#me: i feel like everyone hates me on saturdays bc i only work four hours

[semercury]

I miss having a professional tell me not everyone hates me every other week. I am suffering :(

#stuff sarah says #me: i feel like everyone hates me on saturdays bc i only work four hours #mom: what??? #i cant explain it #i mean i can #im not overworking myself #im not on the verge of death or a breakdown so i MUST not be doing something right #and also people see me? and talk to me??? #and so like yeah obviously theyre going to hate me #anyway i saw a spider on some chips at work and i almost died of a heart attack then and there #idk idk idk i just hhh ??? everyone could hate me!!!! how would i know?? what would i do??

[junhuiste]

experi-meant to be ⋆ park wonbin

pairing: wonbin x gn reader

tags/warnings: fluff, cursing, college au, laboratory environment, one mention of baking, 1600 words

a/n: i meant to publish this on valentine’s day since i had lab that day but i never finished it lol. there’s some microbio lab procedure jargon so like this is what streaking plates is if you want a visual lmfaoao. this is my first published work in like three years it feels weird haha + i might change my layout/header for fics but for now i’ll keep the same layout i've had for past fics

wonbin believes U are the uracil to his adenine—you should always be paired together.

| seunghan: dude 

| seunghan: lowkey i can’t come to lab bc my car won’t fucking start so i’ll have to make it up next week :\ but taehyun and his partner would probably be willing to help you out with calculations and clean up hopefully

Wonbin pants heading up the stairs into the classroom lab, cheeks immediately pink as he’s made a spectacle amongst everyone already sitting and tuned into the TA’s pre-lab lesson. Sighing as he processes Seunghan’s text, Wonbin turns to the drawing of bacterial growth curves on the whiteboard but is soon after preoccupied with the fact that there is no Taehyun on a stool. There’s just your backside entirely in front of him. 

Taehyun is one to set up all his materials before the TA even steps foot through the lab door so if he isn’t here now then that means—

“Guess you’re stuck with me for today.” 

Wonbin tries to swallow but it gets stuck halfway down his throat and is about to go into a choke type cough frenzy when he surprises himself and softly clears his throat instead. His thoughts are all just stuck there—in the middle of his esophagus, begging for them to travel back up to his brain so he has enough stamina to stick it through the four hour class. 

“No hate to him because Taehyunnie’s a tad faster at getting through the steps, so you know, we’re usually out thirty minutes early, but I can promise you I’m better at calculations. And I’m more precise with measurements,” you let out a small giggle before setting your backpack on the floor next to Wonbin’s.

The commotion of pipettes being thrown onto the surface, glass tubes clinking, and sneakers squeaking rushing to obtain their samples is right away drowned out in Wonbin’s ears by the sight of you perched atop the stool a mere few inches away from him. He tries to keep his chest from heaving at bay by taking his notebook out of his backpack and reviewing the method for today’s class. The solution is only short lived though, promptly taking notice of how you gather materials from the drawer while simultaneously reading through your own notebook. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Wonbin assumes his seat in the third to last row of his Virology lecture, close enough to the door that he can be among the first to leave as soon as “see you guys next time” leaves Professor Choi’s lips. He longs for the day (ideally it would be quite before the last week of classes but realistically that’s the best he has to offer for now) that he musters up just the slightest bit of courage to join you and Taehyun in the second row, where Seunghan also occasionally accompanies you two. It’s only the third week of this semester, but perhaps the sixth course of his over the past three years Wonbin’s seen you in. From Biochemistry to Rhetoric 2, he has never taken place at a desk next to yours. 

Wonbin’s always aching to know how you’d answer everything he could ever ask you, be it the attendance quiz question or your weekend plans—what time you usually roll out of bed, whether or not you stroll to the local farmer’s market near campus, if you’re spending Saturday with a special someone. He needs to hear you laugh at Taehyun’s cynicism about college. He needs to hear it up close, not having to strain his ear when he’s fifteen rows behind when you crack up at your friend during the five minute break Professor Choi gives the class. 

But Wonbin will take what he can get for now, and if that’s helping you fulfill your wish of completing the lab procedure as quickly as possible, he’ll do it. 

“I can do the calculations for us,” you begin, “would you mind getting our mutant strains at the front of the class and streak the Petri dishes?” 

Wonbin nods almost too enthusiastically and curses at himself for seeming embarrassingly desperate in front of you. Sure, he’d like to muster up the courage to ask you out, but today he’ll try to take it one step at a time.

When Wonbin returns with new plates to grow your bacteria on and two tubes filled with your bacterial strains, you scoot your chair closer to his to later show the finished calculations. He catches a whiff of your light perfume and almost falls out of his own chair. 

As he’s setting up the Bunsen burner for sterilization, you chuckle, “you know the real reason Taehyun’s not here today is because he left town last night to get a head start on the extravagant romantic weekend he has planned with Gaeul.”

“If there’s one way to use our one free unexcused absence, that’ll do it,” Wonbin replies. 

“Do you have any plans for Valentine’s Day, Wonbin? I mean if you did I just hope you wouldn’t leave me early like Taehyun did,” your eyes meet his for a brief second before flitting back to your notebook.

Wonbin’s grip on the matchstick to light the burner loosens. He just barely catches himself before the match could fall from his hand onto the lab bench. What he needed to get a grip on was his fucking sanity—he almost set the classroom on fire because his heart instead is aflame for yours. 

Taking a breath, Wonbin exhales when the flame turns to blue, finally lighting the Bunsen burner. 

“Nope, no plans,” he briefly turns to you. There’s a beat and he considers that asking you back would seem too forward, but he does it anyway. 

Upon seeing your grin before you open your mouth, he turns his attention right back to the tubes and plates in front of him. 

It’s so over. 

For a second Wonbin’s relieved, because he thinks he can actually get through the next two hours without overthinking his micro movements in front of you. Now that it’s over for him, maybe he can actually pay attention to the way the metal loop he’s holding makes contact with the jelly-like agar inside the plastic plate and not disappoint Seunghan with the results. However, it’s not realistic because even still, Wonbin takes note of all your beauty and remains completely bewitched.

“Honestly I wish...I mean Minjeong, Yunjin and I are gonna do a rom-com binge and bake desserts…but you know…not any plans with someone like that…” 

Your temporary lab partner tries to hide his smile and nods silently as he continues switching between spreading bacteria on the plate with the metal loop and then sterilizing the loop in the blue flame. 

The rest of lab goes smoothly as Wonbin tries to quell the embers within him for the time remaining. There’s forty minutes left but technically to you Wonbin knows time is dashing away and it should feel like there’s what but only ten minutes left to do everything. Your pair was a few steps ahead of the others, just like how it would be when Taehyun accompanied you every week. 

Wonbin has been psyching himself up the past two hours to finally ask you out but currently he’s stuck in his head and just can’t seem to get it out. Does he chase you after you’ve stepped foot out of the lab or should he leave you be? Or maybe he can try next week. He’ll keep telling himself that until there’s one day of instruction left and then he won’t see you for three months and then he’ll lament the entire summer to Seunghan that he didn’t say shit. 

He can do that…or just rip the bandage off at an agonizing speed. 

The last Petri dish that Wonbin holds is being wrapped in parafilm to prevent contamination. He’d been going through the motions of the procedure while simultaneously not paying attention to his surroundings, at his own self’s behest. You’ve already cleaned the entire lab bench and he doesn’t notice until he hears “see you in Virology,” and suddenly you’re slinging your backpack over your shoulder. 

It’s now or next week…or never—wait you know that Wonbin’s in your Virology class? What you said is ringing in his ears and it hits him all at once.

Petri dishes in hand and turning around, Wonbin freezes in his tracks.

“Um…”

Your eyebrows furrow.

“Do you want to hang out tomorrow?” his own mouth betrays him and suddenly it’s all coming out much too quickly for his liking. 

You’re about to answer but before you can even get a word in, “I-I don’t mean to interfere with your plans with your friends but uh, if you wanted to do something like that I’m down.”

Your lips press into a line and Wonbin is about to pass out from the threatening fluorescent classroom lights. 

“Park Wonbin…are you asking me out on a date?” He can practically feel his sweat melting the parafilm tape off and a vision of him dropping the Petri dishes in front of you, cracking open and shattering, exposing E.coli to everyone in the room flashes before him. He blinks once and calms his vice grip on the plates. 

“Yes. Yes I am asking you out on a date,” Wonbin looks down at your sneakers, not knowing where else to shift his gaze to. 

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” you smirk, slinging the other strap of your backpack over your other shoulder and saluting.

Park Wonbin swears his heart is on fire and does a backflip off a fifty foot cliff. A curve forming on his lips, he smiles slightly waving with the plates still in his hand, “see ya…”

You halt your forward movement and turn back around, “Wonbin?” he perks up again, “you should sit next to me in lecture on Tuesday.”

#riize imagines #riize scenarios #wonbin scenarios #wonbin x reader #riize fluff #wonbin fluff #wonbin imagines #riize #wonbin

[king-star]

hii! can you please make a natasha x reader fic where they both have been dating for a while and it's natasha's birthday and the reader surprises her with a brand new suit that she made herself and nat cries bc she never got a meaningful gift and the reader also surprises her with cake and more romantic gifts. you could make the reader tony's sister so it would make more sense that she's good at making suits but you don't have to!! thank you sm i need sum cute natty 😫

Birthday Suit

Warning: Use of the pet name Sunflower,

Match: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Genre: Fluff

A/N: So this one was fun. I hate my birthday but this actually was cute. I’m trying a new way of presenting the dialogue. aesthetically it looks better but I’m not sure how it reads. I've seen other authors do the dialogue on completely seperate lines so just lmk if this is good.

Word Count: ~2.5 k

Summary: It’s Natasha's birthday, and despite her acting like she hates it you shower her with love.

The smell of cooking cake fills the compound. Even from the workshop, where you are, the sweet scent permeates the air. You have been baking for long enough to know what that smell means, the cake is almost done.

You check the clock on the wall. 2:44. Nat would be home at 5.

“Shit. I need to get this done,”

You shake your head and set down your wire cutters. The list of everything you need to get done before she arrives rolls through your mind.

It was her birthday. She didn’t know her actual birthday so years ago she made one up. The chosen date was a closely guarded secret she only shared with those she trusted most. For the most part the assassin didn’t even celebrate. When you had asked a week prior what she wanted to do she had brushed you off claiming,

“I don’t really care. As long as I get to be with my love.”

She had kissed you, hoping the kiss would fog your mind from any further planning. Unfortunately for her you were a big schemer, always going as big as you could for your friend’s birthdays.

You walked out of the workshop, making one last longing look at her unfinished gift on your messy work table. No one was around today. The one Saturday everyone had off a month. Natasha had gone shopping with Wanda, a plan conncocted to give you plenty of time to get everything ready.

“Friday do you mind turing the oven off?”

you asked the A.I. as you headed down the hallway.

“Of course Agent Y/L/N,”

entering the kitchen you picked up a discarded list of everything that needed to be done. Two items were crossed off “Bake the cake, movie fort.” The unmarked items looked at you teasingly and you felt anxiety rise in your chest. What if you didn’t get everything done and this birthday made Natasha hate birthdays even more? You shook your head trying to chase off the thoughts and went to the oven.

“One perfectly baked chocolate cake coming up,”

grabbing an oven mitt you pulled the cake out of the oven and placed it on the counter. Carefully you coerced the cake from the pan and set it on the cooling rack.

Back when Wanda and you ventured into the baking realm you had begged Tony to put in a floor to ceiling blast chiller. The kind that was always on baking competitions. He reluctantly agreed, with the price of always having to give him a taste of your creations. The freezer was immensely helpful in tight circumstances. You were more than grateful for it now.

You set your cake into the freezer and went to the pantry to pull out all the ingredients you needed for icing. You poured the powdered sugar and placed the butter into the bowl. When you turned on the mixer a cloud of sugary powder exploded in the kitchen. You blinked and licked your lips. Bringing a hand up to wipe your face, you laughed hard. Sugar covered the entire counter and floor beneath you, not to mention your already grease stained clothes.

“Wow, is my little sibling doing coke in here? And without me!”

a snarky voice sounded from across the room. You opened your eyes and squinted at your older brother with a scrunched nose.

“Can it Tony,”

You growled, grabbing a towel and wiping yourself off the counter. Tony laughed at you and opened the freezer to look at what sweet treats awaited him tonight.

“A cake? Are we celebrating?”

He laughed and made a teasing face. You rolled your eyes and called out to Friday.

“Can you order me four containers of icing from the store to be delivered?”

“You got it!”

her chipper accented voice came over the audio. You threw the towel in the sink and landed a punch in Tony’s arm as you left to go change.

“You better not eat any of that cake until Nat has had at least one slice. I know where you keep those rare magic cards you think no one knows about and I will not hesitate to cut them all in half,”

He looked at you in shock. Whether it was because you knew about the secret stash or because you would dare cut them you weren’t sure. The only way to get Tony mad was to go for something he couldn’t replace with money.

“YOU WOULDN'T FUCKING DARE,”

You run away as he climbs out of his chair and chases after you. You run into your room and lay on the door to push back a Tony who was only a few steps behind you. When you finally force the door into the frame you turn the lock and fall to the floor laughing.

Angry mumbling came from the other side. Tony pounded on the door twice before, defeated. walking away. After catching your breath you pulled your sugar stained clothes off and changed into the outfit you’d set aside that morning.

“Y/N the man just arrived with the icing,”

Friday called out to your room and you nodded.

“Thank you Friday. Have him set the bags in the kitchen,”

Friday hummed in agreement. You stood up and looked in the mirror checking yourself out. When you were satisfied with the look you unlocked the door and turned to the right. You really needed to finish Natasha’s present. You wouldn’t even have time to test it properly. You really hoped the phrase “it’s the thought that counts,” was true. Her gift could be something that got you endless kisses or a real crash and burn.

Making it to the lab you set your hand on your head and groaned. You really hoped it worked. It was so pretty. You grabbed the wrapping paper and box and set it in with a kiss.

“Natty, I hope you like it,”

The gift finished the fort built, and cake baked, there was only one thing left to do, ice the damn cake. You could bake sure, but only Wanda ever mastered the art of making it look beautiful.

When you made it to the kitchen Tony was nowhere in sight and a plastic bag with what you assumed was icing was set on the counter. You pulled out a butter knife and dug in, hoping this looked somewhat edible. Wanda was the one who was skilled at decorating. You could make the elaborate pastry chef treats, but you could never handle the finer details of making it look pretty.

~

You were in the workshop when Friday alerted you that Wanda and Natasha were home. A feeling similar to anxiety or excitement fluttered in your chest. This was the first time you’d celebrated her birthday with your girlfriend. You wanted her to like birthdays again. To feel as special and loved as you can pour out for her.

“Thank you Friday. Please tell them I’m in the workshop and will be heading to the game room shortly,”

You set down the gauntlet you’d been fixing while waiting for them and brushed off your outfit. Your eyes searched over the shirt for stains, and when you were satisfied you were clean you headed to your “party”.

Wanda was the first to come in. She threw her hands to her face and “oood” and “aweeed” over the spread you had out.

“Y/N your cake! it’s…. adorable,”

you punched her in the shoulder with a frown. She fell over laughing.

“I TRIED! and I’m sure it tastes amazing.”

you crossed your arms and pouted. She sat back up still laughing and patted your back.

“She’ll love it Y/N. Even if it had ‘fuck you Nat’ written on top she’d love it,”

you smiled at the complement and stopped pouting. You were explaining the technology behind Nat’s present when the woman of the hour finally walked in.

“What is all this? Are y’all having a party? and didn’t invite me,”

she sat down next to you intertwining your fingers with hers and kissing your shoulder. You smiled as the excitement anxiety mix returned.

“Actually…. it’s for you,”

You smiled and kissed her hands. She looked genuinely surprised. You really hoped the feeling was happy excitement.

“oh- Y/N y-you remembered? and you didn’t have to do any of this. I thought I told you i didn’t care to celebrate,”

you felt Wanda stand up to leave with a pat on your shoulder. You smiled up at her and turned back to Natasha.

“I know I know, but I wanted to do something special. You love me so well and work so hard all the time. You deserve a day that’s unapologetically about you,”

You knew if Natasha didn’t have such complete control of her emotions she would be crying. The agape mouth gave that away. You smiled and leaned forward pulling her into a deep, intimate kiss. Feeling her smile against your lips you pulled away and leaned your forehead against hers.

“I love you Natashka. I will do anything to make you feel like Queen of the world,”

with that she started crying. You frowned and wiped away the tears.

“I really hope those are happy tears,”

she nodded quickly and smiled, sniffling a little.

“Very very happy tears. happy ‘I don’t know what on Earth i did to deserve you’ tears,”

“It is I who does not deserve you. The Great Black Widow. I’m just here to make you smile, it’s my life goal,”

you bowed as much as you could sitting down. Placing a peck on her lips you turned back to the presents and pointed.

“Which one should we open first?”

she pondered and then picked up a small box. Nimble fingers unwrapped the box and pulled out a Ring. You had managed to get her size weeks earlier fitting one of your own on her finger when hanging out. She looked at the little silver band with a carved sunflower at the head. A smile bloomed across her face and she hugged you.

“Oh my goodness Y/N, it’s so pretty…,”

she slid it onto her fingers, finding the one it fit best and stared at it. You hugged her shoulder and kissed her cheek.

“Well, you are my sunflower. It’s just a reminder when we are away,”

Her eyes lit up at the nickname. It wasn’t as common for you to use it as baby or sweetheart, but sunflower had always been her favourite.

She looked at the other boxes realising they were also for her. You picked up the next box, a medium sized one and handed it to her. You were saving the biggest for last.

She was just in awe and set it down before unwrapping it. Her hands snaked around your waist and pulled you flush to her. Her soft lips pressed kisses to your jaw and she set her head on your shoulder.

“Thank you so much Y/N, I- no one has done something like this for me ever,”

She hugged you tight again and then let go picking back up the present. You nodded and kissed her head. Pushing some hair out of her face you stroked her hair softly. Her hands once again unwrapped the gift. She squeaked at the sight of the book underneath the paper.

Natasha never got to read much on her own accord growing up. The red room picked out books for her education but never anything she would actually enjoy. Long ago Natasha had told you the first book she read after getting out of the red room was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and since then she adored the book. You had found, and paid for with Tony’s credit card, a first edition of the book. The auction was rough but you needed that book for Natasha.

Natasha stared at the book once, again jaw hanging open. She wiped her hands on her pants before handingly the book with utmost care. She flipped it over and ran her fingertips over the indented letters and gold illustration on the front.

“Y-you like it? I know you said you like Alice in Wonderland. It’s uh… actually a first edition copy. Tony was about ready to kill me when he saw me pay for the bid,”

You laughed nervously. She turned the book around again and then set it on the coffee table. She tackled you and pushed you back on the couch kissing all over your face. You yelped in surprise then grabbed her hips, catching her lips and kissing her roughly. She melted into the kiss but you pulled away.

“As much as I love this Natty, let’s open your last gift and eat some cake,”

You sat up and pulled her so she was in your lap. You placed a soft kiss to the back of her neck as she reached for the last gift. It was heavy but the assassin had no trouble lifting it.

“After that we can makeout in the fort I made. yeah?”

You wrapped your arms around her waist and pulled her close to you, rubbing circles on her thigh. She laughed and nodded, blushing profusely.

“I like that idea Y/N,”

She opened the box and pulled out the gift you put months of effort into. This time her reaction wasn’t as instantaneous. You helped her pull all the pieces out and set it on the coffee table. She looked at it slightly perplexed.

“I’m sorry… I’m not exactly sure what it is,”

She pouted and looked at you. You smiled and nodded knowing she wouldn’t. You set it out so she could see all the parts.

“Well… uh it’s a new suit. You always say that you don’t like how tight and revealing your other ones are so I kinda beefed this one up so it focuses on functionality,”

She nodded along as you explained. A look of understanding crossed her face as she pulled at the sleeves.

“ohhhhhhhh. That makes so much sense. I- Y/N what the fuck. I can’t express it enough. You are the best, you listened to me and used it to give me the best gifts i’ve ever gotten. You are the most thoughtful partner,”

You beamed. The feeling you knew she was struggling to express, it was exactly what you’d wanted her to feel. Loved, heard, appreciated, and cared for.

“I’m glad sunflower. That’s what I wanted. To make you feel as good as you deserve. D-do you mind if I tell you a bit about the features? I didn’t have time to test some of them so I will need to do that before you take it into combat,”

She nodded and slid off your lap to look at you. You patted her legs and squeezed then held at the sleeve first.

“Well of course it wouldn’t be a suit for the Black widow without gauntlets. These can change through three different modes for different levels and types of stuns also a laser if you need that for aiming,”

You flipped on the laser and pointed it at a pot then turned it back off.

“Also I made it so the suit can suction to your body but be limp to put it on. a lot easier to slip on ya know. And there is mobile but thick padding on all major points of contact for falling. Shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, the like.”

Natasha ran her hands over the surprisingly thin padding and smiled.

“Wow baby that’s… amazing,”

You nodded and picked up the bag attached to the back.

“And uh there’s a parachute built in as well as pockets up the legs, arms and boots so you don’t have to have the belts. They are sorta magnetic so you can like open them easily but when they are closed everything stays in. OH AND THE BOOTS,”

You started to ramble on about the energy absorbing boots you worked with Shuri on that would allow Nat to drop from double the height of a normal human with no damage to her knees or feet. Nat just stared at you hungirly.

“Hey baby, I seriously appreciate the gift. It’s honestly the best thing I've ever gotten. Why don’t we try it out tomorrow and you can show me EVERYTHING. For now we can… sit in the fort like you said,”

She had a cocky smile and you blushed at her antics. You nodded quickly, cutting off your rambling. Her hands found your waist and she pulled you off the couch and into the pillow fort you had built.

“I uh- got a movie for us to watch. Do you want to?”

She nodded and smiled. A look that very much meant “Yes. That's sweet, but I doubt we will be watching it.” You pulled her into your lap, setting your hands on her waist. She draped hers over your shoulders and rubbed light circles on the back of your neck. You leaned forward and trapped her lips in a kiss. Soft but full of passion.

The rest of that night was spent watching the movie and kissing. When you finally remembered the cake a slice had been taken out of it, with

“You were busy with Romanoff so I took what I was owed. The package has been moved, try getting me now little sibling.”

On a sticky note beside it. Natasha had laughed, unsure exactly what had happened but sure it was a story she would much enjoy hearing.

She had moaned over how good the cake was after laughing at how “Adorably” it was decorated.

“So Nat… did I make this birthday worth celebrating?”

She smiled wide and nodded.

“Yes Y/N, if every birthday was like this I would never want to stop celebrating.”

Tag List:

@xburningbluex @zoeyserpentluck @iamgaiiiuwu @natasharomanoffswife @fleurlovesbucky @fayhar @ymzki-haruki @lostandsearching

Natasha Tag list:

@basiclesbianbitch @stephanieromanoff @sapphicshots @madamevirgo @choni-trimberly@wlwlovesreading @i-just-like-storage @screamsin-gay @ymzki-haruki

#black widow x reader #black widow x y/n #black widow fluff #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x y/n #natasha romanoff fluff #black widow #natasha romanoff #black widow fanfic #natasha romanoff fanfic #avengers #mcu #marvel #my fic #king-star

[fruitcoops]

Could we please have a prequel to the praise kink fic? Because i really want to know why were Sirius and Remus not together and what did Remus send him. I really need context

I was hoping somebody would ask for this!! The aforementioned fic is here for any curious souls (18+ please) and SW credit goes to @lumosinlove!

TW for spicy texts (not exactly nudes), and smutty feelings with nothing explicit

The bus went over a bump and Sirius winced as his shins knocked against the back of the seat in front of him, connecting with the metal brace inside. “Fuck.”

“You sure you don’t want to switch?” James asked next to him. Sirius glanced down at the veritable wall of gear and empty snack bags between them, then back to James in disbelief. He shrugged, then set his headphones back over his ears. “Worth a shot.”

“Merde,” Sirius hissed as a pothole nearly took off his kneecap. He gritted his teeth and readjusted, drawing his legs closer to his chest. I want to be home, he thought, allowing himself an internal moment to whine.

He checked his phone—not even ten in the morning. It was a Saturday, so Remus would probably just be rolling out of bed, still sleepy and soft with his hair sticking up like a disgruntled cat’s. Sirius sighed heavily and stared out the window at the small town rolling past in the distance; there was little he wouldn’t give to be back with him instead of on the way to a full week of conferences.

“Why did we have to win the Cup?” he grumbled.

James lifted one side of his headphones. “What?”

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t like they had had much time to themselves before that, either—Sirius’ schedule was packed with interviews that felt more like interrogations, and Remus had been running the PT department mostly by himself while Moody took a well-deserved vacation. They were dead on their feet every night, worked to the bone with little energy left to do more than cuddle and fall asleep. Still, Sirius was grateful for every second of it.

He waited ten more minutes before giving in.

New Message To: Re

Bonjour mon loup <3

There was no immediate response, which made sense, though he was a little bit disappointed. Sirius closed his eyes and tried to make himself relax; it would be at least another six hours before they arrived at their destination, and the bad weather gathering overhead didn’t bode well for quick travel.

His phone buzzed gently and he scrambled to answer. Don’t be Reg, don’t be Reg, don’t be Reg—

New Message From: Re

Morning love!

Thanks for the bagels <3

“Fuck yes,” Sirius said under his breath. The bagels had been a last-minute decision as he crept through the house in the early hours of the morning after carefully detaching himself from Remus with a final half-asleep farewell kiss. There was no guarantee he would remember breakfast with everything going on, so Sirius figured it was a safe bet to toast them and leave them on the countertop before heading out.

Message To: Re

Pas de problem

Sleep well?

Message From: Re

Decent

Missed you :(

Sirius rested his temple against the cold window with a soft sound. He hated leaving at different times, but that was just how their life worked at the moment.

Message To: Re

Missed you too <3

Three small dots appeared for a long moment before vanishing without a trace just as his heart rate began picking up. Where’d you go? he almost wondered aloud. Something bumped his arm and James raised a quizzical brow. “Loops,” Sirius said by way of explanation.

“I figured. He okay?”

“I think so? He just…disappeared on me.” Sirius was well-aware of how plaintive he sounded—James’ teasing smile was completely unnecessary.

“Aw, Cap,” he laughed, reaching over to mess with his beanie until Sirius slapped his hand away. “It’s alright, buddy, it’s just a couple days.”

Sirius jammed his hat back on his head and flicked James on the unprotected bit of his ear, making him yelp. “Fuck off, I know you’ll be a mess as soon as Lily FaceTimes with my godson.”

“He has a name, you know.”

“Sorry. You’ll be a mess as soon as she FaceTimes with Pocket Pots, who happens to be my godson.”

James rolled his eyes. “I regret giving you that title.”

“Nah, you don’t.”

As if on cue, his phone lit up again; Sirius ignored James’ snickering as he quickly unlocked it.

New Message From: Re

When will you be at the hotel?

“That’s it?” he muttered.

Message To: Re

That was a lot of typing for one sentence

6-7 hrs, if the weather holds

Why?

Message From: Re

Sorry lmao Reg came in for a bit

Just curious :) Keep me updated?

Message To: Re

Will do <3

Tell Reg he needs to wash his sheets. It’s been over a month.

A small thumbs-up emoji was his only answer, and he tried not to be too bummed. Remus liked having things to do; sitting there and texting Sirius while he slowly got further and further away was probably not his preferred way to spend a morning. With a sigh that was likely a bit too dramatic for the situation he was in, Sirius faced the window once more and buckled in for a long ride.

He chatted off and on with the others when they stopped for lunch, but everyone was exhausted from the combination of a packed week and an early morning. Even Talker stayed fairly quiet, and James kept his headphones on for most of the trip.

Sirius finally succumbed to his tiredness and put some music on, then dozed for an hour or three while they traveled through yet another field. A few halfhearted calls of “cows” made their way around the bus, though nobody seemed particularly enthused about being packed in with double the gear due to a broken storage compartment. Donuts and gas station coffee could only do so much.

“Just crossed the state border,” Arthur called from the front of the bus as Sirius tried to ignore the cramping in his thighs. Three hours. Just three more.

His music was interrupted by a soft jingle alert and he pulled his phone out, hoping against hope that Regulus hadn’t caused a fire anywhere. It was unlikely given the…well, everything about him, but with Sirius’ luck it could happen.

New Message From: Re

How far?

Message To: Re

About 3 hrs. Ran into some detours

Good day?

Remus remained silent on the other end and Sirius frowned. That was rather rude, and highly unusual. Between the two of them, Remus was the one who kept conversations going past the initial question to be answered.

Message From: Re

Attachment: 1 Image

Love you! Call me when you get there : )

Sirius opened the attachment and almost threw his phone in utter shock. Skin. Bare skin everywhere, its smooth edges broken up only by tight black fabric that may as well have been painted onto the curve of Remus’ ass. “Oh my god,” he whimpered, voice barely audible even to his own ears. It had been taken in their bedroom mirror; Remus looked over his shoulder, and Sirius caught the corner of a devious smirk on his lips. “Oh, you fucker.”

Message From: Re

Thoughts? They’re cozy

Message To: Re

Did you miss the part where I said three (3) hours

Message From: Re

Nope

Second one is a guessing game and u get a prize if u get it right : )

The second photograph was more zoomed-in than the first and Sirius wracked his brain, running through his mental catalogue of Remus’ body to figure out the answer. It did absolutely nothing to calm the situation in his pants.

He had no idea what the promised prize was, but anticipation made his hands shake slightly as he carefully scanned the picture. The shadows caught it at an odd angle—it wasn’t the steady slopes of his face or neck, nor was it the strong curve of a shoulder. Not enough freckles, either, he thought.

A lightbulb lit in the back of his mind.

Message To: Re

Right hip

Another thought connected half a second later.

Holy fuck you took them off

Is that my prize?

Re?

Remus Lupin I swear to god

TEXT ME BACK

Message From: Re

Bingo!

Christ you’re impatient, I was gone for like 2 mins

He chanced a look toward Pots, whose head lolled to the side as he snored.

Message To: Re

Hey quick question why are you like this

It’s a good thing Pots is out cold bc this bus is too small to hide anything

Message From: Re

Haha sux to be you

Sirius’ cheeks heated with a whole cocktail of different emotions as he furiously typed a response.

Message To: Re

‘Sux to be you’???

Are you 13 yrs old????

Message From: Re

Do you want your prize or not u horndog

Message To: Re

YOU MADE ME THIS WAY

He took a deep breath through his nose and flexed his fingers.

Yes please

A simple smiley face—Sirius would never see those things the same—popped up, followed by an audio file. He triple-checked that his headphones were plugged in before tapping ‘play’ with an unsteady thumb.

His face went very, very hot before all the blood went straight to his groin and he closed his eyes, covering his mouth with his hand. Breathy sounds came through the heavy earphones, a little more crackly than they would be in-person; he heard Remus’ gasp catch in his throat and crossed his legs as best he could in the too-small seat, torn between thanking and cursing any higher power. He could practically see Remus’ face in his mind’s eye as the noises continued, intermixed with fragments of desperate words.

The file came to an end after what felt like the blink of an eye and a hundred years, and Sirius did not look away from the violently red seat cushion in front of him for a long moment as his brain came back online. He couldn’t remember the last time he was so turned on.

He took a few deep breaths, though it did nothing to erase the poorly-muffled whines that still rang between his ears like church bells. Sirius huffed and turned to grab his waterbottle out of his duffel, only to make direct eye contact with Finn across the aisle.

Sirius froze.

Finn grinned.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he hissed, too low to wake James but just loud enough to carry over the four feet separating them. Finn’s smile widened. “Stop it. Stop it right now.”

“How’s Loops?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“That good, huh?”

“O’Hara, I swear to god—”

“Oh, is Cap spilling secrets?” Kasey asked, poking his head over the back of the seat.

Finn opened his mouth, but the force of Sirius’ glare must have been enough to at least intimidate him a little, because he shook his head. The smug Cheshire grin remained. “Nah, just having a chat about our plans when we get home.”

Kasey groaned. “You’re a lucky man, O’Hara. Both your people get to come with you. Nat sent me a promise, like, twenty minutes ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. I won’t be available tonight from six to eight if anyone was wondering.”

“Did she really?” Finn looked back to Sirius, who bit the inside of his cheek and tried to keep his cool. Two and a half hours, and then he would be safe. Just two and a half more hours.

[thepencilnerd]

Melophile | Part II

– please read part 1 if you haven’t  – (it can be found on my masterlist ^^ )

melo·phile- noun; a person with great love and affluent passion for music

➵ A piano major and a composition major collaborating for a final semester project. It seemed straightforward, right? But what if you were forced to pair up with the school’s most problematic genius, Min Yoongi? Add to that the fact that he absolutely hated your guts and you had the perfect recipe for disaster. How can someone you’ve never even met before despise you like a sworn enemy? Getting to know each other was hard enough, but what happens when the most beautiful, painful, and darkest secrets force the two of you to expose the thing you each guarded the most—your own emotions?

➵ pairing: min yoongi x reader

➵ genre: AU! enemies to lovers, fluff, angst, smut, slow-ish burn 

➵ word count: 27k (sorry mobile readers)

➵ warnings: swearing, too much fluff, angst, discussions of depression, oral sex (m&f receiving), marking, biting, hair pulling, cumplay/eating, light impreg kink, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it), i’m still screaming while writing these warnings bc i thought it’d pretty tame this chapter i was wrong

a/n: my longest work to date :’) i hope you all enjoyed and thank you so much for staying with me on this emotional rollercoaster <3 

Previously on part one of Melophile...

“Stop calling me that.” Each word came out through pursed lips and clamped teeth. Leaning into you so that he was directly in your line of vision, his lip curled into a smirk and his eyes flaunted a veil of malicious intent.

“Make me,” he snarled. Never in your life had two words made you more furious than at that exact moment.  

“Fuck you, Yoongi,” you spat out, face just centimeters away from his. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, I really am, okay? But you don’t know a single goddamn thing about me, so stop acting like you’re the only one who’s been hurt in the past.”

Moving closer to you in response, you felt his hot breath fan over your lips, making you lean back instinctively.

“I’m not hurt,” he pointed out with venom dripping from his voice. Leaning towards the shell of your ear, his exhaling breath tickled your neck.

“I’m broken, _____…” Yoongi growled.

“Fucking hell...” you muttered silently while pinching the bridge of your nose. Contemplating your reason for existence, you felt an unpleasant stickiness rub the inside of your thighs but ignored it as you found yourself studying the face of the sleeping figure beside you—what a great distraction to start off the day.

Yoongi’s sleeping face was the epitome of serenity. Lying on his side, his face pressed against the pillow like a marshmallow in a way that made his cheek and lips squish to the side lazily. His eyes were shut and his mouth was open the slightest bit, a faint snore emitting from his throat each time his chest rose and fell.

A grin sneakily crept onto your face when you took the time to admire how peaceful he looked. It was probably the first time you’d ever seen him so—exposed. Realizing the mistake of your words, your timing couldn’t have been worse when Yoongi’s eyelids fluttered open.

The corners of his eyes formed into half-moons as he crinkled his nose. Stretching over your body with his free arm, you shuffled away from his reach and rolled off the bed.

You let out a strangled yelp as your body tumbled onto the floor. As if you didn’t have enough bruises from last night already...

Hurrying to peek over the edge of the bed, Yoongi’s face bore a bemused look and you’d bet a million dollars he was about three seconds away from—

“Are you okay?” he chuckled, bursting into a fit of raspy laughter with a lazy smile. 

His upbeat aura made you analyze his face for any indication that he was hungover or on possibly on something, but all you saw was a genuinely cheery boy. 

“Y–Yeah...” you stuttered. “I’m good. Fine. I’m fine.”

Softening his gaze, he sighed and rolled back into bed, staring at the ceiling. What the hell were you supposed to do now? Struggling to find a way to break the ice, you only realized then now dry and scratchy your throat felt.

Clearing your throat, you scratched your head at your surroundings. “Is this your room?” Mumbling something that resembled an ‘mhmph,’ you took his half-ass mumble as a yes.

“How did we, um...” you hiccuped, nerves beginning to take over. You resorted to pointing to random points around the room sheepishly.

Hearing the rustling of sheets, you met his half-lidded gaze. He wasn’t wearing a top, yet you were the one who felt self-conscious and covered your chest with your arms—and you were actually wearing a shirt.

Sniffling slightly, he rested the side of his face on his arm lazily. “I piggybacked you here after you knocked out like a light,” he chuckled to himself, reliving the moment briefly. “Drooled all over my shoulder and everything.”

“I do not drool!” you exclaimed, wiping your mouth subconsciously while blushing furiously at his accusation.

“I beg to differ,” he smiled, flashing a gummy smile that made you hiccup. The conversation was becoming much too casual for your comfort, and you quickly got up on your feet to try and find your clothes. You needed to get out of here. You needed to get out of here now.

Unfortunately, your body betrayed you when your legs trembled and gave under you. Your muscles felt like jelly and you couldn’t even make an attempt at getting up the second time, so you slid down back into a cross-legged position on the floor as smoothly as you could, trying not to look as embarrassed or defeated as you felt. Yoongi hid his snort of amusement with a cough. 

“Where are my clothes?” you questioned, suddenly aware that you were dressed in black boxer shorts and a shirt too large to be your size. Your eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at the realization.

Hands shooting up to cover your chest instinctively, you stared at Yoongi like a deer in headlights. “You undressed me?!” you gawked.

Propping his elbow up, he rested his cheek on his hand as he chuckled. “Technically I redressed you after the undressing part, so it counts as a double negative,” he corrected. Smug bastard...

Wincing at the stretch you felt in your thighs from just sitting in a cross-legged position, you stood up again only to stumble again like a tower made of jello cubes. Yoongi sat up immediately, grabbing your arm to help you stay upright, but you tore yourself away from Yoongi’s warm hands. The soothing sensation of his touch was making you feel too comfortable for your own liking. 

Clothes. Door. Exit. Now. Four words you never expected to dictate your every move thereon afterward. 

He looked at you with a puzzled expression, taken aback by your irrational behavior. Yoongi opened his mouth to say something, but as soon as you spotted your pile of clothes in the corner of the room, you scurried across to pick them up. 

Yanking down the boxers you were wearing and pulling off his shirt, the smell of his cologne sunk through the fabric and made your heartbeat jump for a moment. Flashbacks of last night snapped like a series of camera shutters in your mind; his scent rubbing onto your skin, the texture of his hair between your fingers, the warmth of his lips against your neck, the feeling of his tongue—

“Pull yourself together,” you screamed in your head. Shaking your head to snap yourself out of your sinful thoughts, you jumped up and down into your jeans and threw on your hoodie in record time before he could make a remark about your nude state.   

Picking up your phone from his nightstand and stepping—more like tripping—into your shoes, you turned around and closed your eyes, crinkling your nose to focus and think about whether you needed to gather anything else. Once confirming that you didn’t bring anything other than your phone, you rushed out the door and left Yoongi with his mouth hung open. 

“Well shit...” he thought. 

It had been a full week since the “incident,” as you had labeled it, and you were cooped up in your dorm like a prisoner, only sneaking out to get snacks and coffee from the corner store across the street. The stupid week-long break could not come any sooner, could it? 

Words splattered like stray drops of paint across the walls of your mind as panic occupied every waking thought since that night. 

He knew your secret and you knew his.

You didn’t know why fear was growing on you like a parasite. It’s not like he was going to tell Powell. Even if he did, you’d probably just have to go to a few physical therapy lessons and get prescribed some medication to manage the pain. 

“He’ll restrict your physical participation hours and make you play less...” your subconscious suspected. There it was—that was your greatest fear. Crawling bugs, skyscraper-tall heights, deep dark oceans, and even being trapped in a burning building didn’t compare to the complete and utter dread you would feel if you had lost music. Just thinking about it was enough to make you bite your nails. 

As your silent nights of waking up, showering, eating a few bites of granola bars, and wallowing in your bed until you fell asleep became repetitive, Yoongi was as loud and active as he had ever been—in the form of texts, that is. 

Saturday

Min Salty: You good? [1:41 p.m.]

Sunday 

Min Salty: Earth to _____ ? [ 8:19 a.m.]

Min Salty: Did you get sick? [11:43 a.m.]

Monday

Min Salty: Are you okay? [4:50 p.m.]

Min Salty: Call me [5:01 p.m.]

Tuesday

Min Salty: _____ , talk to me [12:12 a.m.]

Wednesday

Min Salty: At least let me know that you’re alive [10:08 a.m.]

Yesterday

Min Salty: I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you need [9:04 p.m.] 

Re-reading each text was like stabbing yourself with a rusted dagger over and over again as the realization of what you had done loomed over you like a storm cloud. Lying in your bed, you buried your face in the pillow and screamed, thankful that everyone down your dorm block was away for a few more days. It killed you even more inside when you read over the text you had sent five minutes ago.

Today

Min Salty: Practice room 2B at 3? [2:34 p.m.]

You: sure [2:41 p.m.]

Thrashing your arms and legs wildly in an attempt to relieve you of your impulsive and rash decision, you huffed one more time before getting out of bed and changing into a pair of jeans. Rubbing your eyes and triple-checking whether you had just done what you think you had done, you wailed overdramatically, praying that this was all just one big nightmare. 

What the hell were you thinking? 

Blowing your wild baby hairs away from your face, you ignored the state of the bird’s nest of a messy bun that laid atop your head and didn’t bother changing out of your hoodie. You were way too used to wearing those since you started college. Packing your dorm keys and notebook into your backpack, you slung it over your shoulder half-heartedly and prepared for the storm that lied ahead. 

The entire walk across the campus was filled with dread and you didn’t bother cleaning up your disheveled state when you finally knocked on the door. When it swung open, you met his gaze for the first time in what felt like weeks. 

Yoongi was sitting on the piano bench with a cup-holder filled with two hot drinks and a paper bag settled on the guest table. He too was flaunting just as plain of an outfit as your black joggers and school logo-printed hoodie.

With grey sweatpants, matching sweater, and grass-stained sneakers, you both stared at each other with awe at your equal ability to feel so comfortable in your less than dress code friendly attire. You didn’t even notice until your eyes landed on his socks that they were different colors, to which you clamped your hand over your mouth and disguised your snort with a brash cough. 

“Don’t you look gorgeous?” he scoffed, admiring your equally casual half-strewn choice of an outfit. Pulling out two chairs from the side of the room and placing them next to the table, you opened your mouth to protest, but the smell of freshly brewed coffee and warm pastries filled the room.

Starting with the coffee, he handed you the paper cup, tapping under your chin playfully because he found your dazed face amusing. Angling your head down low, you felt a pang of regret. He shouldn’t be this happy...

He tore the bag open to reveal an array of croissants, donuts, and pastries from the café across the street. You’d gone there so many times in the last couple of years, you would be a moron if you hadn’t memorized the menu by now. 

“Why did you—” you sputtered, pointing to the golden loaves of steaming hot fluffiness that made your mouth water. Sitting down, he patted the chair next to him, welcoming you to sit and make yourself comfortable.

“Food first then talk,” he halted. “You look like you haven’t eaten anything other than instant noodles and mix coffee in weeks—and I know better than anyone what that looks like...”

Scowling at his double-edged insult and scold, you sat moved the chair to be across from him rather than beside and sat down slowly like a cat who was exploring their new home. 

Were you dreaming? Why was he being so soft? Was he on something? Perhaps, plotting his revenge? Or worse, your murder? 

 Sensing your hesitant state, Yoongi shoved a mini-donut into your agape mouth. “I didn’t poison anything, you fusspot.” He continued eating his food in silence as if nothing were wrong in the world. Maybe this would be an opportunity for you to get some actual food into your system and not be forced to talk.

And who were you to turn down lunch?

Chewing the mouthful of glazed donut you'd been fed, you chewed slowly and closed your eyes to hold back the moan that nearly came out. Starchy bread and sugary fruit preserves had never tasted so good.

A few minutes passed in total silence. The only sounds came from the crinkling of papers as Yoongi pulled out more napkins and the gulps that came from the two of you idly sipping your drinks. Yoongi had finished eating, but you were purposely taking your sweet time by chewing slower than a turtle and being overly cautious with your now-lukewarm coffee.

Leaning back onto the wall, Yoongi looked up at your room, breaking the silence first. “You’re in a single-dorm?”

Pausing in the middle of chewing, you swallowed and nodded, reaching over for your drink again. 

“By request?”

Another nod.

“Does it get boring?” he continued, clearly seeing that he was getting under your skin with each question. 

God, why did he have to talk so much?

You shook your head a little too vigorously as you took the last bite of your donut before setting it down and then taking a few reasonably long gulps of your coffee, finishing that as well. 

“Why’d you call?” you finally asked. 

Chuckling at how he had broken through your shell with the peace offering of food and coffee no one could resist, he fumbled with the empty cup in his hands. “I just wanted to check up on you,” he replied simply. “Plus, I was bored out of my mind and you’re the only other person on campus so I figured it’d be smart to kill some time with practice.” 

You shifted in your seated position as the comment took you by surprise. “You knew I was fine,” you mumbled, voice coming just short of a shy child’s whisper. 

“I actually,” he cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about last week.” 

“It was a mistake.” That was all it was; a mistake. 

Yoongi’s eyes widened as his eyebrows lifted up, his expression morphing into one of shock at your unexpected answer. “No, I—”

Shaking your head, you gnawed on the inside of your cheek. The sooner you got this cleaned up the easier it’d be on both of you. “We made a mistake and we need to move past it. It wasn’t responsible for us and—”

“Bullshit.” The word came out in the familiar tone that he used with you that night; anger and rage directing itself into the fury of one single word. 

“What?” you scoffed, wide awake now more than ever. You couldn’t tell whether it was because you were shocked at his view on the situation or whether it was the caffeine kicking in and doing its magic. 

Stretching his neck to one side and exhaling through his nose, he couldn’t make direct eye contact with you and opted to stare at your hands wrapped around your cup. “It wasn’t a– you didn’t do anything wrong,” he altered his sentence. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of us did anything wrong because you and I—” He pinched the bridge of his nose as he began to grow annoyed at himself. 

Why was he stumbling over his words so bad? 

“Yoongi,” you said firmly. It was your turn to take hold of the conversation. “Can we just pretend like none of this happened and go back to being—” Pausing to bury your face into your hands, you shrugged. “Whatever we were before.”

“You really don’t want to talk about it?” he asked bluntly. 

You refused to even give yourself a second to process the question before you responded with a firm no. His tongue prodded the inside of his cheek for a moment before he got up. “Should we work on the piece then?” 

For some reason, regret ate at you like a power-hungry monster that would never be satiated. 

“Yeah,” you responded robotically, sitting yourself down on the cold leather chair. “Let’s practice.”

Never in your life had those words tasted so bitter in your mouth. 

You wanted to say that moving past mortifyingly embarrassing moments in your life was a process in and of itself. You even dared to say that admitting them was the hardest part but of course, to each their own. 

It had been two weeks since you last spoke to Yoongi and timed seemed to move slower than ever. Whenever you found yourself pondering over the option of texting him, your pride got the best of you. 

Between passing periods and free time after school, you had yet to formally speak with him last week. You cringed internally as flashbacks of the week prior set off like landmines in your head.

Scurrying down the hallways like an undercover rat, you went as far as wearing sunglasses along with your hood to try and disguise yourself. Surely, Yoongi wouldn’t recognize you in this state, right? You were even wearing a colored hoodie, for God’s sake—completely unheard of for someone of your tastes. Black and grey hoodies were your wardrobes’ partners in crime.

You earned a couple stares from the crowds of people as you kept your back hunched and weaved through them, but it definitely won over having to run into Yoongi. Or even worse, actually having to talk to him. Chills ran down your spine. You’d have to face him one day, but this was the one things you could afford to procrastinate just a little bit. 

Then came the day when he too learned about your schedule after countless trials of “accompanying” you to your classes—while hiding from your line of sight. 

“_____!” he shouted through the bustling crowd, waving his arm in the hopes that you’d see him, but to aid him in the off chance that you wouldn’t run away from him this time. Somehow, by the laws of the universe and its devious ways, he managed to catch up to you and tug at your sleeve. 

Turning around after muttering a wave of silent swears to yourself, you turned around like a character who was moments away from being murdered by the serial killer. Spoiler alert: this scene actually had a happy ending. 

“I’m late for a class!” you chuckled wryly, cringing at your own forced and awkward tone. “Catch you later!” Waving goodbye, you sped off as quickly as your legs could carry you to your lecture. 

“Catch you later?” Did you jump out of a 70′s sitcom or something? Your pessimist mocked you, poking fun at your awful crack at an excuse. 

There was bound to be someone else who arrived at the lecture 20 minutes early, right?   

Lounging in the tightly nestled corner of the café, you were in the middle of shuffling through the notes from class when a certain someone decided to grace you with the gift of a heart attack.

“Jesus freaking Christ!” Your notes nearly flew into the air as you jumped like an animated cat. Turning around to face the person behind you who had made the ballsy choice to sneak up on you and poke your shoulder, Yoongi’s face greeted you with a cheeky grin.

“Busy?” he asked nonchalantly as if he hadn’t just given you the fright of your life. Looking at him with your eyes open to the size of saucers, you wet your lips and gulped, trying to think of a way to dig out of yet, another hole you had buried yourself in. 

Pointing behind you with your finger to distract him, you raised your shoulders and jutted your neck forward, contorting into an uncomfortable pose that screamed awkwardness. “Text me later!” you spit out, crinkling your nose with a forced chuckle.  

“But—” Yoongi’s sputtering faded into silence as you dashed out of there quicker than a farm dog that was herding a flock of geese. 

Each time you replayed the self-deprecating memories like a slideshow in your head, it was comparable to sticking your hand into ice cold water you’d scooped up from Antarctica. “Dammit.” Your voice came out hushed but dangerously close to being an audible growl and your fist slammed onto the wooden table. 

Studying in the library was a bad choice. Odd stares and hushed whispers scattered across the room like a swarm of bees and caused the people around you to shift in their seats. Murming a silent apology at your sudden outburst, you packed your things and tried to leave as quietly as possible.   

As you felt the satisfying crunch of leaves under your feet with each step, your eyes drifted off into nowhere while your mind was a million miles away. You didn’t know why you felt so strange. It was as if everyone saw the world through black or white lenses and yet, you were the only one who hallucinated color in between the lines. 

Huddling your arms closer to your body, a cold gust of wind blew across your face, making you shiver and prickle with goosebumps. A dull, aching sensation made its way across the tops of your hands as your muscles reacted to the temperature difference, forcing you to tuck them under your armpits. Fashionable isn’t it? The weather of the autumn and winter months always bid the worst for your hands, and yet, your forgetful self always let the errand of buying a pair of stupid mittens slip your mind. 

It had also been a week since you’d gone anywhere near a piano and it stuck like a wine stain on white linen. You were jittery and anxious like a stranded survivor balancing on on the tip of an iceberg. Since you had a natural inclination to let out your emotions through playing, your cognitive acuity also felt at an all-time low. The rare possibility of running into your professor while you were in this state was soul-crushing, and the off-chance that he might see your restricted playing ability was even more so debilitating. 

Even though you hated to admit it, the best thing you could probably do for your hands was to go and play, even if it were for a few minutes. The doctor—even though it was his sincere recommendation for you to stop playing altogether and consider taking up stress ball yoga instead—told you that light activity was actually beneficial in regulating your chronic pain. 

The occasional Advil helped as well, but you’d been popping the tryhard M&M’s like candy on a regular basis since sophomore year, so your built-up tolerance to the orange-coated tablets rendered them useless. 

Debating between taking a hot shower back at the comfort of your room and going to practice for an hour (or three), you settled on the latter. You could use the extra hours anyway—you knew better than anyone how much you needed them. 

You took your usual shortcut around the quad and turned at the corner of the brick building you’d grown too acquainted with throughout the years. Stepping into the corridors, warm air welcomed you like an old friend as the buzz and whirring of the heater indicated that it was on full blast. Thank God. 

Treading down the length of the hallway with tentative steps, you were surprised to see that there were quite a few people occupying the studios. You recognized a few classmates through the glass panes of the doors. 

Judging by the pointless blabbering, incessant arguing, harsh thumping of keys, and scattered frustrated groans, the muted sounds that were still clearly audible through the soundproof rooms made you chuckle. Something told you that these were the master procrastinators who didn’t decide to start on the project until now...

When you reached the end of the hall, you were relieved to find an empty room. Finally. Sighing in relief, you had never found the flick of a light switch and whoosh of a closing door more satisfying than in that moment. 

Sprawling your things out haphazardly onto the floor, the overly-stiff lid of the piano opening made you scrunch up your face. If this piano was the only one out of tune in the building, you were going to—

You didn’t even finish the thought before your finger pressed on a key as if it had a mind of its own. “Thank the tuning gods,” you sighed, bringing your hand to your chest and exhaling out the air you’d held in your lungs. Sure, it was one of the older models the school’s inventory had to offer, but it was still miraculously in tune. 

If anything, you let out a ‘hm’ of intrigue as you sat down. You’d never played in this particular studio or on this piano before, but the different weight of the keys and peculiar texture of sound that emanated from them piqued your interest. 

Playing on a different piano than your usual model could best be described as a painter who had to paint with a completely different base canvas, colors of paint, and a set of brushes. Whereas a painter was familiar with his or her usual painting medium and more than comfortable with the feel of their brushes, the process of adapting to a new set of materials altogether was neither difficult nor easy, because they didn’t know what they were dealing with yet. 

It was just different. 

Pianos were almost grouped in the same theory, except rather than produce a visual piece with brushes and paint, you had to paint a picture with sound; an odd medium considering the less physically pliable nature of it. 

This piano in particular, for example, required more weight on certain keys to produce an equal amount of sound as the others. The texture of the sound was also a different quality, this being more rustic and ragtime sounding than the new models lined up in the front entrance studios. Those sounded much more acoustic, crisper, and sharper, fitting a more classical and structured repertoire. 

Starting easy with a few scales and basic pieces you learned when you were younger, the aching in your hands still lingered, but the pain grew more than bearable since your hands had warmed up. 

What were you going to practice today? Chopin? Beethoven? Lizst? Forming your mouth into an ‘o’ shape at the last name, you quirked your lip into a meek grin. When was the last time you played one of that psycho’s pieces? 

Settling on Liebestraum No. 3, you took a moment to try and remember the piece by heart. Closing your eyes to concentrate on picturing and mapping out the piece in your head, you breathed deeply and grazed your fingertips across the keys. 

The collection of three pieces was also known as Dreams of Love and the third piece’s gentle and melodic hymn was just that. The beginning of the piece was soft like a lullaby, enveloping the listener into a space of warmth and tenderness; like the sparks of a newly blossoming and dreamlike relationship. Hypnotizing and consuming, the simple unfolding melody drew you in completely.

The second cadenza then transitioned into the harsh reality of love, becoming more weighted and melancholic as the tempo not only sped up and became more frantic, but the tones and harmonics also developed into more complex ones. Desperate, heartbreaking, and filled with the raw reality that love had the ability to take just as much as it had to give, your hands no longer dictated how well you played at that moment; your humanity did. 

The final cadenza was the one that shredded your heartstrings. After the highs and lows of falling in and out of love, the dynamic returned to its former soft and lulling roots, reminding you that the everlasting form of love and eternal happiness was truly unattainable, and only lurked in the distant world that was your dreams. 

The words that constantly lurked in your head sent a pang of guilt into your chest, erupting and manifesting itself physically into the delicate and drawn out keys of the pieces final notes. Would you ever be happy?

Coming down from the euphoria that engulfed every nerve in your body, tears brimmed your eyes. Scoffing at yourself, you sniffled, dabbing away the wetness that dampened your cheeks as self-pitying chuckles left your mouth. This was a definitely a first. 

The sudden sense that someone was watching you made you grow suspicious. Snapping your head around to the door, your body went cold as a figure was visible through the glass pane of the door. 

Yoongi.

You remained frozen in place, unable to move from the wave of anxiety that swallowed you whole. Your throat was dry and your tongue felt like it was cemented to the roof of your mouth. Turning back around to face the piano, you tried to wipe the remaining tears as discreetly as you could, but you realized that your puffy eyes and red nose betrayed you. 

Facing back to the door, you pressed your lips into a thin line and hoped that it would mask any indication that you had just bawled over a stupid piece. God, you felt so pathetic...

Through the reflective pane, you tried to make out his expression but felt your heart hiccup when you zoned in on his face. He sniffled once before looking down at his feet, then back up at you, allowing you to catch a glimpse of his glassy eyes. 

Was he—crying? 

Blinking hard through your still-puffy and damp eyes, you squinted to try and get a clearer view of him through the glass, but in the blink of an eye and almost as soon as he had appeared, he was gone; vanishing like a figment of your imagination in a dream you had rudely woken up from. 

Your feet felt like they were cement blocks weighing down on the pedals. Unable to come to your senses enough to stand up and stop him you could only stare blankly at the door as the illusion of his echoing footsteps deadened into silence.

Today

You: 4A in 20 minutes? [5:22 p.m.]

Min Salty: sure [5:26 p.m.] 

Trying to push past and cross the awkward tightrope of a situation that you had created, you felt your breath hitch in your throat and form a hiccup instead. You weren’t sure what surprised you more, the fact that he had replied quicker than you anticipated or the actuality that he had replied to you at all. 

Biting your cuticles raw, your nerves were stinging you like a swarm of angry bees. You were already in the studio, of course, and had been practicing for an hour or so before the idea popped into your head. After that, the text had been saved as a draft for about ten minutes before you eventually swallowed your ego and placed your finger on the dreaded send icon. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Exactly two-minutes had passed since his response and each tick of the clock was like the ring of a bell, signaling that it was feeding time for the growing monster that was your anxiety. 

You hissed through your teeth when you accidentally bit down too hard on your cuticle too hard and made a pool of bright red blood flood the edge of your nail. Simultaneously, the click and turn of the doorknob made you snap your head up and freeze, halting your pacing steps. 

Smoothing over the top of his hood, Yoongi fashioned a plain black shirt, tattered burgundy jacket, distressed jeans, and scuffed white sneakers. It didn’t take you a second longer to notice the black dust mask he had over his mouth, either. Whether it had become a habit of yours or a natural inclination to study him from afar, you always found yourself staring for a moment too long before you spoke. 

“You’re—” you cleared your throat. “—early.” Glancing at the clock, you made sure that you read it right. “Really early.”

He pulled out a chair and slung his bag onto the floor. “I figured you’d be here already.” His voice sounded rough, but not the abrasive kind of rough—the sick kind. When did he get sick? Did he take any medicine? Why was he here?

“Shut up...” you reminded yourself. “It’s none of your busine—”

“Are you sick?” Repressing your negative subconscious, you cared more about his health, for now, more than your ego could force you not to. He shook his head no rather than give you a formal response, refusing to speak and therefore, confirming your suspicions. 

He hadn’t even taken off his mask yet and you were pretty sure it was about 75 degrees outside; more than toasty enough for him to walk around without a mask to keep his mouth warm. 

“Yoongi, you should go home and rest,” you sighed. Instant guilt began to gnaw at you. 

Another forceful head shake and a few suppressed coughs later, he sat down on the chair and pulled out his notebook. It was bad enough you had your own pride to deal with, and adding Yoongi’s into the mix wasn’t going to lead anywhere. You weren’t putting him through this today. 

Taking his notebook away from his lap, you set it on top of his bag and kneeled down, placing your hand on his forehead. As you expected, it was slick with sweat. 

“Christ, you’re burning up...” you swore, flipping back and forth between the palm and back of your hand to make sure that he was really that hot. Gently grabbing your wrist, he craned his neck away from your reach and pulled your arm away from his vicinity.

He took his mask off agitatedly at your relentless nagging to try and prove his point. “I’m fine.” His voice was stern but still weak, a clear indication that he was anything but that. Frowning with concern written all over your face, he simply stared vacantly into your eyes while still maintaining his hold around your wrist. 

Shaking your head at his hardheaded attitude that mirrored yours, you pried his fingers off of your wrist and pressed the back of your hand to his damp cheek. Yoongi’s eyes went wide as his face instantly heated up and flushed at the contact. 

“You’re running at least a 100 right now, Yoongi,” you scolded. “We can practice anytime, but right now, you need to go home and rest.” Your hand was still resting on his cheek while you spoke while he continued looking at anywhere but your eyes. 

You pulled your hand away from his cheek and let out a near-inaudible gasp when he clutched your wrist again. Bringing your cool hand back to his face, you swallowed tensely when he slid his grip up to your hand and guided it to the side of his face, cupping his large hand over yours so that it was now cupping his cheek. 

He closed his eyes tenderly at the coolness of your hand, relishing the soothing and comforting touch that only you could ever provide. Your eyes fluttered a few times before you gave into his silent plea. Running your thumb over the delicate skin of his cheekbones, a twinge of woe struck your chest at the sight before you. 

“Why do you make me feel this way...” you murmured to yourself. 

“If only I understood the way I felt about you...” Yoongi thought. 

A soothing and not-entirely awkward silence filled the room. Yoongi’s throaty breathing and occasional sniffles were the only other noises that were distinguishable, and your intermittent hiccup decided to grace you with its presence towards the last three minutes of the hour. 

“Yoongi?” you whispered. Had he fallen asleep? Sitting up? Was he secretly a horse? 

“Mhm?” he hummed. Whew—still awake. 

Holding back the tiniest grin, you sighed. “Let’s go back to your dorm.” 

Mumbling something in his enervated state, you helped him up to his feet and slung his arm over your shoulders to keep him upright and on his feet. You could only pray that he was still conscious enough to have control over his legs. 

That day, you learned that dragging a barely conscious man who was twice the size of you into the boys’ dorm block was a sight worthy of earning a couple tentative stares. The childishly logical part of your brain wondered how serial killers did it. 

“Hm, I don’t know _____, maybe the fact that they’re absolutely maniacal psychopaths who possess four times the upper body strength you do helps,” you huffed, verbally exercising your strain as you tried to walk straight while propping Yoongi up. Was he drunk or really that sick?

Where was the RA anyway? Paying that high price of tuition should at least warrant a decent resident advisor for safety reasons. 

Brushing the shoulder of a stranger, the guy stared at you with terribly confused eyes as he stopped brushing his teeth. Panting heavily, Yoongi grumbled another illegible sentence of nonsense as you took a breather to ask the stranger where his room was. Logically, it had to be one of the only single-dorms in the building, so you prayed it mirrored the layout of yours and was at the end of the hall. 

The doe-eyed boy pointed to the end of the long corridor, the minty toothpaste bubbles foaming around the sides of his mouth as it remained parted open in confusion. You quickly thanked him and stumbled slowly but surely down the length of the hallway. Even though it was safe to assume that his door was locked, you turned down the lever and were surprised when the door swung open. Yoongi apparently doesn’t lock his door on the regular...

Thankfully, the layout of the room did, in fact, resemble yours, so you were able to find his bedroom with ease. You convinced yourself that fact that you had woken up there one fateful morning certainly played no part in it. Flinging himself (along with the frustrated force that resulted from your built-up and rushing endorphins) onto the mattress, he landed into the rumpled sheets with a thump. Apparently, he also didn’t have a habit of making his bed before he left his dorm. 

You let out a final harsh exhale. You did it. Stretching out your shoulders as a reward, you were more than positive that they’d be sore tomorrow. When was the last time you worked out? A trick question with a secret option C. You couldn’t be bothered to. 

Pulling off his shoes and peeling his jacket off of his body, you started to question whether he was secretly blackout drunk or truly terribly ill. He was out like a light within the first few steps into his dorm. You splayed his crinkled blanket over his body loosely, careful to keep him insulated but still allow some room for air to circulate and allow breathability. 

When your fingers brushed away the blonde hairs that were stuck on his sweat-dampened forehead, he shifted from his side-lying position, reaching out instinctually to grab your hand again. Yoongi kept his grip on your wrist firm, locking it close against his chest like a child’s teddy bear. He nuzzled his head into your wrist like a puppy, nosing the soft skin between your pulse point and prominent vein. He couldn’t help it that the cool skin of your poorly circulating limbs felt like ice packs on his burning hot skin. 

You blinked a couple times trying to process the options you had. Each tug in an attempt to free your arm from his grip only resulted in him clutching tighter, and he seemed to mumble something as his face contorted into a recognizable expression of discomfort. Nightmare?

Finally realizing that he wasn’t going to let go of you anytime soon, you gave up. It’s not like you had anything better to do today. Kneeling down beside the bed, you placed your free hand underneath your chin and propped your elbow on the mattress, trying to find a comfortable position and wait for the situation to pan out for a couple minutes. He’d have to let go of you eventually. 

You couldn’t hold back the burning desire to admire his sleeping features. He looked so at peace compared to his day-to-day mood, almost like an entirely different person. Rubbing over his knuckles involuntarily, you didn’t even realize you were doing it until you felt his grip relax with your touch. Judging from how he had his mouth slightly parted and the steady rhythm of the rising and falling of his chest, you concluded that he had fallen asleep. 

Not wasting another second, you stealthily slid your hand out of his caging hold and folded the remaining edge of the blanket over his arms. You stood up and brushed off your red kneecaps and tip-toed to the door, closing it as softly as you could. Yoongi needed to sleep his heart out. 

Was it wrong to just leave? You stopped dead in your tracks when you realized that by the time he’d wake up, he would be starving. It wasn’t easy eating when you were sick, and Yoongi’s comment last week about him knowing what a month’s long diet of instant noodles and coffee looked like made you shudder in guilt. Gathering every single bit of patience and empathy you had left in the degrading bones of yours, you diverted yourself away from the exit and to the kitchen. 

Single-dorms on the university campus were like miniature studio apartments. Usually reserved for students on an as-needed basis, there were only six or seven in total. So far, Yoongi was the only other person you had met who occupied one. You hated to admit it, but he was probably the only other person you had talked to and gotten to know this much in all your years of attending the school. Would you dare go as far as to say he was your only friend? 

You quickly shook off the thought and went back to digging around his kitchen. His fridge and cupboard inventory didn’t come as much of a shock to you. It was, for lack of a better word, horrendous. 

The small refrigerator was practically empty, and the only things occupying the near-empty shelves were a couple apples, a half-dozen pack of eggs, a measly portion of fruit salad (probably from the mini-mart down the street), a package of mixed and chopped vegetables for soups and stews, one styrofoam takeout box, and a suspicious looking tin-foil boat. 

Don’t even mention the side compartments. Those were reserved for a few energy drinks, half-opened caffeine shots, packets of takeout condiments, a full-sized bottle of ketchup, a block of cheddar cheese, and a torn open foil pack of butter. Quirking the edge of your lip into a dumbfounded pucker, your face relaxed into one of comedic amusement. How could anyone live off of this—garbage? You couldn’t even bring yourself to say the word “food.” That would be offensive to the existence of food itself. 

His freezer was completely empty, so moving onto the cupboards was either going to be a big mistake or a happy accident. You prayed deep down it was the latter. Then again, you also could not have been more wrong. 

The cupboards weren’t any better. If anything, they were worse. The grey-painted plastic backboards were the only things visible, usually a sign that a student had just moved in days ago. In one corner of the lowest shelf was an almost-empty box of granola bars; the shitty 99 cent ones every seasoned uni student stocked up on in bulk before the semester started. Beside it was a newly opened bag of rice. At least that was the one food item in this crapshoot that seemed remotely new. 

The rest of the shelves held two worn-out, rusty frying pans, and chipped glass china. Those were probably hand-me-downs from senior students who couldn’t be bothered to throw their old belongings away after graduation. There was a whole recycling bin full of them in the storage shed by the cafeteria 

You bit your lip, trying to think of what to make with what little you were given. Omelet? Boring. Soup? Painfully more boring. Curious, you unwrapped the mysterious bundle of tin-foil and discovered a very fresh marbled flank of beef. Cheering internally, you set to work on your favorite childhood dish that you were most confident in cooking: fried rice.  

You were more than willing to buy him another pack of meat. Hell, after the shock of seeing his fridge? You were more than willing to buy his groceries for a whole damn month if it meant he would take care of himself. Your grandparents always sent you too much money at once anyway. It wasn’t as if you had friends to go out and drink with, so paying for dinners wasn’t a usual activity you took part in. 

You started off by washing the rice and setting it up on the stovetop to boil. It would take the longest to prepare, so it was only natural to get that out of the way first. Next came the simple process of chopping up the meat, cooking it thoroughly, combining the packet of pre-cut vegetables, and then mixing in the rice last. On any other given day, you would have seasoned the meat with at least a pinch of pepper, but you didn’t exactly have that option considering the given circumstances.

It didn’t take long since the limited and pre-measured ingredients boxed you in along the way. Plating the rice onto the only dish deep enough that Yoongi had available, you used the same pan to quickly fry up two eggs. The smell of steaming hot food made your stomach grumble in response. 

Not to stroke your ego or anything, but you enjoyed patting yourself on the back for your accomplishments every now and then, no matter how small. Self-assurance was good for the old pessimistic soul. 

You tried to think of any other thing you could add to the meal and ogled the table when you nearly forgot. Shuffling back to the fridge, you cut up half an apple and arranged the slices into the plastic mini-mart bowl of fruit salad. Then, you eagerly jumped towards the bottle of ketchup and shook it vigorously with arms that were already starting to feel sore from lugging around Yoongi earlier. 

Drizzling the condiment over the golden heap of steaming rice, the red zig-zag streams finished off the orange and green vegetables quite nicely. You covered it with the only other dish Yoongi had in his cupboard and hoped it would still be warm by the time he woke up. Sighing in satisfaction as well as exhaustion, you didn’t pause to check the time. 

“Shit...” you muttered. The sky was already pitch black, meaning that it was well past 9. You facepalmed. How long had you been here? Mind you, you also completely forgot that you still had an essay due next week. Do you know how much easier life would be if your laptop grew its own set of hands and just wrote it for you? 

If you checked up on Yoongi before leaving, you had a feeling he would wake up the minute the doorknob clicked, so you thought it was best just to let him rest. Sneaking out of a dorm for the first time in your life, the door creaked ever-so-slightly before latching shut as Yoongi and his dorm returned to their all-too-familiar state of vacancy. 

Getting up the next morning was certainly an interesting process, to say the least. You sat in your tangled mess of bedsheets for about ten minutes before coming to the realization that yesterday was everything but a dream. It hit you like a bucket of cold water that had just been dumped over your head.

Throughout the entire day, you hobbled through your classes with hunched shoulders and a rounded back, feeling a constant strain in your upper body each time you tried to straighten out. “Working out” was a mistake. 

As the deadline for the performance was almost at the two-month mark, you grew more and more anxious with each passing day. It wasn’t anything special. You always had a healthy amount of anxiety revolving around academia but your performance nerves were on a completely different level. 

Humming to piece to yourself, your phone buzzed from your pocket as the blaring of your ringtone sounded. Your parents didn’t call you during the weekdays and you couldn’t think of anyone else who had your phone number. “Perks of having no friends,” you thought. Fishing it out of your coat pocket, your eyes widened when Yoongi’s name flashed across the screen. 

Your fingers swiped across the green icon absentmindedly, accepting the call with little hesitation. “Hello?” Didn’t he usually prefer to text you rather than call?

“Hey,” he replied. He sounded a lot better than yesterday but his throaty tone made it clear that traces of his cold still remained. “Are you free?”

You hiccuped. “Wh–yeah. Yeah, I’m free.” Of course, he knew you were free. It was a trick question. After following you around and trying to catch your tail, he had familiarized himself with your schedule, just as you had done a few weeks prior. “Do you want to book a practice room?”

A sniffle suddenly sounded from behind you and echoed in the receiver, making goosebumps sprawl across your neck. Not a millisecond after, the line clicked dead. Rip it off like a band-aid or peel it off slowly and painstakingly? Opting for the former, you closed your eyes tightly and mouthed a silent swear, turning around in slow motion like something out of an action film. 

Low and behold, there was Yoongi shifting his weight back and forth on his heels. “I was actually wondering if you wanted to go on a—” he paused to rub the back of his neck; he only did that when he was nervous. “On a hike?” 

“A hike?” The word felt foreign in your mouth. As far as you were concerned, yesterday’s fiasco was enough physical activity to last you for the rest of the year, but Yoongi wanted to go on a hike? “Aren’t you still sick?”

He shrugged. “A little cardio might help me burn it off and do me some good.” 

“You’re not plotting my murder, are you?” you gulped. Why was that always the first logical explanation that presented itself in your head?

Blinking at you for a moment, he chuckled and shook his head at your comment. “Not unless it's by physical activity. And it’s only up to the viewpoint. You’ve sprinted to classes farther than that.”

He had a point. The school was built atop a hillside and the viewpoint was, as its name entailed, a spot where you could look over the entire campus. It was about a five-minute walk outside of the gates and the climb wasn’t too steep. It certainly beat running a whole campus-length to each of your classes. 

“What about practice?” you sputtered, tongue weighing down your mouth like an ankle weight. “We haven’t gone over the piece in weeks.” 

Throwing his arm over your sore shoulders and bringing you close to him, he sighed. “Learn to live a little, _____. We still have two more months. A walk might clear your head.” Since when was Yoongi the voice of reason? 

You allowed him to walk a few steps ahead of you and ducked under his arm swiftly when you got the chance, freeing yourself from his hold. The concept of space bubbles around Yoongi had grown dangerously close to popping now. 

“Okay,” you cleared your throat. “Fine, fine, let’s go.” Picking up your pace, he trailed behind you with an amused smirk. 

Was it the cough medicine making him loopy or was he just particularly charming today?

“Min Yoongi, yo–I swear to God—” You couldn’t even finish your sentence before collapsing onto the grass like a sack of potatoes. “If I ever get the strength back in my legs, I am going to smother you with a pillow,” panting between each word. 

By the time you made it up to the top of the hill, the sun was already set, making vivid orange and dusty pink colors streak across the darkened sky. The air was colder up here than back down on the campus level but you tried your best to hide your discomfort whenever your hands throbbed from the cold. 

Yoongi laughed as his eyes crinkled and his pearly white teeth showed in a gummy smile. “Good luck with that,” he chuckled. Making himself comfortable and sitting down beside your limp body, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, breathing in deeply. The walk actually did in fact, miraculously clear up his stuffy sinuses. Wonderful. 

Sitting up, you tried to rub your hands as discreetly as possible so as to not make him worry but failed when cracking of a few knuckles caused him to snap his gaze to you. He unzipped his jacket and flung off his hood and you immediately stopped him. 

“Nope,” you retaliated quickly. “No. Put it back on. Don’t even think about doing anything textbook cliché or I’ll roll you down the hill like a Lincoln log.”

Raising his eyebrows slightly at your distaste and choice of a non-threatening threat, he shrugged his jacket back on with a quizzical pout. “Don’t you have a pair of mittens or something?”

You grumbled a no in response, embarrassed that even he was aware of how ridiculous it was. A calming silence cast over both of you, the only sound coming from a few crickets chirping and the murmuring city far below. Your teeth started to chatter a couple minutes in, making genuine concern spread across Yoongi’s face. 

“Come here,” he sighed, gesturing to his open arms. Widening your eyes, you raised your hands assuringly.

“I’m fine,” you chuckled nervously. “I just have really bad circulation, that’s all.” It wasn’t a total lie. You really did have awful circulation and it constantly made your hands and feet cold. Not a day went by when you didn’t wear socks and a thick wooly sweater around your room. 

“Do you want to get sick too?” he asked with a bite in his voice, almost as if your stubbornness was beginning to get the best of him as well. “We’ve done worse things with fewer clothes on anyway...”

“Hey!” You jabbed his side. Narrowing your eyes at him in a silent message that he had won this round, you scooted over beside him as he wrapped his arms around your frame. It never ceased to amaze you how no matter the situation, whether it was his hands around yours or his arms around your body, you seemed to fit perfectly in his hold like a matching puzzle piece. 

Nestling yourself into his warm figure, you felt yourself relax into his touch. It would be a sin to deny that he had an unexplainable effect on you. The softness of his jacket, the heat radiating from his body, and his natural scent lulled you into a dazed state, too relaxed to even care about boundaries anymore. 

“Can we talk about it now?” he whispered, voice coming out muffled because his cheek was squished on the top of your head like a child’s. 

Fluttering your eyelashes open at his sudden request, you swallowed tensely. How did you not see this coming? You pulled away to get a proper glimpse of his face. “What is there to talk about, Yoongi?” 

“Don’t say my name like that,” he cut off abruptly. Had you already ticked him off? Giving him a look of confusion, he shook his head and looked down. “Don’t say my name like you pity knowing me...”

“Yoongi,” you exhaled faintly. He didn’t interrupt you this time. “I don’t understand what you want to talk about. We got angry at each other, we fought, and we made a mistake. That’s all.” Forcing out the last phrase felt like swallowing a jagged blade. You hated admitting it because of how untrue it was. 

“It didn’t feel like a mistake to me, _____.” His face remained firm as he used your name, speaking with an unflinching air of confidence and assuredness that only he could muster. 

It was your turn to shake your head and scoff. “What do you want me to say? That it was amazing? Because it was. It was amazing, okay? Everything felt so fucking perfect and I hate admitting it—” Pausing to breathe, you groaned and tangled your fingers through your hair at the sudden outpour of emotions you’d kept bottled inside of you for weeks. 

"Because feeling that good and happy for once scared the shit out of you, didn’t it?” he finished for you. Looking up at him, his gaze remained glued onto you, completely unfazed at your expected outburst. 

The question that made your heart race like the beating of a butterfly’s wings suddenly presented itself on a silver platter. 

“How did you know about my RA?” Your throat went dry as the words felt like chalk on your tongue. Had he told Powell yet? 

Leaning his head to one side, his jaw muscles tensed. “It doesn’t take a doctor to see that you're in pain outside of class.” He said it with a tone of dripping bluntness. “Not to mention how sensitive you are to the temperature changes; how you always rub your hands when it’s cloudy outside because it’s cold; even after playing a long piece because your fingers start to ache, and how abnormally swollen your joints get after a long day.” 

Your eyebrows furrowed into a dumbfounded frown. How did he know all of that? You weren’t even remotely aware of the fact that he was cognizant of your existence, much less your usual habits and mannerisms. “How do you notice all of that?”

Yoongi's jaw muscle tensed but he didn’t respond. 

Licking your lips nervously, another equally anxiety-inducing question made its way to the tip of your tongue. Moving your hands down to his sleeved arm, Yoongi’s breath hitched in his throat when you looked at him softly, silently asking for his permission. His tongue darted out to lick his lips, hesitant for a brief second, before tipping his chin down once.  

Your fingertips lightly brushed across the smooth skin of the top of his hand before grasping the edge of the sleeve cuff. Sliding it up slowly, the scars that were hidden became exposed, the milky tone of his skin contrasting with the rough and darkened scratches that were scattered across the entire length of his arm. 

“Gnarly, isn’t it?” He let out a nasal scoff. These were the only battle scars he was sure he would never flaunt in all their glory. The pads of your fingers carefully brushed over the delicate skin, studying the textured pattern like an ancient relic; one that would leave an impression in the mind for all the wrong reasons. 

“What happened afterward?” Your voice was cautious, coming out just shy of a whisper. Would he trust you enough with this? 

Yoongi’s jaw clenched again. Before he could say anything, you slid his sleeve back down over his arm and instinctively held his hand for support. Gripping yours back in response, he took a deep breath to compose his thoughts before speaking. It was now or never. 

“Powell found me. Whether it was because of fate or some bullshit theory of the universe, I don’t know, but he rushed me to the hospital and stayed with me for the entire week in the recovery unit.” A cold gust of wind blew and he was the one who held your hand tighter. “I didn’t tell my parents of course,” he chuckled dryly. 

“They never supported me in music until the day I got my scholarship here. Before that, they practically forced me away from anything having to do with music. ‘You’ll die starving and poor; you won’t have a proper job; and when you’re on the streets, homeless and begging for money, we won’t be here to help you. Just to tell you, We told you so.’ If I told them, I knew they’d force me to move back in with them and take on the family trade; scrubbing pots and serving drinks for drunkard business mongrels until 3 a.m.”

Yoongi’s Adam’s apple bobbed at the memory but his eyes remained centered. “I took a semester off to recover and decided that it was probably best for me to just drop out since I couldn’t play anymore. PT was a crapshoot. There was nothing left here for me.” His eyes glazed over momentarily but returned in a split second. Did physical therapy really not work? Had he even tried a single session? 

“Then Powell spent the entire semester practically begging on his knees to try and convince me to switch majors to composition and theory instead,” he grinned faintly, even letting out a ghost of a chuckle. “It took a month or two, but I figured I owed him that much. The old man practically raised me like his own son ever since freshman year.”  

He turned to face you, gaze landing on your intense ones with a soft smile as his thumb rubbed over your hand. “Everyone thought I got sucked into the party scene, failed all of my classes. I think some of those idiots assumed I got hazed into a gang or a cult. Like those morons knew anything about me...” 

You bit your lip. People were truly the worst. Not to mention immature, gossip-mongering, feeble-minded pre-burnout college pricks. 

“The hospital seemed like heaven compared to the hell I stepped into when I got back. I was like an animated corpse. I rarely ate, couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t even bother going to classes. I’d just sit my bed all day and stare at the ceiling like a rock. I was too afraid to sleep because every time I did, I’d have nightmares about it.” 

He frowned at the pang of contrition that struck him. “The headlights centimeters away from my face and blinding my eyes, the sirens ringing in my ears, the creaking metal wheels on the gurney...” Shaking his head, tears flung off his face and a droplet landed on the top of your hand. 

Your eyes fell to the grass at you held back your own budding tears. No matter how badly you wanted to scream that it was all over and in the past and that you were there for him, all you could do was sit and listen.

“Everything just felt so fucking empty…” he whispered, tugging hard at the edge of his lower lip between his teeth. “That night with you in the practice room was the first good night’s sleep I’ve gotten in two years.” The confession took you by surprise, your eyes lighting up like a spark from a firework. 

His eyes softened at your reaction. “When I got rolled into the ER, a nurse was rushing down the hall with me, holding my hand the entire way. I was busy blacking in and out of consciousness.” He stopped to grab your hand and bring it to cup his cheek, closing his eyes instantly at the contact-comfort. “But she had her hand by me the entire time until I completely knocked out in the operating room.”

Stroking your thumb over the sleep-deprived hollow that sunk in under his eye, his eyebrows knitted together and he clutched your hand tighter, afraid that if he let go, you’d dissipate like a figment of his imagination that was too good to be true. That’s why he wouldn’t fall asleep yesterday...

“It was dangling there like bait in right in front of me; taunting me, insulting me, mocking me like I was nothing—like the universe was reminding me that I was never going to be able to love anything else ever again and that I’d just have to live with it,” he continued with his face strained, expression taut as he tried to focus despite reliving the painful set of memories. 

He hadn’t bothered touching a piano since that night, refusing to accept the fate he’d have to gamble in anticipation of finding out whether he still had the ability to play or not. In reality, he didn’t know whether he could still coordinate his muscles—and he had absolutely no desire to find out any time soon. 

Yoongi let out a huff through his parted mouth. “Do you know how easy it is for people—things—to come into your life, give you everything that you would ever want and could possibly ask for, and then have them take it away just like that?” Seeing his breath through the frigid air, you had a feeling it wasn’t the weather making his words sound cold, but the emptiness and distance he had created within himself.

Gnawing on the corner of your lower lip, you kept your gaze focused down at your hands. It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. Somehow, you finally found the courage to speak. “Is that why you hated me?” you asked in the barest of a whisper, your voice quieter than the rustling of the leaves on the trees. “Because you felt like I took that away from you?”

“No,” he replied instantly. Fluttering your eyelids at his unexpected and confident response, you frowned at him, confused. 

“I never hated you—didn’t—hate you because you played the piano,” he shook his head, eyes directed to the ground wistfully. “I was jealous.”

Your gaze softened at the confession as you swallowed nervously, awaiting his next words. “You looked so happy,” he smiled, letting out a chuckle that was too full of melancholy. “I knew from the first moment I saw you playing by yourself in the studio...” Yoongi’s voice trailed off, face melting into an expression you couldn’t read. 

Staring into his eyes, you silently pleaded him to continue. The corners of his mouth lifted into a gentle smile as his pearly white teeth barely peeked through his lips. “From the moment I saw you on my first day back, I knew I was screwed,” he grinned. “I wanted to hate you so badly but you were so perfect, how could I?”

A rosy flush crept onto your face at his heartfelt words. “You were alone in the studio two hours before any classes started and you were just playing your heart out,” Yoongi remembered the day clearly, the vivid details of the first time he encountered resurfacing like the fresh morning air after a rainstorm. The way his heart raced in his chest made it seem like it had just happened yesterday. 

“I thought you were some competition kid who got a free pass into school because of personal connections or an arranged acceptance, but I just heard you playing and—” he chuckled, shaking his head again. 

“You weren’t just reading notes and playing the piece like a robot; you were breathing the music and I could feel it.” Yoongi’s fingers stroked the palm of your hand. “I could feel you. In every single piece I’ve ever heard you play: Campanella, Liebestraum, Fantaisie, Moonlight Sonata...”

Your pulse was racing like the engine of a sports car. Judging by how confidently he listed down the pieces, he knew each of those pieces by heart, recalling each exact moment when you had played the melodies like a page out of the book of his recollections. Campanella was the piece you’d chosen for your junior year exam, Liebestraum your senior, Fantaisie was simply one you practiced for fun, and Moonlight Sonata was the piece Powell had asked you to play for an exhibition recently. 

“I tried so hard to avoid you and hate you and completely despise your existence,” he scoffed at himself. “You glowed brighter than the stars when you played. Seeing it from you made it hurt so much more because I missed that feeling more than anything,” he paused. “But I couldn’t. I was already in too deep, so I just ignored you.”

For the first time, a lengthy and comfortable silence befell the two of you.

“I didn’t know what who I wanted to be until I started college,” you admitted suddenly, confidence stemming from the seed Yoongi had planted with his truth. 

“My mom taught me how to play the piano when I was four. She’d put me in her lap while she played and let me press the keys.” You chuckled at the flashback. “I didn’t think much of it until I fell entirely in love with it in middle school. It was this weird need, this urge to play whenever I was happy, angry, sad, annoyed, and frustrated. I felt like it was the only friend who understood me better than the actual people I knew.”

Yoongi gave you an understanding smile, sympathizing with your logic by the nature of personal experience. 

“In high school, everyone thought I was the one who had my whole life plotted out like a map: a loving family, supportive parents, good grades.” A ghost of a smile grazed your face at the distant memory. It felt so close and yet so far like you could reach out and touch it, yet it was a fingertip’s length from being torn away from you.  

“During senior year, I found out that I really didn’t have a passion for anything. Not even for music—at the time,” you filled in. “I shut everyone out with these gates I built. I hated how lonely I was, but who else could I blame? I didn’t want people to see me for who I thought I was: a passionless, unmotivated, lazy, worthless failure who would never amount to anything.” 

Shaking your head, tears welled in your eyes, blurring your vision, yet refused to cry over something as stupid and insignificant as this. Seeing this, Yoongi simply laced his fingers through yours firmly, wordlessly showing his support for your endurance. 

“I auditioned for fun one day after seeing the posters stapled across our school’s bulletin board. Didn’t expect much at the time since I didn’t think you could do anything with a degree in music, and in the beginning, I actually thought I was right,” you laughed wryly at yourself. 

“Undergrad was pretty awful. Playing as a student with a major was so much different than playing for fun. I was so stressed with deadlines and projects and practice hours, I almost forgot why I started playing in the first place.” Your mind wandered back to the long, sleepless nights you spent in the studios trying to perfect what would never even come close to the synonym of perfection.

“Then in my sophomore year, I got to take more classes with Powell and he completely changed my life. I wish I was exaggerating, but he really did change who I was as a person, not just a dazed university student. I don’t think I’d still be here without him.”

Your lips formed into a tender smile. “I started getting my passion for playing back and I learned to appreciate the value of my scholarship. I guess now, I’m just hanging in the middle.” Yoongi’s eyes studied your features intently, concentration remaining unswayed for the entirety of your release of emotions. 

A couple moments skimmed by before you resumed speaking. 

“I like spending time at coffee shops, taking the bus to the bookstore when I have free time, and sometimes I even make an effort to actually greet some of the people there—but I like being alone,” you admitted. Yoongi’s ears perked up at your last phrase.

“I like doing things by myself and being able to have control over everything in my life so that I don’t have anyone to blame other than me when shit goes downhill,” you rambled, swallowing your words while you spoke like bitter medicine. Yoongi’s smoldering gaze, as it lay on you, was intense enough to start forest fires.

You sighed heavily. “But frankly, I don’t like being lonely.” The confession bled past your lips like spilled ink from a bottle, leaving a splattered and stained trail as it seeped through your mind. 

“No one does,” he responded honestly. Directing your watery eyes to his softened gaze, you looked down at the pair of your hands entwined together.

What was this in his eyes? 

Who were you to him?

Yoongi, on the other hand, didn’t waste a single second before cupping the sides of your face and bringing you into a kiss. The force took you by surprise and made you land on your back with a soft thud, causing you to burst into a fit of laughter against his lips.

It didn’t take you longer than a couple of flashes in your brain synapses to give into his magnetizing touch. Making out on a hilltop in front of the city lights never crossed the line of sounding appealing other than outside of a cheesy rom-com, but Yoongi’s warm lips preoccupied every train of logical thought that ran cross your mind. God, what was he doing to you? 

You’d slept with him once and you still managed to get butterflies like a giddy teenager who was in their first relationship; immature and blind with infatuation. You tangled your hands through his hair like second nature as his weight pressed on top of you, making you feel secure under him. The kiss was tender and patient—a stark contrast to the last time you had locked lips with him. 

“Can I be alone with you?” he asked suddenly, breath fanning across your lips because he refused to pull away farther than three centimeters from you. 

You laughed heartily, making him flash his pearly whites and peeking pink gums again. “Is this your dumb way of asking me out?” Smiling widely in response, his lips connected with yours again, effectively shutting you up. 

“I don’t want to pretend like I don’t have feelings for you anymore, _____,” he murmured into your ear. “Do you know how hard it’s been having to act like I hate your guts for the past three years when I can’t stop thinking about you on a regular basis?” 

Another awfully timed blush graced the tops of your cheeks. You shoved his shoulder playfully at his seemingly sarcastic yet sincere compliment. “Stop being such a softie, it’s gross.” Yoongi pouted, feigning hurt at your teasing comment. His childish face made you burst into laughter, vibrant and full of life. You’d swear on your life that he had a million personalities buried deep underneath that facade of a stone-cold gargoyle. 

Biting your lip, you shook your head, picking at the grass to distract yourself. “What if I’m sleeping and this is all some dream that’s way too good to be true?” you mumbled. How did you go from avoiding each other like water and oil to melding perfectly like paper and ink? 

“Then it’d be your dream and my nightmare...” he murmured, keeping his forehead pressed against yours as his lips remained centimeters away from contact.

You laughed shyly, shoving him away teasingly at his admirably honest nature. “So three years, huh?” 

Again, Yoongi chose not to respond, allowing you to take note of yet another one of his habits: refusing to answer a question he knew he was guilty of.  

You only had one shitty, wonderful, stressful, joyous, short life. Might as well make it worth living with what you were given. 

As you gazed deeply into the dark eyes that belonged to the person who you once thought hated your very being, you realized that you were entirely and utterly screwed—because you were completely captivated by each other. 

The best part? You had a million more reasons to discover exactly why. 

Relationships were never you or Yoongi’s thing. Whereas the typical couple would spend hours at a time arguing over stupid things, trying to work it out but only tearing their hair out in clumps and eventually breaking up, you never saw the point in arguing in general. If you argued with your partner, you would request to break up. Simple. Clean. Painless. Well, at least for one.

It was a really black and white way of seeing the complex web that composed a relationship, but to you, it was just blatantly obvious. Some called you cold but that was just another opinion. 

Why argue if you’re “in love” with each other? Why fight if you’re “in love” with each other? Why hurt the person you love if you can choose not to be with them and let them be happy? Holding onto people for the sake of a quote on quote, “relationship” despite hurting each other was selfish and pointless. 

To you, that wasn’t love. It was self-sabotage. 

“You okay?” Yoongi’s voice peeped from above you, mumbling into your hair. 

“Hm?” you hummed, snapping out of your daze. He chuckled deeply at your deeply unwavering expression, pressing a kiss to the top of your head tenderly. You were currently tangled in the sheets of his bed after waking up from a nap. Today marked the first week of your official relationship and you had to admit, it was pretty nice. 

Okay, nice was an understatement. It was perfect. 

You had yet to get into an argument, as both of you had quite passive and anti-argumentative personalities. Then again, you were still technically in the honeymoon phase of your relationship, so it was bound to pop up at some point. 

Your days together were few and far between spending time in the studio practicing, sleeping over at his dorm (courtesy of his ever-so diligently working resident advisor), walking each other to class, texting and video calling for hours until one of you fell asleep, and occasionally going up to the viewpoint when the weather conditions proved to be favorable—and you had chugged four cups of coffee. 

It was like something of a fairytale, and you were always worried that you’d wake up one day to find out that it was just that: a false reality you had conjured up in your own head. But if it was a dream, it was one you never wanted to wake up from.

“Hold still,” you scolded for the tenth time. 

Yoongi grumbled. “I’m trying, but it’s hard when you’re tickling my neck.”  

Huffing at his fidgety muscles, you blew a hair out of your face and kept your hands busy. “It wasn’t my idea to dye your hair, dummy.” He hummed an off-beat tune in response to your incessant scolds. 

In the early hours of the morning, you had gotten a text from your loving and selfless boyfriend that he needed to save a few bucks and needed to touch up his hair. You, being the only other person he spoke in the whole universe (practically), so graciously agreed. It was about five minutes into the hands-on activity that you were beginning to regret your generous and giving disposition. 

Thankfully, you didn’t have to deal with the fumes of bleach as Yoongi had opted to dye his hair back to his natural dark brown color. He mentioned something about his growing lazy temperament and it becoming too time-consuming to continuously touch up the dark roots every few weeks. It wasn’t exactly the best for his hair either, the blonde ends breaking off due to the harsh chemicals and his inability to spare the extra five minutes to use conditioner. 

“Then why did you dye it in the first place?” you laughed, dumbfounded at his odd reasoning. 

Mumbling something in an inaudible hush, you shot him a confused glance. "I was going through a phase...” he said clearer this time, tucking his chin down in shame. 

Lifting your eyebrows, you nodded, accepting his answer and sensing that he wasn’t going to elaborate any time soon. “You know, you could just let it grow out and style it like that, grown out roots and everything” you offered. “I’ve seen a few celebrities who pull it off pretty well.” 

“Eh,” he let out a disgruntled sound, crinkling one of his eyes.

You snorted through your nose from holding in your laugh, making him flinch as your breath tickled his sensitive neck again. “Sorry,” you giggled. Continuing brushing the pitch-black gel over his roots, you were trying to be careful and not let it get on his skin. As far as your experience in hair dye went, the stains would wash out easily with some warm water and soap, but you didn’t enjoy the extensive process of cleanup it would lead to. 

“Does it bother you?” you asked, referring to the color differentiation of dark roots to beige blonde hair during the grow-out process. 

Thinking over it for a minute, Yoongi pouted and gave into his perfectionist attitude as he clicked his tongue with a “yup.” Holding back a grin at his undeniably soft personality, you couldn’t believe that you still hadn’t woken up yet. You intentionally blew a puff of air in his ear, causing him to jolt from his seat. 

“Hey!” he was the one to scold this time. 

“My advisor is going to kill me.” 

“If you die, I’ll kill you.” 

Scrunching your nose at his menacing threat that made absolutely no sense, he let out a sleepy grumble, nestling his head into your hair and inhaling your scent. 

“Just because your advisor is shit at his job, doesn’t mean that mine doesn't notice when I’m gone,” you pointed out. 

Yoongi mumbled lazily into your hair in the hopes that you’d drop the topic and go to sleep. It was an idle Friday night and the two of you had spent the entire day at the studio practicing the piece. Since you only had classes from Mondays to Thursdays, you got into a routine of meeting up and spending the whole free day in the studios. 

The last day of the week was what Yoongi looked forward to more than anything because it usually ended with you burying yourselves in his bed sheets with a random episode of The Office playing on your laptop and falling asleep tangled in each other. 

“Yoongi,” you groaned. “What if I get in trouble?” 

He hummed something inaudible into your chest once again, tickling your collarbone with his whispers. No way were you letting him fall asleep that easily. It was only fifteen minutes past 8. 

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Poking his shoulder playfully, his mouth was still closed, indicating that he was indeed fully awake. He always parted his mouth slightly when he was asleep, another habit you picked up early on the way before your relationship started.  

Then an idea struck you. There was that favor you needed to repay him for...

Prying your body away from his arms gently, you bit your lip coyly, smirking at his clueless sleeping body. Your hand trailed down to the band of his sweatpants slowly, making him gulp. Running your fingers along the bundle of fabric near his hipbone, you were surprised when your hand met his already-hard length. 

Yoongi’s eyes were now fully open as you shot him a questioning gaze. “Your fault for being so goddamn attractive all the time...” he defended, jutting his lower lip into a pout and not bothering to hide his blatantly obvious hard-on. 

Dropping your mouth in a mock offended gape, you raised your eyebrows as a chuckle of disbelief came out. “I haven’t even touched you yet!” 

“I get hard just thinking about you,” he admitted all-too casually. Smacking him on the shoulder from embarrassment, you shook your head and couldn’t help but bury your face in his chest. 

“It amazes me the same Min Yoongi who despised me a few months ago would turn out to be the softest cheeseball I know,” you scoffed. 

Kissing your nose, he wrapped his arms around you and turned onto his back, rolling you on top of him. The change of angle made you immediately feel his hardness pressing under you. You rested your chin on his chest innocently, rolling the piling lint on his shirt between your fingers. 

Yoongi’s eyes started drifting off again, too tired to keep the ball rolling, but not before giving you another idea. Keeping your chin resting atop his chest, you began rolling your hips slowly against his, making him suddenly choke while exhaling. 

Lifting his head to look down at your seductive grin, you batted your eyelashes sweetly, feigning innocence as you continued grinding your hips over the growing tent in his pants. 

“_____,” he whined, rubbing his tired eyes. “You know there’s nothing or anyone I’d rather be doing right now, but I’m a little sleepy.” Pressing a swift kiss to his lips, you ignored his excuses and slid down to pull down his sweats. 

“Who said you had to do anything?” Your voice was too cocky for your own good and Yoongi was, as he had mentioned, too tired to even sit up and watch what you were doing. You had all of him to yourself and at your mercy. 

Snapping the band of his boxers against his skin, Yoongi let out another soft whine as he started growing more impatient and harder with your teasing pace. His clothed member was straining against the tight cotton of his briefs and made you lick your lips in anticipation. 

You palmed him through the thin fabric, drawing out teasing him for as long as possible to make his pleasure greater in the long run, but it forced another throaty growl out of his mouth. His gruff tone made wetness pool immediately between the junction of your thighs. 

Unable to handle your own slow pace for much longer, you yanked down his briefs in one swift tug as his length immediately sprung out against his toned stomach. It was just as perfect as you had remembered. 

You were seconds away from biting your lip to the point of breaking the skin. Wrapping your hand around his hardness like a magnet, it throbbed underneath your fingers, already oozing precum from the red and swollen tip. Each time you pumped up and down his length, it caused a bead to well up and pool around his slit. Fuck—how was he was so perfect?

“_____,” he moaned through a strangled whine. Watching his face with every precise stroke, Yoongi’s face flushed bright pink as he clenched his jaw and rubbed his forehead in frustration. Words of encouragement weren’t needed to put an end to your teasing; your own blooming arousal took care of that. 

Gnawing on your lower lip, you couldn’t hold back your desire anymore as your tongue darted out to lick a slow line along his tip, grazing the dimple of his sensitive slit with the flat edge of your tongue. He arched his back off of the bed instantly and almost came with a single touch. 

Unable to talk and already breathless from the contact he had been waiting for since that night, you peppered kisses down his thick member and licked a stripe on the prominent vein beside his tip, causing him to jolt again. Your core throbbed seeing him in such a vulnerable state, while Yoongi knew that at that exact moment, he belonged to you, and only you.  

Finally wrapping your lips around his head, your tongue smoothed over his cock, sucking with just the right amount of pressure to keep his nails digging into the mattress. Swirling your tongue around the tip tantalizingly slowly, you guided his hands into your hair, directing him silently to tug your tresses. 

Obeying instantly with a moan, lewd sounds began filling the room as you began bobbing up and down mercilessly, varying your speed and pressure occasionally to keep him on edge. You even went as far as to grasp him with your hand and drag his tip across your slick and swollen lips which earned you another deep moan from him.  

“Fucking hell,” he moaned, throat raspy and rough from holding back his cries of pleasure. Pausing your unholy administrations, you gave your jaw a break by gripping his base tightly with one hand and swirling your tongue around the index finger of your free hand. He craned his head back in an overload of pleasure as you used it to rub over his slit, toying with his red tip. 

Everyone had a different piece of advice regarding giving head. Some said you needed to focus on the tip; others said that the balls were highly disregarded; a few said that the spot where the head met the length was the most sensitive. All in all, it really depended on the person, and to be quite honest, you weren’t that experienced. 

Yoongi was an exception, as both of you had learned your respective kinks out of genuine interest and desire for mutual pleasure, not as a nagging chore or contract payback. 

Not to mention the first time you’d slept with each other was—enlightening. 

“Fuck, _____,” he growled, moving your hair out of your face to gaze into your eyes. “How are you so fucking perfect?” Huh—even when he was blissed out, he was still the romantic type. 

You broke your character of confidence as a shy grin escaped. Wrapping your mouth around him again, he let out a grunt and threw his head back onto the bed. The sloppy, obscene sounds returned once you repeated your actions, his knuckles moving out of your hair to grip the bed sheets for fear of hurting you. His fists were clenched so hard, his knuckles were white. 

Yoongi’s body grew warm, a sheen of sweat formed on his forehead, and he began pulsating in your mouth more frequently; he was close. Closing your hand around his throbbing length, you gripped him firmly and coordinated your pumps with your mouth, making him throw his head back in pure ecstasy. 

His hands found their way back to your hair, trying to pull you away as a warning that he would cum soon, but you swatted them away. Grabbing your hands instead, he laced his fingers through yours in a death grip, heart pounding so hard that it nearly burst through his ribcage. 

His pants grew increasingly urgent and his moans were primal. He found his release with the cry of your name as his cock shot hot spurts of cum into your throat and on your readily cupped tongue. The sensation of him throbbing in your mouth as his breathing calmed down was such a powerful feeling, and add to it the pleasure of seeing him writhe in pleasure beneath your fingertips? 

It sounded like a recipe for a perfect Friday night in both you and Yoongi’s books. 

Sucking his remaining release off of his softening length, you savored the satisfying, salty taste like fine wine as it coated your tongue and throat. It felt so wrong but too right. You wiped off whatever you could from his spent cock, hating to waste anything. Once you were done, you tugged his boxers back on as Yoongi brought you into his hold and wasted no time kissing you deeply, exploring your mouth with his tongue. 

Parting your mouth to calm your breathing, Yoongi’s eyes bore into yours with blown out pupils, still coming down from his high. “I didn’t know that’s what you meant by sleepyhead.” His euphoric chuckle reverberated like the baritone of a bass. 

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to do that?” you moaned softly under your breath, licking the remnants of his release off of your index finger as you nestled into his side.

He gazed at you warmly as his mouth broke into a gummy smile and eyes into half-moons. “That’s supposed to be my line.” 

Suddenly, a mischievous expression glassed over his features. You narrowed your eyes. “What is that face?” Smirking with a sinister gaze, Yoongi was now wide awake, giving you no time before flipping you onto your back and tickling your sides. 

“Hey!” you giggled, trying to swat away his arms like flies. Without giving you a formal warning, he tugged down your shorts making you yelp in surprise when the cold air hit your dripping core. 

Licking his lips in excitement and carnal instinct, he flashed a far too innocent grin at you before he delved in, unable to hold back his mundane hunger for another second. 

It was going to be a long weekend.

Digging around the fridge, a bundle of asparagus landed in Yoongi’s hand as he caught it mid-air from falling. You were already crouched down and braced for impact, but unfurled your wound arms, taking a peek at the grinning figure above you. 

“You okay there?” Yoongi’s eyes crinkled as he smiled, helping you up from your hunched position. Taking the bag from his hands, you beamed at him in response, turning back to the stovetop. 

He sighed. “You really didn’t have to stock up my fridge, you know.” Sneaking a carrot off of your cutting board, he popped it into his mouth like a 12-year old badgering their mother in the kitchen. “The apocalypse isn’t until—” he snuck a glance at his imaginary watch, filling his cheeks with air and pursing his lips into a puffer-fish face pout. “—400 years from now.”

You rolled your eyes at his ever sarcastic jokes. “If the apocalypse doesn’t kill you, your diet of energy drinks and expired caffeine shots will,” you lectured. 

Yoongi couldn’t help but smile warmheartedly. Not at your nurturing actions, but at you. He still felt like this was all a dream, too good to be true. Wrapping his arms around your waist, you fit into his larger frame like a lock and key as he nestled his head into the crook of your neck. 

“What’s on the menu today?” he asked, voice producing ticklish vibrations just under the shell of your ear. 

Turning to face him, you scrunched your nose. He wasn’t just a cheeseball—he was officially the biggest, softest, sweetest, weirdest, and most amazing person you had ever met. You never thought you’d say anything even remotely close to that in your entire life.

“Your favorite,” you answered in a sing-song voice. 

The corners of his mouth turned up into a cheeky smirk you knew too well. His hands trailed down slowly to your hipbones, rubbing soothing circles into them out of habit. He licked over his bottom lip teasingly, all while keeping his eyes glued on you. Yours were focused on washing the rice. 

“Yoongi,” you warned playfully, knowing his expressions like the back of your hand. You could feel his eyes drinking in your features, your very existence an oasis for him, a once deserted and desperate man. “Don’t even think about it.” 

He pouted, jutting his lip out as his eyebrows furrowed into a dramatic scowl. “But I’m hungry!” he whined impishly into your hair. 

“I’m making lunch,” you giggled. “Just wait.” Your eyes widened at the last word, emphasizing your point. 

Trailing gentle pecks long your neck, he murmured softly into your ear.  “Not for fried rice...”

Your hands froze in the midst of opening the bag of spinach.

“Yoongi!” you groaned. 

Another Wednesday, another solitary four hours spent in the studio alone. After your classes were over, you texted Yoongi saying you needed a few hours alone to practice freely. Just because you were in a relationship didn’t mean you had to spend every waking moment with each other. 

Besides, he and you were both aware of your respective personal space and private time you needed to spend doing your own things. Yoongi also mentioned that he needed to finish up a beat he was making for a friend, so it worked out well. 

You walked out of the studio with a scarf wrapped around your neck, sheltering you from the biting wind that graced the campus grounds. Skipping down the stairs, you were greeted by the back of a person whom you had become very well-acquainted with. 

Hearing the sound of your gleeful steps he had memorized down to the last click, he turned around—with a pair of to-go cups in his hands. 

Your eyebrows raised up as your mouth broke into a mixture of an endeared laugh and astonished chuckle. Leaning down, he pecked you on the cheek, feeling his heart flutter at your effortless beauty. 

“Was she even real?” he wondered.

“You didn’t have to,” you awed. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to get dinner anyway.” 

Yoongi handed you the cup marked with the symbols you knew by heart: double-shot of espresso, a pump of mocha, a single packet of hazelnut creamer, and two packets of sugar. 

“Your hands need to stay warm,” he insisted, rubbing over your hands that were now wrapped tightly around the cup. 

Biting your lip, your cheeks were hurting from smiling so much at the simple but meaningful gesture. “Thank you,” you blushed sincerely, not just from the wave of emotions that washed over you but also from the cold. 

Was he even real? 

You nearly twisted your ankle trying to catch up to his speed-walking figure. 

“Hey!” you shouted, panting heavily at how quick he was on his feet. Was he training for a marathon behind your back? “Yoongi! Hold–wait up! Slow down!”

No matter what you said, it didn’t seem to faze him as he continued walking. Hunching over and putting your hands on your bent knees to hold yourself up, you took a couple deep breaths before sprinting as fast as your burning legs could carry you. 

“Min fucking Yoongi, if you don’t stop right now, I will—” You didn’t manage to finish your sentence before stumbling over a jagged crack in the pavement and falling with a gasp. The impact was abrupt, the shock not giving you a chance to let out a proper scream. Silent accidents were the ones that hurt the most. 

Yoongi was by your side in the blink of an eye, almost tripping over the ditch himself when he ran back to you. “_____!” he shouted in pure panic. Well, that certainly broke his vow of silence...

Helping you get off of your stomach and sit up straight, he winced when he saw your forearm. The injury was nothing more than a wide scrape on the damp cement, but the rocky debris and dripping crimson trail made it appear all the more appealing for a Stephen King movie. 

You cringed at the wound yourself, but more so at the stinging pain that began to spread over your elbow. Minor cuts and scratches were gifts sent from Satan himself. The thought of it getting infected made Yoongi pull out a pack of tissues from his bag as he pressed the bundle firmly over your wound. His face was still locked in an uncomfortable grimace. 

“Let’s go back to my dorm. I have a first-aid kit,” he mumbled, helping you onto your feet and bending down on one knee. You raised your eyebrow at his odd position, only realizing a few seconds afterward that he was offering you a piggyback ride. 

You let out a nasal scoff. “Yoongi, my legs are still perfectly mobile. Get up before you get your clothes wet.” You had enough to deal with his bitchy mood today and it certainly didn’t help that it had been raining a few hours prior to his temper tantrum. 

He pressed his lips into a firm line, refusing to respond or get up from his crouched position. Was he messing around? After a minute of complete silence, you huffed, annoyed at his ridiculous and adamant form of an apology, and saddled onto his back. 

Hooking his arms beneath your knees as you looped yours around his neck, you realized how much of a cheeky shit he truly was. Yes, he hated acknowledging it, but even he knew how ridiculous this argument and wanted to use the close proximity a piggyback would give to his advantage—even though the two of you were as stubborn as garden weeds. 

“Are you going to talk to me now?” you asked, propping your chin comfortably on his shoulder like a perched bird as he began walking the two of you back to his dorm. 

Sniffling once, he prodded the inside of his cheek in an effort to distract himself, too prideful to answer you right away. 

“Yoongi...” you sighed faintly, saying his name the way you did whenever he tugged at your heartstrings. He exhaled harshly through his nose once before finally speaking. 

“I don’t like how nice you are,” he said bluntly with an obviously sheepish tone of shame coating his voice. What?

“What?” you repeated out loud this time, unable to hold back your animated face of utter confusion.  

When he didn’t reply, you tugged on his ears like you were scolding a child who’d just been caught licking dollops of icing straight from the piping bag. “Min Yoongi,” you called out half-threateningly. 

He let out a whiny grumble, a sound that was a combination of a grumpy obese cat and worn out AC motor. 

“I don’t like how nice you are to everyone,” he repeated. “Especially to guys.” 

Your mouth was parted in an ‘o’ shape and your eyes were narrowed like an animated character’s. Was he—no way...

Your eyes widened to the size of the moon when he blushed. Oh my God. “You’re jealous?!” you screeched. He jumped at the volume of your voice. It was the first time he had ever heard you genuinely scream and he imagined it was what you would sound like if you were at a concert. 

Were you a Liszt or Chopin person? Rachmaninoff? Maybe Beethoven? He nibbled on his lips to hide his grin. Why were you so cute? 

“Earth to Yoongi?” you deadpanned, waving your hands in front of his face to get his attention. Snapping his eyes to you and blinking out of his daze, he returned to his stern expression. Tipping your head to one side, you stared at him with half-lidded eyes, tired of his antics. 

No wonder relationships didn’t last long; human beings were naturally and wholeheartedly stubborn as fuck. Flaring your nostrils at his unyielding disposition, you clicked your tongue between your teeth, resorting to blatant, unfiltered honesty. 

“Jungkook was just being helpful—and I was being polite.” Enunciating the word, Yoongi paid no attention to it, as it wasn’t one he had registered in his dictionary. 

There it was. Yoongi’s breath caught in his throat at your ability to lay out your non-implicit thoughts onto the table. “You could’ve told me he was the idiot who told you where my dorm was when you were hauling me into my room that day.” He defended his reasoning, still unconvinced. 

“I didn’t even know who he was until we met him today,” you groaned, repeating what you had said earlier for the fifth time. This was all so torturously textbook newly-blooming relationship bullcrap and was making your head pound in your skull. 

Jungkook, the boy you’d seen that day when you dragged Yoongi down his dorm corridor and who had directed you to where his room was, recognized you during lunch today. Being the social butterfly and sweetheart he was, he found it in his best interest to introduce himself to you formally.

During the conversation, which lasted just short of a minute and a half, Yoongi’s glare was practically burning crater-sized holes into Jungkook’s face the entire time, imagining his face as target objects ranging from a checkered dartboard to a chipped wooden knife block. 

He jutted his lower lip into his signature pout. “Well I didn’t exactly enjoy seeing the little prick recognize you and shout like he’d just won the damn lottery...” he remarked bitterly, irritation directed purely towards Jungkook and not you. 

“Did he really not have a better way to grab your attention? I was this close to filing a lawsuit for hearing damage.” Unable to bring his fingers up to mimic a pinch, he narrowed his eyes tightly instead. “Nearly burst my damn eardrum running over to you and calling you 'superwoman lady...’”

“Yoongi,” you hummed, a chuckle escaping your lips like a song. “You’re jealous because of some sophomore who happened to recognize me from carrying her boyfriend—” you emphasized. “—to his dorm room because he was sick?” 

Coming to terms with your lawful point, he mumbled something under his breath that you could’ve sworn was, “Not back then I wasn't.” 

“I’m in love with you, you idiot.” Poking fun at his jealous side, it was quite endearing to know that he cared about you to the extent of fuming like a kettle in the presence of other guys. Grabbing one side of his face with one hand, you gave him an affectionate peck on his cheek, causing him to blush like a middle-schooler. God, he was so innocent. 

After a couple more leisure paces in the direction of the boys' dorm, you stopped for a moment to look at you properly. 

“I still think you’re too nice,” he closed with a ‘hmph,’ continuing his way back to his room. You could only hold back your hearty smile for so long before it burst. 

“No freaking way, buddy,” you scoffed. Tossing another kernel of popcorn into your mouth, Yoongi pointed to his open mouth. Popping one into his, respectively, you returned to your bantering debate. 

“Liszt is obviously far superior to Chopin,” Yoongi remarked snarkily. You’d gone over this for the past hour, killing time while the pre-packaged cookie dough you bough baked in the oven. 

Another sarcastic puff of air left your lips. “Are you kidding me? Other than the fact that he had freakishly large hands and made a pact with Paganini and sacrificed both of their souls to the Devil, I don’t think this is even a real topic up for grabs.” 

Snatching the kernel from your fingers in the midst of bringing it to your mouth, Yoongi chortled at your gaping jaw. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?” His straightforward and genuine eyebrow raise made you shrug. 

“I don’t know. You listen to La Campanella and tell me.” Mirroring his inquisitive expression and raising your eyebrow, his voice vibrated in a lengthy hum. 

“Hm... Well played, _____. Well played...” Yoongi’s eyes narrowed, trying his best to seem intimidating like a dollar store Sherlock Holmes. “But you mastered Campanella in your junior year, so who’s the real soul-sacrificing Devil here?” 

You poked your tongue out, launching another piece of popcorn into his readily awaiting mouth to shut him up. However, your aim was a little too northbound and it ended up hitting his forehead. You laughed to the point where your stomach was cramping. You assumed it was karma taking your side. 

Days blurred into weeks and before you knew it, it was the night before the performance exam. No matter how many times you’d been forced by your school assignments to play for an audience, it never ceased to get your heart pumping—for the wrong reasons.

Sighing, you flung your body into your freshly washed bed sheets. It was only 10, but you figured since it would take you a few hours to fall asleep from the nerves, it’d probably be best to knock out early. 

“Not too late to sneak over and cuddle with me, you know,” a voice reverberated from your phone speaker. 

You chuckled at Yoongi’s determined and unwavering stubbornness that stemmed from his giddy fondness for you. Your advisor had eventually caught you sneaking into your dorm room a few days ago and if you had, oddly enough, listened to Yoongi’s pestering and stayed in his room for the night, you wouldn’t be on room lockdown right about now. You felt like a prisoner in your own dorm. 

Wrapping the blanket around yourself like a swaddle, you hid your gleeful smile with the bundle of sheets as his equally gummy grin displayed on the bright screen of your phone. Both of your room lights were all off so his cheeky face was all the more visible. 

“She let me off easy and didn’t give me a suspension and that was because I’m one of the good students on this block,” you reminded. “I don’t think I want to push my luck.” 

Yoongi huffed exasperatedly, irked that he wouldn’t be able to hold you tonight. “Are you ungrounded tomorrow?” He spoke in pout. That damn pout...

Burying your face in your blankets and clamping your hand over your mouth to hide your squeal, your mind couldn’t help but wander to the crude beginnings of your relationship. Was this real? 

“Yup,” you mumbled sluggishly through the fabric. “You’re buying dinner after the performance is over.”

Letting out a sigh, he lied down on his bed and rested his hand comfortably beneath his head, allowing you to get a full glimpse of his body, only now realizing that he was shirtless. Despite the darkness that cascaded both of your rooms, you could clearly see the definition of his lean but built muscles, the veins on his forearm rippling with each time he shifted on his mattress. 

“Who gave you permission to be so hot?” you yawned out, accidentally letting the lewd thought slip past your lips as you grew increasingly sleepy with each sentence. He laughed huskily in a low voice, admiring your state of sleep-drunkenness, as you liked to call it. 

His raspy voice wasn’t just the thing you’re ears were blessed with in the mornings, but also at night when he was equally as exhausted as you. It was like a second piano to your ears, lulling you to sleep each time whether it was through video calls or cradled by his side.  

Bundling the sheets around his body, you whined faintly at the loss of your favorite sight. “I don’t know, my girlfriend. She’s cool or whatever,” he whispered, eyes beginning to droop shut like yours. “But don’t tell her I said that.” 

The word still felt like a new muscle stitched his tongue, every sentence that contained it sounding a million times better with the coined phrase. Yoongi continued cherishing his new reality: he had a girlfriend and it was you. 

You couldn’t respond with words, just a fuzzy, softhearted grin. “Love you, dummy,” you yawned again. 

Yoongi yawned in tandem with you, lips curling into the gummy smile you loved.  “I love you, _____...” he managed to say before allowing sleep to consume him.  

Neither of you even bothered to end the call, a habit you had developed from the hundreds of times you had rung each other and fallen asleep to each other’s voices. The first few times resulted in you both waking up with absolutely no battery and having to forgo your phones for the whole day, however, you quickly learned that splurging $30 on a portable charger just for these occasions was well worth it. 

What if you mess up? Are your hands warm enough? 

What if you forget a section? You should’ve fit in a few extra hours in the studio yesterday. 

What if your fingers cramp up? 

Did you remember to take an Advil? Should you have taken two? 

A million questions pestered your mind like a plague, buzzing and ringing in your ears loud enough to make a swarm of steroid-filled bees jealous. Pacing around backstage as the muffled sounds from the auditorium filled the space, you were a few paces away from boring holes into the ground. Performance jitters were the worst and your anxiety made them all the more unbearable. 

“Hey,” Yoongi interrupted, placing his hands on your shoulders to snap you out of your pool of overwhelming thoughts. “Calm down. Breathe. You’re starting to make me nervous.” 

Running your hands through your hair, you groaned and uttered out another apology. Why were you so stressed out? It wasn’t a full audience. Just your entire class plus the comp majors and table of judgmental executioners, more commonly known as the board of music teachers. The entirety of their presence was the icing on top of your cake of nightmares. God, what you would do for a slice of double-chocolate cake right about now...

“What—” you started but Yoongi knew better to cut you off early and derail your train of thought before it arrived at the station. 

He cupped his hands around your flustered cheeks, his cooling touch bringing relief to the blistering hot skin that began to rise with your heartbeat. 

“Do you know how absolutely phenomenal these past few months have been?” Articulating his words in unison with his heartfelt gaze, his thumbs stroked over your cheeks softly, assuring you wholeheartedly with the fewest words he could. 

“I know how much pressure you put on yourself, but I also know how much more you love playing the piano,” he spoke soothingly. “Don’t think about them or messing up. Hell, don’t even think about sticking to what we fixed and picked on during practice.”

He brought you into his arms, making you lean onto his chest and listen to his steady heartbeat that thumped through his shirt. “Think about enjoying it to the point of not having any regrets. Of what it feels like while you play. Think about how you love it unconditionally through thick and thin, and how you wouldn’t give up anything in the world to let it go.” 

His words flowed like a stream in your head, smoothing over the rocky slopes of your worries and fears and replacing them with ripples of passion and confidence. Just as you pressed a kiss to his lips, the stage coordinator signaled to you with a frantic wave. It was your turn. 

Yoongi held onto your hands tightly for just a moment before giving you a small grin and going to find a seat in the audience. You took a deep breath. You only had one chance at this; you were going to make it count. 

Taking even-paced steps onto the stage, you closed your eyes and murmured a  wordless prayer to whoever might be listening. Whether that’d be the piano gods themselves or the ibuprofen coursing through your bloodstream and numbing your nerves, it didn’t matter. You needed to play for you. 

Not hesitating or wasting any more valuable seconds, your fingers brushed the cold keys, a sudden rush of eagerness filling your previously buzzing nerves. Your muscle memory activated like the flick of a light switch, the soft melody of the beginning exposition filling the echoey stage all the way to the back of the concert hall. 

Your fingers stroked the keys with such accuracy and precision, nailing each of the complex chords with ease. The development was coming up next. Changing your tempo from the quick-paced and exciting beginning to a mellow and even-toned pace, a pre-recorded track suddenly flooded through the onstage speakers but you didn’t have time to react.

You could recognize that beat from a million miles away. 

It was the same solemn tune that Yoongi was playing in the studio that night alone; same melodic chorus, orchestral strings, deep bass, and right down to the synth pad that started towards the end of the section. The flowing melody and tempo blended with your playing harmoniously, producing a euphonious sound that pushed you to play with more urgency and passion. 

The unexpected harmony made you smile, on the verge of tears as you could only comprehend one message that rang as clear as a bell: he wrote this for you. 

Before you knew it, you were already finished with the last recapitulation, the final remaining notes trailing off gently into what you assumed would be the end of the track, like that night, but it didn’t stop. It continued into another excerpt that melded perfectly with the coda you’d composed; vibrant, fuller, lively, vivid, and colorful—happy. 

The full-bodied and adagio resonance of Yoongi’s composed track with what sounded like a philharmonic orchestra and synth board contrasted like day and night from your constantly moving fingers. High off of the adrenaline of playing and euphoria of music, you paid no attention to the burning that had spread in your fingers during the first two minutes of the piece, instead choosing to bask in the utter state of bliss you were in.  

The track slowed down in sync with your playing, toning down the fast-paced and riveting chorus that had reverberated through the room seconds ago and replacing with it with the delicate and gentle closing notes that finished the piece.

It was over. You did it.

A momentary pause enveloped the auditorium, silence washing over the audience like a crashing tide. Your fingers were resting on the keys for a second before a roar of applause replaced the dead silent concert hall. 

You did it.

The panel of teachers were all standing on their feet, their warm smiles and nods of approval and continuous claps almost making tears trail down your cheeks. Looking around the crowd of people to try and find Yoongi, a finger gently tapped your shoulder, making you turn around with glassy eyes.

There he stood in all his gummy cheesiness, smiling his heart out. You sniffled, unable to hold back the tidal wave of tears that overwhelmed you as you burst into sobs and threw yourself into the safety of his arms. Enveloping you into his ever-warm and comforting embrace, he pressed soft kisses on the crown of your head, keeping you secure in his hold. Refusing to pull away even for a brief moment, he stroked your hair soothingly, urging you to take your time to breathe.

Sniffling once more, you managed to croak out a word or two. “When? How? Why—” you couldn’t finish before breaking into tears. You were a mess.

Even though the entire auditorium was still filled with the continuous applause and praise from the audience, Yoongi leaned down and chose to whisper into your ear. “I told you. Ever since that night when I saw you in the studio alone…” You could practically feel the happy smile that danced across his voice.

It was the first dream you didn’t have to wake up from.

It was real.

All of this was real.

The first thing you did after finishing your presentation was sprint like a marathon runner to the dressing rooms and change out of your quote on quote, “formal” attire. Consisting of a pair of black dress pants and frilly blouse with heels, your feet screamed in relief when you changed to your usual outfit of straight-cut jeans, oversized sweater, and frayed sneakers. 

Yoongi handed you a bouquet of flowers as you strode victoriously out of the concert hall to the stairwell at which he was waiting. You widened your eyes and had to blink a few times to make sure that this was still real life.

“Is this a practical joke or rom-com gesture?” you giggled, accepting the arrangement of dark red roses, lemon leaves, white snapdragons, and baby’s breath buds. He went the extra mile by personally requesting a gold ribbon to be weaved through each of the rose buds, making a sentimental warmth spread throughout your chest. Breathing in the fresh scent of the flora, the earthy and undeniably pleasant scent filled your airways.

Yoongi’s lips quirked in a shy grin and hid his gummy smile, rubbing the back of his head like he always did when he was apprehensive about something. 

“I figured I missed out on doing this on our first official date,” he shrugged as his tongue caught on the unused word. “So, I felt like surprising you on our twenty-something official one. And I might have snuck in a slice or few of cake in your fridge... ” 

Your jaw dropped to the floor. His face shifted back into the cheesy Chesire Cat grin you adored before humming a soft ‘ah’ and pausing his steps to reach for something in his bag. Was there anything that could make this day any better? 

Fishing through his disarray of loose papers and crumpled notes that decorated his bag, he pulled out a box that had miraculously not gotten squished or dented inside. It was wrapped in rose gold colored polka-dot wrapping paper and adorned with yet, another glittery gold ribbon tied into a neat bow. 

Making a shy face at the extensive detail, you carefully tugged on the end of the ribbon as flecks of glitter flew up in the air, the knot coming undone with ease. Yoongi offered his hand out to hold it.

Smiling, you moved onto the wrapping paper. Trying your best to peel it by the tape because you hated to tear it and make a mess, you finally got to the box. You pulled to top off to reveal another layer of tissue paper. A fluffy bundle of fabric was folded neatly underneath, making you take on a puzzled frown. When you took them out and unfolded them, you couldn’t muffle the gasp that escaped.

A pair of fuzzy mittens with a matching beanie.

“Yoongi...” you gawked. Rubbing over the feathery light, cozy fabric, he was still smiling widely at you, feeling pure happiness at seeing you so overjoyed from a pair of mittens.

Taking the bouquet, crumpled wrapping paper, and empty box from your hands, he set them down on the ledge beside the stairs. He first put the fluffy tasseled beanie on your head and smoothed out your baby hairs. Then, he rubbed your already-cold hands for a couple seconds to warm them up before sliding the plush gloves on.

“I don’t like it when you’re cold…” he said softly, rubbing circles over the tops of your hands through the wooly fabric. Cupping his cheeks with your warm and well-circulating hands, you pressed a single deep kiss onto his readily puckered lips. 

“Your room or mine?” His breath grazed your pink lips, a distinct warmth emanating from his body compared to the crisp winds that blew against the pair of you.

Biting your lip at his query, you shoved his shoulder teasingly. He already knew the answer.

Making out and walking backward was anything but a non-hazardous concoction. You practically topped over the door ledge while walking into Yoongi’s dorm, continuing to stumble over the bumps and dents in the poorly boarded floor. He managed to pull off his shirt and unbuckle his belt before shoving you onto the bed, and you only made it to the zipper of your jeans before landing on your back with a soft thud.

Caging you in between his forearms, he reunited his mouth with yours in a heated and feverish kiss. You captured the delicate of his lower lip between your teeth, nipping, tugging, and sucking on it to tease and satiate him for the time being. You had the whole weekend for yourselves.

His eyebrows furrowed as he couldn’t resist anymore and gave into his body’s demands. Grinding his clothed member into your aching center, you moaned at how hard he was beneath the fabric of his jeans. Satisfaction and adrenaline surged through you and you couldn’t help but be the least bit proud at the fact that only you had this effect on each other. Undeniable lust triggered by unconditional love, aided with consistent support and mutual understanding; a thing so many people craved but so few had the ability to cultivate.

Yoongi let out a husky growl when your hands tangled into his dark hair, gripping firmly at his scalp and trailing down his bare back. Although your nails were trimmed short, they still left red lines down the defined ridges of his shoulders and back as he moaned into your mouth at the sensation.

Grasping you by the roots of your hair, he maneuvered your head to bare your neck to him, placing hot, open-mouthed kisses at the exposed and delicate skin. Nipping teasingly at the junction of your ear and pulse point, he bared his teeth in a grin before sucking a deep purple bruise into the skin, causing a rush of arousal to flow down your thighs.

“Yoongi,” you moaned out hoarsely. His pouty lips continued trailing down your neck before stopping, giving you to a moment to hastily take off your sweater and throw it mindlessly onto the floor. You’ll pick it up later. He licked his lips at the sight of you in all your beauty, pressing a soft kiss to the dip of your collarbone. He couldn’t help it when his lips instantly attached to your breast, massaging the other with his hand and lapping at your nipple skillfully. Moving onto the neglected side, you arched your back into his firm erection when he grazed his teeth over the sensitive nub.

Another gush of wetness flooded your thighs as you rubbed your legs together instinctually at the dampness. Yoongi noticed this like a hawk, eyeing your every movement keenly. Smirking, he slid down your unbuttoned jeans with one firm tug, swiftly yanking the loose-fitting pants down like a candy wrapper, except this sweet treat was one he could never get enough of. The best part? He didn’t have to worry about cavities.

Taking a moment to admire the string of arousal that trailed from your core to the string of your thong as he pulled them off, he gulped, saliva pooling in his mouth at the mere thought of lapping up all of your juices. His sculpted fingers rubbed small circles over your drenched folds, bringing the arousal coated digits to his mouth for a taste. He couldn’t wait another second.

Yoongi delved face first into your center, not caring to clean up the trail of wetness that painted your thighs beforehand. His cheeks were coated with your essence and he licked up as much as he could, his entire mouth cupping over your core in a desperate attempt to hear your delectable moans that spurred him on. Hearing your vocal sobs and whines of pleasure made him moan as you gripped his hair, the vibrations of his gruff voice making your body tingle with even more pleasure. It was a never-ending cycle of mutual pleasure.

You were in absolute heaven. Alternating the use of tender flat-edge of his warm tongue with the firm tip, you could’ve pulled a muscle in your back from how much you were contorting into the bed. Each time he sucked harshly at your swollen clit, it forced out a euphoric cry from you, teetering amidst the peak of your pleasure and the brink of startling ecstasy.

You tried to be gentle with his hair, but when you pulled your hands away from his tangled mess of locks, he growled in disapproval, immediately demanding that you return your hands to where they were by moving away from your aching core and biting at your thighs.

You wanted so badly to take his throbbing and dripping cock into your mouth. You salivated at the utter thought of it and it sent another stream of arousal down your thighs and into Yoongi’s mouth. Two fingers slowly stretched you out, pumping deliciously into your tight heat in sync with the flick and suckle of his tongue as it produced a high-pitched gasp from you.

His free hand came up to knead your breast, pinching and twisting your sensitive nipple agonizingly slow. He gazed into you with jet black pupils, a carnal aura surrounding his every breath, leaving you with no choice but to surrender to him willingly. He continued sucking at your clit while curling and pumping his long fingers into your heat at the perfect pace, earning a drawled-out moan from you each time. His dick twitched against the straining fabric of his boxers, begging for some kind of attention, but Yoongi ignored it.

Tonight, it was all about you and he was going to make sure you knew that.

The obscene sounds of his tongue working relentlessly against your drenched and throbbing pussy made you bite your lip hard enough to draw blood in a feeble attempt to drown out your moans. As he pinned your hips down with his forearm, his fingers suddenly changed pace, moving faster and curling deliciously against your tight walls. His mouth wrapped over your clit and fingers began pumping furiously, the bursting pressure of your peak shattering like glass with one last suck.

“Fuck, Yoongi!” you exclaimed, grinding into his mouth during the first few moments of your high to ride it out as long as possible. Feeling like a boneless pile of jelly from your staggering orgasm, you felt him smile against your dripping center, lapping up your flowing juices like an oasis in a desert. Your clit throbbed from the remnants of the overwhelming pleasure gifted to you by his talented tongue. By the time he was done, the only evidence that you had just had the best orgasm of your life was only visible on his face, his chin completely drenched in your essence.

Yoongi licked over his lips and swiped over his chin with his thumb to collect the remnants, popping his finger into his mouth to savor the taste he could never get enough of. His forehead glistened with a light sheen of sweat, chest rising and falling visibly from the effort he had just spent. How did he still have the stamina for more?

Lost in the blissed-out haze that came from your high, you chuckled lazily, still swimming an orgasm-induced trance. You’d never came like that before and you were more than sure you’d never be able to without the help of Yoongi. Smiling drunkenly as your post-orgasm blush dispersed along your face, a soft giggle left your lips when Yoongi hovered over you before flipping you over.

Lying on top of him, your hands ran down the svelte muscles of his chest and abs as you tasted yourself on his lips, the remaining wetness that spread over his chin coating yours in an act that was too sinful for you not to relive in the years to come. Literally.

Your mouths tangled in a fervent kiss full of desperation and need, running your hands over his toned body without any logical thought. The faintly metallic but not too bitter taste of yourself on his tongue made another pool of arousal stream down your folds. The pleasure was all yours now.

Before you scooted down to his desperately throbbing member, you made sure to appreciate the beauty that was Yoongi. You captured the delicate flesh of his vascular neck between your teeth and sucked blooming marks into the delicate skin, grinning in satisfaction when they mirrored yours but were half the size.

Nosing at the skin beneath his ear where his pulse pounded like the delicate wings of a hummingbird, your exhaling breath tickled the shell of his ear, making him let out the barest hint of a giggle. Tugging on the small hoop earring that decorated his ear lobe with your teeth for a sweet moment, you moved back to his torso.

Tracing across the picturesque sketch of his abs and the V-line that led down his pelvis, his skin felt hot beneath your lips, evidence that his blood was rushing just as much as yours had been not too long ago.

You forced out a grunt from him when you palmed his hard length through his unbuckled jeans, wasting no time and pulling the thick fabric down along with this cotton briefs. His immaculate length sprung up against his stomach with a soft slap, the head of his cock red and oozing precum. Rubbing over the dripping slit with your fingertip, his knuckles turned white from gripping the sheets so hard. He couldn’t think straight.

“_____,” he begged, Adam’s apple bobbing to expose his dewy neck. The glossy sheen that glossed over his entire upper body made your body hum with pure desire. He was so perfect…

You rubbed over the head of his cock a few more times just for the sheer satisfaction of watching a bead of precum form at his tip and pool around your index finger. Placing your now-glistening fingertip in your mouth, you hummed at the musky taste that coated your tongue. Without teasing any longer, you finally pumped his throbbing cock, licking down the length for more lubrication while trying to focus on his head.

“Fucking–God, _____,” he choked out through a guttural moan. With clenched teeth and hands now tangled in your hair, he didn’t have to guide you as you went to work pleasuring him. “Fuck.” He was like putty in your hands, melting into a pool of boiling hot magma with one single touch.

Stroking the base of his cock while you bobbed up and down the upper half, he jolted with the pace at which you were going. Your tongue swirled around his sensitive head and into his slit every few seconds, making him writhe in absolute ecstasy.

Yoongi let out a carnal growl, pulling you up by your arms up and up to his body. He cupped his hands your ass while his mouth locked onto yours in another deep kiss, exploring your mouth with a hunger he only possessed when he was with you; one that no matter how much time passed, would never be satiated.

Massaging your pillow-like cheeks with his firm grasp, you both moaned into each other’s mouths when your dripping wet slit found his dick. With the feeling of your slick pussy grinding over his bare length and your hands raking through his disheveled head of hair, Yoongi almost came right there.

This was completely different than the first night you two had spent together. The first time was entirely filled with sinful lust, primal hunger, and frantic passion. It resulted in a battle of teeth clashing against tongues, bruising grips, and hasty eagerness, allowing neither of you to feel the full extent of your deepest desires. 

However, the deeper you fell in love with each other and the greater time you spent in each other’s company, sex became less about the physically pleasurable aspect and more about the raw emotional and near-spiritual bond you felt while connected.

Legs and arms entwined in a mess of tangled limbs; sticky bodies glistening with sweat; his hair sticking to his forehead and yours strung across his damp chest; the soft puffs of faint panting and the warmth of your bodies wound tightly against each other that lulled you into the best slumber you could possibly ask for. That was what you loved more than anything. The total submission of your barest state exposed in all its vulnerability and your mutual ability to look after one other unconditionally was more than you could ever ask for. He was yours, and you were his.

Yoongi’s hands ran over your shoulders and the small of your back, reuniting them with the plush pillows of your ass, admiring your rosy flushed face with awe.

“You’re so beautiful…” he said in a quiet voice, afraid that if he spoke with valor that you’d vanish like an illusion conjured by his deepest desires.

Calming down your heavy breathing, you placed a hand against his beating heart, the pronounced thumping of it underneath your fingertips causing goosebumps to scatter down the back of your neck. He placed one of his hands over yours while the other found your free one, cupping it against one of his cheeks tenderly. Nosing the delicate skin where your wrist met its socket, he inhaled gently, drinking in the feel of your soft skin against his.

Your fingers traced over the hollows of his cheekbones, marveling at how he appeared more beautiful than a millennium-old sculpture. You always took the time to admire and cherish every part of his body and his eyes were no exception. The deep-set and piercing gaze you had first feared was now a sight you hated to part with. Running alongside the hairs that stuck to his forehead, your focus settled on his lips, smiling heartily before pressing a slow and patient kiss to them.

“I love you so much, Yoongi,” you whispered against his mouth, earning you a smile back.

He clasped your hands tightly, pressing fluttery kisses to the tops of your knuckles before locking his gaze onto you. “I love you, _____...” He spoke in a hush like he was keeping a secret, you name rolling off of his tongue like a sacred hymn he held closest to his heart. 

Studying the darkened gaze that cast over his eyes, your instincts clawed at you. “I need you inside me now, Yoongi.” Your voice came out in a whining sob, begging him to take you. 

Slowly sitting down to guide his member into your aching heat, he kissed you with even more urgency and passion than you thought was possible, basking in the feeling of you consuming each other through the linking of your bodies as he buried himself hilt deep. 

“Fuck, you’re always so tight for me,” he hissed. Dirty talk wasn’t really something you two prided yourselves in, preferring to voice your desires through physical actions alone, but you sure as hell didn’t have any complaints about it. It always seemed to come naturally for both of you and ended up sounding like praise rather than command. 

Your velvety walls wrapped around his thick length and made him twitch inside of you. Grinding into his hips from your dominant position, Yoongi nestled his head into your chest as he began pounding into you mercilessly, all while paying equal attention to your sensitive bundles of nerves on your breasts. 

Words weren’t needed to direct each other when you knew one other like clockwork; every kink, erogenous zones, sensitive spots—especially pace. 

He leaned back onto the wall and lifted you by your hips, allowing you to hover over him at an angle that made him drive into a spot deep inside of you and gasp. “Oh my God, Yoongi, right there!” Your moans turned into pants and sobs of overwhelming delight at the deeper angle at which he was filling you.

A drop of sweat beaded at Yoongi’s furrowed brows, his tense expression a result of him also feeling the torturously delicious feeling of you encasing him. He couldn’t hold back for much longer and neither could you.

“Yoongi,” you warned, feeling your walls tense with each additional thrust he managed to power through his growing exhaustion, not from the physical act of relentless thrusting, but from the pure willpower he was exerting from holding his orgasm back. Your nails dug deep crescent half-moons into the ridges of his shoulders while his fingers pressed blossoming bruises into your hips, reminding you to gawk at them later.

Feeling your tense body, Yoongi used up the last remaining bits of his energy to pound into you furiously, exerting as much force as he had left. A sharp intake of breath came from deep inside his chest when you came around him without further warning, your unbelievably tight and utterly drenched cunt clenching around his cock and making him finish not a second later. 

Bottoming out completely before sliding out and back in, it was almost too much when he continued hammering into you at a slower pace, his pulsating member shooting continuous spurts of hot cum deep into your heat. With his teeth bared in a silent snarl and your mouth parted in euphoria, you rolled your hips over his a few more times before collapsing on top of him, his spent cock still somehow twitching and filling your heat with thick spurts.

Yoongi’s eyes were half-lidded and dazed from his equally powerful orgasm. Staying inside of you for a few more seconds to ensure that as much of his cum remained inside of you as possible, you yelped when he slid out and replaced his cock with his hand, cupping your cunt to prevent any from seeping out. You giggled lightly at his concentrated face when he flipped you onto your back.

He also took great pleasure in scissoring your mixed fluids together between his fingers and bringing them up to his lips for a taste; another one of his post-sex habits. Curling into your drenched lips to scoop out more of the unholy mixture, you didn’t need to ask as he slid his coated fingers into your mouth, swiping over your readily cupped tongue as the evidence of your releases slicked down your throat.

“Kinky...” you giggled, running his fingertips along your lips before pecking them.

Yoongi gave you a half-parted gummy grin and chuckled. “You love me more for it.”

Completely spent, he kissed you deeply before he climbed into the covers, comfortably nestling his head into the valley of your breasts and nosing the soft skin. You cradled his head and pressed a delicate kiss to the top of his frizzy hair, raking through the messy knots with your fingertips. His exhaling breaths grew soft, indicating that he was on the verge of falling asleep.

Even though he mumbled the words into your chest, you broke into a heartwarming smile at his entirely too pure personality and held him in the security of your embrace. “I love you, _____.” 

There it was again: your name. 

It never sounded as good as it did unless it flowed from his lips. 

“I love you too, Yoongi,” you whispered, your soft whisper lulling him into a deep slumber as his eyes drooped shut while his steady breaths coaxed you into the darkness of sleep as well.

It was real. 

Some time in the near future...

You woke up to an empty bed, frowning in confusion instantly at the cold sheets that greeted you. Where was Yoongi? Almost as soon as you had asked the question, the smell of bacon and fried eggs filled your nostrils, making your mouth water.

Throwing your legs over the bed and climbing out of the disheveled bundle of sheets, you threw on one of Yoongi’s wrinkled shirts over your bare body, smiling sheepishly at how it draped over your thighs and stopped right above your knees. Brushing your teeth and rinsing your face in a record amount of time, you made your way to the kitchen and were greeted by the amusing sight of Yoongi dancing to the playlist you used when cleaning your room.

Jumping around like a maniac, he was too absorbed in his dancing and oil-spattering bacon to notice you leaning on the counter. With a cheeky grin gracing your face, Yoongi’s eyes bulged out of their sockets when he saw you. Clearing his throat harshly, you broke into a bright fit of laughter at how bashful he was. Was that what you looked like when he caught you dancing in your room?

“Good morning,” you giggled, nibbling the corner of your lip to hold back a snort.

Yoongi turned off the stovetop with the click of a knob, plating the hot food onto your dishes. “Good morning,” he played off cooly. Carrying the two plates to the small dining table, he pressed a quick kiss to your cheek before setting them down.

“Happy Anniversary,” he exclaimed, returning to you to give you a proper kiss. Smiling onto his lips, you laced your arms around him as he wrapped his around your waist.

You scowled playfully but broke into a smile. “A little birdy told me a while ago that anniversaries were stupid…” you hummed jokingly, referring to the surprise you gifted him a year after you started dating. It was just a handwritten card and matching set of hoodies, but Yoongi let it slip that he thought regular anniversaries were cheesy and a little cringeworthy. 

But he wholeheartedly appreciated your gift though, refusing to wear anything other than that exact hoodie for the majority of his classes. Often times, he asked you with puppy eyes and a pout to wear yours—even on some days when it was 80 degrees outside.

“Must have been a really drunk bird then,” he shrugged. You weren’t terribly hurt by his statement that night because you truly did understanding where he was coming from. Those couples who had hebdomadal anniversaries did, in fact, make you want to gag. Anniversaries in your mind were supposed to be reserved for monumental occasions and milestones, not as petty excuses to receive stupidly expensive gifts from each other.

You beamed, pecking his lips once more. “Mhm, not a very cute peeper either.” Your comment made Yoongi raise an eyebrow, nuzzling his mouth into your neck and blowing raspberries against your skin until you surrendered.

“Okay, okay, okay!” you gave up, choking your submission through joyous laughter. “Let’s eat, Yoongi!” Eyes lighting up in victory, he pulled out your chair for you before sitting down himself.

“Happy Anniversary, Yoongi,” you chuckled, lips forming into a loving grin at the gummy smile that blessed his sparkling eyes.

Reaching over the table to hold your hands and rub comforting circles into them, he blinked slowly, imprinting a picture-perfect snapshot of this moment in his long-term memory for years to come. “Happy Anniversary, _____,” he beamed.

“Are you sure about this, Yoongi?” you asked cautiously, rubbing his hands in the hopes of soothing his buzzing nerves. “We don’t have to do this today…”

He pressed his lips into a firm line and nodded, keeping his eyes glued on the black and white keys that lie before him. “I’m ready.”

Releasing his hands from your grasp, you patted them softly before letting them hover over the keys. Not having touched a piano since before the accident, the unfamiliar cold feeling of the wood made Yoongi’s breath hitch in his throat.

His fingers suddenly started to shake as bile rose in his throat and his face went pale, turning colorless enough to make the piano keys look off-white in comparison. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth like epoxy glue and felt heavier than a cement block. With his pupils dilated dangerously wide and beads of sweat forming along his hairline, his throat closed up, restricting his airflow.

Your eyes widened immediately, alarmed at his visceral reaction as he snatched his hands away from the keys and couldn’t bear to face the instrument for another second.

“I ca—I can’t. I can’t. I can’t do it,” he choked, shaking his head vigorously while hiccuping, trying to take in breaths of air as he began drowning in the memories that suddenly poured in.

You cupped the sides of his face and smoothed your fingers over his tear-stained cheeks gently. “Yoongi—look at me.” Shutting his eyes tightly, more droplets of his painful memories trailed down as his hands shook, the pads of his fingers squeezing coin-sized bruises into your forearms.

“Look at me,” you said more firmly the second time. Opening his eyes slowly with shaky eyelids, he swallowed the lump in his throat before making direct eye contact with you. “I’m here, okay? I’m right here. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I’m right here with you, Yoongi.”

Relaxing his grip, his fingers that were pressing into your skin moments ago slowly began rubbing small circles into your forearms, soothing the numbing pressure as your blood began to circulate again.

“I’m so—,” he sobs choking on his tears, your lulling shushes helping his breathing calm down and slow. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—” His repetitive please continued into mumbled whispers. 

As he continued to mutter his robotic sayings, you soon realized that he wasn’t apologizing only to you—he was apologizing to himself.

“Yoongi, it’s okay,” you whispered, allowing his head to fall into the crook of your neck as his tears left trailed down your chest, leaving a glistening trail of wetness that made your eyes sting with your own tears. Your heart shattered seeing him in such a state of distress, but all you could do was murmur softly into his hair while his shoulders continued to shake. 

This too was real. 

“Bach Invention No. 8 already?” you gawked. “Yoongi, how?”

He shrugged, shoulders rising up to his ears in humble yet clearly visible accomplishment.

“You were playing Hanon a few weeks ago, what are you putting in your cereal?” you chuckled, shaking your head in disbelief and awe at his consistently growing skills.

“I had a pretty great teacher,” he smiled warmly, patting the seat beside him and inviting you to sit down. Shaking your head at his lively and glowing image, you set down your two cups and made yourself comfortable.

It had been nine steady months since Yoongi had composed himself to start playing again and it would be a lie to say that it hadn’t been a time-consuming process. Slowly but surely through tears, overwhelming breakdowns, neverending hours, long nights, and emotional outpours, Yoongi’s natural instinct and eagle-eye muscle memory kicked in, aiding his subconscious breaking down the mental barrier he had formed since the accident.

The first few months were a struggle as he was stuck in his own head and high expectations. He stayed up constantly trying to master the most basic warm-up exercises, refusing to give up until he knew it by heart. Even during the deepest pitfalls of exhaustion, you stuck by him, likewise refusing to leave his side until he was half-asleep and drooling on the keys.

You, on the other hand, had finally gotten around to accepting physical therapy, regular check-ups, and after four years of putting it off, had your prescription officially signed off by your doctor. 

The short-span of your potential professional career was inevitable, but you processed and accepted the outlook better than you did when you were first diagnosed. You had grown up since then. You weren’t a young, naïve, immature, want-it-all child anymore; you were just you, and that was more than enough. Life wasn’t about doing as much as you could for the quantity in hopes of happiness, but rather for the quality of happiness that you were living with what you could accomplish to your heart’s extent. 

“Why not 13?” you asked curiously, referring to the piece that was in the solemn and dark minor key. Yoongi’s lips curled into a sheepish grin, sensing where you were going with your question.

“Major keys are nicer to listen to,” he mumbled. Fumbling with your fingers in his lap as he usually did when he felt the need for a distraction. “Minor scales are too depressing.”

Nodding your head in agreeance with his response, a soft chuckle reverberated from deep inside his chest. You gave him a comical eyebrow raise. He brought your hands to his cheek for what felt like the millionth time in the span of your relationship, leaning into your easing and tranquilizing touch as he melted in your hands. 

After years of ignoring the adverse effect of your struggling circulation, the effort you dedicated last year in looking after your health had paid off; your hands were finally warm. All the more inviting for Yoongi to cup them around his plush cheeks. A healthy diet, consistent sleeping schedule, and regular hikes up to the viewpoint with Yoongi really went a long way in terms of lifestyle. 

Thinking over his words, he shook his head rightfully so. “There are too many good things in life to do instead of drowning in that kind of ocean…” His kissed the top of your hand as his eyes met yours in a stare that radiated unconditional affection, complete fondness, and total selfless love.

Life was, in fact, too good to spend it wasting away in the shadows.

Some time further in the future...

Shuffling through the array of papers that littered the desk, you were seconds away from ripping your hair out. How were you going to do this? You started with the syllabus. That was probably the first step in starting a lecture, right? Then the expectations for the class? Goals? Learning outcomes?

God, were you even speaking English at this point? The abrupt buzz of your phone alarm snapped you out of your thoughts instantly. As crowds of students in what seemed like the hundreds flooded the lecture hall within seconds, you started to panic. Anxiety flooded your throat like thick smoke, forcing you to gulp a hiccup down. A gentle nudge on your shoulder caused you to turn around, coming into the view of none other than Yoongi.

“You okay?” His eyes voiced concern, eyebrows turned downwards as he studied your face with flowing sympathy.

You nodded, pressing your lips into a tight line. “Fine. Fine. All fine. Everything’s great.” Your speech flowed out like dreaded word vomit.

Yoongi rubbed your shoulder to ease your rippling waves of uneasiness, trying to relieve your bubbling apprehension. “Powell asked us to sub his class for a reason, _____. “Don’t doubt yourself. You’ll be amazing and I’ll be right by your side to help,” he convinced. “Okay?”

Swallowing down the sheet of sandpaper that lined your throat, you nodded.

The students were now fully seated and quiet, the soft hums of a few sorting through their bags and pulling out their laptops. The sea of L.E.D. apples and brightly lit block print logos made you nauseous. Once they were all settled, you cleared your throat.

“Thank you all for coming to today’s class,” you greeted with as much authority in your voice you could muster. “My name is _____, and this is Yoongi.” Pausing to direct your attention to him, he tipped his chin up lazily, reminding you of the first day you’d encountered him in a setting much like this one. Your eyes softened at the reminiscent memories. Time flies... 

“We will be substituting for Professor Powell, as he is out sick for the week,” you explained. 

A few scattered hollers and applause were heard from parts of the hall, making Yoongi shoot you a smug grin. You frowned quizzically for a brief moment before shrugging it off. “As former graduates ourselves, we are very aware of the immense pressure Professor Powell puts on you as first years in the graduate division. Trust me.” You turned your body to Yoongi, signaling him with a small nod. “We’ve both been there.”

He chuckled, taking the reins of the conversation smoothly while you began handing out the syllabus for the final project. “Powell might have discussed this project with you last semester or you might have heard legends about it from your upper classmates while you were freshmen.”

Yoongi didn’t bother using the title of “Professor” before he spoke, making some students gasp audibly. His voice was the epitome of confidence, self-assurance and clarity coating his voice like velvet as he articulated his words with consistency.

“The syllabus that is being handed out to you explains the details of your final project. Your partners have been chosen for you and will not, under any circumstance, be altered to fit your personal preference.”

Whispers spread across the entire room like a swarm of bees, students gasping and mumbling, appalled as they analyzed each detail written on the page. Your echoing clap silenced into their incessant grumbles. That seemed to grab their attention.  

“As Professor Powell has said multiple times prior to the start of this semester and I’m sure as far back as your undergraduate days.” A grin formed on your lips and you glanced over at Yoongi, who was already smirking and staring back at you with his lip in between his teeth. “The audience needs to see who you are through the music; experience your deepest memories, feel your deepest pain, and live through your life up until this point.”

“You’ll laugh, cry, scream, and want to rip each other apart with your bare hands,” Yoongi added on with conviction in his voice, standing up straight and no longer leaning against the wall. “But above all the setbacks and obstacles, you’ll come out as stronger musicians and even better artists.”

“Complain and fail. Choose to work independently from each other and that implies that you are working against one other,” you noted. “You are there to help each other through difficult times, not leave the other person hanging when things get tough.”

Yoongi sighed. “It sucks, we know.” He glanced at you thoughtfully, a ghost of a smile dancing across his lips. “But we promise it’ll be worth it.”

At this, a student in the front row raised her hand, a wide-eyed curiosity glinting from her eyes. You smiled and gave her the cue to speak. “By chance, you guys aren’t the seniors who passed this same assignment with a full grade four years ago, are you?” Her naïve and self-answering question made you and Yoongi look to each other knowingly, embarrassed and honored that the rumor was still flying about, alive and well as ever. “You two are like living legends!”

The class erupted into another wave of applause and gasps, sounding like a sound effect out of a comedy club’s built-in soundboard. 

Rubbing the back of his neck, he chuckled, leaning his head to one side and side-eyeing you lightheartedly. You also found yourself blushing and chuckling awkwardly, sighing as you avert your eyes to anywhere but the crowd of eyes glued onto you and him.

“It’s kind of a funny story…” you hummed. 

“Why did you start liking me?” you asked. Lying down on the blanket that was strewn on top of the grass, Yoongi shifted beside you, admiring the spot on the viewpoint he picked out. The view of the campus never ceased to take your breath away. 

The longest three seconds of your life passed before you turned on your side and he peeled his eyes away from the dim sky, redirecting his gaze to you. Taking your hands into his, the edges of his lips curled into the tiniest smile, staring thoughtfully at the sight he had never imagined in his wildest dreams would be here right in front of him. 

“Because you gave me everything I could ever ask for without wanting anything in return, and I don’t deserve it.” His words flowed like ink from a fountain pen, soaking through the pages that bound your love for him. 

Pausing before continuing, you couldn’t prepare yourself for what he had to say next.

“It’s like you’re too good to be real. Here. In front of me.” he clasped your hands tighter. “I still feel like don’t deserve you.” At this sudden confession, his tense expression softened. “Like I’m not enough for you...”

The dark and piercing stare you used to cower in fear at had now revealed itself to be the only one you knew that was full of vulnerability and as delicate as a glass menagerie. They were eyes you had grown fond of, admired, and more than anything—wholeheartedly and unequivocally loved.

Running his thumb over your cheek, you cupped over his hand in response, making your heart flutter at the delicate flush that spread across his face. 

“Min Yoongi...” you sighed as your eyes began to form budding tears. Shaking your head while trying to hold back the painful smile that threatened to escape, you took a deep breath. 

The lump in your throat returned tenfold when you looked up and saw that his eyes were glued onto yours, his deep brown orbs watering with glassy tears and lip quivering with the infinite ocean of amour he felt for you. You had already fallen in too deep to drown.

All these years later and you still made each other’s hearts race like a soaring kite. 

Whether it was from the cold or the bursting dam of repressed emotions, it didn’t matter. You cupped both sides of his face and brought his forehead to yours, pressing lightly and maintaining contact so that you were trapped directly in-line of each other’s eyes. You couldn’t help but smile and allow a tear to trail down your cheek when his hands cupped over yours.

“You’re right. You aren’t just anything to me,” you whispered, your voice near barely audible to anyone except Yoongi. “You are absolutely everything I could ever ask for and more. 

Yoongi swallowed the rush of nostalgia that flooded his mind and closed up his throat. “I have never in my entire life met someone who comes close to how you understand me, wait for me, and push me through my bad days,” he croaked through blurry eyes. 

You sniffled, brimming tears finally spilling like the puddles of your youth you once basked in. “You make me the happiest and the best person I can be, and I love you more than anything else in this entire world...”

“And I promise that I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you feel the same way.” His Adam’s apple bobbed when he finally spoke, completing your words like the last piece of a puzzle fitting perfectly in its place. 

His words and soft lips sealed a kiss on your forehead, your eyes fluttering softly at the ardor you felt only while in his warmth. You kissed him back, the saltiness of your mingled tears leaving watercolor thin streaks down both of your cheeks.

Words would never be enough to express the bond you and him shared. He could only pray to whoever was listening that you felt it as strongly as he did, and you for him. 

A song composed with no more than the painful memories of your past, tender youth of the present, and limitlessly unbound fate of your future, your paths entwined with the string of fate and aria had brought you together to this exact moment in time.

Passionless pursuit in the chase for perfection; a journey filled with sorrows in the hopes of leading to the smallest sliver of happiness; an outcome neither of you had expected to come to fruition in your wildest and most distant dreams.

Everything else is arbitrary. Happiness through the darkest of times stemming from the willingness to fight and determination to be happy—that is what you made your lives out to be. 

The faint glint of the rings you both bore reflected against the lamp post bulbs, an even brighter light emitting from both of your smiles. Had it already been a year since he’d asked for your hand? Yoongi’s fingers ran over the engraved metal, tracing the near-microscopic words that were etched into the band. You did the same with his, the loop of silver feeling cool against your fingertips.

It was real.

This was real.

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[thenightisland]

unsolicited lengthy updates from the ghost that runs this blog

i couldn’t believe i hadn’t done one of these in 2018 since in 2017 so much was happening that i had to like five or six of them so let’s see what we have here

mm - second in command nurse/one of my best friends, the one who’s always cursed with constantly cheating death and people dying on her etc ch - staff nurse/one of my best friends, human version of pink champagne, pregnant rc - the techs’ version of a charge nurse/one of my best friends cb - the thriller novelist who inexplicably works with us, the one who nearly got killed on the unit last year there are others that’ll come up but i guess those are the main players

2017 was awful right up to the end. about an hour into 2018 things started looking much more promising, mostly from a personal life standpoint. which was the least it could do after 2017 ruined my christmas.

few weeks into the year cb finally came back. he’d been out five months. no one understood why he came back when he had so many other career options at his fingertips, and we certainly didn’t understand why he came back to the shift it happened on. and even more so i didn’t understand why he talked to me about writing, when he wouldn’t even admit he was a writer out loud to anyone else and certainly didn’t talk at length about it with anyone. he still wouldn’t talk about it, to anyone else.

rc nearly put himself into DTs at the beginning of the year, despite, you know, working in psych and knowing what that does to a person. which sometimes i wonder if that was his intention, to do lasting damage, bc that shit can kill you. he got through all of that ofc, and had done really well until these last few weeks, more on /why/ later

our hospital has a weird tendency to create odd romantic relationships that i swear are things forged out of a mash unit type of daily trauma. so mm is currently in a will they or won’t they arc - leaning toward will - with a guy who works up there. one of my med nurses who went 7-3 is most definitely with one of my techs which we all knew would happen. ch is engaged to a social worker who worked at our hospital at the time. our director married a tech. a house sup has a kid with a tech. the detox charge nurse met his wife when she was a tech and they both worked our unit. etc. i guess it’s bc we deal with such intense things every day and you literally do save each other’s lives. we always joke hospital relationships are an inevitability. that being said my situations with rc and cb should have been expected and yet here i am, the former esp, as we’ve been the hospital’s most popular pairing for ages.

i spend a lot of my time now breaking behavior cases rather than treating psych pts. behavior cases are people who aren’t psychotic, they’re just violent opportunistic assholes who have figured out how to go to a psych hospital instead of jail. treating psych pts is tiring but rewarding. breaking behavior cases makes you feel almost sociopathic bc you /do/ you have to break them. psychologically, i mean. physically all we really have to work with is a shot and a few hours in seclusion. so you end up doing these hannibal lecter style speeches and trying to come up with threats that sound convincing that you know you can’t follow through on but you have to make them believe you can. they keep taking these “pts” so i spend 90% of my time now breaking those cases so that they don’t keep hurting staff and my real pts. one such behavior case was responsible for rc getting attacked. it really is a matter of 98% mind games and movie villain speeches, since this large violent not at all psychotic “pt” no longer messes with me or any of my people after our discussion about his behavior. 

my nursing friend who died unexpectedly last year. her sister was bipolar, which i found out in nursing school, bc over easter weekend i helped my friend get her through a psychotic manic break. i didn’t remember her and she didn’t remember me considering the circumstances of our one meeting. so this past spring i’m prepping a pt to transfer to another unit, and it isn’t until then that i realize the sister had been on my unit all week. part of her paperwork said “off meds, having difficulty coping with upcoming anniversary of sister’s sudden death.” it was like seeing a ghost.

my friend’s mother died. we all adored her mom. she was an artist and a very accomplished one. we had to watch what became a ten year decline.

one of my high school teachers died after dealing with cancer for two years and while i wasn’t fond of her and didn’t mourn her, a death is still a death

cb was a night shift weekender, primarily. in march, found out why when i was on 11-7 he’d pick up shifts. and why he started picking up 3-11s when i switched to 3-11. and why he came back to the shift he got hurt on. why he came back at all. why he was finally actually /talking/ to someone about his life and background before he gone girled himself, and why that person was me. took mm pointing all of it out to realize i was the common denominator but i was always bad at math. 

i went to an island in south carolina for a few weeks in april and dreaded coming home since the vacation curse is 4/4. but nothing happened. thank god. i doubt i could have handled a fifth round.

my nursing class had another member die unexpectedly this year too. last year this guy was the one to post in our fb group that my friend/our classmate had died. idk if this is a the ring sort of deal, but now he’s dead, so the girl who posted about /his/ death should probably watch out in 2019. we have an awfully high mortality rate for a class that had like 22 people in it. much like the teacher, i wasn’t esp fond of him, but it is a bit creepy to watch a classmate die each year.

sometime in may is when the hospital started going to hell, i think. i have vague memories of regulatory agencies being around all the time and some of the doctors and assessors literally living there, pt rooms on one of the nicer units converted into bedrooms for them because yes it was that bad. one woman didn’t see her son for two weeks. it kept escalating to a point that our unit was constantly having meetings with the ceo bc things were that fucked up. they were taking behavior cases they should never have taken. there were so many employee injuries in 2018, and we all just kind of revolted when one such behavior case decked a med nurse in the face just bc he could [you know, the person with no psych history who had tried to murder his little sister prior to admission] that pt was supposed to be d/c’d to jail in two weeks. we had him almost two months. the unit looked like a tenement from the boarded up broken windows. we fought and fought and fought for unit safety and the staffing required to accomplish that. everyone was so goddamn exhausted that we started holding admission paperwork hostage like no it’ll get done when you give me the staff to fucking do it but two nurses in this nurses station with 80 volatile pts is not enough, and guess what four techs for that many pts isn’t enough either. i mean it was just every day fighting. i remember sitting on my tailgate drinking tequila one night with ch and us in tears bc our home was falling apart. and the day rc just said i don’t know how much longer i can keep doing this, sounded defeated, which he’s never defeated. there was a night me mm rc and cb just stood in the nurses station exhausted and saying we’ve got to get out of here. but we kept coming back, fighting for every last bit of progress we could. 

i’d been texting cb one weekend while he was at work, which was the only reason i had my phone on me which meant i saw the message from mm that said “what would 30mg of klonopin do to me” which was how i ended up with one of my best friends on my couch on a saturday night sobbing bc she had come close enough to killing herself that she had the already half empty bottle of vodka in one hand and the bottle of pills in the other. so i had to crisis suicide intervention my fellow psych nurse friend. so i guess good thing i was talking to cb about neruda and auden poetry bc i hate to think what would have happened that night if i hadn’t bothered to keep my phone on me like i do a lot.

and then about a month and a half ago it all came to a head. the dangerous understaffing reached its peak. four techs for eighty pts, which meant two techs for /47/ male pts, a unit of behavior cases, four or five pts who were on 1:1 obs, three admissions untouched, six more pending, and me alone in the nurses station bc i had to put my one other nurse /and/ the secretary on 1:1s that i didn’t have coverage for. i told them it wasn’t safe. i told them i was sick of having this argument every week. i told them that the last time i had to go to two techs on that male hall the week before that staff got hurt. well, three of my four techs were guys, who were stuck on the floor in a hold with a male pt and barely able to keep him contained like having to actively fight and i had to be out there for paperwork/supervisory purposes. that left my remaining one hall tech trying to contain the rest of the unit, since the others were stuck on 1:1s which effectively trap you. so an opportunist female behavior case came up from behind and started beating me in the head over and over and dragged me across the floor by my hair, got a lot out too i had hair coming out for /days/. so my one hall tech is trying to pry this bitch off of me and the staff on the 1:1s are dragging their respective pts up there to the middle of it so they could help bc my guys were still in a losing battle with the male pt. from there i remember mostly being in a blind rage and at some point admin et al came to the unit. and i know i yelled at them a lot and told them they’d better be glad i wasn’t handing them my keys and leaving. and our sweet grandma house sup told the ceo and nurse exec they could be house sup the rest of the night bc she was taking me to the er. our director had to be me the rest of the night. rc wouldn’t even /speak/ to her apparently. one of the social workers was telling her boss that if i left then she was leaving. everything was in an uproar. my nurse who had been stuck on the 1:1 was in the nurses station /sobbing/. the female tech told our director “i hope you know we’re staying for karen, not you.” cb was freaking out bc i texted him from the er and then was taken back for a ct and so didn’t answer and he had called ch terrified bc i wasn’t answering [i think the whole thing probably brought back bad memories for him, obv]. rc didn’t sleep for several days bc he was blaming himself and i had to keep telling him /the only way any of this could have been prevented was by them staffing us appropriately/ bc that’s the truth but he was still so fucking miserable and told mm “if this makes her quit they aren’t getting a two weeks notice from me i’m walking out with her”. in the wake of all this, the unit has continued in the same fashion of fighting for basic necessities every day, and mm is struggling running it in my absence with her already fragile mental health. everyone is kind of terrified about something happening to ch since she’s pregnant. mm is having full panic attack rage breakdowns at our director. when they had the admin meeting with everyone else who was there when i got attacked admin asked my team “how could y’all have prevented this” at which point all of them started yelling at them, and then admin wanted to know why no one called a code when i got attacked at which point rc straight up just yelled at the ceo /because there was no one to fucking call it/.  the nurse exec, who always liked me and was one of the few admin people with a conscience, quit in the wake of me getting hurt, because of the whole thing. and rc has been drinking himself to sleep off and on. 

so now we’re at this crossroads, mm ch rc and i. unsure whether to stay or go. and if so, where? our job is like a war zone idk how to be a civilian anymore, but the four of us have been talking like this place is killing us if this job was a boy/girlfriend we’d call this abusive and end it. if the four of us leave that guarantees the total collapse of what little of the unit will be left. it’s already struggling just with /me/ out [i’ve been out because of the head injury which those aren’t fun], let alone the four of us who have always kind of held the unit together. 

so what the hell are we supposed to do?

in theory 2018 didn’t feel as stressful as 2017 but on paper??? on paper it still looks pretty terrible???????????????

#time to pull out that awful tag: #karen's adventures in trying to sort her life out #this year has gone by really quickly

[sneakyhomunculous]

RPT Phoenix Report: Back to Back!

Part 1: Preparation 

“How should I begin this? I’m just so offended; how am I even mentioned by all these fucking beginners?” 

Let’s back up a bit. 

I’m coming into this half season fresh off a 5th place finish in the last MC, which means I’m qualified for RPT1/2 and PTFinal 1. 

From what I could make of the shoddy convoluted details at the beginning of this year; I believed I had a serious upper hand in the Rivals race. 

Only 4 tournaments count. The 3 I am qualified for and the 2nd PT final which I’ll have multiple chances to que for as well. 

Almost everyone else has at most 1 RPT Q and a pipe dream. 

With this info, I decide I am going to go for it. I know I am still an underdog, but I believe I am one of the few people in the world in this spot to somewhat reasonably set this goal of top 12 paper rivals for myself. 

At the same time, the world we live in is an Arena dominated one. 

I hate it of course. 

Like most of you reading this; I play the game for mostly 1 big reason [the fierce competition]. Arena is severely lacking in this department.

Only standard, a mindless ladder with the only reward being a single lottery ticket into a ~15k USD 0.5% equity drawing. (that requires you to play standard for 8 hours on a saturday there will assuredly be a GP you want to play.) 

A petty, infuriating chore. 

Bc standard is so chalked and flooded with players anyway; You are forced to play casual [but ranked] drafts against the bots.  

Slamming BO1 games with 15 land decks until your eyes bleed and the mythic achievement is reached! 

Then you close the unbearable program down not to be touched again until the next time this chore is required; or the lottery drawing is happening.

Nice system! 

All that being said, I’m still not going to handicap myself, and so I decide I will go for Arena as well. 

Unfortunately I have no early advantage there, and the spots are obviously unbelievably high variance. 

There are only 2 Invys and 2 Mythic point challenges, and if you miss the first invy you are almost drawing dead at a 1-12 spot. Especially with special invites and re-ques for top finishers all factored in. 

So far I am failing on the Arena front. 

I was too attached to my beautiful Urza Oko deck (I didn’t prepare enough for the first MCQW I would be double queing along side the modern GP in Austin. It cost me as I woke up and played poorly to a swift 2-2 exit with Jetski Fires before heading over to the GP) 

I lost a win and in and got 17th there. Never have I played a tournament with a bigger edge over all non mirrors in the field! Unfortunately I played 7 mirrors and managed a lowly 4-2-1 in them. 

I can’t make it through these gauntlets on autopilot anymore. 

I’m only 27, but my seemingly rapid reduction in processing speed has made me feel like I’m somehow getting too old for this grind.  

The way I have dealt with it? 

Accepting it. 

As much as I hate to admit it; I am not the same 17 year old wunderkind anymore and the young guns have a big edge on me. 

I have to take all the necessary steps to take care of myself and do everything in my power to make sure when I’m in the trenches; inside the matches in the important tournaments; I can be as focused on the games as possible. This is just so I can make the playing field close to level. 

Otherwise I am going to be reading cards, and playing slow unconfident magic. 

This is a big one; I believe. 

I think one thing a lot of players are lacking in pushing themselves to higher levels is the confidence in their decisions. I used to struggle with this a lot (still do sometimes) and I would constantly second guess things multiple times every turn. 

Over time, I’ve learned that if you put in the work... 

You practice; 

Play actual games and learn the interactions; 

You can really lean on your instincts and exude confidence in yourself that goes a long way in winning matches of Magic the Gathering. 

(Look at almost all of the best players. They are confident in their decisions in the games, even when they end up making mistakes.) 

But enough with the nonsense; let’s get to the tournament prep so we can blaze through that boring shit and get to the sweet 16 PT rounds 

(spoilers: there may be more than 16) 

Collin Rountree is torn between testing with Me Ty Will and the Houston Slack, and testing with team 5% captained by Allen “The Process” Wu. 

Of course the choice is obvious, but Collin doesn’t want to leave all the local bangers in the dust. 

He lobbies on our behalf, and Me Ty Will and Eddie all join team 5%. 

I am not a stranger to large testing teams. 

I spent four PTs testing with team TCG/SCG and we averaged around 15 people. The difference was that we always met up in person a week or more ahead of time for an intense testing period, and also I guess we had more dueling personalities.

Shoutout to everyone on those squads those were great times. 

But when you have Steve Rubin Seth Manfield Corey Burkhart Andrea Mengucii mixed with Brad BBD Martell Kibler mixed with Me Fennell GerryT Josh Cho mixed with Ari Lax trying to organize everything for everyone..... 

Anyone who knows these people can see how this led to some logistics issues and some heated arguments about who is not pulling their weight, or who is just showing up late and mooching, or who keeps brewing decks with no mana bases and sideboards and bringing them to Brad telling them they are great and we have to play games with them (another shoutout to Fennell, hope he reads this and fires up a modo draft tonight. And shoutout to Brad for creating the no 75, no games rule. You can’t fucking say you made a deck if you don’t have a manabase or a sideboard, and some brewers out there may need to hear that again.) 

Team 5% (7.1673746%) is all online testing. 

We use a discord with dedicated channels to all the constructed decks, all the limited topics, logistics, and chalkdiesel/washed bad beat/rant rooms/RIP Rimrock Knight etc. etc. so you can see how it stays pretty clean, organized, and simple. 

But no really, having so many people gives us an edge on many fronts. 

There is usually always someone available to battle. We can cover a lot of ground really quickly. Multiple people are brewing and many people are tuning the known decks. Lots of different opinions and we end up covering all the limited archetypes quickly as the drafts pile in. 

All of this being said, my best two PT results from the past are when I worked alone. 

I usually draft infinite (75-100) times (when I lose I drop and draft again. And sometimes I drop when winning just to draft again) and I just try to play the best deck in constructed. 

This I have learned is a recipe for success for me. 

But I was happy to join this team. My intention was to just do the same thing, but have some people to talk to while I drafted 75-100 times and tuned the best deck. 

I worked with a few of these players back in the TCG days (shoutout to Ari and Corey, and again to Corey for winning the PT let’s gooooooo) and everyone that I heard was currently on this 5% team; I liked. 

So for my testing I did almost purely magic online. 

I did around 60 drafts after all was said and done. In constructed, I played a ton of UW control and small amounts of all the other stock decks, and watched a lot of streams. 

I wanted to be familiar with the format but not go too hard until the days leading up to; during; and right after the first 2 RPTs. 

What a weird dynamic, having 2 pro tours 5 days before deck submission for your pro tour. 

It really worked out in our favor because our team is so big and we were able to quickly attack the new and perceived future metagame. 

Nothing at those two tournaments made me waiver from wanting to register UW control. 

I was still beating everything, and I predicted the metagame would be 20%ish UB invertor and then spirits, red, black, and sultai delerium/invertor uro decks would be all around 10%. 

When I say I was beating everything, I was beating everything. 

Granted these were in leagues, but it was mostly all against real decks and my constructed rating was skyrocketing above my limited. 

Not a thing I am accustomed to. 

I had a 17-1 record against mono red, and no cap. I had a 12-2 record against mono black. I had a 8-1 record against UB invertor. 

I crushed Collin so badly with our teams current front running mono white devotion that he decided to add 4 Gideon Ally of Zendikar to the maindeck and try again. 

A 4-0 for me later in which he resolved 5 Gideons led to him telling the discord he is off it. “Bursavich just beat me every single game and I resolved gideon in all of them.” 

The only deck I ever lost matches to was spirits but I still won more than I lost against it. 

Around Monday our team was all piling on to the breach deck realizing how good it was, and I joined in to. 

I played a prelim and a league and immediately bought all of the cards from cardkingdom. But after my next few matches I was feeling very conflicted. 

I was very worried how bad UW was against breach, but I didn’t think breach would break 7-8% or the metagame anyway. And I can tweak UW some to have a shot I tell myself. 

The breach deck is obviously busted, but it’s a combo deck with a weird puzzle-like 3 step combo. 

First you have to get 2 lands into play and then play lotus field, then u have to play a thespians stage and copy it, and then u have to kill your opponent with ur huge amounts of mana. 

But the deck is so consistent and sort of resilient that I found myself trying to play it like a midrange deck. 

I have these faes and grazers and pores and viziers, I can block! And Fae for planeswalkers and grind people out or take all these weird dynamic lines... and then I realized I was fucking up a lot. 

The games are not always intuitive to me, and I won’t be able to live with myself if I register this and play horribly to lose games I should win, considering there will likely be some number of games my deck fails and I can’t win (or my opponent is prepared with damping sphere or one of the other 1-2 cards that do anything at all to stop this abomination of a deck) 

So a few hours after ordering the breach cards I am going to bed Monday night and I know I’m going to play UW control... 

Shoutout to the squad though! 

They really crushed it over these few days and perfected the breach list and had all the matchups figured out down to the T. 

Our limited meetings were great and I believe they really helped everyone a lot and we had an overall great showing in limited. 

I spend all day Tuesday and Wednesday with magic online open and the discord on my other monitor. 

I occasionally jam some games with teammates but for many many hours I just stare at my UW decklist while catching up on the latest breach tech. 

I just stare at the deck..... 

For hours

I went to get lunch and came back and stared some more. 

It was perfect and there was just nothing to cut. 

I wanted another hard counter in my deck but could not find the space. 

I have been moving 1 card around here and there, swapping 3rd field of ruin for the 4th Glacial, swapping back, then swapping back again. going down to 1 absorb and back to the 2/2 split back to 1. Moving around seal away D sphere narset lantern thassas intervention Mystical Dispute elspeth etc. etc. but mostly keeping the same core 73-75 cards the same. 

With a few hours left in submission and all the data pouring in, we realize that LSV Huey and a large swath of great players have all been spotted in leagues today playing breach. 

I am suddenly panicked bc the matchup is still quite bad. 

I have a few good cards, but nothing to swing it past like a 33% matchup at best.

I know damping sphere is my only real option if I want to respect it, and I’m of the mindset that doing so is normally a bit silly. 

While the deck is obviously busted, it’s been 5 days and many players are uncomfortable playing decks of this style. 

My general guess is that it breaking 6-7% of the field will still be unlikely, and I think it pushing above 10% would be crazy. 

So I can expect to play vs it once on average?? 

Not so fast. 

This is a new RPT with a wide open field, but still a lot of goats at the top. 

Turns out you almost always have to defeat multiple goats to get the trophy in PT’s... 

And I didn’t fly to Phoenix just to have a good ole time and settle for 6th place, so I man up and delete 2 Monastery Mentor for 2 Damping Sphere. 

This will hurt me in mirrors and vs Invertor, but I am confident I will be fine anyway. 

With 10 minutes left in submission I consider adding a 3rd sphere but am too lazy to open back up my laptop and know I won’t be able to cut any of the beautiful cards in my sideboard for it anyway. 

Enough with the boring shit; let’s get to the tournament!!! 

Part2 coming tomorrow!

[angelic-guardienne]

It’s 12:30 AM and I’m super tired and still have homework to do and have to get up for school in less than six hours but my brain is whirring entirely too fast. 

A few days ago I made a post about the bros being relatable, and in the tags I said Prompto specifically. 

And me? I’m so angry. I’m so angry. I know I should be forgiving, but I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired.

Read more bc I’m just -- too much. 

TL;DR: Basically I just rant for entirely too long about shitty parenting things, then connect my own experiences to Prompto’s at the veeeery end, followed by “You can’t choose your blood, but you can choose your family” and how both Prompto and I did that.

Reason I said Prompto specifically? Terrible parents. Parents that only care distantly, if at all. Parents that don’t really try.

I suppose it’s a little rude for me to say such things...

I’m just angry. See, for context, my whole life has been between two households cause my parents pretty much hate each other (and whenever I say “hate” they say that they don’t hate each other but that’s beside the point). I spend the week with my mom because she lives closer to my school, and then on weekends I go over to my dad’s.

My mom is golden, more than so. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time together, we’re just that close, she’s pretty much my best friend, she loves me enough for two people, five people. (she’s been a single mom the whole time she’s been raising kids cause my older brother’s father didn’t stick around either, which just makes my mom that much more amazing to me because she raised two kids pretty much by herself)

My dad?

With me, I bottle up things way too much so there’s always that one thing, that super small thing that always breaks the bottle, the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, that’s how I handle like 95% of everything I deal with (unhealthy, yeah, but that’s another thing for another time)

And the bottle bursting always happens whenever I’m in a good point, as in I have a bit of motivation and my grades are good and I��m just generally not as depressed and that bone-deep, soul-deep exhaustion I feel isn’t as harrowing. It’s like the plot of life takes a sudden left turn straight off of a cliff.

The little thing this time was my flute.

Y’all know I play the flute. Y’all know I’m in marching band. 

About two-ish months ago, I took my flute in for repairs, ‘cause it was garbage and didn’t play any notes, and I wanted it for marching band season so I just. Took it in for repairs, that was July? More than two months. whatever, so I got a call saying I could pick it up this week. 

Went over to the shop...

Repairs came out to be $203. Like I said, garbage flute. Buuuut way back when I sent it off originally, my dad was prepared to lay down $200 so that it could be paid for -- as in, there was a pre-payment system so that if the repairs cost $200 or less, they’d already be paid for, but if it was over that amount they’d have to get customer approval before beginning transactions and whatnot.

(Of course it’d be $3 over the line... but anyways)

So I’m like, cool, I’ll just call my dad and he can pay for it and I can pick up the flute, it’ll be great, right? 

Nope. (and here, if this was a verbal story, I’d pop my “p” just because of how simply and quickly he turned me down and how infuriated I am about it)

The basic rundown of what he said was that no, I wasn’t going to get my flute until next week (this week, now) and that I wouldn’t have it by Saturday (a truly important date for me b/c it was my last marching band competition, I wanted to have a playable flute for that ((and I ended up having to use my expensive ass concert flute for that event, anyways))) and that I might not even get it next (this) week because I was low on his priority list.

I probably sound like a brat but -- his daughter? Fucking low on his priority list?

He gave me a hard time when I said I should be at least second on the list, and because I’m a little shit I just took it with a tight smile and an “okay, see you next weekend, love you too, bye.”

And like -- god, he’s been doing this shit for my entire life. I guess it just took until now for me to finally see it. To say the least he’s very poor at keeping his word with me.

(Once my mom said we could go to the movies together to see Spiderman: Homecoming. She promised me we would go. Come the day of, we were running on a bit of a tight schedule due to unforeseen circumstances, and even though I told her that it was alright and we didn’t have to go see the movie, she still took us to see it because she promised. She made time for a basically three hour outing (four, I think, we may have went out to eat) because she promised me that we would go see that movie.) 

((My dad’s never done anything like that. Once, when I was younger, he asked what I wanted, probably something for a birthday or Christmas or whatever, and I said I wanted to spend a day with him, just he and I, so we had one meal together at a restaurant and he took me back home. And me, being myself, I just ate that time up because I didn’t have any other times that I could say were ours, just ours. It’s... kinda sad.))

Every single time he doesn’t keep his word I get all broken up and just completely break down, full out sobs and all that jazz, because? Why? It’s the same thing that keeps happening. 

I’ve been making excuses for him for years, years, my entire life. I’ve been forgiving him over and over.

Because he’s not all bad. He’s really not. (And I don’t mean it sarcastically, at least I don’t think I do, cause I’m not too sure anymore) He buys me the things I want on the appropriate dates, as in holidays and birthdays. He bought me a PS4 with the help of my brother, and he bought me FFXV (also with the help of my brother) and the like. The things I wanted in that moment, if it’s close enough to a holiday, he’ll buy.

It’s the wants, but he never participates in the needs. Never, not once.

You know, when I was younger he would always say no whenever I asked to do something with my friends on the weekends? (There’s one particularly terrible experience that happened when I dared to have an outing with my friends on a Friday without letting him know) Did you know it got to the point where my friends just stopped asking if I wanted to hang out because they knew the answer would be no? 

Do you know how much that hurts?

One of my best friends (we’re estranged now) was having a birthday party for herself, and she was debating on asking me because she knew the answer would be no and she just figured that it would be better if I didn’t know about it in the first place. 

I’ll never forget the look that she gave me, the pure hesitance in her whole being, when she finally told me about the party.

You know I only hear about parties second-hand now? So much time was spent, “Did you go to so-and-so’s party?” 

“I didn’t even know so-and-so was having a party... how was it?”

“Ah... it was fun.”

“That’s good.”

It fucking hurts.

But does my dad care? No. (Sometimes I felt like he was doing that on purpose, just to make it easier on himself in the long run, not having to hassle, trying to cart me around to everyone’s birthday parties.)

But all that was a tangent. 

I don’t think my dad knows where I want to go to college, and I frankly don’t think he cares so long as he doesn’t have to pay anything.

(My reasons for believing that? I told him a while back ((he probably doesn’t remember)) that I was going to apply to both Queens University of Charlotte and Duke University. I want to go to Queens more badly ((which requires more work on my part because I’m basically in a one-income household, so scholarships)). Duke has this financial plan where, if your family makes less than a certain amount of money yearly, the school will cover a certain amount of the tuition. At the current income level and their need-based aid, my mom wouldn’t have to pay anything because my education would be completely covered by the school. Queens has no such plan as that... but it’s my preferred school, for reasons I won’t list at the moment. When I told him these things, he basically told me to “just get into Duke,” because then he won’t have to pay anything.)

Like I said, the big things, he just doesn’t want to be involved in.

He doesn’t help my mom make payments on my car, at all. He doesn’t help with school fees, at all. (I have a fun story about that one) 

When I got my permit to drive, we went driving exactly three times together (once when I first got it, and then twice when I was about to take my test for my license so he could help me parallel park). And after I got it, he called me “driving partner” ...and then hasn’t let me behind the wheel since.

My dad’s never taken off of work to support me. I’m always second place. (As a foil, my mom has taken off of work plenty of times to support me, and then worked extra to make up for it, all for me ((and bills, of course)))

I send my dad a schedule of the football games for this season, basically every time he can come see the marching band perform the show at half-time, and does he come? Not to one game. Not at all. 

I didn’t tell him about competition this weekend because (after much coercing) he’s going to the game next weekend, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get him to do something like this for two weekends in a row.

(And he told me he might not even stay to watch the show, depending on his work hours.)

When he picks me up to drive me to his house on Fridays, he won’t speak to me unless I speak first. He doesn’t ask me how my week was, nothing. The drive is just an hour of fucking silence (because he doesn’t turn the radio on with me in the car), if I don’t talk first.

He once had to pick up some food so he had a lunch for work that evening. So, with me in the car, he stopped by Chick-fil-a. (Note, I hadn’t eaten anything that day, but I hadn’t told him that.) He didn’t ask me if I wanted anything, didn’t ask me if I had eaten, didn’t even look at me. About twenty minutes down the road later, with me having to hold his food in my freaking lap because there was nowhere else to put it, he asks me if I was hungry. And when I say yes, he tells me about the leftovers in the fridge.

He makes me feel like such a nuisance whenever I even think about asking for something outside of the prompted times (again, holidays and birthdays).

I hate it so much. 

And then he feels like he can still think he plays some huge part in my life when he’ll barely speak to me when we do get to see each other. 

It’s like I, as a person, don’t even matter. It’s like all he wants is the final product of a “good daughter,” but not actually put in the work of being a father. (I once got a 96 or so on a test, and was very proud of it, but when I told him, his response was, “Why didn’t you get a 100?” I stopped telling him about my grades after that.)

If my school is doing a fundraiser and I ask him to buy something, no matter how politely I put it, he’ll tell me no. A random ass kid from the neighborhood can come to the door selling bottles of water and he’ll rush to get his wallet.

I just don’t get it. ...is it me?

But anyways... so yeah. My dad, as a parent, does the bare minimum.

To relate this all back to Final Fantasy XV as per this blog, I imagine Prompto’s parents were much the same as my dad.

They were never around. They never actually took care of him like parents should. He came home to an empty house most of the time.

And presumably they sent money, because Prompto ate fast food a lot but surely didn’t have a job, to at least show that they care a little bit.

They don’t want him to die.

So it’s the bare minimum... and Prompto, like me, just takes what he can because there’s so little, and makes excuses for the rest. 

And knowing Prompto (especially with how he reacted to having to kill Verstael), if his parents died in the fall of Insomnia, he would be torn to pieces by it. And he might be asked why, because they were never around in the first place, and Prompto can’t explain it well (neither can I, for that matter) but there’s just something about his parents dying that’s just... killing him, too, even if they weren’t the best parents... they were still his parents. 

When I was having a sobbing fit at the game immediately after the whole flute thing with my father (aka a basic thing of “am I just worthless to him?”), my friend said something to me that really stuck with me. 

“You can’t choose your blood, but you can choose your family.”

And it’s not her own quote (she said as much) but it’s still true.

My dad’s related to me, and I probably love him because of that, because... he’s my dad. How can I not, even when he does make me angry sometimes?

I made my family elsewhere. I have amazing friends that support me, and I have my mom, and I have my section in the marching band and I have you guys, here on Tumblr and everyone I’ve talked to in the past that’s still with me now... I have a family. They may not all be blood, but they’re my family.

Prompto did the same thing with Noctis, Ignis, and Gladio. His parents may have been his “blood,” but he made his own family with the people that really cared about him. He chose his family.

So yeah, I don’t really know how to end this -- this was a little raw with emotion and I know I’m most likely just screaming into the void, but it’s... it’s nice to get some of it out, you know? This probably isn’t cohesive at all.... sigh.

It’s 2:30 AM now. I need sleep. 

#admin note #ignore this if you like cause it's just me ranting about life and probably being a bit of a brat about it tbh #i'm just angry and drained #prompto argentum #final fantasy xv #prompto #ffxv #would i tag this under writing? #it sure is long enough to be an entire piece #it's 2625 words...yikes

[f0blove]

Perfect (Patrick Stump)

Based Off a Request for a TOP & FOB imagine ( requested by the amazing @imke-vd who might hate me bc I told her I was working on this like a month ago.... sorry! Hope you like it!<3)

A/N: I’m pretty proud of this one ( it’s my longest one ever and features two of my favorite bands ) so I hope you like it!

Subject: Patrick Stump, featuring twenty one pilots and Fall Out Boy

YOUR POV

You shift your eyes from left to right. Are you in the right place? You shake your head and walk down the hallway to the left. Obviously you're in the right place, there’s twenty one pilots posters covering the venue, and the security guard handed you a backstage pass and checked your name off of a list, but you still felt lost. Why is it so hard to find the stage? You rub your arms and look down the next hallways, debating which direction to go.

“Need help?” You jump at the voice that comes from behind you.

“Yeah,” you say gratefully, smiling at the security guard, “I’m trying to find the main stage?”

“Down that hallway and to the left” the security guard gestures, “You’re almost there”

You grin and thank him, hurrying in the direction he pointed. When you emerge from the hallway, you're right behind the stage and you spot a group of guys standing in a circle in the center of the stage. You grin as you spot who you’ve been searching for this whole time, and you can’t help but break into a run.

PATRICK’S POV

“TY-JO!” The yell rips through the stage and Patrick jumps as it startles him, turning just in time to see a blur of dark hair running towards Tyler. For a moment he panics, wondering if this girl was a crazed fan or something, but then Tyler turns, grins and holds his arms out. In another second, the girl collides with Tyler and hugs him fiercely, laughing as she tucks her face into his neck and then he’s spinning her in a circle. It’s like a scene from a movie, but Patrick’s confused. Who’s this girl? Is he supposed to know her? Does Tyler have a girlfriend? As he looks around the group no one else seems confused at what’s happening. The girl finally steps out of Tyler’s arms, only to immediately hug Josh.

“Josh, I missed you” she groans as he hugs her tightly.

“I missed you too kid” he grins at her.

She grins cheekily and Patrick is mesmerized by her smile - it lights up the whole stage. She hugs Pete too, and suddenly Patrick wonders if he’s the only one who doesn't know this girl. But then she introduces herself to Joe and Andy. Then finally, she turns towards him, smile brightening as they make eye contact, and Patrick is almost speechless. This girl is one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen, and he’s so distracted by her piercing eyes he almost misses her words.

“Hey,” she says happily extending a hand to him, “I’m (Y/N)”

“Patrick” he responds, shaking her hand.

“I know” she says , then blushing, “I mean , um, I’m a fan so I know, we haven't actually met yet” she rushes to explain herself.

YOUR POV

You blush furiously as you rant, tripping over your words. It figures, you’ve been wanting to meet Patrick for a long time, and the minute you do you act like a crazed teenager fawning over him.

“It’s okay, I’m glad to hear you’re a fan. And it’s nice to meet you” He smiles back, and you let out a breath. You try to find something else to say, anything that will keep those gorgeous eyes of his looking into yours, but Tyler tugs on your arms.

“What took you so long? I thought you’d be here hours ago. You missed sound check!”

“I'm sorry, traffic was awful and it took ages to get out of the house” You explain, “but I'm here now!”

“Thank god, I thought you were gonna miss the whole show” Josh groans, nudging you in the shoulder.

“Nah I’d never miss the chance to see my boys play” you grin, hugging Josh’s side. “Plus I’d never turn down a Fall Out Boy concert either”

Pete throws a grin, high fiving you.

“Can I put my stuff in the bus now?” you ask , looking between Tyler and Josh.

“The bus?” Patrick asks from behind me.

“She’s joining us for the rest of the tour” Pete says, looking at Patrick confused.

“That’s alright, right?” Tyler asks.

Patrick looks back at him, equally confused, “Of course, Sorry, I mean that’s great, I just didn't know” he turns to you, “Seriously, that’s great, I’m glad you're coming it'll be a lot of fun.”

You actively try to stop from smiling as he smiles at you, nodding back at him.

“So…” you say, breaking up the silence that followed, “Buses?”

The guys all murmur agreements and Tyler and Josh start leading everyone to the bus. Both of them trying to talk to you at the same time. You link arms with Tyler, just happy to be back with your best friend again.

PATRICKS POV Patrick’s heart fell a little as he watched her link arms with Tyler, head leaning on his shoulder as they walked.

There was still time before they had to get ready for the show, so they all broke paths to go to their separate tour buses, and Patrick felt oddly disappointed when (Y/N), Tyler, and Josh disappeared into their tour bus, but he couldn't figure out why.

Four hours later, Patrick walks off the stage, applause and screaming from the crowd ringing in his ears, grinning widely.

“Good job man” Joe says, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Yeah you too” Patrick responds, high fiving Pete and Andy too.

Tyler and Josh appear from back stage. “Ready for the encore?” Tyler asks.

They all nod, and rush back on the stage, to give one long, dramatic encore, singing Saturday and Trees. The crowd explodes at the end, louder than they had been all night. The guys exit the stage for good this time, and (Y/N) is waiting in the wings, clapping for them.

“You guys were amazing!” she cheers, hugging Tyler and Josh first, “Ew okay, also really sweaty” she commented with a laugh.

“And you guys, oh my gosh, I swear you get better and better everytime I see you” she gushes, turning towards the guys of Fall Out Boy. Patrick’s heart flips in his chest as she hugs him tightly.

“You’ve seen us before?” Patrick asks, pulling away.

“Oh yeah” (Y/N) says, “I’ve been a fan for ages I’ve actually seen you guys like four times” she blushes, looking away.

“That’s awesome” Patrick says grinning, and you lock eyes.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I am starving” Joe interjects, “Anyone up for food?” “Can we do pizza?” Pete asks.

“No how about taco bell” Tyler chimes in.

“Ty, we are not going to Taco Bell, ever” (Y/N) groans, putting a hand on her hip.

“I agree” Patrick throws in.

Tyler looks at them, offended, “Wow I really feel like I’m getting ganged up on here but whatever”

(Y/N) laughs leaning forward and putting an arm on his shoulder. “There’s an old fashioned diner just a few blocks from here. They have pizza and mexican food and a little bit of everything else. How does that sound?”

Everyone agrees, deciding to head back to the buses to shower and get ready first.

An hour later, the large group of you walk down the street, having decided on just walking to the diner since it's so close

It’s cold and a little windy outside, so everyone’s hunched against the cold. Patrick walks behind Tyler and (Y/N). He watches with annoyance as (Y/N) moves against his side, and Tyler throws an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder to warm her up. Patrick can’t explain it but he feels insanely jealous. He’s known this girl for less than twelve hours and yet for some reason he can't stop the flare of jealousy that piques in his chest every time Tyler and (Y/N) do something cute. He can't help but feel like it should be him, but that's crazy… right?

“Dude, are you okay?” Pete asks.

“What? Yeah I'm fine why?” Patrick responds, taking his eyes away from the back of (Y/N)’s head.

“I dunno you just look… kinda pissed I guess.”

“Nah i'm good, just hungry” Patrick says, avoiding Pete’s eyes.

“Alright if you say so. But good news, I think we’re here” The people in front of them stop, opening the door and piling into the cozy little diner. The seven of them cram into a booth, everyone jostling and being a little bit too loud, scrambling for menus and talking about the show. Patrick catches eyes with (Y/N) who sits across the table. She makes a gesture that says “Wow can you believe these guys?” and Patrick laughs in response, shrugging. As she smiles back, that flare in Patrick’s chest gets a little warmer, and little kinder, and maybe a little more hopeful.

After an hour of eating and talking, the group heads back to the buses, Patrick and Pete to one, Andy and Joe to a second, And Josh, Tyler, and (Y/N) to the third. Patrick stands outside the door to their bus, waving to everyone as they disappear.

Pete grins as he spots Patrick’s eyes trained on (Y/N) as she climbs into the bus.

“She’s cute, isnt she” Pete says, moving around him to climb up the bus.

“Beautiful” Patrick corrects, before blushing and clearing his throat and following ete inside. “I mean, uh, Tyler’s a lucky guy”

Pete looks at him in confusion, before letting out a chuckle “Nah man you got it all wrong, They're not together”

“They're not?” Patrick repeats, heart flipping in his chest.

“Nope. They’re just friends. Been friends since they were babies, I think. Nope, as far as I know she’s single”

“Interesting” Patrick says, pretending to act somewhat uninterested.

“You should go for it, Trick” Pete comments.

“What? No I…”

“You’ve been staring at her all night. And she’s been staring right back”

“No she hasn't” Patrick denies, rolling his eyes.

“Dude,” Pete says, putting hands on Patrick's shoulders and squeezing, “She’s beautiful and smart and funny, I think you two could be cute together. Go for it”

“I'll think about it” Patrick says, and Pete grins, walking away to go to bed.

Late that night Patrick drifts off to sleep, hoping that Pete was right.

THREE WEEKS LATER  - YOUR POV

“That was awesome!” You cheer as the guys come running off the stage.

“Yeah but you always say that” Tyler says with a smile, rolling his eyes.

“Well you guys are always awesome” you tease, poking him in the shoulder.

“I just can’t wait to shower” Josh complains, running a towel across his forehead.

“Oh friend we’re all excited for that” Joe says.

Josh makes a fake hurt face and flips him off. The group moves away from the stage, splitting up to shower and agreeing to meet back in Tyler and Josh’s bus. Being the only one not showering, you pull out your laptop and settle in on the couch, waiting for everyone to be done.

The first one to come into the bus is Patrick, and you can’t help but smile when you realize it’s him.

“You clean up nicely” you say with a smile.

He blushes slightly, letting out a laugh “ Thanks”

“Come sit, no one else is ready yet” you pat the couch next to you.

He nods and come to sit next to you, and you smile at him when his knee brushes his.

“What do you think everyone wants to do tonight?” Patrick asks you

“Probably go out to a bar or something” You say with a little distaste.

“What a shocker” Patrick says with faux surprise. You giggle at his response, looking over when Tyler emerges from the back of the bus, freshly showered.

“Josh is almost ready, doing his hair I think” He comments, dropping on the floor and resting his back against your knees.

“That boy and his hair” you comment with a laugh, “but no one besides Patrick is even here yet so it’s fine”

As soon as the words leave your lips, the door opens and Andy, Joe, and Pete come in.

“I guess I spoke too soon” you add.

Josh comes out of the back as well, grinning at the sight of everyone.

“Alright, who's ready to do this?” Pete exclaims.

“Do what exactly?” Patrick asks him.

“We’re going to that club downtown” Joe adds.

“Do we have to?” You and Patrick say at the same time. You look at each other in surprise, laughing when everyone else groans.

“Since when did you become such a drag” Tyler complains, rising from the floor.

“I am not a drag, I just don’t always want to go out” You say defensively,

“No the two of you are boring” Josh says, gesturing between you and Patrick. “You never want to come out!”

“That’s definitely not true” Patrick looks to you, “We were just out like two nights ago”

“Exactly” you confirm.

“You really don’t want to come?” Tyler asks doubtfully.

“I really don't” you say, a little guiltily.

“Patrick? You sure you don’t want to join?” Joe asks Patrick seriously.

“Nah I'm good” he replies, “Plus, someone’s gotta keep the lady company” he adds with a grin at you.

“I feel bad just leaving you guys here” Tyler says, frowning and looking at you

“Seriously, you guys go” you say, rising from the couch and nudging Tyler and Josh towards the door. “I’ll be fine, Patrick will be fine, and we’ll go out next time, I promise”

With one more doubtful look, the guys hug you and leave.

“I thought they'd never leave” You joke, turning back to Patrick.

He laughs, shaking his head. “I don’t know how they go out every night and aren’t always exhausted”

“It’s a mystery” you say, sitting on the couch again and facing him, “At least it’s just the two of us now”

Patrick looks at you in surprise, “Uh, I mean as opposed to me being alone. I'm glad you stayed” you expand, blushing a little.

“Me too” Patrick says with a small smile, “What do you wanna do?”

“I don’t know” you say thoughtfully, “Just hang out?”

“Works for me, there's actually some stuff I wanted to get done anyway” Patrick says.

“Cool you go ahead and do that and then maybe we can watch a movie or something”

He nods and leaves to get his laptop, returning in a few minutes. You run in the back, grabbing your little speaker and your laptop, before returning to the front.

You sit on the floor, turning your phone. “What do you wanna listen to?” you ask.

“Whatever you want, I’m open to anything”

“I'll just hit shuffle” you decide. You do, and the first song that pours through the speakers is one from Soul Punk. “Well this is awkward” you say with a laugh, switching to the next song.

“You have Soul Punk on your phone?” Patrick asks in surprise.

“Of course,” you reply, “I told you I was a fan”

“I know I just figured you meant of Fall Out Boy” “I am a fan of Fall Out Boy, but also of you. A huge fan in fact. I actually saw one of your solo shows” you confess in a rush.

“No way” Patrick says setting his laptop aside. “I can’t believe that” he laughs.

“I did, and it was fantastic. You have a lot of talent Patrick”

Patrick blushes, “Thanks” he says to you, looking back

You chew on your lip, trying to decide if you should say what you really want to or not.

“Patrick? Can I just say something?” you asks, looking up at him a little embarrassed.

“Yeah, what is it?” he asks, looking down at you in concern.

“I just…” you trail off, unsure of how to tell him, “I just think you're really brave”

His eyebrows draw together in confusion, “Brave? Why?”

You pull your knees to your chest, looking up at him. “I watched an interview once where the interviewer asked you and Pete about Folie a Deux”

“Yeah…” Patrick asks, still looking confused.

“And you told this story about how you guys toured for the album, and one night when you announced you were gonna play some of the newer songs, the entire crowd just flipped you off” Patrick grimaces. “And you said that’s all you can ever think about when you think of that album”

“Yeah, that is true” Patrick's says, a little bitterly, but confusion still lingers in his eyes.

“And then during hiatus I read the article you wrote” you continue explaining, “About how fans would tell you they like you better when you were fat, or would come to your solo shows and tell you sucked without Fall Out Boy or that you should have never gone solo”

“(Y/N) why are you bringing all of this up?” he asks, and you see pain tracing his eyes.

“I just wanted to tell you that I think it’s really empowering and brave that you’re still out here playing music after all of that awful stuff you went through. I think you’re kind of amazing Patrick” You finish your little speech, looking away as a blush colors your cheeks.

“Wow” Patrick says in aw e, “You really think that?”

“Always have” you say nodding, “Sorry I didn't mean to make it awkward I just wanted you to know”

“No, um, thank you for telling me” he says, smiling down at you, “That means a lot and it actually makes me feel a little better. But music’s my passion and my life, I couldn't give it up if I tried”

“I know” you says smiling up at him, “And that’s pretty amazing too”

You grin up at him, turning back around and resting your back against the couch, opening your laptop. For a while the two of you just sit there in comfortable silence, working on various things. After about an hour though, your legs are growing numb from sitting on them and you’ve run out of stuff to do. You turn to see what Patrick’s up to, only to find him entirely absorbed in whatever he’s doing. His headphones are on, but only one ear is covered. You smile, thinking that he left one ear covered just in case you said something to him.

“What are you looking at?” Patrick says suddenly.

“Nothing” you shrug with a smile, “Just you”

Patrick blushes slightly, looking away from you.

“I’m bored” you declare, poking him in the knee.

“Sounds like your problem” Patrick responds playfully.

“Nooo come on Patrick” you say, standing up, “Come dance with me”

“Dance?”

“Yeah you know…” you say, spinning in a circle, “Dance”

Ha laughs at you and you grin back, reaching down to your phone to skip through until a fast paced song comes on, and you turn it up. You pull Patrick (reluctantly) to his feet, and start dancing. He just looks at you for a while, laughing at your goofy dance moves, but then he laughs and joins in. Just like that, the two of you are having your own private dance party.

You’re dying of laughter watching Patrick attempt the wave when the song fades out, and the song “Perfect” By Ed Sheeran comes on, considerably slower and more romantic than the song you had picked before.

“Now this is more my style” Patrick says with a smile. “Know how to waltz?”

“No” you say, raising your eyebrows. “Do you?”

“Of course, every proper gentleman does.” He bows deeply, smiling up at you with shining eyes. “May I have this dance?”

You giggle and accept his hand, “But I don't know how” “I'll teach you” Patrick says simply, lightly placing an arm on your waist. “ Step on my toes”

You balk at the sentence, “I’ll crush your feet”

“Oh please, I can handle it I promise” he says, raising his eyebrows.

You sigh, smiling him “Well if you insist”

By the time the two of you are dancing in a relatively smooth manner, the second verse is coming to an end, and Patrick starts softly singing.

“ Darling, just hold my hand, Be my girl, I'll be your man, I see my future in your eyes” you pull back from him a little bit, looking at him in shock at the emotion filtering his voice. He smiles at you, pulls you a little closer to him, and continues singing the next chorus.

“Baby, I'm dancing in the dark, with you between my arms. Barefoot on the grass, listening to our favorite song. When I saw you in that dress, looking so beautiful. I don't deserve this, darling, you look perfect tonight” He stares into your eyes with the last line, and your heart beats so fast you’re worried he can hear it. You lean your head against his shoulder, drinking in this new closeness you hadn't felt with anyone in a long time.  After the instrumental, he sings the very last chorus, and you pull back to watch him as he sings to you. “ Baby, I'm dancing in the dark, with you between my arms, Barefoot on the grass, listening to our favorite song. I have faith in what I see. Now I know I have met an angel in person, And she looks perfect.I don't deserve this, You look perfect tonight”

The words fade out as you stare into each other's eyes, still wrapped up in the moment even though the song has switched to something else. He lifts his hand, gently caressing your cheek as he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. His eyes flit down to your lips for barely a second, and then the two of you are leaning towards each other, slowly, still wrapped in each other's arms. You feel like your chest is about to explode from how fast your heart is beating and then - BAM! The door to the bus is ripped open so hard it bangs against the outside of it, and you and Patrick jump apart as though you had been shocked. Tyler, Josh, Joe, Pete and Andy file in, Tyler and Josh alone being loud enough that you can tell they’ve maybe had a little too much fun.

“(Y/N)! Babe! We missed you!” Josh belts out.

“Well if it isnt my best friend!” Tyler announces, coming up to you and throwing an arm around your shoulder. You giggle at their antics, throwing a nervous look at Patrick. He glances back, meets your eyes and shrug, grinning at you. Your heart soars.

“So you guys had fun?” you ask the group, all but shoving Tyler towards the couch, where he happily plops down.

“So much fun” Josh declares.

“But you should've been there. We don’t hang out enough” Tyler says, getting serious. Your heart squeezes at his words.

“I know Ty, I’m sorry” you say, squeezing his hand. “I'll go out next time” “You too Patty!” Pete announces suddenly.

“Yeah, definitely” Patrick says.

“I feel kind of sick” Joe says, suddenly looking very ill.

“We should get him back to his bus” Andy says with a sigh, looking weary and bored, as though he was used to this.

Joe, Andy, and Pete move towards the door.

“Wait, Trick are you coming?” Pete asks from the door.

“Yeah, yeah, in just a second.” he calls back, looking back to you.

You look at him with a smile. “You should go with them,” you says, crossing over to him and quietly squeezing his hand, talking quietly so Josh and Tyler can’t hear you. “I have to take care of those guys anyway. But i’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” you smiles up at him.

He smiles back and squeezes your hand in return, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to your cheek. “Goodnight (Y/N)”

“Goodnight Patrick” you say, watching him collect his stuff and moves towards the door, watching until he leaves the bus and disappears into the night.

*THREE DAYS LATER*

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY (Y/N)” the shout jars you from your sleep and you jump awake to see Tyler and Josh staring down at you.

“Five more minutes” you groan, rolling over towards the wall.

“Nope, sorry birthday girl” Tyler reaches in your bunk, grabbing you and pulling you out. You screech as Josh grabs you from him, swinging you over his shoulder.

“Josh, put me down!” you say, gripping his back so you don't fall down.

“Josh dont put her down” Tyler instructs, “Today’s your birthday and we have a full agenda, so there's no time to waste on sleep”

Josh plops you down at the little table, and Tyler slides a bowl of cereal in front of you. “Just so you know, I was going to make you pancakes but I do not have access to either pancake batter or a stove”

You laugh, taking a bite. “Thank you, this is perfect. But you guys really don’t have to make such a big fuss over my birthday, it’s no big deal.”

“Of course it is” Tyer huffs, checking his watch. “ Now, you have forty minutes to eat and get ready, and then we’re heading into town to go shopping.”

“Shopping?” you ask.

“You need something to wear to your party”

“My party!?” You exclaim.

“Oh yeah, by the way, we’re throwing you a party tonight”

“Oh my gosh” you say with a laugh. “You guys really are going all out aren't you” “It’s because we love you, “ Tyler says cheekily, “But seriously, I was instructed very clearly by my mom that if I was throwing you a party I also needed to provide you the opportunity to get a new outfit”

“Your mother is a wise woman” you say, pointing your spoon at Tyler.

“Plus, I thought you might want to get something extra special, since Patrick will be there”

Your heart jumped at his name, but you shrugged, “Why would that matter?”

“Oh please, you’re practically in love with him” Josh claims, bumping into your shoulder.

You roll your eyes, “ I am not”

“Listen, we’ve all been waltzing around watching the two of you make puppy dog eyes at each other for days,” Tyler says, looking at you knowingly, “we’re merely observing.”

“Okay, okay fine you caught me. I may like him just  a little” you admit, blushing despite yourself.

“So, we’re going around town to a few places, wherever you want, and we’re all gonna get fancy new outfits. Then, we’re going to lunch at this cool little barbecue place that some fans recommended, we’re stopping at a nearby park, and then we’re coming back to get ready and dance the night away’ Tyler explains.

“Sounds perfect” you say with a grin. “Thanks guys” you reach across the table, squeezing Tyler’s hands.

“Anything for you” Tyler says, “but only for today because I hate shopping”

You let out a laugh, “Sounds like a deal”

The two of you finish getting ready, and head into town. Josh stayed behind, meaning you had the whole day for just you and Tyler. You two spent the day shopping, eating, and sightseeing. Being with Tyler was crazy fun - it had been ages since just the two of you hung out and you had missed him a lot. After hours of goofing off and annoying each other, you decided to return. When the two of you returned, it was like a ghost town. No one was around, even Josh wasn’t in the bus. You asked Tyler about it, but he simply told you not to worry about it and to “hurry up and get ready already”. The two of you blasted music through the bus, him dancing around and annoying you, distracting you from getting ready. Finally, you emerged from the back of the bus ready. For your new party outfit, which Tyler bought for you as part of your birthday gift, you had gotten black ripped jeans, black booties with a cute little heel, and a dark red lace shirt. Your hair was curled in large loose waves and you had re done your eyeliner three times just to make sure your makeup looked perfect. You usually didn't get too excited over your birthday, but tonight your stomach was filled with butterflies

“Ready for your party?” Tyler asks, gallantly offering his arm.

“Yeah but, where are we going?” You asks, looking around the parking lot he was guiding you through.

“You’ll see”

After a few minutes, you reach a pair of doors.

“Here we are” Tyler says with a grin, “You ready?”

You nod, unsure of what to expect behind the somewhat rickety looking doors. Tyler grins at you one more time, makes a drum roll sound with his tongue, and opens the door.

PATRICKS POV

“SURPRISE!” the loud shout rings through the building as confetti falls over the door and covers (Y/N) and Tyler. Patricks grins and claps, laughing at (Y/N)’s shocked and happy face when she takes in the crowd. The guys had gotten together and invited a ton of people to give her a huge party, and Patrick heard that many of her close friends had even made it.

“Oh my gosh!” (Y/N) says, grinning at the people that approach her. Patrick and Pete hang back to wait their turn, watching everyone else come through.

Gerard walks up to (Y/N) with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, a few girls that must be good friends of (Y/N) tackle her in a group hug. Finally, Patrick watched as Brendon approaches her. (Y/N) grins and shouts his name, hugging him tightly and Brendon spins her in a circle and kisses her cheek, causing Patrick to shove down a wave of jealousy.

“Seriously was I the last person on earth to meet her?” Patrick asks in exasperation.

“Sorry bro. If I’d known you woulda liked her so much I would have introduced you earlier” Pete answers with a chuckle.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” Patrick says. Pete just looks at him, raising an eyebrow.

“Alright, okay, nevermind” Patrick waves his hands, “Yes, I like her”

“Trust me, we noticed” Joe laughs.

Patrick rolls his eyes and waves them off, finally seeing a lull in the crowd and walking over to (Y/N).

“Hey” Patrick says, stuffing his hands in his pockets after hugging her lightly, “Happy Birthday (Y/N), you look stunning”

(Y/N) smiles as a blush pours over her cheeks. “Thank you Patrick. I can’t believe you guys did all this”

“It was mostly Tyler’s idea, he thought you’d want to be surrounded by all your friends”

Her responding grin lightens Patrick's heart, “This is amazing” she says, shaking her head, “I feel bad making you guys go through all this trouble. I mean inviting everyone, decorating,pl-”

“Hey” Patrick says, reaching forward and grabbing her hand, stopping her mid word, “We all wanted to do this for you. Just repay us by having fun okay?”

“Okay” she says with a shy grin. Patrick squeezes her hand, and nods towards the dance floor, “What do you say we show these people our dance moves?”

(Y/N) giggles and nods, and Patrick leads them to the dance floor. The next several hours are filled with music and lights and cake, and it isnt until almost two in the morning that the party evan begins to die down. This is when Patrick decides its time. He searches across the room, finally spotting (Y/N) near the gift table, talking animatedly to Brendon.

Patrick approaches, trying not to interrupt them.

“Hey Trick” (Y/N) says with a warm smile when she spots him over Brendon's shoulder.

“Ah good,” Brendon says, turning to see him, “Keep the birthday girl company Patrick, I’m gonna go grab a drink” Patrick nods and laughs as Brendon kisses (Y/N) loudly on the cheek and struts away.

“I didn’t know you guys were so close” Patrick says.

“We’re not, really, we’ve just hung out a few times since him and Josh are close,” (Y/N) explains, “He’s just really friendly”

Patrick laughs “Yeah yeah he is”

“Having fun? Sorry I haven’t been back to the dance floor for a while, figured I should just make the rounds” she says guiltily.

“Oh that’s fine I was actually, well, I wanted to give you your birthday present.” Patrick explains nervously.

“Oh Patrick you didn’t have to get me anything” she says, looking surprised.

“No it’s okay, I really wanted to get you this, but we have to go outside to get it”

“I could use some fresh air anyway” she says brightly, smiling and taking Patrick’s hand when he offers it. Patrick slips back to the doors they had come in, turning the corner until they reached the back of the building, and a ladder that led to the roof.

“We have to go up” Patrick says with a smile when (Y/N) looks confused.

“Are we even allowed to?” she asks, concerned.

“I think so, I’ve been up here already. But either way…” he trails off with a shrug and a smile, starting to climb.

“Wait Patrick…”

“Yeah?” he pauses his climb, looking down.

“You’re not going to murder me are you?” (Y/N) asks jokingly.

“No,” Patrick says with a laugh, “But if I was I wouldn't tell you anyway”

“Well that’s reassuring” (Y/N) says with a laugh, following Patrick up the ladder anyway.

Y/N’S POV

When you reach the top of the ladder, Patrick grabs your hand and steadies you as you step onto the roof. When you look around, you can't help but gasp. On the roof is a large picnic blanket, spread out along with a little picnic basket and a small speaker, playing quiet music in the background, and some candles spot the area, basking the whole scene in warm, glowing light.

“Patrick this is beautiful” you gasp, turning to face him. When you do, he’s smiling at you and holding a single rose, and a wrapped gift. Your eyes widen and you smile at him, “Oh my gosh” you say, covering your face with your hands - you couldn't believe he had done all of this for you.

“Happy Birthday (Y/N), this is for you” he says, handing the box to you. You take it, trying to hide your shaking hands as you slowly untie the ribbon and tear the paper off. When you open the rectangular box, a sparkling pendant in the shape of the infinity symbol hangs off a silver chain.

“Patrick it’s gorgeous” you say in awe, meeting his eyes again.

“You told me last week that the infinity symbol held a lot of meaning to you so I thought you might like this”

“Like it?” you repeat, “Patrick it’s wonderful. Put it on?”

Patrick nods and takes the box from you, carefully slipping it out of it’s holdings. You turn your back to him, holding up your hair. He softly slips the necklace around your neck and clasps it, every brush of his fingers sending shivers down your spine. When it’s done, he drops his hands, ever so slightly caressing your shoulders. You turn to face him, dropping your hair around your shoulders, standing only inches from his face

“How does it look?” you ask, reaching up to touch the small pendent with your fingertips.

“Breathtaking. Just like you” Patrick responds, looking deeply inside your eyes.

This time, neither one of you hesitates, and you lean forward, lips meeting in the kiss you both has been waiting for. Patrick kisses you softly, one hand slowly slipping into your hair and the other resting on your waist. The two of you kiss until you have to pull away to catch your breath, but you remain woven together, neither one willing to let the other go.

“Patrick,” you whisper, biting your lip.

“Yeah?” he asks softly.

“I think I love you” you confess as your forehead rests against his.

“(Y/N)?” he says.

“Yeah?” you ask, momentarily afraid of rejection.

“I think I love you too”

Tag List:  @imke-vd @imsocutekl @deltablue202 @theghostofpatrickssideburns @thepatricktreestump @memyselfandwifi @jigglypuff1999  @goldenlifevsgutter1996 @emoxxtrash @everybodywantsapete @the-doctor010

#patrick stump #fall out boy #fall out boy fluff #twenty one pilots fluff #tyler joseph fluff #pstump #tyler joseph #joe trohman fluff #twenty one pilots #Pete Wentz #josh dun #joe trohman #andy hurley #brendon urie #gerard way

[itsjayyyy]

September 18, 2018 4:53 pm

wow since it’s been a few days since an update, I had a lot of things to open this entry with, but of course only one topic can be the first i talk about. so, the most recent one: I was just laying in bed thinking about how I need to study for my bio exam tomorrow and also complete the next two modules for econ, but then I realized it’s tuesday and econ hw is due monday nights, and freaked out. I literally went through all five stages of grief, before I was like “it’s okay, it’s only the homework, the exam will pull my grade up” and opened my laptop to start reading for bio. but then I checked econ and apparently because there’s an exam this week, there wasn’t any homework due so HOLLA.

so this past weekend has been annoying, as always. I was at ioa for friday, but we only had three workers total (we normally have 6) for closing, so it was hell trying to close on time. and then saturday I went to usf, which is always hell. not to mention, hhn started so we had to spend an hour cleaning so the night crew would be set. and at the end of my shift, the usf manager has the nerve to say to me that she wants me to pick up some shifts this week. I tell her that I have four exams, and I’ll have to check my schedule, but she says “oh but your availability says you’re free after 4 on tuesdays, thursdays, and fridays” what the fuck!!!!!! don’t go looking at my availability when I’m not your employee!!!!!!! so I kept saying I had to study, I had to see, two of my exams are online, etc and she kept pushing for me to at least take shifts on friday afternoon and saturday, since I should be done with exams by then. I took the saturday shift because by this point my shift ended a minute ago and I wanted to leave, and told her I’d call her to let her know if I can take friday (I won’t.) SO SUNDAY I walk in to ioa (home sweet home), and we have a new coworker!!! And by new I mean he used to work at usf but transferred here permanently. What. “Oh jay we send you to usf because they’re understaffed and we’re overstaffed.” Okay. So I tell my manager that they’re stupid for accepting MORE workers when we have that issue, and she has the audacity to say to my face “oh it’s more than that, he didn’t like it at usf” as if I haven’t spent the last two months telling both ioa and usf managers that I hate usf. Okay. So Sunday, when I next work at ioa, I’m going to speak to my highest manager and tell her that she either tells the scheduler that I am not to work at usf again, or I quit. I have enough money in my savings account to last me a while.

wow. rose deadass drank 6 apple juice boxes out of the 8-pack we had. this bitch clearly doesn’t care if I starve huh.

so yesterday I met up with heather after class in the student union. did I mention how much I love cafe bustelo? I really love it. a good cafe con leche really warms me up. we talked for a while, then I walked her to class. In our conversation, our birthdays came up at some point (I think I said something along the lines of “you didn’t get me anything for my birthday this year! and she said “you didn’t get me anything either!”) and I was like “I bet you don’t even know my birthday” and she said april 22nd. and then later she was like yea well I bet you don’t know mine and i immediately said march 19, so she said she’d buy me starbucks today to make up for it.

today’s morning was really gr8 and also really un-gr8. like, I woke up at 7 thinking I had to leave the house at 8:30 for my ortho appt, and laid in bed for a while before finally getting up and showering. but when I stepped out of the shower and saw the time was 8, I realized that I didn’t leave the house at 8:30, my appointment was at 8:30. cue getting dressed while still partially damp, forgetting heather’s gov’t textbook, and going 75 in a 45 zone. I thank the gods daily that motorcycles don’t get red light tickets.

while driving down the main road leading to my university, I had this white car weaving between traffic. at one point he was behind me, but then when I slowed down in a turn he switched to the right, which ended up being right behind a campus shuttle (you know, the ones that drive 5 mph under the speed limit at all times and you can barely see around. and they’re diesel, ugh!). as he saw me speed up at the end of the curve, he switched back to behind me and sped up too, but as soon as I reached level with the front of the shuttle (and the pickup on the other side of me), I slammed on my brakes so he couldn’t try to go around. Definitely risked getting run the fuck over, but it was so worth it seeing the look of frustration on his face.

I got nearly instant karma, though, because he entered the university through the first turn, when I went for the second a little ways up since it’s closer to my garage. but the traffic light was down, so I had to merge into one lane with everyone else, and then they wouldn’t even allow left turns because it’s too complex for the person directing traffic, so I had to make a right then a u-turn. But it was made up for by the fact that the trike that normally parks in my spot was probably also deterred by the traffic, and I got to claim my righteous spot.

so when I got on campus, I went to heather’s class, or rather, the building it was in since I couldn’t find room 106 exactly. I remembered that my annoying coworker said that her classes were in that building + the one next to it also on tuesdays, but I thought that there was no way I’d actually bump into her considering there are over 60,000 students and the buildings are pretty large, plus I didn’t know what time her classes are.

well, now I know that her class gets out at the same time + same building as heather. we walked towards the starbucks (which is near her next class), and I introduced her to heather, we talked about how it was to work at universal, the sort. and then she was like “well I gotta go to class now, bye!” and i was like bye and smiled and when she was more than 20 feet away I turned to heather and said “that’s the coworker I told you that I hate.”

I love pumpkin spice season!!!!!!!! got a frappuccino tho, because it’s never truly fall in florida. heather got a mango dragonfruit refresher bc I recommended it to her, and it’s funny because the person ordering before us was also named heather and also ordered a mango dragonfruit. As a barista, that’s like my worst nightmare. Luckily they were able to tell it apart because the other heather got a grande. We sat in the starbucks for a while, I explained how weed is a lot more safe than cigarettes, talked about pine hills’ reputation, and how samantha’s mom is so damn disrespectful. This woman drove heather home one day when picking up samantha, and the whole ride was bragging about how samantha was going to be so successful because she’s majoring in some type of psychology and will be making over 90k a year. and then she turned the conversation to how teachers don’t make that much money, and she asks heather how she could do that, just take such a low-paying job. and lemme tell ya how MY GIRL HEATHER FUCKIN SNAPPED. she done said she tired of people saying teachers don’t make a lot of money yall. she said to samantha’s mom, “I don’t know how you’re looking down on my salary when you have three children from three different men with only a salary of $30k.” Y’ALL. the point that heather was trying to make the point that “people from working-class families act as if a salary less than 100k is unacceptable even for an unmarried, childless young adult despite working class families often having a household income of 50k while supporting children just fine,” but damn she really went there. goin off on this good catholic woman for having baby daddies. well samantha’s mom and samantha became very upset. and they told heather’s dad who would not leave her alone until she apologized. as in, he was banging on her door telling her she had to apologize. I said put headphones in and ignore it, she was like “girl you don’t understand haitian parents. my dad literally opened my door with a knife when I locked it.” so she had to apologize :/ but she also made it clear that she didn’t like the way samantha’s mom disrespected her. she tried to make it seem relatable, and be like, “oh what if i said that to your mom, wouldn’t you tell me to apologize” and I’m like???? no???? I would make my mom apologize for being disrespectful first the hell??? then I reminded her about how I literally lived on the streets for 3 weeks because my mom was disrespectful to me.

today after class I decided to take the city bus home, for 4 reasons: I wanted to stay humble and remember where I came from, I wanted time to be able to finish this book, not walking the last half-mile home every day this semester has caused some weight gain, and I really wanted to hold my parking spot against that damn trike, and it seems he comes too early in the morning for me, so I just left my bike there overnight. yea I’m petty.

The book was really good. It’s definitely a hard read, for sure. In the sense that it really will make you cry. At the end, it listed all of the school shooting victims since columbine, plus a small snippet about them (it was like 20 pages long). The one that really got me was an 8 year old, whose text read “shoot me first,” as he wanted to take a bullet so it wouldn’t be used against his classmates. Then, below that entry, a seven year old, who said “shoot me next.” Just typing that is making my eyes water again.

The walk home was super tiring. I’m super out of shape, it was hard for me to even imagine that I did this every single day the entire first semester of college. And I have to do it tomorrow morning again, ugh. Can you believe heather wakes up at 5:30 am???? I’m never seen out of bed before 7, and even then it’s only for things like appointments. But I guess I really should start waking up earlier, because whenever I get on campus around 8 I feel great because I have so much time to study and stuff. but that means I have to buy a coffee on campus, and I don’t know if I want to commit to that expense.

edit: so I originally posted this to my main, and when I saw that I copied it, then deleted it, then tried to paste it into a new post, but I guess I didn’t press ctrl hard enough because it didn’t copy. and I was about to cry bc this is close to 2k words, but then I realized I had a tab of my main open that still had the original post showing, so I copied from there.

[coreytravelogue]

Victoria, BC - August 19, 2018

Another entry another bit of traveling done for me, this one was just a day trip to Victoria, it won’t be my last. Every time I come I am reminded that I should come here more often than I do but when I do I can’t help but bring back movies and vinyl that I don’t need but my impulses say I do. I should just come for the beer but that will be for my birthday I think because by that time there will be nowhere else to go unless Yellowknife trips go 50% off than they normally do there.

2 weeks from now I embark on the biggest trip I have taken since 2014 which is to Australia to see my girl friend. I wish I could go for more than the two weeks I will be but that was as much as I could stretch out of my 7 allotted days off allowed. Thankfully next year it will be at least two weeks w Roth but it is looking like 7 will go to Japan and 7 to Newfoundland unless I can get my parents to come which I doubt they will.

I would like the first two weeks of September to go as slowly as possible. The plan is 2 days of Adelaide before going to Roxby Downs, then go to Melbourne for a few days then back to Adelaide for the rest.

That won’t be the only rest of travel I do though, two weeks after I return I will go to Montreal on Thanksgiving long weekend. There is also the slight possibility that I could go back to NFLD this year too but it will only be for a week if I do.

It has been amazing the amount of travel I could pack into this year and for good reason as it will be harder in the future.

I won’t look back at it all till at least Montreal or next time a go to Victoria.

I will always be a big fan of Victoria, I don’t like how they handle their sewage but outside of that I like it. Can’t help but feel depressed as what should be cleared skies is filled with smoke. A result of climate change and. Something we will have to live with as no one is ready and willing to get off the oil addiction here. Even as BC is on fire we are still bickering over climate change. Humans.......

I arrived in Victoria far later than I expected, did not expect so many people would be going to Victoria on Saturday. When I arrived I found out I made a brain fart. I booked a bed from 17-19 instead of 18-19 which I what I thought I did. So I realized I wasted 36 dollars and would have to spend another 36 dollars just for one night today. I thought for a moment it was a glitch but no, it was my fault.

Even though the concert started an hour early I had to wait 4 hours for the band I wanted to see to come on. Thankfully this was a free and open concert so I walked around here and there. I wish I did more of it but I kept thinking Archers would come on at any time but I should have known better, they were the headliner as if it was any doubt but then that is what today is for. In two hours I will look around for dvds and vinyl as I always do then head straight home to pick up my bike from the shop where I sent it in to get tuned up.

The one hour concert itself was pretty cool, the beer cheap and not great but hey it was all IPA beer which is my least favourite. There was supposed to be a after party at another bar but by the time I got there the line ups were too long and I had no patience to be around even to meet the band.

I returned to my dorm where I got the top bunk and squeezed maybe 4 or 5 hours out. My trip could have been better but could have been worse and most of it was my own fault.

Since I am in Victoria and have 2 hours to kill I should give Victoria a review.

The vibe Victoria has always been chill and easy going, that has always been the appeal of Victoria to me. When you come to Vancouver things are slower but not Conservative slow. Things are more relaxed, it is still a city but not a fast city like Vancouver. That being said the poverty in this city seems to be getting worse and worse every time I come and it is getting too noticeable. With all that I give Victoria a 3/4 C on vibe.

Things to do I give Victoria 2/3, there is lots to do depending on where you want to go. You want to shop this place has a little something for everyone, you want to eat there is plenty hear, you want to hit the parks or harbours you can spend a day doing that too. If you want to see music you can do that too.You can spend at least 3 days before you really get bored here. With that it is not a museum city so much as it’s be outside city which sets it apart from most of the places I have been to. For a smaller city it has a lot to offer and offers a great counter measure to what Vancouver has.

The food I will also give Victoria 2/3, I don’t think there is much local cuisine but like most Canadian cities we don’t have much of our own food. With that Victoria still has a wide variety of resteraunts to try. Not on the level of Vancouver but again for its size it got much of the same.

The beer I will also give it 2/3, it was through a Victoria based brewery that I started really discovering BC beer and most of the breweries I have tried here have always had good beer. Again they do t have the same amount of options and Vancouver but in terms of quality I would nearly say Victoria almost beats Vancouver but not quite. Vancouver has the numbers but with its numbers it also has variety and quality. Victoria has the same but with lesser numbers.

The transit however is where the city takes its biggest it, it gets 1/4. It’s transit is suffice to enough once you know how to use it but compared to other places it’s fairly poor and slightly confusing for someone who has never used it to use. Seems so strange for a place so connected to Vancouver to have a stark difference in this since one could say transit is one of Vancouver’s greatest strengths at least on a Canadian scale. This city is very bike friendly though but that is about it.

If adding my fractions correctly Victoria gets CCC on the Corey Scale. Between Whitehorse and Fort Mac it gets middle of the pack.

I still got 90 minutes so I feel now is a good time to grade other cities. I will save grading the Europe cities for the four year anniversary if I remember and have time for it. I assume if I do do it it will be before I leave for Adelaide.

Vibe of Vancouver is good now that I can grade it without a jaded sense to it but that being said I would still give it 1/3 because the city can come off as distant and arrogant at times. There are still friendly people in the city but the city is very cliquey. As a tourist people are nice enough to you but if you live her it can be very lonely till you find your clique but once you find it it’s not so bad.

The transit from my experience compared to most other places in Canada I would say is second to none, at least till I go to Montreal. The transit is great, the city is very walkable and very bike-able.it is expensive to use the transit but the transit will take you anywhere you need to get to with minimal fuss. So with that I feel like it should get a full C on that.

The food should also get a C and that is not because I have a bias for living in Vancouver because if you knew me you’d realize I have some long standing anger towards Vancouver but even when I hated Vancouver the food choices in Vancouver beat anywhere in the world period. Pick a culture and they got it, pick a diet and they can work around it. Vancouverites are utterly spoiled with food. As much as they like to complain about a lot none of them will complain about food choice.

Things to do however I have to give Vancouver a 1/2, it is a summer cit when their should be no excuse for it especially for its size. Yes it has many museums and gardens and places to still hike in the rainy periods but that is it. To experience Vancouver fully and completely you have to be there in the summer. Then you can spend a week and get a full weeks worth may have missed things. To me there is no excuse for that, other cities still try to get you in with stuff during the winter and their winters are far more harsher. All Vancouver has is cold rain and maybe a week of snow. In the summer Vancouver is hard to beat, in the winter it’s hardly worth passing through. You may as well go to Whistler and that is it or Victoria even.

Vancouver is the beer capital of Canada, period end of story. Unless Montreal can suddenly show me something in the four days I will be there I can’t see how anywhere else in Canada not named Victoria or Alberta collectively that competes with Vancouver toe to toe, it’s not even a fight. I have been to nearly everywhere in Canada minus NWT, PEI, Labrador and Nunavut and I can’t imagine they could sway me with their beer culture. There are so many breweries in Vancouver it’s insane and all of them experiment all the time with beers to drink. Name the style and you might find it. Mind you their own weakness is one most breweries do and their beer reflects seasons. So that means summer you get wheat beers, kolsches and the lighter colour beers, in the winter you get more porters and dark beers. Fall or spring is often a crap shoot but even then there are so many beer options in Vancouver that you are bound to find what you like. Plus most bars compete with each other in having variety. Gone are the days in Canada where your choices are Canadian, Budweiser or Kokanee/Labatt. So with all that Vancouver gets a full C.

So with that Vancouver gets the highest grade with CCC5/6. That may be the highest grade any city may get. Maybe a German city will get close but the city just rocks the transit, food and beer.

So that really all I got for now. Next time you hear from me is I’ll either be preparing for Australia or I will have already been in Australia for a little while. Either way you will hear from me soon. Shazbot nanu nanu.

[captainverbatim]

Apparently I have the tiniest fucking veins imaginable and it’s a miracle I’m alive because how on earth are those tiny veins circulating enough blood through my body

Alternate title: Getting Your Blood Drawn Sucks Ass

Story under the cut bc it got longer than I expected

I recently applied for a life insurance policy, and part of that process is a health screening. Mostly they just ask you some questions (in which you should say no to everything; give them the healthiest version of yourself)[I’m not even trying to give bad advice, that’s literally what the insurance people said to do: lie], but they also take some bodily fluids. Peeing in the cup was the easiest, if not most demeaning, part. 

The sucky part, the stressful part, the part that caused me so much ire for the last week, was getting my blood drawn. Now before they do all this, they tell you to fast for at least 4 hours, stay away from caffeine and alcohol, and to drink hella water.

Water is my nemesis. This is terrible, but on a good day, I might drink two glasses of water. Might. My body is pretty much used to being in a constant state of dehydration. Again, I know this is bad. But I also like to think that, if ever any shit went down, that makes me good in a crisis when water supplies are low. 

My first appointment didn’t go so well. The lady stuck me in three different places, multiple times. Twice in my left arm, three times in my right arm, and once on the back of my hand. I still have a bruise on my hand and this was a week ago. I even asked her which veins she was looking for (oxygenated vs deoxygenated) because I could see several blue veins in my arms and she gave some wishy washy answer about looking for something bigger. The whole time, she kept making comments about how my veins are so hard to see and if I was even alive. My arms were pretty much rubbed raw from all the times she used the alcohol wipes to see my veins. The lady was finally able to draw blood from my hand but it went for like two seconds and stopped. She barely had anything in the vial. By this point I was feeling flushed and nauseated, so she packed her stuff up and left with what she had.

She reported that I didn’t drink enough water (she may have a point, although I tried really hard) and fasted too long (bullshit). I had a 10am appointment and had last eaten at dinnertime. There was no way I was going to wake up before 6am just to nibble on something to make the four hour fast. 

In the end, I had to make another appointment. Since I was told I fasted too long I tried to get an appointment for after work. It was gonna be great. I could better control when I last ate and make sure I drank enough water beforehand. But I forgot that the universe hates me, so of course all of their people were either booked or didn’t work that late. Then I tried to get a weekend appointment. Again, hoping for the afternoon or evening. Again the universe thwarted me and I had to settle for a 9am appointment today. This time though, I was a step ahead and specified for the examiner to bring a butterfly needle (that’s the type of needle they use to get blood from babies because I have tiny baby veins).

Luckily they didn’t need to redo any of the other parts from the previous appointment. They only needed to draw blood. A different lady shows up. 15 minutes late. My gut telling me that this was a bad sign and that I shouldn’t expect this to go well. She starts getting her supplies set up and asks me for a paper towel just in case there’s a mess. NOT. A. GOOD. SIGN. I’m pretty distressed internally but I keep a brave face. The lady looks at both my arms to see which is a better contender. More comment about my tiny veins are made.

My right arm gets chosen (as a lefty, I’m glad) and she ties it with that rubber thing you see drug addicts use in the movies. I’m torn between watching her and turning my head away because I’m naturally curious but I know my body will react negatively to seeing my own blood. She asks if I’m ready and I turn my head away as she sticks me with the needle. That’s when I hear it. I hear the actual fizzle of my blood going through the tube, clearing air bubble in its path. My stomach lurches and I close my eyes. I hear/feel her remove one vial and replace it with another. Then she says that it stopped and she has to push the needle in deeper. I count my breaths. The second vial fills up some, but my blood stops again. Rather than stick me again, she hopes that it is enough and calls it a day.

She finishes her paperwork, puts stickers on things. The whole time she repeats that she hopes that this is enough blood because if not, they’ll have to send someone else out again. So now I get to spend the next I don’t know how many days stressing out about whether that is enough blood and if I’ll have to make another appointment and be stuck with needles while I try not to puke all over my kitchen table. Happy Saturday, everyone, it’s time to eat a snack and take a nap.

#maybe this is why i'm so cold all the time #all these years I've joked about having circulation issues #there could be actual truth to that #tw for talk of needles and blood #my life

[stickyrunawayangelsworld]

Monday, 4:51 am

my best friend on the whole wide planet ruined her life, and now she wants me to ruin mine. you see, she grew up living with her controlling and abusive grandparents. parents were drug addicts, never gave a shit. she turned 18 in march of 2016, had a beautiful daughter in april. moved out of their house in may or june. left all her shit (by force). she moved in with her mom, which didn't work out too well. some time in june or july i had to get her and all the shit we could get quickly and leave. she stayed at my sisters for a while. everyone in my family told her that she could stay with any of us, permanently. my nana and papa already had two teenagers (18 and 16), but they didnt have a spare room. my sister was 7 months pregnant and newly wed, they have their own place which is two bath and four bed. one room i was living in, the nursery was in the back by their room, and the room they were ready to make hers was right beside mine. my parents with three kids but only one living at home (my brother, 16) (i moved out in june due to a very bad fight with my dad which ended in me in the icu, and my sister is 24 so) had two spare rooms, one which was already being made into a nursery for their soon to be grandchild, the other completely empty since i left. however, she wanted to move to texas to go live with her long distance boyfriend she had never met. so, in august, she moved states to be with an abusive asshole. there were signs he was definitely abusive before they were even dating, and she ignored them all because he also did nice things. he bought her and willow gifts and mailed them. he bought promise rings. he sent her his jackets so she could wear them, he sent her letters, tagged her in memes, etc. he also called her fat. (not the worst thing to others, but she's been suffering with eating disorders since she was a child, and she was 8 months pregnant at the time.) he also triggered her ptsd. he would belittle her, push her around, and manipulate her into doing things she didn't want to do. every fight he would call her a bitch, irrational, overreacting. she has multiple disorders where it's hard to tell if she is overreacting or being irrational. he would leave her on read during a panic attack. actually i can't think of a single time he talked to her when she was freaking out. he always said it was stupid and that "she'd calm down eventually". anyways. so she moves down there. its good for maybe two or three weeks. after that it was non stop with the fighting. "Toriy he's such a dick" "i hate it here, i don't know anyone and the city gives me anxiety" (san antonio is like 300 miles, and she's from a small ass town) "Toriy please call me" "____ did x, y, z today and I haven't eaten in three days" at first it was shit that i wasn't surprised by. he called her fat, he ignored her during a panic attack, he put his friends before her. then christmas week happened. it started put early in the week. he was mad because something that happened at work or whatever, and he was (as usual) taking it out on her. she didn't say anything, just kinda took it. the next few days were pretty similar. his family celebrated christmas on christmas eve, and she didn't know hardly any of them. he has a pretty large family. she only knew his mom, dad, sister, brother, and other brother. she was so anxious and she spent half the night in the bathroom crying. not so shockingly, he ignored her existence the whole time. that night when they got home, was the worst. he broke up with her, sent her several messages calling her a shitty mom (lemme just tell you, she is an AMAZING mom. also lemme just tell you one of the "reasons" he used for her being a shitty mom was that she washes her childs bottles????), he accused her of lying about being raped, he said so much shit. christmas day, at two something in the morning, he got physical. the baby was crying and my friend could not handle it. she asked the dude to watch her for a second so she could go to the bathroom and wash her face and calm down. he started screaming at my friend, slammed the baby's head (she was 8 months old at the time) into the metal bed frame, kicked my friend in the stomach and the legs, and punched her a few times. i can't even begin to tell you how bad the phone call i got that night was. three months later, and he hasn't been physical since, but he hasn't changed anything at all. tonight he got in a fight with her because his parents took her to get chinese while he was at work but they wouldn't bring him whattaburger. he got home, said "fuck you" to her, and left. shes spent the whole night having panic attacks and blacking out. i haven't heard from her in three hours and the last thing she said to me was "im going to hurt myself". the other day she asked me to move there. if me her and him can get a place together. i have spent the last eleven days doing nothing but mentally cussing her out. (excluding friday night / saturday morning bc BOI) Fuck you, ____. I hate boys. I hate loud and aggressive boys. I hate boys who think the world owes them something. I hate boys who have the audacity to think that triggering someone's PTSD is fucking funny. I would rather go live with my fucking dad. At least then someone (my mom) would have the balls to say something. Fuck you, ____. Fuck you for letting this boy fuck up your mental stability that you and I worked SO FUCKING HARD on leveling out. Fuck you for letting him put his hands on you and your child. Fuck you, ____. Fuck you for making me feel like shit because I want to hang out with friends. Fuck you for begging me to move there because you "need" me. Fuck you for moving there in the first place. I told you he was abusive. My mum, the lady who literally has been married to an abusive ASSHOLE for almost 30 years, told you that him "being a dick" was the start of abuse. Literally you're so fucking smart. Why the fuck. Fuck you, ____ for even THINKING of asking me to get a place with a guy who calls me a crackwhore because "her reaction is funny", jokes about raping girls, and is physically abusive to you. Fuck you, ____ for telling me that if he does some shit while I'm down there visiting you for your birthday to not hurt him. I will hurt him. I will stab him in the face and I will not apologize for it. Fuck you. Fuck you for expecting me to move away from my family and friends and my boyfriend to live with a guy who abuses my best friend and makes me physically ill every time I talk to him. I get it, ____. You love him, or whatever. I cannot and I will not put myself in that situation again. I got away from my rapist and my abusive dad and Andrew and Dylan and I will not put myself anywhere near that kind of situation again. i couldn't leave here even if i fucking wanted to. the last time i was over two hours away my dad got physical with my mum. he won't go near her or Justin if im close. i cant risk that. (the only time he's ever gotten physical w my mum I threw a knife at him and the only reason it didn't hit him was bc my mum pushed him through the fucking door to protect him. i guess a broken arm full of glass shards is a better story than "14 year old kills her father" huh?) (also little brother is basically my child considering my dads an alcoholic and my mum worked 24/7 when i was kid so guess who grew up literally raising a kid two years younger than her??? hahahahahah me.) i get it. all your friends and family you could easily leave behind. i cant leave my mum and brother like that. i can't leave Xander at all ever. if my bestfriend kills himself while im in another state because his dad died and he lost both his parents, youre going to find me bled out on the bathroom floor. i get that you miss me, but i can't fuck up my schooling or my therapy and i can't just whimsically move like you did. i fucking cant. fuck you for thinking i can.

#i took an hour to type this #i am so fucking mad #i am so done #bff #xan ment #drug ment #rape ment #cussing #abuse ment #domestic abuse #suicide ment #self harm ment #caps #father ment #mother ment #so many tags #sorry if i missed a trigger tag