#it’s weird when people reference me positively

[pencilpat]

In Any Form You Take - dukeceit

Scar positivity, mostly made for the purpose of comforting myself, but I wanted to share it as well. I hardly see media involving people with scars as gnarly as mine, so hopefully this can bring others comfort as well. The title is a reference to this song.

Read on Ao3 here

[Content warning for implied past self harm and current body image issues.]

Remus sits splayed out on its bed, trying to act like it isn't waiting for something. Janus has, for the first time in the months they've been dating, agreed to stay the night in its room. He disappeared into the bathroom to change almost 30 minutes ago, and Remus would be lying if it said it wasn't worried. It turns over to look at the ceiling, making bored popping noises with its lips.

It doesn't blame Janus for any nervousness there may be, Janus hasn't been naked around... well, any of the sides for as long as it can remember. Remus can't place when it happened, but as Thomas grew up and Janus became more engrossed in his role, he started to cover up everything. Literally and metaphorically. Long sleeves and even gloves, at one point when they were a teen he even had a half mask on his face before everyone discovered his snake-like features.

Remus knows Janus must be getting into pyjamas, and the sound of shuffling indicates it doesn't have to speculate for very much longer. Janus cracks open the door slightly, just enough to see his face, his long hair down and swaying by his chin. "Remus?"

"Yeah, Janus? Everything okay in there?"

"Yes. I'm okay. I- I just need you to not act weird, okay? Can you promise?"

Remus sits up cross-legged, face scrunched up in confusion. It chuckles slightly, rolling its eyes. "All I ever do is act weird, but I can tone it down for ya."

"Remus, I'm serious."

It takes pause, blinking and tilting its head to the side softly. Janus's tone of voice is heavily somber and almost nervous, and it's not one that Remus hears often. "Uh, okay. I promise, no weirdness."

Janus takes in a deep breath, and the door opens. His hand falls from the knob and holds his own wrist anxiously, eyes refusing to make contact with a nervous attempt at a coy smile filling his features. "I- I know it's a lot, feel free to stare and ogle as long as you'd like." Janus's biting sarcasm feels completely toothless, and he can't quite make himself look at Remus's face. So, when its suddenly right in front of him, he startles and gasps quietly. But as he's pulling away, Remus is reaching towards him.

"Stare and act weird at you about this? What? Why would I be that mean?" Remus lets its hand hover between them as it waits for a sign that it's okay to touch. It tries not to look outwardly fascinated by the scars that cover its boyfriend's arms almost entirely, all thick and bumpy in varying shades of purple and white. Old, but definitely some nasty keloids.

"Remus you've done meaner things in your sleep, don't play with me." Janus laughs and it comes out strained. Cringing at himself, he barely feels present all of a sudden. Like he's floating. Dizzy, lightheaded. "I know you've seen scars before, though you only seem to have them for a short time when you do get them, but they... stayed on me." Janus rubs his own arm, horrifically textured no matter what he does, breathing out shakily. Remus is observing him silently, and Remus is never silent. It makes him terrified. "Sorry, I know they're gross, this was probably overstepping. It was wrong to assume you'd be okay with it, I can go back to my own-"

Remus's hands close the gap, and rests right there, directly touching his scars. "Nah, you assumed right, I don't mind one bit!" It smiles, sharp teeth gleaming at him. "The shit you've seen me touch and you thought I'd find you gross? Jan, that's so unintelligent that I barely recognize you." Janus is frozen in place, his eyes watching Remus's face as it touches his arm, running its hands over even the ones Janus won't let himself touch. A gentle smile fills its face, and it leans in to plant a kiss on Janus's cheek. "Certainly adds a bit of dramatic flair to one's body, huh?"

Janus feels tears in his eyes, glancing to the side as Remus kisses his scales. He can't seem to make words come out of his mouth, because if they did it would just be bashful apologies and humiliated proclamations of how ugly he is.

"Did someone tell you you were gross?" Remus asks, bizarrely quiet and soft compared to its usual self.

"God no, I'd rather die than show any of the others this. No, I did all the name calling myself, thank you very much."

Remus's arms wrap around him in a hug, gripping him tightly. "Well then tell that asshole to shut up for once, why don't you?" It buries its face into Janus's shoulder. "I will hunt down and eat anyone who ever says those things to you, and that includes you yourself!"

"Remus..." Janus can't help a light, comforted chuckle at the expression of violence. "You won't be eating anyone, down boy," he jokes, laughing even as he's sniffling.

Remus pulls back, gazing at him fondly. "You're really pretty, Janus. Scars included." Its eyes darken playfully. "And when I see a pretty boy I want him in my bed!" Remus suddenly swoops Janus up over its shoulder like a sack, making the smaller side yelp and cling to it upside down. Without time to adjust he's chucked haphazardly into a pile of pillows, wheezing out a laugh and covering his face.

"My god, you're so dumb. Fine then, bed me Mr. Duke," Janus dramatically throws a hand against his forehead and lays back as though on a fainting couch.

Remus cackles and throws itself on the pillows right beside him. "No offense, babe, but I'm exhausted and I'd rather just cuddle and feel up your sick ass battle wounds, if you'd let me. I can even scream dramatically and act like I stepped in horse shit if that'll validate your self flagellation!"

"Oh, how caring and noble an offer," Janus quips, rolling his eyes and cuddling against Remus's chest. They both laugh, and then go quiet, staring across at each other.

"Love you," Remus offers up.

"Love you too," Janus accepts, the room darkening as Remus wills it to and settling them into darkness for sleep.

#ask to tag #cw self harm #tw self harm #dukeceit #janus sanders #remus sanders #tss fanfiction #tss fanfic #tss fanart #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides #eyestrain #eyestrain tw #bright colours

[council-of-beetroot]

Rambling post

#kinda want to change my pronouns at least here to she/they #i know it's mostly used for non-binary people and I'm not nonbinary but for some reason #but with asking for pronouns and stuff being more common #it really makes me feel weird having to affirm that i identify as a girl because #because that part of me means not very much to me #like it is and sure i look like a girl was assigned at birth as a girl #funnily they didn't know what gender i was for a while lmao #because my sister's position in the womb pregented them from being able to easily tell lmao #but like when people use exclusively female pronouns for me online it makes me feel so weird #and sometimes it's nice too when people refer to me with more masculine nouns too really depends #sorry for rambling #when i get tagged in posts like #oh councilofbeetroot is a blog she does content with eastern europe #it's like that reminder of gender makes me feel weird #fuck writing feliks makes you really question your gender identity sometime #fuck

[ranboolivesaysstuff]

HEY! Just because I am now 20 I think having something to kind of re establish boundaries would be good! Considering the ones I put all those times ago have changed :D GENERAL RULES! Do not be racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, ableist, or discriminatory against anyone for any reason. Please if someone is calling you out for things you have done or said, please self-reflect and take the proper steps to change or remove yourself from the community. If you see something you do not like, and it IS MADE WORSE BY BRINGING ATTENTION TO IT, THEN IGNORE IT! Bringing attention to problems that just arent really problems with either the community or me in general are not worth it! Please use common sense when thinking about what/what not to engage with! I personally wish that people in the community do NOT engage with people who just obviously do not like me! Chances are they want a reaction from it so it is MUCH better to just not argue with someone whos mind you will not change! ALLOW CRITICISM OF ME AND MY CONTENT! IF YOU DONT AGREE OR DONT LIKE THEN DO NOT ARGUE ABOUT IT!!!! ALL IT WILL DO IS CAUSE UNESSICARY DRAMA!!! DO NOT make ANY comments or content about me that is explicitly sexual. I completely understand that lately there have been bits due to the changes in how I’ve been presenting myself and how I’ve been presenting more femininely, but that does not allow anyone to use that as an excuse to sexualize any features and such that are more feminine or masculine. Remember that femininity is not sexual and should not be seen or created as such just because its there! (for example, the Vtuber costume and chat being overly weird over the added boobs where there was no need for it). DO NOT draw me in ways that are sexual either, such as highlighting any aspects in a sexual way, or making the content something sexual. I am completely okay with being drawn as any body type, masculine presenting or feminine presenting, as long as you stick to this! PLEASE DO NOT SPECULATE ABOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE!!! Making jokes about certain topics CAN be fine, but a line is crossed when it becomes a legitimate speculation or if a joke is said when I have expressed my discomfort! RESPECT MY FRIENDS!!! All of my friends are their own, incredible people. And they do not deserve to be lumped in or referred to as JUST "my friend". Be respectful in their chats even when im not there, and be respectful to all of them everywhere else! IF SOMEONE IS TRYING TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU MAY BE DOING SOMETHING WRONG PLEASE LISTEN!!! There has been a lot of times in which I have seen people be unwilling to change in the face of a genuine discussion, and that is not something I want in the community! I should NOT have to police every single thing because it should NOT take me saying something in order to change your mind! As my words are not worth more or less when it comes to a lot of subjects! And lastly, do good. Whenever you have the ability to. BE POSITIVE!!! The hater mindset is very draining and can be very toxic to both you and the people around you, so highlight the good instead of the bad if you have the ability to! I am so incredibly proud of how far this community has come, and I cannot wait for the future!!! I have spent some time writing this, but it may not be perfect, so I will update this as time goes on and I think of more, or if something needs to be SUPER cleared up, but for now these are the main ones! I will NOT be updating this after every little thing however, as I do not want you guys to feel like the only way that something is wrong is if I talk about it! As you guys should be able to sustain yourself as a community without my consistent input! Imma go enjoy my birthday by eating a pizza :) thank you all!

[sistertotheknowitall]

Some Guy Bingo

Masterpost.

Nearly three months into (what Jason called) The Haunting, the siblings kinda started a game. (“Either we're haunting him or he's haunting us, I haven't decided yet." "Considering he's the one appearing randomly, I'd say he's haunting us.")

Technically Tim had started it with, “five bucks says Danny went to class today.” (Gotham university was having an out break of fear toxin curtesy of Dr. Crane.) However, it was Jason who kicked it off with, “ten if he says something about actual scarecrows.”

Dick had snorted and said, “fifteen if it’s a personal experience about a farm.”

“I call bingo if he makes a vague statement on agriculture.” So it was actually Steph who started it.

“Bingo? We were placing bets.”

“Unlike you Hood, some people don’t get adopted by money.”

“As if Bruce doesn’t give you an allowance.”

(“As if he didn’t offer to adopt you,” Tim tacked on.)

It became a running joke where they started calling out "bingo if -" whenever they had to go out on a call. The joke had later formed into a running game when Danny had told Cass, “fighting gods is a pass-time, it is humanity that the real fight is against.” (He had trip over a curb and laid on the ground for several minutes before she asked if he was okay.) She said it wasn’t the most concerning thing he said to her and Steph chimed in claiming, “on a scale of one to ten that statement rates at a three.”

Jason had asked why Cass and Steph always got the weird ambiguous statements and he got cryptic shit about his “soul”.

(Damian had pointed out that at least he wasn’t being constantly referred to as a baby.)

I Call Bingo, which they still played whenever a situation required more than one of them, became “on a scale”

Dick was sure that “having given up on optimism, I find your enthusiasm to be overly bright” should be ranked higher then “I don’t like two-stepping but I’m from the mid-west, so do you know how to line dance?” (Danny and Duke had gotten into an awkward side step where they kept blocking each other.) Damian said the wording seemed passive-aggressive but the tone was too positive to be rude so he gave it a three. Jason said it sounded like a bad pick up line and gave it a two.

They often debated and defended the score they gave with Barbara chiming in over coms. She had never met Danny as Oracle but he was a regular at the public library. He was always polite and respectful and had quickly become one of her favorite patrons. Like Steph and Cass she also got odd statements but hers felt more like half-hearted jokes.

Bruce didn't always join in on their game but it wasn't surprising to see the occasional score placed in their reports. (They had a file dedicated to Danny's remarks. Originally it was to keep track of what they knew about him but at this point it was just to let the others know what he said this time.) Alfred was roped into it even if he didn't really participate unless asked. ("Hey Alfie, what would you give 'i'm glad i don't have to fight my food to eat it but if Batburger keeps giving me the wrong thing I'm summoning Lunch Lady.' Cause Tim says two but I think it's a five.") (He gave it a four.)

Post 4

#I just realized that i'd been forgetting Barbara and that is unacceptable #i hope this is coherent #danny is just some guy #the batfam are mostly use to him #batfamily #dcxdp #dc x dp #dp x dc #dpxdc #dp crossover #dp x dc crossover #danny fenton #danny phantom

[slavonicrhapsody]

WHO IS THIS SAULTRY LITTLE BINCH

ok this is my extremely unpolished breakdown of MESSMER THE IMPALER from the shadow of the erdtree trailer

The first thing that stands out about this dude is that he’s wearing EVERY possible symbol of treason against the Erdtree: SNAKES and FLAME

Messmer has snakes on his sigil, helm, and 2 snake friends who have dragon wings. Volcano Manor is known for its statues of winged serpents, but the wings are feathered, not dragonlike. these snakes are bright red-orange and are very unlike the Great Serpent we all know and love, who has a heavier build and is blue-grey in color. 

Regarding snakes as symbolism, the Duelist Helm description reads,

“Bronze helm decorated with innumerable snakes. Worn by gladiators who were driven from the colosseum. The wearer becomes a slightly easier target for foes. The snake is viewed as a traitor to the Erdtree, and the audience delighted in seeing these bronze effigies beaten and battered.”

We can bet that whoever is associating themselves with snakes is a confirmed Erdtree hater (Rykard, hello!!!) or perhaps, this dude could even be part of the reason why snakes are considered traitorous in the first place?

In addition to us seeing Messmer wield fire, this line from the trailer (which I think is spoken about Messmer but not by Messmer) implies that he’s known for his fire: “Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death. In the embrace of Messmer’s flame.” 

It’s well known that flame is in many ways a taboo power; particularly the flame of the Fell God, which has the power to burn the Erdtree (the cardinal sin). Messmer’s fire is weird, in some ways it reminds me of the Rune of Death since it starts out black and turns red, but it’s also far too orange to simply be the Rune of Death’s power. 

There’s also this description of the DLC: “The Land of Shadow. A place obscured by the Erdtree. Where the goddess Marika first set foot. A land purged in an unsung battle. Set ablaze by Messmer’s flame.”

I’d guess that the Land of Shadow was the place of Marika’s first conquest, and perhaps Messmer either aided her in razing it or that’s just something he did later? 

so WHO is this dude????

for starters, his name is Messmer the Impaler — M like Marika! Melina, Malenia, Miquella, Mogh, and Morgott. seems to be a pattern...

He says in the trailer, “Mother, wouldst thou truly Lordship sanction, in one so bereft of light?” 

Whoever Messmer’s mother is, she is in a position to “sanction lordship” meaning to give official permission for a lordship to take place. that screams Marika — she is THE goddess, and is responsible for guiding Tarnished to becoming Elden Lord. I can’t think of anyone else who might be called Mother who is in such a position as to allow someone to ascend to the position of Lord. He's also sitting in the same type of throne that the demigods sat in that we see in Morgott's cutscene.

theres 2 ways to interpret this line: 

Messmer could referring to himself when he says this; as if he’s saying, would my mother truly allow me to become Lord even though I’m so dark and edgy?? in a kind of sarcastic way. the flames he produces start out black, and he’s covered himself symbols treasonous to the Erdtree. OR, he’s referring to us, the Tarnished, when he says this; as if he’s saying, would you really let a person with such little light inside them become lord, mother?? (rude!) I’d say we need more context to determine exactly what he means

ALSO, interestingly, his left eye is sealed shut… you know who else has their left eye sealed shut? THAT’S RIGHT… OUR FRIENDS MELINA AND RANNI

The scarseal and soreseal items of Marika and Radagon are also carved into eyeballs… could eye trauma be an empyrean trait?? could Messmer also be an empyrean, one who the current demigods didn’t know the existence of??? 

with all that being said, I really doubt that this guy is Rykard or Rykard’s child as I’ve seen some people speculate… these other clues in the trailer point towards him being another, separate demigod. so what do we make of all the similar imagery?? I think that Messmer might be working against the Erdtree toward his own ends, and he’s embracing similar powers that Rykard did when he turned traitor. 

who is he then? I think he’s a demigod child of Marika, and possibly of Radagon because of the hair (unless his hair color comes elsewhere? a curse?). I think he got banished to the shadow realm for treason reasons, given the heretical symbols. perhaps he was an empyrean with his own agenda who was disposed of by Marika, like the Gloam Eyed Queen? perhaps he has ambitions to return to the real world and become Lord, destroying the Tarnished who might take his throne?

I did this instead of sleeping I hope you’re all happy

#elden ring #elden ring dlc #shadow of the erdtree #messmer the impaler #messmer #elden ring lore #ok now ive got that out of my system i can go about my day

[isuckatwritingsobenice]

Infernal Shadows 03

Synopsis: Being one of the most powerful overlords in Hell, you like to keep up with colonies and overlord plans. Recently with the new extermination date out, you hold your annual gala sooner than usual. You hadn’t expected to get in the middle of the already heated feud between the Radio Demon and the head of Vox Tech.

Warnings: She/Her pronouns used for the reader, mentions of blood, voodoo?, Angel Dust being a horn-bag, Reader is referred too as Madame to the public. Vox and Alastor feud because I live for it. Carmilla and Velvet feud because I also live for that. I also really favor Zestial for some reason as a calm mediator.

Song for this chapter: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

A/N: Thank you all so much for your positive feedback & feedback in general on the last two posts!! I really didn’t think this would catch so much attention but I’m so glad people like it. For some reason Tumblr’s being weird and doesn’t want to let me tag certain people, I don’t know why but if anyone does please let me know because I really don’t like that ;/ But I hope you all enjoy this chapter!! Please note that some blogs cannot be tagged, so I recommend checking this post and to check your settings to make sure I can tag you! If anything I can always just message you when the next chapter comes out, and yes I am making this series longer :) it’ll also be posted on my Wattpad soon!

Word count: 3890

Taglist: @dollops-of-delusion @nebusokuxp @scrunchss @rosedasy @valluvz @chesstras @pishybowl @iaaeav @forgotten-blues @22carolina08 @roboticsuccubus83 @doflamingadonquixote @froggyferrets @frompeach @absurd-ash @sillysillyxinnabun @urdariingdoll @delectableworm @immahuman @justaproudslytherpuff @local-mr-frog @angeli-fucking-cat @coldsweetsenthusiast @jadekomaeda @iaaeav @coffeethoughtsandanxiety @lunalixya @pretty-puppy-stuffies @lemonrolls @asimplikeallyall @lunalixya

Navigation!! // Masterlist!!! // Serendipity Writes (event) // Part One. // Part two. // Part four.

Engaging with guests throughout the night had become an exhausting endeavor, and a part of you yearned for the solace of your absence. Nevertheless, you maintained the façade, acknowledging every sinner whose smile dripped with crimson mischief. Having greeted each guest, you discreetly slipped into a shadowed corner, your shadows enveloping your figure quickly, seamlessly disappearing from the expansive room in mere seconds and emerging into an intimate gazebo outside, meticulously arranged beneath the sweeping branches of a weeping willow, you marveled at its unique ambiance. Unlike the earthly counterparts that stood white, the willow in your realm bore a deep crimson hue, its leaves adorned with a subtle, luminous sheen. A gentle smile graced your lips as you leaned against the sturdy black iron railing, delicately cradling a piece of the weeping willow between your fingertips. In the distance, the grand mansion hosting the gala loomed, its opulence contrasting with the simplicity of your secluded retreat. Despite the awareness of etiquette dictating against leaving guests unattended, the need for a mental break led you to this haven, a safe space for you. Reflecting, you acknowledged a desire for better preparation and rehearsal with the shadows, realizing the repetitiveness of conversations with the familiar sinners had rendered the night somewhat lackluster. It almost felt like you had come out of hiding for nothing. Quite the disappointment.

You sigh, massaging your temples, the lace fabric on your fingertips only slightly soothing the growing headache. However, not too far behind, you hear the sound of soft grass. You straighten up and turn around, seeing none other than your long time friend Zestial, who just smiled, nodding at you.

“Why art thou out here all alone on this crimson night?” Zestial inquired, standing by your side with his back against the railing. You resumed your original position, taking a moment to appreciate his father. Mentally noting how much of your grandfather Zestial reminded you of, you kept the sentiment unspoken.

Tonight, Zestial adorned himself in an outfit resonant with his time period, preserving his distinctive color scheme. A dark, meticulously tailored coat with lime green accents draped over his slender frame, capturing the essence of his demonic class. The cloak, adorned with lime green spider webs, unveiled a mesmerizing display when unfurled—his lime green eyes radiating, the upper pair embellished with vivid red irises. Instead of the customary big top hat, Zestial selected a smaller, more appropriate hat with a touch of flair. Dark as the shadows you command, it featured a light grey patch at the front and was finished with a grey-colored skull and a lime green and red-striped feather on the right side, adding a distinctive touch that mirrored his nature.

“Why art thou out here all alone on this crimson night?” Zestial repeated, shifting toward you a bit. Yet you resumed your original position, savoring the quiet ambiance before finally answering him. “What shall we discourse upon during our repast this eventide?” Zestial asked. Though his wording occasionally posed a challenge for others, having grown up in a family of eloquent speakers, you easily deciphered his intent. Something he truly appreciated. Though he was learning to speak more ‘modern’, or as modern as he could be.

“Quite unsure of that. Everything is changing, and I fear I might be left behind,” you expressed bluntly. Zestial sighed in response, a mix of understanding and concern evident in his lime green eyes.

“Madame, thou art timeless,” Zestial said with a bow, his cup proofing into smoke. “I pray thee, vex not thyself o’er so trivial a matter,” he added, his words resonating with both reassurance and genuine care.

You nodded, handing him a card. His surprised expression upon finding two cards instead of one didn’t escape you. “What manner of thing is this?” Zestial inquired, prompting you to summon a shadow for yourself, knowing he would find his own means back to the Gala.

“Carmilla. I am no fool to the both of you,” you said, amusement coloring your words as Zestial shook his head.

“Thou dost astonish me on every occasion,” Zestial remarked, standing by your side as you walked into your portal. Two seats vanished, leaving four empty seats at your table and six occupied.

In your study, you floated scripts in front of you, checking off names on the table list for tonight. With a few overlords left to choose from, Alastor and Charlotte secured seats based on trust and connections. Vox, Zestial, and Carmilla, an unspoken but potent couple, promised intrigue. Reconsidering Velvet for her potential devolution, you weighed each decision with strategic acumen.

Valentino, the Von Eldritch twins, and other weaker options were dismissed, maintaining a careful balance of power and influence. As you weigh the option of inviting Rosie to the gathering, her unpredictable nature adds a layer of excitement and potential surprise to the upcoming discussions. However, this unpredictability could also introduce challenges, creating an air of uncertainty around her contributions. Hopefully with Alastor around, she’d feel more inclined to behave. You check her name off the list.

In considering Stolas, the Goetia prince, his personal issues and tarnished reputation pose significant hurdles. Divorcing from his wife, sleeping with an imp for fun, as well as losing control of his daughter on Earth, it all seemed too risky to get involved with. While his wisdom and influence could contribute positively, the shadows of his struggles may complicate the dynamics, stirring potential conflicts and requiring delicate handling. Someone might get out of line with a comment towards him. His power was incredibly useful, but not worth the risk.

Husk’s transformation from a former overlord to a bartender signals a decline in power and status. While his laid-back demeanor might bring a sense of unpredictability, his diminished influence raises questions about the relevance of his involvement in the current political landscape of hell. Though he was your friend, you needed to keep your reputation pristine.

As the you contemplate the overlords assets, a mix of excitement, caution, and uncertainty envelops the decision-making process. Each overlord’s potential positive contributions are balanced by the looming negatives.

“Madame?” One of your shadows materialized, prompting a nod for them to proceed. “There seems to be some trouble in the lobby between the guests. What would you like us to do?” it inquired. A grimace crossed your face, hoping the disturbance wouldn’t mar your night. “Let me handle it,” you declared, snapping your fingers, causing the script to vanish. The shadow nodded, blending back into a wall for you to step through.

Upon reappearing, you assumed the form of a taller shadow. The room surrounded by guests revealed Vox, Velvet, Alastor, and Carmilla standing in the middle. Zestial, seemingly composed, stood close behind Carmilla, observing the situation. Carmilla appeared visibly upset, with Velvet in proximity, a pointed finger dropping as soon as she noticed your arrival. Alastor maintained his usual wide smile, though it bordered on the eerie, revealing a glimpse of his gums. The scene unfolded, presenting a potential challenge to the serene atmosphere you aimed to maintain during the gala.

Everyone seemed to stop, slowly turning toward you to see your face. Except there was no expression, just the large shadow you had taken form of. In seconds the shadow disappeared, leaving you in the fog, the expression on your face anything but calm.

"Madame I-" Velvet began, but her words were halted by the sight of your lace glove, your hand rising to silence her. Approaching the overlords, you spoke with an air of cold authority.

"My quarters. Now," you commanded, and with a snap of your fingers, smoke enveloped your spot as you vanished. Shadows materialized around the overlords, guiding them to your quarters, leaving the stunned guests in the lobby.

"Well, that was interesting," Valentino remarked.

In your study, the overlords found you seated in your tall, black chair. Its ebony surface featured intricate carvings of black glass, elegant swirls, and patterns tailored to your essence, creating an atmosphere of undeniable authority and refinement.

"I hope you all had fun acting like children," you chided sternly. The overlords lined up, forming a unified front. Leaning against the right side of your chair, you crossed your legs, elbow on the armrest, pinching the bridge of your nose with a sigh. Annoyance laced your words as you questioned, "What did you feel the need to argue about now?" Before Velvet, Vox, and Carmilla could respond simultaneously, you halted them. "One at a time. I'd assume you all handle this like adults, if you even can." The tension in the room hung thick as the overlords awaited their turn to address your inquiry.

“She wants me at her table Vaggie! Me!” Charlotte said excitedly. Vagatha just smiled.

“That’s good! Now you can tell them about the hotel, and maybe someone will be interested.” Vagatha said, and Charlotte just nodded.

“Maybe they-“ Charlotte stopped, observing as people began to crowd around the center of the lobby. Charlotte and Vagatha stood from their spots at the bar to walk toward the center, where the overlords stood. Velvet and Vox were next to each other, while Carmilla, Alastor and Zestial were across. Carmilla and Velvet were face to face. “What’s going on?” Charlotte asked as Vagatha and her pushed their way through the crowds of people.

“Come on, Carmilla, always the mood-killer,” Velvet scoffed, a disrespectful tone tainting her words. Carmilla shot her a stern look, ready to assert her authority.

“Watch that tongue, Velvet. I will not let your insolence slide,” Carmilla retorted, attempting to rein in the escalating tension.

Vox, ever the smooth talker, chimed in, “Ladies, ladies, let’s not turn this into a drama fest. We’re all here for a reason.” Vox said, sternly giving a tight lipped smile to Velvet, silently telling her to keep her shit together.

Carmilla shot a glare at Velvet, who replied with a defiant smirk, “Drama or not, Vox, some of us aren’t here for the ballroom charm.”

Alastor, drawn to the brewing chaos, couldn’t resist adding his flair, “Well, well, a bit of spice never hurt a party, does it?”

Carmilla, unfazed by the chaos, spoke with a calm authority, “Velvet, your insolence is unnecessary. This is not a playground; it’s a gathering of overlords. Act accordingly.”

Velvet, seemingly undeterred, shot back with a dismissive laugh, “Poor Grandma, always trying to play the responsible one. Maybe loosen up a bit? Have a drink will you?”

Vox, ever the smooth talker, added with a slick comment, “Perhaps we can focus on the matters at hand. Save the theatrics for later ladies.”

Alastor, intrigued by the unfolding drama, simply grinned, “Oh the picture box has spoken! Quite intriguing.” The room continued to buzz with tension as each overlord, except Rosie, added their own flavor to the brewing turmoil. As the tension thickened, Vox, with a sly grin, couldn't resist adding his own slick comment to the mix.

"Ah, Alastor, the radio days were quaint, but it seems you're a bit outdated. Television is the future, perhaps you should tune in sometime," he quipped with a wink, the words delivered with a calculated smoothness. The room momentarily hung in a charged silence before the verbal sparring resumed, adding another layer to the complex interplay of personalities at the gala.

With Vox's comment about Alastor being outdated sinking in, the radio demon responded with a sly grin, sharp teeth on display, his eyes displays dials, as the rooms lights began to deepen, "Ah, Vox, your television endeavors are impressive, but remember, I'm not just audible; I'm unforgettable. A little screen time won't change that," he retorted, “This face was made for radio.” He said with a grin, tilting his head to the side, a sharp snap in his neck, his words carrying a mix of amusement and confidence. The verbal exchange between the two overlords added another layer to the already charged atmosphere, each comment becoming a piece in the intricate puzzle of conflicts and egos at the gala.

“See what you did grandma, now you’ve got the two of them fighting.” Velvet said, pointing a finger into Carmella’s chest. She scoffed, shoving her away.

“Don’t you dare get disrespectful on me you brat.” Carmilla said, beginning to heat up with anger.

That's when Madame stepped in, reappearing in the form of a taller shadow, casting a lengthened silhouette in the room brimming with guests. Vox, Velvet, Alastor, and Carmilla found themselves at the center of the unfolding tableau, and Zestial, seemingly composed, lingered just behind Carmilla, quietly observing the escalating drama. Carmilla's visage betrayed a hint of distress, her pointed finger lowering as she registered your reappearance. Alastor, with his trademark grin, bordered on eerie, revealing a glimpse of his gums. The unfolding scene disrupted the serene atmosphere you had meticulously aimed to maintain during the gala, presenting an unexpected challenge.

A hush fell over the room as everyone turned their gaze toward you, anticipating your reaction. However, your face remained expressionless, concealed within the depths of the large shadow you had taken form of. In mere seconds, the shadow dissipated, leaving you in a misty veil. Yet, beneath the calm exterior, a storm brewed, ready to challenge the delicate balance of the evening.

Now, here you all were, sitting in the study after Carmilla had explained the situation.

“Madame, with all due respect,” Carmilla spoke, looking down. “I truly do not believe Velvet is mature enough to be at our table tonight.” Carmilla said.

“Are you questioning my judgment?” You asked sharply, to which Carmilla stiffened quickly, shaking her head then.

”No Madame, I would never-“

“Then do not say foolish things.” You said. Sighing, you shut your eyes, feeling the weight of the situation. Tonight sensitive information would be revealed and Carmilla did have some point here. Velvet clearly could not hold her tongue.

”Vox, control your associate please, or you both will be cut from the dinner tonight.” You said finally, to which he nodded nervously.

“Of course Madame.” He said, nodding to you.

“I wasn’t finished.” You said, looking to Alastor.

“I want none of this technology talk either.” You spoke, staring at Alastor who just smiled with lidded eyes. You knew he was very much upset, but you had forbidden anyone to fight in your home, anyone but you of course. “You all will act like mature adults wether you like it or not. I am not your guardian, I should not be having this conversation with overlords who should know better.” You said, standing. ”Now, all of you, out.” You said, snapping your fingers. Quickly the shadows began to move, ushering everyone out of your study. Everyone except Carmilla. “Not you.” You said to her, Zestial nodding to you and her as he stepped out, giving you both privacy.

“Madame, I didn’t mean what I said-“ Carmilla said quickly. You waved her off, straightening yourself out.

“Nonsense Carmilla, I know you meant well.” You said with a stoic expression. You sit back down, crossing your legs and snapping your fingers to form a chair in front of your desk, ushering her to sit. “I wanted to speak to you about your weapons.” You stated. At this her eyes went wide, before dropping again.

“Oh, very well then. What would you like to know?” She asked. You grinned, before standing again.

“Well, how much would I need to give you for you to make me a personal bayonet?” You asked. She went silent for a moment, before answering.

“Nothing at all Madame.” She said, standing to look at you. “May I ask what for?” She questioned. You shook your head.

“No, just to have on display. I want a new one, the old one I have is quite out of style for me.” You replied. She just nodded, before you waved to her, sitting back down and summoning a script again. “You may go now, and please, do not argue with children.” You commented. She just smiled and nodded, leaving you to your own vices.

It was half-past eleven, five minutes till the midnight bells chime. Everyone in the lobby was beginning to get excited for the entertainment you had planned for the night. Oh, you knew you would not disappoint.

“Madame would like everyone to accompany her on a journey tonight. She has sent me to retrieve you all. She would like to formally welcome you to tonight’s entertainment.” The large shadow said, standing from the topic of the stairs. Behind it was a large portal. It stepped backwards, into the portal, and nodded for the guests to start coming through.

The custom-built coliseum stands as a testament to Madame's vision, a grand fusion of opulence and dark elegance. The circular structure boasts towering columns, but instead of conventional pillars, thick chains rise, intricately linked and serving as both ornamental decor and structural support. The arches, molded in black, curve gracefully around the circumference, evoking a Victorian Gothic aesthetic that permeates the entire venue.

Two larger-than-life statues of Madame herself flank the entrance, capturing her regal poise and adding a touch of imposing authority. The statues serve not only as decorative elements but as a representation of the gala's hostess, a constant presence overseeing the proceedings, she is always watching, all seeing, perfection.

The overall ambiance is one of grandeur and mystery, with the black molding on the arches casting shadows that play into the darker undertones. Every intricate detail, from the chains to the statues, contributes to the unique Victorian Gothic feel of the coliseum, matching Madame’s home perfectly, matching her perfectly. The venue, finally being unveiled to the guests, now welcomes them who are treated to an appetizer course, surrounded by the striking architecture and entertained within the darkly enchanting atmosphere Madame has meticulously crafted.

Numerous shadows, dark and formless, line the entrance walls, extending silent greetings to the arriving guests. Their presence adds an air of mystique and intrigue as they blend seamlessly with the Gothic architecture. As attendees make their way into the coliseum, these shadowy figures create an ethereal welcome, embodying the unique atmosphere of Madame's custom-built venue.

At a separate entrance reserved for the handpicked members of Madame's esteemed dinner table, a solitary shadow stands guard. This entrance, reserved for a select few, hints at the exclusivity and importance of those who will partake in the upcoming dinner. The shadowy sentinels serve not only as silent greeters but also as guardians of the event's secrets, casting an enigmatic allure over the gala.

A singular shadows escorts Charlotte, Alastor, and the rest of the overlords to the exclusive section, leading them to an elevator to bring them to the best seats in the coliseum. The elevator’s interior is a striking display of elegance, with white and black checkered flooring lending a timeless touch. The walls, enveloped in darkness, exude an air of mystery, while black, smokey glass engravings on the ceiling add intricate detailing that dances in the ambient light. Each number on the elevator, indicating the ascending levels, glows a vibrant red, creating a vivid contrast against the monochrome palette.

“Oh I’m so excited! What do you think we’re gonna see? Gladiators? Sinners fight? Oh actually I hope not, I don’t want people to die.” Charlotte said to Alastor. Carmilla just chuckled at her antics while Zestial eyed her with curiosity. Where did Alastor find such a girl and why the princess of all people?

The elevator stops at the top floor, revealing the opening in the middle, which was surprisingly covered with water.

“What is Madame playing at?” Carmilla questioned as the overlords sat in a row at the top. From there they could see everything and everyone.

“I am quite uncertain, yet my anticipation is stirred nonetheless.” Zestial said. The lights around began to dim, and shadows began to pour glasses of water in front of all the guests. Down in the middle of the coliseum was the tallest shadow, the one that seemed to be Madame’s favorite, since it always spoke for her.

“Greetings all. It is Madame’s pleasure to invite you all to the special entertainment tonight. Madame has put together some of hell’s finest performers for your entertainment tonight. I would like to present, preforming here tonight, The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra preforming Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61.” The shadow said with a bow, before it vanished just as quick as it came. Then, other shadows appeared, but this time they were different. They were people, performers, with clear outlined silhouettes, faces and expressions, even clothes.

“Hey, Al?” Charlotte asked, leaning over in her seat to Alastor. He let out a ‘hm?’ In response.

“Does Madame own those souls down there?” Charlotte whispered, but before Alastor could answer, a shadow had already cut in.

“Yes. All the shadows here, even yours, Madame owns.” The shadow said quietly, filling Charlotte’s glass cup with water. Charlotte nervously, perked up, but said nothing as she shadow carried on with it’s catering.

The ethereal notes of the music filled the air as the performance unfolded. Around the musicians stood ballet dancers, their movements a delicate poetry in motion. Clad in all black, the performers created a stark contrast to the dancers, who emerged with an otherworldly grace akin to figures rising from the depths of water. The dancers moved with an angelic fluidity, their forms intertwining seamlessly with the haunting melody, creating a mesmerizing tableau that captivated the audience. The visual symphony of black-clad musicians and the whisky-hued ballet dancers painted a scene of enchantment and mystery within the grand coliseum. Even down to the dancers, this had Madame written all over it.

Velvet's keen eye captured the essence of the dancers' ethereal movements on paper. With each stroke of her sketch, she depicted the dancers as if emerging from a watery abyss, the fog enveloping their feet creating an illusion of water flowing upward. The intricate details on her sketch paper brought to life the dancers' graceful forms, their figures seemingly intertwined with the rising mist, evoking the enchantment of a waterspout captured in a moment of sublime artistry. Velvet's artistic interpretation added a layer of depth to the performance, transforming the ephemeral dance into a tangible and captivating visual narrative.

Water had begun to swirl, the dancers moving around it, the water getting taller and taller, similar to the way it had when you had first made your entrance at the beginning of the Gala. Now, it was water, and from Charlotte’s seat, she had struggled to make out what was going on. She turned to Alastor to see him holding a pair of opera glasses in his hand. Without you having to ask, he tapped the armrest of her seat. Charlotte turned to the side to see a pair tucked neatly against the front of the armrest. She grabbed them quickly, before looking through them and at the waterspout now forming in the middle. Her jaw flew open, as well as the loud screech of Alastor’s track playing. Vox had short circuited, and Carmilla gasped loudly. Velvet stood silent, but there was evident confusion on her face, while Zestial sunk into his seat, conflicting emotions flowing through him.

“Madame- she’s-“ Charlotte stuttered, and Alastor nodded, swallowing thickly.

“With an exorcist. I know.”

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin alastor #alastor x reader #hazbin charlie #hazbin angel dust #hazbin vaggie #hazbin demon #hazbin vox #hazbin hotel rosie #alastor #zestial hazbin hotel #yandere alastor x reader #yandere alastor #yandere vox #yandere vox x reader #hellaverse #isuckatwritingsobenice infernal shadows #isuckatwritingsobenice

[confinesofmy]

Finland is not in Scandinavia tho... Also, they're just saying that in Finland "how are you" is a personal question, not a greeting. It's a different culture. Those exist. Doesn't mean they're autistic and even if they were, you're basically saying that's a bad thing, wtf?

hello, random stranger going through the notes of a popular post! you misunderstood me entirely and should re-read my tags with that in mind. sorry i said finland was scandinavian though, i must've been conflating scandinavian countries with nordic ones.

#i am autist*c and was referring to them as autist*c out of fondness and a feeling of kinship #it is weird that you're this angry about those tags #i prefer the finns' method of using how are you bc they use it as a personal question instead of as a greeting #the use of it as a greeting means that when people direct it towards me as a question i take it as a greeting instead #and have the same positive answer every time #even if i was bleeding to death i would still answer it as a greeting #because i am autist*c #.......it is a friday night. do you really live like this. #anon #ask #adam talks too much

[lookingformoondrop]

could i request a boyfriend!andrew graves x reader headcannons or scenarios? i LOVE TCOAAL🫶🫶

Boyfriend! Andrew Graves x Reader - Headcanons

TW: Andy has a foul mouth, reader gets groped, Andy is a little possessive, a tiny bit of violence (-is always the answer)

♥︎Notes: I'm kind of an idiot so if you notice something is spelled incorrectly, feel free to send me a dm so i can fix it (totally not at all referring to my first Yandere!Andy x Reader post where I spelled dark as darmfk ;-;). Also this is kind of short because so many people requested for Andy x Reader, so I didn't want to pull out all the stops. I hope this meets your expectations <3.♥︎

The first thing you gotta to know about dating Andy, is that he's very touch starved.

I can just headcanon that due to his aloof personality and very broody behavior, he doesn't get many hugs...

So when you enter his life, best believe that Andy shows you this completely different side of him!

I'm talking.... Cuddling in the mornings till the point where you're almost late for work because he refuses to let you go.

I'm talking.... Andy being able to sense when you're about to go into the shower. His spidey-senses tingles, and the moment you're about to hop in, he's right there already getting his hair wet.

I'm talking.... Trapping you with his kisses when you're making food, definitely not noticing that he's causing you to burn dinner.

And no amount of protest can deter this man either.

Speaking of making food... Andrew is the master-chef of the house!

Now he's no Gorden Ramsey (as he likes to tell you whenever he makes you a sandwich), but everyone knows that one bite of his food is enough to make a sailor come back to the land.

So it's very nifty when you're sick and at home, in need to have someone take care of you.

The first time you ever got sick was when you and Andy were still living separately.

It was a Friday night, and it was supposed to be your 1-year anniversary with Andy. Unfortunately, due to some unhygienic biotch at the office, you caught a cold and had to cancel.

At first Andy didn't respond, instead leaving you on read. You felt bad, figuring that he was mad at you for canceling.

But lo' and behold, exactly 10 minutes later, that was a frantic sound of keys jiggling into the your front door.

You had gotten up from your couch-potato position to see the person who wanted to rush into your home so badly, when it occurred to you;

Andrew is the only one with another set of keys...

And with that realization, Andy burst through the door with a pharmacy store bag in one hand, and a grocery store bag in another.

In an instant, Andy made you take a disgusting amount of cold medicine, and blessed your cold home with the warmth and smell of spices and herbs (likely all from the soup).

When the food was ready, he sat you up with a pillow and hand-fed you soup for the rest of the night. You felt so bad for ruining your anniversary, but everytime you tried to apologize for it, Andrew would stuff your mouth with more soup and would say;

"I don't care about that romance and anniversary shit. We don't need to go to a fancy restaurant or an expensive place just to feel like we're honoring an important date. That date is important because it is our date. We don't need to one-up that memorable time just to remind everyone of how special it is... Y/N, you're crying into the soup."

Needless to say, you cried.

But Andrew doesn't just take care of you...You best believe he also protects.

Well, sorta.

You could be in a grocery store, at a Boba shop, in the mall, getting new shoes, it wouldn't matter, Andrew would always have his hand on your waist.

Be it because he saw someone look at you, doesn't matter who or how old they are, he'll always wrap his arms around you and whisper ever so softly, "You're mine..."

It has definitely given you some weird looks over the years, but you know he means well.

And if anyone ever actually looks at you funny? It's over for them.

Andrew will make it VERY clear that you're not to be messed with.

For example, a couple of months into your relationship, you were riding the train. Enjoying a simple conversation about suspicious neighbors and whatnot, when all of the sudden some guy came up behind you and tried groping you discreetly.

Andy noticed very quickly that all the blood drained from your face. He looked behind you and noticed the old geezer trying to get a hand full of someone way younger than them, and Andrew could feel every restraint in his body snap.

In an act of "self-defense" as told to the cops later on, Andrew punched the living daylights of the guy and sent him flying into a pole.

You fussed over Andy's fist for awhile, completely forgetting about how you felt. But the only thing Andy could think about was how he should've hit that guy harder.

When you guys were finally walking home, hand in hand, you leaned on Andrew.

"I'm sorry about today Andy... I didn't mean for you to get all banged up."

Andrew snorted, "My knuckle is a little scratched up, so what? That perverted asshole had it coming for him."

You kissed Andy's cheek, which granted you a dark blush from Andy, and a grin from you.

"Thank you Aaandy~" You brushed his hand with your thumb,

Being in a relationship with Andy is a little messy, and yes sometimes a little crazy. But no matter what happens, Andy will always stick by your side.

"You're welcome, sweetheart." Andy squeezed your hand in return.

Thank you for the ask<3

#the coffin of andy and leyley #x reader #andrew graves #andy graves #headcanons #y/n #andrew graves x reader #andy graves x reader #relationship headcanons #cute #what else do i put here #not proofread #andy and leyley #the coffin of andy and leyley headcanons #dem kids swear up and down

[inuyashaluver]

can you write a jessie x hockey!r, where r gets into a fight during one of her games and jessie is watching from the stands with some of the chelsea players? thx

cheeky - jessie fleming

jessie fleming x reader

description: in which your girlfriend brings her friends to her cheeky girlfriend’s game

warnings: jessie still plays for chelsea!! let’s pretend ucla offers women’s hockey 🫠 swearing, mentions of a fight, suggestive

a/n: you guys don’t understand how much this request has infiltrated my tiny brain, thank you you so so much, my love, enjoyyyyy

⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆

you and your girlfriend, jessie were quite literally some of the nicest people alive. every time someone was around the two of you for either a short or long time, they came out feeling lighter, happier and all round just more positive.

you and jessie just radiated love, a special bond between the two of you that was just undeniably beautiful.

—

you and jessie met at a college party years ago. you both went to ucla yet never crossed paths until this party. you weren’t really a party goer and neither was jessie, you both found refuge in the backyard of the house you were at.

both of your friend groups had unknowingly ditched you and you both wanted some air, away from all the drunk frat boys and sorority girls.

“sorry, do you mind if i sit here?” you ask the brunette where she sat on a small bench. her head snapped up from her phone at hearing a familiar accent. canadian.

“oh, yeah, go ahead!” jessie stutters, scooching over a little and patting the spot next to her. you smile at her gratefully, sitting down with an exaggerated huff.

jessie lets out a laugh when you sat, both of you looking at each other with bright smiles. you both thought the other was breathtakingly gorgeous, feeling like the party was a little worth it at this point.

“you sick of seeing people basically fucking each other everywhere too?” you ask her with a shake of your head, your eyes falling on a couple making out in a way that should definitely be behind a closed door.

jessie chuckles, looking down at the cup in her hand and nodding while taking a sip of it. “that and my friends ditched me” she rolls her eyes, you nudge her shoulder with yours, “mine too, don’t worry” you grin, making her return one shyly.

“i’m (y/n) by the way” jessie smiles, repeating the name in her head that she would surely never forget.

“jessie” you smile at her, pink cheeks a little evident on the both of you when you made eye contact again.

“sorry if this is weird but are you from canada?” jessie asks nervously, your eyes widen comically, your face brightening at the girl's question.

you didn’t really have many friends from back home who came to the states for college. sure there was a bunch of canadian girls at college but none of them were this pretty. or this easy to talk to.

“i am! don’t tell me you are too?” you question, jessie smiled at your excitement, her heart beating quickly at your glistening eyes. she nods, making you start rambling with where she was from.

you both continued to chat and it was scary how much you had in common.

the conversation was full of laughter, shared jokes and most definitely a shared attraction. “so, jessie, what do you do besides being an environmental warrior?” you say cheekily, the girl scoffs, slapping your thigh gently and rolling her eyes,

“i play soccer” she mocks, you give her an impressed smile as she explained how good she really was, “mhm, i should come and watch you sometime, superstar?” you flirt, giving her a charming smile that had butterflies swarming in her stomach.

you’d both gone far from friendly conversation, the flirting taking over after about 2 hours of you familiarising yourself with each other.

“yeah, maybe you should, and you? miss number solver?” she teases back, referring to you doing an accounting degree.

“i play hockey” you move a little so you could face her better and she does the same, although, her face has a shit eating grin on it.

“what’s so funny?” you narrow your eyes at her, “you’re so canadian” she laughs, you shake your head as she throws her head back in laughter, clearly enjoying how you’re not even defending yourself.

she encourages you to talk about your sport and to say she fell in love with you there was an understatement. you spoke with so much passion she really loved to see and hear it.

you also admit you fell in love with her when she talked about her sport, but even more with how intently she was listening to you, soaking in every word you said and clarifying things she didn’t understand.

you both felt something bubbling under the surface as you talked, so much so, when the party started to filter out, she asked if you wanted to get some ice cream and who were you to decline?

the teasing and the flirting throughout the whole night was so unbearable, you asked her out on a date without a second thought, smiling brightly when she accepted without any hesitation.

you both began to date after a few months, becoming one of the ‘it couples’ around campus when everyone could truly tell how much you were in love with each other.

you went to each other’s games with bright, adoring smiles, wearing each other’s jerseys with pride.

you had study dates together, most of the time getting distracted but neither part was complaining.

you were there for each other throughout all the ups and downs, talking and listening to one another for hours and somehow feeling not enough when you were with each other every second of the day.

you’d both established a career before you even graduated college, star athletes in the making in your respected sports.

you’d do anything for each other, so much so you moved with her to england when she signed her contract to chelsea.

—

while jessie played for chelsea, you still continued to play hockey in england also. it was hard being away from home but jessie made it all better.

your continual support for each other offering a sense of security that nothing else could. it also helped that you both represented canada nationally, often getting the opportunity to go home together.

—

the chelsea girls knew you too well, you came to every single game without fail with a bright grin on your face in the ‘fleming’ jersey that was almost worn as much as your own.

“your wife’s here” niamh teases as she warmed up with jessie before a match, the two of you weren’t married, or engaged even, not yet at least but this didn’t stop niamh from wishing you were, knowing how much her best friend adored you.

“where?” jessie grins, stopping all movement and frantically looking for you, niamh directs her head to where you were sitting in the friends and family section and her heart swelled with pride.

you wave at her brightly and she returns it instantly, her face growing warm at the smile you sent her, snapped out of her trance at niamh’s laugh. “such a sap” she smiles, jessie just gives her shoulder a little shove, continuing to warm up.

when the match was over after an easy win, jessie bounded over to you without a second to waste. “hi, baby” you smile as she walked into your arms, the barrier making it a little difficult but you both didn’t care.

“hi, gorgeous” jessie says breathlessly, pulling you into a sweet kiss with her hand on your cheek. you smile against her, your own hand on the side of her neck, your thumb brushing against her skin gently.

“my superstar” you say as you pull away, brushing away some stray hairs from her face before pulling her into a tight hug.

“gotta impress my wag, baby” she says cheekily, kissing your cheek repeatedly to make you giggle, working successfully like it did every time.

“i’m definitely impressed, baby canada” you smile, pressing another quick kiss to her lips as you pulled away slightly.

her hands make her way to your waist, rubbing up and down gently as you chatted, only lasting for a couple of seconds before you ushered her to interact with the fans.

“i’ll see you at home, beautiful” she winks, pecking your lips before running away, shouting a quick “i love you” over her shoulder that you quickly returned before leaving to drive home.

—

you had an upcoming game, an important one at that. you’d been nervous about it all week, jessie frequently having to calm you down so you could breathe. you were the captain, both for this team and the canada team so a lot of pressure fell on your shoulders.

the only reassurance you had was knowing jessie would be there, even inviting some of her teammates to come and watch you since they had the day off.

jessie wasn’t one to miss an opportunity where she got to ogle her talented girlfriend and show you off at the same time so she was extremely excited.

the morning of, let’s just say it was extremely difficult to get you out of the house.

“what if i fuck up?” you whine, turning from the door and walking back to jessie who was watching you from the doorway. “you won’t” she assures, pinching your cheek softly before turning you around and giving you a soft push to the door.

you turn back around, “what if something goes wrong?” you say nervously, “baby, you’ll be fine, we can deal with it” jessie chuckles, you throw your head back in annoyance.

the people who only knew you from hockey would be shocked to know you did this before every game. they’d be shocked to know how soft you were when it came to your girlfriend.

“i don’t want to go” you groan, jessie draws you in by your waist, her arms wrapped around them securely, “baby, you’ll be amazing, like always” jessie says earnestly, her brown eyes looking directly into yours so you knew she wasn’t lying.

“but you don’t know that” you pout, jessie quickly smiling before pulling you into a sweet kiss.

“i’m your girlfriend, i know everything” she says cheekily, pecking your lips a couple of times and managing to pull a small smile out of you.

“you go do your best, that’s all i want from you” she smiles, her hands now cradling your face as your arms wrap around her. “okay” you breathe out, determined.

smiling before pulling her into a breathless kiss that made both of you feel dizzy, sharing a quick i love you before she had to physically push you out of the house, knowing you’d convince her to stay.

—

jessie made her way to the arena in your jersey, your number written neatly tiny on her cheek. she was accompanied by niamh, zećira, aggie and hannah.

to say jessie got teased the entire time was an understatement but she didn’t care, she had no shame with the amount of love she had for you.

when you skated out on the ice with the ‘C’ over your heart, you had no ounce of nervousness at all. a complete contrast from the morning.

the truth is, on the ice, you were ruthless, completely contradicting how you were off the ice.

you carried yourself with complete confidence, expecting nothing but the best. you were a little rough but one of the best players and everyone knew it. you didn’t take any bullshit.

you were strategic, smart and calculated. you knew what you were doing and you were the captain both in this league and nationally for a reason. a team leader without fail. a role model, a borderline legend.

jessie and her friends cheered loudly for you when your name was announced on the loudspeaker. jessie watched as you waved around the arena before locking back in, skating around the ice in preparation for the game.

jessie was on the edge of her seat the entire time watching you, scoring 2 points in a short amount of time. you were playing exceptionally well, jessie’s heart swelled with pride but she was extremely nervous how this one player kept trying to rile you up.

she knew you didn’t take any disrespect and knew this girl was about to get her ass handed to her.

the girl was being overly physical with you and you would counter it every time. she was the other captain and knew she’d get thrown into the box if she tried anything too much. her behaviour was surprising.

but the girl continued, having the nerve to be near you every time with something to say every two seconds.

you’d ignore it, having dealt with people more annoying than this but it flipped when she started talking about jessie. your jessie.

she started with the insults about you until she said, “is your girlfriend some sort of puck bunny?” you fucking lost it.

you dropped your stick and both of you break out into a heated fight. fists flying before you grabbed her by her shirt, slamming her into the glass and spitting out words that we’re definitely not family friendly. jessie’s eyes were so wide in shock, never really seeing you in a fight like this before.

“talk about my girlfriend like that again and i’ll shove the puck down your fucking throat” you exclaim, getting pulled back by the referee and getting told to go to the penalty box.

you send a glare to the girl and she falters almost instantly before you skated to the box. you sat down with a huff, arms crossed over your chest as you watched your team dominate the other.

jessie shook her head while she looked at you, niamh and zećira cheering you on throughout the fight and even more now that you were in the box.

when your ten minutes was up, you played the rest of the game with passion, finishing with an easy and well deserved win. jessie ran down to where the change rooms were, her teammates waiting nearby.

jessie watched as you skated off the ice, catching your breath as you quickened your pace to jessie. her face was etched with worry as you approached, watching as you took off your helmet hastily and took out your mouth guard.

“hey, baby” you say brightly, bounding over and wrapping jessie up in a hug, your face instantly tucked into the crook of her neck, your cold nose brushing against her warm skin.

“for someone that just beat the shit out of someone, you’re very happy” she says amusingly, her arms wrapping around you without hesitation.

“she deserved it, trust me on that” and jessie did. you pull away from her at arms length, a cheesy smile plastered on your face as you looked at her.

“are you okay?” she asked, her voice clearly laced with worry, you nodded, kissing jessie’s cheek tenderly as you drew her a little closer.

“i’m fine, love, especially since my biggest fan is here” you grin, “you should see the other guy” you laugh as jessie slaps your shoulder lightly, “cheeky” she chuckles, pulling you into another tight hug in absolute relief you were okay.

you could tell she was on edge because of the circumstances, the hug telling you everything you needed to know. you hugged her tightly, letting her find solace in you and honestly calming you both down.

you wave over at her teammates when she pulls away and chat with them excitedly. you held onto jessie’s hand the entire time you all chatted, thanking them for coming and watching.

“what does that say on your stick?” niamh questions, you smile, moving your hand to show that you’d written jessie’s name with a little heart next to it on your tape, a tradition for you ever since you’d started dating.

“good luck charm” you grin, both of you getting teased for your bright pink cheeks. you say goodbye to them before they leave, turning back to jessie with a sweet smile. this is the side of you she knew the best. an absolute softie.

before you get changed, you draw jessie into another kiss, unable to stop yourself from smiling against her when she whined against your mouth.

you give her an amused expression, seeming as though she was a little riled up about the whole situation. “shut up” she groans, pushing you away by your chest slightly but you came right back, pressing a sweet peck to her lips,

“i didn’t say anything” you mumble against her, squeezing her hips gently before you ran to the change room, wanting to get back home as quick as possible.

let’s just say violence is never the answer but is excusable only for the way your girlfriend reacted to you when you both stepped through the door of your shared apartment.

⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆

liked by niamhcharles17 and 44,232 others

_jessflem: you wouldn’t know she beat someone up 10 minutes before this but here we are

view all comments

yourname: so worth it

↳ _jessflem: really was actually

niamhcharles17: your girlfriend’s got a crazy fist on her but is SUCH a softie

↳ yourname: watch it niamhy

↳ _jessflem: biggest softie ever

↳ yourname: you’re supposed to defend me

↳ _jessflem: i love you?

↳ yourname: yeah. whatever. i love you too.

#woso x reader #woso fanfics #woso one shot #woso imagine #jessie fleming x reader #jessie fleming

[headspace-hotel]

Just spent a couple hours digging into this book. I'm not even sure what has worse environmental impacts, the paper the book is made of or the opinions printed within.

Is "post-colonial" literary theory a joke? It's distressing that a book printed in 2021 by a reputable academic press can be so painfully Eurocentric, and I mean PAINFULLY. The philosophical and literary frameworks drawn upon in most chapters are like what some British guy in 1802 would come up with. In most of the chapters, every framework, terminology, and example is inseparably fused to Latin, Greek, and/or Christian philosophers, myths and texts, even down to the specific turns of phrase. You would think only Europeans had history or ideas until the 20th century.

Don't get me wrong, non-european and even specifically anti-colonial sources are used, and I don't think all the writers are white people, but...that's what's so weird and off-putting about it, most of the book as a whole utterly fails to absorb anything from non-European and in particular anti-colonial points of view. The chapters will quote those points of view but not incorporate them or really give their ideas the time of day, just go right back to acting like Plato and Aristotle and Romantic poets are the gold standard for defining what it means to be human.

In brief, the book is trying to examine how literature can shed light on the climate crisis, which is funny because it completely fails to demonstrate that literature is good or helpful for the climate crisis. Like that is for sure one major issue with it, it shows that people *have* written stuff about climate change, but it sure doesn't convince you that this stuff is good.

Most of the works quoted are rather doomerist, and a lot of the narrative works specifically are apocalypse tales where most of Earth's population dies. The most coherent function the authors can propose that literature fulfills is to essentially help people understand how bad things are. One of the essays even argues that poetry and other creative work that simply appreciates nature is basically outdated, because:

“One could no longer imagine wandering lonely as a cloud, because clouds now jostle in our imaginations with an awareness of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants” (Mandy Bloomfield, pg. 72)

Skill issue, Mandy.

The menace of doomerism in fiction and poetry is addressed, by Byron Caminero-Santangelo, on page 127 when he references,

the literary non-fiction of a growing number of authors who explicitly assert, some might even say embrace, the equation between fatalistic apocalyptic narrative and enlightenment…they are authoritative in their rejection of any hope and in their representation of mitigatory action as the cliched moving of deckchairs on a sinking ship

He quotes an essay “Elegy for a country’s seasons” by Zadie Smith, who says: “The fatalists have the luxury of focusing on an eschatological apocalyptic narrative and on the nostalgia of elegy, as well as of escape from uncertainty and responsibility to act." Which is spot-on and accurate, but these observations aren't recognized as a menace to positive action, nor is the parallel to Christian thought that eagerly looks forward to Earth's destruction as a cathartic release from its pain made fully explicit and analyzed. Most of the creative works referenced and quoted in the book ARE this exact type of fatalistic, elegiac performance of mourning.

I basically quit reading after Chapter 11, "Animals," by Eileen Crist, which begins:

The humanization of the world began unfolding when agricultural humans separated themselves from wild nature, and started to tame landscapes, subjugate and domesticate animals and plants, treat wild animals as enemies of flocks and fields, engineer freshwater ecologies, and open their psyches to the meme of the ‘the human’ as world conquerer, ruler and owner.

This is what I'm talking about when I say it's dripping Eurocentrism; these ideas are NOT universal, and it's adding nothing to the world to write them because they fall perfectly in line with what the European colonizing culture already believes, complete with the lingering ghost of a reference to the Fall of Man and banishment from the Garden of Eden. It keeps going:

“Over time, the new human elaborated a view of the animal that ruptured from the totemic, shamanic and relational past.”

Okay so now she's introducing the idea of progression from shamanic nature-worshipping religions of our primitive past...hmm I'm sure this isn't going anywhere bad

“While humanity has largely rejected the colonizing project with respect to fellow humans, the occupation of non-human nature constitutes civilization’s last bastion of ‘normal’ colonialism. A new humanity is bound sooner or later to recognize and overthrow a colonialism of ‘nature,’ embracing a universal norm of interspecies justice.” (pg. 206) 

OKAY????

Not only denying that colonialism still exists, but also saying that humans' relationship with nature constitutes colonialism??

Embracing limitations means scaling down the human presence on demographic and economic fronts…(pg.207)

ope, there's the "we have to reduce the human population"

Embracing limitations further mandates pulling back from vast expanses of the natural world, thus letting the lavishness of wild (free) nature rule Earth again” (pg. 207) 

aaaaaaand there's the "we have to remove humans from wild nature so it can be freeeeeee"

don't get me wrong like I am a random white person with no particular expertise in anti-colonialist thought but I think this is an easy one. I'm pretty sure if your view of nature is that colonialism involving subjugating humans doesn't exist any more and actually humans existing in and altering nature is the real colonialism so we should remove humans from vast tracts of earth, your opinion is just bad.

Anyways y'all know I have an axe to grind against doomerism so it was probably obvious where this was going but good grief.

#climate #climate doomerism

[fire-lizard-ro]

Hi Roro, hope you’re doing well! Let me start by saying your Sunday stuff is MAGNIFICENT, oh my gosh this MAN-

I’ve come with a request for you…

Dr. Veritas Ratio x fem or gn reader. Bathtub. Sex. Like most of the time he’s only interested in reading in the tub, rejecting reader’s advances. But one day, idk, he’s in a MOOD but he doesn’t want to admit it, so he lets reader go a little further than normal with her advances, but he’s still being petty about it, kinda denying and still trying to read his book or whatever and it just Escalates eventually…

Aaaa thank you so much if you decide to do my request! Remember to take breaks and stay hydrated!

I'm ILL over this man jfc-

Dr. Ratio here to prescribe you with a dose of vitamin D-//SHOT

Veri, my love, please just one chance I'm begging just a crumb oisego-

But yesssss gimme the bathtube sex I want it- I wanna do all kinds of wild things to or with this man. Crazy.

But hehehe I know what you are. 👁️👁️

A s i m p . 🫵 (Like I'm any better.)

And thank you!!! This took a While, but I did it. I had lots of fun with it so feel free to request again~

CW and writing under the cut:

CW: vagina and cock (gasp), PIV sex, cockwarming, rough sex, hair pulling, choking (+some breath play), cumming inside (wrap it before you tap it folks), spanking, degradation+praise, objectification, kinda sorta human furniture thing???, name calling (ex:slut), use of words like "cunt" (wow that feels weird writing here-), marking, ignoring you during cockwarming, doggy position(?), cum play, holding your hands behind your back, discussion of safe wording (check-ins), kinda cum as lube?, funishment, d/s aspects to the relationship (though you are dating for romantic reasons as well), slight pussy slapping, talking to your pussy (I know this man a freak <333), crying during sex (+dacryphilia), dumbification (ofc this was gonna be here), ruined orgasm, edging, slight cum eating, a liiiiittle bit of gagging (w/ fingers), usage of "pet" exactly once

Reader gender: fem (I talked with anon separately and they decided on this when I asked for preference- I also only have one fem reader ask. If people want, I can write another version tweaked to be gn or AMAB/male reader~)

Disclaimers:

>>>Dr. Ratio will be referred to as Veritas here since reader is dating him.

>>>This was written and almost finished before 1.6 release.

Bathtub sex, surprisingly, probably isn't the norm for you two. After all, Veritas (oml it feels weird calling him that after so long of calling him Ratio-) enjoys his down time in the bath where he can relax with you and read his books. I like to think that it's one of the few times when his ever racing mind is a bit quieter. So when you are finally pent up enough at just the right time to want to pounce on him in the tub, he's a bit surpised at first. But the surprise would soon melt into mild annoyance. "Can't you just stay still? Quit it- I'm trying to read."

Of course he says it in that ever dramatic way of his while not even glancing up from his book. Speaking of said book- "You're going to get my book wet, darling-" (Yes, he's a "darling" kind of guy. It's sophisticated as he is. And you know he'd say it with that drawl of his and drag the word out. Sometimes in those more intimate moments, it sounds almost like a sultry purr with the way he says it, commanding all your attention.) "And if you do that, you know I'm going to have to punish you, hm?" You almost want it if it means he'd touch you where you want him, but you know that his punishments aren't necessarily fun. Yet still you like them all the same.

(They're more of funishments than punishments in this case- Please do know that funishments and punishments aren't the same, my dear little kinksters~ Since the reader actually enjoys these "punishments" a lot and they are done for their and Veritas' mutual gratification, it's a funishment. These are normally for bratting behavior while actual punishments are for serious things and are meant to actually discourage the behavior that earned you the punishment. Hopefully I explanied it well, lololol-)

But of course you continue to try and rouse his interest, touching him here and there. It reaches the point where you manage to wiggle your way between his arms, in front of his book. Not only does this block his view, but you're dripping water all over his book! (It was all of one or two droplets.) If you listened close enough, you'd probably have heard the sound of his reason breaking in that moment. Like you had poked a sleeping bear one too many times. (And some little part of himself that knew it was also partly because he also was getting into a mood was squashed. Of course it was just because you needed to be disciplined.)

"That's it. You want my attention, darling? Well now you have it.” There was something dark in his voice that sent a shiver down your back and made your nethers tingle in anticipation. He snapped the book closed and set it on the table by the bathtub almost gently, a stark contrast between how his voice sounded and how he was looking at you. He'd tilt his head and consider you, seemingly thinking about how best to punish you for your transgressions. "Hands on my shoulders and do not move them. Color?" Veritas was launching right into it, huh? "Green." "Good."

With hands on his strong shoulders, you watched him with eyes darting around his form to try and figure out what he'd do. Your question was answered by a hand gripping your hip and another dragging down between your breasts, then over your belly, then stopping on your mound. He didn't move any lower, fingers thrumming there just above where you wanted him. Teasing. "I can see your cunt drooling from here. Was she just so hungry that you couldn't be good and hold it until we were out of the tub?" Heat bloomed in your cheeks as he spoke. "Should I punish her? Hm?" Veritas gave your wetness a few light slaps, just enough to make you jolt but not enough to do more than just barely sting. "No- It isn't her fault she's so empty and wanting. But it is your fault that you couldn't be obedient and wait. Isn't that right, my cute little slut?" He whispered in your ear, leaned forward to curl possessively over you while his fingers slipped down to trace around your twitching hole as it tried to suck his finger in.

"Mmmmm..." he hummed lowly, the sound vibrating against you where your chests were pressed together. He kissed the spot beneath your ear before his lips marked a path down your neck, sucking and nipping marks into the tender flesh there. Just as he reached the junction between your neck and shoulder, he suddenly sunk his teeth in and thrusted two fingers into you at the same time. Veritas had sneakily wrapped an arm around your waist to keep you still right before so you weren't able to squirm away from his teeth or his fingers that now plunged in and out of you, agonizingly slow after that fast, rough entry.

The man pressed a kiss to your new bitemark before sliding the hand of the arm around your waist up your back to latch onto your nape and hold you still for a kiss. He chuckled into it as you attempted to fight him for dominance, your tongues clashing. Ultimately, he won and was now devouring your mouth, licking into it with fervor.

At some point, his fingers began to speed up. Veritas was fingerfucking you with his palm slapping against your throbbing clit. And right as you felt yourself begin that climb- He slowed down, his thrusts going back to a leisurely rhythm. He swallowed the whine that left your throat, smirking into the kiss you were still locked in. As he pulled away, he looked incredibly smug. "Thought it would be that easy? Of course not. This is a punishment.”

He did this another time, bringing you close to the rise of pleasure (not at all that close to your peak, though) before going frustratingly slowing. The third time, however... It didn't seem that he was going to stop, and you felt it build and build inside you like a white hot flame. And right as you were reaching the end... He spanked you and ripped his fingers out, sending you over the edge but ruining your orgasm. It had tears beading in your eyes. Fuck did that make him want to fuck you absolutely stupid, but he had more control than that. Your punishment was far from over.

He soothingly ran his hand over your back as you leaned into him, body shivering. "Color?" Through your panting breaths, you managed a weak, "Green." "Good girl." He didn't let you rest any longer, manhandling you into a new position. Now you were leaned over the edge of the tub with your hands keeping you from falling out, Veritas behind you. "I'm going to fuck you now, and you're going to take it all like a good girl, right?" At first you thought he was talking to you, but then he caressed your slit and cooed at it. That mixed sense of shame and arousal shot through you and had you clenching around nothing, making Veritas laugh condescendingly. "So honest..."

Again he started out slow, the sensual slide of his cock inside of your pussy making you close your eyes to focus on the pleasure he was giving you. But he was faster to ramp things up now that he'd already edged you and ruined one of your orgasms. It may or may not have also been because he was quite ready to slake his own lust with your body.

The only reason you didn't slam your face into the tub's edge or fall out was Veritas' grip on you when he grabbed both of your wrists and pulled your arms behind your back. You felt a hand slide into your hair and then he was thrusting into you hard, the slap of his hips slamming into your ass loud in the confined space of the bathroom. It was obscene the way you could even hear the wet sound of his cock going in and out of you amplified by the natural acoustics of said bathroom. "You like hearing how well you take me, slut? I certainly do. It's filthy. Fitting-"

Your hips are bruising from them being pressed onto the edge of the tub, bumping into it with almost every thrust. It hurt but fuck did it all feel so good because he was pressing against your sweet spot every time he fucked into your wet hole.

The hand pulling your head back by your hair let go only to wrap around your throat and pull you up so your back pressed against his chest. "Fuck you sound like such a whore right now. Are you my good little whore? Just for me?" Of course you couldn't answer because your mind was blank from his hand pressing just right to cut off some of that blood flow. Oh and because he had also just tilted his hand to cut off your air. He held for a bit, waiting until your vision was a bit fuzzy at the edges before letting you breathe, the feeling of the air rushing back into your lungs making you dizzy. You felt so close you could scream- And then you nearly did when he pulled out and stopped your orgasm.

His hands let go of you and you nearly keeled over, but he caught you. With an arm around your waist, you couldn't tell what he was doing behind you until you heard the slick sound of him fisting his cock. Right as he began cumming, he slammed back into you to fill you with it while biting down hard on the back of your neck. Another bite to mark you as his.

Veritas then pulled out so the last few spurts of cum would paint your labia in white, marking you inside and out with his spend.

You could feel the frustrated tears pouring down your face as you felt your burning arousal festering in your belly and the mix of embarrassment and thrill at his actions. Fuck this man would be the end of you. He unlatched from your neck to lean forward and lick the tears off your face with a hum. "You look so pretty like this..." He patted your ass before that same hand was sliding down to open you up using your pussy lips as he leaned back to watch as the cum he poured into you began to slip out.

Scooping up the cum that had dribbled out, he fingered it back in, purposefully tapping at your gspot a few times. He then pulled the white covered fingers out and petted your clit, playing with it a little before bringing it to your face. "Clean them off." Your tongue kitten licked some of it off before he was shoving them in your mouth. You gagged a little, drooling over his fingers while weakly sliding your tongue over them to clean them of the cum clinging to them.

"Good girl," he praised with a kiss to your jaw before he let out a sigh. "I'm going to sit you on my cock and finish my reading. Color?" "Green, fuck-" "That's a good pet."

Warming his cock while leaned forward to rest your arms on the lip of the tub while your head rested on those was hard. You desperately wanted to cum, but you now were willing to be obedient to get what you wanted. You weren't sure how much more punishment you could take. It didn't help that he had an arm resting on the back of your hips, slung over them as he leaned on you a bit while his other arm rested atop the other one. That hand was holding up his book. He wasn't touching you besides that and your ass resting in the cradle of his hips, cock deep inside your pussy which still fluttered around his thickness occasionally. Every time you squirmed he would spank you with a pointed look before going back to his book, ignoring you entirely. Any whining or talking would be met with the same treatment.

He checked in on you after a bit. "Color?" "...yellow." His demeanor changed immedately. Petting your side, he eased you back to lean against him once more. "What's wrong, baby?" He typically saved that endearment for intimate moments alone together and times like this where you might need reassurance. "I wanna see your face... wanna hold you." It seemed you might be a bit sensitive, now, after being punished for a while and needed that from him. "Of course, baby. Your punishment is almost over. I'll let you come soon and we can continue in the bedroom, hm?" You loved this man. "Okay." He kissed your forehead. "Good girl."

He slipped out, making you whine. It was met with a chuckle and he helped you turn around to slide into his lap again, this time facing him.

Veritas pulled you to rest against him, tucking you into his neck as he wrapped an arm around your waist. Once you both were settled in, he went back to reading. He still ignored you, but it wasn't so bad this time.

You knew he was done when he set his book on the table again.

He settled his grip on your hips before going straight into fucking up into you hard and fast, what cum was still left in you from his cock plugging it in you aiding the slide of dick in and out of you. He fucked you and played with you until you felt like you couldn't think straight. Even when he asked you questions, knowing you couldn't answer, you weren't quite sure what you said. Whether it was even coherent or not.

"Such a cute, dumb girl for me."

As you came around his cock again, you moaned as you felt the warmth of his cum in you. "Did so, so good for me. Such a good girl." Veritas gave you some time to come down from your high before asking. "You wanna continue in the bedroom or are you finished for the night?" "...m' done." "Alright, baby." He gave you some more time before cleaning you up and draining the tub. Another kiss was pressed to your forehead, then your cheek, then your lips. "Let's go to bed, darling. I'll take care of you."

Lololol hopefully you like it. 🙏

If there’s any typos or if it doesn’t make sense somewhere… Your honor my client claims “oopsie daisy”. It’s me. The client is me, your honor-

#Roro writes #asks answered #dr ratio x reader #dr ratio smut #fem reader #hsr x female reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #hsr dr ratio #honkai star rail dr. ratio x reader #hsr Dr. Ratio x reader #Dr. Ratio x reader #hsr smut #honkai star rail smut #smut

[vhstown]

super short london slang guide !!

i haven't got a scooby doo about cockney so this is mainly gonna be mle and like the way 14 year old secondary school boys talk oookay let's go (just so yk i am a londonder!!!!!)

direct things to call people (or avoid calling people)

bruv, blud, man, mate, fam (can use in replacement of a pronoun like he, she, you and i or for emphasis — "man's got a meeting, bruv!")

more on "man" it can be used in plural too — "us man" or "them man" or "you man"

my g, my guy (for referring someone you are friendly/friends with)

bossman (something you'd call a shop or business owner — "aye bossman get me the 3 wings and chips yeah")

big man (usually used in a sarcastic friendly but kind of demeaning way, the older cousin of "big guy" — "oi big man what you sayin' cuz?"

i wasnt going to put these here cause of personal preference but 😭 people are gonna use them anyway so i might as well tell you what they mean:

peng (adjective cute/pretty — "her? she's peng!")

leng (adjective hot/sexy — "rah, he's leng you know?)

nouns

ting (usually to refer to a girlfriend but can also just mean "thing"... or a knife? — "don't chat to my ting fam!")

grim (very outdated word for a promiscuous woman — "she's a grim bruv!")

skeng (gun)

shank, spinner (knife)

paper, Ps, pronounced "peas" (money)

ends (neighbourhood, area — "if i catch you in my ends yeah")

mandem (group of friends — "having a laugh at the pub with the mandem" aha)

gyaldem (group of women / female friends)

ganja (weed)

blem (cigarette)

pagan/paigon (snitch or untrustworthy person, not a super common you might wanna use "snake" or "snitch" instead)

wasteman (someone who's useless, a lowlife)

pussio/pussyo (pussy, coward)

other common words and phrases

wagwan, or "wag1" in text (what's up, what's going on)

bare (a lot — "i got bare problems with him!")

gassed (prideful, full of yourself — "im actually so gassed, man got promoted"

"and that" (instead of "and stuff" — "i got links and that")

"allow it" (let something slide — "i forgot my wallet allow it bossman")

safe (like "alright cool", or as a bye — "aight safe")

"pattern up" (fix up, get it together)

hard, tight (cool, good, though "hard" is also used in an offensive way — "bro thinks he's hard, pussio")

blam (to get shot, not actually very common to hear in my experience)

sheffed (up), shanked (to get stabbed)

ahlie (used as an interjection when in agreement with something, similar to phrase "am i lying?")

non-mle specific words i hear sometimes

thick (dumb, stupid)

clapped/tapped (ugly, weird, unattractive)

merk/murk (kill, beat up)

slag, sket (slut)

chav (used to refer to someone of the low social status, associated with violent or rude behaviour)

taking the mick, taking the piss (being annoying)

mad (means crazy obviously but people use it a lot, can have positive and negative connotations — "that's mad!")

nonce (literally means pedophile / sex offender, do what you will with it 😭)

dickhead, bellend (similar to douchebag)

wanker (used towards someone you dislike, or in a joking way)

geezer (usually to refer to an old man)

also!!!

depending on which communities are predominant in the area, words from other languages can come in / have come in

some words are common with US slang too because they share origins 😁 ain't that cool

there's a lot of influence from jamaican patois due to the history of british jamaicans in london for ex in words like "ting" or "mandem" or "wagwan" (hence why mle is sometimes referred to as "jafrican") and its not strange to hear "bomboclaat" or "bloodclaat" here either

in communities where there's muslims and arabs (especially in east london) you might hear arabic terms like "wallahi", "khalas" or "astagfirullah" (though people debate whether that's cultural appropriation or not)

south asians have also had an influence with words like "gora" or "ganja" though again this is largely area based and the impact of hinglish is also found a lot outside of london

some people have a mix of different dialects! i mainly alternate between mle and estuary (sometimes yorkshire don't ask it is very easy to pick up...)

you're not gonna hear every single word here all the time the usage varies throughout london. the way north and west londoners speak can be v different for example

uhhhh if you wanna learn properly just listen to some grime or sutn . listen to londoners speak!

for some more resources in-depth PLEASE check out these guides made by other british people ! (one and two)

ok that's it bye bye british ppl & londoners feel free to add on! it is midnight rn so ive probably missed stuff lol... dms are open in case you've got any questions or want any help :p

#vee rants #hobie brown x reader #spider punk #spider uk #hobart brown #hobie brown #hobie brown x gn!reader #british accent #london accent #potential to be edited

[queerfables]

Why all the crowd scenes look the same, aka: Something is WRONG in Soho

I'm not even gonna tease and draw this out because it's so cool it doesn't need the fanfare. Ready?

Season 2 takes place over the course of 5 days. During that time, most of the passersby in Soho - maybe even all of them - stay exactly the same. It's the same people every day, wearing the exact same clothes, and they wander through the neighbourhood in paths that don't make any sense. You won't be able to unsee it. I can't believe it's taken us this long to realise.

Don't believe me? Rewatch the scene from 2x03, I Know Where I'm Going where Shax confronts Crowley outside the bookshop, appearing in a series of different guises. Pay attention to the people going past.

I've marked out five people you see on screen when Crowley first exits the bookshop at 39:37:

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 are following the path right. Number 4 follows the path left. Number 5 crosses the road.

Here the five people are again, at 40:19, when Crowley goes to return to the bookshop:

Number 5 is still visible in the distance, in the direction she walked in. This makes sense! But numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are rounding the same corner they just passed. It's as though 1, 2 and 3 all decided to turn and head back the way they came just 40 seconds ago, and number 4 has circled the block to join them.

This on its own would be super weird, but they're not the only people to do that in this scene. The man in the purple sweater from the first picture crosses the road, then appears back next to the bookshop, then starts walking back the way he came again.

Here's the part that made me absolutely certain, though. At 40:05, a man wearing an orange hoodie with blue sleeves walks past Crowley, who is heading towards the bookshop entrance.

The camera cuts to a view from behind Crowley, and a moment later, at 40:08...

He reappears in front of Crowley and walks past him again.

It's such a distinctive outfit, there's no mistaking it. They are absolutely fucking with the background characters and they are absolutely doing it on purpose.

Your turn. There are at least three other characters in this scene who pass by multiple times. Watch it again and try to spot them.

This scene is really chaotic and obvious, but the phenomena I'm talking about is much bigger than just one scene. Let's go back to the first thing I said: the background characters don't change. All our leads do. Maggie and Nina wear distinctive outfits, clearly demarcating each new day. Even Crowley and Aziraphale, who in season 1 were like cartoon characters with wardrobes full of identical clothing, vary their looks. Crowley changes his (very subtly) each day; Aziraphale is less rigid on timing, but he has a few different coats that he switches between. The background characters, on the other hand, wear the same outfits every single day. They walk by on the street but they never actually seem to have a destination. They sit in the coffee shop or pub and don't eat or drink anything, and nearly everyone leaves together exactly on closing time. It's eerie.

For reference's sake, here's a rough timeline of season 2, with pictures of Maggie and Nina's outfits to show the passing of time. I had to outsource this section because my post was too image heavy, lol. The main point I wanted to make is that five days go by.

Five days, and all the same faces keep showing up in the background, and almost none of them change their clothes. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but there's no way it's an accident. It might, in fact, be a game changer. To me this is proof positive that something is not as it seems. I've been a massive Clue skeptic, adamant that I'd only be convinced by the most unambiguous evidence, and honestly? This is enough to move the dials. It's too big for me to ignore. Whatever grand explanation of Good Omens we come up with has to account for this. I don't have it yet, but my current working theories are that Crowley and Aziraphale are under some seriously heavy surveillance, that time warping is involved, or that reality itself is not what it seems.

It would take a really long time for me to go through all of the background characters who turn up over and over but I do want to show you what I'm talking about. To wrap up, then, I'm going to pick out some memorable characters and walk you through a few of their appearances through the week. I highly recommend looking out for this yourself on your next rewatch and seeing how many other characters you can recognise.

Yellow Skirt

The first person I kept coming back to as being not quite right. You probably remember her from the first episode - she's the one who waves and walks past Maggie and Nina the night they're locked in together. Incidentally, she's also Person Number 3 in the scene with Shax.

Day 1 (2x01 - 36:20):

Day 2 (2x02 - 42:03)

Day 3 (2x03 - 06:36)

Day 5 (2x06 - 30:00)

Coolest Leather Jacket In The World

It's not so easy to recognise people wearing lots of nondescript dark colours, but I love his hair and his jacket, so he stood out to me. I think there might be a lot more people who are wearing fairly nondescript clothes who I just can't recognise from episode to episode.

Day 2 (2x02 - 16:44)

Day 4 (2x04 - 41:20)

Day 5 (2x06 - 29:20)

Dressed In Mustard

Ms Mustard shows up everywhere. If you want to see what I mean about their paths not making sense, pay attention when she comes on screen, because she'll often show up a few times in succession and walk very purposefully to nowhere in particular. The thing that she is doing, essentially, is behaving like an extra in a tv show. Which of course she is, but you're supposed to make that invisible by not having the same person go back and forth in the same scene, or changing up their outfit each in-universe day to give the sense time is passing. Not doing that is a really deliberate choice.

Day 1 (2x01 - 22:37)

Day 2 (2x02 - 42:03)

Day 3 (2x03 - 01:49)

Day 3 (2x03 - 37:07)

Day 5 (2x06 - 29:59)

Swishy Dress

This character shows up a lot in the first episode. I've struggled to find her in later episodes, though. None of the characters seem to follow the same patterns or show up to equal extents each day, which makes me think this isn't a straightforward time loop. I haven't actually cross referenced character appearances to in world times, though. Possibly this is a project for someone who's more across the time-related shenanigans than me.

Day 1 (2x01 - 22:43)

Day 3 (2x03 - 07:01)

Yellow Vest

I've only seen this guy a handful of times, always around the French restaurant. I wonder if there's significance to that.

Day 2 (2x02 - 41:06)

Day 4 (2x05 - 12:49)

Fuzzy Blue Coat

Another background character who shows up frequently. The blue doesn't stand out quite as much as the yellows and reds some characters wear, but it's very distinctive.

While we're getting a lot of shots of the street, it's worth noting that I'm pretty sure the vehicles we see are also just the same few cars repeating each day. A lot of them are in neutral silvers and monochrome, but there's a couple of blue cars, one red, and one black and white that I'm fairly sure I've seen over and over through the season.

Day 1 (2x01 - 22:45)

Day 2 (2x02 - 42:04)

Day 3 (2x03 - 02:00)

Day 5 (2x06 - 40:10)

Day 5 (2x06 - 48:56)

Day 5 (2x06 - 50:06)

One final note: Whatever this is, Nina's employee who you see in the background at the coffeeshop sometimes isn't affected by it. He's wearing different outfits each day. On the other hand, some of the other shopkeepers do seem affected. I'm fairly sure Mr Brown and Mrs Sandwich wear the same outfits a few different days, only changing because of Aziraphale at the ball.

And that's it! Thanks for reading and I hope your mind is blown as much as mine is.

EDIT:

Hey I don't mind anyone pointing out production reasons that this might be the case or disagreeing with my analysis (over-analysis, some might say 😉). Please be kind about it, though. I'm not ignorant of the practical limitations involved in film making, but some of these costumes were really distinctive in a way I thought might be intended to draw attention.

For those of you who do find this theory convincing, I feel I should mention that I was working under the assumption that this stuff would have taken a few days to film, even filming it all together. That would strongly suggest that the actors were deliberately costumed the exact same way over multiple days of shooting, which made me think it had to be purposeful. @coranax was kind enough to point out, though, that behind the scenes videos said the extras were filmed separately to the main actors because of Covid protocols. In that case, they could have done it in just one day and that weakens my confidence in its intentionality.

Finally, all of my points about the scene with Shax in 2x03 stand. That was not a case of accidental continuity errors, it was really elegantly choreographed to enhance the tension in the scene. I say that with confidence because the extras are doing exactly what Shax is doing: circling Crowley, appearing where he doesn't expect them, creating a whirlwind sense of being off balance and out of control. I think it's really cool and effective, whether there's a deeper meaning to it or not.

#good omens #good omens meta #fable talks good omens

[vivendraws]

making an important announcement about some things i’ve noticed in the gwendoline christie fandom that really bug me.

disclaimer: read this at your own convenience and discretion. i am not responsible for any sort of hurt feelings and frankly… i don’t care. if you’re mad about this, you are probably the problem. /lh

to start with id like to begin on a positive note so that i’m not diving into negativity, i don’t want to be completely negative about my experiences because i’ve actually met some of the kindest people in the world through this fan base.

the gwen fandom, the gwandom, the gwendoline christie fandom , the lesbian cesspool, has been an incredible experience that i’m grateful i’ve had the pleasure of being apart of.

i went through a rough patch during november, and if i hadn’t found out about gwen, or met such wonderful people during my time here , i honestly wouldn’t be here right now. i owe my life to these people, gwen included. i will forever adore miss christie and what she stands for alongside the friends i’ve made along the way.

and while i know someday this hyperfix will end, it’s really disheartening to me when a fandom is what makes me grow distant from things i enjoy. it happened before, i feel as though it is happening all over again.

and no, i’m not taking issue with anything like the catrissa stuff or the brienne and larissa ship going around or anything like that. i like that we can all be weird together and enjoy aus like catrissa and crackships like bririssa (not sure the official name that was decided lol). my issue is the amount of content i’ve seen that either focuses on gwen herself, or the strange relationship with minors, or the odd artwork of gwen, and the absolute disgusting behaviour towards giles.

gwen would be absolutely appalled seeing fanfictions of herself that involve nsfw or just her in general, anyone would, it’s disgusting to make works of real people in that setting. it’s like you’re treating them as an original character you can mould and manipulate as you see fit and using someone who is real with thought and feeling and consciousness for smut fics is not okay, or any fic in general. i totally get the hype around her characters, i literally have “brienne’s princess” in my bio and i’ve had “jane murdstone’s bloodbag” (in reference to my vamp au) as a name in a discord server.

but i think the fandom has begun to blur the lines between fictional characters and reality settings when it comes to gwen and the personalities she portrays on the television screen. it’s not fair to her. it’s disgusting. i’ve seen a minor do it, i’ve seen a grown adult do it. it’s something i don’t see shamed and frowned upon often enough and it’s really not okay.

on that note i’d like to quickly mention the photos, we alllll know what photos i’m talking about. the bunny one, the nudes, the ones gwen has expressed regret towards and wishes to not have them spread. was there not a “fan” who brought her a book of her nudes and wanted her to sign it? that person who was blocked on instagram by gwen because they reposted her nudes on their story and tagged her???? how can you refer to yourself as a fan after behaving so abhorrently? absolutely disgusting behaviour. as a collective fandom we need to stop touching those photos (metaphorically speaking) and leave them in the past.

i’ve been told of numerous circumstances in which adults have shown their nsfw works to minors in this fandom and it has to fucking stop. it’s disgusting!! how can you do that knowingly? i constantly ponder terminating my account after a minor got ahold of my nsfw work, and upon realising they WERE a minor it was as simple as blocking and moving on. it’s truly not that hard, folks. and the minors on tiktok who fight with others saying silly things like “that’s my wife” or worse. i’ve seen it all, i feel like, and the more i see it the more sick i become. i cannot stand it.

i have seen and heard of fans who have fat shamed gwen for that one pink dress she wore to the met gala. she looked so happy in that dress, and the audacity one must have to fatshame that poor woman on twitter then turn around and continue to proclaim your ‘love for her’ as if you’d done no wrong? are you fucking serious? are you mental?

and the sexualisation over the porcelain doll look, gods some of you are sick. those were not real breasts, people. considering the fact she wholeheartedly regrets her nude photoshoots , what possesses you to believe she would actually flaunt her chest in that outfit?

the blatant mistreatment of poor giles is not fucking okay either. just because you’re jealous of someone who makes her immensely happy does not give you the right to post something so vile and cruel about him. shame on you. why do you believe this is okay to post:

????????

are you serious? have any of you stopped to consider how HAPPY giles makes her? or is her happiness the last thing you ponder when you look at her? have you even noticed how unhappy she looks lately? have you truly paused to consider how she would feel about seeing this on your page, random twitter user, or the rest of you who think this is okay? bless your hearts.

and some of the absolutely horrific things i’ve seen about her online and the hurtful behaviour towards giles makes me question the difference between a fan and just the general paparazzi. because if you truly loved her and you truly loved giles then i would not be ranting into the fucking void about it for no reason.

i avoid interacting with pages i find problematic on here to keep from stirring the pot but tonight i chose violence and got reeeeeal pissy about how i felt about this place. it’s not okay what i see on here and it’s getting exhausting seeing the same cycle of content on a daily.

that’s everything i have to say, i think. i probably missed a lot that should be discussed in the comments but i’m done for now because i know if i go on i’ll probably cry.

before you post things about real people with real feelings , stop to consider how they will feel those real feelings towards the content you put out. chances are you’ll become less problematic and obnoxious that way. 💘

#gwendoline christie #gwendolineuniverse #sigh #announcement #i’m upset #this fandom is insane #some of you need help #seriously #like its not even funny #you guys are weird #please repost this everywhere #this is not okay #i’m really tired of seeing these things #and i understand i can block and move on but i feel as though it was important enough to be said #fandom #tumblr fandom #and specifically #the tumblr and tiktok fandom #instagram is becoming just as bad #and twitter has always been atrocious

[zreamy]

nothing to lose

pairing: jay park x fem!reader

summary: after a hockey party, a football game, and a near perfect first kiss, jay is humbled by his (practically silent) friend sunghoon, who reminds him that he has nothing to lose.

genres: university / college au, friends (uni crushes) to lovers, smut, fluff

warnings: minors dni, vaguely (very?) british undertones..

word count: 24,064 .. sorry.

playlist: awkward sza, do you like me? daniel caesar

author's note: please just be nice to me and let me know your thoughts (positive / negative / anything as long as ur not mean abt it) .. thank u @asahicore my rock, my bestie, my beta reader .. <333 hope u enjoy !!!

When you pair his kind eyes and charming smile with his ever-positive outlook on life, it’s easy to see why Park Jongseong is heavily popular amongst the student body; even described by your flatmates (and the rest of his fan club) as the stuff of dreams. And in your dreams, you know exactly why he’s staring in your direction with a sweet smile on his face. In real life, however, you have absolutely no idea and it’s kind of weird. Not his smile itself, no, his smile is.. really pretty, but it’s kind of weird in the sense that it’s directed at you. 

You think. 

Most of the library’s population sits across the room in the computer lab and based on your seat, at an empty table, in the (also empty) far corner, he’s either smiling at you or at the wall that your head is resting on. It’s not until the two of you lock eyes that you feel you should smile back, though your brows knit together at the way he whips his head around in the other direction when you do – a move that seems out of character for the Park Jongseong that you know. Or rather, the Park Jongseong Jay that you knew.

The Jay you knew was a (more than) pleasant enough guy who grinned in a way that pushed a dimple into his cheek every time he got to class and sidled his way through the aisle to sit in the seat next to you. The very first time he did it he’d mistaken you for someone else, his smile faltering slightly as he sat down anyway, a large hand extended to you.

“Jay,” he introduced himself, nodding thoughtfully when you told him your name and holding on to your hand for a split second longer than what was comfortable. And even though it was clear that he’d been sitting in the wrong seat, at Na Jaemin’s end-of-year party months later, you acted shocked when he told you about how he’d forgotten to put his contacts in that morning. Nonetheless, he continued sitting next to you in that class for the rest of the semester.

From your current seat in the library, you watch him curiously, wondering if he might look over again. For two minutes, he leans against a shelf in the reference section, completely unaware of his audience (you) as he types on his phone. You can’t take your eyes off him until the sudden vibration of your phone startles you, your hand reaching for it immediately thinking (hoping?) it might be a text from him.

yj: hockey mixer tn 

yj: what are you guys wearing 

You feel relieved to see that it’s just Yunjin in the group chat, though, as you read the messages, you struggle not to roll your eyes seeing that she (captain of the hockey team) is still trying to convince you (non-member of the hockey team) to go to the hockey mixer. By the looks of things, the field hockey team is the last to take advantage of the space that the student union building has to offer. Functioning as a nightclub over the weekend (and on select weeknights), The U is the place to be if you’re looking for a good time for a good price.

Unlike the other club parties, tonight’s hockey mixer is Yunjin’s answer to concerns raised by members of the students’ union about binge drinking on campus. According to her: “A mixer is an informal gathering where people mingle, interact, and get to know each other. And a party is,” she paused, fixing her eyes on the ceiling as if waiting for divine inspiration to strike. “Fun.” She didn’t seem pleased when you asked if this meant that the mixer would be boring and eventually confessed that the hockey party would be a mixer in name only.

You lock your phone without responding and lift your gaze back to references only to find that Jay is gone; stuck to the part of the bookshelf he was leaning on, you notice a lopsided poster featuring two crossed field hockey sticks and a ball over a green gradient, and a chill runs down your spine. If Yunjin is one thing, she’s bad at graphic design persistent. 

Unfortunately, in all your time spent not working, you find that your laptop hasn’t begun doing your research paper for you, and the Google Doc looks exactly the same as it did when you last edited it one hour ago, with only the intro from the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals website pasted into it. In the bottom left corner of your screen, a white box tells you that it’s 467 words long, and, feeling a rare bout of motivation, you get to work paraphrasing and attempting to condense the text.

As morning turns into afternoon, the library starts to get busier and busier, and despite the low hum of several different conversations creeping in through your earphones, you’ve gotten into a flow with your work and don’t let anything distract you. That is until Jay himself lets his backpack thud onto the table across from you, brows raising a little at the sudden noise, before pulling out the chair and sitting down. 

“Need a study buddy?” he asks, a tentative hand on the zipper of his jacket. 

You take a moment to observe him; the way he asked to join you after having already joined you, settling into the seat before you’d had a chance to say anything. A part of you wants to say “no,” just to see how he reacts, but, with a smile on your face, you take out your earphones and say, “Sure.” 

A grin spreads over his lips as he mumbles the word sweet, shrugging off the oversized coat and letting it drape over the back of his chair, revealing a chunky pair of headphones sitting around his neck and a thin gold chain with a hook pendant on it. His dark hair sits flat on his forehead and he rakes a hand through it twice before taking a textbook out of his bag. He doesn’t touch it, though. Instead, he lets his elbows rest on the table in front of him, biceps flexing slightly under his sleeves as he crosses his forearms. “What are you working on?” he asks.

“A report on the integration of renewable technology in buildings, for my sustainable development class.” 

Jay hums, brows raising slightly. “Renewable tech like solar panels and shit, right?” 

“Right.” 

Another grin, pretty, sincere. “It’s cool you’re getting to learn about the stuff you care about,” he tells you, and even if you hadn’t been looking at him, you’d have been able to hear the smile in his voice, light, sweet. Jay is sweet. The statement trickled out of his mouth so simply, so casually, a small detail that you have to rack your brain to recall sharing with him; still just as attentive as you remember. “Really.”

“Yeah,” you nod, smiling too. “Exactly.” 

There’s a distinct comfort that rolls off of Jay in waves as the two of you chat, and the scene feels familiar. It’s reminiscent of the nights you’d spend together last term, at a table like this one with the notes from your shared Property Law lecture sprawled out in front of you while pretending to study. The two of you would find anything else to talk about, and constantly received dirty looks from the laughter you’d struggle to stifle. 

It’s not until Jay reaches for his textbook that you properly check it out, and as a non-fashion student, you’re not expecting to know what subject he’s studying but you’re pretty sure that Nutrition, Energy, and Human Performance are not part of his curriculum. “Excercise Physiology?” you ask, reading its title.

“I picked it up earlier for Sunghoon. He’s at the rink all morning,” he nods.

“So why are you studying it?”

Jay laughs, shifting in his seat. “It’s, like, the only thing I have in my backpack. I just came over here ‘cause I wanted to say hey.” 

It takes everything in you not to say “aww” out loud; his sweetness palpable, his smile contagious, and his eyes so bright and warm that your heart soars in your chest when you look at them. “Hey,” you say after a beat. 

“Hey,” he chuckles. “How was your break?” 

“It was good! I went home for a week, or so, and then I got bored and came back to hang out with Chaewon,” you tell him, grinning despite yourself at the memory of poorly mixed cocktails and days spent lounging by the pool at her family’s holiday home. “85% of the summer was just us running around being stupid.” 

“And the other 15?” 

You feel more than a little awkward about telling him that you spent the other 15% fooling around with Jaemin, so with a forced smile you tell him, “Just more running around being stupid.” Hopefully, he can’t sense your mild discomfort and thinks you’re scratching your neck because it’s itchy and not because of the slight guilt you feel. “How was yours?” 

“Minus Chaewon, I had, like, the exact same break.” He pauses, breaking out into the widest grin you’ve ever seen. “Oh, and I went to the Yuuri show! It was crazy.” He runs a hand through his hair, sitting up a little straighter in his seat. “I was gonna text you but I didn’t wanna bother you during break or anything.” 

“Oh,” you say, dragging the vowel. “Right. So you’re bothering me during term time instead?” You tease, though with the way Jay’s eyes widen and his brows knit together, it doesn’t seem like he’s caught on to your joking tone. “I’m kidding, tell me all about it,” you add as quickly as you can manage, a huge smile on your face. 

Relief washes over you as Jay laughs, his shoulders shaking, and his nose crinkling, showing off the scar across its bridge that you’ve come to like so much. After calming down, he watches you carefully, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Right,” he finally says, taking a breath before talking with excitement and at great length about the concert. 

But it isn’t without slight interruption: Jay’s phone vibrates against the table a few times, and he ignores it, eventually turning it on do not disturb before squinting at you. “You’re not allowed to laugh. Pinky promise me you won’t laugh.” He holds his hand out to you, wagging his pinky finger in your face. There’s a smile on his lips when you link your finger with his, his skin rough against your own when he squeezes your pinky. As much as his tight grip is starting to hurt, you (unsuccessfully) fight off a smile when you realise that the two of you are effectively holding hands. 

“I’m not gonna laugh,” you promise.

A beat passes before Jay lets out a chuckle. “That’s my girl,” he says, voice low as if he didn’t want you to hear him. You wish you didn’t hear him. 

When you try to let go, he doesn’t budge, only easing up a little so he’s not cutting off your circulation anymore; just holding it lightly with his. Across the table from you, struggling to meet your eyes, Jay wears a sheepish look. “He threw his pick out into the crowd at the end of the show, and I caught it!” he tells you, looking away. “And I cried..” His voice thins out into practically nothing though you think you hear the words “home,” and “Heeseung,” before he stops talking completely. 

Jay’s sentimental side has tugged at your heart for as long as you’ve known him, and given the way he’d sobbed quietly in his seat at the cinemas when you’d gone out to watch a late showing of Spider-Man 2 together, you find it easy to imagine him welling up over catching Yuuri’s guitar pick. 

For some reason, much like the tears he’d shed over Peter Parker, you find the thought quite cute, and a smile teases at the corners of your mouth as you make a mental note to finally listen to some Yuuri songs later on. Jay looks at you expectantly, and before you have the chance to speak his phone starts to ring, vibrating incessantly against the table, though Jay doesn’t take his eyes off of you. 

“Do you need to get that?” you ask, unable to suppress the snort that makes its way out. 

Jay shakes his head. “You promised me. You’re still promising me,” he says, lips curving into a frown as he makes a show of waving your still-linked hands.  

“No, it’s cute that you cried.” 

He seems shocked by this. “Really?” 

“A little.” 

His mouth falls open in a silent gasp as he furrows his brows at you. “A li—” He’s cut off by his phone vibrating once again, and he releases your pinky to check it. Jay sighs lightly, reading the messages from his screen and picking up the textbook. “Sorry, Hoon’s on my ass about this thing. I gotta go.” 

Disappointment weighs lightly on your shoulders at his words, though you do feel better when you see the little pout on his lips, hoping that it means he doesn’t want your conversation to end either. “I get it,” you say, shooting him a smile that you hope is convincing as he puts the book in his bag before pulling his jacket back on, and standing up from his seat. 

“I’ll text you,” he says cheerfully, waving at you before leaving. He looks over his shoulder a few moments later, waving again with the same smile from earlier on his face. 

You can’t help but watch as he retreats, captivated by the air of confidence he somehow exudes even without showing his face, until he disappears into the mix of students by the entrance, becoming just another bag and shoulders in the crowd. 

Without Jay to chat to, the idea of sitting in the library becomes jarring, and suddenly it’s time for you to leave too. You don’t hesitate to grab your phone when it vibrates twice next to you, an odd combination of the relief from earlier and slight disappointment hitting you when you see that it’s Yunjin — texting you directly this time. 

yj: if you wanna ignore me turn off read receipts 

yj: open bar for girls on the team

you: sounds like the hockey girls are gonna have a good night

yj: i’ll get you a jacket

you: don’t bother i’m not going. 

SWANG rattles through tinny speakers in the student union and with every free drink you knock back, it gets harder and harder to pretend to Yunjin that you’re not having a good time. The team jacket she snagged for you and Chaewon to share fits a little big over your shoulders as you conclude that Number 20 is a lot more popular than you thought if the vaguely disappointed look on many faces when they see your face is anything to go by. 

Sitting in a booth towards the back of The U, you and Yunjin mumble along to the song with a shot in each hand as she starts a countdown from 3! and you wonder whether or not you’ll be able to make it to class in the morn—2!—ing given how much you’ve had to drink and how much of the night is still left to happen 1! The formerly rancid tequila goes down like water the first time around, and gets caught in your throat the second time. 

“I’m so happy you came tonight!” she yells in your ear, wrapping an arm around your shoulders, choosing to gush while you cough into the crook of your elbow. “I always have the most fun with you but you never come out.” Her drunkenness is evident in the slightly higher pitch that her words take on and the way most of the consonants come out almost the same way the vowels do. 

As sweet as she’s being, you can’t ignore the alarms blaring in your head hearing that your best friend would describe going out (at least) two nights a week as “never” going out, but you chuckle along anyway, locking your hand with hers. 

With a smile on his face, Lee Jeno brings Chaewon back to the booth in one piece, ruffling her hair a little before raising a hand to salute you and Yunjin, and disappearing back into the crowd. 

“The period at the end of that last text almost convinced us,” she says as she takes her seat beside you. “But I new your little crush on Jay wouldn’t let you miss a chance to see him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Chaewon rolls her eyes, backing a shot before leaning over you to get closer to Yunjin. “She’s pretending again.” 

With a scoff, Yunjin unlocks her phone and pulls up her camera roll to an album titled with an unfortunately cute ship name. “I can’t stop thinki–” You cut her off, snatching the phone from her hands and placing it under your thigh. 

“Okay, okay,” you relent, letting your head fall back as you groan. “I may have had a.. thing for him last semester but I’m over it now.” 

“Do you think he’ll swipe up if I post a song he likes?” Chaewon reads between laughs. 

Flustered, you sink into your seat after hearing the text that you sent two nights ago, hoping with all your might that the booth will open up to swallow you whole. 

To your utter devastation, it does not. 

The universe chooses to soothe you in a different way by sending an angel Kazuha to drag you all out onto the dance floor. With intertwined hands, the four of you “excuse me” and “sorry” your way over to where Sakura and her friend Mark are dancing a little closer than usual with one another. 

His hands are on her hips as he holds her back to his front, the two of them grinding to the music, but she’s quick to smack his hands off of her and break away from him when she sees you guys approaching. Using a hand to push hair out of her face, Sakura laughs at nothing, smacking Mark’s chest playfully while he glues his eyes to the floor. 

“We missed you at pres,” you say, wrapping her in a hug. 

“Right, sorry, Mark had a thing at his place!” 

Despite understanding why she does, you ignore Chaewon when she nudges you at the mention of Mark and his place before hugging him too, agreeing when he says that you guys should come next time. 

The six of you form a circle after greeting one another, jumping around while yelling obnoxiously to the music blaring into your ears. Over Mark’s shoulder, you see Jay nodding at a friend before leaving the clu—“I’m actually gonna go get some air,” you blurt out. “Alone!” you add before Yunjin can offer to come with. 

Despite the way the breeze nips at your legs, the fresh air is a welcome slap in the face when it hits you; the previously ear-splitting music reduced to a pathetic mumble now that you’re outside. A few girls that you recognise from some of your classes stand opposite the, now short, entry queue, waving you towards them and blowing cigarette smoke over their shoulders. You shake your head when they offer you a draw, though (against your better judgement) you do accept a few hits of a polar menthol flavoured juul while chatting distractedly about your “new spot” on the hockey team and trying to find Jay — which doesn’t take you very long.

Not too far from where you’re standing, he leans against the building’s grey brick while looking at his phone. Its OLED display casts a slight glow over his features, showing off the crease of his brow, the slope of his nose, and the tiny little pout set on his lips as he types. 

You can’t help but stare as Jimin and Minjeong plan the rest of their night, which includes afters at Yizhuo’s if she doesn’t pass out, and extend an invitation to you and your friends — “I mean, we’re still gonna go. She’ll probably need us more if she does,” Minjeong says, stubbing out a cigarette under her shoe before both girls head inside. 

Waving goodbye, you let yourself find Jay again and take a deep breath. For a moment, you attempt to strategise in the way you and the girls always do together. A few possibilities play out in your head and right when you think you’ve found a good opener—“Hello!” You find yourself saying as you stumble walk over to him.

As you’ve come to expect, his mouth curves into a smile when he looks up at you. “Hello,” he says, laughing through the word. In the short time it takes you to reach him, and lean about an arm’s length away on the same wall, he slips his phone into his jacket pocket. “Since when are you a hockey girl?” 

With a smile of your own, you roll up your left sleeve to refer to a watch that you’re not wearing. “It’s been a few hours.”

Jay’s teeth press down on his bottom lip as he chuckles, before mumbling an apology and pulling his phone back out. You don’t mean to peek at his screen when he opens the messages app, but you do anyway. And can’t help but feel bad at the sight of your name at the top of the second message thread — the memory of Yunjin taking your phone so you couldn’t text back forcing your stomach to turn a little. 

Lifting your gaze back up to him, you sort of hate how pretty he looks as he ruffles his hair before putting his phone back in his pock—You turn your head immediately, finding sudden interest in the lamp post that irregularly flickers a pale yellow over his shoulder. For a split second, it seems like you managed to stare at him without being caught, but if the little laugh he lets out is anything to go by, your neck jerk wasn’t as subtle as you’d hoped. 

“You’re cute,” he grins, stepping a little closer. “It suits you.”

It’s a struggle to backtrack and remember what the two of you were even talking about as the faint scent of his cologne hits your nostrils. “F-field hockey?” you offer. 

“The jacket,” he clarifies, a sweet laugh slipping past his lips as he speaks. 

“Ohh, you too.”

He cocks his head to the side. “You think this suits me?” 

His hand comes to one side of his denim jacket, holding it out slightly and allowing you to catch a proper whiff of his cologne and a glimpse of his bare shoulder. You worry a little about what might come out of your mouth if you open it, deciding for everyone’s sake just to nod and pray that he’ll leave the damn jacket alone. 

“It’d probably look better on you.” 

An audible smile tugs at your lips. “No way.” You shake your head, trying and failing to keep your giggles to yourself.

“You wanna prove me wrong?”

With a tilt of your head, you turn the offer around in your mind; a pros and cons list starting to take shape. 

Pros: getting to wear Jay’s jacket, having an almost permanent reason to keep chatting with him throughout the night, and getting to see Jay in a vest — arguably the biggest pro of them all, given the amount of IG stories he’s posted in the gym recently.

Con: losing free drinks privileges; which doesn’t really seem like a huge deal because Chaewon can just wear the hockey jacket and get drinks for you like she’s been doing for half of the night so far. 

Under the weight of Jay’s stare, you shift on your feet, realising that he’s clearing his throat for the second time since he stopped speaking and you still haven't said anything. “But then I’d have to pay for my drinks,” you say in an attempt not to seem too eager. The words slur a bit on their way out, though you’re too caught up in the way Jay’s lips tug into a grin to fuss over it. 

“Not if you stick wi—” He stops short, cut off by a voice from a few metres away. “Jongsaaaaaaeeeeeeng!” it yells. And if not for his silver head of hair, you’d never have believed it was Park Sunghoon screaming like that. 

“Poor guy kept icing himself,” Lee Heeseung calmly explains, walking ahead of Sunghoon and, what looks like, Sim Jake who’ve been giggling with one another since the cry left the younger’s mouth. 

Despite not knowing Sunghoon very well, from what you’ve heard about him, it’s easy to imagine him hiding bottles of Smirnoff Ice to ice one of his friends, only to lose track of where he’d put them and find them himself later on, thinking one of his friends was icing him. The thought makes you stifle your laughter; you like the fact that Jay laughs too. 

Before dapping Jay up, Heeseung offers him the confiscated Smirnoff Ice that Sunghoon had made quite a dent in, only shrugging when he declines. Jay watches as his friend wraps an arm around your shoulder in a polite side hug while asking if you want to finish the “smice”. You let a beat pass before telling him that you’ll think about it. 

For a while, you listen as he fills Jay in on what he missed at pres, smiling at Jake and Sunghoon as they get closer, and wondering when it would be appropriate if at all, to introduce yourself to the three boys that you’ve only ever walked by at parties or on campus. You find a window when the two arrive, waving a little when you tell them your name. 

Jake’s lips curve into what looks like a smirk as he looks over at you. “We know,” he says, eyes darting quickly over to Jay before looking back at you.

Sunghoon says nothing. 

The boys are quick to get back to their conversation, and Heeseung glances in Jay’s direction, nodding his head before making a show of unscrewing the cap on the smice and skying it. After an impressive chug, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, holding up the empty bottle like a trophy before putting it in the bin. 

With a slight frown, you realise that you didn’t even get to tell him that you didn’t want it. 

There’s a grin on his face as he wraps his arms around Jake and Sunghoon’s shoulders. “See you guys in there!” he says before guiding the two boys away and into the club.

With the two of you on your own again, you become hyperaware of your proximity, of the fact that if you moved your hand even a centimetre it would brush his. The heat from his body is dizzying, and with his body leaning down towards you, Jay is already watching you when you look up at him. His lips rest in a small smile that only widens at the sight of your face, seeming unbothered that you’d caught him staring. That it wouldn’t take much to bridge the gap between your faces. Between your lips.  

“The offer still stands,” he says. “To wear my jacket and drink for free.” 

A somewhat familiar 808 beat rattles through tinny speakers in the student union.Jay’s jacket fits pretty big over your shoulders as you try not to say anything ridiculous while he holds your hand, leading you through the crowd. Now that your hands are actually clasped, the butterflies you’d felt over having linked fingers for a pinky promise seem silly, completely eclipsed by the feeling of your heart clattering against your ribs. After every few steps, he looks over his shoulder at you, your cheeks burning hotter and hotter with each smile he throws your way.

Upon your return to the booth, you drop the team jacket in Chaewon’s lap, praying that your friends won’t say anything about Jay or the fact that you’re wearing his jacket — or the fact that despite having reached your friends safely the two of you are still holding hands. By the looks of things it seems as though telling her to move up isn’t enough of a signal to her that you’d like to sit down; though maybe she’s just too busy trying to shrug the jacket back on to move up. You tell yourself that she’s just too busy trying to shrug the jacket back on to move up. 

Chaewon wears a wicked grin on her face, making no effort to be discreet about staring at your intertwined fingers. “YN? Why aren’t you dancing? You love this song!” she says, opening her mouth to wink obnoxiously at you and nudging Yunjin.

“I don’t know this song,” you say, liking the way Jay laughs beside you, squeezing your hand a little. 

For reasons unbeknownst to you, Yunjin sees this as the best opportunity to chime in, tilting her head before saying, “Whaaaaaaat? This is your favourite song! Trust me, Jay, she loves this song!” 

“And she’s such a good dancer,” Chaewon adds. “Have you seen her dance, Jay?” 

You stand around dumbly, mouthing the word “stop,” at your friends and leaning up towards Jay when he leans down to you. “How about a drink?” he asks with a voice as smooth as velvet, soft lips grazing the shell of your ear. 

“Please.” 

After telling the girls that you’ll be back, and flipping them off with your free hand, you let Jay lead you back through the dance floor to the bar, letting an elbow rest on its surface. When you look at him, he’s watching you, his lips quirked up ever so slightly while he does so. 

Letting your nails drum against the bar, you smile back. “Sorry about my friends,” you say, unsure as to why you’re apologising but feeling like it’s the right thing to say. 

“Sorry about your friends?” Jay asks. He grins. “Sorry about mine.”

You want to tell him that you liked his friends, that they seemed nice. Even though Sunghoon didn’t speak, and Heeseung finished the drink he offered you before you even had a chance to let him know that you wanted it. But he’s already distracted. 

His eyes scan the bottles that line the shelves behind the bar, and you busy yourself doing the same thing, the sight of almost every rum brand bringing up memories of past nights out with your friends. Two palm trees on a white bottle of “MarkLeebu” leave you suppressing your laughter as you think about Sakura’s friend falling asleep - standing up - against the wall of a club after drinking two bottles of Malibu to himself on a dare. 

Jay’s breath fans your ear when he speaks, “What are you having?” 

“A jäger bomb.” 

With a nod, he orders your drink and a whiskey for himself, and as per his suggestion, the two of you toast “to third year” before drinking. 

Jay makes good on his promise. One shot becomes two becomes three, and a cocktail in a comically large pitcher before you wake up the next morning to Sakura hogging the duvet, and no memory of anything beyond sitting down at the bar. 

While lying on your back you curse two versions of yourself: the first for leaving the window open before you left, and the second for having so much to drink. Staring up at the ceiling, you attempt to go over your interactions with Jay using a fine-tooth comb to figure out just how badly you humiliated yourself last night. Given the fact that you don’t remember what happened after 1 a.m. (or so), this doesn’t take too long, and the corners of your lips quirk up into a smile as you think about the way his hand felt in yours. 

Your memory tells you that he smiled a lot, but this seems like an insignificant detail because Jay always smiles a lot. There was a pitcher. A big one. Inside it was a vibrant, sweet, too cheap to be true cocktail that you sipped, blinked, and opened your eyes to find yourself in bed. The unaccounted-for period fills you with a visceral sense of dread, leaving you unsure if you shiver because of the temperature in your room or out of sheer embarrassment. 

The notifications you find on your phone only make you feel more nervous, so you cover your eyes with your hand before checking them. You were mentioned in Chaewon’s Instagram story (which means you behaved catastrophically), and you have a text from Jay (which .. well you’re not quite sure what to make of this). Through the gap in your fingers, you start by looking at the story, uncontrollable butterflies in your stomach from what you see. A picture (on close friends) of you sitting in Jay’s lap with his arms wrapped around your wairs, and his chin resting on your shoulder; the two of you donning wide grins with THESE TWOOOOOOO 😍😍😍 written over it. 

Jay’s text is simple yet sweet: hope u got home okay, was realy nice getting to chill w u again &lt;3. You don’t even realise that you’re giggling until Sakura stirs next to you. 

you: i did thank uuuuuuu

you: sorry if i was weird though haha 

You say. Although all things considered, you can’t really think of anything to be haha-ing about but Jay’s reply comes so quickly that you barely have the time to dwell on this fact. “Nahhhh you were so cute dw,” he texts back. 

With your stomach doing somersaults, you turn over in the bed, burying your head in the pillow to muffle a squeal.

Sakura wakes up. 

While in the shower, you let the water hit you directly in the face for a bit with your eyes screwed tightly shut under the stream. And not a single thought occurs to you other than how cute Jay seems to think you are. 

jay: do you have class today

you: slept in

jay: L

jay: for me.. i wanted to see you again  

Your jaw falls open as you read the message, and over your shoulder, Yunjin lets out the gasp that you hadn’t been able to. “Oh, my God!” she says, watching as a cheek-aching smile creeps up on your lips. A small celebration ensues while the two of you squeal and kick your feet like children. And then your phone vibrates again.

jay: could still link if ur down?

jay: hold up 

Yunjin pulls air through her teeth. “Could still link if you’re down,” she reads before taking the phone from your hand. “Fuckboy text, ignore.” 

Knowing you’re not likely to win the argument that Jay’s not a fuckboy — even though he’s not one, you think — you roll your eyes. “So what if he’s a fuckboy?” you frown, pulling your knees to your chest. 

“If a fuckboy was supposed to be liked he’d be called a like boy,” Yunjin says as if reciting scripture. “Text Jaemin back if you want a fuckboy.” 

You don’t mean to groan out loud at her tone. “Jaemin’s not a fuckboy, he’s just.. a guy. Who.. likes to fuck.” 

The sound of the front door opening prompts you to pause the TV, and the two of you crane your necks towards the open doorway to hear what’s going on. It’s Chaewon giggling loudly before speaking. 

“Thanks for bringing me home.” 

A deep chuckle sounds through the hall. Jeno. Of course. “You’re my girl,” he says and his smile is audible through his words. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

Chaewon giggles at this too, and, pressing play on the remote, you share a look with Yunjin as you hear the beginning of a wet kiss. Brooklyn Nine-Nine gets through an entire cold open and the theme song before she – looking fresher than ever in her boyfriend’s sweatpants – joins you both on the couch. 

“What’d I miss?” she asks. 

“Yunjin thinks Jay’s a fuckboy.” 

Chaewon lets out a snort. “Well, yeah, anyone could’ve told you that, dude’s best friend is Lee Heeseung,” she says, though quickly changes her tune as if remembering her audience. “It’s all just rumours though, people see a good-looking guy who’s overly friendly and flirts with everybody, and posts obvious thirst traps to his Snapchat story, and just assume he’s a fuck boy..” she trails off, sinking a little in her seat.

Somewhat disheartened, you nod your head. “Right.” 

“So what did I miss?” Chaewon asks again, pointing at the TV this time. 

Still in Yunjin’s custody, your phone vibrates in her lap and she gasps as she reads the screen. “A reformed fuck boy?” she says, holding the phone up for you and Chaewon to read. 

jay: would you like to hang out with me later? 

You grin despite yourself, reading the message and reading it again before telling him “yes”, and later can’t come soon enough. The time slips by like molasses and you finally meet up with Jay -four decades- two hours later, with no set plan, at the library where he approaches you with Jake and a smile on his face. 

Friendly as ever, Jake chats with you and keeps a pretty smile on his lips the whole time. “If you ever have a hard time with physics or math based classes, I’ve got you,” he offers, clearly happy to hear that you’re in STEM too. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you tell him, grateful as you remember the tears you’d shed over a Construction Mathematics lecture last year. 

With a wave, Jake leaves the two of you alone, saying “See you later” before walking away. He excitedly glances over his shoulder to where you stand with Jay a few times. 

After telling you that he “knows a spot,” Jay takes you on a bit of a walk, successfully distracting you from the distance by keeping you talking. He listens enthusiastically while you ramble about a show you started, and you like the feeling in your chest when he says he’ll check it out. 

With a “ta-da,” Jay extends an arm to the gate in front of you. A play park. “We’re here!” he says, struggling to mask the excitement in his voice as he walks towards the empty play area. “It’s no fun when there’s kids here so I brought us the long way.” 

As you follow him through the gate, you can’t help but feel a bit nervous. The last time you’d been sober at a play park you were probably 15 or so, cutting through the park on your walk home from school with your friends. You’d spin the roundabout at lightspeed cackling at the screams of terror coming from those sitting on it, and talk about your crushes while calming down on the swings. 

Jay sits on one of the swings and watches you, and even though you’re not too sure what to talk about, you’re pretty sure confessing your crush on him as you sit next to him might send him running in the opposite direction. Instead, you clear your throat and look over at him. “So your “spot” is a play park?” you ask, using your feet to rock you back and forth. 

He pulls air through his teeth, scrunching his nose and tilting his head. “Would you prefer it if I took you to CP in the Sky?” 

If Jay had his car with him, you might have hoped for that. Most of the boys in your city who drive, including Jaemin, have been known to take girls to a spot they know. Super quiet, private, and almost as pretty as you, they’ll say, and take you up to ‘Car Park in the Sky’; the city’s most notorious hook-up spot. Though, Jaemin hadn’t exactly been secretive about wanting to hook up and actually only drove there after you’d told him about it. 

You shake your head. “The park is good, it’s great.” 

Conversation ebbs and flows between the two of you, the sounds of nature and the swings creaking keeping you company. It’s nice spending time with Jay like this. Sober. And not holed up in the library or a cafe with assignments and deadlines on your mind. 

You don’t mean to gain momentum but you do, swinging about as high as you can, gasping when you see a car over the top of a climbing frame. 

“What is it?” he asks, laughing to himself when you jump off the swing. 

“I wanna take a drive!” you call out over your shoulder, jogging over to the wooden stationary car you saw.

Jay’s footsteps sound after yours, and he grabs you by the wrist before you climb into the driver’s side. “Did you get your licence yet?” 

You shake your head, watching as his mouth falls open, bracing yourself for a lecture on how a girl of your age should be driving already. 

He looks aghast, in genuine distress before he speaks. “What makes you think I’m gonna let you drive?” Jay nods his head to the other side of the car. “Go.” 

Letting out the most exaggerated sigh you can manage, you comply, dragging your feet to the passenger side and climbing in. Jay follows suit, sitting down next to you on the small connected seat built with kids in mind, and his thigh presses up against yours. 

“Don’t be upset, everyone knows passenger princess is way more fun than actually driving.” 

And rationally, you know he’s not specifically calling you a princess but your tummy turns nonetheless. 

“Whatever,” you mumble, faking a sigh and struggling to suppress your laughter when he buckles a fake seat belt. Jay gives you a disapproving look when you don’t move to do the same. “Are you serious?” 

“As a heart attack,” he says solemnly, though you can see the smile teasing at his lips. “Better safe than sorry, that’s what I always say.” 

There’s nothing behind his words, no hidden meaning but you read into them anyway, hoping he can’t hear the way you gulp at the thought that plagues you. For some reason, you’ve chosen this hill to die on, shrugging at him and turning to look straight ahead. 

Jay sighs dramatically, pinching the bridge of his nose before leaning over you to grab your ‘seat belt’ and buckle in by himself. He takes his time though, and the way he looks you dead in the eye makes you wish you’d just done it yourself. His face is close to yours, his breath warm against your skin, creating a welcome contrast to the cold air around you. He lingers for a beat before sitting up straight and clicking the belt into place. 

“Finally,” he whispers, putting an imaginary gear stick into reverse and draping his arm over the back of your connected seat. You can’t help but watch as he looks over your shoulders before moving the car, liking the way his side profile looks under the rapidly setting sun. Something stops him, he looks at you. “I can’t focus with you staring at me like that,” he says, taking his hand from the wheel to touch your cheek.

Your breath catches in your throat. Jay grins, gently turning your face away from him. You stare over at the roundabout and feel just as dizzy as you would have if you’d taken him up on his offer to spin you on it. 

Jay gets on with all the necessary checks before ‘starting’ the car and ‘driving’ off. “What are you thinking about?” 

It probably wouldn’t be appropriate to tell him that you’re thinking about the way it felt when he put his fingers to your cheek. Or how gentle he was with you, only pushing you a little bit and then guiding you the rest of the way. So you keep that to yourself. “The movies.” 

You hear Jay chuckling next to you. “All of them?” 

“Yeah,” you nod. “The drive-in kind. Have you been?” 

“I went once.” 

You gasp, excited. “Really? What did you see?” 

Jay thinks about it for a while. He thinks about it really hard before shaking his head, “You know, I don’t think I was paying much attention.” 

“You spent all that money on a ticket and didn’t even pay attention? What were you doing?” The words rush out before you can stop them and you cringe a little thinking about the possible answers. 

He turns his gaze back out on the road. “Sleeping,” he mumbles, swallowing thickly. 

You wish you could go back in time to stop yourself from asking, finding an answer to the question: “Is it better to speak or to die?” 

“Hey, we can go to the drive-in right now! I just need to put this thing in park and we can watch any movie you want!” he says, stopping the car and turning as much as he can in his seat to face you. “Any movie that’s available with a Netflix subscription!” he adds, smiling when you do. 

Cramped together in the front seat of the stationary car, the two of you watch The Devil Wears Prada and get about halfway through before Jay’s phone hits 10% — and it’s probably the best movie watching experience you’ve ever had.  

You take Jay up on his offer to walk you home, and he chats with you about the movie, telling you how much he thinks it totally blows that Miranda Priestly isn’t a real person that he can work for after graduation, but he seems happy enough when you suggest that he could become Miranda Priestly.  

Reaching the familiar crossing by the student union, you look up at him. “If it’s easier, you can just head your way from here. I can literally see my building,” you offer, feeling bad about him walking so far out of his way. 

Jay scoffs like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “I’m not gonna make you walk by yourself.” 

“It’s barely five minutes,” you tell him, shaking your head. “You don’t have to.” 

“YN?” 

“Hm?”

A pretty smile spreads across his lips. “I want to, let’s go.” And Jay hardly gets to start telling you about his upcoming mock trial before you reach your flat. 

“This is me,” you say, pointing at the door to your building. 

He lets out a dry chuckle. “You’re kidding.”

You shake your head. He frowns, looking terribly cute with his lips turned down like that. Though it doesn’t last for long and he raises his brows when you gasp. “You know, we came from a place I’ve never been before, and I’m starting to think this might be the wrong street,” you say, struck by the sudden realisation. “We should probably walk around the block a couple more times, just to really be sure.” 

Listening to your words, Jay beams at you and it’s heavenly. “I heard it can actually take, like, 4 or 5 walks around the block if you want 100% certainty.” 

“Oh yeah,” you giggle. “I think I’ve heard that too. Should we make it 6?” 

“Perfect.” 

To your surprise, you’d both been wrong. As it would turn out, the required number of, very slow, walks around a student housing complex to be 100% sure, completely beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re at the right place is ten.

“Hey, uh, how about we do one more lap? Just to make sure? For the absolute best measure,” Jay suggests, eyes twinkling under the streetlamp. He almost looks a little nervous, burying his hands in his pockets as he watches you. 

“Sounds good.”

Just like your last few walks around the student housing block, fallen leaves rustle under your footsteps, and the back of Jay’s hand still brushes against yours, but this time feels different. Maybe because there’s a finality to this; the last lap. You couldn’t possibly ask him to spend any more time walking around here. Could you? 

“This neighbourhood is so cute, all the student apartments clustered together like this, I love it,” he says, looking over at you.

“It’s nice knowing that some of my friends, and the people I like partying with, live so close, but it’s always so noisy around here,” you tell him, continuing when he doesn’t speak. “‘Cause it’s all just a bunch of 18–20–somethings that live here, and The U’s just down the street. The noise is fun when I’m part of it, but when I’m studying or just trying to sleep it’s annoying.” 

“Don’t you think it’s kinda cool though? There’s always something happening. So even if the girls aren’t down to go out, you’re not exactly short on plans.”

You’d never really thought of it like that. Probably because Yunjin is always down to go out. But you like the way he puts it. You nod, reminded of your classmates who live in the building right next to where you’re walking. “Yeah, I should probably text Minjeong more.” 

“And if not you can always hit me and see what I’m doing,” he says at the same time. 

You stop walking, and your heart — feels like it — stops beating. 

Jay, noticing this, stands in front of you, hands help up defensively as he shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that, obviously. I just thought it’d be cool if you weren’t doing anything and I wasn’t doing anything, maybe we could link and do nothing together,” he explains. “I’m stupid, sorry.”

This might be the first time you’ve ever heard Jay ramble like this, and your heart does a twirl just seeing his worried expression. “I think if I’m not doing anything, and you’re not doing anything, then it’d be cool for us to link and do nothing together, Jay,” you smile, liking the way he visibly relaxes, his shoulders falling slightly and an exhale curling out of his mouth and into the air.

“Cool.” 

When, for the 11th time, you reach your building, you turn to Jay and hesitate a little, unsure of what to say. Glancing at him, it looks as though he’s feeling the same way. A silence falls over the two of you. 

Finally, Jay speaks. “Goodnight,” he says, pulling you into a hug. 

Despite your surprise, you wrap your arms around his waist, holding him close. You hope he can’t feel the way your heart is racing. Or the way it starts to pick up when you catch a whiff of his scent. Warm and cosy, tempting in a strange way that you can’t quite put your finger on but you like all the same. 

When Jay lets go of you, you look up at him almost instinctively. You don’t mean to stare at his lips but you do, gulping at how close they are. You want to kiss him. Not any more than usual, but the urge is there. “Goodnight,” you say, taking a step back and walking up the path to the door.

Using your key fob, you unlock the door, turning to look over your shoulder and thankfully finding Jay still standing there, watching you with a stomach-turning smile on his face. “I had a really nice time tonight,” you say, smiling back. 

“Yeah?”

You nod. “We should hang out more.”

“I think so too.” 

“Cool,” you smile, biting your lip. “Goodnight, Jay.” 

“Goodnight, YN.” 

“Could you, text me? When you get home, so I know you’re, like, safe.” 

Jay beams at you, nodding his head. “Of course.” 

After a week (eleven days) of texting and hanging out with Jay when you can, you find yourself spending 3 hours of your Friday afternoon taking notes in your Sustainable Development lecture, and coming to the realisation that none of the course content is relevant to the report you’re trying to get through. 

Seeing Jay leaning on the wall outside your class when you leave is a welcome surprise; he wears a thin pair of glasses and a smile that makes your heart stutter a bit as he stands up straighter, greeting you when he sees you and quickly falling into your step. “I meant to ask you earlier, are you going to the game on Saturday?” A beat passes. “Football,” he clarifies. “First home game of the season.” 

“Maybe if my friends are going.” 

Jay seems to think about this for a moment as you round the corner at the end of the corridor and he holds the door to the stairwell open. “After you.” 

You mumble a thank you and count six steps before he speaks again. 

“I’m going,” Jay informs you, his hand meeting the back of his neck to scratch awkwardly at it. “I mean, I’m gonna be on the pitch but.. I’ll be there.” 

A breathy laugh slips from your lips at this added information; how sweet of the football team’s captain to let you know that he’ll be at his team’s football game on Saturday. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

“I just think it’d be cool to see a friendly face in the crowd when I score the winning goal.” 

Given Jay’s unending kindness, you imagine that most of the faces in the crowd — or at least the ones from your uni — will be friendly, especially if he scores the winning goal. The thought causes a smile to itch at your lips as you consider that maybe he means that it’d be cool to see your friendly face in the crowd. And who could say no to that? 

The rest of the conversation goes smoothly and Jay slows down when you reach the second floor. “I have some admin shit to work out, but I’ll see you at the game?” he asks, watching you with hopeful eyes and chewing on his bottom lip.

Knowing full well that you’ll be there, you pretend to think about it for a moment. “Maybe.”

Jay chuckles at this, tilting his head. “Please?” 

“Maybe,” you repeat, despite already planning your outfit. Did you wash your white shirt or will you be doing laundry tonight? You wave at Jay when he waves and make your way down the rest of the stairs while clicking mindlessly through Instagram stories. 

Nothing interests you until you reach IG user onyourm__ark's story; a picture of IG user 39saku_chan in his football jersey. You hit the like button and pretend to believe that the song choice (Infrunami by Steve Lacy) was made purely out of sheer enjoyment of the artist’s early work.

With a smile on your face, you text the group chat to solidify your weekend plans.

you: are u going to the football game tmrw

cw: not even if u paid me

yj: hard no

yj: i’m going to the party AFTER the game though

yj: why?

you: it’s nothing dw

cw: ???

you: jay invited me..

The chill of October’s first evening is unkind on your face as you sit amongst the rowdiness of drunk uni kids, cheering and groaning in unison as the game trudges on, and somehow Kazuha manages to sleep through it all with her head on your shoulder. 

“Fuuuuck,” Yunjin groans, shivering in the seat next to you. “I hate sports.” 

“Says the captain of the hockey team,” you say, voice coming out muffled behind the top of your jacket.

“Playing and watching are, like, completely different.” 

You’re sure Yunjin’s right, she has to be, but you have to admit that there’s something more than slightly entertaining about watching a group of boys chasing a ball around and yelling expletives at one another, all while number 99 keeps a huge grin on his face, laughing at his teammate’s temper. Or lack thereof. 

However, the novelty wears off at around 8:45 when the ref calls for half-time; a chill runs down your spine as you’re struck with the realisation that university football games are full-length. But other than Yunjin’s teasing, there’s no use pretending that you hate the sight of Jay lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.

As the players retreat from the pitch and some students start to clear the stands, Yunjin gets up to stretch. She hums along to the song playing while you watch from your seat with aching knees, slightly envious and trying not to move too much and wake up Kazuha who sleeps soundly on your shoulder. 

With her arms above her head, Yunjin lets out a yawn. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’d really rather be doing a reading for marketing than be here any longer.”

“And I’d rather be helping you out,” you say, frowning a little when Kazuha stirs. “Hey, what do you think they do during half-time?” you ask distractedly. 

She thinks about it for a beat, eyes flicking to the pitch before looking back to you. “We usually strategise, use the bathroom, get water — quick things like that,” she says, raking a hand through her hair, watching as you shift a little in your seat to get your phone from your pocket when it vibrates. “They have a lot longer than we do though.” 

jay: are you having fun?

you: yeah you guys are great, good game so far :)

Yunjin scrunches up her nose as she reads the exchange. “God, you’re so boring,” she sighs, taking the phone from your hands, and typing something before showing the screen to you. 

“We should link at the party later,” you read, scoffing as you take it back and delete the message. “I’d never say that.” In those words. 

jay: hahaha i think you might be my good luck charm 

A dramatic gasp comes from a now-awake Kazuha. “Don’t reply!” 

You heed this advice, joining her as she stands up to stretch as well. 

“Look how much fun they’re having,” Kazuha sighs, pointing over at Sakura and Chaewon in their seats close to the pitch. They dance along to the music blaring through the speakers and laugh so loudly you can hear them despite their distance. “Why didn’t we join them?” 

You think about it for a bit, filled with regret. “At the time, pregaming before the game and then pregaming again before the party seemed intense but..” you trail off, watching your friends clutch their stomachs in laughter. “Next time.” 

“Next time,” Kazuha repeats, slouching in her seat. “I’m clearing your drink supply when we get back.” There’s a frown on her face when she speaks but she’s quick to perk up at the sound of your text tone, grabbing the phone for herself. 

jay: are you coming tn? got a feeling that congrats will be in order

you (technically kazuha): wouldn’t miss it !!! 

“Three exclamation points? I’m not that desperate,” you say defensively, nudging her in the ribs. 

As if on cue, Yunjin reads another text. “I saw his notes again, his handwriting is so cute and ugly, agh I’m literally clutching my chest, he’s perfect,” she says, her voice high-pitched and mocking. 

Hearing your typed words out loud from someone else’s mouth is troubling, especially because “It never seems that bad when I’m typing,” you frown, immediately checking your phone when it goes off. 

jay: awesome :) see u there 

jay: !!!

The game’s second half goes by much quicker and in the end, they lose 5-3, leaving you and Yunjin struggling to keep your laughter to yourselves at the sight of the FIRST W OF THE SEASON banner hanging up in the living room of the house that most of the footballers share. With linked arms, the two of you make your way to the kitchen to get something to drink. Already feeling the buzz from pregaming, you settle on a cup of lemonade which Yunjin rolls her eyes at. 

“Shut up,” you say, eyeing her over the rim of your cup. 

Yunjin holds her hands up defensively, spilling a few drops of her tequila-vodka concoction. “I didn’t even say anything.” For a couple of minutes, you pretend to listen as Yunjin tries to come up with a game plan for the night, nodding and humming along when she pauses, and trying to decipher the animal code names she’s using. A gasp. “I see him! Black cat and penguin sitting out on the half wall.” 

You watch as she leans over the sink to get a closer look out of the window. “I feel like saying exactly where they are makes the code names redundant.” 

“I feel like you’re redundant.” A beat passes. “Just be yourself, and if he says something funny, laugh and put your hand on his bicep while you do.” 

“Noted.”

Yunjin doesn’t let you go outside without taking a sip (or three) of the poison in her cup, and after you gag over the sink, the two of you make your way into the garden, sights set on the half wall where “black cat” now sits alone. A potent mixture of the scent of tobacco and weed hits you the second you open the back door, and the two of you leave the house to make a beeline to Jay, apparently to Yunjin’s displeasure, given the way she asks you three times to play beer pong with her when some of the basketball boys start setting up cups for the next round.

“No,” you say. Three times. 

As if sensing your presence, Jay whips his head around right before the two of you reach him, a bright smile gracing his face as he waves at you with his whole arm. He seems to glow against the darkness of the night, bright, dreamy, an unreal quality that leaves you feeling fuzzy around the edges. Jay, you think, over and over and it starts to sound made up. Jay. Jay. Jay. Until you reach him. He stands up when you guys are close enough. “You’re here,” Jay says with a smile, pulling you into a hug. With his arms around your waist, his hold is somehow both tight and gentle. Secure. Safe. 

“Hey,” you say, voice muffled by the fabric of his hoodie. A whiff of his scent hits you, flooding your senses. Fresh, citrusy, and undeniably Jay. A dizzying combination, so light, and distinctly him in a way that makes your heart beat a bit faster. 

When Jay lets go of you to hug Yunjin, you take the last sip of your drink and almost wish you’d taken her cup instead; your lemonade is sweet to the tongue but does absolutely nothing to boost your confidence. You watch as they greet each other while Jay sits back down. Standing in front of him with your arm against Yunjin’s, you feel as though you've missed the window to sit down too and opt to continue standing next to her. 

“We like your banner,” you say, pointing in the direction of the house behind him. 

Following your finger, Jay lets his head whip around towards the back of the house. Yunjin uses the time he spends looking over his shoulder to nudge you, nod her head in his direction, and mouth the word “sit” at you. So you do.

If he’s surprised to turn back around barely a second later and find you right beside him, Jay doesn’t show it. He gives you a warm smile and knocks his knee against yours before speaking. “What, first w of the season?” He tilts his head. “And here I thought you were a good luck charm, twenty,” he says with a chuckle when you nod. 

Yunjin’s brows raise, and you feel yours rise too. “Twenty?” she asks. 

“The hockey jacket,” he answers without missing a beat. “Speaking of, when’s your next game?” 

“Oh, we’re playing the Foxes next week,” Yunjin rakes a hand through her hair. “TDU, you know?” 

Jay nods, turning his attention back to you. “Can I look forward to seeing you on the field, twenty?” 

Tilting your head, you pull air through your teeth. “You know what, I actually just got benched, like, right now,” you say, liking the way Jay laughs. “I’m out for the rest of the season.” 

After clapping a hand to his mouth, Jay points at you. “Did they get you on a drunk and disorderly after the mixer?” he asks through a laugh. 

In horror, you watch while Yunjin’s head falls back with laughter as she lets out cackles that only unsettle you. “That’s exactly what happened!”

“I was not.. disorderly,” you say meekly, finding sudden interest in the hem of your skirt.

It sounds as though Jay says: “You didn’t tell her how she got back home?” though you’re finding it difficult to focus on much other than trying to recover your missed hours after the hockey mixer. 

You’ve gone on countless nights out, spent many mornings after vowing never to drink again, and, on multiple occasions, have gotten too drunk to enter the club. But even then, in the past, your memory has only ever been.. spotty, nonlinear. Never completely void for hours at a time, and it’s concerning. After tonight, you really won’t drink again. 

Except on birthdays. 

And when you go to the club. Or to parties. Or when you’re bored with the girls. But again, apart from that? Never. 

“How did I g—” you start, though Yunjin cuts you off. 

“I think Zuha’s lifting her leg again, hold on,” she groans, looking over Jay’s shoulder at the glass doors leading to the kitchen. Yunjin disappears back into the house and it’s not until you watch her slide the back door shut behind her that you remember Kazuha having too much to drink at pres and having to stay in with Chaewon. 

When you look at Jay, he watches you with knitted brows. “Kazuha’s doing what?” he asks. 

“Ballet,” you explain. He nods. 

Neither of you speak for a moment. While you chew on the inside of your cheek, you can’t help but wonder if you should’ve followed Yunjin, or if you should’ve had less to drink at the mixer. You reckon the fact that Jay’s still talking to you must mean you didn’t do anything that you can’t recover from, but you can’t shake the feeling that your trip home that night was less than pleasant. 

“Hey,” Jay says quietly, catching your attention with concern lacing his features. “What do you look so down for?” he asks. 

Though terrified of the answer, you repeat your earlier question. “How did I get home?” you ask, wondering if the Earth usually opened up to swallow people whole or if you’d have to put in a special request.

Jay licks his lips, using his hand to push your shoulder playfully. “I have no idea,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “I was talking to Yunjin at the library on Tuesday, I think, and she told me you can’t remember anything. I just wanted to freak you out.” 

You feel heat under his touch and relief from his words, though something about him talking with Yunjin seems to jostle you slightly. “Yunjin was at the library?”

Briefly, what looks like disappointment flashes across Jay’s face, replaced quickly with a pretty smile, light, playful. “You care more about Yunjin being at the library than me asking your friend about you?” he asks.

“You were asking my friend about me?” 

“Yeah, I think you’re cute,” Jay says sweetly, smiling at you in a way that makes your cheeks burn even when you look down at your lap. 

There’s something about the way he says it, so casually as if telling you the time or today’s date, that throws you off. It doesn’t make any sense to you that some of the most vivid sensations that Jay makes you feel are just that: sensations. You know that your stomach doesn’t actually have butterflies in it and that your heart isn’t really twirling in your chest, but it sure feels like it. You wonder if he also feels like that sometimes. You earnestly hope that if he does, it’s because of you.

He seems nearer than before when you look at him, and for fear that you might kiss him if he gets any closer, you bring your empty cup to your lips, lean back a little, and pretend to sip. Its emptiness isn’t lost on Jay, however, who chuckles, asking if you want a refill. While walking towards the house, you listen as he tells you what the team normally get up to during half-time (mostly strategising and pretending not to hear Heeseung’s snores), and silently beg your cheeks to cool down. His hand is heavy on the small of your back as he ushers you inside first, sliding the door shut behind him, and gently pushing you towards the kitchen island. 

You let yourself lean against the counter, ignoring the fluttering in your stomach as you watch him reach for a visibly sticky bottle of your favourite drink without asking what you’d like. Though before actually touching it, his eyes widen. “Wait, I have something for you,” he says, holding out a hand for you to take. “Come on.” 

Jay weaves his fingers with yours, leading you through the house and up the stairs into a bedroom. He closes the door gently behind you, stepping over a couple of backpacks before sitting on the end of the bed, and tugging at the zipper on one of them. 

For a moment you watch as veins appear on his hands and have to physically tell yourself to drag your eyes to anything else, eventually settling on the walls. Walls that are covered in countless glossy 4x6 prints, some shots of landscapes, groups of people, out-of-focus beer bottles and.. “You have a lot of photos of Mark Lee in here,” you comment, scanning the room around you. “And it doesn’t look like you’re.. in any of them,” you continue as you notice a grainy polaroid stuck to the wall next to the light switch — a picture of Mark making out with his best friend, Sakura “give me a break, a boy and a girl can be just friends” Miyawaki, and make a mental note to bring it up later. 

Jay glances at you as if you’re the one sleeping in a Markkura shrine. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s his room,” he chuckles. “You can sit down, you know,” he adds after a beat, moving over a bit on the bed. 

With a nod, you look at some more of the pictures as you make your way over to the spot next to him, a photo of Mark and Jake with their middle fingers to the camera catching your eye. And holding it for so long that you trip a little over one of the backpacks before sitting down and pretending nothing happened. Thankfully, Jay doesn’t seem to notice. 

“It’s not much by the way, don’t get your hopes up,” he warns, his hand still hidden by the fabric of his bag. 

“Got it.” 

Despite his earlier disclaimer, he makes a show of the whole thing. “Ta-da!” His voice is a little singsong as he brings the obje—bottle of Smirnoff Ice into view. 

“Thank you?” The bottle is cold in your hands when you take it from him, reading the ABV 4% on its label and wondering how many of these Sunghoon must have had to drink to have been stumbling the way he was that night. You also can’t help but wonder what reason Jay has for buying you a bottle and then taking you into the privacy of Mark’s bedroom to give it to you.

“Yeah,” he trails off a little, letting his hand come up to scratch the back of his neck. “You looked pretty crushed the other night when Heeseung finished that one bottle.” 

You can’t help the scoff that comes out. “Crushed? I mean, I might’ve frowned.” 

“Frowned? You were near tears, I was worried about you.” 

“Shut up.” 

“I’m serious, every time I looked at you, you had this.. upset look on your face.” 

“Well, maybe you should stop looking at me so much.”

Jay’s eyes sparkle under the light, flicking back and forth from your eyes to your lips as he brings a hand up to your face, tucking some hair behind your ear, his fingers hot on your skin, unmoving. His eyes lock with yours. “Come on,” he says in a low voice. “You know there’s no stopping that.” 

A smile tugs at your lips. Jay bites his. His gaze drops back down to your mouth. Lingers. And in what almost seems like an alcohol-induced hallucination, he leans in. Slightly. As if testing the waters. As if waiting for a sign that you want him to stop. A sign that you want him to continue. Anything. His hand is heavy on your cheek when he cups it in his palm, skin rough against yours. 

Mere inches away, Jay’s lips seem more tempting than ever. Separated only by the distance of a breath and your nerves, you try to settle yourself. To put your heart at ease. But how could you relax when he looks at you like that; his gaze soft, tender, all of his attention on y—The bottle slips from your hands, cool against your thighs, reminding you of its existence. Jay flinches when you do. 

“Let’s have a drink!” you suggest, though the absence you feel when he takes his hand from your face makes you wish you hadn’t.

“Sure.”

The cap screws off the bottle with a few satisfying clicks, and Jay, amused, shakes his head when you offer him the first sip. “After you,” he says. 

Without a second thought, the bottle touches your lips and the sweet, sweet taste of Smirnoff Ice touches your tongue, coating your mouth and leaving you wishing the alcohol content was higher. 

“Do you mind if I put my lips on it?” he asks while you pass the drink to him. 

You shake your head, determined not to think of a double meaning, and watch as his lips connect with the bottle’s opening, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat while he drinks. When Jay pulls it from his mouth, he lets his tongue dart out to wet his lips. You wonder if it will taste different in his mouth, if his lips, wet from the drink, taste as sweet as they look. 

Now that you realise you’ve shared an indirect kiss, you kick yourself for passing up the chance at a direct one, deciding that if you want him to kiss you, you’ll need to get closer. Step up your game a little. Maybe you’ll say something about his necklace, ask to get a better look.. And hopefully, he’ll take the hint and kiss you because you’re not really sure what else you could say. 

Of course, you could opt to skip words altogether, taking his face in your hands, and pressing your lips to his. You’re sure that’s what Yunjin would do. And you’re sure that would be her advice to you if you asked her.

Jay hands the bottle back to you and you close it, determined to feel his lips on yours if it’s the last thing you do. And you quickly open the bottle again, one last sip for good luck. The soft laugh he lets out is breathy, and it’s hard to tell if the heat in your stomach is coming from the drink, or from the way you see him looking at you in your peripheral. 

His straight teeth bite at his bottom lip, and he shakes his head when you offer him another sip. This time when you close the bottle, you do it for good, setting the glass on the floor so it doesn’t interrupt you again. 

“I really like your necklace,” you say, off to a good start, following the plan. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

“Aw.. thanks,” he says, choosing now, of all times, to stop being a conversationalist. 

In the quiet of the room, you realise that you hadn’t planned anything beyond the compliment. You let your eyes focus back on the charm hanging from his neck, trying to picture him with a fishing rod in his hand, and wellington boots on his feet. It doesn’t really work. “I didn’t realise you were so into fishing,” you blurt out, and the way he knits his brows together makes you wish you’d just grabbed him and planted a kiss on the lips he purses to the side while watching you. 

“Me?” 

“Yeah you, with your cute little hook on a chain.” 

Jay squints at you. “Hook on a chain?” he repeats. 

You let a hand reach up and press on the hook pendant on his necklace. 

His shoulders rise and fall dramatically as he sighs, his hand coming up to wrap around yours, holding it to the base of his neck as the small (not) hook warms in your fist. “Why does everybody think it’s a hook?” 

“It isn’t?” 

“It’s the letter J.” He lets go of your hand to lift the charm. “See?” 

You squint your eyes, leaning a little closer to him, gaze fixed on the little gold hook letter sitting near the base of his neck. “Ohhhh, right,” you say, but even from a few inches away, it still looks like a hook, and from this close, you can hear the way his breath hitches in his throat.

With an inhale, you find yourself lingering. Sticking around just long enough to make out the woodier notes of his cologne before moving back a little. Finally, you draw your eyes away from his neck, wanting to meet his gaze but finding yourself stuck on his lips instead. They sit slightly ajar, pink, pretty, sort of chapped in the way they always seem to be. His breath tickles your forehead. You sit straighter, noticing the way his eyes burn holes into you. 

“Quit staring,” you mumble hypocritically. 

Jay’s brows quirk up for a split second as he sits back on his hands. “I’m not.”

“You are.” 

“Well, you’d have to be staring at me to know.” 

“Do you want me to stop staring?”

He seems to consider this for a second before shaking his head. “No,” he tells you. 

“What do you want then?” Your voice is soft when you ask. 

“I wanna kiss you.” 

Jay’s lips don’t move but you hear the word “really” being spoken out into the room like a question. Your voice doesn’t feel like your own and doesn’t fully register until Jay says: “Yeah,” so softly that it’s practically a whisper. 

Jay wants.. to kiss you. You feel your breath catch in your throat and it seems even more ridiculous to think it than to have heard it from him. To see his lips move to form the words. I wanna kiss you, he’d said. You’d heard it. You’d seen it. It happened. He wants.. to kiss you. 

“Do you want me to do that?” he asks, leaning in slightly, his hand rising to cup your cheek. Slower, gentler than last time. 

You let your gaze meet his; regret flooding you immediately. Just as kind and soft as the rest of him, Jay’s eyes stare into yours, warm, and inviting, but, still, you can’t shake off your nerves. More than anything, you want to say yes; to say of course, can’t you tell? but you don’t trust yourself enough to open your mouth and speak to him. Instead, you nod, so slightly that for a moment you wonder if he even noticed. And then, there, in the dim privacy of Mark Lee’s bedroom, while your heart beats out of your chest, Jay kisses you for the first time. 

His lips are warm against yours, the sweet taste of Smirnoff Ice only amplified as he holds you close. Soft, gentle, kissing Jay is everything you’d imagined it would be. You feel as though you might melt under his touch as his hand grabs your waist to pull you closer. So close that you’re nearly in his lap as he deepens the kiss, his tongue moving along yours.

It doesn’t feel real, it can’t be. 

As if thrown by your thoughts, Jay pulls away. While attempting to form a coherent thought, you catch your breath, once again, regretting looking at him. He looks down the bridge of his nose at you with half-lidded eyes, and his pretty, pink lips sit parted, wet and plump from kissing. Jay leans in almost immediately, the moment cut short by his lips on yours once again. 

It’s tangible this time; you couldn’t possibly make up the way his hand grips your ass or the way he groans softly when you whine into his mouth. He’s real, and he’s kissing you, and you only feel yourself growing dizzier, and dizzier the longer his lips move against yours. A gasp pulls you out of it and the two of you separate.

Looking in the direction of the now open door you see Sakura and Mark hand in hand. You can’t help the slight embarrassment that hits you at first, hating that, of all people, it had to be Mark to walk in and find you making out with someone on his bed. 

Though you get a bit distracted seeing him and Sakura like this, they look cute together. His football hoodie covers her form completely, much longer than the dress she has on, as she leans into him, and a giggle slips from her lips when he lets go of her hand to wrap an arm around her waist instead. 

Somewhat belatedly, and needlessly, Mark apologises, his eyes focused on you when he speaks but you can’t get the words out to respond to him. Jay chuckles at this, shaking his head and telling him not to worry about it as he stands up from the bed. You follow suit. Jay picks up your drink from the floor and takes you by the hand, telling Mark he’ll text him later while leading you out of the room. When you glance at Sakura, she’s grinning at you, mouthing: “Sorry,” before smacking your butt. 

Jay hands you the bottle when the door closes, his hand slipping out of yours. A beat passes. And then another. He chews at his bottom lip. You clear your throat and the silence continues. It’s a shame to be standing around like idiots on the landing like this, you think. 

“I..” he trails off, wiping his hands on his pants. He points over his shoulder with his thumb. “I should get back to the boys.” 

Your heart sinks as you hesitate, unsure how to respond. Slowly, you nod. “Right, yeah,” you say.

“Later,” he mumbles, holding up his hand to wave stiffly at you before turning around to leave. 

Deflated, you lean against Mark’s door while you search for your phone to ask Yunjin where she is. Maybe if you’d waited for a moment, you’d have seen the way Jay stopped at the top of the stairs to look over at you, seen the frown on his face when he saw that you weren’t looking at him. But instead, you read 2 texts from Yunjin. 

yj: dude heso into u 

yj: flirt more = hv fun upstairs 

You spend the next three days pretending nothing happened at the party, avoiding Jay, and dreading going to uni. It’s just unfortunate that for you, pretending nothing happened looks like zoning out in the library while replaying the kiss in your head until your elbow slips off the desk. And avoiding Jay seems near impossible, given his tendency to show up everywhere. Or rather, your tendency to see Jay in everything. 

Like the tiny little black cat you saw perched on the fence outside your apartment building, and the busker singing Harry Styles in the city centre. And the half-full bottle of Smirnoff Ice from that night that sits on your dresser with your perfume and jewellery, displayed with about as much sentiment as a trophy won at school for a random achievement. 

Impulsively, you post a selfie to your Instagram story before hiding your phone under your pillow and leaving the room entirely, making yourself comfortable atop the kitchen counter and waiting for someone to come back home. 

Chaewon gets home first, and quickly, arriving with a groan as she shrugs her jacket off and shuts the door behind her. “I hate uni,” she mutters. “I hate studying, I ha— Hey.” She jumps a little when she sees you in the kitchen. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever, where’ve you been hiding?” 

“My room.” 

She nods, leaning comfortably against the doorframe. “You’re not going out tonight, right?” 

You shake your head, amused by the look of relief that paints Chaewon’s features as she whispers thank God. “I’m gonna shower, and take a nap,” she informs you. “But when I wake up, it’s you, me, pizza, and whatever story Yunjin has from practice.” 

“Can’t wait,” you say sincerely, stepping down from the counter. 

With a wide smile on her face, she salutes you before dragging her feet to the bathroom. Completely endeared, you decide not to comment on the salute even though you think it’s sweet that she’s starting to copy her boyfriend. 

The sounds of student housing on a Wednesday evening seep in through the open window as you pour yourself a glass of water, unable to stop wondering if Jay saw your story; and what he thought about it if he did. Wondering if he’d notice that the picture was from Saturday night. 

Filling up your glass again, you take it to your room and pull your phone out of hiding. Along with a message from Yunjin telling you and Chaewon to order your food so it comes shortly after she gets home, you find that Jay hit like on your story. Then sent a reply ten minutes later saying: you’re sooo gorgeous.

With a smile on your face, you type out various forms of “thank you so much, you’re perfect,” before settling on a simple: thank uuu :D, and Jay’s response is immediate. 

jay: i don’t think i’ve said that before

jay: how prettty i think you are

The heat that rises to your cheeks is troubling, yet despite your best efforts, you can’t get it to pass. Especially not when you read and reread Jay’s message. You press your eyes shut, willing the heat to pass, willing the grin on your face to fade. Neither works, in fact, they only worsen when you open your eyes to see the new messages waiting for you in the chat. 

jay: it’s a lot bte 

jay: *btw 

You let out a romcom-worthy sigh, clutching the phone to your chest and laying down on the bed. A glow-in-the-dark sticker stares back at you from its spot on your ceiling, a single star that you’d won as a set of two at the arcade with Kazuha in December. The memory brings a smile to your face, even though you remember being a little annoyed after she turned down the other star when you tried giving it to her.

Another message from Jay makes your phone vibrate in your hands. 

jay: sorrry 

you: it’s okay 

You tell him. Even though you’re not sure what he’s apologising for. Just like before, Jay reads the message immediately though this time his reply never comes.

With Yunjin now home from practice, and freshly showered, you sit on the couch with your flatmates, talking and laughing over the sound of the TV for hours until Netflix asks if you’re still watching, and Yunjin’s passed out with her cold, wet hair on your shoulder.  

Pressing a wet kiss to your cheek, Chaewon retires to bed, whispering “Goodniiiiiiiiight,” in your ear before abandoning you. Tired as you are, a part of you feels bad about waking Yunjin so you decide to sit a while longer, moving the blanket from your lap to cover her up properly. But of course, this is the movement that wakes her up. 

In a soft voice, you tell her goodnight, standing up from the couch to stretch your arms above your head. 

“You never told me what happened on Saturday,” Yunjin says tiredly. “Kkura told me you and Jay were busy in Mark’s room.” 

The mention of his name takes you back to that night. Back to Jay and the way his lips felt against yours, the way his hand held your waist, and the way he’d ditched you outside Mark’s room. A pit forms in your stomach; and as if reading your mind, Yunjin asks if you’re okay.

You sit down on the other end of the couch, bringing your knees up to your chest and telling the story from top to bottom. After recounting the night in detail from after she left you guys alone, you find yourself hyperaware of the differences between you and Yunjin. For you, the highlight of Saturday night was Jay kissing you and then running away after. 

“Wait, Sakura and who?” she asks when you’re done. 

For Yunjin, the highlight of the story seems to be Mark’s presence. 

“Mark.” 

“She told me she went on her own, what were they doing?” 

Although you have some idea, you think it best to keep your knowledge to yourself. “They were looking for her phone,” you say, pleased to see that Yunjin accepts your answer and moves on. 

“So then what?”

“He texted me hey on Sunday morning, which I ignored, and then a couple hours ago he replied to my story and told me how pretty he thinks I am,” you say, pausing to take a breath. “Then ignored my response.” 

Yunjin sits silently, seeming to take in everything she’d just been told. Her eyes are focused on the TV screen ahead so you look over at it too. It had gone into standby mode, displaying nothing but an indistinct impression of the two of you. 

And the silence continues. 

In the TV’s cast, you can just about make out the way she tilts and then turns her head to look at you. “Maybe he’s just.. frazzled, or something, from being walked in on. How did you feel?” 

The answer takes a while to come up with because for you, the night exists in two parts — Before kissing Jay, and everything else that happened when you left the room. This whole time, you’ve been so focused on him leaving, that you’ve barely given any thought to how you felt when Sakura opened the door. Frazzled, you think. Probably the best word to use. Embarrassed suits a bit better though. 

“I was embarrassed about it, but only because it was Mark. If it had been you, or Chaewon, whoever, it would’ve been different because they’d walk in and go “oh sorry” or something and leave, but obviously, when it’s Mark going into his own room, he’s there for something, you know?” you explain, chewing at your bottom lip.

“Maybe that’s how he feels too.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t embarrassing enough to leave and never talk to him again.” 

Yunjin exhales heavily. “I want to be on your side, really, I do, but isn’t that kinda what you did?” she asks, her voice hesitant as she tilts her head. “He texted you the next day and you didn’t reply, what do you think he’s thinking about right now?” 

“He’s the one who said he should get back to the boys.”

“What if that’s just because he spoke first?” she suggests. “Obviously we don’t know what you would’ve said if you spoke first, because you didn’t, but I feel like you would’ve been like “I-I’m gonna get back to the girls” and ran away.” 

Always correct, Yunjin is your worst enemy and your best friend rolled into one. Oh, how you hate her. Well, she’s correct about the fact that you would have said the same thing. You think. You press your lips together in a straight line and sink into your seat. 

She sighs when you don’t speak. “Look, he talked to you today, and told you how pretty you are, which is a win, right?” 

You nod reluctantly. 

“So let’s celebrate that, celebrate the fact that you kissed Jay! Even better, the fact that he kissed you.” Yunjin pauses, for what you think is dramatic effect, before speaking again. “Just.. don’t sweat the small stuff, okay?” She stops again to yawn. “And text him back if he reaches out, or, text him first.” 

Leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom, you brush your teeth, watching as Yunjin does the same, sitting on the edge of the tub with her eyes shut. While gargling mouthwash, you think about the conversation you’ve just had and decide to take matters into your own hands. By pleading with God to put Jay in front of you and have him tell you that he likes you back. 

Once again, the higher powers seem to be on your side. Kind of. Jay does end up in front of you to tell you that he likes you back. Kind of. But only after learning that you’ll have to start your report again; which, given that you’d only gotten through 800 of the required 4000 words, wasn't exactly criminal. It was an irritation that settled in you, mainly, as all of your research and the sources you’d found were now redundant in the face of such adversity. 

Nonetheless, with heavy feet, you leave the lecture hall, trying to come up with a way to fake your graduation ceremony next year so you can secretly drop out. You draw a blank and find Jay waiting in line at the vending machine near the library’s entrance. 

Even though you’d spoken with her on Tuesday night, here, today, on Friday afternoon, Yunjin’s words echo so clearly in your mind you almost want to peer over your shoulder to see if she’s there. You do. She isn’t. 

Your formerly heavy feet lead you right over to Jay, who greets you with a smile. “How’s the report coming?” he asks, his tone light, easygoing, and clearly oblivious to the fact that his question strikes you like a knife to the gut. 

The two of you shuffle forward slightly, now at the front of the queue. Waiting for your response, he punches E6 into the machine that rattles loudly, delivering his bottle of Lipton lemon. 

“Not great,” you tell him, feigning nonchalance and watching as he presses E4 before squatting down to collect both drinks. “Are you heading to class?” 

Standing up straight, Jay holds out the new(er) bottle of Lipton peach towards you. “What happened?” 

Holding the drink in your hands, you fall into step with him and sigh despite yourself. “I have to start over.” 

Jay’s eyes widen and his jaw drops slightly at your words. Dramatic. Cute. “Nooo,” he says sincerely. “How come?”

“I read the question wrong.”

“Oh,” he says. “That’s okay, at least you found out now rather than later. And you still have until December to get it done, that’s almost two months! I’m sure most people haven’t even read the question,” he tells you in a gentle voice. 

There’s a fuzziness in your chest, and Jay’s words make you feel like everything will be alright. Even though you weren’t exactly cut up about the report, something about talking with him about it leaves you feeling soothed when you look up to give him a warm smile.

“I don’t have classes today, I’m just here to study,” he says, answering your earlier question as he leads you to a table. 

You watch as Jay sits down, and decide to take a seat across from him, dumping your bag on the floor at your feet. His brows quirk up when you put the drink down on his side of the table, confusion evident in his voice when he says: “You don’t like peach tea anymore?” 

All of a sudden your heart is pounding, and you grin despite yourself. Oh, Jay, you think. “It’s my favourite.” 

Matching your smile Jay slides the bottle over to you. “It’s yours,” he says.

You can’t explain the overwhelming sense of gratitude you feel over a barely cold, 500ml bottle of tea, but it beams brightly on the table between you; radiant, glowy, the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. “Thank you,” you say sincerely in a soft voice, lest you knock the bottle out of its haze. 

The deepest part of your brain romanticises the scene around you even further, and the table you sit at, in the smallest library on campus, starts to seem like something from a kid’s storybook. From a mythical land where the iced tea is luminescent, and you get to study with an angel who wears Chrome Hearts pants and olive green 6s.

“Can I read it when you’re done?” His question cuts through your thoughts. Surprised by how genuine Jay sounds, you glance back over at him to find him already looking at you, his lips pushed up into a soft smile that spreads flutters around your chest.

It takes you longer than you’d like to admit to realise what he’s talking about, but you tilt your head when you do. “You wanna read my paper on wind turbines and solar farms?” you ask. 

Jay’s eyes widen briefly as if shocked that you’re even asking him that. “Of course I do,” he says, sounding almost offended, defensive maybe. 

You eye him from across the table, sceptical. Jay seems to pick up on this. “Why wouldn’t I want to know about the UN’s advances towards net zero by 2030?” he asks, chuckling to himself when you raise a brow. He shrugs. “I got curious after you mentioned it.” 

With burning cheeks, you watch him as he continues to talk, neither of you making any effort to start on the work you’re there to do. As much as you feel it’d be useful to get work done in the library — because it’ll allow you to go home and do nothing without guilt — you don’t see the point in half-assing your research and absentmindedly chatting with Jay, when you could ditch the research completely and fixate over the way his lips move to form his words. 

“I lost my student card so I need to read while I’m in here. I think it’s better though; easier to stay focused, less distractions,” Jay tells you when you ask what brought him to uni just to study alone. “Usually,” he adds, gaze flicking up to meet yours with a teasing smile crossing his lips.

Jay’s words hold a flirtatious undertone that isn’t lost on you or the butterflies that take flight in your stomach. “I’m not a distraction,” you say, frowning slightly. 

“I never said you were, but I had no problem getting my work done until you got here.” 

Jay’s words remind you of your first test for Property Law in February. The two of you sat together at a table in the campus cafe, empty mugs and printed slides scattered across the space between you. For four hours, you highlighted sentences and rewrote notes to keep your hands busy until Jay walked you back to your flat, where you pulled an all-nighter so you could actually study. You got a 61 and slept for twelve hours afterwards. 

“If it’s getting to you that much, I can go,” you offer, really, really, hoping he doesn’t take you up on it.

“No, please stay. I like spending time with you,” Jay admits with a slight downturn at the corners of his lips. 

You try to work out how to echo his sentiment without sounding like a lovestruck fool, though you draw a blank, distracted by the way he– “Are you batting your lashes at me?” you ask through a chuckle.

Jay squints. “Is it working?” 

You shake your head. 

“Well, neither are you,” he points out, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that almost makes you feel scolded despite his light tone. You think you like it. 

An overly dramatic sigh huffs its way out of your mouth as you roll your eyes at him, fighting a smile at the sound of his breathy laughter. “Whatever. Starting now, I’ll work on my paper. You focus on your reading, no distractions,” you suggest.

“Right, no distractions,” Jay repeats, his eyes falling to your lips. 

Sticking to your word proves much easier than you’d initially thought and you manage to sit, mostly undistracted, for more than a little while, putting the paragraphs that can stay in italics, the bits that need to be amended in bold, and deleting the rest. 

Your workflow is broken only when Jay speaks softly, “Is it cool if Heeseung works with us?” he asks, sending a text after you tell him that it’s okay. 

And as if he’d been waiting around the corner, Heeseung shows up seconds later. “Jongseongieeeeee,” he coos when he sees Jay, extending a hand to pat his head and ruffle his hair. 

Unable to hide his irritation, Jay’s face scrunches up at the interaction and in an attempt to stop the sudden attack, he grabs Heeseung by the wrist, seeming shocked when it works. You watch him fix his hair in his phone camera. 

In the same playful tone, Heeseung says your name too, sitting down in the seat next to Jay. “I feel like I haven’t seen you since the hockey mixer.” 

You can’t help the breathy laugh that comes out at the cute pout on his lips. “Because you haven’t seen me since the hockey mixer,” you say, smiling at Jay when you notice him looking at you. 

“You weren’t at the football party, were you?” Heeseung asks, his eyes widening right when the words leave his mouth. “Riiiiiiiight, you were.” He mumbles to himself before covering his mouth with his hand. “I’m just..” he trails off, pointing at his laptop with his index finger before opening it and sinking in his seat. 

There’s a nasty pit forming in your stomach while you watch Heeseung all but disappear behind his screen. And in the black screen of your laptop, you stare at yourself, pretending that: 1. The fingerprints and smudges don’t bother you, and 2. That you don’t notice the way Jay’s looking at you. Or rather, the fact that Jay’s looking at you. If you’d noticed the way he was looking at you, you might have picked up on the softness of his gaze. But you didn't, so you don’t. 

Instead, the fact that Jay’s watching you only makes you feel worse. Though at least it looks like your hair is sitting nicely today, you think, glad to have at least one thing working for you rather than against you. Like the pit in your stomach, or the Lipton peach that tastes like nothing when you take the first sip.

In the presence of Heeseung - and the things he said - the three of you manage to get on with your work, free of conversation. 

Reluctantly, you let the two boys walk you back to your place when you’re ready to go home. Heeseung leads the conversation, thankfully, with no more mention of the football party and even hugs you goodbye while Jay watches from a few feet away. Judging by the expression on his face, you’d think the person he’d liked for months kissed him and then ran away. 

“Sorry,” Heeseung whispers, pressing his lips into a straight line. 

With your key in the lock, you watch as they retreat, Heeseung nudging Jay when he reaches him and mumbling something that you can’t quite make out. Neither of the girls are home when you get inside and, sprawling out on the couch, you look for your phone to make plans. 

you: we should go out tn

cw: tmrw ! i have a deadline

yj: broke friday or .. j*emins party 

Too broke for broke Friday, the two of you find yourselves stepping over the legs of a sleeping Sunghoon to reach the open door to Jeno and Jaemin’s apartment. There are people everywhere, including the hall outside, but you suppose this is the benefit of student housing; none of your neighbours can complain about noise because they’re too busy being part of the commotion. 

Jake almost spills his drink when he sees you both, saying “heyyyyy,” with a giggle and eyes that linger on Yunjin while he talks though he quickly excuses himself to take water to poor Sunghoonie. 

The night is largely uneventful, much the same as every other night out you’ve had since starting college. Except for the part where Jay shows up,a massive grin on his face to greet your friends. Sakura, Yunjin, and Kazuha all get a “hey” and a brief hug. Jay regards you with a nod and a small smile. At least Kazuha seems to believe you when you tell her that you’re crying in Jaemin’s bathroom because you hate your outfit.

After a weekend of self-pity, you spend Monday at a coffee shop with Sakura, watching as she studi—“You could at least pretend to study, you know?” she sighs. “Every time I look up you’re either staring at me or using your phone, it’s distracting.” 

With a frown on your face, you touch your mug to see if your coffee is cool enough to drink yet — it’s not — before flipping your notebook to a blank page and trying to write out some of the key points that you remember from Friday’s lecture. A part of you feels bad for neglecting your Architectural Practice class but it’s just not as interesting, and you tell yourself that you’ll dedicate all of your time to it after finishing your report. You definitely will not come to regret leaving three months worth of work to the very last minute. 

You study with Sakura for a few hours until deciding that you simply cannot continue, and the two of you leave the cafe in favour of a Mcdonald’s drive-thru, eating your dinner in the dark parking lot before she drops you off.

On Tuesday night, you’re thankful that Yunjin and Kazuha don’t push you to go out with them when you say you’re tired, but when Netflix asks if you’re still watching Modern Family at almost 3 a.m., you wish they had. 

You push yourself out of bed to do your skincare, and hear the two girls coming back home as you apply your last pimple patch. After Kazuha all but yells something about a huge pair of shoes by the door, it seems like they settle in the kitchen. 

They’re sharing a bowl of cereal at the table when you get there. Feeling bad, you make instant noodles for them while Yunjin hugs you from behind. Both of you try your best to laugh quietly at Kazuha’s story about some box blond figure skater who completely blanked her when she tried flirting despite staring at her all night.

Once the food is ready, you sit up on the counter, watching them eat straight from the pot. Trying to talk to those two while they’re so invested in dinner is a waste of energy so you busy yourself on your phone instead, scrolling aimlessly until both girls kiss you on the cheek to thank you for looking after them. Kazuha gratefully drinks the glass of water you give her, and Yunjin, as you expect, is stubborn about it; taking three small sips before running away to her room. 

The argument you can hear through the open window keeps you entertained as you wash the dishes, and you check your phone on the way to your room, finding two texts from Jay. 

jay: i know it’s late but can we talk in person if you’re up

jay: it’ s important

They came in four minutes ago and you chew on your lip trying to figure out what he wants to talk about. 

you: are you okay?

jay: can you come outside 

With not even enough time to hit send on the three question marks you’d typed out, the distinct ring of a FaceTime call surprises you. Though what you find more surprising is the sight of your building’s door behind Jay’s face which just about fills the screen. Lit dramatically by an orange street light, he looks beautiful. Looks cute when his lips pout slightly around the words: come quickly and dress warm, as he successfully convinces you to leave the comfort of your bed.

Through the glass in the main door, you see him. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he looks up towards the sky and puffs visible breaths into the air above him. Jay turns around at the sound of the door opening. You feel your stomach lurch because he doesn’t smile when he sees you. 

“Hey,” he says after a while, watching you intently, inspecting almost, as you shut the door softly behind you. His face softens, the smile he hadn’t given earlier coming through now. “Are you wearing my jacket?” His voice is soft too when he speaks, breathy enough for the smell of alcohol and vague peppermint to hit your nose. 

“I thought I should probably give it back,” you nod. “Sorry I kept it so long.”

Jay shakes his head, hair shifting on his forehead from the motion. “No, I love it on you. Please keep it,” he pauses, taking a step towards you. “I want you to keep it.” 

Thank God, you think. You hadn’t really been meaning to give it back, and you weren’t really sorry to have kept it so long, it just felt like the right thing to say. 

The space between you is so small that you wonder if he can hear the way your heart rate starts to pick up. In the time you hadn’t talked, you’d seen him around campus, in the corners of story posts, but seeing him here in front of you is almost overwhelming. A gust of wind ruffles the jacket Jay has on and his scent unfurls right under your nose; warm, lived in, mixed with faint sweat and what you think might be tobacco. It creates a musk that leaves you weak at the knees.

“It was milk and cookies night,” Jay continues when you don’t respond, digging into his pocket and holding a plastic-wrapped cookie out towards you. “You like white chocolate chip, right?” 

Hearing that it was milk and cookies night makes you wonder if you’d been too hasty when you turned down the girls’ invitation. 

Despite the cold, Jay’s hand is warm when your fingers graze his. Letting your touch linger, you thank him sincerely, touched by the little things he seems to remember about you. 

Even though you’re aware of the other students coming home from various nights out, and end up having to move out of the way so some of them can enter your building, it feels like the two of you are in your own world. You notice that his sights are locked on the cookie, on the spot where your fingers touch, allowing you to admire him freely. 

Standing almost directly under the lamppost now, you notice that his cheeks and the tips of his ears are dusted with red. You feel a little bad, he must be freezing, you think. Your gaze falls to his lips that sit parted, chapped like you expect, and now you’re thinking of kissing him. 

Clearing his throat, Jay moves his hand from yours to put it in his pocket. You do the same. 

“I know I said I wanted to talk, but I just wanted to see you,” he says, looking you right in the eyes. “I wasn’t sure you’d come if I said that.” 

You frown, wondering if this whole time he’s been avoiding you because he thought you didn’t want to see him. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

Jay only shrugs in response. 

From over your shoulder, you hear the door opening. Jay’s eyes flicker in its direction. You turn your head to look too. A boy with pink hair frowns when both of you tell him you don’t have the lighter he’d been looking to borrow. 

“I’m sorry about leaving after we kissed. And for avoiding you. That was stupid,” Jay says as soon as the door closes. “It was childish of me to do that instead of just telling you how I feel. I wasn’t gonna say anything, because I know you only see me as a friend, but I have to let you know that I like you, a lot.” 

You stand around limply for a beat, staring up at Jay and trying to take in every single detail about this moment before you inevitably wake up. But this ‘dream’ doesn’t cut off where you’d been expecting it to. Instead, you feel your heart thudding against your ribs, your stomach flipping. The only thing you can get yourself to do is blink at the boy in front of you. The boy who likes you. 

A lot.

“It’s just that, after Heeseung said that shit in the library and you couldn’t even look at me, I knew I didn’t have a chance with you and I just.. am trying to figure out how to be near you and pretend like I don’t want to drop everything and kiss you.” 

“What’s stopping you?” you ask, surprised that your voice even comes out properly.

Jay’s gaze drops to your lips. Without noticing, the two of you had gotten so close that your chests are barely an inch apart; they’d probably touch if either of you took just one deep inhale. A beat passes. His gaze flicks up to meet yours and your breath hitches in your throat. You want to kiss him. You must. Right when you start to lean up towards him, to put your lips on his, he steps back. 

“Fuck,” Jay mumbles, his brows knitting together as he shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” 

The ability to hold his liquor is something that Jay sees as both a blessing and a curse. 

On the bright side, he can drink as much as he wants and won’t say or do anything he wouldn’t say or do when sober. His delivery might be a little off when he’s drunk but the point still stands.

On the not-so-bright, catastrophically dim side, however, Jay wakes up the morning after drinking with a vivid memory of everything that happened to him at whatever party he’d been to. Plus a killer migraine. 

And so, since drunkenly showing up at your place with a cookie in his pocket and his heart on his sleeve two weeks ago, Jay’s been quietly pitying himself and gently encouraging Jake to work harder on physics so he can get some sort of time machine up and running. 

Though it seems like you’ve been able to go on as normal. So normal, in fact, that Jay starts to believe the whole thing was just an elaborate dream. So elaborate that when he scrolls through your text thread, he finds the messages that you’d ‘exchanged’ that night. He finds the thought of having developed self-awareness in a two-week-long dream to be a greater comfort than the reality that you don’t like him back. 

You would have said if you did. Right? Or at least brought up what he’d said. Asked if you could talk about it. You’d be so excited to see him again, sober, that you wouldn’t even be able to say anything except: “I like you too!” Right? 

But you haven’t. So unless you’re going through trauma-inflicted amnesia, or someone has finally come up with the technology to invent The Neuralyzer, you really don’t like him back.

Jay had been so sure, certain that you liked him back. It just seemed so obvious; like the way you seemed to find him at every party, and how anytime you saw Jake in the engineering block you’d ask about him. Surely it wasn’t all in his head. The way that Chaewon and Yunjin had been teasing you at the hockey mixer, and how Yunjin made up that excuse to leave the two of you alone at the football party. It was all so.. like-y.  

Even today, when you texted him asking to hang out. He was sure that you were finally (finally!) going to tell him you liked him too. So sure, he’d even told the boys that he’d be coming back home as someone’s boyfriend. As your boyfriend. 

But instead, Jay finds himself climbing the stairs of his apartment complex wondering how the fuck he’d been so delusional. In his back pocket, his phone vibrates. Twice. Texts; both from you. 

you: i forgot to say but lmk when u get home lol

you: and if u have time to hang out before ur game tmrw !

His heart twists in his chest as he reads your messages. 

jay: okayyyyyyyyyyyyy, i can chill for a bit

jay: what did you have in mind? 

After fishing his house key from his jacket, he twists it in the lock and crosses the threshold before texting you once more: home now :). You heart the message immediately. The laughter that Jay could hear in the hall quiets as soon as he closes the door, and heavy footsteps thud towards the living room’s open doorway. Sunghoon. 

“It’s Mr YN YL—” he stops short. “Oh.” It’s not until Sunghoon looks over his shoulder and shakes his head that Jay even notices the stupid shutter shades he’s wearing. And when Jay joins his friends in the living room, he smiles despite himself seeing the way they’d decorated the space. Streamers dangle from the ceiling, hand-drawn A4 posters with both of your names written in lopsided hearts are stuck to the wall, and Jay ignores the thought of losing the security deposit to appreciate his friends; they’re good to him. 

On the way to his usual seat, an armchair in the corner of the room, Jay stops to wrestle a bottle of Desperados from the open six back sitting atop the coffee table and kicks a balloon that was in his path before sinking into his chair. 

Knowing there’s no use giving them a play-by-play, Jay recounts the last few hours as briefly as he can. He makes sure to leave out small details; like how he felt weak at the knees when you hugged him and told him you loved him after he won you a Hello Kitty plushie from the claw machine that you swore was rigged. Or how you’d worn his jacket out and his heart started racing when he noticed that your perfume had started to mix with his cologne. Unexpectedly, the guys seem hooked on the story right until its end. “So it’s not like it went badly or anything, I just.. didn’t tell her.”

Somehow, all three of them speak at the same time: “What do you mean you didn’t tell her?” 

Jay stares at a spot on the floor, noticing a hole in the toe of Jake’s sock. He’ll make fun of that later. “I just couldn’t get the words out,” he mumbles, shoulders drooping as he slumps further and further into his seat before taking the first sip of his bitter drink a—“Fuck, why does anybody drink these?” 

“Cheap,” Sunghoon mumbles, scowling after sipping from his own.

Clearly.

“Unless I’m missing something, this doesn’t seem like the end of the world. Just tell her tomorrow, tell her now, text her,” Heeseung sighs, letting his eyes fall shut. 

The other two boys seem to agree, echoing the sentiment and adding their own ad libs to it. Jay watches as Sunghoon leans over to get another drink from the table, admiring his commitment to beer drinking even though he doesn’t like it. He waits for silence before speaking again: “I already know she doesn’t like me that way. And it’s only been two weeks so it doesn’t make sense to confess again so soon when I know the answer.” 

“Again?” Sunghoon asks, raising a brow. 

Ahhh, Jay knew there was something he’d forgotten to do. Though he's struggling to figure out how he’d withheld this information, considering it was the main thing on his mind at all hours. “Yeah, after milk and cookies I went to hers and told her I like her,” he says, attempting to feign nonchalance, shoulders rising and falling in a stiff shrug.

“And you kept that to yourself because..” 

Jay scrunches up his nose, genuinely unsure. “I didn’t go there to confess, I just wanted to see her and give her the cookie I got for her,” he admits. “But then she came outside, and she had my jacket on, and she just looked so pretty. The only thing on my mind was oh, my God, I can’t go any longer without telling you I’m in love with you.” Jay pauses, taking a long sip of beer before telling them what happened outside your building. 

As if he wasn’t feeling bad enough already, Heeseung bursts out laughing. Hard. It’s not long before Jake and Sunghoon join in and Jay wants to vanish into thin air. Feeling slightly left out, he also wants to ask what’s so funny, but the fear of being slated holds him back. 

It’s the eldest who calms down first, sitting up straight in his seat. “So you go to YN’s door, tell her you like her, almost kiss her, then explicitly tell her not to say she likes you back, run away from her, again, and you’re wondering why she didn’t say she likes you back?”

With the story being laid out so simply, Jay starts to see the flaws in his logic. Though too stubborn to admit that he’s wrong in front of Jake, he nods his head. “Exactly.” 

He presses his lips into a straight line when the boys call him chronically stupid. 

“You need to call her, talk to her, figure your shit out before it’s too late,” Heeseung says with a firm tone. 

Jay thinks about it, biting at his bottom lip before replying, asking in a small voice: “But what if she says she doesn’t like me?” 

As much as not having confirmation is killing him, there’s a part of Jay that likes not knowing how you feel about him because it lets him play into his delusions. Lets him feed himself with thoughts of you being excited to see him because you like him and not because he makes great platonic company. The thought of you checking up on him through Jake because you’ve been thinking about him, but feel too shy to ask directly. And Jay knows when you properly reject him, he won’t be comforted by such thoughts anymore. They’ll only hurt him. 

Though after hearing what may be the wisest thing he thinks Sunghoon has ever said, Jay starts to see the situation a little differently. It’s casual. Spoken through a yawn. “You already don’t have a girlfriend. Nothing to lose, right?” 

The walk to your apartment building is longer than he remembers, but the cool air feels good on his neck as he tries to figure out what exactly he should say. Jay only starts to consider that this may not be the best idea when he stands face to face with your apartment building and feels a little too nervous to buzz your flat. What is he doing? 

A grating screech comes from the heavy door when it opens, and Chaewon’s boyfriend steps outside with squinted eyes. “Jay?” he asks as the door thuds shut behind him. “YN didn’t say you were coming over.” 

An awkward chuckle slips from Jay’s lips and (for the first time in his life) he does jazz hands. “Surprise?”

Jay feels better when Jeno’s lips spread into a grin. “Ohhhh,” he says, nodding and extending an almost empty deck of cigarettes in his direction. 

“I’m good,” Jay declines, shaking his head. 

Though if things go poorly up there he might have to take Jeno up on his offer. 

Holding his cigarette between his lips, Jeno uses a fob to open the door for him, and Jay can’t help but feel comforted by the way Jeno pats him on the back and says: “I’m rooting for you.” 

Standing at the door to your apartment only unleashes a new sense of nervousness. His hand rests on it, balled into a fist, waiting to be pulled back. But something stops him. Jay lets his hand slip down the door and takes a step away from it. He’d been standing too close. Now, he stands shifting his weight from foot to foot, and the toes of his shoes are just touching the doormat. 

Reminding himself that knocking isn’t the hard part, Jay takes a deep breath and knocks three times. 

A few minutes pass and it’s now that he remembers he doesn’t even know for sure that you’re home, or awake. He counts ten seconds before knocking again and the second his fist touches the door, he hears the sound of a lock clicking and the door creaks open. 

Like something from a dream, you stand in the doorway, looking so beautiful with his hoodie on that Jay has to put in effort to keep his jaw from falling to the ground. 

“Jay?” you say quietly, brows furrowed. “Is everything alright?” 

“Do you like me?” Jay blurts out, pressing his eyes shut immediately as all plans of a proper conversation go to the wind. From his spot on your doormat, he can hear the sound of the TV quieting and a terrible silence settles over the two of you; lasting eight whole seconds before you speak. 

“Do you wanna come in?”

Jay steps into the apartment, taking off his shoes at the door while mumbling a greeting to Yunjin and Chaewon who (definitely heard him) lay on the couch with wide grins on their faces, and follows you to your room where you close the door behind him. 

“Sorry, I had, like, a speech ready and then I saw you and I just..” he trails off, standing awkwardly near the door and looking at everything in the room except for you; he struggles to tear his eyes away from a polaroid picture of the two of you with huge grins. It’s only when you talk that he manages to look over at you instead. 

“You can sit down,” you say, patting a spot on the bed next to you. Without saying anything, Jay crosses the room to sit beside you — if sitting at arm’s length can be considered as beside you. “Tell me about the speech,” you say, and Jay shakes his head while trying to convince himself that your chuckle isn’t patronising. 

“Do you like me?” he asks again, not wanting to waste any more time. 

“I like you.” 

Your words, simple and quiet, leave Jay winded. 

“You look surprised,” you say, tilting your head. “You really didn’t know?”

Immediately, he relaxes his face. Clears his throat. Jay’s not entirely sure what he did and didn’t know, but he doesn’t think it matters. Nothing could possibly matter more than you do right now. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, letting out a sigh of relief. “I like you too.” The words sound regular when he says them, though he does like the lightness in his chest knowing for sure that the feeling is mutual. “Can you say it again?”

“Jay,” you start, resting your hand on his knee. Jay wonders if this is supposed to comfort him and clasps his hands over his lap as discreetly as he can manage. “I like you,” you tell him again.

Under the weight of your words, Jay feels his heart cinch a little in his chest. Why does everything sound so perfect coming from you? He can’t help but lean in, finally kissing you after what feels like an eternity. Jay didn’t think anything would feel better than your first kiss, but having your lips move softly against his, and knowing that you like him back, might just be the best thing ever. How did he go so long without this? Dazed and lovestruck, he lets his forehead rest against yours to calm down, to catch his breath. “Again?” he whispers, hopeful, one step away from begging.

You let out a chuckle, soft, breathy, fanning his lips. “I like you,” you say after a while, quietly, a whisper, just for him before kissing him again.

Jay’s not sure when it happened, he’s not even sure he notices that you’re sitting in his lap until you grind down on him; the feeling overwhelming despite all of the layers between you. A whine slips from your mouth into his when he rolls his hips up towards yours, and he can’t help but hate himself a bit for not just confessing sooner. 

You pull away from him, a smile on your face as he chases your kiss. “Please touch me,” you whisper, hiding your face in his neck when he chuckles at your request, calling you cute under his breath.

He feels oddly thankful that you’re not grinding on him any longer because he was about two more movements away from cumming in his pants. His hand slips under your shorts, finding your clit and pressing on it through your underwear, liking the way your breath fans his skin when you sigh. The wet patch on the fabric only starts to spread when he starts rubbing you. “You like that?” 

“Yeah,” you tell him on an exhale, letting your hips roll against his hand, whimpering at the friction. 

Your mouth quickly finds his again, and you let your hand clutch at his shirt, balling it up in your first before tugging at it, parting to take it off of him. With wide eyes, you gape at his torso, the word “Shit,” falling from your mouth while you let a hand rest on his stomach. 

When he tries pushing your panties to the side, the soaked material sticks to your slit slightly, and Jay groans despite himself. You’re absolutely drenched in slick, sopping wet to the core as you let out a broken whine from the feeling of his finger slipping into you. Curling his finger towards your belly button, his eyes fall shut, cock throbbing against his thigh when he thinks about how you’d feel around his shaft, how you’d look under him.

“You’re so good,” you whisper, awestruck and trembling in his lap.

The way you watch him makes him feel a little under pressure when he opens his eyes, but, determined to make you feel good, Jay attaches his thumb to your clit and everything is so slick that his finger slips around a bit before he can help it. You squirm in his lap, your head falling forward into the crook of his neck, forcing Jay to hiss when you bite on the skin of his shoulder. Your whimpers turn into cries and you mumble that you’re close, your walls tensing around him a moment later as if to prove your point. 

Jay pulls his fingers out, holding back a moan at the way they glisten in the light, coated in you— “Nooo,” you whine, sounding audibly distraught. 

Though he’s too busy tasting your cunt on his fingers to grace you with a response. In the quiet of the room, you sit up properly to look at him, watching with parted lips as Jay sucks on his fingers, humming at the way you taste. You barely give him a chance to put his hand back down before pressing your lips to his, moaning into his mouth as you taste yourself on his tongue. 

Getting a tight grip on your waist, he moves around a bit to lay you down on the bed. Resting on his forearm, Jay leans over you, kissing you again. He lets his hand trail down your body, liking the way you spread your legs when he dips his fingers into your waistband. You nod eagerly when he asks if he can take them off, and his cock throbs when you tell him to take your panties off too. 

With no unnecessary fabric in his way, his finger drags up and down the length of your pussy. Already close, it doesn’t take long for you to start whimpering and squirming underneath him, your walls stuttering once again as you cum, hot and hard on his hand. 

Ever the gentleman, Jay stands up to place himself between your legs, groaning at the sight of you, pulsing and wet. “Such a pretty pussy,” he says. Deciding not to waste another second, he uses his thumbs to spread your lips a little before burying his face in your cunt. 

It doesn’t take much for you to writhe under his tongue, and as soon as he kisses your clit it’s a wrap. He feels his cock leaking a little when your clit starts to throb between his lips, and he can’t help but groan when you tug at his hair. 

You stutter through the words: “Too much,” and Jay tears his mouth away from you, letting his forehead rest on your inner thigh while he catches his breath, savouring your taste on his tongue. It doesn’t last long though; your scent drives him crazy. When Jay leans back over your face, he presses kisses to your cheek, mumbling to you about how pretty you are, and how good you taste, all while playing with the drawstrings of your hoodie. 

He likes the way it looks on you, way better than it does on him. Likes it so much, he almost objects when you sit up to pull it over your head. Jay’s glad he doesn’t. He gulps at the sight of your breasts, surprised to see that you weren’t wearing anything under his hoodie, his dick somehow growing harder just from looking at you. 

Jay feels an intense desperation to suck on them, but your hands reach back up to his face, pulling him towards you to kiss him again. He settles (ecstatically) for holding one in his hand, pinching your nipple with his fingers. He’s relaxed, he’s happy; not torn up about it because he has all the time in the world to feel your tits in his mouth. 

He thinks. 

Jay pulls away from you. “Wait,” he says, feeling butterflies when you smile up at him. “Can I be your boyfriend?”

Your giggle sounds like music and he feels warm all over when you say, “Of course,” the words somewhat muffled by his lips on yours again, he could make out with you all day. But he stops for a moment, looking down at you, into your eyes and revelling in this moment. Revelling in you, his girlfriend, and the way you look at him. Like he put the stars in the sky or moved mountains; like you want him just as much as he’s wanted you all this time. And he wonders what he’s done to deserve it. 

Overwhelmed by emotion, Jay kisses you, lets his tongue run along the seam of your lips as he considers just kissing you for the rest of the night. It almost seems like he’s trying to, and you speak once more against his mouth. 

“Are you gonna fuck me?” you ask, moving your head to the side. “It’s okay if you’re not, but I’d like to know.” 

Jay smirks at you — pretty cocky for a guy whose dick is throbbing against his thigh just from hearing you talk. “You want that?”

“Mhm,” you hum, nodding. “Need it.” Your gaze burns into his as he tries to process your words. You look distractingly beautiful with a thin sheen of sweat on your forehead, lidded eyes, and kiss-plumped lips that you press up against his once more. “There’s condoms in the second drawer.”

Leaning up off of you, Jay reaches into his back pocket to show off the two condoms he’d brought with him.

“Classy,” you tease, though there’s an excitement in your eyes that drives him mad. 

“Responsible,” he corrects, standing up to pull his pants and underwear down. Slapping against his stomach, his cock throbs when he hears you gasp. Jay lifts his head in your direction, trying not to cum on the spot from the sight of you leaning up on your elbows, staring at his dick with an open mouth. 

Taking a deep breath, Jay reminds himself that he has all the time in the world to find out what your pretty lips will feel like around him, choosing to busy himself with putting the condom on instead. “How do you want it?” 

If the way you stop and stammer through the word “However” is anything to go by, the question seems to catch you off guard. Making his way back over to you, Jay racks his brain trying to figure out how he wants this to go, but seeing you on your back with your legs spread for him makes it clear. He hovers over you, lips drawn to yours like a magnet, using his hand to run the tip of his cock up and down your pussy, all while you whine against his mouth every time he pushes past your clit. 

“Don’t want to wait any longer.”

Your words make his stomach turn. He pulls away, his brows knitted together. “How long have you been waiting?” 

“Months, Jay,” you say, voice barely above a whisper, eyes screwed shut in a tortured expression. “Please.” 

Satisfied with your answer, Jay guides his cock to your slit. Pushes just a little. “I won’t make you wait like that again,” he tells you, and he means it, pushing in as much as he can before you cry out. 

Worried, Jay stops, leaning close to press a kiss to your cheek. “You okay?” 

“I just need a sec,” you tell him breathlessly.

Jay nods. As good as he feels, quitting while he’s ahead seems like the better option at the minute — he needs a sec too, but with the way your walls clench around him, it doesn’t really feel like much has changed. He finds himself having to hold his hips back after a while, as you get used to the feeling of him inside, your pretty little cunt starts trying to suck him in and his breath hitches in his throat when you look him in the eye. 

With a hand on the back of his neck, you pull his face back down to yours. “I’m good,” you mumble into his ear. 

“Yeah?” he asks, grinning when you nod in response. 

You stretch around him so easily that Jay whines as you take him in, deeper and deeper, inch by inch until he bottoms out. “Shit,” he mutters. How did he go so long without this? The sting of your nails digging into his bicep makes him hiss and he all but passes out when you moan. Falling from your mouth on a loop with every move he makes, his name is the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard; you cut yourself off with a gasp, breath hitching in your throat.

“There?” Jay asks, even though he knows he’s hitting your spot. 

You look up at him through fluttering eyelids, becoming more and more dazed each time his hips smack yours. “Mhm, I—close,” you mumble. 

Jay takes this as a sign to hike your leg up around his waist, making sure to hit it each time he pumps into you. It seems like it’s working. “Cum for me, baby,” he whispers, using his free hand to push some of your hair out of your face. 

Your whines turn into broken sobs and you hide your face in the pillow next to you, muffling your screams. Although he thinks your consideration for your flatmates is coming a bit late, he leaves you be, finding the sight sexier than he cares to admit. 

Sexier still is the way your body tenses before squirming again, your walls pulsing uncontrollably around him while you cum. Jay’s stomach starts to tighten as he fucks you, spurred on by the look on your face as you orgasm, and the sound of his cock filling you up. With a few more thrusts and a jagged moan, he spills his load into the condom, just about collapsing on top of you. 

Considering how fucked out and sleepy you’d been while Jay cleaned you up, he isn’t surprised to find you fast asleep when he gets back from cleaning himself. He does his best to join you in bed as softly as possible but it’s no use because you wake with a large yawn, making his heartache from a weird mixture of guilt and how cute you look. 

He lays on his back, grinning to himself when you rest your head on his chest, making yourself comfy with an arm and leg slung over him. You talk drowsily about watching The Devil Wears Prada in full after his game tomorrow and nod eagerly when he asks if you want to wear one of his jerseys to come and watch him play. Jay keeps his eyes shut until he hears you snoring faintly, and looks forward to teasing you about it in the morning.

When he stares straight ahead at your ceiling, a fuzzy feeling rises in his chest. “I put my star on the ceiling too,” he whispers, knowing you can’t hear him, but feeling happy nonetheless.

Huddled up under Jay’s jacket, you sit on the half wall outside the football house with Chaewon, watching as Jeno blows smoke from his super king over his shoulder. Though given the way that the wind blows it back in your faces, the two of you may as well have taken him up on his offer to share. 

Letting Chaewon rest her head on your shoulder, you take a sip of your drink and feel thankful to the version of you from five minutes ago who let Jay fill your cup with lemonade instead of vodka. The two of you laugh along with Jeno until you see Yunjin rushing out of the double doors and into the garden. 

“Is there anything wrong with my outfit?” she asks, giving the three of you a twirl so you can check and mumbling a “thank you” to Jeno who reaches his arm out to stop her from falling over in the process. 

Yunjin’s outfit looks fine. At first. Until you notice the massive hole in the left side of her skirt; the sight of which leaves you and Chaewon wiping tears of laughter. Through cackles and a slight stomach ache, you manage to ask what happened. 

“I got caught on something, like, an hour ago, and I wasn’t hurt or anything so I forgot about it, and then I went out front and felt the craziest breeze on my thigh and I looked down and.. half of my skirt is just.. missing,” she explains, pausing only to take a draw from Jeno’s cigarette. “Does it look intentional at least?” 

You almost choke on your drink when Chaewon suggests using her acrylics to make an identical hole on the side, telling her to market the holes as “cutouts” and try selling it on Depop. 

“Vintage, Y2K, I.AM.GIA, Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears,” she says, although she’s had so much to drink that it all comes out as one word. “Don’t laugh at me, write it down! Babe, quick, take pictures!” 

Yunjin poses dramatically while Jeno takes product photos on her phone, and in the space between them, through the double doors, you see your boyfriend standing next to the dining table, his friends laughing around him while he stares over in your direction with a sweet smile on his face. 

And even though you can’t say for sure, you’re just glad that here, tonight, you have a pretty good idea of why Park Jongseong’s smiling at you.

© zreamy (2023), all rights reserved. do not repost, translate, or plagiarise my work. do let my know your thoughts !

permanent taglist: @asahicore

#jay smut #enhypen smut #enha smut #enhypen scenarios #jay scenarios #jay x reader #jay park smut #jay park #jay park x reader #enhypen imagines #enhypen oneshots #jay oneshots #jay imagines #enhypen hard hours #fic.jay

[thebestandrealestever]

~NOT YOU TOO!~

miles1610/hobie brown x black fem! reader

sum: miles cheats on reader w gwen, reader gets even 🤷🏽‍♀️

warnings : slang, the n word, cursing, cheating . emotional cheating. READER BEING PETTY unedited and not proofread

genre: angst, a lil of comfort?

a/n:i rly hope it don’t disappoint, part 2 w miles and reader make up eventually, cause i can’t stand writing miles as a dickhead. JUST A STORY, I DONT CONDONE CHEATING, DONT THIS TO PEOPLE.

- - - - - - - - - <\3 - - - - - - - - - -

first time in a long time.

hurting deeply inside .

there it was. the confirmation you so desperately needed to blow off on miles. you’d suspected he was messing with gwen for a little while now, him leaving you too go on missions with her that ONLY they knew about, being on facetime with her while he was at YOUR house, his highlight on instagram for her, not to mention the countless drawings of her around his room that he hid horribly, just a bunch of weird shit. you had conversations about it before but he always reassured you and gaslit you until you shook of the accusations. but now, now you knew he was cheating. miles was in the shower he left his phone on the nightstand, you looked long and hard at it. debating whether if it was a invasion of privacy, as you thought about it you get more and more upset. if gwen could be an invasion of your relationship then this didn’t really matter. you pick up the phone and put the password it, it’s his birthday (narcissist 🙄.) you go to gwen’s message thread, the blue heart next to it made you infuriated. your stomach twist and your eyes leak with tears that you don’t even try to wipe not wanting to miss anything. all of the “i love you’s” and the “im with her right now’s” made your fingers tremble as you scrolled farther into their text. why did he waste his time with you if he loved her? why would he do that to you? when did he fall out of love? what did you do? your thoughts quickly interrupted by the sound of the shower turning off you jumped up turned the phone off and put it in the same downward facing position wiping your face speed walking back to the bed pretending to watch tv.

“what’s going on now , ma?“ he asked referring to the episode you were watching. your face turned as you came up with a lie. “uh nothing really they just found out she was pregnant” you huffed, you’ve never been a good liar and miles could read your emotions like they were his own, you had no idea how you were going to go the rest of the night with him, so you didn’t. getting up from the bed you acted like your mom texted you to come home, frowning looking at the fake text. miles squinted at your pout, walking closer to you he said,

“you okay?” “my mom said i had to come home, she’s going out tonight and wants me to watch my sister, she’s sick” miles fake frowned “you want me to come with you?” he suggested walking to his drawers to get some clothes. you shook your head no “i don’t want you to get sick, it’s fine i’ll just facetime you okay?” you said as you picked up your purse and put on your shoes. “okay at least lemme drive you home. can’t have my baby walking alone in the dark.” he joked as he put on his own shoes and jacket too. you internally cringed at his sentence reminded of who he also called his “baby”.

trust, trust who?

watching my back even when i’m in the booth.

ohh, trust who?

you’re in the passenger seat of his car, seeing the blue hair tie in the cup holder that wasn’t yours. you stared at it for a bit rethinking your entire relationship. he glanced at you, then the hair tye. he spoke up rubbing your thigh trying to get your mind off of it. “u wanna go to the mall tomorrow? we can get froyo.” he suggested knowing that you liked the froyo place in the mall, you knew he was trying to make you happy so you wouldn’t question the hair tye you just went along with it.

“yea okay.” you smiled warmly at miles not meaning it at all. his phone buzzed and you both looked down at it, the speed of which he grabbed it in was almost inhumane. you side eyed him closely as he swiped the opened the message then turned his phone off placing it into the cup holder facing away from you. as you pulled up to your house he leaned forward to peck your cheek, you couldn’t stand the feeling of his lips on your skin right you. “bye mami, facetime me later okay?” he whispered as he looked into your eyes with that same look on his face that made you swoon once before. “okay, i will” you said knowing you weren’t. as soon as you got into your room you cried, searching in your mind for a clue on why he was doing this to you. you’d tears interrupted once again as your phone buzzed, who was calling you and why couldn’t they go away ?? you checked it as a small smile speared on your face it was margo. margo kess had been your best friend since before you met miles, she worked at the same spidey agency he did , or whatever the fuck it was called. you answered wiping your tears. she was eating unti she saw your expression. “what happened??? why you crying boo?” she frowned at you through the screen “miles is cheating on me with gwen, i checked his phone” you chuckled through sniffles as her jaw dropped “what the fuck?? u exposed him his ass right ??” she shouted and you shook your head “i was in denial i guess, i still can’t believe this shit” “you know what you gotta do right?” she said and your face turned into a confused expression “what i gotta do?” she rolled her eyes “get even duhhhhh!! you way to pretty to let this nigga cheat on you with a big back ass bitch you know that.” you snorted at her compliment “ion know mar, maybe gwen didn’t know we was dating” you said trying to express grace to gwen.

“bitch how?? all that nigga do is talk about you, not to mention youre his lock screen.” you tilted your head in agreement, she spoke up again “and you been told his ass all that shit he did with gwen was weird and he didn’t stop it? if he wanna act nonchalant you can act notchabitch” margo smiled as she her attempt to cheer you up worked. “speak of the damn devil, guess who texted me.” you smirked as margo raised her eyebrow “don’t tell me you talm bout hobie.” you tried to fight the smile on your face as you clicked on his message

“hey, wyd rn?” the text read. margo sighed as she saw the smile on your face “HOBIE. HOBART BROWN?? really (name)? well i mean the way he looks at you is crazy, and i been saying y’all would be mad cute .” she shrugged as she resolved up her own feelings, you nodded as you thought about it . was this really what you wanted to do? hurt miles? nonono if he didn’t care about hurting you he can’t say shit when you do it back. you texted hobie back “nun rn, wby?” and he replied almost instantly “im bored, lemme come over?” you almost laughed at how you realized that hobie has never cared about your relationship with miles . you told him yes and you said your goodbyes to margo as you got ready for him to come over, eyes burning as you saw the multiple hoodies that miles owned .

“hey love.” hobie said as he walked into your room from the window, you always noticed hoboes accent but you never noticed how attractive it was until now. “hey hobie.” you said as he lifted your chin up with index and thumb. “you’ve been crying? what happened ?” he said trying to read your face. “um nothing just stuff with miles” he almost winced at the mention of miles, he would offen tell you that he wasn’t good for you, guess he was right. “what did he do now. something when gwen again i bet” you sighed deeply remember the messages in his phone again. “yea, he’s cheating i just found out.” hobie eyebrows furrow as you say this, if he didn’t like the way miles was treating you before, he definitely hated him now.

“i was just joking but, really? what the fuck? after everything you’ve done for him? i’m gonna murder him i swear to g-“ “hobie no, no don’t say anything. i’m fine i’m gonna deal with it myself.” you say pushing him back with your fingers. “at least let me make you feel better.” he said giving you a tight hug. he smirked as he said “you know i’d never make you feel like that.” you snorted into his chest pulling away, hobie grabbed your face with both hands and kissed your forehead. “you don’t deserve this ,(name) you deserve the entire world” he muttered , looking down at you with so much care. stand on your tipe toes to kiss hobie, he doesn’t kiss back for a while in shock but then he reciprocates it and you know you shouldn’t do this, that’s the exact reason why you did it anyway . you pull away looking up into his deep brown eyes, you needed this, comfort from someone that wasn’t hurting you. someone that wasn’t him. he kissed you again more aggressively this time. he pulls away this time only to catch his breath. he pecks your lips once , then twice. he smiles at you then walks to the bed and turns on the tv, you thought it was weird but you also didn’t want to talk about it, and definitely didn’t wanna do anything further. after watching tv with him at a uncomfortable distance you decide to address the elephant in the room.

“so, we not gon talk about that?” you turn off the tv before turning your head to look at him and he does the same “we don’t have to, you know i like you. but i don’t think you need that tonight, i think you just need me here.” he said and honestly, he was right. even though he had you all the way fucked up onna tuesday, you still loved him. you just nod at hobie and he kisses your cheek wrapping his arms around you so he’s spooning you, the way hobie is holding makes you think that he’s the only boy in the world. he falls asleep and you lie awake looking at the ceiling, you decide to go on instagram looking at people’s story until you see gwen’s story, it was a picture of her and miles in his car her feet up on the dashboard, the same car you were just in, the same car you had your first kiss in. that’s not even the half of it, the picture had a “besties” caption on it but you could tell from 20 miles away they were far from that. you take a picture of hobie asleep and post it, tagging him too copying the same caption as gwen had. after maybe 20 minutes miles replies to it “wtf? why are you letting hobie touch you like that? and i thought u had to watch your sister” “and i thought you and gwen were besties?” you reply back sending him the screenshots you send to your phone if gwen and miles text he starts blowing u up like crazy but you put your phone down and snuggle closer into hobie, maybe you could get even.

doing my own thing,

i’m down to come clean,

not like you.

lmk wat u think 😭.

#black reader #miles morales #across the spiderverse #miles morales x reader #1610 miles x reader #hobie brown #hobie my beloved #hobie x reader #hobie brown x reader #hobart brown #gwen stacy #gwen x miles #margo kess #spider byte #female reader #Spotify