of his nose, gentle curve of his cheekbones, that jawline–and of course those lips. Perfect lips.

Jaemin leans closer. “You’re prettier.”

You burst into laughter, stopping only when you snort. “You almost sound serious.”

Jaemin doesn’t say anything else, still smiling at you, only a couple inches of space between you. Ignoring those lips this close is impossible. They’re the prettiest shade of pink, and he must have put on lip balm–or maybe it’s the lighting–because they glow. What do they feel like? They have to be soft—you’d bet everything in your pocket (if these pants had pockets) he tastes sweet. Like a fruit, a yummy, juicy fruit, dripping with juice, which reminds you—pee.

You push past Jaemin, into the bathroom. “Need to pee.”

He catches his hand on the door before you can close it, frowning a little. “You’re not going to slip and crack your head open?”

“Nope,” you say. “Really need to pee.” He lets go of the door and you slam it shut, using one hand on the counter to steady yourself while you fumble with the lock. After an eternity, you finally get to the toilet, which, despite the number of people crowded in a house of two college guys, isn’t totally disgusting.

Two minutes, an empty bladder, and clean hands later, you push the door open. Your balance has improved just enough for you to feel confident in your ability not to die on the dance floor—and with perfect timing because Break Your Heart by Taio Cruz just started playing. You find Donghyuck in the middle of the room and join him, grinning when he cheers.

Renjun appears halfway through the next song, shots in hand. More of the tequila ends up on the ground than in your stomach by the time you knock it back but Renjun shouts, “Six!” anyways.

Another 2000s hit plays (it’s definitely Chenle’s playlist, which reminds you that you haven’t seen him in a while) and you get Renjun to stay on the dance floor for the full song. It’s hot and sweaty and you wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world.

Donghyuck cheers again, hyping up the people that join your little circle. You turn to see Jeno, wearing a piece of fabric that technically could be called a shirt though it really looks like a hole for his head that’s completely open at the sides except for the ties at the bottom. Beside him, and right next to you, Jaemin grins at you. He throws an arm over your shoulder, pulling you against his side.

“And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh!” You shout along with the song, vaguely aware of the rest of the guys singing along—except for Jaemin, who waits for Ludacris’s verse to come in to rap it word for word.

Renjun drags you away before the next song can start. “Number seven,” he shouts in your ear over the bass.

“What about Donghyuck?” You glance behind you where he starts a full performance, an empty water bottle as a microphone.

Renjun shrugs. “He’ll catch up.”

You watch Renjun struggle to pour the tequila, holding the bottle with two hands off the edge of the counter to get the mouth as close to the paper shot cups as possible. You can’t see how much tequila actually makes it into the cups but it burns its way down, sending your stomach spinning. Only a third of the drinks you are supposed to take with him but you’re already questioning the next round.

Renjun gets dragged away from you by some people you aren’t even sure are actually his friends, but you lose track of him when someone tugs on your hand. Jaemin, again. He lost his jacket at some point, wearing a shirt that matches Jeno’s, showing off his considerable arms. Even in the poor lighting from the strobe lights Donghyuck set up, you can see the definition in his biceps.

Yeah, you’re definitely staring.

Jaemin asks something but you can’t hear him over the music. You step closer, stumbling a little on your own feet. As always, he catches you, arm sliding around your waist.

“How are you doing?” He shouts over the music.

You grab his other forearm to keep yourself from falling over. “I’m so hungry.”

Jaemin leans closer, lips brushing against your ear. “Wanna get out of here?” You raise your eyebrows at him and he grins. “The McDonald’s, across the street?”

“I need French fries,” you say, letting go of his arm and spinning out of his embrace to face the door. He catches you before you can go too far (and fall on your face), looping his elbow through yours.

As soon as the door closes behind you, everything falls silent. Not everything, because you can still hear the bass from inside the house, and cicadas sing, and the highway is close enough to hear the rumbling of engines passing by. But quiet falls in the space between you and Jaemin, a breath waiting to fall free.

He doesn’t let go over your arm, using his other hand to brace the three steps in front of Donghyuck and Renjun’s place. He leans on you as much as you lean on him, magnets stuck to each other, except magnets don’t struggle to stay upright crossing an empty street. Maybe if they could get drunk.

The street light flickers above you, crackling electricity. You can feel Jaemin’s bare arm against yours, firm muscle held taut. You peek at the boy beside you, his head tilted to the sky. Pretty. You won’t say it again for fear of being repetitive, but it’s the right word for this moment. Not just Jaemin, but the chilly night air, the faulty light above you fighting with the neon lights to illuminate your breath. You’ll blame the alcohol in the morning, but tonight it’s all pretty.

Jaemin swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, and he turns to meet your eyes. It’s definitely the alcohol but you don’t look away.

The crosswalk changes to the white man, beeping at you to cross the street. You tear your eyes away from him, settling for clinging to his arm to make it past the striped crosswalk illuminated by headlights.

You’re hardly the only drunk couple at McDonald’s. Jaemin notices you limping a little and drops you off in a booth, stumbling on his own to order. You must have done something dancing, though you don’t remember anything hurting. Your ankle hurts now, so you lean your head into your elbow and watch Jaemin’s back.

The fluorescent lights can’t make him look sickly. They show his arms in their full glory, open sides revealing enough of his body to make you self-conscious. The hint of a farmer’s tan dusts his arms, shoulders just a shade lighter than his forearms. Where did he get that from?

So many questions about him. So much to know. So little you do know but you like him so much it gets so hard to tell. What matters.

Jaemin puts his wallet into his back pocket, turning around and smiling when he meets your gaze. He slides into the seat across from you. “Potatoes are incoming.”

“Do you know what persimmons taste like?”

“What?” His brow furrows, a cute frown that makes you forget what you’d asked.

“Never mind,” you mumble. Opening your mouth any more around him is a dangerous game—you aren’t quite sure what will spill out.

He reaches out to tap his finger on your arm. Like the sun, being in his atmosphere makes everything warmer, his touch boiling your skin. The heat flows through your body, each cell vibrating with the need for something.

“You feeling okay?”

It takes considerable concentration to work past his finger, which has graduated to drawing shapes, and answer him. “Renjun wanted to do twenty-one shots for his birthday but seven is beyond enough.”

Jaemin whistles. “Is Renjun going to survive tonight?”

“Probably not,” you mumble. “That opens up a council position. You could be a good social media person. Your face is pretty enough.”

“Is that the only requirement for student council?” Jaemin asks. “Being pretty?”

“You can’t be a poli-sci major either,” you say, “which you pass. It helps that you’re smart, and kind. I like people that are smart and kind.”

“That’s a low bar,” Jaemin says. “What else do you like?”

“Hm…” Your voice rumbles, a funny feeling in the back of your throat. You hum for a little longer before you remember Jaemin asked you a question. What do you like?

“Sharks. They’re much cooler than dolphins. And potatoes, I love potatoes. I like Renjun. And Donghyuck. And Mark, even though he’s a poli-sci major. I like Chenle and Jisung. They might be my favorite people.” And you. I like you so much I don’t know how to say it.

“What about doctors?” Jaemin leans closer, intertwining his fingers with yours. “Do you like doctors?”

You lift your head up, pouting your lips at him. “Doctors have needles. I don’t like needles.”

Jaemin laughs. “Even if the doctor is super rich?”

“Rich? From taking all my money?” You cry.

“Rich from saving people’s lives,” he says. “Like a neurosurgeon.”

You squint at him, the blurriness of your eyelashes mixing with the blurriness of the alcohol and canceling out until his face becomes clear. “Are you actually pre-med because of Grey’s Anatomy?”

Jaemin looks away, running a hand to the back of his neck. “Maybe.” His biceps are almost enough to distract you from his admission. Almost.

“Oh my god.” You can’t hold back the giggles, trying to cover your mouth with your hand. Tears prick at your eyes and you gasp for breath, stomach twisting the alcohol with the giggles and turning over itself until you aren’t sure if you’re starving or need to throw up.

“It’s a perfectly respectable career!” Jaemin says.

“You want to be Patrick Dempsey?” You say between giggles. “Not even McSteamy?”

“Hey, he’s—wait, you watch it too?”

You shrug. “It’s fun.”

“Then how are you making fun of me!” He cries.

“I didn’t go into medicine because of it!”

Before he can say anything else, the workers shout a number. He glances at the receipt and shoots you a glare without a drop of malice in his eyes and leaves.

Jaemin being silly. Jaemin bickering with you. Hard to believe that even two weeks ago, you never would have believed he watched children’s shows in class and chose his profession because of a soap opera. Jaemin who keeps surprising you, who makes you want to believe that maybe he’s from the same planet as you after all.

He brandishes the brown paper bag in front of him like treasure. What does it matter that you’re grinning because of him and not the golden treats inside?

“For you,” he says, setting the bag in front of you and tilting it on its side so you can reach inside for the fries. “I didn’t know what sauce, so I fought… Okay, maybe flirted with the worker, but the important part is that I got one of each.” He pauses glancing at you. “Which apparently you don’t need.”

“So good,” you say, eating them properly: no sauce, just freshly fried golden perfection. You look up to find Jaemin smiling at you… fondly? Is that what’s in his eyes?

“What?”

He shakes his head. “You’re just cute.”

You stare at him, fry halfway to your mouth. He looks down, the tips of his ears tinted red as he grabs a fry and dips it in honey mustard.

The rest of your time at McDonald’s is dedicated to properly enjoying the French fries and not at all sneaking glances at Jaemin sneaking glances at you. You finish the fries long before the swirly feeling in your stomach goes away. The butterflies must be drunk too.

“Back to Renjun’s?” Jaemin asks, standing up and extending a hand for you to take. The most dangerous handhold of your life. You don’t think twice about taking it.

“Mm, I’m pretty tired,” you say, “and Renjun was pretty adamant about the twenty-one shots thing. If we go back, he won’t let me go until one of us is in the hospital.” Walking is easy when Jaemin lets you lean on his shoulder. Standing just outside the McDonald’s, your shadows stretch ten times as tall as you, the lines between you and Jaemin undefined.

Jaemin raises an eyebrow. “You aren’t worried about him?”

“He swore to send Donghyuck to the grave before him, he’ll be fine,” you say, “plus Jisung is there, sober. They’ll be fine.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be fine when I get home.” You tilt your head up from his shoulder only for him to look down at you, his nose brushing against yours. Your breath catches in your throat, heart pounding. But you don’t move away and neither does he.

“Take me home?”

He doesn’t move for a heartbeat, eyes flickering to your lips. Then he turns his head straight, patting your head with his free hand a couple times. “Okay.”

You whisper directions, a ten minute walk from Renjun’s place. The walk home is considerably less stumbly, your balance recovered halfway through the fries. You cling to Jaemin’s arm anyway, more afraid of letting him go than falling.

The building appears far too quickly, Jaemin pushing open the glass doors and walking you to the elevators. You don’t dare say a word to break the silence as the elevator dings to the third floor. He waits until you reach your door to disentangle himself from you, standing with the tips of his sneakers a millimeter away from yours, catching your hands in his.

“Goodnight, YN,” he says.

No. This isn’t the time for goodnight, not when every atom in your body might explode if he takes a step away. You tighten your fingers around his.

“Do you want to come in?” You ask. “See my apartment?”

He tilts his head, a little frown creasing his brow. “Okay.”

You fumble with your keys, hands shaking when you open the door. Emotions swirl around you, making it difficult to tell the difference between excitement and anxiety, if it exists. Calling the place an apartment is a bit of a stretch. Glorified broom closet is your preferred term–a bed shoved against the far wall with a tiny window next to it, desk tucked in next to it like a puzzle piece without enough space for a chair, a door for your bathroom, directly next to the “kitchen” of a stovetop oven and sink, and a closet that barely fits your coats.

Beyond being tiny, you left the place a mess, second, third, and fourth contenders for outfits strewn on your bed, unwashed dishes in the sink. The entryway is the only space for the two of you to stand together comfortably but you lead Jaemin farther in, balling up the clothes and tossing them into your hamper underneath the bed.

“I don’t normally have company,” you explain.

“It’s okay,” he says, “my room’s a mess too.” He picks up the pink teddy bear from your bed and smiles. “A gift?”

You shake your head. “Bought it myself for surviving sophomore year.” You pull the great white shark out from beneath a blanket. “Freshman year.”

“Cute,” Jaemin says, still looking at the bear.

You follow Jaemin as he wanders the tiny room. He pauses at a framed picture of the student council that sits on your desk. It was a gift from last year’s graduating cabinet, the whole group, president, appointed cabinet, unofficial members, and the fresh-terns, fifteen people in total.

“That one’s my ex,” you say, the word still strange in your mouth. “If you count two weeks as even dating.”

“The one in red?”

You nod.

Jaemin snorts. “I’m way hotter than him.” He sets the picture and turns, and suddenly only a couple inches of space separate him from you. This close, you can see exactly how pretty he is, long eyelashes that cannot be natural, even longer when he stares at his toes instead of meeting your eyes. And, this close, you can see the soft pink of his lips, lower lip jutting out just a tiny bit.

Not drunk, not yet sober, it’s easy to lean a little closer, brush your lips softly against his. The kiss is over before you can think about it.

You open your eyes to Jaemin staring at you, eyes wide, somewhere between disbelief and fear. You open your mouth to apologize but he moves faster, hand coming up to cup your face and pulling you closer until you kiss him again, your hand instinctively catching you against his chest. He links his fingers with your free hand, tugging you even closer to him.

He moves slow at first, a gentle kiss that takes your breath away anyway. He pulls away when the stars flood your brain, smile boyish and sweet. His thumb strokes your cheek into the shape of a heart. Then he slides his hands to the back of your neck, letting go over your other hand to wrap around your waist and pull you against his chest.

Jaemin knows how to kiss. He moves like it’s his last chance, desperate lips telling truths words can’t capture. And you might not have as much experience, but you understand the language of desperation. A never ending chain of fireworks explode within you, pushing you to wrap your arms around his neck, kiss him even harder. Your hands move on their own, tugging at the cloth of his shirt until he leans back, breathing heavily.

“How far you want to go?” He asks, chest rising and falling with each breath. “You know consent is so sexy.”

You laugh, giddiness making it difficult to think. “You have a condom?”

Jaemin grins, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet. He slips the shiny packet out, tossing his wallet to the floor along with his shirt. He gives you a proper amount of time to ogle his chest before tugging you against him again, your heart pounding so hard against him he must feel it.

He tilts your head towards his until his lips brush against yours, and when he speaks, you feel every word. “Now where were we?”

[Na Jaemin] sorry I had to go :( [Na Jaemin] wish I could have been there when you woke up [Na Jaemin] but! I have a surprise [Na Jaemin] [image attached] [Na Jaemin] see you in the morning <3

You blink at the message, a picture of him wearing a fuzzy headband in the middle of his skincare routine. Your head pounds a little, but otherwise your hangover isn’t too bad. Definitely not the worst it’s ever been.

No, the strange feeling in your stomach is something else. Last night is burned into your memory, every move, every touch. Jaemin, who you fell asleep beside, though the timestamp on the texts show he didn’t stay much longer after. Not that you expected him to. It’s Jaemin, you remind your traitorous heart. No matter how much he flirts, no matter what he did drunk, he was never yours.

Your phone rings, but it isn’t Jaemin.

“Hey,” Renjun says.

“You sound awful,” you say, throat aching.

“You’re one to talk,” Renjun says, “and you didn’t even get to double digits. Donghyuck out-drank you.”

“And how’s Donghyuck doing?”

“Throwing up in the shower, it sounds like.”

You laugh, the motion, sending your stomach spinning. “Happy birthday Renjun.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “I actually did call for a reason.”

“I am not helping with clean up,” you say, “Chenle swore he’d do all of it since he bailed on set up.”

“Not that,” Renjun says. “I’ll be over as soon as I can walk without passing out.” He hangs up, leaving you to frown at the empty screen.

Well, considering how late he got back, Jaemin probably won't be awake any time soon. You need to shower and rehydrate and try to convince your stomach to take something—and with how Renjun sounded over the phone, it seems like you’ll have plenty of time.

An hour later, slightly burnt toast, and post-Advil, the headache is mostly gone. Your stomach still twists at the thought of Jaemin. You jump at the doorbell but find Renjun wearing a mismatched sweatsuit and his bright orange crocs, glasses nearly sliding off the bridge of his nose. He wears the hood of his sweatshirt up but you can see tufts sticking up.

“God, did you shower?” You catch a whiff as he passes by, reeking of tequila.

“I was serious about coming over as soon as possible.” He groans, collapsing on your bed. “I think I maybe came over too early though. Might need to throw up.”

“Do you want toast?” You offer.

He glares at you. “Just sit.” Renjun rarely speaks with patience but today he seems extra short on it. Maybe because of the hangover, but the way he glares at the carpet before turning to look at you makes you wonder if something else is wrong. His eyes soften a little when he meets your eyes, his frown lightening just barely.

“I really wish I didn’t have to tell you this,” he begins. “Did you go out with Jaemin last night?”

“He… took me home,” you say. “What’s wrong Renjun?”

“Last night—well—this morning, I met some guys from Sigma Nu, who are friends with Jeno and Jaemin,” he says, “who were talking about how Jaemin is going to be president. About how he’s messing around with the frontrunner, trying to distract them or fuck around, trying to take the presidency.” He falls quiet, studying your face.

“He wouldn’t.” Your voice feels so small.

He wouldn’t, you said, but you can’t even convince yourself. Your heart flounders, drowning in a lake of its own creation, choking on fantasies. Your brain takes control in the chaos, gears turning despite the crashing waves. Facts don’t need oxygen.

1) Jaemin approached you about the presidency first

2) he pretended not to know you were running

3) he’s known for hooking up with anyone

4) he never belonged in your world

The conclusion is obvious, a conclusion you could have come to much sooner if you weren’t too busy getting swept off your feet by his easy flirting and sweet smile. Though your heart doesn’t want to believe it, it makes too much sense. So much more sense than the hope you were stupid enough to believe in. Jaemin isn’t that type. How many of your friends told you that? How many times did you tell yourself that? But you let him hurt you anyway because he held your hand and called you cute. How quickly a fruit can rot when it sits in the palm of your hand.

Jaemin doesn’t exist a universe away–he lives in your world, worse than a cliche. The type of boy that made you want to believe in him, even when you knew better from the start, and maybe that’s the worst part. He never hid who he was, what he wanted. It’s you that wanted more, that believed he could want something more. How pitiful.

“I’m sorry,” Renjun says softly. “I wanted him to be different.”

“Did you? Because everyone was telling me about how I needed to be careful, protect myself, not get hurt over him. Did any of you consider that I didn’t ever expect anything from him?” You shake your head. “No, you all thought poor little YN, getting their feet swept out from under themself over a boy that doesn’t give a shit about them? A boy that’s actively trying to stop them from achieving a dream they’ve had since they started college? Well, guess what? You all were right. Congratulations.” You bite your lip trying to hold back the tears but it’s too late.

“I’m sorry,” Renjun repeats. He pats your arm, looking away when you swipe at your eyes. He waits for you to take a shaky breath, hand on your arm. You grab the teddy bear, trying not to hear Jaemin calling it cute.

“I slept with him.” The admission burns its way up your throat. “Last night.” You sigh. “You don't have to tell me I’m an idiot.”

“Okay, I wasn’t going to say that,” Renjun throws his arm over your shoulders. “Though I’m kind of regretting sitting on the bed.” He scoots a little forward but squeezes your shoulder. “You’re going to do things you regret, there’s no stopping it.”

“Why do you always have to be right? Why am I exclusively attracted to shitty men?” Your chin digs into the innocent bear, jaw tightening. “Why can’t I just like a boy that likes me?”

“Do you think maybe you liked him too much?” Renjun asks gently. “Like maybe you liked the idea of him more than Jaemin himself.” He pauses, squeezing your arm. “Don’t let a boy that isn’t real hurt you.”

You lean into his touch, resting your head on his shoulder. “But he was real. Sweeter than persimmon. Like a strawberry. Or a mango.”

“Okay, I’m not understanding.”

“I thought he was a persimmon, a magic fruit I could imagine tasting sweet or sour or tart but he’s real and even though his flavor isn’t a mystery, it’s better than what I could have imagined. Like taking a bite of a pineapple and it’s the best pineapple you’ve ever had, juicy and sweet.”

“Okay first of all, that’s a terrible metaphor, please stop talking about how he tastes or I will throw up,” Renjun says. “Also persimmons are real.”

“I know that,” you snap, “but I’ve never had one, so they’re magic to me.” You stare ahead, grateful Renjun knows when you just need a little bit of time to work up the courage to say what you need to say. “I’m saying you are right. I didn’t really like him, not at first. But it’s worse than that because when I did get to know him, it was so much better. He wasn’t a dream, he was a boy who watches Grey’s Anatomy and does skincare even after a night of partying.

“I know it makes more sense, that his flirting wasn’t real, that he was never really interested in me. But nothing real about him makes sense, and I want to believe in him, still.” You purse your lips. “Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“You really liked him,” Renjun says, “that won’t just go away.”

“That would be too easy,” you mutter.

Renjun laughs. “You’re going to be fine. There are so many better men.”

“That’s what you said last time,” you say.

“And I was right,” Renjun says, “Jaemin is better than last time. Marginally. At least he isn’t a poli-sci major.”

You snort.

“See, you’re already laughing at him.” Renjun pushes you off his shoulder, standing up and groaning. “Now, I’m going to throw up in your bathroom, and then we can watch dumb action movies until your brain rots. The rest of the guys are supposed to come over, though I think Donghyuck is still throwing up.”

You bury your face into the bear. “Does everyone know?”

Renjun pauses. “The guys from this morning were sort of proud to be the ones to tell us.”

You groan. The door to your bathroom closes but you barely hear it. You clutch the bear a little tighter, as if the fluff could break through your chest and fill the spilling hole in your heart.

It would be too easy to blame Jaemin, to pretend like none of the pain is from your own stupidity. But you already told Renjun. You knew it from the start.

Knocking at the door, a knock that means only one person. You wipe the tears from your eyes and take a deep breath that does nothing to steady your heart.

“God, I was afraid I was waking you up.” Jaemin starts talking as soon as you open the door. He holds up a bag, a tray with two iced coffees and a hot cup. He looks unfairly good and, of course, he grins at you. “I wasn’t entirely sure what your hangover cure is, so I got hot and iced coffee, and there’s a breakfast sandwich and a donut and also these potato things, I really wasn’t sure what you’d like, but–”

“Did you know that I was running for president?”

Jaemin freezes, frown slowly curling his brow. “What are you–”

“Just answer the question.” You grip the door handle, knuckles turning white.

He pauses a moment too long. “It’s not like that.”

“Never talk to me again.” You fight the urge to slam the door, but your neighbors don’t have to suffer your wrath. You shake your head, “I can’t believe I fell for your bullshit.”

Jaemin opens his mouth but you close the door, sliding the deadlock as hard as you can. He has the audacity to try to explain himself. If you didn’t want to hear him out so badly, you might laugh. Instead you turn your back on the door, sliding down it until you can rest your head on your knees and sob.

Jaemin makes it halfway down the aisle of seats on Tuesday before you turn to Renjun, panic and tears in your eyes. He glares at Jaemin so hard he freezes in his tracks and doesn’t try again. He doesn’t look at you in class, not even a peek. On Thursday, he walks straight to his seat.

Chenle doesn’t bother to throw his packages into the recycling after opening them. He says he’s hanging onto them to make moving out easier, but really he’s just too lazy to break them down. You have to step around them to get into his apartment, since he thought it would be fun to make an obstacle course out of them. Navigating these sober is hard enough, you have no idea how he makes it to bed after a night out.

But today, it’s worth it. It’s been two weeks since you cut off Jaemin, a month since the day you bumped into him in class (a month and three days but who’s counting?). He doesn’t look at you anymore. You haven’t fully escaped him–every once in a while you’ll hear his laugh from the other side of the lecture room. The sound still stabs between your ribs, a wound turned new each time you hear it. But it cuts a little more shallow each time. One day you won’t feel it at all.

And today, Chenle got a puppy.

She cries before you make it over the baby gate in Chenle’s room. A tiny ball of white fluff bounds toward you, tripping over her own feet.

“Hi baby!” Your voice automatically rises three pitches looking at her. “Aren’t you just adorable!” You crouch down, letting her jump on your knees. She won’t sit still long enough to be pet, sprinting around your feet, then back to Chenle sitting on the floor, back resting against his bed.

“Hi to you, too,” Chenle says pointedly.

“Hi Chenle,” you turn back to his puppy. “And hello puppy!”

“Her name is Daegal,” he says. You can hear him rolling his eyes. “‘Cause she’s got a big ass head.”

“Chenle is so mean to you!” You coo at the puppy at your feet. “But that’s okay, I’ll take good care of you. You can come home with me!”

“You hear that baby?” Chenle says. “YN wants to pay me $1000 to take care of you!”

You stare at him. “Did you seriously adopt a $1000 puppy?”

He shrugs. “She’s really cute.”

“You’re insane.” Daegal settles down enough to let you pat her head.

“I invite you into my home for some much needed puppy love and this is how you treat me?” Chenle sighs. “To think that I felt bad for you, that I told you about her before anyone else. This is how I get treated for my kind heart.”

“I don’t need your pity,” you say. Daegal licks your hand.

“It’s not pity.” He pauses. “Well I guess it is pity, but you’re also my friend YN. Believe it or not, watching you live the sad boy lifestyle over some dude, again, is not fun. I’d much rather watch you being happy with my puppy.”

“You’re the one who brought it up,” you mutter.

Chenle claps his hands, making Daegal jump. “But that does remind me, everyone has been too much of a coward to ask, but I’ve heard from tertiary sources about his reputation, but I’d love a first hand account.”

“What are you talking about?” You eye him.

“How was the sex?”

“You’re seriously asking me that?”

He shrugs. “Well, yeah.”

You pick up Daegal, staring at her instead of Chenle. She wiggles her tail, then her paws, so you set her back down. “I’m not answering that.”

Chenle narrows his eyes, studying you. “That means it was good.”

“That’s not at all what I said.”

“And yet you’re not denying it.”

“Please shut the fuck up.”

For once he listens. With Renjun, silence means peace–he doesn’t say anything that doesn’t matter. When Chenle doesn’t speak, it means he has something to say and he isn’t sure how to say it. You peek up at him and your suspicions are confirmed. He chews on his lip, frowning at you.

“Just tell me.”

Chenle purses his lips. “He dropped out.”

“Of school?”

He rolls his eyes. “The election.”

You stare at him. “Seriously?”

“He hasn’t touched his application since Renjun’s birthday and Donghyuck said yesterday he emailed and said he wasn’t going forward with it.” He doesn’t say anything about how technically you should be checking the email.

“But it doesn’t make any sense.”

Chenle shrugs. “I’m just telling you what I was told.” He stands up. “Now! How much do you like cleaning up dog pee?”

You glance down at Daegal, who squats in the middle of the room, a dark stain on the carpet beneath her. Chenle tosses you some paper towels and a can of Febreeze.

“Why am I cleaning up after your dog?”

“Because you tried to steal her,” he says, “and I’ve already done this three times today and I’m really sick of it.”

You shake your head but pull off a paper towel and press it into the stain.

“We’re going out tomorrow night, by the way,” Chenle says. “And you’ve passed two weekends in a row so you’ve hit a cap for the month. You have to come with, no ‘buts.’”

Apparently the grace period of pity is over. Whatever, it’ll be nice to do something other than hiding in your room watching Powerpuff Girls. And maybe you will see him. Maybe you’ll get an answer to the giant question mark that’s lodged itself in your heart when Chenle told he dropped out. Maybe the little caterpillar of hope that’s survived these past few weeks can metamorphize.

And maybe he’ll break your heart again. But you won’t get any answers daydreaming.

How Renjun can still drink Tequila, you truly do not understand. Ever since his birthday, the thought of it makes your stomach flip, and you didn’t even drink that much. But he sips on the margarita, insisting it doesn’t taste like alcohol.

“It’s disgusting,” you say, pushing it closer to him. “I am not drinking this.”

He rolls his eyes. “You do realize the whole gimmick of this place is all their drinks are made with tequila, right?”

“No one told me that!” You glare at Chenle, who showed up at your door at exactly 8:00pm and dragged you to the bar. “For the record, I would have pre-gamed. But I guess I can be the babysitter tonight.”

Chenle cheers. “Donghyuck, you’re back in! YN is babysitting!”

Your drink slides down the table to Donghyuck, interrupting whatever ‘conversation’ he was having with Jisung.

“I thought the whole point of dragging you out was to make you have fun,” he says.

“You better be fun, then,” you say.

Donghyuck raises his eyebrows but eventually take a long sip. “Brain freeze!” He cries, clutching his forehead. You laugh with the rest of the guys. It’s almost normal, except you can’t help but peek at the door whenever somebody walks in.

The night passes and the guys get more drunk. The bar gets more crowded–soon you are squished between Renjun and Chenle, barely able to breathe as the music slowly gets louder. The tequila looks more and more appealing but the guys need at least one person sober to make it back alive: Chenle arm wrestles a stranger while Donghyuck has some poor soul cornered, practicing his pick up lines.

When Chenle loses, you push past him, muttering something about fresh air that they probably can’t hear. You push through the crowd of drunk people, trying not to remember the last time you did this.

You squint at the steps, edges difficult to see with so little light. Who builds a bar on the second floor of a building? You make it to the final step but misjudge how close it is and your foot slips off the edge, sending you tumbling forward. You might have caught yourself, but you don’t have to—strong arms catch you mid fall, wrapping around your waist and swinging you clean off the stairs and onto solid ground. You aren’t surprised at all to look into Jaemin’s eyes as he lets go.

He frowns at you, eyes so dark they look black. Maybe it’s the lack of light, but the twinkle in his eyes, the glint you’ve come to recognize as trouble, is missing.

“Hi,” you say.

He drops his arms, stuffing his hands into his back pockets. “So you’re talking to me now?”

An apology begins on your lips but you can’t push it out. Not when you still don’t understand. “Can we talk?”

He glances at you. “Have you been drinking?”

You shake your head.

“Okay.” He doesn’t walk away, folding his arms over his chest.

When you imagined this conversation, the sun shined so that you could see the warmth in his eyes. He smiled at you, called you silly for ever doubting him. The Jaemin in your head wouldn’t ever do something to hurt you.

But Jaemin doesn’t exist in your head–it’s far past time you learned that.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I shouldn’t have just cut you off. But I thought… I don’t know what I thought, let alone what I think now.” You force yourself to meet his cold eyes, searching for a hint of warmth. “Chenle told me you dropped out of the presidency.”

He nods slowly.

“But Renjun told me that someone told him that the presidency is the only reason you ever pretended to like me, but if you dropped out then I really don’t get it. Not that I ever got it in the first place, though, because you’re you and I’m me, and everyone kept telling me that, like I didn’t already know that you are supposed to be a persimmon and grow on a tree far far away from my lemon or pomegranate or whatever kind of fruit I am, because the point is we were never meant to be.” You take a deep breath, realizing that you don’t exactly sound sane. “What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t make sense. It made sense when you were trying to cheat me out of the presidency, but you dropped out. And it doesn’t make sense.”

Jaemin blinks slowly at you. “You would rather believe that I was trying to rob your presidency than that I actually like you?”

“Do you?”

He frowns. “Of course I do. I like you so much I think about things I’ve never wanted before, the silly shit–watching horror movies as an excuse to cuddle, having picnics by the river, buying groceries together–I wanted to do all of it with you.

“You talk a lot about how we’re different people—who gives a shit? If I’m the type of person that wants to be with you and you’re the type of person that wants to be with me, why does any of that matter?” He takes a step closer to you, and you can see you were wrong. His eyes aren’t cold, they’re full of emotion, dark waves of hurt. “What do I have to do to prove it to you? Should I tell you how pretty you are? How incredibly smart you are—not fake smart like me, but really smart. And when I’m around you, I like who I am. I know it’s cheesy but you bring out the best in me.

“I know I fucked up. I should have told you how I felt before anything else, and I shouldn’t have left. I regretted it as soon as I was gone but it was terrifying to lay next to you and give you my bare heart, even when I didn’t think you would ever try to hurt me.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if it hurts more thinking that you never wanted a relationship or thinking that I’d ever stoop that low. I mean, everyone tells me about my reputation, but I didn’t think you cared about any of that.”

Tears prick at your eyes. How could you be such an idiot? Listening to all the wrong people, especially yourself. Jaemin doesn’t exist in another world, he isn’t any kind of fruit. He’s a boy that you like that likes you back. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, reaching a tentative hand out to rest against his arm. “I’m so sorry.” He drops his head, sighing. “I was an idiot.”

He sighs, staring at your hand. You start to drop it but he grabs it, squeezing your fingers. “Where do we go from here?”

You study him, eyes finally adjusted to the darkness. Jaemin who is not a fruit, not an alien, just a boy.

“Hey.” You reach out and cup his cheek, waiting for him to meet your eyes. “My name is YN. I think you’re really cute.”

For a heartbeat he doesn’t move. Then he smiles, cheek rising underneath your hand. “Hey, my name is Jaemin. I think you’re really cute too.”

“Oh really?” You slide your hand to the back of his neck, wrapping your other arm across it. His arms wrap on your waist, pulling you into a hug. He squeezes you flush against him, head tucked into your shoulder just as yours is tucked into his.

“I know we can’t start over,” he says, “but can we start again?”

“How about this time we just talk to each other?” You say, tapping your fingers on his shoulder. “No more rumors and gossip.”

He nods, chin digging into your neck a little. “I swear, I won’t give you any reason to doubt me ever again. I won’t be the kind of guy your friends call a red flag.”

You loosen your grip and lean back to look him in the eye. “Wait, did they seriously say that to you?”

“I ran into Donghyuck after I dropped out and we had a very… one sided conversation with his side doing all the talking,” Jaemin says, “and Renjun made it obvious from the start that he didn’t like me.”

You laugh a little, then even more when he pouts. “You’ll win them over again.”

“They really don’t like me,” he says.

You cup his cheek again. “You’ll change their minds.” He leans into your touch, closing his eyes. You lean forward, resting your forehead against his. He gasps a little, hands tightening on your waist.

“Now, am I remembering incorrectly, or are you an amazing kisser?” You ask.

He grins, leaning forward and closing the distance without wasting a second. Neither of you can stop smiling, lips and teeth gnashing together but it’s still the best kiss you’ve ever had.

You stretch an arm out, only to find more bed instead of empty space. You sit up, shivering as the blanket falls away. Right, you fell asleep in Jaemin’s bed. His room is much bigger than yours, sharing an apartment with Jeno. He has enough room for a dresser and a nicer desk, even a chair. It seems he lied to you about being messy, because even when you show up unannounced, like today, his clothes are neatly folded and the biggest mess you’ve found has been three dirty dishes in the sink (which you later found out were Jeno’s).

Jeno, apparently, isn’t all bad–he did let you in even though your boyfriend was still out. He doesn’t fully trust you, but then again, your friends don’t hide their mistrust of Jaemin either. You maintain your earlier stance that time will heal that wound.

You hear a knife against a cutting board coming from the kitchen, so you wrap the blanket around your shoulders and shuffle towards the sound, unable to stop the smile from spreading up your lips when you turn the corner and find Jaemin standing at the counter. He glances behind him and grins at you, and even though you just woke up from a nap and probably have messy hair and marks on your face, he says, “you look sexy.”

“So cheesy,” you say. He laughs and turns back around. You slip behind him and wrap your arms around him, burying your face in his back and closing your eyes. He radiates warmth better than any blanket. It’s too easy to lean against him, take a deep breath of the scent of his laundry detergent and cling to him. Jaemin moves slowly, careful not to hit you by accident.

“What’re you doing?”

“A surprise,” he says, “at least my attempt at one.” He sets down the knife on the counter and taps on your hands, pulling them apart gently and spinning around to face you before setting your hands back on his waist. He tilts his head at you when you purse your lips and frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Still no ass,” you say, patting him a little lower than his waist.

“Hey!” He sticks his lower lip out. “I’m trying.”

“No one’s perfect,” you say, sliding your hands back up and sneaking a kiss to his cheek.

“You are,” he says, cupping your face to kiss you properly. Jaemin still kisses like it’s his last chance, drawing out every moment, lips lingering on yours until your head spins. It’s only when you can’t breathe that he finally pulls away.

“Good answer,” you say.

He smiles. “If you come to the gym with me I’d be more motivated to get an ass you’d be proud of.”

“You send enough pictures for me to know that if I saw you at the gym I would never survive,” you say. “You want me to die?”

He laughs, squishing your face together with his hands. “If anyone’s going to die, it’s going to be me, because you are too cute.”

He presses another kiss to your lips, still squished together in a pout. He laughs at the outrage on your face, letting go of your cheeks and slipping his hands behind your neck, kissing you one more time for real, letting go far too early.

“The surprise,” he says. He lets go of you with one arm, turning to the cutting board and holding up a slice of what he was cutting. It looks a little bit like a tomato, though it’s more orange than red, and about the size of a golf ball.

“A persimmon?”

“I still don’t really get the persimmon thing,” he says, “but I’ve never tried one.”

You blink at him. Jaemin makes it so easy to fall in love. He holds the piece closer to your mouth, waiting for you to open. A persimmon tastes sweet and mild and rich, a little bit like honey. Jaemin eats his own piece, frowning and nodding.

“No more magical mystical fruit,” Jaemin says.

“You’re going to make an amazing trophy husband,” you say. You tap him on the nose. “Maybe we could even be a power couple.”

He grins. “We’ll be so cool. Like Beyoncé and her husband.”

“Jay-Z?”

“Whatever.” Jaemin flips his hand. “The important part is that I am Beyoncé.”

You smack his shoulders softly. “Hell no, Beyoncé would never have a flat ass.”

“It always comes back to the ass.” He sighs. “Be honest: are you embarrassed by me?”

Once you never thought he could be embarrassing. That was before you knew he staked his career on a soap opera and wears jorts to the gym, before he called you drunk just to confess he accidentally stole your pencil, before he spent three hours putting up campaign posters for you (and then another two getting written up by campus police for not having permission). Before you fell in love with him.

“By you? Never.” You pat his cheeks. “Your ass leaves much to be desired, though.”

thank you for reading!

#🌟 stars galaxy #nct #nct dream #nct x reader #nct dream x reader #nct reader #nct fanfic #nct dream fanfic #nct dream fluff #nct dream angst #nct fluff #nct angst #jaemin #na jaemin #nct jaemin #jaemin x reader #jaemin fluff #jaemin angst

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ale-wosofan · 2 months

Text

broken

Alexia x R

R is struggling but she’s not sure why or how to fix it. Will she finally be honest with her girlfriend about how she’s feeling?

warnings: little bit of angst (+fluff), implied adhd

a/n: English is not my first language (I’m aware how much of a cliché that is) so there might be some mistakes; feel free to correct them :) Here I talk about my personal experience with adhd, please don’t use this to self-diagnose, as it is not the same for everyone. Enjoy!

-----

The first time you feel that there’s something wrong with you, you’re at home with your girlfriend.

“Hey, princesa. Have you seen that there’s a new season of that TV show you like?” Alexia asks you once you’ve sat down on the sofa.

“Oh, I didn’t know,” you shrug settling on top of your girlfriend and kissing her cheek.

Alexia looks a little surprised at your answer but starts running her hands up and down your back nonetheless.

“How come? I thought you said it was, and I’m quoting you, the best show you’ve ever seen.”

But you don’t answer. You don’t really know what happened, you’re just not that passionate about that particular show anymore. You had been interested for a few months; had watched all the interviews, bloopers, deleted scenes, but now you just didn’t like it as much anymore. You’ve had a few intense months thinking and talking about the show almost every minute of every day so you probably just need time away from it now that all that initial intensity has worn off.

You don’t realise how much time you’ve been quiet until Alexia speaks again.

“Amor?” you hum in acknowledgement urging her to continue “are you okay?”

“Yeah, just got a little distracted,” you answer shuffling around a little bit trying to get comfortable.

After a couple of minutes moving around you can’t seem to settle. You sigh and sit up feeling Alexia’s eyes on you the entire time.

“So, have you finished the work you had to do?” your girlfriend asks while putting her feet on your lap.

“No, not yet. But I really needed a break.”

Alexia looks up at you surprised.

“¿De verdad? I thought it was supposed to be something easy. You’ve been working for almost two hours.”

You frown. There’s no way it’s been two hours, right? That can’t be possible. But when you look at your watch you realise that it really has been two hours. You have spent all that time in your office and haven’t been able to finish a relatively simple task.

“Today is not my day, I guess,” you say rubbing your hands on your face with frustration “I’m a little distracted today, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything.”

But it wasn’t just today, and you knew that. It was something that had been going on for a while. You couldn’t exactly pinpoint when it had started to happen, but it got bad after the quarantine. You were on your second year of college when the pandemic occurred. You spent a few months studying online, a few months that felt like a bliss to you despite everything that was happening in the world. But you had to come back to class eventually. And it was fine; until it wasn’t. Every time you tried to pay attention to class you got distracted and couldn’t focus on what the teachers were saying for more than a few minutes at a time. When you had projects to do you couldn’t bring yourself to work on them and waited until the last day to get them done. Studying suddenly became a torture since you couldn’t concentrate for long. What once used to take you ten minutes, now it took an hour.

And the thing is you still don’t understand why. You don’t know what’s wrong with you now that wasn’t before. It hadn’t really bothered you before, you’d been able to deal with it for some time. But now it feels like it just keeps getting worse with each passing day. Deep down you know you need help, and you know you should talk to someone about this, but you don’t feel ready to. Not yet.

“How about you keep working on it tomorrow? And we can relax for the rest of the say. We can have a nice bath and then order some food. How does that sound?”

You smile at your girlfriend. How did you ever get so lucky?

“Yeah, I’d really like that.”

-----

The second time you feel that there’s something wrong with you, Alexia had just come home from training.

When you hear the door front open and your girlfriend call out for you, you’re lying on your bed scrolling through social media.

You get up and go say hello to her.

“Hi, baby,” you greet her opening your arms for a hug.

“Hola, mi amor.”

She takes a step back from your embrace, places her hands on your cheeks and kisses you passionately. And just as quickly as it had started she was pulling away.

“Hi,” you repeat feeling yourself blush.

“Hi,” your girlfriend answers kissing your forehead “I’m going to take a shower.”

You blink slowly taking a few seconds to get yourself together, being quickly interrupted by Alexia calling your name from the bedroom.

You make your way there but stop in your tracks in the door frame when you realise why your girlfriend had called for you.

“Princesa, what happened here?”

You give her a smile that you’re pretty sure turns out looking more like a grimace.

“Okay so, I wanted to rearrange some of the books-”

“Again?”

“-but then I wasn’t sure if I wanted to organize them by colour or by genre, so I decided to watch a video to decide. But then I got distracted by another video and kind of forgot what I was doing in the first place, so I just laid down and waited for you to come home,” you answer honestly giving your girlfriend a sheepish smile.

Alexia looks at you in deep thought.

“Okay, how about this? I take a shower and get into some comfortable clothes and once I’m done I’ll help you with all this.”

You sometimes wonder how someone so perfect like the woman in front of you exists.

“Or, we could shower together and then work on the bookshelf together as well,” you suggest smirking.

Your girlfriends lets out a chuckle and kisses your cheek.

“Nice try, but if we do that we might never be able to come out of the shower.”

Once your girlfriend is out of sight you take a look at all the books splattered around the room. The state of the place is certainly overwhelming and it just stresses you out more. Where are you supposed to start?

You sigh and sit down on the bed.

You should’ve finished this before Alexia got here. You’d had more than enough time to do it, so why couldn’t you just focus on your task like everyone else instead of getting distracted with everything? Now your girlfriend had to help you out instead of resting after the long day she probably had.

You rub your hands on your face in frustration. It really isn’t supposed to be that hard right?

“Yeah, I’m just a little lazy sometimes,” you whisper to no one in particular before getting up.

-----

The third time you feel that there’s something wrong with you, you’ve just gotten to your house from work.

When you arrive home you’re exhausted.

Stepping into the house the first thing you notice is the Spanish music playing in the background and the smell of your favourite meal being cooked.

Walking into the kitchen you are welcomed by the sight of your girlfriend wearing one of your old shirts dancing and cooking.

“Hi, love.”

She turns around at the sound of your voice and looks at you with a lovesick smile.

“Hola, princesa,” she quickly answers opening her arms for you to hug her, which you happily do “How was your day?”

You step out of her embrace and give her a kiss before making a face.

“It could’ve been better,” you tell her honestly.

You sit in one of the stools while your girlfriend resumes her cooking duties keeping an eye on you the whole time.

“¿Por qué? Did anything happen?”

“No, nothing in particular,” you pause, deciding whether or not to continue “Although there’s a new project I’ve been working on, which is obviously really exciting, but I’ve spent all morning busy with it; emailing people, setting the different dates for it, planning meetings and all that.”

Alexia completely turns around to look at you and nods urging you to keep talking.

“I just-” you sigh frustrated “I suddenly got hungry, right? And I looked at the time and realised that it was already pretty late and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so I went to grab a sandwich to the shop nearby. Then, on the way back I went past that bookstore I really like so I decided to have a look around for a bit to relax, and I ended up buying that book I told you came out yesterday.”

Your girlfriend’s frown deepens.

“Isn’t that a sequel to a book you haven’t read yet?”

“Yes,” you whisper a little embarrassed “I know it was a stupid decision, but I really wanted to buy it in that moment. Then I just felt bad because I had spent money on something I don’t even know if I’ll like.”

You feel yourself blush at the admission and hide your face in your hands.

“Hey,” you hear your girlfriend quietly say in your ear while she wraps her arms around your waist “There’s really no need to be embarrassed, ¿vale? You bought something you wanted after having a fairly stressful day at work. I promise you it’s not the end of the world, mi amor.”

With each word she says you begin to slowly relax in her arms.

You turn around and take her face in your hands.

“How do you always know what to say?”

“Because I love you and I know you better than I know myself,” she answers placing a kiss in your nose “Now you’re going to take a shower, we’re going to have dinner and then we’re gonna cuddle while watching a film. Tomorrow will be a better day, princesa, I promise.”

You nod although you don’t fully believe it.

-----

When you finally lay down to watch TV with your girlfriend you can’t seem to settle. Your mind is working really fast and you’re starting to get a little bit restless.

You haven’t really thought about it until now, but what if there is something actually wrong with you? What if it isn’t just a bad day? What if all the sleepless nights, the impulsivity, the difficulty staying focused for too long and the racing thoughts are all somehow connected? There’s no way, you or someone around you would’ve realised sooner. Right?

You feel Alexia’s eyes on you when you stop the show you’re watching.

You try not to think about it too much and begin to speak.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

“What do you mean?” she asks confused.

“Never mind. Just ignore what I’ve said,” you answer shaking your head and laying down on top of your girlfriend again.

“Hey, no. None of that,” Alexia sits up with you in her lap and takes your face on her hands “What’s going on? Talk to me, please,” she begs worried.

Looking at her you realise that this is your partner, the person you’re building your future with. You are aware this is a tough thing to talk to her about but there’s no one you trust more in this world. She is your home.

“I've been feeling really overwhelmed lately, like my mind is always racing and I can't seem to focus on anything for long. I mean, it actually started a while ago, but it’s just been getting worse. I’m not sure how to explain it,” you confess.

Your girlfriend takes both of your hands and smiles encouragingly at you.

“Try. I’m listening and whatever it is I’m here for you, okay? Always, te lo prometo.”

“Okay, so, have you notice how I always seem to jump from one thing to another without actually finishing anything? I've tried making to-do lists and setting reminders, but nothing seems to work. And that’s just one of the things, you know? But it’s also not being able to sit still for more than five minutes and acting always so impulsive. And it's starting to affect everything I do. I just-” you take a deep breath “I’m always so frustrated. I just want to be able to be like everyone else, but it's like my brain is wired differently.”

“How long has this been going on?” Alexia asks concerned.

“I don’t know. A few months, I think.”

Your girlfriend lets go of your hands and holds your face instead making you look into her eyes.

“Mi amor, listen to me. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Yes, your brain may work a little bit different but that doesn’t mean you’re stupid or broken, ¿vale? It's okay to feel overwhelmed, and it's good that you're talking about it. But I really need you to understand that. What do you want to do now?”

“I’m not sure, I wasn’t even planning on telling you to be honest,” you admit feeling yourself blushing.

“Maybe it could be helpful to talk to a professional about all of this?” Alexia suggest “Whatever you feel comfortable doing.”

You shrug and hide your face on her neck.

“Yeah, I guess. You promise me you’re not going anywhere?”

Your girlfriend kisses your forehead before answering.

“I'm here for you no matter what, we will figure this out. Thank you for sharing this with me, princesa.”

“Thank you for listening to me,” you whisper just for the two of you “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

-----

Maybe I'll write a sequel to this but I'm not really sure. Let me know what you think! <3

#woso x reader #woso fanfics #woso imagine #woso community #woso #woso angst #woso blurbs #woso couples #woso drama #woso fluff #alexia putellas #alexia x reader #alexia putellas x reader

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acowardinmordor · 6 months

Text

You Left Me - You Miss Me - Six

Sup, I finally wrote the next part. Mostly because of someone trying to find it via the fic finder blog, which gave me a big ol spike in anxiety about the lack of update.

Part One .... Part Four - Part Five

---

“Rob, no.”

“Don’t you tell me ‘no,’ Steven Dingus Harrington!”

“You can’t drive to Hawkins and kill the guy.”

“Oh yes I can! I'll take your bat with me!”

“Babe, you still don’t know how to drive, and I have work in the morning so I can’t take you.”

“I’ll figure it out on the way!”

She wouldn’t. She wasn't going to drive to Hawkins. She would definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent kill Munson if she had the chance and Steve didn’t talk her out of it, but Robin wasn’t going to leave him alone when he’d had a breakdown an hour earlier. She wouldn’t let him sleep alone for the next few days, and she would go to work with him in the morning, and she’d probably skip her Stats class so she could stick by him after work too.

It took Robin about thirty seconds to realize something had happened.

That was the gap between her opening the car door, and Steve speaking. All he said was “hey, Robs” and she cut off her ramble about chlorofluorocarbons. The same way he could tell by the sound of her stirring soup, or which color eye shadow she wore, she knew immediately something had happened.

She touched his arm.

And he had a breakdown in the college parking lot.

Steve updated the tag on the side of the box and put it back on the shelf. He was,technically, working. Robin was ranting and using a tie-dye shirt as a prop.

“You don’t need to crash our car trying to go kill a guy I’m not even mad at.”

“Ugh,” she flapped the shirt at him and slouched against the edge of the shelving unit. “Why not? Why are you not mad at him? How? I’m mad at him! He took the kids away from you! They’re annoying little shitheads but you loved them and he jus---”

“Rob,” he interrupted softly. He couldn’t get into that side of it right now.

“Sorry. Sorry. But you’re not this nice, Stevie. You’re wonderfully bitchy and petty and it’s one of my favorite things about you, and I don’t get this. He sucks! This was super shitty! Why aren’t you mad at him for being an asshole?”

“It’s not his fault.”

“He said it was his fault!”

Eddie blamed himself, and maybe it was his fault, but it didn’t matter. Not in comparison.

“Are you going to inventory anything tonight, or is this just going to be me?”

“No! And why are you working?”

Because if he stopped, if he let himself turn his full attention towards it, he was going to fall apart again, and stupid as it was, checking inventory used up just enough of his focus that he couldn’t drown. Steve flicked through the stack of size smalls, and wrote it down on the list. “Uh, because we’re at work?”

“We both work tomorrow tonight and there is no way that Mary or Nick have ever looked at the stock sheets in their life, they aren’t going to look tomorrow either. No one will know.”

“I’ll know.” He glanced up to make eye contact for a second, and she caved with a groan.

“If you were anyone but my soulmate, buddy…” She folded the shirt terribly, shoved it into the gap between the cardboard and the other shirts, and finally closed the box.

Letting the silence settle gave Steve a minute to breathe, and reset himself without the rising tension. She knew that, and waited until, unspoken, she knew he was ready to keep going.

“Steve.”

“I am mad, Robs. I am. You know that it’s.. At the kids, and at Hopper, and at myself for agreeing to this stupid idea, but I’m not mad at him.”

“Why does he get special treatment?”

Hearing how that sounded, he tried again, “No, uh. I’m mad at him, but, like, the same way you get mad when the grandma in the crosswalk is going really slow and then drops something and goes back, and you end up stuck waiting again even though you should have made it through the light before. Yeah, it sucks, but it’s not like grandma was doing it specifically to fuck with you. She’s just, you know, shopping or whatever.

“It wasn’t like there was a friendship there that he betrayed. He did something for his own life and it was sorta sucky, and it sucks for me, but he feels really shitty about it, so I don’t think he meant for them to, you know, vanish.”

Robin thumbed down the stack of Levis, whispering the count as she went. Three more sizes got counted before she responded.

“You carried him out of there. You saved his life.”

Steve hummed absently. “He wasn’t bleeding that bad. His trash lid kept most of them off. I panicked when I saw blood and picked him up.”

“And that doesn’t make you friends?”

“It’s not like I only saved him because it was him. Not like I stopped and thought about whether I should get the bleeding guy to the hospital. Lifeguard, remember?”

The other half of the thought, he bit back. He’d had nightmares about Billy after Starcourt. Dreams where he could have saved him, and didn’t. Where he could have saved Max from having to see that, having to recover from that. He saw Eddie bleeding, he saw one of his kids screaming, and there wasn’t a thought in his head. Just the need not to let it happen again. Not again. Not Dustin too.

He kept his eyes on the inventory form so she didn’t see that part.

“Still think it should have mattered more. Life saving creates friendships.”

“He was unconscious. I know you don’t know much about how guys act with each other, but generally both dudes are awake when they become friends.”

She snorted at his weak joke, throwing her pencil at him. It wasn’t anywhere near her.

“New record, champ, that one wasn’t even close enough for me to pretend to dodge it.”

“Ugh, I hate you.”

“Love you too, Robs.”

He got through a full set of kids dress shirts in peace, counted and listed. Then he pulled down the crate of kid’s dresses, next on the list to check.

The whole can of worms would tear open when, if, when Eddie showed up with something from the kids. There was no version of that day that wouldn’t end with him falling apart. If he skimmed them, if he burned them, if he read them, if he wrote back, if he refused to take them at all, it didn’t matter. He was going to fall to pieces.

If they wrote and it was real, if it was petty, if it was anger, if it was grief, if it was gloating he was gone, if it was begging him to come back, if it was proof that it was always fake, always a temporary placeholder until they found someone they actually like. The imminent breakdown was going to be bad no matter what.

Like those safety videos in school about seat belts.

Like knowing the car crash was coming, knowing it couldn’t be stopped, and knowing that nothing he did was going to make it any easier to bear. Slow motion, watching a car come -- a beat up old van come towards him. No time to put on a seat belt, no way to brace for it, just accept that it was going to happen and hope you survived.

Robin cleared her throat to get his attention, and Steve blinked back to himself.

“Did, uh, did you say something?”

Robin watched him for a minute. He let her this time. It was easier to let her see what he was feeling than try to turn it into words, and he needed her to let it go for now..

“I’m going to skip my bio lecture on Friday afternoon.”

“Birdie, you don’t--”

“You are going to call in sick at the skate rink. We are going to make snickerdoodles and brownies and the cracker bark thing, and order pizza, and we’re going to make ourselves sick eating too much, and we’re going to watch some random movie on mute and make up our own story and dialogue. Got it?”

“Got it,” he smiled.

And it wasn’t going to make it all better. Eating two pounds of butter in a day wasn’t going to make it easier when Eddie showed up, but it was like hitting pause on that video. Car crash was still coming, but he could look away for a while.

***

Steve clung to the pass shelf from the kitchen as the expected car crash hit him on Monday. John, always eager for the chance to throw someone out of the diner, looked over Steve’s shoulder. It was a nice moment. A nice little thought before he had to face what he’d agreed to. If he asked, John would throw Eddie out. Literally. Nice image, but not the one he got to see.

Instead, he declined the offer, and grabbed the plates.

“Gimme a minute,” he mumbled to Eddie, heading to the sweet elderly couple celebrating the birth of their second granddaughter with a leisurely breakfast. If he spent an extra minute talking to them, complimenting the polaroid of what seemed to be some kind of mashed potato swaddled in white and pink, it was to get a good tip, not because he was stalling.

Eddie hadn’t moved when he got back. He was a step back from the counter, stiff, holding a paper grocery bag under one arm, eyes trained on the ugly teal of the stool’s seat.

“Well?” Steve asked bitchily, “Did you bring milk and eggs and bread, honey?”

He put it on the counter, clutching the folded top hard, like he was making sure it stayed shut.

Like it was full of spiders or something. Mutual sentiment.

Steve grabbed it, tossing it onto the shelf where they kept personal belongings and the leftovers they’d called dibs on. He hadn’t expected Eddie Munson to be up to Franklin at eight am on a Monday. Eddie wasn’t a morning person. Steve thought he’d have a few more hours to brace. Now he had to deal with customers while that bag burned a hole in the back of his head.

Luckily, Rebecca was serious when she said he could get mean with guests if he wanted to. Today wasn’t a want. It was going to be a necessity.

Eddie was still standing there.

“You can tell them I got it, or whatever,” he tried to dismiss him.

Something that looked like the tortured remains of a smile flickered on Eddie’s face. He gave up after a second and nodded too many times. “Thanks. Thank you. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, right?”

It took a minute for Steve to catch up to the question.

“I haven’t said I’m going to answer them. Or open them. Or keep them.”

Eddie was quiet for a minute, still not looking up, and Steve’s Travel-Size-Robin was vibrating with the need to make him so they could guess what the hell he was thinking.

“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday mornings?” he repeated.

“Yeah. Sure, yeah,” Steve gave up.

Eddie left, and Steve did the entire day’s front of house prep before Susan got in, trying to keep his head away from that damn bag.

***

Steve didn’t open it.

He fell asleep in Robin’s bed, grateful he didn’t have other work that evening, and doubly grateful when she made him eat some crackers and drink some water before they passed out for the night.

If he was waiting for the impact the day before, seeing Eddie again the next day was so unexpected that the crash whooshed past him without an impact. He didn’t sit down, and he looked a little rough, probably from driving to Franklin in the early morning twice in two days.

“Do you have…?”

“No? No,” Steve boggled at him, “How could I have anything for you to even -- No. Man, no.”

Eddie nodded.

Eddie left.

***

Steve stared at the bag instead of taking a nap before their shift in the stockroom. Didn’t open it, that was way, way beyond him, but he did manage to look directly at it, and it was only a few saltines, but he did successfully eat.

Robin, angel, light of his life, soulmate and perfect person got in the car after class, handed him a kinda gross protein bar that she stole from an athlete in her class who she didn’t like, and made him eat it.

She didn’t make him talk about the bag shaped elephant in their apartment, and she spent the entire shift explaining the way Ann Carson’s translations of Greek plays had totally shifted how people read them, making them more accessible, and how the push to do the same with Shakespeare was incredible.

When he went to crawl into his own bed that night, she grumbled, brought her favorite pillow, and climbed in after him.

***

Eddie walked in at quarter to seven, right after three four tops seated.

“No.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Eddie looked small, probably because he was speaking at a normal volume, sounding like a normal human, which ran opposite to how Eddie was in Hawkins. He also looked like crap.

“Why are you here, dude? You hate mornings. You don’t have to leave that early, I work until one.”

Eddie scrunched his face, but didn’t answer that.

“No?” he asked instead.

Someone at table six shouted ‘waiter!’

“I’ll bring your coffee in a damn minute!” Steve yelled back, half turning with the carafe in his hand.

“Steve?”

“Look, I don’t have anything for you. Nothing. You don’t need to waste your time. I haven’t opened it.”

“There’s more than one -- oh,” Eddie scrubbed over his face. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. Do-- Are you going to? Open it.”

Thinking about opening it made him want to run away to Canada.

Thinking about never knowing made him want to puke.

Whatever weird face Steve made was something Eddie could translate. He only raised his head for a moment, just long enough to look. But then he covered his face with both hands, taking a deep breath that shuddered on the exhale.

“See you Monday,” he said as a goodbye.

“Where’s my coffee?” the same guy yelled. Steve didn’t have the energy to deal with customers and whatever the fuck was going on with Eddie’s early morning emotional mess.

“Wait a second,” he complained to both of them at once. Steve grabbed one of the big mugs, the ones they used for the expensive hot chocolate, filled it with coffee, and set the pour jar of sugar next to it. He looked from Eddie to the cup, pointedly. “Don’t crash. Bring the cup back with you.”

The asshole yelled for him again, and Steve turned on the terrifyingly polite smile that Robin had helped him hone. Then he deployed it on the asshole at table six.

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

We are headed towards Steddie, on a path that will, hopefully, not feel like I brushed off all this to get there. However. Wow, they're hurting right now. You can't have Eddie's pov yet, it would spoil things, but. just. trust me. ow.

Still don't do tag lists. Once I know how many parts it'll be, this will go to Ao3, promise.

#You left me - you miss me #steddie #my writing #angst

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oceansblvds · 5 months

Note

I SENT THE ASK ABT TEACHER CORYO IM BEGGING YOU TO WRITE TA/PROFESSOR SNOW 😝

OKOKOK IM GONNA WRITE SOME HEADCANONS BUT I MIGHT HONESTLY EXPAND THIS INTO A FULL FIC BC im a whore!

warning(s): nsfw, obsessive behavior, lowkey an abuse of power

coriolanus, almost out of university, was selected to teach a higher level math class on the account of dr. gaul saying he needed a little bit more experience with teaching and leadership if he was to be head gamemaker. so, he was a TA, teaching under a professor but was basically given full rein with the class, as the professor seemed to focus more on research than teaching the class. the second he was in the lecture discussion, he saw you walk in. you were a junior, just a year under him in university and god were you beautiful. almost mouth wateringly so. it made him sick in the head at how pretty you were.

and gods above, you were smart, almost as smart as he was (though he wouldn't ever admit that) and it was clear that you liked him. you always smiled when he complimented your high scores on tests and quizzes, and would read the notes that he put in the margins of your essays with a glimmer in your eyes. he needed to talk to you, needed to be closer to you, and the only way that he could think of was to give you slightly lower marks on your essays and homeworks. never on a test, he would never want to drop your grade low enough for it to be concerning, but he did wait for you to stumble into his office hours. and you did. you asked him how you could do better on the material, and he told you that he'd help you.

he didn't have an office, only a classroom that he was lent during his office hours in the top floor of the math building. it was there that you would meet him, every tuesday and thursday, to go over problems. he liked the way that your lip would be bitten in between your teeth when you were looking at a particularly hard problem, or when you would look at him with your big doe eyes when you asked him for help. and whenever you asked him for help, he would lean closer, and explain it to you.

one day, he finally got the courage to make a move. you asked him for help and he placed his hand on your thigh, as if he was using it to keep himself steady as he leaned over. but instead of watching him explain on the paper, you kept your attention on his face. and then he pushed his hand further up your thigh, under your skirt, and you didn't stop him. your hand came to his and you pushed it up until it was cupping your pussy. he fingered you right then and there, hoping beyond hoping that no one else would walk into his office hours for help. the two of you made out while he fingered you, going as far as to press three fingers into you, with a squelching sound, your moans echoing through the room softly.

that became somewhat of a normal thing. you two always met during his office hours, until you decided to go to his home one day for some extra tutoring. it ended with you in his large bed with your legs spread, while he put his fingers in your mouth as he fucked you with such fervor that you were sure you were going to break.

sometimes when he was grading papers, you would slink under his desk and pull his cock out, spitting on the tip and bobbing your head up and down until he gave you the attention you wanted. he always fantasized about you doing this when he was teaching another class, with you working him with your mouth as he sat on his desk and no one else knew the wiser. he would have to try that with you one day.

lots of words like how dirty you were for sleeping with your teacher. "you're such a needy thing, aren't you?" "show me how good you've gotten" when you were riding him. "you probably fantasize about my cock in class, don't you?" it was all so derogatory. and other times he would praise you. he would tell you how smart and beautiful you were. he would let you cum when you got a problem right while he sat under the desk, eating you out. when you got a problem wrong, he would stop, and no amount of begging would get him to continue unless you continued your work.

#coriolanus snow #coriolanus snow smut #coriolanus snow x reader #coriolanus snow x you #coriolanus x reader #coriolanus x you #tbosas #the hunger games #tom blyth #angelica talks!!

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invvuu · 3 months

Text

LIPS TO EYES AND VICE VERSA — SIM JAEYUN

SUMMARY : sim jake sucks at being your tutor but he makes up for it by being your boyfriend. PAIRING : boyfriend!jake x gn!reader GENRE : established relationship, fluff / 1.6k words WARNINGS : jake is flirty, reader loses their mind because of jake ( there is a theme here if you couldn’t tell ) not proofread

﹙ 📑 ﹚ AUTHOR’S NOTE — why is writing author notes harder than the actual fics themselves,,, but anyways i guess i can just mention that i started writing this last night and then finished it while i was in online class as some sort of tmi (no cus why did i edit this draft five times already just to change the author’s note)

“MY EYES ARE UP HERE,” you say blankly — or rather, in an attempt to appear blankly as you look at Jake, your boyfriend and current tutor for the time being.

He had his chin sitting on top of his palm, fingers resting and occasionally tapping against the skin of his cheek. Jake had a couple rings adorning his fingers, all in silver except for the matching ring he bought for the both of you as a gift to ensure his commitment.

His hair was slicked back partly, slightly giving way for you to see his forehead. It also gave you a much clearer view of his eyes, hiding behind the clear lenses of the glasses he usually wears when reading or studying.

His eyes were a common sight considering the fact that he was your boyfriend and you see him almost everyday, however the only reason why you were bothered by them was because they didn’t focus on your eyes, but rather on your lips as you talked.

This was one of his flirty antics at work, the kind of antics you’ve gotten used to a long time ago but can’t help but still be affected by it.

“I know,” Jake responds back, attitude completely the same as it was in the beginning of your rant. Shortly after you notice the corners of his lips curving upwards into smirk, appearing to showcase that he knew exactly what he was doing.

And you were not surprised.

A sigh escapes your lips, “Jake, you’re supposed to be helping me with the lesson.” You spew out while raising an eyebrow at him, crossing both arms together in a direct manner. “Are you going to help me study or are you just going to keep messing around?”

He chuckles amusingly, grin not faltering.

“Messing around? I’m just admiring you, babe. You do know that you’re beautiful, right?”

Jake’s gaze starts to slowly trail from your lips towards your eyes, seeing the expression displayed on your facial features. “Besides, you were going off topic by ranting about Professor Kim and the Math exam.” He tilts his head, still appearing to be flirting with you.

“Well — yeah, and you’re supposed to be helping me pass the exam right now because I don’t want to fail,” you insist, attempting to get Jake back on track in acting as your tutor.

You then see him switch his focus onto the semi messy written notes, opened and sprawled across the table in front of you. “Huh,” he lets out, “You seem alright doing it by yourself though.”

Crap, he was getting to you. The way he spoke to you in a soft yet attractive tone rendered you flustered, and the way he looked like currently was definitely not helping your mental state at all.

With further inspection of his overall appearance, you can see he had his sleeves rolled up until it reached right below his elbow. This simple insight made you admire how evident his veins were on his hand, clearly seen due to his dress shirt’s sleeves not covering them.

He was, without a doubt, making you short circuit. And you absolutely hated that he was doing nothing but only the bare minimum.

“I still need your help either way.” Your tongue moves on its own immediately, mind trying to keep your thoughts at bay about him. You lay your hand on top of the written notes, sliding them towards Jake so he could read them properly.

“Oh, I was supposed to be your tutor or something?” He asks nonchalantly, brows raising up as he fixes his posture on his seat.

In response you roll your eyes and scoff, expression becoming a bit more irritated than it was in the beginning.

“So you just agreed to do this without even listening to me properly when I asked you earlier?” You inquire back, voice surprisingly sounding harsher as you continue looking at him.

Another set of chuckles blew out of Jake’s mouth. “No need to be so angry,” He then leans forward again, tilting his head another time, “I really am sorry though, but I was only doing my job as your boyfriend.”

His words sent shivers down your spine one after the other. It was annoying really, how much his voice had this much of an impact on you. His sultry and deep tone that he always used when speaking to you added another factor of why you were attracted to him in the first place.

From how he apologized, you could easily surmise that he wasn’t truly sorry. But the part where he mentioned that he was just being your boyfriend immediately gave you all of the reasons to forgive him.

You sigh, giving the attempt in ignoring your heart from fluttering another chance. Sim Jaeyun, Sim Jake, Jaeyun, Jake, Jakey — or whatever name he goes by, he truly knew his way to get to you no matter the occasion or if he had changed his persona.

At this point you were already losing your calm demeanor the more you interacted with Jake. Honestly, if it was him who drew the other half of your heart, you’d keep it against your chest without a single question.

He made you want to do impulsive actions, he made you want to embarrass yourself, and he made you want to become a fool. These thoughts were things that you wouldn’t dare to say out loud, mainly because you knew how stupid you would look like in doing so. You couldn’t help but wonder pitifully in your mind.

What was this man doing to you? You’re both dating now, so why does it feel like you were back to hopelessly crushing on him like before?

After all of these questions, you were sure that your mind was going to go haywire if he ever decided to graze his hand against yours.

“Babe,” Jake calls out, catching your attention as he waves a hand in front of your face, “Am I really that much of an eye candy to you?” He asks teasingly, eyes still looking into yours as he watches you flinch slightly at the sudden movement.

You then feel a tap on the tip of your nose, seeing a soft smile adorning your boyfriend’s features, “You’re making it harder for me to help you study if you keep acting this cute.”

As your heartbeat intensifies from his words, you quickly realize what had happened: you were staring at Jake and you weren’t aware of it.

In this point of the current situation, there was no mistake that you were an actual fool in disguise as a human. “Oh — uh, what were you saying?” You ask in a rather flustered manner as you place a hand at the nape of your neck, rubbing it gently the moment it touches it.

Jake grabs the pen from the table’s surface into his hand and clicks it a few times before answering, “I was admiring the view and it seems like you enjoyed yours too.” He cheekily prompts while giving out a small wink towards your direction.

Embarrassment quickly shoots through your mind at full speed, making you receive the desire to hide yourself from him further. “I was looking behind you,” you mutter, trying to create a valid excuse as your fingers begin fiddling with the edges of the papers sprawled across the table.

“You were looking at books about Shakespearean plays?” He stifles, turning his body to glance at the bookshelf to confirm his question. “Last time you told me that Shakespeare sucked, didn’t know you had a change of heart,” Jake shrugs sarcastically, the corners of his lips tugging themselves into a small smirk.

You frown slightly, letting go of the papers and allowing your hand to rest on the table. “I didn’t say he sucked, I said that reading and analyzing his works sucked,” you explain exasperatedly.

Jake can’t help but supply laughter at your words — the way you quickly tried to cover up what you were actually doing made him find you cuter than usual. With the intent of making the situation seem more entertaining, he points the pen at your face, “Then what about the books made you stop talking?”

“I just remembered about my assignment for History.”

“Really? History?”

You nod eagerly — a bit too eagerly for the matter. You tried your best to remedy the situation at hand but the seeping thought of Jake already knowing the truth was pretty much turning into reality.

“Yeah, I have to — um, read a chapter from Midsummer’s Night Dream and analyze it.”

“But I thought you were supposed to be reading Macbeth?”

The amount of counter statements your boyfriend kept saying were only making you more embarrassed. Embarrassed because at this point, you were sure that he knew exactly what you were doing a few moments ago.

“Just tell me the truth,” Jake prompts, “You were looking at me, it was very obvious.”

This was beyond what you were expecting for this tutoring session — actually, was this even a tutoring session in the first place? It was more like a stupid moment of you going feral over a man that you have been dating for almost a year now.

Sim Jaeyun was definitely a bad choice to have as your tutor.

“I have a challenge for you.” He puts his hands together on the table, as well as leaning back away from you to straighten his posture, “I’ll kiss you every time I catch you gawking at me.”

Hearing his idea makes you click your tongue subconsciously, because you knew that it would’ve make your life so much easier if this entire session didn’t happen, nor if you asked Jake to be your tutor in the first place.

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subbypeterparker · 9 months

Note

Hear me out whiny!Ethan landry fic or headcannon

whiny!ethan landry headcannon

• he is perhaps the most vocal man you’ve ever met

• but you’d better be sure his whines and moans are music to your ears

• as uni students, you both spend enormous amounts of time on your individual classes, which can lead to time spent away from each other

“pleaseee will you touch me mommy (im sorry i had to slip it in), I promise I’ll make you feel so good, i swear”

you’re sitting cross cross on his bed, working intently on your laptop while he lays behind you, pressing soft kisses to your neck

and obviously him moaning and begging in your ear has you feeling some kind of way, but you really do need to focus

once he realizes he needs to wait a while until your attention can be on him, he gets a bit restless, and lets out a sigh of defeat as you continue typing away

• this man is actually such a slut for you, it’s insane he gets anything done since you two got together

• part of being whiny means ethan being so needy for you, no matter where he is

• even if it’s inconvenient for him to be touching you anywhere, he will beg and whine for you to let him, either until he gets to touch you, or until you punish him for being desperate

“please, please, let me eat your pussy…” “ethan, we’re in the library” “…no one’s around, and i won’t make any noises, i promise”

he’s always so eager to touch you, whenever and wherever he can. doesn’t even need to be sexual

“…sweetheart, you don’t always have to hold my hand,” you look down at your conjoined hands with a pointed look on your face. “i know, but i just want to be near you,” he practically pouts

will get pouty and whiny if you don’t let him touch you, and will act bratty until you let him

• i have to mention this man’s moans and whines

• as i’ve mentioned, he’s very vocal, and when he’s desperate for anything, it goes up 10x

he’ll practically be screaming in bed, especially when he’s close, and loses his breath quickly doing so

this results in the the lewdest and loudest whines and moans you have ever heard, and they’re truthfully enough to have your pussy throbbing

but oh. good. lord. when it comes to pegging, this man is extraordinarily vocal

with his back arching, ass pressing against you as he moans out and clenches around the strap, his poor brain can’t decide if it wants you to slow down, or speed up and wreck him

this conflict results in ethan just losing his ability to speak, and his brain turns numb and can only let out whines and whimpers for you

• he’s so big on being praised, and the slightest stroke on his face combined with a soft praise has him preening in your hands

• ethan landry has the BIGGEST praise kink known to man, and will beg and whine for more praises to poor from your mouth, no matter what you’re doing

he can truly cum just from you praising him, and he knows this, and begs for you to praise him, just so your voice can get him closer

• when he has to restrain himself (either from cumming or from touching you or himself), he starts to whine for your touch and your help

“fuck mommy please, i cant last much longer,” he’s been lying on your bed naked, watching you watch him as he falls apart while you touch yourself

he can feel himself getting closer without even touching himself as he watches you touch your pussy, whining out when you moan his name

• although he likes being praised, and as i’ve said, can get off solely on it, he’s big on being degraded

trust me when i tell you there is NOTHING like ethan sobbing and whining as you degrade him

although he knows he shouldn’t like it as much as he does when you call bim degrading names, he can’t help but moan out and whine for you to keep doing it

“baby look at you, nothing but a fucking whore for mommy, only here for my pleasure, huh?” your words make his back arch as he whines out broken cries and screams of “mommy!”, desperately holding on to any sanity he has

• he is such a simple minded teen boy, that anything to do with you has him whining and writhing just for you, and only you

• he truly is a slut for you, and holy shit, does he earn that title

————————————————————————

it is incredibly late after a long day, yet this writing was much needed, PLEASE keep the ethan requests coming!! 🫶🫶

#subbypeterparker #ethan landry #ethan landry smut #sub ethan landry #sub!ethan landry #scream smut #jack champion #jack champion smut

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neptuneiris · 10 months

Text

cardigan (3/3)

I knew you, leavin' like a father, running like water

pairing: modern!aemond × best friend reader!

summary: being in love with your best friend since high school becomes a strong and unavoidable feeling. until it starts to become more difficult when you get to college and the two of you, especially him, meet new people.

word count: 8.8k

previous part • next part

After forcing yourself to forget about Aemond, start having every intention of having fun with your friends no matter what and get a few drinks… you did it.

You managed to have fun and have a really good time with your real friends.

Even though you got your heart broken, you felt really bad and had to endure that ugly sharp pain in your chest along with all that sadness, pain, anger and disappointment…. you drank and forgot about everything to focus on the moment.

You even met new people, all friends of Ryan's.

The next day, in Sara's room at the dorm, you didn't even remember their names or almost half of the things that happened at the party.

Until she reminded you herself and showed you videos of everyone together with those people dancing and having a good time.

Then, remembering what had happened before you decided to have fun, you felt that urge to cry again.

Fortunately Sara didn't ask you about him, it was as if she had forgotten about him and you were thankful for that since you didn't have to talk to her about anything.

However, after Sara does you the favor of taking you home, even though the place doesn't really feel like that anymore, nervous, cautious and not really having the energy and courage to face him, you still open the door of the apartment and enter.

But you get the big surprise that he's not even here.

Incredulous, you think to yourself that he must have stayed with his girlfriend again. And you quickly attend to Vhagar and yourself, wanting to occupy your mind so that you don't seriously cry at that moment.

Did he really completely forgot my birthday?

You didn't even need to know, the answer to the question was pretty clear when you got to the apartment since he didn't show up for the rest of the day either.

And you didn't know if you felt grateful for it since you didn't want to see him or it made you feel worse about the fact that he really had completely forgotten you and your special day.

So the best you could do at that moment, was to take a bath, eat a little and then look for a job again around your area.

You want to keep your mind busy, you don't want to think about him, so you don't rest and you don't take your eyes off your phone until you find a job.

Until you finally find a job at a flower shop near the university as the store's receptionist and where the working hours fit your schedule perfectly. They don't ask for experience either.

That day, even though your head hurts and you still haven't recovered one hundred percent from the previous party, you take pills, get some rest and head to the flower shop.

And the next few days, it's back to living alone in the apartment.

Since you completely ignored Aemond's messages that night, neither you nor he have spoken again, not even a phone call.

You no longer ask him if he will come to eat, what special food he wants in case he does, where he is or where he spent the night.

You don't do it anymore because you no longer want to or care.

You also no longer do his laundry, the little he has here really, and now you simply clean up the mess you make and only buy food for yourself.

He probably has to come to the apartment when you are in class and you are grateful for that, even though you feel more broken inside every day that passes and you see again how he completely forgot your birthday.

He doesn't say anything to you, he doesn't even make the slightest effort, he doesn't see you and doesn't seem to have the intention of doing so any time soon.

Does it hurt? Yes, very much.

But you know you are no one to tell him what he can and can't do, who he can and can't be with.

Just as you don't have to remind him that it was your birthday, nor should you tell him that he forgot all about it.

He knows what he is doing, he makes his own decisions, he is no longer a child,… and neither are you.

That's why despite being very upset, sad and broken, really not wanting to you still force yourself to try to communicate with him.

You've got the job and there's a dorm room available at the residence halls, so now you just want to give him the key to the apartment.

Although nothing would be better than just leaving and nothing else, but you know you can't do that.

After all, he helped you a lot financially by offering you your own space here, basically for free.

But yet when you text and call him a few times as you start packing, he doesn't respond.

He responds very late at night only telling you that he's staying the night with Alys. And when you ask him if you can see each other and talk, he doesn't respond anymore.

Until more days go by and you unsuccessfully, feeling really annoyed with him, you tell yourself that enough is enough.

You ask Ryan to help you transport your things to your new home and you definitely break all ties with Aemond by bringing Vhagar with you as well.

With him pretending you no longer exist, as if he didn't have his best friend living with him, or apparently so it was, so now you also do the exact same thing.

You pretend he no longer exists and just walk away.

And now as you settle into your new home, which is not at all like where you used to live before, you still like it and tell yourself that you will get used to it soon.

It has nothing more than the small square space with your bed, your closet and desk, also a small bathroom.

You only have to buy a small refrigerator now while everything else like laundry is already offered by the residence on the first floor.

You know your room will be a small place for Vhagar but she doesn't seem to mind as she settles into your bed and falls asleep once you start unpacking.

Until the weekend comes and your friends make noise in the group chat saying they want to party on Saturday.

And you, thinking you wouldn't be in the mood, agree to go and have some fun.

It's already been a full week Monday through Saturday morning that you started your new job that you couldn't have liked any better. So you want to get all the stress out.

Most of all you want to get the sadness out of your system because of work, your classes and also because of him.

It's also been a full week since you moved, so not wanting anything to do with him anymore, you head to the one person you know will help you with the matter: Helaena.

Helaena also studies at the same university, she also lives in a dorm room, only that she studies biology.

So once you send her a message asking if the two of you can meet, she gladly accepts and you arrange to meet in her room.

And soon enough she finds herself opening her door to greet you.

"Hi Y/N!" she exclaims happily and wraps you in a soft hug, to which you smile.

"Hello Hel."

"Where have you been? I finally see you."

She asks you as she pulls away from you and looks at you a little confused, without erasing her charming smile.

"You know…" You shrug your shoulders, a little nervous, "I've been very busy with my classes."

And even though that's not the real reason, she still believes you.

"Oh yeah, sure, me too, it's a nightmare. Come on in."

She steps aside so you can come in and you do, immediately feeling nervous because you know you'll have to tell her about everything that happened with her brother.

"Even so, you didn't come to the ball."

Helaena says to you suddenly and you watch her as she closes the door behind her.

"I thought it was weird since you always go to my family's ball."

"Yes…" you say a little uncomfortable, "I… I did…

"But it seemed so weird to me that all of a sudden Aemond took his girlfriend when he said that…..

She stops suddenly, then looks at you with her eyes wide open, now softening her confused face, watching you intently.

"Oh, don't tell me," she murmurs.

And all you do is bite your lips and lower your gaze for a moment in sorrow.

"Don't tell me you didn't go because he took his girlfriend."

You let out a long breath and at that moment, taking advantage of the fact that she has already brought up the subject of him and his girlfriend, you decide to tell her everything that happened.

The ball, how you now live alone in his apartment when it wasn't supposed to be like that, his conversation with Alys, his irresponsibility with Vhagar and finally your birthday.

"Oh I'm going to kill that son of a…

"No, Hel, please."

You ask her, not wanting to talk about him anymore.

"It's all done now. I don't want to cause any more…

"You? Cause anything?" she interrupts you, incredulous, "Y/N, you couldn't cause anything, it's all caused by him and his obsession with that girl."

"She's his girlfriend," you say with pain in your chest, "It makes sense."

"Yeah, but you don't put your best friend down for a relationship, Y/N," she says obviously and with an annoyed tone, "And believe me when I tell you that when I met that girl she didn't give me any good vibes. Mother seemed to some point pleased, but Nyra with her look told me everything, so did Aegon and even my uncle Daemon."

"Really?"

You ask her really interested in it, since apparently you were not the only one who felt that way when you met Alys for the first time.

"Yes, really," she assures you, "They all asked about you, Daeron, Jace and Luke too."

You lower your gaze with a sad expression, since you haven't seen Aemond's little brother or his two nephews who have always been very kind and funny with you.

You are also struck by the fact that Aemond did not tell you that his family had been asking about you at the ball.

Maybe he did it so as not to make you feel bad.

"Aemond didn't even answer them, he didn't even seem to know what to say. He just immediately introduced them to his girlfriend," she says with a pout.

You let out a long breath.

"Well, I still get the idea of how much fun everyone had. I saw your pictures and videos on Instagram."

"I just can't believe he told you at the last minute when you already had everything ready that he was taking his girlfriend," she insists, really annoyed, "And yet after making plans the idiot forgot your birthday?" she inquires.

"It doesn't matter anymore, Hel, that was a little more than a week ago," you say not wanting to give more importance to the matter, "In fact, I came here because I wanted to know if you could do me a favor, now that we are talking about it."

Helaena, still annoyed to hear everything you told her, still nods.

"Sure, what is it?"

"I…

You bite your lips, feeling nervous to tell the sister of your best friend, or ex best friend rather, about the new chapter of your life.

Mostly because after this, Aemond will finally know everything soon enough.

"I've gotten a job in a flower shop and I've also moved into a dorm. Don't worry, I have brought Vhagar with me, now I will take care of her."

You assure her the instant you know she would ask you about Vhagar.

"And even though I didn't want to, I had to try to communicate with Aemond, but he never responded and I never saw him around the apartment, so I just left because I couldn't delay any longer. To this day he doesn't even know anything."

Again Helaena's soft, tender face contorts in anger.

"That fucking son of a….

"So…" you interrupt her, taking the things from your backpack, "Here is the key to the apartment and also this envelope with money to pay him for the troubles."

You look at her with a certain sadness and with the hope in your face that she will take care of this after Helaena sees everything in your hands and again returns her gaze to yours.

"Could you hand it over to him, please?"

And now it is Helaena's turn to look at you sadly and with compassion as she looks at your hurt face and understands what you went through and what you are going through now.

"Oh, Y/N…" she says disappointedly, "I'm so sorry for my stupid brother."

And again she pulls you in a soft and comforting hug that you allow since you really need it, even though you avoid breaking down crying at that moment.

You know Helaena probably won't tell him anything, but you still don't want to cry in the arms of your ex-best friend's sister.

"Don't worry, Hel. And nothing that happened with him will affect our friendship either," you assure her in a sad voice.

"No, of course not," she says instantly, hugging you a little tighter.

After a few more moments like that, they both separate and Helaena takes the key and the envelope with the money.

That money was sent to you monthly by your parents and you decided to give it to him. Now with your job at the flower shop, you can get that money back for your needs.

But for now it feels good to give it to Aemond because despite hearing that horrible conversation between him and his girlfriend, you do it mostly to feel better about yourself.

And after talking a few more moments with Helaena, you both finally say goodbye and you walk through her door.

You both agree that one of these days you could go for a coffee together. And just as you are about to leave, Helaena stops you with her words.

Words that leave you completely still, and then you look at her again with a slight surprise on your face.

"I always believed and hoped that you and Aemond would end up together, you know," she says with a sad little smile, "I know you were best friends, but I always had a feeling, always.

At that moment… how you wished her words would have been true.

How you would have wanted that to happen.

You think with illusion, sadness and disappointment, and then just try to smile even a little in her direction, say goodbye one last time and leave.

Later that night, after crying a little and trying to cheer yourself up by getting ready to go to the party with your friends, you arrive at the frat house and the party starts right then and there.

At first, cautious, you are kept alert by the fact that Aemond could probably be here with his girlfriend or with his friends, or maybe both.

But fortunately for you, there is no silver-haired guy with a black haired girl in the crowd, so you can feel at peace.

Immediately the party games like beer pong and drinking begin.

Until at some point of the party, you realize while talking and having fun with Aileen, that again Ryan's friends have joined the group, three guys exactly.

And as you're all dancing together, having a good time, you're drinking and forgetting about everything, really enjoying yourself, you suddenly find yourself dancing and singing the songs at the top of your lungs with one of Ryan's friends, Cregan Stark.

A tall guy, dark brown hair, with black eyes and features that can't go unnoticed.

Cregan seems to have his eye on you and you have yours on him.

Eventually the two start talking, being close, dancing together, even taking pictures and videos of each other, and then the two sit on one of the sofas and continue talking.

The two very close to each other to the point of almost kissing.

Maybe it was the alcohol, the moment, the party or just that you wanted to have this kind of moments with some guy, because Cregan is really handsome and you really wanted to kiss him.

However, all the guys arrived just at that moment to keep you company and rest a bit after having been dancing for a while.

Cregan didn't seem to mind, you didn't really either, you both just smiled at each other, although he had that little disappointment on his face from the interruption.

It remained as that pending between you and that's why he asked for your number.

The next day, apparently that interaction and closeness between you and Cregan was noticed by everyone, but more so by your friends who squeal and excitedly talk about him and you.

You find out that he's a law student, a year older than you, likes dogs, plays the guitar, and apparently isn't dating anyone.

You didn't want to get your hopes up with him, because you knew that meeting a guy and him suddenly having an interest in you at a party is usually not a long-term interest and is just for the moment.

But the expectation went up the moment he texts you and asks you if you want to have coffee with him on Tuesday morning before you both have your respective classes.

And you respond, or well, your friends respond more excitedly than you, that you accept.

"Girl, the guy is handsome, tall, funny and a really nice guy, what more could you ask for?"

And in that, Aileen is right. However… there is a problem. And that problem has a name: Aemond.

Aemond has ruined every guy for you in many ways, both physically and personality-wise.

And even though he wasn't like that, he really was a very bad friend to you and all his decisions hurt you. That's why agreeing to date Cregan is easy.

You also tell yourself that Aemond doesn't matter anymore. He has a girlfriend, he's living his life apart, and so are you, and you and he are no longer friends.

So once Cregan tells you that he is already waiting for you outside your dorm, you rush out.

Excitedly you take one last look in your mirror, make sure nothing is out of place, also make sure Vhagar is okay and head for the door to leave with your backpack on your shoulder and your phone in hand.

But when you opened the door, you clearly didn't expect to see your ex-best friend about to knock on your door with a totally bewildered, confused, worried and to some extent distressed and desperate look on his face.

"Y/N...

And you are totally paralyzed the moment your name leaves his lips.

At first, you don't understand what he is doing here or how he knew exactly where you were now since you didn't tell Helaena anything about your new home.

In fact, you didn't say anything to anyone he and you know together. However, you do know him.

You know that he just by asking anyone he can find out anything he wants to know, including finding people, simply because he is Aemond Targaryen.

And then you start to panic and you feel very nervous because he's really here.

"W-what are you doing here?" you ask him in a bewildered whisper.

In an instant you tense up and hold tightly to the edge of your door, watching him intently and alertly.

"What am I doing here?" he asks in a totally bewildered voice, "What are you doing here?" he says, now certainly annoyed.

"I-I don't… I don't have time for this, okay?"

You try to walk past him, bearing in mind that Cregan is waiting for you outside and you don't want to keep him waiting any longer.

But you can't stop your heart from beating too fast and you can't stop this agonizing feeling in your gut at the sight of him now after so many weeks.

"Are you serious?"

He stops you by taking your arm in a firm grip, making you stand in front of him again, with the most bewildered, confused and annoyed look you've ever seen on his face.

"I come home calling you, wanting to talk to you, having this stupid idea that you were busy or something, only to find out that Vhagar isn't there, neither are you and neither are your things," he says to you incredulously, "I thought something bad had happened to you Y/N, I was so worried. I started to go crazy because I couldn't even call you or send you messages, nothing was getting through to you."

And at that moment, everything you were feeling, is replaced by hatred and anger for very clear reasons and that he, seeming surprising to you, doesn't see or even realize.

He probably wanted to talk to you about your birthday, but he couldn't call or text you because since you moved out and he had no idea, you decided to block him from everywhere.

But really, even though you feel weak from his unexpected appearance, his words don't make you feel anything but hurt and angry.

"And do you have any fucking idea how it made me feel when I called Helaena and she told me you got a job and moved into a fucking dorm just making everything worse?" he asks you annoyed, "All this without me having a fucking idea, Y/N."

The way he tells you everything, you immediately tell yourself that you won't react the same way even though all that flows through your system is one thing: anger.

So instead of talking to him in annoyance because you don't want to and don't have the time to explain yourself more than necessary, you talk to him calmly in comparison to him.

He is visibly frustrated and looks more bewildered than ever.

"Maybe you would have known… if you had answered my calls or messages, Aemond. Or if you had shown up even once at your apartment."

And you overemphasize your apartment.

"All that was over a week ago, much longer in fact, and you barely care to know about me or Vhagar," you say bitterly.

He shakes his head, looking more distressed and worried than before.

"I-I…" He lets out a long breath, "And what the fuck is this supposed to mean?"

He asks you again in annoyance, clearly after he has no idea what to say to the previous and from his jacket pocket he takes out the money you gave to Helaena for him and also the key to his apartment.

"For your troubles?" he raises the money in annoyance, "And the key for what? Are you really going to stay here definitely?"

"The money is because I didn't give you a single penny to help you financially and the key so you have more privacy with Alys every time you get home and I don't have to be there locked up in my room… stopping you," you explain without much interest, "That's what you wanted, isn't it?" you raise your eyebrows expectantly at him.

But he is speechless, staring at you in surprise, bewilderment and anguish, his whole worried expression speaking for itself.

"Did you…" he pauses in concern, "Did you hear us that night?"

You deliberately ignore his question.

"You wanted me to meet new people and go out more, also give you your privacy…well, I'm doing exactly that. Now leave and don't ever come back."

And without further ado you close the door behind you firmly and walk away from him to head for the stairs and finally leave to meet Cregan.

But because of the circumstances and everything Aemond must be feeling, he doesn't let you go so easily.

"Hey, no, stop," he says in a warning tone and then grabs your arm and immobilizes you as you turn towards him.

"Let go of me."

"Y/N…

"I have to go. Someone is waiting for me."

"Y/N, please…" he calls pleadingly, "You don't have to lie, I-I…" he runs a hand over his frustrated and anguished face, "Was all this for your birthday?"

At his question, you say nothing, just continue to stare at him with the most serious look ever, now just pressing your lips together and waiting for him to let go so you can leave.

"Y/N…" he calls you cautiously and with worry in his eyes, "I know I fucked up, I know that….

"Oh please, Aemond," you exclaim irritated, "I don't need any more of your pity, okay? I really don't care what you have to say, it's all done. I gave you the key back and the money too, didn't I? Now you won't have to pity me anymore and your girlfriend will be pleased to know that I won't interfere with your plans anymore."

He lets out a long breath, more frustrated than before and completely irritated by your words.

"It doesn't matter what you heard that night, Y/N. It doesn't matter what Alys said either," he tells you in desperation.

But you don't care anymore.

"I've done my part, now leave me alone."

Again you try to leave but he again won't let you go.

"Will you stop running away!? I want to talk to you, I want to fix this!" he says in exasperation, "I don't want your key and I certainly don't want your fucking money, I want you back with me!"

And that's when you can't take it any longer and you finally explode in anger at him.

"Now you want me to be with you after always leaving me out of all the plans we made for your girlfriend and leaving me living alone!? Do you really think I even want to see you and be in the same place as you after everything you done!?"

He is about to answer you, but a third voice between you stops him and also the whole discussion between the two of you.

"Y/N?"

Both you and Aemond turn your heads and from the stairs Cregan Stark looks curiously between you and Aemond, almost worried.

You know your screams must have been heard all the way to the first floor considering your room is on the second.

"Is everything all right here?" he asks you softly and attentively, turning to you.

Feeling embarrassed that he might have heard everything, which is most likely, you finally loosen your grip on Aemond and control yourself by telling yourself that it's all over now.

"Yes, everything is fine," you put on your best face, or try to, "Sorry, I was on my way out. I didn't want to keep you waiting too long."

"No, it's fine," he says nonchalantly, "Although I did come to hurry you a little," he confesses with a small, embarrassed smile, "At the coffee shop we're going to, the coffee you like is on promotion, but only until ten o'clock, so I want to get there to buy it for you."

In other circumstances, Cregan's words would have made you feel on the clouds, but because of what was happening before and with Aemond present, his words have no effect on you.

Especially because of Aemond's confused and intimidating look at Cregan, clearly annoyed by the interruption, as well as wanting to know who this guy is and realizing that you really had someone waiting for you.

"Yeah, yeah, let's go," you nod in his direction, "He was just leaving too."

You say with a certain bitter and obvious tone turning your head towards Aemond, but without looking at him to which you immediately feel his gaze on you, but you ignore him.

And not wanting to keep Cregan waiting any longer, you head towards him, take him by the arm and lead him along with you towards the stairs, leaving Aemond behind.

After you and Cregan start heading towards the coffe shop, you try to pay attention to everything he tells you, but you can't.

You pretend to listen to him and collaborate a little in his conversation, feeling bad about yourself but you can't help it since all you can think about is Aemond.

And even though Cregan tries to bring up the subject, clearly because it's obvious he heard you were arguing, you quickly evade him.

However, he tells you that he believes he has seen Aemond before and has heard a lot about him. Also of his sister, Helaena.

But overall, this going out or rather date? with Cregan… did not turn out as you expected and as you wanted it to because of Aemond's unexpected visit to your new home.

And once again, you find yourself out of balance because of what happened with him now.

Latch by Disclosure and Sam Smith is heard throughout the house of the most popular party frat house and the one that never disappoints.

At first, you thought about not partying with your friends and Cregan since you weren't in the mood and didn't want to have to deal with a hangover the next day.

However, Cregan is the one who convinces you and now the two of you are dancing along with all your other friends having a good time, singing at the top of your lungs and forgetting about everything.

The whole party is going amazing, you're still not drinking too much, you're having fun with your friends and Cregan most of all.

Until you are catching your breath to continue dancing with Cregan, both of you apart and talking, suddenly your gaze is focused on the entrance of the house and Aemond Targaryen makes an appearance holding Alys' hand with all his friends also entering behind him.

Instantly you want to leave, because you know you don't feel comfortable now with the presence of your ex best friend knowing what happened the last time you saw each other.

And even more so when he notices you standing apart, with that guy from before, the two of you very close and talking, now realizing your presence.

But you pretend not to see him even though your heart starts beating fast when you feel his gaze.

When you stop feeling that he is looking at you, then you see him and still holding hands with Alys both of them go to the kitchen. And that's when you say to yourself: no.

He is not going to ruin this party with your friends. He came here for the sole purpose of having fun, which is the point of the party and so are you.

You decide to leave the feelings behind and continue having fun as before.

You drink some more, resume dancing, singing and playing party games, just forget about him and focus on you, what you are doing and the people around you.

When in the kitchen, while you are pouring more drinks for Cregan and yourself, something happens that you least expected and that causes you a lot of confusion at the same time.

However, somehow you must have known that Aemond would be coming for you.

"Y/N."

He calls out to you and when you look at him, you again meet his gaze a little worried but also hopeful that he might talk to you.

But of course, Alys must be by his side clinging to his right arm, watching you with a certain indifference.

And you, preferring a thousand times to ignore it, unfortunately still do not finish preparing the drinks, so you decide to act indifferent.

"Yes?" you say without even looking at him.

And just with your indifference, which Aemond notices perfectly, only makes him more frustrated, but not wanting to explode again against you, he can only try to relax and start with what he wants to say as calmly as possible so as not to push you away.

"Are you…" he swallows hard, looking at you apologetically and a bit nervously, "Are you enjoying the party?"

However, his question couldn't have been more pathetic for you.

"Yes, very much in fact."

You answer without further ado, putting everything back in its place to finally get out of the way and leave. And that's what you do, you turn around with your drinks in hand and walk away.

But he stops you instantly by standing in front of you.

"Y/N," he calls out to you pleadingly, "Can we go outside and talk, please?"

And you, wanting to take your indifference further, even more with Alys' presence, that's exactly what you do.

"About what?"

"About the other day," he tells you more cautious and attentive than before.

And you frown at him.

"Was there anything else to say?"

He lets out a long sigh.

"Y/N, please…

"There you are!"

Again Cregan's voice interrupts the conversation between the two of you and Cregan, without even noticing Aemond, turns to you with a small smile on his lips.

"I went to the bathroom for two seconds and I had already lost you," he says amused, "You need help?"

He points to the drinks and you nod.

"Yes," you extend one to him, placing a soft smile in his direction, "This one's yours, actually.

"Thank you, my pretty."

And maybe it had been again the interruption of the same boy from the other day, that makes Aemond can't help but feel annoyed.

But maybe it's more from the fact that he tenses up and watches him with a clenched jaw as he hears that word from him towards you.

Pretty.

Both he and you think, but you really couldn't care less as you watch between Cregan and him over the nickname.

And feeling Aemond's burning gaze, Cregan finally seems to notice the presence of Aemond Targaryen himself.

"Oh, hey," he smiles friendly, "Sorry, we've met before, haven't we?"

And Aemond, really annoyed, just bites the inside of his cheek and avoids showing his irritation, as well as the discontent he feels towards the guy.

"Yes," he says without looking at him, with a cutting tone, focusing again on you.

"Yes, sorry again," Cregan tells him again, "It's just that we weren't introduced."

And after Cregan says that, you're sorry but you want to murder him.

Especially since now Cregan is watching you too, already having the smoldering stare of your ex best at you and the guy you're apparently starting to have… something with.

Not to mention the judgmental and irritated look from Alys as well.

And you, having no choice, introduce them to each other.

"Aemond, this is Cregan, my friend," you point to Cregan, "And Cregan, this is Aemond, an old classmate at high school."

And finally you point to Aemond, without looking at him too much.

And again, everything in Aemond contracts and his whole bewildered look is reflected on his face after hearing your words.

Even Alys stirs in her place, watching Aemond intently.

A strange feeling in his chest invades him and all his disappointment, as well as his sadness, is reflected even though he tries not to be.

But the way you said it, your look, your attitude, everything about you makes him feel miserable and makes him recognize that he has definitely lost you.

Especially because after that, you don't waste any more time, you take Cregan by the hand and excuse both of you to go back to your friends, not wanting to be around him anymore.

After the party goes on, Aemond can't enjoy the moment. Even Alys next to him doesn't get his attention, neither do his friends.

All he sees is you, with him, the two of you dancing, laughing and close to each other.

He's certainly never seen you having fun like that before, never in the company of a guy he admits he recognizes; he seems like a really nice guy.

An unpleasant feeling turns his stomach and he feels it in his chest again when you laugh at something he has said, he slips an arm around your shoulders and leaves a kiss on your cheek.

His jaw tenses and he can't take his eye off of you, to some extent starting to annoy Alys by his lack of attention.

And Aemond loses it completely the moment he turns his face towards you, you turn your face towards him and the two of you kiss.

All the friendship that the two of you and Aemond used to have, you and Aemond, passes right in front of him in that moment.

Everything, from the beginning, from high school to college, with both of you moving into the apartment, having movie nights, having breakfast and dinner together, grocery shopping, everything.

As well as all the bad stuff caused by him, which he admits to, like all those nights he left you behind for Alys, the ball and your birthday.

Unable to take it anymore, totally ignoring Alys and everyone, with the hardest look on his face, he leaves the house in an act of desperation and

He moves away from all the people, from Alys, from you, because he can't see you having fun without him, he can't see you with other people, because it was always him.

And knowing that he was the one who caused your friendship to end, he takes a seat on the stairs leading to the house and starts smoking.

But even he doesn't understand himself.

Isn't this what you wanted?

His mind asks him, as confused as he is, who with a bad face and feeling like a complete idiot, continues smoking, thinking that it would be better to go back home.

But without you… it doesn't feel like that anymore.

He stays thinking for a long time, without Alys bothering to look for him, which he is grateful for since he has more time with himself.

While you, still at the party, continue drinking and sharing a kiss or two with Cregan, not really caring that you're among friends and other people.

But the moment with Cregan ends when he tells you that he has to leave, even showing you some messages from his sister asking him to pick her up at a party outside the university.

He asks you if you want him to leave you too, but you prefer to continue having fun for a while longer. You both say goodbye and stay with your friends.

Not long after, however, they all get really drunk. Even Ryan.

So as the four of you leave the house, ordering Uber's and laughing amongst yourselves, that's when Aemond sees you.

Confused, he throws the rest of his cigarette away and stands up from the stairs, watching you intently. And noticing your condition, he actually gets worried.

You can't even stand firmly on your feet.

And all you remember is having a brief conversation or discussion with someone, that someone also talking to Ryan, then you feel yourself being carried, you protest a little, and then all goes dark.

The moment you open your eyes, completely numb and feeling like a mess, the pain in your throat, body and head begins.

You groan under your breath, scrunching up your face and holding a hand to your forehead, feeling as if your head is about to explode in constant sharp pain.

You let out a sigh, closing your eyes and trying to calm yourself down so you can get through the pain easier, but it's impossible.

You drank too much, that's for sure, your body is confirming it. But what you don't know is where you are.

Alarmed, you quickly reopen your eyes and look around you, worrying because you don't remember who you left with last night and whether you came to your room or someone else's.

When your whole face contorts in confusion as you realize that this room is not yours, nor is it Sara's or Aileen's room. In fact, this room you know and you know it very well.

You open your eyes wide and don't understand anything, beginning to get seriously alarmed and worried.

What the fuck am I doing in Aemond's room?

You think to yourself as you force yourself to ignore all the internal pain you are feeling and get out of bed.

You quickly put on your shoes, make sure you have all your things with you and leave the room, hoping he's not here.

But of course he must be, because as you walk out into the hallway, with your things held against your chest, you hear sounds and very low music coming from the kitchen.

And as you slowly, cautiously approach, you see him, preparing breakfast, moving back and forth across the kitchen with his back to you.

Hopeful, you watch the door ahead a few feet away from you, then look cautiously again at Aemond, who fortunately has not noticed your presence.

You think to yourself that you could head for the door without making a sound and leave without him noticing. Being here with him in your old home doesn't please you, especially since you don't understand how you got here last night with him.

But you don't care, all you want to do is leave.

However, before you can try to do anything, he turns to grab something from the counter and sees you.

"Oh, you're awake," he says with a soft tone and a calm look.

At this, you don't say anything, you just watch him, hoping that by your look and your posture he understands that you already want to leave.

But he, at your lack of words, continues trying.

"You must be feeling very bad, you were very drunk last night. Here I have left you a glass of water and a pill, it will help you after you finish breakfast," he points to the bar, effectively pointing to a glass of water and a pill."

You look away from him for a second, wanting to let out a snort, since you definitely don't plan to stay here for breakfast and it's silly of him to think so just because you're here.

"What am I doing here?" you ask him, serious.

And by your tone of voice, Aemond is surprised and also disappointed, since he thought that things between you and him would never be like this again.

But how wrong he was.

Still, with relaxed posture and soft tone, he answers you to keep the peace as much as possible between the two of you and you don't leave, which is what he fears the most.

"You were very drunk last night, and so were all your friends," he explains.

"Ryan was supposed to take me and my friends to my doorm," you tell him seriously.

"Your friend was really drunk too, Y/N," he says in a more serious tone, "He couldn't handle the three of you. And I certainly wasn't going to let you go in that state, you could barely walk.

You press your lips together, thinking about the party and your friends, to again look at the door in front of you.

"Well… thank you, but I didn't need your help," you say curtly, "Not now either."

And without further ado you head for the door, catching Aemond unawares, who quickly reacts and stands in front of you, grabbing your arm.

"Y/N, please wait…

"I need to go.

"Where to?" he asks frustrated, not believing you.

"That doesn't concern you. I don't want to be here," you tell him annoyed, again trying to pass by his side, but he doesn't let you.

"Please," he repeats pleadingly, "Please don't do this anymore. Just stay."

"Let me go and let me pass," you warn him.

"At least just stay for breakfast," he insists desperately, "Let's talk and then I will take you to your dorm, I pro….

"Will you stop!?"

You explode furiously at him, unable to hold back any longer, feeling more headache and pain all over your body, but you don't care because you're tired, you're fed up and because you've had enough.

While he remains completely silent and observes you slightly surprised by your reaction, since he had certainly never seen you like this before.

At least not with him.

"I don't want to be here, I don't want to have breakfast with you, I don't want to talk to you and I don't want to see you!" you exclaim annoyed, "Can't you really see that? Can't you see that you and I are no longer friends? Can't you see that you're hurting me?"

"Y/N…" he says to you in a low tone, with a thread of voice: "Don't say that...

"You shouldn't have brought me here, you shouldn't have even tried to talk to me, because I don't want to talk to you, I want to get away from you and I want you to respect that!"

And without being able to stand it anymore, tears start to run down your cheeks, but you ignore it totally and continue watching Aemond with the most hurt look of all.

"Stop trying to play savior with me Aemond, because I've had enough."

"Playing savior with you?" he repeats in bewilderment, "Y/N, you are my best friend, I don't….

"No, that's not true, I'm not your best friend, I'm nothing!" you blurt out again furious, "A best friend doesn't hurt his best friend, doesn't leave her aside for a relationship, doesn't replace her, doesn't leave her living alone and certainly doesn't forget her fucking birthday, Aemond!"

Then again Aemond is speechless, watching you with his eye wide open, his lips half open, while you start crying in earnest, unable to control yourself.

"I'm so sorry, Y/N," he says to you, in a low, broken-toned whisper.

"No, you're not!" you reproach him, upset, crying, feeling broken, "If you were really sorry, you would have apologized since after my birthday, not until now that weeks have passed," you tell him hurt, "And that hurts, Aemond, it hurts that until now you have realized it, that until now you are looking for me, always treating me as the second option!"

The first tear falls down Aemond's right cheek, looking at you with a hard, but still broken expression.

"I'm so sorry, I really am. I care about you, you know that….

"No, that's not true, you don't, you don't care about me!" you contradict him again, crying.

And finally you are able to pass by his side, leaving him in a state just as broken as you are, while you wipe your tears and try to control yourself, when you can't. You still want much, much more.

There is still much, much more you want to say and you say it as you stop before you touch the door and stare at Aemond with as much sadness, hatred and anger as you can.

"You left me aside for Alys, you included her and took me out of our plans, you left me living alone here with Vhagar, you forgot my fucking bir…

You stop, sobbing and breathing hard, trying to calm yourself down.

"You forgot my fucking birthday for her and her parents while I was waiting for you, believing your stupid promises so that in the end you never showed up and only to remember me weeks later and a real friend doesn't do shit like that to his best friend if he really cared, Aemond!" you tell him crying, "I never was that way with you and believe me that having a boyfriend even so I wouldn't have been."

Then everything, both for him and for you stops, because hearing you crying and seeing you so broken, leaves him completely immobile and as broken as you are by your words.

Words and feelings of yours that he had no idea about.

While you, unable to take it anymore, finally open the apartment door and leave, wanting to get away from here and him, because that's what you want and…. he lets you.

He doesn't go after you, like he would have, because your words, everything about you, has left him completely paralyzed. He had never seen you like that, so destroyed and in tears.

And that he was responsible for those reactions of yours, reactions that he hates to see in you, makes him feel more stupid and guilty than ever.

And at that moment he realizes, that this time he has definitely lost you and in a very bad way. He has lost his best friend because of his own actions.

He feels miserable. More miserable than you.

And after that… nothing was ever the same again, both for him and for you.

You didn't see each other again after what happened in his apartment, you didn't even hear from each other through social media, because you had blocked him from everywhere and that's just felt better.

The two of you continued with your classes and in separate ways, as before, only now he was also aware of it and not only you, now with the difference that the friendship between the two of you no longer exists.

To a certain point you knew that he was still having a relationship with Alys Rivers, while you, you had to realize that starting something with Cregan, something more formal, would not be possible, at least not on your part.

You are still so in love with your best friend and so hurt that you didn't want to start something with Cregan knowing that you didn't feel anything beyond that for him. You didn't want him to be your distraction, because it wasn't right.

Your distraction was something else, something you still don't know what it is but you desperately need. Until two weeks after what happened with Aemond, that distraction showed up.

At the end of another semester of your career, an exchange program was opened for the next semester with destinations to Winterfell, the Iron Islands, Casterly Rock, Highgarden and Dorne.

There were also destinations to Essos, but you decided it would be best to go to Highgarden since with your excellent academic record, you entered the program with all expenses paid.

At the same time that you would go to classes, you would also have your internship with one of the best psychologists by being his assistant and start training yourself with his cases. You would even get paid for it.

The semester lasts six months, six months away from Kings Landing, that being exactly what you need.

So after going through all the necessary processes, you were finally given a departure date to Highgarden to begin a brief but important chapter in your life.

You gave the news to your parents, who were happy for you, wished you much success, and even let Helaena know who texted you to ask how you were doing. You never tried to talk to him.

And after the day arrives, happy and at ease with yourself, you board the plane taking Vhagar with you and hope that this will help you put it all behind you.

While still at Kings Landing University, in one of the coffee shops on campus, Helaena and Aemond Targaryen enjoy a good coffee, both serious, not talking much, just him and Helaena lost in their thoughts.

Helaena let him know the news and honestly, he doesn't know how to feel.

He is happy for you, but knowing that you are gone and will be back in up to six months, with no more friendship between the two of you, makes him feel even more miserable.

"She's in love with you, you know?"

The sweet voice of his sweet sister makes Aemond, in a fatal state, as if he hadn't slept well for days, raise his gaze towards her without really having much expression.

As Helaena shows him with her gaze how terribly honest she is being with him at that moment.

"She didn't tell me anything, but I just know," she explains.

And Aemond again lowers his gaze, running a hand over his chin, letting out a long breath.

"You really fucked up, Aemond. I can't believe you were such an idiot."

"I know," he says in a low, emotionless whisper, "You don't have to say it again, I know."

"So what then?" she says, "Get that brilliant brain of yours working. You can't be the smartest guy in your class and at the same time the biggest idiot with the girl who has always been there for you."

He shakes his head, only feeling worse just talking about you.

"Hel, I don't want to…

"Are you really going to let her go?"

His sister interrupts him with a look more expectant than ever, watching him attentively, while he swallows hard and observes with a serious and sad look Helaena in front of him.

And he doesn't answer because he doesn't want to, but because he doesn't have an answer to that question, mostly because he hadn't thought about it before.

Will I really let her go?

He asks himself, but the truth is… he doesn't know.

Aemond knows it's already too late but he also feels that that's not entirely true. Maybe, just maybe… he has another chance. And his last.

thank you very much for reading and for joining me in this short way, it makes me so happy that you liked cardigan very much, there are more stories for you on the way, wait for them:)

besides, there's still the epilogue, that's when we'll say goodbye to this story for good🥺❣

@letmeloveyouuuu @ohdemimonde @carriellie @jennifer0305 @serving-targaryen-realness @mariaelizabeth21-blog1 @ttkttt @melllinaa @nyenye @hoziersfairy @introverbatim @happinessinthebeing @hnslchw @padfooteyes @riseandreigns4u @shessthunderstoms @strangersunghoon @aemondslefteyeball @1950schick @ammo23 @targaryenmoony

there were many of you that I could not add to the taglist, an apology.

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x you #aemond x fem!reader #aemond x oc #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond x reader #hotd aemond #aemond fanfiction

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sunghoonnsupremacy · 4 months

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PRETTY BABY! - sim jaeyun ꨄ

- warnings : pussy eating in public, cussing, dirty talk

- words : 663

"you've got such a pretty pussy." my eyes widen, turning around to face the person who said that. "sim, what the hell? we're in class!" i whisper back at him and kick his shin from beneath the desk. he just smirks and rolls his eyes. "meet me in the art room during lunch, okay?" i nod and turn back around to try and pay attention to the lecture but the aching between my legs made it hard to focus.

TIMESKIP TO LUNCH.

my shoes clack against the floor as i walk throughout the halls of the somewhat empty school. everybody's at lunch, including my friends who i had to explain to my absence at the dining hall.

that simple answer being sim jaeyun, or jake as he preffered. we're not dating, nor are we friends. fuck buddies if anything. we met at a frat party and hooked up and ever since then it's been these annual meetings when one of us, or both were horny.

I open the door to the empty art room and immediately get attacked by a pair of hungry lips. "took you long enough." he peppers kisses around my face and collarbones, unbuttoning my blouse and groaning at my white lingerie. "wore this just for me baby?" jake looks up at my eyes, panting. i raise an eyebrow and decide to tease him.

"maybe, or maybe it was for heeseung." at that, he slams me against the wall leaving me wincing at the damage. "don't lie, heeseung could never fuck you like i do." his fingers linger around my waist before sliding down between my legs. "he could never make this pussy wet like i do." my thighs automatically squeeze at his possessiveness.

jake smirks, "let me eat you out, yeah?" i eagerly nod and sit down on the chair that's next to me with my legs spread. he hungrily licks his lips and gets on his knees. "please.. jake. need it so bad." i whine and tug him closer by grasping his hair in a tight hold. jake rips my tights apart and groans at my slick already coating my pussy. he starts rubbing my clit with his thumb and licking around my opening.

i gasp at his teasing and try to close my thighs around his head to bring him closer. instead of my plan working, he grips my thighs and brings them apart. "keep them open baby." i groan at his slow pace and try to beg for it. "jake.. please eat me out." i see him smirk before diving into my pussy.

soft gasps leave my mouth as my eyes widen and his tongue starts doing wonders inside my pussy and his thumb rubbing my clit faster. "oh g-god!" a loud moan erupts from my throat when he plunges two fingers inside and starts thrusting them at a fast pace. he removes his thumb and starts sucking and licking around my clit like his life depends on it. i start to whimper at his desperation, him eating me out like he hasn't eaten in years.

jake adds a third finger and continues slamming them inside, reaching my gspot in seconds. i start seeing white and my moans get louder. its like the both of us have forgotten we're still in school, his tongue slurping up my juices and my whimpers reaching a high level of sound.

"come on my pretty baby, cum. I know you want to." he removes his fingers and starts tongue-fucking me. "fuck jake im c-cumming!" i let put a high pitched moan and cum around his tongue, letting him lick it all up.

I start to squirm at the over stimulation yet he looks like he's barely finished. when i start to push him away, he shakes his head and looks up at me. "you're gonna cum until im tired." i groan and throw my head back. maybe it wasn't such a good idea idea to mention heeseung, or was it?

#enhypen #enhypen smut #enhypen jake #jake sim #jake smut #enhypen hard hours #enhypen drabbles #jake hard hours #jake drabble

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distantdarlings · 6 months

Text

BY THE FIREPLACE (PT. 2) // t. nott

RATING: PG -13 / 1.4K WORDS

Theodore Nott x Fem Reader

+ SUMMARY - *Requested* A continuation of the interesting situation you unknowingly placed yourself in. Theo takes you, in your Animagus form, back to his dorm room and attempts to take a nap with his new friend. (Comedy?) (Read Part One first)

+ WARNINGS - Language, nothing else really

+ MUSIC (listened to while writing)

New Perspective - P!ATD (it's stuck in my head)

*I just wanted to say that I am sorry this is so short and may not be the best follow-up to Part One, but I really hope you like it. It was kind of rushed because I had a really busy, frustrating day, but wanted to write!*

---

Every few minutes, Theo would shoot a glance towards his annoyingly persistent group of friends. His glare became sharper and sharper each time, but, still, they refused to stop giggling and teasing.

He could barely focus on his bloody work and they were absolutely not going to stop any time soon. He groaned and got to his feet, shoving all of his schoolwork quickly into his bag, keeping you safely cradled in his arms. Maybe you’d attach to him and sleep at the end of his bed and stuff. He’d have to get some cat food.

Their giggling and whispers came to a stop as soon as he stood. They watched him closely, waiting to see what he’d do next.

“Oh, so now you all shut up?” Theo growled. “I’m trying to get work done. How am I supposed to do anything when you all are—?” He mocked their giggling.

“Sorry, Theo, we just missed you,” Mattheo joked, “we wanted to be close to you.”

“Yeah, right, why are you really here?” Theo asked.

None of them answered. Just all glanced at each other and started giggling again. He rolled his eyes and started towards the library’s entrance.

“Hey, where are you going?” Pansy asked.

“To my dorm and you better not follow!” Theo warned, never looking back. Their laughter only got louder. He groaned in frustration and slammed through the library door, careful not to jostle your sleeping figure too much. You slept pretty heavily for a cat.

He pushed through the occasional crowd of students on their way to classes as he headed towards his dorm. Hopefully, nobody would be in there and he’d finally get some peace and quiet for him and you. He had a million things to get done.

He walked rather quickly until he came upon the Slytherin dorm entrance. He spoke the password and made his way across the threshold, melting at the small coo you made in your sleep.

“Aw, I love you, little thing,” he laughed. “You don’t belong to Hogwarts anymore, you belong to me. What should I name you?”

He followed the staircase up to his assigned dorm and finally tossed all of his stuff onto the desk next to his bed. He gently set you down on his freshly-made bed and assured himself that you were wrapped up cozily in your little wool blanket. A small smile appeared on his face.

Distantly, he could hear his irritating friends downstairs. They laughed and joked noisily with other Slytherin students down in the common room. He refrained from rolling his eyes as he set all of his work out yet again. He was getting this shit done—today, with no more interruptions.

He grabbed his wand and flicked it at the door. The wooden lock against it landed with a heavy clunk. If someone needed to come in, they could state their name and business.

You stretched in your sleep once more, releasing a purring yawn. He smiled at the motion and brushed the tip of his quill’s feather over your face gently.

He turned back to the papers and books scattered across his desk and set to work. Circling answers, scrawling out short answers, and highlighting passages. The warmth from the sun pushed through the window, gently heating his hands, face, and a sliver of your back on his bed. Every few minutes or so, he’d lean over and run a soothing hand over your head or back.

His friends had quieted down downstairs and seemed to have gotten bored of whatever stupid joke they were playing on Theo. He figured they were just trying to get him to think they were talking about him or hiding something from him. Which was really annoying. He’d never done anything like that to them, so what the hell?

As his hand worked the quill across the parchment, his mind wandered a bit. He wondered if you’d ever gone back and picked up your stuff from the library. Maybe you’d forgotten it? It doesn’t really seem like you were the type of person to forget all of your stuff, though. He shrugged. Maybe he’d go down later and see if it was still there.

After about an hour or so of working, Theo pushed out of the desk chair and pulled his body into a tall stretch. He groaned at the release and popped his knuckles. He was sort of tired, come to think about it. Maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if he skipped his fourth period. He’d tell Professor Sprout he wasn’t feeling well, which, after accidentally being transfigured into a toad in McGonagall’s earlier, he didn’t exactly feel one-hundred percent.

Just as he was scooting you gently up next to his pillows and slipping beneath the comforters, a knock came at the door.

“Who is it?” Theo asked.

“It’s us, man, just let us in.” Mattheo.

“Absolutely not, I’m busy.”

“Please, we really think it would be in your best benefit to open the door.”

“Do you need something out of here?” Theo called back, settling comfortably beneath the blankets.

“No, but—”

“Is someone injured or dying?”

“No—”

“Then you don’t need to be in here—you’re just going to keep picking on me,” Theo grumbled. He tucked his arm under the covers and curled his hand around you, pulling your back against his chest. You purred in your sleep. You were so warm.

He ignored their persistent pounding at the door and settled in, closing his tired eyes. This was going to be the best nap of his life.

He was teetering on the edge of being awake and not when he felt something move against him. It felt like something had touched his legs. Maybe you’d gotten up and moved farther down the bed. But he was pretty sure you were still curled beneath his arm. He wasn’t sure and he was too tired to care. Though it really felt weird…

“Ugh, why doesn’t he just open the door?” Pansy grunted, slamming her hand against the wood once more. “The teasing was funny, but I didn’t think he’d actually take her to his dorm!”

“Yeah, I don’t think any of us did,” Mattheo pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Why was she sleeping in her Animagus form, anyways?” Enzo asked. The other two shrugged.

From the other side of the door, it had gotten completely quiet, and they all wondered if he had laid down with you. They all hoped he hadn’t. It would have been funny to see you wake up, confused and angry, in his lap, but it might not be so funny if you were in his bed. You might think you’d been kidnapped or something.

Just as the thought hit, they all started pounding on the door more.

Somewhere near the back of your head, you heard muffled pounding and shouting. It sounded like a small army parading about the room. You wondered if the Quidditch team was practicing outside the library’s window or something like that.

You didn’t mean to fall asleep. Hopefully, nobody had moved your stuff. You still had a ton of work to do. You groaned and raised your arms to stretch out when you realized the bottoms of your arms caught more material. The armchair was bigger than you realized. And a lot more comfortable…

You began rubbing sleep from your eyes as you started to lean up. As you did, something caught your body and held you pinned against the chair. You opened your eyes in confusion, looking at the material below you. Not a chair….a bed? Had someone taken you back to your room? You glanced down and saw a tanned arm wrapped tightly around you. What the fuck? Maybe you got laid.

You turned over and came within inches of Theodore Nott’s nose.

“This is literally the weirdest situation I’ve ever been in…” Enzo sighed. They all had given up on trying to beat the door down and sat against the wood, waiting for one of the two of you to wake up. They hoped it wasn’t going to be too bad of a situation.

Best case, you guys awkwardly brushed it off and went your separate ways. Worse case….

A shrill scream pierced their ears. They, and half of the common room, flinched at the sudden noise. That high-pitched whistle was soon accompanied by a more dulcet shout. Both drew out for at least 30 seconds. The three students cringed at the realization that you two had woken up.

“Fuck,” Mattheo said. They all dropped their faces into their hands.

Part 3!

#fanfiction #creative writing #fanfic #writing #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #reader insert #oneshot #slytherin #gender neutral reader #theodore nott x reader #theo nott #mattheo riddle #enzo berkshire #lorenzo berkshire #pansy parkinson

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rumisgf · 4 months

Text

— ATTRACTIVE THINGS HE SAYS/DOES

includes: katsuki bakugou, denki kaminari, shoto todoroki

warnings: college!au, black reader obv, suggestive, she/her pronouns used once

KATSUKI BAKUGOU

you can try to get pouty or sassy with him if you want to, but it is not a game you will win. one thing he likes is checking yo ass (cs he knows you secretly get a kick out of it).

“fix that attitude ‘fore i fix it for you.”

and he does not let you smart mouth him at all. he’s the sassy one, not you babes.

“what’chu say?”

you start trynna cuss at him or give him more attitude? he’ll deadass look to the left, to the right, behind him, then look back at you and be like “oh, you talkin’ to me?”

“ay, watch yo mouth.”

possessive in not a toxic way but still obvious

he cares a lot about your grades and he’ll memorize your classes so if you decide to skip a day or two, he’s texting you making sure you at least did your work

and like y’all are still in highschool, he’ll deadass take your phone if you need to catch up and keep it in his pocket

“uh uh, yer not gettin’ this back until you finish. we clear, baby?”

unconsciously flexes his jaw when he stretches

digs his tongue into his cheek whenever he’s focused and furrows his eyebrows

bakugou manspreading. that’s all.

if he sees someone trying to flirt with you he will deadass laugh in their face

moves you out of the way by grabbing your waist

if he wants you to sit with him he simply pats the spot next to him (or sometimes his lap) and is like “c‘ mere”

if you couldn’t tell, yeah he likes to give orders (☺️)

speaking of orders, knows your food order from every place you like by heart

and is the one who sends your food back if they get your order wrong

“yo, excuse me! yeah send this shit back she didn’t want pickles on her shit.”

he actually talks to older adults very respectfully

as he got older, he matured and his manners towards his professors is definitely one of the things that swept you off your feet

DENKI KAMINARI

he knows damn well when you missed him and loves to be especially affectionate just to have you all shy under his touch and with his words

“hi pretty babyy”

“aww, am i making you nervous?”

“you miss me my princess?”

“you’re real cute, y’know that?”

when you achieve something like learning how to play a game he’s showing you or doing good on an exam he always says things like “see, there you go” “good job, baby ‘m so prouda you”

he’s very attentive to you, he lets you be clingy whenever you want

taps his pencil gently with his fingers or plays with his rings whenever he’s trying to focus hard on something

then when he’s confused he runs his fingers through his hair with furrowed eyebrows and his lips pouted up

always responds with “yes, baby?” whenever you say his name to get his attention

and to make sure he’s not neglecting you all the time when he sits down to play video games he has you either cuddled up in his lap, sitting between his legs on the floor, or laying your head on his lap depending on how he’s sitting

no matter who he’s with always greet you with “hi baby” or “hey babe”, he has absolutely no shame showing affection to you

definitely participate in all those tiktok slideshows where people show off they girlfriends

pulls you into his lap by the waist

<< his morning voice 33

getting to go to the gym with him or at least see him after he goes to the gym is a true blessing bc his messy hair immediately makes him 10x hotter

always hugs you tightly and wraps both arms around your body

and loves hugging you from behind

hypes up every post you make and spams your comments

SHOUTO TODOROKI

when he gets mad it makes you feel all hot, especially because it’s rarely directed at you

his voice. that’s all.

he’s so polite and treats you like the highest human being on earth (as he should)

“are you alright, my love?”

“i’m so sorry my angel, let me make it up to you please.”

“here, i’ll carry that for you love.”

“goodnight my princess, i’ll be dreaming about you.”

he hugs you with his whole body, making sure he can feel every inch of your skin pressed up on his.

and he makes you do it to, pulling you in by your waist flush against his stomach.

makes sure to hold your hand every time he’s walking you somewhere because your safety is a priority to him

always ask before he does things, he hates feeling like he’s making you uncomfortable. “can i kiss you?” “is this okay? “you sure you want to, lovely?”

contrary, to popular belief he’s way too good at eye contact

and then gets confused when you become all flustered even though he’s staring into your eyes as you speak

“what’s wrong? is there something on my face?”

but eventually you admit how nervous it makes you, and he takes note

so now, he especially looks you in your eyes during conversation

“hmm? go ahead sweetheart i’m listenin’.”

whenever he’s studying for an upcoming exam, he leans back more in his seat and when he goes to stretch, his shirt lifts up and reveals his lower stomach

he comes well dressed no matter how bad of a day he’s having or what time he woke up

whenever he walks in a room, trust he got that shit on (because he’s way too rich to be dressed like a fool)

his dorm is always clean: bed’s always made, has a specific shelf for school supplies, etc

him cursing. that's all.

whenever you fall asleep on his chest he holds you tight under his free arm with his hand over your head, just because he wants so bad to protect you

in general tends to be protective

keeps a hand on your waist at events, walks next to the road on the sidewalk and will make sure you dont, puts his hand in front of you if the car stops too hard, all that

#denki headcanons #bakugou headcanons #bakugou katsuki #bakugou x black reader #denki kaminari x reader #denki kaminari x black reader #denki x black reader #bakugou katsuki x black reader

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btsugarush · 1 year

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Tracing Your Tattoos | jjk [teaser]

summary: you never expected to reunite with the ex that broke your heart years ago after he disappeared on you during your pregnancy, but here he was in the the flesh, asking for a place to stay.

pairings: ex boyfriend!baby daddy!jungkook x f!reader

warnings: smut, angst, alcohol addiction (jungkook is a recovering alcoholic), exes to lovers, brief violence, fluff, 18+, minors dni

warnings for teaser: DV, strangulation

word count: 922

You let out an airy sigh as you enter your home, relieved to finally kick your shoes from your aching feet. You peel off your jacket, hanging the denim on your coat rack. You notice Jungkook still sitting on the couch, just as he was when you left for work this morning. “Hey, honey.” You greet the brunette. “Hey.” He mumbled, his eyes staying glued to the tv screen. You furrow your brows at his lackluster tone, finding his unenthusiastic attitude off putting as he usually greets you at the door, but you chose not to dwell on it. “Where’s Junior?” You keep the conversation moving, venturing towards the kitchen.

“Asleep. Where else?” He says with agitation in his voice, subtly hinting that he wasn’t quite in the mood for talking. He takes a sip from a plastic red cup that you hadn’t spotted in his hand until now. You sense the hostility in the room, so you decide to address it. “Is there a problem?” You ask the brunette, who still refuses to look away from the television. “No,” he burps. “Do you want one?”

You scoff, throwing up your hands as you refuse to argue with him and his random act of rudeness. You focus on the mess that was left in the kitchen, rolling your eyes. Leave it to Jungkook to make a mess and not clean it up. You grab the garbage from the counter, stepping on the peddle of your trash can, the lid popping open.

You notice an empty glass bottle sitting atop of the heap of garbage, and a frown forms your lips. You throw the trash in your hands back to the counter before you grab the glass bottle from the trash, reading over the label. ‘Jack Daniels’. Your cheeks heat up with rage, and you stomp over to Jungkook, slamming the bottle on your coffee table. “What the fuck is this?!” You shout angrily.

Jungkook finally pulls his gaze away from the tv, looking from the bottle to you. “A bottle.” he replies in a snarky manner. “Yeah, that much I fucking gathered. What’s it doing here?” You cross your arms, giving him the 3rd degree.

“I had a friend from my sobriety class come over, and we had a little drink. So what?”

“So what?! You drank the whole fucking bottle, Jungkook. You’re not supposed to be drinking at all, you’re a recovering alcoholic!” The brunette scowls as though he didn’t need your reminder. “I know that.” He slurs a bit, his voice nonchalant. “Then why the hell are you drinking with your sobriety buddy when you should be attentive to our five year old?”

“You know I’ve had a tough week, so give me a fucking break.” He takes another swig of what was in his red cup, which you could only presume to be the rest of the Jack Daniels. “That better not be alcohol in that cup.” You point to the red solo cup. “And if it is?” He glares at you, his eyes glossy.

You huff, stepping around the table to snatch the cup from his grasp but Jungkook is too quick, moving the cup away from you. “Jungkook, give it here.” You demand, reaching for it once more, though it was all to know avail. Fed up, you smack the bottom of the cup, watching it fly out of his hand and hit the floor. “What the fuck is your problem?!” He bellowed, abruptly standing up from the couch.

“No, what’s yours?!” You size him up, not backing away just because he towered over you. “You promised me you changed, but here you are drunk with our son only in the next room! You’re fucking hopeless!”

“I’m hopeless?” He chuckles. “If I’m hopeless then you’re pathetic. Having that damn kid when you know I never fucking wanted him in the first place!” He spat. You felt a pang in your chest, your eyes watering a bit. You refused to let them fall though. Instead you pull your hand back and slap Jungkook across the face. The brunette’s head turned upon impact, and you could see him bite down on his lip ring.

Before you’re able to process what you’ve done, Jungkook lunges at you, knocking you down onto the couch. He straddles you, his hands flying around your throat. You struggle to get him off you, your fists pounding against his chest. The struggle only makes him squeeze tighter, your eyes watering as you lose oxygen.

“Daddy?” The sound of your son’s voice rings in your ears; Jungkook’s grip suddenly loosens, and he finds himself pulling away from you. The look on his face is a look of terror, shame, and sadness as Junior stands there in confusion. Though the child didn’t understand what was going on, it was the mere fact that he was witnessing his father strangle his mother, and that made Jungkook sick to his stomach.

Jungkook looks from the five year old, to you, lying there trying to catch your breath. He runs his fingers through his hair, his eyes brimming with tears. “I’m… I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” He shakes his head, standing up from the couch and darting to the front door. He puts on no shoes, or jacket, just opens the door and leaves you there alone with Junior. You sit up from the couch, the tears you wouldn’t let fall finally did so.

Junior approaches your shaking frame, looking up at you with worried eyes. “It’s okay, mommy.”

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 22 days

Text

The Quiet Ones 5

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as dubcon/noncon, and other possible triggers. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You live a quiet life, but your peace is fractured by a chaotic man.

Characters: Lloyd Hansen, short!shy!reader

Note: I slept for like ten hours and it was fucking wild.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me <3

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Asking for more or putting ‘part 2?’ is not feedback.

Love you all. You are appreciated and your are worthy. Treat yourself with care. 💖

You watch the long needle slide out from under your skin. You don’t feel it much. That man, Lloyd, loops the tube around the IV bag stand. You sit in the bed still, disoriented and dull. You can feel the tension buzzing off of him, as if he’s holding himself back. That scares you more than anything he’s done.

Before you can say or do anything, your stomach growls. The tumble is painful as your insides squeeze violently. He looks at you and takes your hand, tugging you towards the edge as he snickers.

“Hungry, jellybean?” He teases, “come on. I’ll make you a nice omelet.” He pulls until you shimmy across the bed. You turn your legs out and can’t help but use his strength to stand. He’s patient as he easily hauls you up. “You okay, babykins? I could carry you. Like before.”

“N-no,” you try to wiggle your hand free but his grip is unbreakable. He squeezes and you quit your resistance.

“You might be a bit groggy, that’s normal. The smoke, the meds--”

“Meds?”

“Well, I slipped a bit extra in the bag,” he shrugs as he glances over at the IV, “just so you could sleep.”

You look at him, your horror burning from your eyes. He grins proudly and swings your arm, turning to lead you to the door. You take short steps, muscles stiff and achy, shoulders wracked from sleeping on your back. You look down at yourself and shudder; at least you’re still wearing your own clothes.

“I’ve been doing cooking classes. I can do a florentine that will blow your tits off,” he boasts as he angles you through the door.

The hall is airy and echoey. The house must be huge. You get that sense easily. You don’t need to go around and count the rooms. He takes you down the long hallway and you stop at the top of a set of stairs. They bend in the middle but more corning, there’s a large space between each. They’re polished to a shine and look slippery as the morning reflects off of them.

“Just a step at a time,” he goads as you latch onto the railing.

You put a foot down and grip both him and the railing. Another tide of wooziness comes over you. It could be what he gave you or your days of restriction, but it’s too much. The world is too much.

“That’s it, baby,” he coos as you take a second step down.

This is strange. It reminds you of a movie you watched as a kid with a maze and twisting and turning walkways and a taunting villain. You’ve awoken in his trap and you see no escape in sight.

You slip on the third and let out a squeak as you feel yourself falling. He’s quick to catch you, scooping you up easily even in the narrow space. He lifts you and continues down swiftly, bringing you onto flat ground. You murmur and rub your head as you feel his heartbeat against your arm.

You feel a tickle in your hair and hear him take a deep breath. Is he smelling you? You repress a shiver at the thought as your eyes struggle to focus on the shapes all around you.

He carries you into another room, a kitchen, as spacious and sleek as any other part of the strange house. A white marble counter lines two walls and wraps around into full C, marking off the cooking space. On the other side, there’s glass table in an abstract, asymmetric shape with metal frame chairs around it. The whole place is out of one of those design magazines. All impractical at the expense of aesthetic.

He sits you in one of the chairs, it’s just a rigid as you expect. He stays bent, holding you by the shoulders until your hold yourself up. He drags his hands down your arms as he reluctantly pulls away. You flutter your lashes and rub your eye sockets, trying to block out your reality.

“My sleepy bean,” he beams and plants a kiss on the top of your head. “So how about it? Eggs florentine? Or are you in the mood for something a bit sweeter? I’ve perfected my crepes.”

You grumble and drop your hands slowly, crossing your arms as a chill rolls through you. You feel it pricking in your chest and across your skin. You’re not wearing a bra and your tee shirt is thin. You keep your arms locked.

You listen to him moving around. You don’t know what to do. You’re too weak to do anything. Even if you could get on the other side of the walls, you have no idea where you are. Where help could be.

You rock as your fear bubbles up. Why is he doing this? Why does he think you want him? Why you? Of all people. You mind your business, you keep your head down, eyes to yourself... you don’t deserve this.

You glance over at him as he starts to hum. Your lip quivers as you watch his shoulders blades stretch the fabric of his shirt. He’s a bit ridiculous in a full set of satin pajamas, the dark black speckled with a subtle grey leopard print. He’s too much.

You turn your head straight and let it hang. You resign yourself to helplessness. You have to be logical about this. You can’t spark his suspicion to soon. You have to wait for a window and then... figure that out, you guess. You don’t like uncertainty. You have a routine and you keep to it. That’s what keeps you safe. Or so you thought.

“...wise men say, only fools rush in...” he sings softly and you wince. The lyrics of the Elvis ballad make your skin crawl. He’s actually deranged. You don’t know him, you're strangers.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I know tree nuts are a no go,” he chimes as he whisks, turning to you with a broad smile.

You blink at him. How does he know that?

“Don’t think you’ll be needing any but I also got penicillin on the no go list and the latex thing... there’s alternatives,” he chuckles and you furrow your brow. “How’s that ticker doing? You been taking lots of iron?”

Your body hollows out. How much does he know about you? How? You can guess he’s snooped around your medical records. Obviously, he’s a man with criminalistic leanings. Is this even his house? Has he taken you to a fortress he commandeered by force? Is there some terrified family bound in the basement? Is there a basement?

He continues to futz around the kitchen as you curl your shoulders down and chew on your lips. Speaking of your heart, it’s beating again, racing, almost painfully. You’re a mouse trapped in the corner by the feline with his bristly whiskers.

Your eyes wander over to the large windows and you stare out at the curated landscape. The property is beautiful and lush. You imagine a whole team maintains the perfectly trimmed hedges and colourful blooms. The stone mosaic pathway and the leafy archway over a bench. It’s like a dream, more so, a twisted nightmare painted in hues of fantasy.

A plate clinks down before you and a sweet aroma brings you back inside. You face forward as Lloyd steps back on his heel, watching you with anticipation. You look at him then the plate. He pulls out a chair and plops himself down, planting his elbow as he cups his chin and watches.

“Let me know what you think,” he insists.

You take a breath and unlock your arms. Slowly, you drag them apart and take the thick butter knife and long fork. The cutlery feels too big for your small hands. You lean forward as the drizzle of dark syrup across the rolled crepe lures you in. Your stomach roars noisily and he giggles.

“Aw, you must be starving,” he muses, “please eat, baby, I don’t want you to ever go hungry again.”

You exhale through a ripple of disgust. You cut into the thin crepe and into the filling. Slice off the end of the roll and scoop it up with the filling. You carefully open your mouth around the fork and take a bite. Your eyes flit up to meet Lloyd’s as his gaze sticks on you. There are flames in his blue irises.

You pull your mouth off the fork in embarrassment as he hums. He’s a weird, weird man. All of this is weird. Surreal.

You look down at the butter knife and contemplate the gold cutlery. It’s heavy, it would hurt if you used the handle to give him a conk, but the blade is too dull to do much. It can slice through a crepe but wouldn’t do much on meat and bone. You don’t think you could do it, either. The thought of hurting others is just unnatural.

“Is it good? Tried my own combination,” he explains happily, “dark chocolate syrup, not too much sugar, some softened cream cheese in the middle with black cherry jam.”

You swallow and look around for something to wipe your lips. Short of a napkin, you lick your lip and clamp them together. He shifts in his chair, an act that makes you feel uncomfortable.

“Good,” you croak.

“Oh, wait,” he stands suddenly, “your coffee. Oopsie.”

He struts away and your stomach mulches the single bite greedily. As much as you want to be stubborn, you’re so hungry. And it’s delicious. It’s better than your usual flavourless fare. You could gobble it all down in a second but you won’t. You carefully cut out another bite as he returns with a tall mug.

He puts the cup down by your plate. You gulp down a forkful and set down the cutlery. You consider the mug before you take it, the white porcelain marked with the golden outline of a rose above the letter ‘Mrs.’. He has another in his hands, black but with a bowtie above ‘Mr.’. What the hell?

“Colombian dark roast. A little less caffeine so your heart won’t mind so much,” he says.

You nod and take the cup. The thought of coffee is enough to override your agitation. You take a sip and hold back a sigh. It’s good. You hate all of this but it’s all so good. You put the cup back and return your attention to the crepes. You pause and glance up at him. He doesn’t have a plate, just his cup.

“Oh, jellybean, you’re so sweet,” he smirks, “I gotta keep my protein up. I’ll have some eggs and a shake soon. Right now, you just worry about you.”

You dip your chin down and focus on eating. Small bites. You don’t want to seem too greedy. You don’t want him to see how much you need this. Does he know everything? Of course, he was watching but did he know the days you spent feeling as if your stomach was eating itself?

He pushes his hair back, trying to tidy the long strands as he watches you, “we’ll get washed up after breakfast. Then you can get settled in and relax. I’ll take care of everything else, alright? You just need to get all dolled up when the time comes,” he explains as he drags his fingertip around the tabletop, “not that you need to do very much.”

You just chew. What can you say or do? This man is straight up crazy. Not only are you his prisoner, he’s been stalking you. It doesn’t matter when it started, look where it’s ended. No, this can’t be the end.

“What’s...” you speak before you can think. You shake your head and smother your question with another bite.

“What? Go on, sugar lips, ask me anything? You wanna know my favourite colour? My favourite song?” His cheeks tint pink as he plays with a button on his pajamas.

You clear your throat and put down the fork and knife, “what’s going on... later?”

He tilts his head curiously.

“The... dress and... doll up?” You repeat his words flatly.

“That’s a surprise,” he trills as if it should be obvious. “Don’t wanna spoil it, do we?”

“I guess,” you sit back and fold your hands in your lap.

“You don’t gotta think about anything, sweet cheeks. You leave the thinking to me. I’m gonna take care of you,” he avows as his hand stretches across the front of his satin shirt. “You just gotta be you.”

You feel his gaze bearing down on you. You peek up to find his eyes slipping down and you feel them centre on your tee shirt, your nipples poking against the cotton. You hunch your shoulders and cross your arms again.

“How’s the coffee, jelly bean? You like it?” He tears his attention from your chest.

“Good, thank you,” you murmur.

“Ugh, I love hearing your voice,” he puts his coffee down and reaches between his legs. You blanch as he drags his chair closer as he lifts himself. He puts his hand on your knee, stroking with his thumb, “will you call me ‘honey’?”

You stare at him. Your cheek draw tight and your lips flatten. You want to shake off his touch and scream but that foggy glaze in his eyes deters you. This man is wild.

“Okay, er,” you gulp tightly and cough, “honey.”

He hums into a sigh and his hand slips higher on your leg before trail back down, “oh,” he shakes his shoulders, “that tingles. Do it again.”

You fight not to let your true emotion blaze through. You hug yourself tighter and bite down before you can muster the word, “honey.”

“Oh, baby, that’s nice,” he winks and sits back, eyes grazing up and down your body, “you cold? You’re all twisted up like a pretzel.”

You nod. It's an excuse you’ll gladly take.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner, jellybean?” He stands suddenly and you notice the way he tugs on the waistband of his pants. You turn your head, blurring your vision so everything around you is vague.

He rushes off and you wait. You don’t know what else to do. You’re still too weak to make a move. Whatever he gave you is potent. Or maybe, you’re just too scared to do more than shrink and surrender.

He returns with a fluffy purple robe in his hands. He comes around the back of your chair and you lean forward to let him drape it around you. He curls his hands over your shoulders and bends over you. He presses a kiss to the top of your head.

“You need more coffee, baby cakes?” He asks as he kneads your shoulders.

“Still working on it,” you pull away from him and grab the cup, “thank you...” you let the words dangle in the silence, tension piquing, “honey.”

He sighs and draws away with a tickle up your neck, “mmm, isn’t this wonderful?”

#lloyd hansen #dark lloyd hansen #dark!lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x reader #the gray man #the quiet ones #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #series

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