#does anyone want to buy a vowel i suggest e | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lxveille · 6 years

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lee chan would like to buy a vowel

dino x reader

word count: ~ 3330 warnings: profanity, mentions of sex a/n: part of the morning after shuffle; university au

This morning, Chan is certain of only three things.

Number one is that being put on door duty is the worst. He gets it; he’s obligated by virtue of being one of the newcomers in the fraternity to do it now and then. But it was particularly hellish on the night of ΣΛT’s infamous highlighter party. There were more people crowded on and around the front porch than parties of their usually attract, and Chan hardly knew what to say when upperclassmen in theme-mandated white shirts start namedropping older brothers. But the last thing he wanted to find out was what Seungcheol would say if the house went too far over capacity during his shift at the door. Telling tipsy party-goers they can’t actually get into the party yet? Not exactly the way Chan wanted to spend his Saturday night.

The second thing he knows is that you are, without a doubt, the prettiest girl he’s ever seen step foot onto the porch of the disaster area they call their house. Which is probably why he let you and your friends in as soon as you showed up instead of telling you you need to wait like he ought to. But he was also ninety percent sure one of the girls you came with has been hooking up with Jeonghan lately; so there was that excuse to fall back on. In all honesty, though, at that point he wasn’t thinking as much about avoiding getting yelled at so much as he was trying to wrangle one of the other brothers into taking over door duty for him.

The third certainty he has is that the clumsy line he used to invite you back to his room absolutely should not have worked. Once he got Seungkwan to cover the door for him, he made his way into the black-lit crowd to find you doing a shot with Jihoon while Soonyoung was giggling and doodling something on the back of your shirt in blue highlighter. From that sight alone, he assumed he didn’t really stand a chance. Of course, that thought didn’t stop him from approaching you all the same. It didn’t stop him from saying just about anything that came to mind and probably laughing too hard at the joke you made at Soonyoung’s expense.

And it definitely didn’t stop his heart from pounding too rapidly when you uncapped a green highlighter leaned in to write something on the front of his shirt. Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her; his mind had chanted when you looked up from your glowing handwriting to his eyes, but the thought of one of his brothers catching him in the act and teasing him about it tomorrow kept him from it. Instead, he blurted out a nonsensical line about how he had some highlighters in colors different from the standard blue, green, pink, or yellow up in his room. Even as he said it, he knew there was absolutely no way someone as attractive as you would accept that weak of an excuse for slipping upstairs together.

So maybe he’s only sure of two things, given that he’s waking up beside you.

Chan pauses, only just propped up on his elbows in bed, and looks at you with a helpless smile pulling at his lips. Some impulsive part of him wants to grab his phone and take a picture just as proof for himself later today. After all, it’s not everyday that he manages to actually hook up with someone that inspires the thought as soon as he lays eyes on them. Even with tousled hair and stubborn remnants of eye make up smudged on your face, he still finds you pretty.

That’s really something. If you had left in the middle of the night, Chan might have tried convincing himself it must have been some booze-induced dream. Because seriously. And that’s before he even lets himself think about what you look like over him. Or under him.

He makes himself look away from you. Heat rushes to his face at both his thoughts and a preemptive embarrassment at the prospect of being caught watching you sleep. From the bits of conversation the two of you did have last night, Chan suspects you’d probably give him at least a little hell if you opened your eyes to find him staring.

Could you blame him, really, though? His eyes find you again, just in time to catch you shifting slightly in slumber, nose pressing a little further against his pillow. From there, he focuses in for a few beats too long on your lips all over again. As if he hadn’t admired them enough throughout the night before. Grinning, laughing, smirking, pressed against his own, parted and panting his name, and --

Holy shit.

He’s an idiot. An outstanding, entire idiot. Perhaps the worst kind, because once you wake up his idiocy will just make him look like an asshole. Fuck.

Chan doesn’t remember your name.

He must have asked for it. Surely, you wouldn’t have gone to bed with a guy who didn’t even know your name. Right?

He doesn’t know. This is bad. How does he not know if he even got your name last night? It’s not as if he had that much to drink. And certainly not as if he doesn’t care about who you actually are. If anything, he’d been worried about coming off too obviously about how much he wanted to know who you are.

This feels like it must be some kind of karma. Though Chan can’t possibly imagine what he did wrong to deserve this particular twist of awkwardness. (He can, however, think of a few things Jeonghan or Jisoo would take the opportunity to say he did that would warrant this. Suddenly, figuring out your name becomes even more important than it already felt.)

Slipping out from under the covers feels like some kind of insanity. Why would anyone want to leave a bed that had you in it? Like, ever? Except, of course, in a last ditch attempt to save face. Chan is shaking his head to himself when he arrives at this conclusion. As he starts to shuffle off the side of the mattress, he glances back to you several times over, quietly dreading that now will be the exact moment you wake up. Whatever fate has got against him, it must not be too bad of a grudge, because you stay still, cuddled up in his sheets and nuzzled into his pillow.

He just has to hope when he closes his door behind him that you’ll stay that way for a while longer.

At the top of the stairs, he spots Mingyu passed out on the designated sexiled couch. So Minghao had patched things up with his definitely-not-a-girlfriend, apparently. Or perhaps he’d gone and made things worse. Either way, Chan decides he’ll have to care about that particular part of last night at another time.

It’s an improbable relief when Soonyoung is already in the kitchen, in the middle of deciding whether or not to have cold pizza and cola for breakfast or actually start cleaning up the kitchen. There’s still marks of highlighter on his arms. Because of course Soonyoung wouldn’t mind people writing on more than just his t-shirt last night.

“Hey,” Chan says, and must already have some kind of edge in his voice from the way Soonyoung’s brow immediately creases when he turns to look at him.

“Morning,” he greets, and takes a sip out of leftover red cup sitting on the counter. That particular choice is followed closely by a grimace and mutter something about how it was flat. And somehow not about how it almost cerainly had rum mixed into it as well. Soonyoung proceeds to pour it down the drain all the same, and adds, “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” Chan answers quickly. Quick enough, in fact, to draw a skeptical hum from Soonyoung and put a suspicious smile on his features.

“Did you forget to use protection?” Soonyoung takes a guess.

Heat rises in Chan’s face immediately. Along with a certain dose of regret already for his decision to come downstairs. “No!”

“So you did get laid last night.”

“That’s not --” he starts, only to realize that it is, essentially, what’s set him on edge. He pauses, shuts his eyes for a moment and shakes his head. And reminds himself that he’s a man on a mission, no matter whatever remarks Soonyoung might have to make. “Look, I wanted to ask you something.”

Soonyoung shoots him a look that makes it clear he hasn’t lost the original thread of the conversation despite the unsubtle attempt at shifting the subject. “Then shoot,” he says, shrugging and looking back at the mess on the countertop.

“You know that girl you were drawing on last night?” Chan asks plainly.

“Nope,” replies Soonyoung immediately, deflating Chan’s chest. “Which one?”

Really, Chan should have known better. Of any of the brothers, Soonyoung would certainly be among those very actively participating in the whole gimmick of a highlighter party. Lingering smudges of neon colors on his skin should have tipped him off that Soonyoung had been right in the middle of it all. As if simply knowing him wasn’t enough of an indicator. “She was doing shots with Jihoon too,” he tries again.

That additional details makes Soonyoung pause for a moment, hand on the door of the refrigerator. “That econ major he’s into?” he suggests after a moment.

“Maybe?” He tries not to visibly wince at the thought that Jihoon might already have a thing for you. It’d definitely put a damper on things if sleeping with you ended up adding tension of that kind into the house.

“What about her? Did you find out which guy from Mu Chi she’s seeing or something?”

Okay. Well, he doubts you’re seeing anyone seriously if you’re still snuggled into his sheets upstairs. Relief must be obvious on Chan’s face, because Soonyoung’s lips twitch along with the furrowing of his brow. “Seriously, Chan, did you drink something fucked up last night?”

“Nevermind, okay?” Chan decides that this plan is perhaps not going to work out so well in his favor. At least not without running the risk of Soonyoung barging into his room just to see who you are. And as much as he needs to know your name, that is hardly a waking up call he wants you to be on the receiving end of.

With that, he spins on bare feet to turn and head back up the stairs. “Hey!” he hears Soonyoung calling after him, “Aren’t you gonna help me clean up?”

“Later!” Chan shouts back.

It’s not as if Soonyoung is actually about the start tidying up, after all.

What Chan isn’t expecting is to come back into his room to find you standing in the middle of the room, buttoning up the fly of the same dark wash jeans you’d worn to the party last night.

You look up, unalarmed, at his suddenly entrance. You’ve slipped on your graffiti-ed white shirt as well. In the daylight, it looks less like a cool, glowing outfit and more like what it actually is: a shirt a whole party’s worth of drunk students wrote and doodled on.

“Hey,” you say, and the casualness of your tone makes Chan nervous all over again. You sound like him coming in on you only just finishing up redressing is a totally normal thing. Like it could be an entirely regular thing, even. And how is it fair that you manage to make last night’s clothes and messy hair look as good as it does right now?

“Hi,” he answers on a momentary delay. And -- to his own dread in exactly .3 seconds -- he adds, “You’re up.”

“Yeah.” You glance around the room as if something in the decor will explain why you couldn’t stay asleep in here. “Woke up alone, too.” Your gaze lands steadily back on him. There’s a slight tilt to your lips that, first of all, makes him want to kiss you all over again. But moreover, it makes him feel like you’re poking fun, even if your voice sounds a touch critical.

Chan smiles apologetically. “I was kinda surprised you stayed the night,” he admits. He can only hope you don’t take it as a suggestion that you should’ve taken off right afterwards. Watching you shrug and look towards his bedside table, he begins to worry that may be exactly what happened. So before you can reach your phone, he tacks on, “But glad you did.”

You pause to glance at him, and he feels himself smile back at you on impulse at your sudden flash of teeth. “What can I say? You’ve got some comfortable pillows here.”

Don’t say some dumb shit about how they were on sale before freshman year, he tells himself. Somehow in this line of thought, what he does end up blurting out is, “My mom would be glad to hear that.” He regrets it for a moment before your laughter reaches his ear and sounds amused rather than merciless. Chan takes note that there really is something about you that’s got him a bit off-kilter.

“I would love to be a fly on the wall of that conversation,” you reply before unlocking your phone and starting to tap quickly against the screen.

“It’s not like I’d mention the making out bit,” he hurries to quip back, drawing your gaze back to him in the process. There’s a glimmer in your eyes that makes him feel the best kind of nervous. A kind of bubbling feeling where he already knows he can’t anticipate what you’ll say, but that he’ll stay glad just to be talking to you.

You tilt your head a fraction at him. “So you’re skipping straight to the sex part, then?” And then you look back at the screen cradled in the palm your hand as if you’d said nothing at all. The upwards tilt of your lips that he can still spot is a clear tell, though.

The thought of mentioning anything the two of you had done the night before to his parents is mortifying and somehow hilarious at once. He laughs, and is a little glad that you’re texting instead of looking at him just in case the slight warmth in his cheeks is showing.

“I’d probably say you came over to study instead,” he says, “And fell asleep or something.”

“Uh-huh,” you nod, and toss your phone back onto his bed of unmade sheets. “Key question then: what class do we both have in your story?”

“I hadn’t gotten that far yet,” admits Chan, grinning slightly, “Maybe econometrics?”

You glance towards the ceiling, feigning contemplation before nodding. “That does sounds like a class that would call for joint study sessions.”

“The exams can be ruthless.”

“And yet your pillows --- still comfy enough that I fell asleep despite all the stress,” you carry on, tone tilting playfully. “That’s a real testament.”

Chan chuckles, and for what must be the twentieth time already since he woke up this morning, he feels tempted to kiss you once again. In this moment, there’s something in the light in your eyes and the smile on your face that makes the idea even more irresistible. His feet start moving across the floorboards before he’s entirely made up his mind. “And a totally parent friendly one,” he adds to your point.

As he approaches, you eye him over and grin a little wider. “Well, I guess that’s that sorted out then.” Once he’s within arms’ length, your hands find a way to his shoulders and loop behind his neck.

He takes the nod and only murmurs a brief agreement of, “guess so,” before setting his lips upon your own. It feels grounding and head-spinning at the same time, as Chan nearly forgets that he doesn’t know your name and begins to slip into worries over that fact within milliseconds. All the while his mouth his moving with yours, his fingers skimming the fabric of your t-shirt, and his body inclining into yours slowly.

You pull back first, and take a moment with your arms wound around him to smile at him up close. He’s just about to lean in for a second kiss when you glance over your shoulder and begin with, “Anyway.” Somehow you manage to sound nothing like the bundle of anticipation and elation that Chan is. Had he been less certain, your calm demeanor might have set him on edge. As it is, he finds himself almost more charmed by how steady you are.

“My friends and I are going to brunch in a bit, so...” You look back to him, but your hands stay laced at the back of his neck. It reassures him somehow into thinking you’d be perfectly happy to stay right here if it weren’t for those plans. “I think I’m gonna have to head out.”

“Can I call you sometime?” Chan asks.

He realizes as soon as it’s spoken that this will either be his chance to get your name without having to admit he doesn’t remember it. Or it will the moment where you realize exactly the position he’s in. It all depends on if he can get you to enter in your own contact information or not.

“Sure you can,” you reply simply, and take a step back from him to finally finish gathering your things. “I’m sure there will be an exam that needs studying for sometime soon.” And with a telling smirk, you head for the door.

It takes Chan a moment -- caught up in the half-coded insinuation -- to even realize you’re about to walk out without actually giving him a way of getting in touch. “I don’t have your number, though.”

By the time he blurts it out, you already have the door open. You pause with a hand still on the doorknob to look back at him. “Sure you do,” you answer, moving one shoulder in a kind of shrug and continue out of the room before he can get another word out.

Chan stares at the space where you had been standing for what feels like a small era, mouth parted as he tries to wrap his head around what exactly just happened. And around the very real possibility that he’ll never get in touch with you again. Shit.

Running after you would not be the smoothest thing to do, he has to remind himself. But there’s no denying that he moves a little faster than usual down the stairs.

“You finally gonna help with cleaning up?” Soonyoung asks from the living room when Chan gets to the landing. Soonyoung is, predictably, not actually in the process of cleaning up anything, but instead scrolling through his phone with a piece of cold pizza on a plate balanced on his lap.

“Did you just see a girl leave?”

Soonyoung says your name -- or what Chan has to presume is your name -- like it’s a question without looking up from his phone. “Yeah, I didn’t know she stayed over last night.”

A moment passes.

“Wait.” Soonyoung looks up suddenly, dismay written over his face. “Lee Chan, did you fuck my lab partner?”

“You know... Yeah, I’m gonna go get started with fixing the basement,” Chan deflects entirely. He doesn’t even make it three steps before Soonyoung is exclaiming about he can’t believe that’s who spent the night in Chan’s room last night. Like any reasonable person, Chan quickens his pace.

But at least he succeeded in figuring out your name without making a total fool out of himself to your face.

And later, he’ll pick up the marked up t-shirt from his bedroom floor and discover the same name written in green highlighter on the chest area of the fabric. Followed by a sequence of digits he’ll be adding to his phone contacts.

#seventeen scenarios #seventeen fanfic #dino imagines #lee chan scenarios #seventeen imagines #themorningaftershuffle

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pinelife3 · 5 years

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Businesses I Worry About

When thinking of get rich quick schemes, good ideas might include:

Dropshipping

Chill hop radio streams on YouTube (there has to be some money to be made, right?)

Automating the set-up of Wordpress sites (actually cool themes, basic pages, get rid of shitty blog post format so a business can use it, etc.) and charge ~$20/site

ATM skimmers

Buy the domain www.jetstor.com and make it look exactly like JetStar’s site. Sell fake plane tickets. Use elaborate VPNs and darkweb security stuff to avoid detection. Once the scam ceases to be profitable repeat with virgon.com and any other business where a user might mistype the website’s URL. I’d suggest this scam works best for businesses with a ‘u’, ‘i’ and/or ‘o’ in the name as these three letters sit beside each other on the keyboard (facilitating fat-fingered typos) and also people tend to pay less attention to vowels

Not high at the top of anyone’s list: opening a restaurant.

You may not think this wandering through Chinatown, perhaps on account of the the hand-written BYO WINE ONLY signs or perhaps because of the waiters killing fish in the alleys*, but the choice to open a restaurant is indicative of the kind of pure human energy which has nothing to do with wanting to get rich.

(*I swear they do this at New Kum Den - when someone chooses one of the depressed barramundi from the tank, they fish it out, put it in a bucket and then sneak off to kill it in the alley so the kitchen doesn’t get all fish’d up.)

Just think of everything that could go wrong:

Ruinous upfront and ongoing costs

Unfair reviews

Unreliable twenty-something staff

Think about how much chairs and plates and mops and cutesy pot plants and signs cost. How many tea towels do you need? How many forks? Think about how hard it must be to find a full staff of people you trust. Think about opening for the first day and no one buying anything. Same deal on the second day. Your vegetables start to go bad in the fridge. Did you make a mistake?

This is basically my opinion on restaurants: they are risky investments, shouldered by the courageous so that the whole community has places to go where they can eat delicious ramen or dumplings or fried chicken with blue cheese sauce. With that in mind, why would anyone risk it all to open the establishment pictured below?

Falafel Place opened on Smith Street around 6 months ago. As you can see, it is not stylish - that’s why they called it Falafel Place rather than Palace. It already looks tired and it just opened. It doesn’t beckon. It doesn’t repel. It just exists (for now).

The Smith Street area is already home to many kebab/Lebanese cheap eats joints:

The only angle I can see that Falafel Place may have is that they specialise in vegetarian food (i.e. no kebabs here - only falafel, tabbouleh, etc.) but there’s nothing to recommend this place beyond being vego-friendly.

Something about this place has really gotten under my skin. None of the kebab joints (with a possible exception of Lamb on Brunswick) I’ve highlighted above is especially creative or adventurous in what they’ve opened. I don’t feel a glow of human courage and pride emanating from those businesses - but they do have one thing going for them (beyond the meat): the baked-in grease in the walls, the ravaged staff who have become canny to the ways of the local drunks (getting your kebab is like a hostage negotiation - you’ll have to hand over the cash before you get your food). There’s just something grotty but dependable about the local kebab joints. Like the raw onions in a kebab, it brings a tear to your eye. Not so with Falafel Place. I feel so much pity for the owners. Why would you risk so much money (Smith St rent can’t be cheap - how much fucking falafel will you need to sell to make ends meet?) on a place which looks so disinterested - disinterested in falafel and disinterested in selling us falafel. Do you people even like falafel? Nothing about this place suggests even a passing interest in falafel. Falafel PLACE?!

INTERVIEWER: Excuse me Mr. Proprietor, could you tell us something about what inspired you to open this establishment?

PROPRIETOR: Huh?

INTERVIEWER: Could you spare some time to -

PROPRIETOR: Are you talking to me?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, aren’t you the genius behind this fine falafel restaurant?

PROPRIETOR: Ah yeah.

INTERVIEWER: So, could you tell us a bit about what inspired you to open such a -

PROPRIETOR: Look lady, falafel just spawns here. Every morning we come into the office and find all our desk drawers full of falafel.

INTERVIEWER: You mean you don’t lovingly cook this using a recipe your great-grandmother left you in her will?

PROPRIETOR: No we don’t cook it. We’re accountants. We just sell falafel out of the office reception so it doesn’t attract ants where we’re trying to work.

INTERVIEWER: But why not just eat it yourselves - I don’t understand.

PROPRIETOR: Eat the falafel? I can’t stand the stuff. So dry. It’s awful.

INTERVIEWER: I have to say this is one of the more candid interviews I’ve conducted for Made Up Falafel Magazine. Could you explain the thinking process behind the name?

PROPRIETOR: Falafel Place? Well, yeah we didn’t want to lay it on too thick with superlatives or -

INTERVIEWER: Or even a name which wasn’t a statement of fact.

PROPRIETOR: Look, this is a place where there is falafel. Buy it or not - I really don’t care.

Meanwhile... not too much further along Smith Street, is another newish business: Sen Storm, a Veitnamese fusion restaurant. This premises used to be occupied by a New Orleans po boy joint which seemed to be perpetually closed. A few months ago, I saw that they were re-tiling the shopfront - like so, I think it actually looks really nice:

(It’s closed in this pic - it normally looks a bit more welcoming)

Maybe it’s because I was dimly aware of the failure of the po boy place, but I am very stressed for Sen Storm. Every time I walk past, I look in to see if they have enough customers. Are the staff busy? Are people eating there? Is it being enjoyed? I desperately want the people of Sen Storm to have made a good investment. I can feel the care radiating out of this place - they want it to be nice, they want people to enjoy it. They’re trying something new. Vietnamese food is typically pretty cheap in Melbourne: $12 bowls of pho, $4 banh mi on Victoria Street. Sen Storm is edging their way into fancier restaurant prices ($25 mains, nice cocktails) - there are not many other places in Melbourne doing nice napkin Vietnamese.

I read this interesting article on why noodles are cheap compared to pasta - it has a lot to do with our biases relating to the hierarchy of cuisines:

The other issue in all of this, is us, the dining public. What prices are we willing to pay for pad Thai, ramen or a plate of dumplings? All the chefs interviewed acknowledged a cultural hierarchy that makes noodles cheap and pasta expensive.

"Why would people pay $30 for cacio e pepe, which is really just pasta, black pepper and cheese, but they won't pay more than $10 for three amazingly made har gau or xiao long bao, which probably require a whole lot more skill than making pasta?" asks Dan Hong.

Narada Kudinar, co-owner of Sydney's Yan, sees this play out in his Chinese-style smokehouse.

"We get people who walk into the restaurant, after Googling we are the top-rated Asian restaurant in the area and walking out after seeing the menu prices."

Mr Bayad feels the same frustration running his inner-Sydney Filipino restaurant.

"Customers frequently come in claiming they ate the same food for 43 cents at a street market in the Philippines.

"I deal with that fairly often here and it's an old conversation — I'm just sick of it. The production [of food] here is completely different."

It's an expectation rooted in mainstream experiences of Asian food — from chicken chow mein in suburban Chinese takeaway restaurants with the lucky cat figurines to $1 pad Thai on Bangkok streets.

Even those with Asian heritage can hold the same prejudices. "The easy stereotypes are very ingrained — the idea of yum cha being a 'hangover food' and Chinese being a 'quick, cheap option' — that is ingrained in me as well," says Dr Lee.

^^ This graph is from an Atlantic article from a few years ago which also looks at our biases around food, like why we will pay more for Japanese and French food than Chinese or Thai. Anyway, I do believe tastes and expectations are changing, but the point I’m trying to make is that Sen Storm is part of a new wave - they’re taking a risk and they care.

After months of anxiously peering into Sen Storm, wondering what it was like, I finally went with Matt. We ordered:

Duck curry: orange duck leg curry with egg noodles

Pepper venison: venison seasoned with Vietnamese mountain pepper served with parsnip puree and chilli chutney

Nice, right? I did photograph the food but my pictures were awful (my proud tradition of producing vomitous food photographs continues) but you can see a bit of the venison in the pic below and a corner of the curry as well. Both were very tasty and it felt like a surprising meal. Again, they’re trying something new.

I can understand why the people at Sen Storm took the risk - they had an idea, something to share, and they opened a restaurant which is still not bustling but is slowly accumulating positive reviews and will hopefully grow into a successful business. But if restaurants are risky investments - does it make sense to gamble on something you care about? Is Sen Storm more likely to do better than Falafel Place because the Sen Stormians are passionate? Maybe - but the margin by which Sen Storm has to do better is huge because building something special has cost them a lot more. Falafel Place is built on a foundation of plastic takeout containers.

In short, I am still worried about Sen Storm.

#Smith St #Melbourne #Sen Storm

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