#this one is acc peak comedy

[jenoloqy]

romancing | lee donghyuck

REPOSTED FROM MY OLD BLOG!

pairing. lee donghyuck x female reader

word count. 23.7k

genres and warnings. fluff, comedy, college au, enemies to lovers, podcast au, contains: loads of banter, swearing, weird references of tinder and tiktok references; and hyuck being whipped asf

synopsis. running a romance advisory podcast with lee donghyuck means clashing and feuding with him because you’re too hopeless while he’s too realistic. practically everyone in campus listens to it, which is why you have no idea that your co-host has started asking the show for love advice since he’s fallen for someone. for all you know, lee donghyuck does not fall in love, but you don’t know what’s changed.

author’s note. i am so scared to repost this. idk why. but ahahahaha i hope you enjoy my favourite fluff monster

Welcome to Romanicing, a romance advisory podcast hosted by two broke college students who are only doing this to pass their Speech Communications class. Nothing really special, except for the fact that the two broke college students starring this podcast haven't actually been in any form of romantic relationships. Fun, right? If you believe so, tune in every Friday 8pm for mediocre content and send in your love letters for your story to be featured!

EPISODE 1: the art of online dating sites

If there is one successful dating tip that you know could never go wrong, it would be to never chase over people that do not have the same values as you and will not care to change theirs for the sake of the relationship. You’d like to give full credit to your history teacher back in high school for introducing you to that idea, because now that you’re more exposed to the dating world with all it’s perks and scandals, you’d like to say you survived a good portion of people and their opposed political views from yours. 

It is the reason why all your tinder dates have been a failure; none of them can’t even go past the first date level and it almost scares your neighbour from seeing the amount of dinner dates you come home from with the worst scowl on your face. In fact, your tinder dates are worse than Jaemin’s calculus marks, and everyone knows he failed that course twice already. 

You won’t fully admit that this dating tip has been the major factor to why your dating life has been a total flop, you’d beg to differ. It actually gives you a greater hope that one day, you’ll find the perfect person that will actually fit your standards out of all the other ones that haven’t fit it. And when you finally find that person, it will be the best day of your life. 

For now, let’s focus on the worst day of your life. 

The day you are forced to chase a person who doesn’t have the same values as you. All for a decent mark in your Speech Communications class because your professor had the audacity to partner you up with Lee Donghyuck even after witnessing all the heavily tensioned debates that ensue between the both of you in class. 

“The fact that this is all going to be pre-recorded but we sound like complete idiots makes my headache,” you mumble to the microphone, earning a look of displeasure from your partner, “Anyways, I’ve recently opened our PO box, and I didn't realize that tons of you guys would actually participate. Thanks for the support.”

“With all the posters you placed on campus and peer pressuring anyone that passes by you in the hallways to send in some love letters, I’m surprised if nobody would participate.” You watch as Donghyuck rolls his eyes, and if it only weren’t for the expensive equipment separating the both of you across the table, you would’ve thrown the closest item to you, which is your morning coffee. 

“It’s called advertising, Donghyuck.”

“No wonder why you didn’t pursue business; wise words from a Communications Major.”

There’s a sparkle of satisfaction running through his blood when he sees you taken aback. And knowing that you can’t do anything about that witty remark, he leans back on his chair, watching as you make an attempt to keep yourself composed during the recording while he lets out a light chuckle. 

The moment he notices you clench your fists, the smile on his face grows wider.

Fake it till’ you make it. 

“And since we’re talking about communication, the first set of love advice we’ll be sharing with you guys is about online dating and meeting people through Omegle—you like what I did there?” You say to the recording. Not to Donghyuck — never Donghyuck. “Many of your stories were surrounded by this concept and it’s only fair if we start off this podcast with a bang.” 

“I think online dating is stupid,” your partner comments unhelpfully. It doesn’t help that he hasn’t read any of the love letters and has been relying on you to carry the project. Curse him and his invalid opinions. “I’ve never seen anybody that used Tinder to have gone farther with their relationship other than the talking stage or one-night-stand stage”

“That’s because you're searching in the wrong places,” you take his words to heart, almost pettily because you have to deal with a person who easily stereotypes the online dating world when you know there’s so much more to it. You can’t really say much about it (since your experiences really aren’t the best), but the fair share of documentaries and stories you heard about the successful matches should get into people’s heads. 

“Look— there was a couple that started dating through Omegle, and the boy lived in California while the other is currently living on campus. They’ve been together for two years.”

“Oh. That’s cool, I guess.” He shrugs, still seeming unconvinced. You’ve made a lot of bad decisions throughout your lifetime, but creating a podcast surrounding the concepts of love and dating with Donghyuck is your worst decision yet. Because now that you watch him tap the pencil on the table with little to no interest on his face, you conclude that Lee Donghyuck knows nothing about love and the perks of it. 

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?” You stare down at him, agape. 

“I mean— What else do you want me to say?”

“Donghyuck, this is a podcast.” With that, he looks at you as if you’re speaking to him in a foreign language. You don’t understand why he chose to pursue this type of education when he doesn’t know the basic means and fundamentals. “You need to… you know… talk…”

“Can’t we just cut this part then?” Donghyuck raises both of his hands, his tone sarcastic and emotions unbothered.

“Don’t play stupid. I’m not going to spend most of my evening editing this just because my co-host, which to note is pursuing a career that consists of talking to other people, can’t think of the proper words to say.” You let out a loud sigh, grabbing your mug of coffee and chugging down the lukewarm drink out of stress. They say that doing group work means less individual work, but when your partner does the bare minimum, it feels as if you’re doing double the work instead. 

“Okay, okay, calm down.” he chuckles lightly, whisking away his hand and adjusting the office chair to speak closer to the mic. He looks straight into your eyes when he talks, and you don’t know if he’s doing it to tease you. “Hmm, I’m just a little sceptical about meeting other people through the internet. I have my skepticisms on it. The first and last time my housemate tried online dating, he just got catfished.”

“Are you talking about—?” You suddenly get reminded of Jeno. 

“Mhm.” He nods. “So yeah, big red flag for me there. If you guys want to find sentimental, genuine relationships with others. I’d say look for the people around you in person.” Donghyuck is right and wrong at the same time. 

“I don’t think online dating sites take away someone’s ability to be genuine to another person. I don’t think it really takes away anything for the matter. Yeah people use it for hookups but there’s a whole other side where people actually look for love. In fact, it probably makes relationships stronger; especially when there’s a distance, a screen that’s refraining you from actually meeting a person until you do; it just shows how even through this separation love can bloom.”

“Now you’re just sugarcoating.” He wails and leans back aggressively on the chair, the both of you done with each other's opinions but have nothing to do with it because you need this assignment mark. And it seems like even with 50% worth of both your grades worth on the line, it seems he can put his differences aside to make this podcast seem less of a circus and instead a decent outline to get dating advice. 

“I’m just spreading hope. Unlike you over here who probably hasn’t made an attempt to download a dating app.” It’s no use trying to correct someone who doesn’t want to be corrected.

“Did any of your Tinder dates work?” He attacks out of nowhere, and your heart stops for a second when a smirk forms on his face mirthfully. 

“Pardon?” You ask, blinking your eyes repeatedly.

“Answer my question.” 

The heat on your cheeks keeps Donghyuck’s face looking satisfied because he knows that he’s cornered you at the end of the alley. And it’s worse that you're a person who never lies, “No…”

Your hands slightly clench under the table. “And that concludes our stance on online dating. It. Doesn’t. Work.” At that, Donghyuck pats himself on the back.

Your eyes widen. What is he doing? It’s like Donghyuck wants to lose viewers and lose both your credibilities. And now, you genuinely hope your professor steps on a path of Legos for partnering you with him. “Don’t listen to him, I swear one day you’ll find someone! Love takes time! You’re first right swipe isn’t necessarily your life-long partner, you just have to be patient—”

“Are you going to listen to someone who can’t even find a date herself?”

It’s when Donghyuck bites his lip to refrain himself from laughing that you’ve lost all the last droplets of your patience. 

“Your face looks very punchable right now.” You tell him through gritted teeth. 

“Come at me. I don’t mind.” The beam that breaks out on his face doesn’t make the situation any better, and your whole body collectively agrees to never be in the same room with him, alone, after this project ends. 

EPISODE 2: the morning after (the show went live)

Right off the bat, you knew the podcast would gain some talk around the campus, but you didn’t actually expect for it to blow up over night. 

You have a faint idea as to why it happened, and it’s no surprise that the first two thoughts that popped up in your mind would be because of the excellent marketing skills you’ve contributed to the project or; because Donghyuck is the school’s well known striker in the soccer team and (you hate to admit) a heartthrob and most of the views are coming from the people that think he’s hella cute. You hope for the former.

But when Jaemin reads out the school’s bi-weekly paper in the middle of his tutoring lesson, you realize that the reason why people in your school are tweeting about the podcast is because of a whole other reason. 

The reason being, yours and Donghyuck’s on-mic banters. 

“That was so hilarious,” Jaemin gets distracted for the upteenth time during his tutoring session with you, indulging himself into some talk about your new podcast with his roommate while he throws his pencil up in the air in a frantic manner. Fun fact, actually really really sad fact, the reason why you know Donghyuck on a personal level is through Jaemin, and being the wonderful best friend he is to you (insert the sarcasm), he finds it absolutely lovely you can interact with his roommates. 

“For you, it was.” You shove in a piece of broccoli from the college meal plan in your mouth. Well, Jaemin’s piece of broccoli because he refuses to eat it and gives it to you instead. You chew your food as you talk, “I mean… yeah people got a good laugh because of it. But I don’t want to enter the lecture and see a disappointed look from prof’ after hearing how unprofessional me and Donghyuck were.”

“Uh…” Jaemin chuckles nervously, not knowing what to say as he scratches the back of his head. There’s a meek smile playing on his lips, “It’s not about being professional. I think it’s nice that you guys are able to banter like that, it shows your personalities… and some on-mic chemistry.”

“C-Chemistry?” You stare at him in the most awe-struck expression your face can muster up, lips turning pale at the fact that Jaemin thinks that you and Donghyuck have a dynamic like that. It’s weird to think about. You and Donghyuck... with chemistry... you feel a shiver run through your back. 

“Well, yeah. You guys always know what to say to each other.” Jaemin absentmindedly comments as he closes his calculus textbook. You’re pretty sure he’s stalling at this point and he doesn’t want you to talk anymore mathematical terminology, but you’re too worried about his opinion to continue teaching him.

“That’s because we argue a lot. I practically think of arguments in the shower so I make decent comebacks from his insults.” You raise your arms in defeat, leaning back on your chair and unable to realize that Donghyuck is listening well to your conversation with Jaemin.

“So you think about me in the shower?” He says from the living room — which is honestly only ten metres away from the dining table — and a smirk lingers on his face, “I love that.”

You hate his egotistical mindset, “Not in that way, you idiot.”

“Oh,” he shivers delightfully, “I love the degradation, keep on going, princess.”

You jerk your head to face him, squinting as you watch him sit down on the couch, placing his sports bag right on the vacant area beside him and turning his periphery back to you to notice the literal death glares you're giving him. He likes the attention.

You decide not to argue further, unless you want to make Donghyuck satisfied. You don’t. He wants you to piss him off, to give him all the attention you can give. So you give him the opposite of what he wants. 

“Anyways, Jaemin.” You turn your head back to face your best friend, opening up his textbook and watching as he slumps down. Jaemin really thought he could get away with his act, “Look at problem number four...”

And while you start to get back into the tutoring lesson, Donghyuck watches you argue back and forth in the slightest ways with Jaemin, his heart racing when he hears the small giggles that elicit your mouth when you let Jaemin complain to you how much of a pain his mandatory calculus class is, or when your eyebrows furrow at reading his textbook. He thinks it’s cute.

Wait, what?

“So... How long are you gonna put up with this act?” Donghyuck almost forgets that Jeno is in the same room as him, which is why he jumps from his seat when he sees Jeno looking up from his laptop to look back at Donghyuck with such a taunting expression. 

He clears his throat, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Donghyuck makes a reminder to himself to keep his tone low, because even if yours and Jaemin’s voices are too loud to be able to hear the other conversation happening on the other side of the room, there’s still a possibility you can hear it.

“Yes you do.” Jeno chuckles, standing up from the love seat and making his way so he can sit on the same couch as his roommate, “You definitely know what I’m talking about.” 

At this, his throat turns dry.

There’s a confession Donghyuck needs to make, and probably everyone has already been aware of this secret before he even confesses it. Well, not everybody. He doesn’t actually hate you. In fact, he doesn’t know what catalyzed him to pretend to hate you in the first place. But you don’t know that. Not when you’re too busy mustering up your next argument with him to realize he actually doesn’t reciprocate the hatred you give.

He doesn’t hate you. He thinks you’re pretty cool. Pretty and cool. 

And the thing is, when Donghyuck thinks someone is pretty (and) cool, he would like it if he could get their attention. Even if that attention isn’t the best form of attention that could exist. It’s stupid. It’s his beautiful and absolute form of desperate measures. But you’re pretty and cool. 

He wants your attention.

"Okay, listen," he keeps his tone low, leaning closer in order for Jeno to hear his whispers. It's almost passive aggressive, and he talks through gritted teeth. "You don't just say this out loud, what if those two hear you?”

Although it contrasts Donghyuck's stance, the last thing he wants to happen is for you to find out about his perception of you. It's better this way, he assumes. It's better because he doesn't have to over-analyze anything. If anything, it keeps him more at bay; obviously excluding the times Jeno has to call him out on how whipped he looks. Because he isn't whipped nor infatuated, he just finds you tolerable more than you can account. And, again, pretty cool.

“You’re. Right. What if those two hear us? Will something happen?” Jeno emphasizes; still not empathetic of Donghyuck and deciding to talk in such a loud manner.

Donghyuck's heart races when you momentarily turn to their direction, eyebrows furrowing at the commotion of the two boys. It makes him freeze to his spot, terrified of almost getting caught before you turn back around casually and continue on helping with Jaemin.

Jeno watches as Donghyuck releases a breath of relief, and this causes a nudge on the shoulder, because Jeno should know when to keep his mouth shut, yet he still decides not to. He wiggles his eyebrows at Donghyuck with a mischievous glint taunting his eye, enjoying the scowl on the boy's face.

“Don’t.” Donghyuck leans back on the couch, sending Jeno those words in a whisper-yell.

If Donghyuck ever regrets any moment he's done in his life, and his you-only-live-once agenda, it would be that he told Jeno of all people his secret. And with every passing second, Donghyuck feels as if he's falling into a miserable hell hole because of anxiousness, trying his best not to look back at your figure just to make sure you aren't listening to the conversation.

He feels like a high school student being painfully obvious about his crush. But he knows better than to compare this to a crush. It's not a crush. It's just you. The bane of his existence. And that can mean something different depending on the context and perspective you look through.

“Don’t what?” Jeno tests. Yup, he hates his guts. And the chuckle that escapes the other boy's lips is turning Donghyuck crimson red.

“Fuck you.” He mutters underneath his breath, trying to fleet his mind of the situation as he plays with the laces of his soccer shoes inside his backpack; anything to distract him. He doesn't even know why Jeno has the audacity to bring this up now, he knows you're at the same roof as him; and his eyes light up when he hits a nerve.

“Imagine all the girls that will be disappointed when they find out that pretty boy over here can swear.” Jeno shakes his head in faux disappointment, making his way to grab the remote controller and turning on the television. In attempts to drown out the noise they are making. “Now tell me, what with Y/N that makes you act like… this.”

The question causes him at a halt. Why is he even acting like this? What the fuck?

After a five second pause, he speaks up, “Nothing. I just think she’s cute.” Donghyuck shrugs, finally making an effort to compose himself instead of staying flustered in front (but not really in front) of you.

“Yeah, sure.” Jeno rolls his eyes. He doesn't buy it.

Blame his marketing tactics, because Jeno knows when someone is lying or not. It's a business major instinct, to know if someone is being genuine with their words, or just saying them to save face. He knows Donghyuck is just saying that to save face.

And you know what gave it away?

It's when he looks down at the ground, smiling to himself when he says those words. No one does that unless they are whipped.

“What?” Donghyuck looks up, furrowing his brows and staring at Jeno questioningly, his eyes asking for him to elaborate.

He has a slight idea of what Jeno is implying.

“So, you’re not going to tell her.”

Jeno says more as a statement rather than a question, nodding to himself to accept how that situation will end up as. For some reason, Donghyuck can hear the downheartedness enlaced in his roommate's voice, and he doesn't understand why so. Because Jeno knows you, it's not even that serious. He knows Donghyuck isn't that type of person.

But it's the fact that it is you of all people that caught Donghyuck's eye. You. Just regular, mediocre, you. Jaemin's best friend who visits the apartment every other day and shares an 8am class with him. Nothing special at that. But something special enough to gain a reputation from Donghyuck that is not part of the people that likes him for clout. You're the enemy-not-so-enemy.

It's almost flattering that you both end up like this. It keeps him up his toes, excited at what next argument you'll be able to muster up in front of him. There's no compliments nor sweet interactions. It's purely of insults and dirty looks and maybe a casual interaction once in every new moon. And he thinks that that is pretty cool.

“Hell nah. She doesn’t need to know.” He likes it this way. It's fun, new, refreshing. “I don’t want to see her getting all gassed up because of it.”

Donghyuck chuckles to himself, zipping up his backpack.

“Or maybe you can actually have a chance.” Jeno corrects, but Donghyuck refuses to let this get to him.

“Nope.” He shakes his head. “Never that.”

And he will take this stance till’ the day he dies.

Because Lee Donghyuck, soccer player, campus heartthrob, will not say those words out loud. Lee Donghyuck refuses to, and he too refuses to fall in love. Romance podcast or not, he will not fall in love with anyone; his extent will only be thinking of someone as ‘pretty cool’, and that already, is sending red flags his way.

EPISODE 3: the sports captain stereotypes 

The next two weeks, you find yourself in utter chaos as you navigate through the waves of learning how to properly detail the podcast so it will be user-friendly enough — curse being a Technology Grandma™ in the first place — and; doing the editing, rough scripts and idea planning all by yourself. All while your supposed partner in crime does the bare minimum.

You try not to blame him, since he did mention that his schedule is pretty hectic: Tuesday and Thursday mornings are designated for going to the gym, Wednesday to Friday at 3:00pm is for soccer practice, his weekends are also busy because he uses that time to party and study; and though you have your fair share of college struggles, it isn’t as ridiculous compared to a student athlete, which is why you brought it up to yourself to carry the assignment. 

But it still doesn’t change the fact that he must still contribute to the good mark, after all, he too is one of the professor's favourite student’s (along with you, surprise), and he would be dead-fucked if he fails this course. 

It doesn’t help that you hate his guts.

It doesn’t help that you have to put aside that hatred to get this project finished, instead of hating him more for not doing anything. 

You don’t know how you’ve managed to memorize his schedule… then again, you also remember Jeno’s schedule so it shouldn’t be that of a big deal… but you decide to take advantage of this piece of knowledge and proceed to reach out to Donghyuck.

It’s a shame that desperate times call for desperate measures, because if Donghyuck had the initiative to at least help you with some parts of the project, even with his schedule, then you wouldn’t end up with this predicament.

Jaemin and Jeno says they will wait in the car, eating away the fast food takeout you three ordered earlier (you doubt they will even save some food the time you return) and sending you an encouraging thumbs up before they bury their faces in the burgers, you looking at them painfully disgusted before grabbing your laptop and notebook, trudging across the parking lot and towards the campus field. 

Right from the get-go, you can already dread the image of talking to him; Donghyuck, the one who’s most likely dripping in sweat because he’s just finished practice, feeling the shivers crawl down your skin the moment Donghyuck realizes that you took the time to work on the assignment even under the sun. Especially with your whole “I don’t chase people” ordeal, he will definitely not forget this. 

To you, Lee Donghyuck is merely a boy who you will only act respectively because he’s your best friend’s roommate, and for the sake of getting a good mark. There has always been a principle to his arrogance and smugness — something that will unforcebly cause your face to scrunch in disdain. And with the amount of torment he’s given you by just simply existing in your life, you’d like to say you have your fair share of valid reasons why you don’t want to be in the same league as him. 

But nevertheless, you will still work with him. Again, just for the sake of getting a good mark.

The sun delicately drips down the soccer field, rays of golden light seeping down the grass patch just while the Coach’s whistle blows, the sound of him screaming ‘thirty seconds left’ from the sidelines causing the team to speed up their laps around the field. At the opposite end of the field from where you're standing, is the specific person you’re looking for; he who has placed more effort than anybody else to sprint the last few seconds.

“Oh,” you accidentally let out when your eyes trail to Donghyuck’s figure, seeing how his jersey tightly clings onto his body. Although everybody else in the field is decked out in the exact same uniform, you could easily recognize the outline of his ass and how his shorts perfectly hug his skin like it’s already part of his body. And you instantly look away, hating that you can admit such a fact in the first place. 

A smirk plays across his face when he realizes he’s the first one done the laps, his chest heaving up and down heavily and placing his hands on his knees, catching his breath. You swear, you don’t mean to look at him, heck you don’t even know why you still look back at his figure, but the odds are never in your favour when Donghyuck looks up. 

He feels a presence looking at his figure, and when he decides to see where it’s coming from, he sees you, standing meekly by the sidelines, hugging your laptop like it’s a safety blanket and the tote bag tempting to fall off your shoulders, and the smirk on his face grows wider.

And Donghyuck is good at maintaining eye contact, because his gaze lingers on you for a little while, wiping off the sweat trickling down his face all while keeping his eyes on you. You can feel your cheeks heat up, and when you turn to stare at another soccer player to save some embarrassment, Donghyuck scoffs and chuckles to himself.

He stands straight, turning to the coach and lifting his hand.

“Coach give me five,” he calls for five, and the whistle blows loudly through your ears. It's only been less than thirty seconds since your arrival, and you can already feel yourself regretting going here in the first place. The hold on your laptop gets tighter when he walks up to you, an aura of confidence and mirth radiating his presence as he moves closer to you.

You glare at him, but it doesn't make your side of the situation any better. Instead, the smile on his face unwavers. The annoyance dripping against your gritted teeth reaches the maxima when he stops in front of you, only inches apart, placing both hands on his hips and wondering why the hell you're here.

“Well, if it isn't my favourite girl. I’m glad you came to cheer for me,” the sweetness in his voice irks your skin, if your hands weren't full in this moment, then you could've used it to push him away from you.

“Woah, calm down for a sec’,” you step back, opting to place your stuff on the bleachers beside you and giving him a slight glare, “I’m not here to ‘cheer’ for you, I’m here against my own will just so I can find time to do this project with you. So if you can, will you please catch your breath quicker and do this with me?”

He pants heavily, touching his chest and controlling his breathing. When he sees you roll your eyes at his act, he snickers and proceeds to swipe his hair back, feigning amusement when you try to ignore what he's trying to do to you.

Honestly, you could just turn your heel around and act as if you never made the decision to visit him during practice. You can act like this was all just a plain dream and pretend it never happened; just texting him later in the evening to do his part of the project and hope for the best that he will, actually do it. In fact, you can pick your stuff up from the bleachers and just eat the take out in the parking lot with the other two boys, but because Donghyuck has called a five minute break just, it's the simplest reason why you're holding back.

“Feisty.” Donghyuck notes to himself aloud, and you send him a snarl, only for him to make another step closer to you, “Anyways, you know we could’ve just done this at my place.” He crosses his arms, waiting for another one of your (excuses) retorts and waiting for you to pretend as if everything he does, does not matter to you.

“And everytime I try doing it at your place, you end up stalling and telling me to hang out with Jaemin instead.” You spit, moving aside to grab a seat, the heat of the metal causing you to wince for a quick second before getting accustomed to it.

If only Donghyuck isn't a pain in the ass, then you could've been doing this project peacefully at his dorm; though you realize after years of hanging around with him and the other boys that he is not like that. Donghyuck is of spontaneous, messy schedules that end up seeming as if he has his life down to a t. He can do these things with you anywhere other than mid-practices, but that really doesn't sound like a Donghyuck move to do so.

So, this is what you have to deal with for now.

“Fine then,” he sits beside you by the bleachers, grabbing a quick drink of water before facing you, “What do you want me to do?”

He watches as you turn on your laptop, giving him your notebook in your tote bag and a pencil to write some stuff down. Little do you know, the rest of the team, along with the coach, is giving the captain a strange look; pretending to talk amongst themselves about new game tactics and such, but they instead are just observing your interactions.

Especially since they all know that you both host the new hit podcast around the school. And they all know about the on-mic banters that ensue you both. They briefly wonder if that's all a popularity stunt, a hoax, a marketing plan so you both can get clout, or, if you and Donghyuck actually hate each other.

And seeing how uninterested their captain looks, while you on the other hand look stressed, they assume that whatever the hell your relationship holds with one another, they know that it isn't one that is good.

“I need a new idea for next week.” You start to type on the document that stores all your podcast ideas, Donghyuck just waiting for you to say something that will have to deal with his contribution. “And, I won’t be able to edit this week’s audio. I have to study for a test in my other class, so I was wondering if you can do it just for now?”

You look up from your screen, and you notice that he's holding back a laugh.

“Damn.” Donghyuck nods to himself, drawing scribbles on the notebook for good riddance while you look at him confusingly.

“Huh?”

“This is the first time you’re begging me for help.” He drops the notebook in front of him, propping his hands behind his back on the seat.

His eyes light up when he realizes he's hit another nerve in you.

The shit-eating grin seems to never leave his face, and you can just pull his locks away from his head out of displeasure. You want to wipe off that sickening look on his face, but your annoyance seems to gain him more pleasure. Remind you that he does this all for simple measures — to gain your attention, nothing less, nothing more — and you're just giving it to him.

“I am not ‘begging’ for help, Donghyuck.” The amount of time you have to talk back and answer/correct him for the past few minutes has already started to make your head spin. If only you really could, you would've stuck up the middle finger at him right then and there, but you're desperate, and even if you don't want to admit it, you are begging Lee Donghyuck for help. You sigh, hesitance enlaced in your words, “Listen, if you don’t want to do this. I’ll find a way to do it myself.”

“You talk too much,” this time, he rolls his eyes, placing his hand out, “Just give me the USB. I'll do it.”

Your eyes widened in surprise at how easy this was, “Are you sure?” And you can't blame yourself to think that he might just be pulling a joke on you, and at the final second, that he might pull his hand back and tell you to do this yourself because he needs to work his ass off for the his stupid, upcoming game.

Wait, no. He actually looks serious this time.

“It’s my project too, you know.” He says out loud, exasperated, yet for some reason, you can also hear a tone of reassurance in it. “I have to do something.” 

You almost think he’s a hypocrite for saying such words — and since you're already in this topic, you would like to complain just how group projects are just pure, blissful pain. Period. Because Donghyuck could’ve been doing something this whole time. 

Well, it’s still partially your fault for volunteering to do the majority of the work, but still! Who’s going to do it if it isn’t you? Your trust with group projects doesn’t make your reliance on him any better. At least he’s the professor's second favourite student? Oh. You totally forgot about that.

You look down, smiling at yourself at the amount of stress you're giving to your body and how crazily worried you are, at this point, it’s better to just shake it off. After this day, you make a mental note not to underestimate the man sitting across from you, and maybe, rely on him more often, only if he’s deemed worthy.

“Well, I’m glad you know that.”

You giggle, and Donghyuck’s heart starts slamming out of his chest, taking a breath of relief and shifting on his seat. He’s in a state of bewilderment, almost taken aback that you didn’t scold him this time or tell him that you will punch his face. And he doesn't know how to feel about it.

“Okay,” his voice doesn’t come off as strong as he initially wanted it to, but he’s thankful you’re not paying much attention to it, immersed in your own feelings to worry about his’. “For the next episode, what if you talk about secret admirers, I’m sure there’s a lot of love letters they gave us about that.”

It’s the first idea that pops up in his mind. No clue to how he got that idea. But it works. It makes sense. And probably better than any idea you can think of on the dot. You quickly type it up on your laptop, and you too are surprised at how easy this conversation has been in the end. Well, compared to all the others then yeah.

“Hmm, okay I’ll write that down,” you give him a meek smile before shutting down your laptop, taking the notebook away from Donghyuck and facing away from him to fix your stuff, “Thank you, I guess.”

“Whatever,” he proceeds to stand up, you see his shadow on the ground, and you’re unable to see Donghyuck’s gaze lingering on you a little longer, “I have to go now, coach is calling. Do you need anything else?”

“I’m good now, thanks.” You shrug, glancing up at him for a split second before going back to placing your items back in your bag.

Donghyuck takes one last sip from his water bottle before he walks back to the field, the coach blowing his whistle and everyone rounding to huddle in a circle.

“Wait.” 

Oh my god what are you doing? 

Donghyuck turns back at you, puzzled. “Do you want me to wait for you until practice ends? Jeno and Jaemin are in the car right now, and we’re going somewhere after.” 

His eyes soften, you can feel a weird flutter settling in your belly, having the sudden urge to slap your head at the spontaneity of your question. Donghyuck can assume you probably didn’t mean it at all, and it was just an act of kindness. But he can tell that you're trying. “It’s fine. I might have to do more drills after practice, but I appreciate the offer.”

He wants to say yes, after all, this is the first time you're offering for him to join whatever you, Jaemin and Jeno are up to, but he feels as if you’re just doing it for the sake of being nice. 

What Donghyuck assumes is something far from the truth.

 “No worries.” You tell him it’s fine, and Donghyuck rubs the back of his head, taking a step back awkwardly. Just then, his coach screams out his name from across the area.

He apologizes, before running towards the huddle circle with his team. You watch his demeanour shift during his practice, and you let out a sigh, trying not to over-analyze the whole situation. You stand up, heaving another breath before turning your body to walk to the parking lot.

Donghyuck turns to look if you're still there, but much to his dismay, he sees you figure slowly exiting out his periphery.

Maybe next time, he tells himself. 

If there even is a next time.

EPISODE 4: for lovers who hesitate

Donghyuck reads the set of love letters for the first time during the podcast. After reading through just one of them, he has made a conclusion to never read another one for the remainder of the season, and he will partially — or maybe wholeheartedly — blame it on the way the letter was almost as if it was directed to him. 

It isn’t directed to him, he wishes.

Because he feels awfully attacked by it.

“Dear Romancing…” He follows through, eyes glued to the paper as he reads it aloud in front of the microphone, “I have a friend. He’s a great guy, really, but I sometimes think he’s the dumbest person to have ever existed. He says he doesn’t fall in love. But it looks like he wants to fall in love. And I think that’s really weird because I don’t know what’s stopping him. I hope he listens to this podcast, because I want to knock some sense into him.”

It’s the last sentence that makes his eye unconsciously twitch, sending imaginary daggers to the person who gave the letter because he knows exactly who wrote this. Either it has to be related to the things he said to a certain someone, or he’s just overthinking and this isn’t actually about him. But his gut feeling is telling him it’s about him.

Yeah, you could say that these type of friendships are the ones that are keepers, since they tend to be chaotic yet for a reason, and Donghyuck honestly thinks having friends like that are cool, but when he’s on the receiving end of the slander, he just wants to take his soccer ball and drop kick it to the person’s face.

Because he can imagine the look of amusement on Jeno's face when he placed this letter on the PO box. 

“Oh wow. That’s so cute.” You giggle quietly. Usually Donghyuck would feel some sort of butterflies when hearing it, but he feels more at fear for himself and has no time to give a damn about what you're saying. Because all he cares about is to save face from you. “People who have friends like these are the best. Right, Donghyuck?”

He’s reading the letter quietly one more time, the only thing remotely important at this time is if any part of the piece contains any easter eggs that will show that his roommate (and now-ex-best friend) is the cause of this.

“Hyuck?” You call out his name, turning to see his eyes glued on the piece of paper. 

“Mhm. Yeah. What you said.” You can tell he’s not listening, it’s all evident from his facial reactions. 

“Are you even listening?” You drum your fingers on the desk repeatedly, waiting for Donghyuck’s gaze to shift to you as you raise your tone of voice a little louder. There’s a difference between someone being able to hear a person and someone listening to the person. And you know for a fact Donghyuck can hear you, he literally winced when you spoke up, but the thing is, he’s not paying attention.

“Mhm.” Donghyuck mumbles, if it wasn’t for the podcast currently recording you would’ve easily just grabbed the paper away from him and asked him what’s his problem. But you have to act like a proper civilian here and add even one more droplet in the smallest bottle of patience you have for the boy. 

“So if you were forced to be in a room full of creepy dolls, then you would?” You raise your brow, testing him.

“Mhm.” And he replies immediately. 

The corners of your lips twitch up.

“And if Jaemin asks you to buy him a $100 meal tonight, would you give it to him?” 

“Mhm.” This time, he adds a nod to his answer, nose still up the paper. To that, you let out a snort, glad that this conversation is even recorded in the first place so now people can realize how much of a fool your co-host is. The noise coming from your mouth makes Donghyuck look up, “Wait, what?”

“I think there’s a little birdie in the room that can resonate with this letter.” He gulps at your word, and you feign innocence in front of him, acting as if you didn’t just make him agree to buying a hundred dollar meal for Jaemin, “So… Hyuck… How’s your love life going?”

The taunt in your voice makes him want to add you on his ‘people to drop kick list’, and the way your batting your eyelashes, attempting to keep things at bay at the same time poking fun of his actions, gives him more of a reason not to tell you about his slight attraction for you.

The moment you find out about that, he’s completely, one hundred percent fucked. He doesn’t think the idea of it stroking your ego would be the best. And this idea makes the one hundred dollar meal for Jaemin look more appealing. 

“Shut up.” He mutters underneath his breath, before sliding the love letter across the table. You take it from him and read the words yourself, the smile on your face evident that it will stay there for a while. 

“Okay but really. To whoever sent this letter, I too get confused when people get scared to fall in love. I swear it’s the best feeling ever.” You gush over it, exasperated and talking to the mic, it makes Donghyuck want to barf. He gags when your cheeks heat up at the thought. “Or that’s probably just me being the hopeless romantic that I am, but people are missing out if they hold back with love.”

“At least you admit that you’re hopeless,” he sighs, tempted to slap his palm on his face, but deciding to do so mentally, “It doesn’t hurt to think rationally sometimes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You give him a look, taken aback at his offense as you fold the letter closed. 

“It means your acting as if being in love is the solution to everybody’s problem.” He’s diving onto an even more sensitive topic over here, and the smile that was evident on your face slowly dissolves with each nasty word coming out of Donghyuck’s mouth. It’s nasty because you know he isn’t wrong, which on your part is a struggle to admit. “Maybe the friend is hesitating because they are scared.”

Donghyuck, ever the realistic one between the both of you, leaves you tongue tied again. Your heart drops at the thought that someone would refrain themself because of fear.

“You’re right…” You swallow the pill in your mouth, feeling some sort of lump in your throat as you search for something— anything from Donghyuck that will make you understand further. “But I don’t get why they would be scared.”

You don’t get why people are scared because you’ve never felt the reason to be scared.

You fall in love because you find you have a reason to, even if you don’t know specifically who or why you like the feeling.

Donghyuck thinks it’s naive for you to think so.

You think it’s heartless for him not to think so.

“I don’t know.” Donghyuck slowly rolls his thoughts off his mouth, shifting on his seat. It doesn’t take him long before he finds the perfect excuse for him and his predicament, something so simple yet effective, and it’s the two sentences that he tells everybody else when they ask him why he doesn’t fall in love. No one gives him follow up questions after he says it, “Maybe they already felt it once. And maybe they don’t like the feeling.”

Donghyuck lets out a quiet breath of relief, assuming that you’ll understand now that he doesn’t want to talk about it. But much to his dismay, your eyes light up instead, concluding that he says his words so vaguely because he wants you to talk to him more about it. No. He doesn’t want that. Sigh. “Have you ever fallen in love before?”

You prop your elbows on the table, curious as ever, and so oblivious. Donghyuck makes a mental note to not read any more of the love letters during the recording. He also makes a mental note to discuss what weekly themes the podcast will talk about before recording sessions, so he won’t act like a complete idiot in the room. Sigh.

“Do you want an honest answer?” He’s hoping you just drop the topic, but he might as well just say it. He might as well just say it in front of the fucking podcast, for thousands of people to hear, for you to hear. Just so you won’t bother him about it again. After all, if you think of him as Mr. Pessimist, you might as well know why.

“Well.. yeah.” Your body tenses up the same time he does this, you almost regret saying you want to know about what happened.

“Then yes. I did. And I think it’s overhyped.” Donghyuck says it firmly, and it gives you a reason to shut up. He doesn’t say anything as well after, and the recording turns dead. You conclude the podcast with an awkward chuckle, a meek apology to your co-host for being so nosy, while his jaw is clenched and his heart is at closed doors.

When you leave the studio that day, you take along with you new knowledge about Lee Donghyuck. Firstly, he might potentially have a hopeless heart. And that hopeless heart started to become a little too literal till it finally crushed him into pieces. The idea terrifies you. Mainly because you have a hopeless heart right now. And you wonder what would happen if you were in his shoes. 

Secondly, Lee Donghyuck fell in love once. And you briefly wonder who that person is, before wondering why they would break his heart. Truth be told, Donghyuck is a decent man to an extent, and you wonder why they would make him feel this way.

You walk back home with a messy recording ready to be edited, and Donghyuck walks home with a shard of glass running down his body; pissed and anxious. He feels the vibrations of his phone, and it doesn’t make his mood better, but at the same time, it doesn’t make it worse.

[2 messages from Jeno to Hot Boy Shit]: so… how was the recording? did you like what i sent? *smirks*

[2 messages from Jaemin to Hot Boy Shit]: wait whats happening lol ive just got a text from bestie that you owe me a 100$ meal ?!

[2 messages from Donghyuck to Hot Boy Shit]: nah fuck you  both of you

EPISODE 5: past and present roads collide

Donghyuck comes home to a lot of things.

He comes home from the sight of Jeno doing his marketing homework, papers sprawled in the middle of the dining table while his oversized hoodie gets the best of his body. 

He can also come home from Jaemin’s failed attempts at baking, the weird smell of something burning seeping through the air, and him fanning a cloth over the smoke detector just so it won’t alarm.

Honestly, it’s safe to say he’s seen a lot of things when he comes home, whether it be something so simple, or something so questionable. This is his small ball of a constant, and him being a strong advocate of habit, he thinks this is all part of routine.

But there he is, coming home from soccer practice, his headband pulling back some parts of his hair away from his face, and he sees a sight he’s not accustomed to (Spoiler: it’s not you, because that sight of you is something that's already been part of his constant).

In other words, Donghyuck thinks he’s seen it all, seen so many oddities in the past years of being roommates with two fools, there will be nothing that phases him.

Or so he thought.

“Congratulations!” 

Because there goes Jaemin with a light pink party hat, standing by the front door of the apartment, holding up a banner alongside Jeno that says the exact words that elicit out of his mouth. It’s ten past seven, and Donghyuck was expecting to come home and take a fat nap, but he looks at the sight in front of him, and tries so hard not to drop his duffel bag on the floor in awe.

“Awe, what’s with the face? Do you not like it?” The enthusiasm in Jaemin’s face drops, and although Donghyuck doesn’t like seeing him being the killoy of all this, he genuinely can’t understand why there is an all of a sudden surprise party. He looks around, and there are faces here that he is more so familiar with, like yours, and some others he sees passing in the hallways.

“What is happening… is it someone’s birthday?” Donghyuck rubs the back of his head, awkwardly chuckling. He tries to look around the room if there’s any clues to the occasion, and he is completely aware that it’s neither anyone he’s close to having a birthday around this time… so?

Jeno steps forward, grabbing Donghyuck’s sports equipment, placing it on the corner of the room and proceeding to take off the boy’s headband, replacing it with the same designed party hat as Jaemin’s, “You know how you reached 10k listeners the other day? Yeah, Jaemin wanted to celebrate.” 

He points to your figure, who is busy interacting with a group of first years. You look like you don’t mind the party, and he pulls the tiniest form of a smile when he sees you laughing over something the girl beside you said. The party hat on your head looks like you’ve a unicorn puked over your head. He wonders if you know how much of an idiot you look with it.

“Oh.” Donghyuck’s lips part, turning back to his two roommates, he doesn’t really know why they decide to host a party over something like this. But you know, they are college kids and uh— Jaemin will find every reason to party, even if it means celebrating the amount of clout you and him gained over the podcast.

“I swear to god, Hyuck. If you don’t show enthusiasm I will kick you out of this house.” Jaemin squints his eyes, his arms dropping, tired from holding up the banner and waiting for a decent reaction to come out of Donghyuck. Don’t be mistaken though, he’s lowkey touched by this celebration, because the boys always take the time to accomplish him with any milestone he’s reached, he’s just in awe. 

Who even knew that he had the luck to get such roommates? He’s so starstruck, to the point he can even formulate the proper words, but apparently Jaemin thinks the opposite.

“No, no. It’s wonderful, I’m just shocked.” There’s something about this that Donghyuck finds so fucking endearing after each passing second, because when he looks around the room more, he sees a small cake in the middle of the table, and if he listens closely, he can hear the speakers blaring the recordings of his podcast (but let’s be real, Donghyuck hates to hear the sound of his voice).

Donghyuck pats his friends’ back as his gesture of a thank you, and takes off his shoes slowly.

The two boys move out of the way so Donghyuck can see the commotion they’ve done. You turn away from the first years you’re talking to and do a double take when you see Donghyuck finally home from practice, and Jaemin takes this as his cue to leave, “Okay, then. We’ll be playing Monopoly in Jeno’s room if you’ll be looking for us.” 

“I won’t,” he jokes around, but when he peaks through Jeno’s bedroom and sees five more people trying to fit in there just to play that game, his words might be truer than he supposes. He cringes at the sight, before making his way to you. 

“Well you seem grumpy in this fine evening,” you call out, watching as Donghyuck approaches you with ease, giving a head nod to the people he is familiar with, and pausing to stop in front of you, “Who am I kidding, you always look grumpy.”

He gives you a look, before clearing his throat. “Y/N.”

The way he says your name stiffly makes you scrunch your nose in disgust. And Donghyuck too crunches his face in disgust when he’s up close, next to you. You reek of alcohol. But you don’t look like you're getting tipsy, maybe give it a few more minutes, but the looming smell surrounding you explains why you’re easily talking to Donghyuck. 

You hold out your bottle of alcohol and offer it to him, as if you guys are friends sharing a drink. “Here, drink this. It will help you loosen up.” The group of first-years move to a different spot in the house, maybe to get a drink from the kitchen, who knows, but for Donghyuck, he hesitantly takes the drink from you.

“Thank you.” He takes a sip from your cup, a small smile forming on your face when he doesn’t bother to hesitate — you repeat, as if you guys are friends taking a drink. You both know this won’t happen again, not unless you're sober. “Congratulations by the way, to us, that is.”

“Can you at least not sound dead when you say it?” You giggle, and Donghyuck awkwardly chuckles, chugging down another sip of the drink and facing away so you won’t study his reactions.

Donghyuck made a terrible mistake by doing that. 

Just when Donghyuck is ready to loosen up and have fun at the party dedicated to him, he sees two figures he’s been trying to avoid since senior year of high school. 

And he has no idea which one of the people in the room concluded that they have the audacity to bring these two here as their plus… two. 

Two years of not seeing them. To be specific, two years, seven months and three days, but who’s counting? Definitely not Donghyuck. 

He mutters curse words underneath his breath, and you’re too busy talking about how many streams the podcast reached and how much pride you take in doing so, but Donghyuck honestly is not listening. The second time he’s done that to you in the past month. Somewhat the same reason — or same context — because he feels so bothered looking at the sight right across from him.

Your back is facing it, continuing to ramble on and on, all while Donghyuck feels his heart just pondering just as his mind unlocks a distant memory. 

“You good?” You finally look up at his face, and realize the wrinkles on his forehead from frowning. Before Donghyuck can get further welled up by the sight, he turns right at you, and musters up the fakest smile possible. You reek of alcohol, so he hopes you don’t sense this facade he’s putting up. 

“Yeah uh, I just need to g—” his words trails off, before glance at the sight of the girl he onced loved, and once of his best friends in high school, looking at each other like they are so in love. He wants to scoff at it, he wonders if they even know that they’re doing such an act at his home. 

And he asks himself, again: who the hell invited these two?

He’s not mad. Because it doesn’t feel like his blood is boiling, instead it feels like it’s turning cold.

“What are you looking at?” As you turn your head back, curious to the cause of the boy’s suspicious behaviour, he sees the two, observing an interaction between the two that just shows that they are a happy couple before turning back to Donghyuck, who’s not fully chugging the rest of the alcohol in the cup. “I—? Um— Mark?”

“You know him?” Donghyuck looks at you, tilting his head, clearly flustered and confused. 

“Yes, he was in one of my classes last sem,” you explain to him, taking one more glance at the two, “I’m guessing that’s his girlfriend.”

The word girlfriend makes him wince. His heart tries to get accustomed to the title, and he hates how the cup in his hands is empty. He can’t drown those sorrows away. 

“Yeah…” Donghyuck sighs, he feels helpless. Which is weird, because he rarely feels helpless, and all of a sudden it’s all crashing down on him.

You can tell something is up.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You ask, grabbing the empty cup in his hand and walking towards the area with the drinks, refilling it for him because you almost feel bad.

He leans his body on the wall, amused at your observations. “Woah. Did I just hear that right?” 

“Huh?” You hand him back his cup, and he chuckles.

“Last time I checked, you don’t care about me.” He calls you out, in a light tone, not spiteful. His almond eyes continue to regard you with keen interest as you tempt yourself away from slapping his arm.

“Shut up.” You mutter angrily, but soften up to him when he spares another glance at Mark and his girlfriend. It’s the fact that he is acting like this matter isn’t making him feel some type of way, while his eyes tell a different story. 

“But really, do you want to talk about it?” Look, this will be the only time you’ll feel empathetic towards him. (It’s the alcohol in your system that makes you talk to him like this. That’s all.)

But it’s enough to make Donghyuck try to forget. He shrugs, lips forming into a thin smile. “I’m good.”

“No. You’re not.” You say as if you’re talking to a child, causing another sigh to escape his lips. The small persistent nature in you has been making Donghyuck say too much about himself to you, and he doesn’t know why he keeps on word vomiting such vulnerable parts of his life. To you. 

And he knows it’s not your pretty (cool) privilege that he has for you.

“Remember that one podcast episode, when I told you I fell in love with someone?” You nod, remembering it clearly because the idea of Donghyuck — the boy who doesn’t fall in love — actually falling in love has been living in your mind for the past few days. “I liked Yeri before, That’s Mark’s girlfriend.”

He swirls his drink, taking another aggressive chug before moving his gaze at the two. The more he keeps on glancing at them, he thinks it will make the pain less, since he’ll start getting accustomed to it. But the more he sees how in love they are — how in love his old best friend is, the pain he tries to subside doesn’t get easier. 

“Oh. I’m sorry.” He glances at you, and you try to reassure him. But he doesn’t know why you're sorry. You don’t know why you’re sorry. It’s not your fault Donghyuck's life has gone to this. He chose to love, and though he once understood how much of a beautiful thing it could be, he refuses to do so again. It’s not your fault he feels this way. It’s his. He doesn’t know why you’re saying those words.

And he doesn’t like that you’re saying those words. Because you of all people don't know how it feels to be heartbroken like this. 

He won’t despise you for it, though. After all, he once knew how it felt like, and he won’t take that away from you, nor place the negative emotions penting in his body towards you. “It’s no worries, you didn’t do anything wrong.” 

If he thinks about it, he’s thankful that you’re here. It makes the fog trafficking his thoughts subtly clearer. 

And you try to change the topic. To make the atmosphere between the both of you lighter. It’s a party dedicated to a milestone you both reached, and it would be foolish if you spend the rest of the night worrying about what could have been. You pat Donghyuck’s shoulder awkwardly, yet with sentiment, and it’s enough for him to forget.

“By the way, there’s cupcakes in the refrigerator. Don’t worry, I baked it this time. If you need it, you can take the whole batch.” You gesture to the kitchen, and your head starts spinning when you take a step forward.

It’s the way you barely drink. Oh god.

“You’re being awfully kind to me,” Donghyuck looks down at your figure, taking a hold of your hand before you accidentally tip forward. It’s his first time making contact with your skin, and his heart — from being so stone cold — warms up at the thought.

“At least I’m not being a pain in the ass this time, you're welcome.” The corners of his lips tug up when you try to compose yourself. This is much better than being a heartbroken fool at your own party.

“You’re so drunk.” He grins when you swat his arm away from his hold. 

Who knew, huh.

From the corner of his eye, he can feel someone’s gaze lingering his way, but he’s too busy to notice. 

“No I’m not. I only drank half a bottle.” You argue back, trying to keep a firm stance but your voice starts to slur. As you try to explain yourself, Donghyuck takes the party hat off his head and swipes his hair back. Oh. 

“So you’re lightweight?” Though he tries to refuse the delight creeping up his way at your drunken state, Donghyuck can’t help to feel at glee, especially after seeing you just gulp down harshly, unknowingly keeping eye contact with him for longer than the normal.

You look away immediately when he smirks. “No no no. I’m alright. It will take an awful lot of effort for the alcohol to do its job, I’ll be alright.” Your words and actions say two different things, and when you take one more step, your mind suddenly faces some difficulties.

These difficulties come in the form of you almost tripping over air, and Donghyuck having to grab a hold of your wrist, you throwing your body at him, and him scoffing at you for it.

“If you say so…” He most likely drank more than you with his two complete chugged down drinks, yet here you are, looking like a complete idiot. As always. If he can, he would declare it as your brand.

“Yes. And let’s get some of my cupcakes and go play Monopoly with the others.” You finally reach the kitchen, and Donghyuck props his weight on the counter with an eyebrow raised, watching you (try to) open the fridge. 

“Who said I want to do that?” He does not want to play Monopoly with the boys in that sweaty room. 

“You want to stay here and watch those two lovebirds?” Even when you're intoxicated, you still find a way to say smart things, and Donghyuck hates that for you. He doesn’t glance back this time. 

“So… cupcakes?”

Monopoly it is.

Donghyuck moves towards you and then beside you, helping you take out the batch of cupcakes after seeing you struggle to get it yourself. The proximity makes the butterflies in your stomach do some flips, re: you’re drunk and you won’t think of this while you're sober. 

But while you’re still not-sober, you turn your head to face him, realizing your faces are inches apart from each other’s. He gives you an endearing beam, and that not-sober mind of yours makes a pact that smiling looks better on Donghyuck than a frown, and you’ll do whatever it takes to see it again.

Re: you’re drunk.

EPISODE 06: the rise of secret admirers

Lee Donghyuck does not fall in love, but maybe there could be a few exceptions.

“Okay so I will pick out our fifth love letter of the day… again, by natural selection.” You try to joke around, but your attempts to do so ends up in the trash when the boy across from you rolls his eyes. And you shoot him a sarcastic grin back at him out of impulse.

With Donghyuck, there’s bound to be endless banter from left to right, no matter how much progress the both of you made to try and cross the line between being in each other throats to finally having a decent form of friendship, all costs and efforts are lost the moment one of you open your mouths to say something to the other.

“Please. If you’re just going to laugh at me, why don’t you say something interesting instead.” You wail in frustration, throwing your rough script up in the air hopelessly. Being a comedian has never been your strong suit. “We need content. And I’m the only one giving proper content to the media.”

“Excuse me for being a prude,” Donghyuck straightens his posture on the chair, staring right at you as he speaks, “But I have made my fair share of top tier content for this podcast. You just don’t have the humor to think mine are okay.”

“No. Shut up.” You grumble.

And he puts up a taunting grin, “You’re just mad that I’m right.” He begins to tease, voice echoing with rich velvet and mirth, “And watch your language, we’re recording.”

“College kids listen to this, not elementary kids. I think I’m allowed to swear.” You fire back. There are so many things tempting to come out of your mouth, but the evident distaste in your features leave him with pure entertainment. He’s such a hypocrite, because you know that in the next few seconds, he’ll probably blurt out some foul language that is much more inappropriate than your simple ‘shut up.’

You continue to stare down at him, sending daggers at Donghyuck’s way and him easily dodging each one. 

“Just read the goddamn letter.” See? What did you say?

After that night, the night where you treated Donghyuck as if he was a friend — someone that can lean on your shoulder when times get tough, he seems to search for the version of you through the days following. But the more the both of you keep firing fire in the pit, he slowly wishes that he never associated with you in the first place. Because you are a pain.

You are so intolerable. 

He doesn’t even know why he likes you.

“Dear Romancing, I’m the friend that got called out the last time. The one that doesn’t fall in love. I don’t know, it’s not that I don’t want to, I just don’t think I’m ready.” You begin reading another letter from the pile, but this specific one causes Donghyuck to freeze. He forgot he wrote that out of impulse.

Let’s see. How shall we explain this? So to keep a long story short, he did it for a variety of reasons that absolutely make no sense, but if they had to come down to the top three, most rational, valid explanations it would be because of Jeno’s peer pressure, content for the podcast, and seeing your reaction without directly asking it from you. 

It’s like a beta; to see how you would present yourself in this type of situation, and how you’ll handle it, so Donghyuck will know what to do when he himself introduces his not-so-loving self to you. He wants to see if you can teach him to fix it.

But he can’t imagine that the letter — out of the hundred others in the mail — that this one would be the lucky draw. If he calculated correctly, then the chances of his letter being read out loud would be lower than the acceptance rate of Harvard. 

This says a lot about his fate, because if you think about it, Donghyuck is one lucky bastard.

Your eyes blink at the paper, forming sparkles as it moves across the sheet. He hopes that the look on your face is a good thing. “But there’s this girl. And even though she can be an ass sometimes, it just feels nice to be around her. But I don’t want to admit that.”

As you repeat the words written, the tone of your voice can depict your excitement. And if only the both of you were filming a Youtube Video instead of recording the podcast, the audience would be able to witness how bad your cheeks are heating up. You think it’s absolutely cute how the person sending the letter is able to find exceptions in his stance.

At the same time, the boy across from you contemplates on how oblivious you are, because there’s a complete set of puzzles set in front of you, and you still haven’t pieced any of the dots together.

“Now this is content.” You chide delightfully, enthralled that there even is a part two to this specific love-advice-story. Everybody, say thank you to Donghyuck for this.

“Damn.” He comments quietly; nibbling his bottom lip to refrain from word vomiting.

“Mr. Guy That Doesn’t Fall In Love, let me just say one thing, because I have a feeling you already know what you're feeling inside.” You beam, sitting on the edge of your office chair as you clear your throat. “If you feel happy with that girl, it’s most likely you’re making the girl happy too.”

His eyes widen. 

What the fuck.

“What type of advice is that?” When Donghyuck bursts, you look back at him with an unphased expression, shrugging at him because you know that what you said is correct.

This is not what he was expecting from you. He expected something along the lines of ‘aS a hOpeLeSs rOmAnTic, i tHinK yOu sHouLd gO fOr iT,’ then that could give him a sense of validation that falling love wouldn’t be so bad. But… this?

You tell him that you won’t say anything because you apparently know what he’s already going to say… and you end up giving him reassurance about giving each other happiness…? 

What does that even mean—!

“It’s great advice. Better than what you can think of.” You commend yourself with great honour at the piece of advice you gave; Donghyuck thinks it’s pure bull. It keeps him in place, it reminds him why he doesn’t fall in love with people because they too don’t know how to properly explain why it would be so great to do so. 

But at the same time, though he utterly, unquestionably, undoubtedly thinks that sending in this letter is such a waste of time, now that you have given him one of the worst replies — and those words only start with the letter ‘u’, there’s much more where he comes from — it still lifts some sort of weight. It did jackshit, but nevertheless, it made Donghyuck somewhat better. Just a little bit.

He feels so conflicted.

“You said something?” Donghyuck pretends to be deafened, holding up his hands to cup his ears.

“Get out of here.” You groan, attempting to ignore Donghyuck as you make an effort to give the patron the advice they are looking for, “But Mr. Guy That Doesn’t Fall In Love, if you feel something towards someone, don’t stop yourself. Don’t be like Donghyuck. Look at him now, he’s a miserable motherfucker.”

At that Donghyuck looks at you in disbelief, crescents in his eyes forming, and though he tries not to show it, he thinks that that was one of the best things you’ve said all day. Even when the ridiculing is directed to him. It made him smile.

“Cute.” 

Donghyuck’s pretty sure he said that in his mind. Not out loud. But when you look at him, taken aback, he flutters his eyes shut and wishes he can erase himself from the embarrassment. You perk up, and he knows you won’t let this off the hook.

“Thank you, I know I am.” You over-exaggerate how flattered you are, flipping your hair dramatically and straightening your posture. Deep inside, you still feel flattered, but by acting over the top, it makes it seem like your heart isn’t failing on you at this moment. But it is.

This is the art of sarcasm, and it has given you a whole lot of perks. 

“I wasn’t talking about you.” He tries to take back what he said, but it’s already engraved in your mind. 

You lean forward to the table, “Then what are you referring to as cute? The guy in the letter?” 

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Donghyuck has reached peak humiliation, and he doesn’t know why he can’t just embrace his slip up and act like the charismatic guy he is towards other people. It’s your fault he’s like this. It’s your fault everyone will find out how whipped he is for you the moment this podcast episode goes live. 

He wonders why he can’t act normal toward you, why he can’t ever do his almost-playboy antics— but it’s you. He uses this as another opportunity to learn something about you. And it is exactly how hard it is to figure out who you really are that keeps his interest levels high. He could go whipped for any other person, he is the star soccer player on campus, but his dumbass-of-a-brain chose you. 

“Loser.” You voice out Donghyuck’s thoughts about himself. Because he’s starting to slowly admit how much of a loser he is. And it’s all your fault. 

EPISODE 7: the first-first kiss

Slowly but surely, Donghyuck starts to admit that he is going through a free fall. Well, not really a free fall because there would be air resistance — the air resistance being his metaphorical refusal that he is indeed going down. And if this version of Donghyuck told the version of him several days ago that he will one day admit this calling, past Donghyuck would not take it well.

But here he is now, grasping in the atmosphere of his defeat; he almost feels like those Ancient Gods that carry the weight of losing an important battle, but he doesn’t know which one specifically because he hasn’t taken any world history courses. 

Lee Donghyuck has hit rock bottom with his relationship with you. He is like a lost puppy, a clown embarrassing himself in his own circus, a shrivelled up leaf on the sidewalk, and every other comparable item that he can think of on the top of his head. 

So when he looks up at the ceiling, he acts as if all the answers could be found there, throwing and catching the soccer ball in his hands as he lies down on the couch as another awful sigh escapes his lips. He can hear your voice inside his head spewing out nonsense. Honestly, you’ve been living in his mind for a while now and could ask you to pay for the rent you’ve been occupying. 

He’s immersed in his own thoughts, that he has forgotten that you are actually here, and he can hear your voice. And it’s not the voice that he’s imagining. “Can you stop sighing, it’s getting annoying.” 

Donghyuck catches the ball with his hands, holding it firmly before proceeding to turn his head to your voice. When he looks at you, he’s faced with the wrath of your dead face, seeming as if you’ve been sick and tired of his noises of complaint, that he isn’t aware he’s doing. It’s the way you have your arms folded, waiting for him to do something, as you sit on the floor by the coffee table with your laptop in front of you with a bored expression that makes him sigh even louder. 

“Why are you even here?” He sits up, leaning his back on the cushions and mirroring the expression on your face, “Aren’t you done tutoring Jaemin?”

“Yeah. But is there something wrong with me staying here?” You interrogate him, and he just closes his eyes in despair. Does he want to deal with this right now? Not really. 

Here we go again. “If you’re wondering why I’m still here. I’m going to make those Dalgona Coffee things that’s everywhere on Tiktok with Jeno. I’ve been dying to make them, and Nana did not want to do them with me. He says it’s too messy—” 

You stop your rant abruptly when you realize that Donghyuck has been staring at you quietly. He’s nit-picking one of the pieces of loose thread on the throw pillow, and even listening to you, which is to your surprise.

“Oh?” He tilts his head when you quit mid-sentence, waiting for you to continue on, but instead you shake your head, shifting closer to the coffee table and typing away on your laptop.

“I went on a tangent, my bad.” You purse your lips, and you still feel the weight of his eyes directed towards your face. 

He feels his heart soften at how casual you are just seconds ago. All while you feel hues of crimson taint your cheeks, bashful at your passionate ramble about coffee. “And you didn’t try to ask me?”

You tilt your head up, eyes churning to see Donghyuck with a grin on his face, which causes you to furrow your eyebrows, “Because you’re going to say no?”

“You never know. I could’ve joined you.” You’re pretty sure this is all talk; last time you checked, you and Donghyuck never did something together voluntarily. 

“But knowing you, if you did join me, I would’ve probably thrown all the ingredients at you in less than five minutes because you would make me mad. Plus, Jeno seems like he’s actually down to do them with me. You’d probably feel forced to do it.” You take note that you’re rambling again, and you want to slap your forehead for it.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep kicking in your system, because that always has been bringing you to do this you won’t usually do on the norm (I.e. talking to Donghyuck properly), of course other than drinking alcohol, that also makes you do weird shit. 

But you're making the coffee with Jeno later in the evening, most likely around 11pm, since he needs to use the caffeine to stay up for his Marketing assignment. That’s still in a few hours, though.

“Wait. Do you perhaps have any fever patches?” You shut your laptop and ask. 

Donghyuck is taken aback by it, eyes slightly bulging out of his head from worry (but you don’t know that), “Are you sick?”

“No,” you trail off, rubbing the back of your head meekly, “I’m just getting really sleepy and I need to stay awake.” You don’t explain further to him, you don’t need to. But he finds that there’s a certain level of oddity at your proposition. 

Remembering that one kdrama Jaemin indulged in around a year ago — where the guy placed a fever patch on his forehead during a midnight study session, because the coolness kept the guy awake — Donghyuck nods in acquiesce, not bothering to question if those things actually work. 

That’s probably why Jeno once bought a whole stash of them one time, “Okay, lemme get them. I’m sure there’s some in the bathroom.” He gets up and pats down his shirt before proceeding to get the fever patches.

You fidget and tap on the surface of the desk while waiting for Donghyuck to come back, yawning shamelessly and shaking your head furiously to remove all the sleepy jitters trying to crawl your skin. From your periphery, you can see him coming back with a fresh box of the item you asked, speculating it before diverting his eyes to you.

He stops in front of you, kneeling down to level himself alongside and letting you watch as he rips open the packaging. “Oh. Thanks.” You try to grab it from him, but he pulls his arm back.

Wait, what.

As you try to grab the fever patch from him, he preps it and holds the edges of the square with both his hands, making sure he doesn’t touch the sticky part. “I’ll put it on you.”

“There’s no need— oh.” Donghyuck shifts his weight, leaning forward as he takes off the grasp of one side of the patch to tuck your hair back behind your ear. Your breath hitches when you take note that his body is inches away from yours. 

He delicately swipes back more strands of hair before aligning the patch straight on your forehead, rubbing it with his thumb softly to ensure it won’t fall off. You look up at him, seeing that he’s focused on putting it properly. This is probably the closest you’ve seen Donghyuck.

“I must say, you don’t look that bad up close.” You comment, Donghyuck feeling your breath hit his skin, and his lips twitch up. The way you’re studying him gives him the sole reason why the butterflies are fluttering in his stomach.

“It’s good that you know that, Princess.” He smirks, finally mustering up the courage to bolden up, just to cover up the fact that he is clearly flustered at where you both are positioned. He wonders where this energy has gone a few days ago.

“Not the nickname again.” You cry, letting out a huff before pushing him away from you. He’s still sitting in front of you, and there’s an evident glint in his eye. “Nevermind what I said earlier, sometimes your face looks very punchable.”

“Oh, really?” He tests you, lifting up one of his eyebrows. 

“Yes. Really.” You squeak, looking down at the carpet with a smile, but as your gaze diverts back to him, you can suddenly feel a lump in your throat when he looks right back at you. His eyes pierce into you, as if he’s searching for something in the stars of your own set, “Donghyuck, what are you doing?”

You awkwardly clear your throat. 

“Looking at you.” He says straightforwardly, and the way he’s still looking at you sends shivers down your back. Donghyuck notices the effect it has, and it makes the crescent of his lip more apparent, “Why? Am I not allowed to?”

“It feels weird.” You reply truthfully, wanting to bury your head in a hole or maybe run to the opposite end of the country just to avoid this contact. It’s leaving brushes of shimmer against your skin, and you don’t particularly know how to feel about it.

“May I know why it feels weird?” He waits for an answer, so confidently, as if he wants to challenge you. 

“You better stop what you're doing.” As you warn him, it only makes him more satisfied, more bold.

“But you said I don’t look bad up close.” There’s a tone of mockery enlaced in his voice, trying to reach and copy the same tone of your voice, only to end up pitches higher as he pouts. The way Donghyuck’s eyeing your lips don’t go unnoticed and your eyes unknowingly rests on his as well, “Don’t tell me you regret saying it. That would be unlike you.”

“Shut. Up.” You say through gritted teeth, looking at him through your lashes as your heart continues to beat rapidly. It’s so intense, you swear if Donghyuck is paying attention to it, he would be able to hear it synchronizing with his own heart. 

He looks back up at your eyes, only to catch you staring at his lips.

“Make me.”

Before neither of you can take back the situation, his lips smash against yours.

You don’t even know who decided to finish the act, whether it be you or him, because he asked you to do it, but you don’t know if Donghyuck was impatient and just did it a millisecond before you. But there are goosebumps rising on your skin when he tilts his head to deepen the kiss; his lips finding solace in yours, it just feels so sweet. 

You don’t even know if you're doing it correctly, but Donghyuck makes it so that your stomach knots harder and unravels quickly again, a bloom blooming throughout your chest as you relax under his touch. 

If he’s being honest, he’s always associated a pair’s first kiss as something so over romanticized. Because he’s never felt that way before. And he would always scoff at the idea of first kisses feeling like fireworks or warm vanilla. He doesn’t know how to describe this one. But he knows it feels right. 

Donghyuck doesn’t fall in love, but if this, if this is what it feels like to fall in love; the one that you won’t ever shut up about, then maybe he wouldn’t mind it at all.

Because maybe he’s growing fond of the idea. 

EPISODE 8: shoot your shot

“And there we have it, Lee Donghyuck scores another goal!”

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Neither of you talk about The Incident for the next few days and you’re thankful Donghyuck doesn’t taunt you for it nor bring it up. If you think about it, it might be better this way. It’s just as if that distinct memory you shared with Donghyuck by the coffee table banished right after it happened, and you blame it for your sleep deprivation that it even happened because having lack of sleep should be able to make you irrationally kiss the boy you would never think of kissing. Yeah. Totally.

At least Jaemin, or Jeno, did not see whatever that was. If they did, you would’ve hid in the closet for the rest of your lifetime. But they didn’t. And that’s all that matters. 

Which is why when the two boys drag you to one of Donghyuck’s soccer games — as their means of being supportive to their roommate, as well as to drag you out of your dorm to get some sunlight — they don’t act differently towards you, and they don’t interrogate you about the status of your relationship with Donghyuck. Because they don’t know what happened. 

Unbeknownst to Donghyuck, he doesn’t know that you will watch his game. Especially since you never even bother to participate in watching any of the sports games held around campus, so he believes that he has the liberty act however he pleases, just because a specific pair of eyes, that belong to you, isn’t watching him. And it’s doing him hella justice. 

Or so he thinks.

“He looks so cool.” Jeno says through the food he’s eating, leaning forward on his seat to get a better view of the game while there are spots of ketchup and mustard left on the corner of his lip from the hotdog.

You raise your head to get a better view of Donghyuck, finally spotting him as his brown locks are pulled back by a headband as he jogs from one end of the field to the other. His tongue is slightly sticking out as he runs with the ball, eyes following it attentively and glancing up to see where his opponents are going.

As you carefully take a bite of your hotdog, you focus your periphery on the main action on the field, seeing the ball fly up in the air towards Donghyuck’s direction, before it lands on the ground a few metres away from his foot. You realize that there aren't a lot of people with the ball other than Donghyuck, and when he sprints to it, there are multiple opposing players trying to take the ball away from him or stopping him from getting closer to the ball.

He slides past them like it’s such an easy feat to do so, and the crowd goes wild when Donghyuck makes a successful long-distance pass, kicking it to one of his teammates before it reaches the other team’s goal.

“Oh my god, did you see that?” Jaemin stands up next to you in excitement, turning momentarily to see your reactions with an awe-struck one laid on his face. 

“Yes, Nana. We saw it.” You chuckle, shaking your head with a smile before shifting at your spot once more to find the best view to the game, since there are so many heads in front of yours and the three of you came to the stadium with half the seats already filled.

As you jerk your head to follow the ball, you see the backs of two familiar figures, pointing at the game and clapping just like everybody else is. 

“Is that Mark and his girlfriend? Over there, look.” You point your lips to the two, nudging Jeno’s side so he can look at where you are looking. He snaps his neck and widens his eyes when he recognizes Mark and Yeri.

He then turns to you in question, “Yeah. What about them?”

“I don’t know. Donghyuck told me something before.” You shrug, lifting your shoulders. 

“Wait. He told you?” Jeno purses his lips, before a knowing smile slowly forms in his face, thinking the most out of the situation. “I didn’t know you were close like that.”

“I don’t think we are? It was a one time thing.” You answer honestly, a nervous chuckle coming out of your throat as you avoid the way Jeno is staring down at you. He scoffs in disbelief, and when Jaemin is finished cheering, he sits back down and joins the conversation, leaning his body to hear what you two are saying.

“I’m surprised that it’s only a one time thing, since you guys have been spending a lot of time together the past few weeks.” Jeno confesses, which makes Jaemin nod furiously as he adds on. “I think you’ve been spending more time with him than me.”

Your gaze shifts back and forth at the two boys, tongue tied because you don’t know how to reply to that. The fact that they are stating this out of the blue, in the middle of a freaking soccer game, makes you want to cough out the hotdog you're eating. 

They might be right about that, how you’ve been spending the past few weeks a little more than your liking with Donghyuck; but them of all people should know that you’re only doing so because of reasons that include everything along the lines of ‘podcast assignment’ or ‘mutual friends’. 

Your heart races at the idea, and when you can feel Jaemin and Jeno waiting for your next move, you suddenly just want to break out in cold sweat. 

What makes you even more terrified, is that you’ve only realized now that you stopped complaining about Donghyuck to Jaemin. 

“Go, Hyuck!” The girls sitting behind you scream out loud, causing you to flinch while the two boys jerk their heads to see why the crowd is suddenly getting hyped up. You let out a huff of relief when they finally quit the curiosity towards your relationship with Donghyuck, and now moved to the game instead. 

But your half-second calmness is immediately replaced with a new problem.

Because as you decide to see the commotion, and why everyone is starting to cheer for the captain (yet, again), his eyes land where you are sitting. He notices you. He looks down at the ball for a second before turning back to you, and it causes you to freeze at your spot.

Everyone around you is cheering loudly, some of them even standing up from their position in enthusiasm. Donghyuck grins smugly and looks back at you, pointing his index finger in your direction that has several fellow watchers trying to find who he was exactly pointing to. Your cheeks start to heat up when Jaemin’s jaw drops and looks at you in disbelief.

“Holy shit. Donghyuck has never done that before. You saw that, right?” Jaemin says in excitement, his lips curving up the slightest as it replays in his mind. “Y/N. What the fuck. He’s fucking flirting with you.”

Oh no.

“He was just pointing at me. I don’t know what that means.” You lie. You have an idea what it means, but trying to admit it will only make you feel even more flustered, so it’s better that you avoid it and play dumb.

“He just straight up dedicated his next shot to you. Come on, Y/N. Did you not find that cute?” Jaemin tries to get something out of you, but you don’t bulge; your eyes are still on the game, Donghyuck gets the goal in and the yells from around you helps you ignore the crazy thumping in your chest.

Yes you find it cute. Nobody’s ever done that to you before. Donghyuck’s never done that to you before. Now shut up before you start feeling some type of way.

“Oh, please. He’s probably done this to other girls. It’s not that serious.” You shake your head, trying to get your mind out of the gutter. You’re trying to remember that Donghyuck and you still despise each other, but you begin to take knowledge of the little things that are changing in this relationship. 

“I’d beg to differ.” Jeno smirks, leaning back in his seat with amusement taunting his iris’. You turn your head with a frown. 

“Shut up, let’s just watch this game.” Jeno laughs, shaking his head at your denial. 

“What if Donghyuck likes you?” Jaemin gasps at the sudden idea he’s thought of, proud at the on-the-go assumption he’s made, while you look at him disappointingly. “Come on. Don’t give me that look. It was like he was dedicating his next score for you.”

“Jaemin.” You warn him, and he lets out a giggle. 

“Look at that. Someone’s blushing.” Jeno pokes your shoulder teasingly. You should’ve never allowed them to bring you to the game if this is what they were going to do.

“Jeno.” You say through gritted teeth, and you don’t miss the way the two boys bump their fist together behind you.

“So you like him.” They say as a statement instead of a question. You wonder why they are so convinced you like him, because you haven’t done anything to make them think in such a way. Well, unless Donghyuck told them about the kiss— if he did, you would whoop his ass. You suddenly think back to the time Jaemin noted to you that you and Donghyuck seem to have ‘chemistry’ while recording the podcast, and you don’t know if he’s taken those words to heart.

“I don’t like him. And he doesn’t like me. It’s as simple as that.” You make an attempt to sound strong and firm, but your words come out as a mere squeak. 

If anything, you’d like to say Donghyuck has turned into a friend. That’s only if you’re willing to call him such, because the past few weeks prove to you that he really isn’t as bad as you suppose. But you don’t like him, you swear. Maybe.

“If you say so.” They drop the conversation, since there’s still a game you have to focus on.

You don’t even understand why you’re getting affected by this; last time you checked, you and Donghyuck don’t share the same values. He doesn’t fall in love. And you want to fall in love. But if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t, then it won’t do you any good. But what if he’s changed? But what if—

“30 seconds on the clock.” 

The commentary snaps you back into present time, a quirk of an eyebrow while you flick your eyes to the scoreboard makes you realize that both teams are on another tie. 

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“Oh shit.” You hear Jaemin curse, moving his butt closer to the edge of the chair while he grasps on his hotdog tighter. You too, feel the rate of your heart quicken. 

“Here comes Lee Donghyuck with the ball—”

Fixated on his figure, your able to follow where Donghyuck is moving with the bolded #1 on his jersey, seeing that he’s running towards the ball with all his might, zipping through all his opponents and flashing through the grass like lightning. A player with a different coloured jersey starts to run beside him, and it cues Donghyuck to pick up his pace. Everything is getting intense, and Donghyuck starts to grow in desperation after every passing second just so he can touch the ball and kick it to the net. 

Jeno’s holding the handle of the chair like his life is on the line, muttering in hushed whispers ‘you better get this one, idiot’ and you want to laugh. But you have no time to laugh. 

“Finally!” Jaemin shouts when Donghyuck gets a hold of the ball after failed attempts prior, kicking it to the other side of the field where the goal was. Every student who is rooting for the team is now standing in excitement, ready to cheer if Donghyuck delivers the winning point. Since he’s captain, though you might now want to acknowledge so, you believe that he can do it. 

It’s not until he moves closer to the opposing side’s goal, moving past the defence players and slipping in between the gaps as they try to take the ball away from him. Donghyuck uses his footwork to keep the ball to himself, and your fists subconsciously turn white at how it’s clenched.

Donghyuck looks at where he’s trying to shoot, doing his best to break the tie and win this game. In a millisecond, he swings his leg back and kicks the ball with just the right amount of energy, causing it to fly before it stops at the net.

“There we have it. The winning shot from none other than the captain himself!”

The commentator tries to scream the stats louder than the noise in the crowd, but everyone is busy screaming in glee, Jaemin and Jeno included as they almost throw their food up in the air from all the exhilaration. Jeno claps his hands, and Jaemin hollers. As for you, you let out the biggest breath, not realizing how apprehensive you’ve become.

A soft giggle elicits from your throat as you watch Donghyuck run through the field haphazardly, his teammates scurrying over to him to engulf him in hugs and pats. And you feel at ease. 

When Donghyuck takes off his headband, wiping the sweat off his head with his arm. He takes a sharp inhale, and eyes going off to search the crowd, immediately stopping when they meet yours in the crowd. There’s so much screaming from the crowd, but you hear bells. You hear bells ringing through your ears and everything about this just feels too good to be true. 

He ignores the pushes and shoves from his teammates when his gaze is at yours, and it’s just as if time has stopped just for you to share this moment with him. You give him a smile, a small-thumbs up, and he reciprocates the act, making your heart set off into a rocket.

“So, what’d you think about your first game you watched?” Jaemin asks, “Is it good?” The thing is, you don’t need to say anything for them to know what you're feeling.

“It’s… okay…” And both Jeno and Jaemin know that you’re lying. Your eyes are telling them it’s more than okay. In fact, by the looks of it, they can tell you won’t be needing your Tinder app anymore. 

The two share a knowing look at each other when you continue to look back at Donghyuck, a whole galaxy painted in your eyes. If only you can acknowledge them.

EPISODE 9: meet-cute (and puppies) 

There’s a shift. 

You can just sense it. 

Or perhaps, you can’t only just sense it, but you know it. And you know it because you have never looked at Donghyuck in that way before. Not in a way where you seem like you're looking for something in him: something specific but not knowing exactly what it is. 

For the most part, this acquired proposition doesn’t completely impact your relationship with him: there’s still the occasional banter from one end to the other, and his continuous foolish acts still makes your skin boil, but now, the way you act around him, when it’s only the both of you in the room, is more tense.

And not the good kind of tension.

 “Hey, are you okay?” Donghyuck says softly, his eyes showing worry when he’s caught you lacking and staring off at a random spot in the room for the past few minutes. 

Your eyes avert to him, and you swear, it feels much weirder to look at him straight in the eye. It doesn’t feel natural. It feels like you’re hiding something from him, but you don’t know what it is in Donghyuck that’s making you feel this specific, new way towards him.

Nowadays, you feel yourself holding back when you converse with him. It takes you an unusual amount of willpower to not all of a sudden worry about the way you speak to Donghyuck. He’s supposed to be one of the people you have no filter for, to be yourself and not worry about what he thinks. But it really doesn’t feel the way you want it to be at the moment.

He waves his hand across your face, causing you to get your mind off your daydream and you give him a faint smile of reassurance before sitting up straight. “Yeah, I’m good.” You clear your throat, adjusting your headset and placing your face closer to the microphone, muttering an apology.

You can still feel Donghyuck’s stare on you. You’re unable to meet his eyes without panicking, which is why you avoid looking at his figure. 

This shift is making you shift on your seat uncomfortably.

“Your shoulders are tense. We can’t have you breaking cold sweat now.” Donghyuck notices the tension in the air, trying to fix it by calling you out and chuckling it off. But everything comes off as awkward. A disconcerting feeling starts to stir in the pit of your stomach, so you take a deep breath and try to forget that Donghyuck is in the room.

Just pretend you're talking to someone else. Absolutely. This is going to work out perfectly if you act like it isn’t your crush that’s right in front of you. Wait— holy shit you did not just say crush. 

“Right.” You yelp, and flick your leg to stop acting like a total fool. Donghyuck just stares at you suspiciously, before he suddenly grabs the notebook where your podcast ideas are written down and pretends to not notice the strained atmosphere. He gets ready to talk, pressing the resume button on the recording and your shoulders drop in ease that he total focus isn’t on you anymore.

“Anyways, I’ll be the one introducing this week’s topic.” he brings himself closer to the mic as he looks up at the ceiling, trying to formulate and visualize the proper words to say. He looks really pretty. “I think it’s my first time introducing the topic… huh.”

“It’s about time,” you mumble, blushing when you feel the sudden weight of his gaze. He gives you a warm smile when you're finally trying to talk to him properly, and it makes things seem much easier to do so.

“Okay, okay. Here we go.” He says excitingly, and your wariness slowly fades away; the bliss he’s giving you when he gives you a knowing look that reminds you that you both are going to talk about a topic you’ve been dying to discuss in the podcast. Donghyuck checks off that topic from your list as he talks, “We’re going to be talking about meet-cute incidents. A topic that has been on our list of discussions for a while now. But we only decided to talk about it now for one specific reason:”

He gestures for you to continue on. He sends you a message through telepathy on what to say, and you hold back a grin suddenly remembering why you and Donghyuck decided to make this your theme this week. Because of Jaemin. The boy across from you feels his heart blossoming when you start easing up in the room. 

It’s like the saying, ‘seeing you happy makes me happy,’ in this case, that form comes in you.

“We have this friend, and when he came back home from his volleyball practice, he brought home a dog that he picked up on the sidewalk because apparently the owner couldn’t be found. At first, we thought that the dog had rabies so we told him to kick the dog out, but he insisted on finding the owner.” You start to talk about Jaemin’s incident from earlier this week, and Donghyuck finds that the small giggle coming out of your mouth is very pretty. “Next thing you know, the owner comes and picks up their dog. And our friend just looked so starstruck when he opened the door.”

Here’s the thing: you’re pretty good at sharing stories about other people in your circle without spilling out their names, and although most people know and associate you with Jaemin and might have an idea that this story is about him, you still do not mention his name for many reasons. But at least it gives a mysterious element in the story, because they wouldn’t officially consider that you are talking about him unless you straight up announce it. 

You try to stop yourself from smiling at the memory too hard, picturing how Jaemin looked when he met the owner of the puppy for the first time, because minutes after the puppy is gone, he either wouldn’t shut up about how cute the owner looked, or would just start grinning to himself at the small memory. You, Donghyuck, and Jeno saw him almost trip on his foot once because of how distracted he’s gotten. 

“I never seen him with that look before. It looks nice on him.” Donghyuck laughs wholeheartedly, neither of you getting slightly worried that Jaemin will come screaming at you for telling his story to the podcast. But again, you did not say his name. And if anything, you can drag Donghyuck down with you if Jaemin does get mad.

“It does.” You agree with him, and he throws his head back in bemusement before huffing a sigh of content.

“To the person who picked up their dog from our friend. This is our love letter to you. Our friend is probably whipped for you now.” Donghyuck does his job as a love advisor, but this time, a matchmaker too, “Last time we talked to him — which was a few hours ago, he couldn’t stop blushing while doing his calculus assignment.”

You’re happy for your best friend, you really are, but the more you see romance happening all around you, from the podcast to now your best friend, your mind goes back to asking when you’ll have that moment as well. Because you, of all people, have been waiting patiently for your turn.

“I wonder when I’ll have my meet-cute moment,” you say out loud, and it perks up Donghyuck’s interest.

He wonders if you remember the first time you met him.

“You know, when I first heard the term 'meet-cute’, I thought it meant that you’re meeting a really cute person for the first time.” This makes you giggle. You nod at him, agreeing because you thought the same thing as him when you first heard of this term. “But it isn’t necessarily that.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.”

“Yeah…”

You clear your throat. “Okay, I’ll get started with the love letters. Donghyuck, pick one from the pile and give it to me.” Grabbing the basket with all the letters you place on the table in front of Donghyuck, as he picks one out, there’s something about the way he looks up at you; it makes your body feel as if it’s zapped by electricity. He’s barely doing anything to make you feel like this, but it almost makes you dizzy — like the blood is rushing hard around your head. 

“Here.” He takes one and gives it to you, your hands momentarily brushing which makes your whole body jolt. A warm tingling feeling courses to your own fingertips, and you wonder how holding his hand would feel like. 

“Thank you.” You mumble bashfully, your cheeks painted with scarlet hues as you try to open the letter. When you unfold the piece of paper, you are meeted with a full page, and you look up at Donghyuck, widening your eyes. “Oh. This one’s a long letter.”

He chuckles, and leans back on his chair, as you start reading. 

There is a shift. You can sense it. But for some odd reason, you’re starting to let it grow on you.

“Dear Romacing…”

EPISODE 10: professor’s matchmaking services

If there is one (1) professor that has been bearable throughout your years as a college student, it would be Professor Dae. And you have a variety of supporting evidence to why you picked her.

For one, she too is a hopeless romantic and will rave over classic love stories she’s stumbled on through Netflix with you. Professor Dae allowed you to email her some Kdrama recommendations, throwing the professionality aside and even giving you five minutes of time after the lecture just to talk about it with her. It’s lovely. Dae is lovely.

And she also likes mint chocolate chip ice cream— though, she seemed more like a caramel ice cream lover. But when after hearing that fact about her during the icebreakers on the first day of school, you knew that you would get along with her easily, because unlike all the others that think mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes like toothpaste, there’s someone you know that finally has a good set of taste buds.

You love your professor just as much as you love your romance films and mint chocolate chip, but after the stunt she pulled, where she made you and Donghyuck partners for this project, she became one of the teachers in your list of ‘watch-out -for-next-semester’ professors. 

“So, how’s the projects going along?” She looks around the classroom, blazer and suit in check, clasping her hands sweetly with a warm smile and her overly large glasses looming over her face when she turns to face you. “Donghyuck? Y/N?”

You freeze when you hear your name, shifting your gaze away from the powerpoint slide filling the window in your laptop, and turning to see everybody in the class looking at you in anticipation. Professor Dae notices you trying to tiny yourself in your spot, and she chuckles. 

“I’ve been hearing a lot from yours. Care to share a little bit with the class before we start our lesson?” She raises her eyebrows, she’s not offering you to share what’s happening in your project, she’s making you share what’s happening in your project. Professor then moves her head to look at Donghyuck, who is seated on the same row as you as she coughs aggressively, making him turn up in surprise. 

“You don’t have to share if you don’t feel comfortable.” You have to share whether you feel comfortable or not. 

You and Donghyuck give each other a look from across the lecture hall before turning back to Dae.

“It’s been good…” you clasp your lips together, your cheeks heating up from all the attention. “...We’ve been getting a lot of… exposure.” 

“Oh really?” Her eyes widen, though little do you know, Professor Dae already listens to your podcast (look, she listens to all her students podcasts, there’s no favouritism here). And she knows what has been happening, at this point it’s just playing the oblivious role. “It’s that good?”

“Well, I’d like to think it is. But there’s probably more arguments in the podcast than actual advice.” You can feel yourself beaming like a complete fool, in front of everyone that’s watching you, and potentially Donghyuck too, which is super risky. But he doesn’t notice because he himself is grinning behind his laptop screen, scared that you’ll catch him.

Professor Dae bites back a simper.

“I’m excited to listen to it.” She claps once, enthusiasm radiating through her words that gets a couple of students to laugh. “Especially since you two would always get into arguments here. I’m surprised you two haven’t gotten along yet.”

Your eyes widen, shy to respond while your tongue gets stuck in your mouth, unable to tell any of them you did start getting along with Donghyuck just recently, but you’re too afraid to admit it. You’d expect Dae to move on and discuss with another student about their communication assignment, since you’ve stopped talking and moved on to continue reading the Powerpoint slides, but apparently she’s not done.

“Well…” She waits in anticipation, but you have no idea what she’s referring to.

“Well—?”

Oh. 

Oh.

So she does want you to correct her.

“We’ve gotten a little bit closer? I think?” You don’t sound as confident as you intend to, because the mere idea of getting closer to Donghyuck, and tipping over that relationship that consists of you despising each other to tip over to friendship, makes your gut, mind and heart ricochet right before your eyes.

You turn to his direction, seeing if he will correct you and say that you both are still what you were at the beginning of the podcast, but when he looks at you, he sends you a subtle grin, as he nods hesitantly.

Professor Dae snickers, face livelier than ever, “Then that’s nice to hear. It’s about time that happened.” She shakes her head, and finds a new group to taunt.

Hold up.

EPISODE 11: there’s just something about you

Donghyuck’s mind is engulfed by you. 

And it means a lot coming from him.

When you sit across from him across the recording studio, he feels like the luckiest man alive that Professor decided to partner you up with him. There are plenty of victories he can acknowledge that happened during his college life — the notable ones including his numerous wins during his soccer games — but this one feels special in it’s own way. There’s triumph in this sense, and his mind can’t simply phantom why he particularly feels this way around you.

But he finds solace in it. He finds solace whenever he sees your eyes from crescents over the smallest things, whenever you try to hold back that smile of yours, whenever you pout or frown over something stupid he says. 

He’s always enjoyed the attention from you, the way you banter with him because you're not like the other ones who easily let him into their lives. But the very moment you showed him the other side of you, the side he didn’t think you would ever give him, you make it feel like it���s a dandelion wisp, something so fragile that he’s scared he would never see it ever again.

It feels so beautiful and painful in every way, and Donghyuck didn’t know he would ever have the capacity to hold such emotions for you. 

“So, we’re nearing the finale.” You note out of the blue in the middle of the podcast, “How do you feel?”

He remembers when you both were so done after the first episode, but after all the things you’ve been through, he can genuinely say that he will miss this. “Delighted. I don’t have to talk to you as much anymore, and we can go back to our separate ways and ignore each other.” He jokes around, it’s all shown in the way his eyes sparkle.

“Fuck you, Lee Donghyuck.”

“I’d love that.” 

And maybe. Just maybe. You're going to miss Lee Donghyuck; questionably humbled soccer player, decent podcast co-host, not so charismatic and more awkward boy, and the boy who’s somehow entered your heart in the weirdest way possible.

“This will be our last week of accepting letters, so get everything in while we’re still here. We won’t be having a Season 2.” It leaves you with a bittersweet taste in your tongue saying these words. You’re going to miss this, but you don’t think you’ll be able to tolerate spending another series of sleepless nights just to edit and think of ideas. Yeah the clout is cool, but it has drained you out a lot. 

“We have reached the end of this week’s recording, so a reminder to hit that five star rating and tweet to us your thoughts of this episode.” You start to sound like those Youtubers that shamelessly promote their content, and it makes Donghyuck’s lips curve up to a grin. You sigh, confessing your thoughts, “I’ll miss this.” 

“No you won’t, you’ll be thrilled we’re done with this. No more pulling all-nighters to do the editing.” He says in a sing-song tone, and you place your hand by your heart in faux pain. 

“That was so uncalled for.” You sneer at him wittily, and as much as you can agree with him, you don’t like the way he’s bluntly saying it for the world to hear. Who knows. Maybe Professor will take off part marks for saying that.

“Okay but I think I’ll miss this too.” When you turn back to Donghyuck, his features soften; the words escaping him simmer in the silence between you, and you never could have imagined that things would end up like this. That you both would actually be at a level where you’ll feel weird going back to the lives you had before Professor brought you together. 

And you press the stop button. Sighing, full of contentment and giving Donghyuck an air fist-bump, in which he gives back through tired eyes.

You take off your headset and gather your bag from under the desk, standing up from the chair and slinging your backpack around your arms, clutching it tightly as you get ready to get out of the room.

“Do you need a ride home?” He asks while you get ready, he’s still sitting down, watching as you move and scurry along the recording studio. 

“Nah, I’m good. I’m meeting up with an old friend in that Korean Barbecue place in thirty minutes.” You play with the strings of your backpack as you reply to him, standing awkwardly by the exit. He stands up, 

“Should I drop you off there, then?”

You shake your head, reassuring him that you’ll be fine, “It’s okay. Thank you, though.” But he looks at you as if there’s so many things drowning his mind, like there’s so much more of the unspoken words that you share. For some reason, you want to say yes to his question, just so you can spend just a few more minutes with him. 

When you turn your heel and turn the door knob, you hear Donghyuck quickly clutching on his keys, the metal clinging furiously as his chair pulls back. 

“Wait, Y/N.” He hurries to your side, and next thing you know, you can feel his fingers wrapped around your wrist. You give it a glance, and you suck in a deep breath, your heart dead struck at from his touch. 

“What is it?” You whisper, doubting your own voice. 

“I— I need to tell you something...” His voice trails off, and you turn back around so you can see his face, which is inches apart from yours. Donghyuck’s nerves wrack together as he finds the right way to say what he’s been dying to tell you for the last few days, and when you look at him so patiently, so lovingly, he thinks it’s no better time to tell you but now. “I think I might’ve caught feelings for you.”

There’s a grace period that happens immediately after, the delicacy of his hold starting to tremble as he waits for an excruciating amount of time to hear if you feel the same way or not. He hopes he has a chance, he hopes he’s just not misinterpreting everything that happens, and you as well felt the same spark he felt. It’s like his heart is getting ripped out of his chest, and though you don’t mean to, you might’ve broken him as you say your next words.

“Are you sure you’re not just saying that?” You know why you don’t want to admit how you feel about him just yet. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can believe you.” 

“You can’t?” He releases his hold. 

“I’m sorry…” But it’s not that you're scared of him, no, you feel everything but that. But there’s just stopping you from telling him now. You don’t think it’s the right moment. There’s a glint flickering your iris’, a heavy burden that makes you want to believe that Donghyuck does feel the same way about you, but he said he doesn’t fall in love. And it’s hard to believe that someone who doesn’t want to have those feelings suddenly gains them in a span of weeks.

There’s a reason why Donghyuck teaches you to be realistic at times, and these are one of the circumstances where you have to. 

“B-but I like you.”

The way his body is sending you the message makes you want to believe him. Because heck, you like, really really really feel the same way. But now that you’re able to finally accept what it feels like falling in love, you’re almost terrified at the idea. You’re scared that Donghyuck is just saying that because this was the first time he felt something different, or if he sincerely feels that way toward you. 

“Then— then prove it to me, I guess.” You tell him, and this makes Donghyuck feel his body that was slowly falling, earning its wings. “I don’t know if I should trust your words, when just weeks ago, you told me, and everyone that listens to our podcast, that you don’t fall in love.” 

And he thinks your words are valid. It’s the way you're giving him a chance that keeps him up his toes. And he knows you’re not purposely playing hard to get, because that game has already been going on since the day you met him. “So what do I do when I prove it?”

You place your hands on his shoulders with a small grin painting your lips, before opening the door. “Do it first. Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do after.”

“Is this a challenge?” 

“I don’t know. Is it?”

For some reason, even though it should feel like you indirectly rejected him, he still feels like there is hope. After all, you did not completely shut him down.

EPISODE 12: let’s fall in love

Donghyuck does not know how to ‘prove it’. If he’s being real, he does not know what that statement even means, but after talking it out with the only person who seems to wholeheartedly understand him, also known as his roommate: the Lee Jeno, he’s been given a good pep talk and decent advice to what he should do. 

It is the exact reason why he’s gone through with his plans right after his soccer practice just so he can tell you. You asked him to prove it, and he will do just that.

He’s panting at your front door, not because he’s exhausted, because everyone knows he has way too much stamina to feel out of breath from just running to your place for a good three minutes. But instead, it’s him standing at your front door, already knocked at the piece of wood with his practice uniform that makes him feel as if he’s ready to give his heart on a platter in any form he can. 

You open your door, wearing one of your worn out high school club shirts and flamingo pyjamas, hair tousled and mix-match socks, and Donghyuck still thinks you're absolutely breathtaking. Your eyes almost bulge out, bewildered at the fact that Donghyuck is standing in front of you at an hour you don’t expect him to. “Woah— what are you doing here?”

“You asked me to prove it to you. So I’m doing it right now.” He doesn’t know why he’s being so straightforward with it, but as he collects all the courage he can muster up so he can talk to you, he believes that this is his one and only chance to make things right. Everything about this feels so right. The drink he's holding, that you still don’t notice, still feels so right.

“Okay,” your face perks up. His attempt at doing this makes you laugh. It’s airy. Light. Saccharine. And it gives Donghyuck hope. So much hope. It gives him hope that love is worth it. “How so?”

“Here.” He holds up the drink in front of you, and you look at it with furrowed eyebrows. “Does this remind you of anything?”

“It’s bubble tea.” 

He gives off a single nod, eyes flickering at the same time you look at him in concern, blinking repeatedly, causing Donghyuck to close his lips shut, refraining himself from the crescents tempting to form his lips. It’s just a simple drink. Taro bubble tea. You don’t know why he’s giving it to you.

“It’s how I first met you.” He beams, simpering when you turn speechless. “You said you wanted a meet-cute moment, maybe I can help you remember ours.”

This alarms a strange, familiar tightening in your chest.

“Donghyuck…”

“We met at the bubble tea shop near the library. Jaemin wanted to introduce his best friend to us for the first time, and he was pretty excited and told us all about you. Then you enter the shop with the warmest smile on your face, and I remember feeling so ecstatic seeing you.” He takes a deep breath, and he doesn’t remove the contact he has with your eyes. If he only can, he would choose to be lost in them for an infinity. 

And it makes you burst through the seams, letting him take your hand and hold the drink. 

“But then when we got our orders, my drink accidentally spilt all over your shirt. And you got so mad at me after that because the purple stuff is now stained on that shirt.” He chuckles, looking down at what you're holding, then back to your face. “You hated me so much after that, and the debates we had in class didn’t make it better.”

“That was not a meet-cute.” You tell him the truth, it’s probably a meet-messy more than a meet-cute, but no matter what it is, the idea of Donghyuck even remembering this keeps your cheeks vividly flaring and fingers quaking. He fucking remembers. 

You look at him gently, sharing a comforting moment through the borderline of your dorm and the hallway. 

“Yes, it was.” Donghyuck begins to groan, “It was the first time I felt hopeful. After what happened in high school.”

You study the drink amusingly. You can’t believe you, the mediocre and simple you, was able to be the reason why Donghyuck has learned to find the value in falling in love. “I can’t believe I did that.”

But what you can’t believe is that you, the hopeless romantic and tinder date searching you, was able to find your reason to fall in love through Lee Donghyuck. The bane of your existence. But now, that has a different meaning.

“Yeah you did.” He wants you to believe him. “I know I say I don’t fall in love, and I know I have been firm with it. But god, Y/N. If only I knew this is what love would feel like.” And you do. You do believe him in every sense, in every word that he tells you.

“Can I drink this?” You hold it up higher, waving the drink at his face and poking the side of the straw, seeing his face drop because just when he’s sure that you will say the words back — because he knows — you do this instead.

“Are you being for real right now?” Donghyuck gawks, looking at you in disbelief, and you put up your best meekful expression. He really wishes you're messing with him right now, he really does, but it’s exactly the way he just gave his heart to you like that only for you to pull this card on him. “I— you know what. I can’t do this. Nevermind what I said.”

He huffs out a breath, taking a step back and getting ready to head to the elevator.

You grab his wrist. 

“So do you love me or do you not love me?” His back is facing you, refusing to turn and look at you because he refuses to make a fool of himself to you one more time. “I can’t believe you're running away already.”

“I said what I said.” He says with a sigh.

“Answer my question.” Deciding to spare a glance at you, he thinks he will be greeted by a stern, or maybe a mirthful expression, but he notices neither. There you are, opposite of hard, of everything fond, sentimental, poignant, compassionate, he really thinks you would play with his feelings for another time.

Instead, you give him a look, one willing to listen to him, one filled with everything he’s been looking for. Seeing how your eyes don’t hold anything back anymore, you hold onto his wrist a little more delicately, like how you would hold his heart, and it makes Donghyuck loosen up and feel jittery at the same time.

“Yes, you fool. I do. And if I want to prove it to you by kissing you, but instead I had to make a whole monologue just so you can believe me. But look at where we are now.” Hearing his blunt words, his voice trembling at the same time, you cup his cheeks, making him look at you.

“You talk too much when you’re nervous.”

You let go of his wrist, moving it to rub your thumb across his cheeks, and Donghyuck finds himself relaxing under your touch.

“So… what are you gonna do now?” He asks you. There’s a twinkle of light that you don’t miss in his eyes, a subtle hint from him to you in hopes you’d continue instead of turning the other cheek.

“I don’t know.”

“I answered your question and you’re not going to say anything—?” Before he can say anything further, or reprimand you for fooling with his heart again, you cut him off, placing your lips on his, and it feels no less than the first time you did so, back by the coffee table. 

Donghyuck’s head is spinning, letting out a gasp of air as honey and sugar drips from your lips, he kisses you, brings you closer, realizing right then and there, though he already knows, that you feel the same way. He’s reassured that you feel the same way.

“Oh.”

You smile at him, lovingly. Ready to tell him anything and everything. “Lee Donghyuck. I have started catching feelings for you too, and I knew falling in love would be wonderful, but I didn’t know it would feel like this.”

“Good.” He says teasingly, and you push your drink against his chest, chuckling, not bothering if you spill it, because that’s how you met, right? “Because if I didn’t say it already, I love you.”

When Donghyuck smiles at your expression, you best believe that it is the most beautiful thing in the world. His mouth is formed so tender and lovestruck and his eyes turn into moons, it’s such a sight to bask in under the constellation painted in the night sky. You probably realized this a long time ago, and you have only come to terms to admit it now — Donghyuck is beautiful. His smile is beautiful. Everything about him is so beautiful that he can easily turn your world around just from his presence.

“I love you too, Mr. Guy Who Doesn’t Fall In Love.”

“Wait, you knew that was me?”

“Excuse me what?” You look at him weirdly, unable to register his words until one, two, three seconds, and your head snaps up. “I just said that as a joke. Oh my god, Donghyuck.”

“Oh well,” He shrugs, before the corners of his lips turn up for the umpteenth time, pulling you into an embrace. “At least you know what happened to his story now.”

Project Title: Romancing Member Names: Lee Donghyuck and Y/N Final Project Mark: 95%

Taglist. @vocalracha @jishyucks @strawbaeri-s @neoteez01 @thatanonymousgirl-as14 @b1kon131 @freesmbdy134 @teardroplover @haruharux23 @haechanswhore @ndr1271 @channiedani @fullfarmrascalpeach @ellethereal00 @jensbae @bluejaem @hhyuckkkk @jensrose @zcl01 @tyunsie 

if your user is bolded, it means i could not tag you. 

#as much as i would say: my humour is dry #this one is acc peak comedy #or whati would like to think it is LMAO #nct scenarios #nct x reader #nct fluff #nct imagines #nct dream imagines #nct soft hours #donghyuck imagines #donghyuck x reader #donghyuck oneshots #nct oneshots #donghyuck fluff #donghyuck scenarios #haechan imagines #haechan x reader #haechan oneshots #haechan fluff

[strwbryshortcake]

HAIKYUU BOYS WEIRD HABITS

Tsukishima

☆ Lmaooo okay i feel like he spends HOURS reading Amazon reviews

☆ on products he isnt even interested in buying???

☆ he just wants to judge people’s poorly taken pictures😭

☆ also leaves comments on things he didnt even test

☆ just because he can

☆ he thinks its peak comedy

Iwaizumi

☆ Idkw but in my head he LOVES to play video games

☆ like call of duty and shit

☆ he rages

☆ full on screaming at the screen

☆ he rage quit i just know it

☆ has to exercise to blow off the steam lmaooo

☆ insult the bad players he encounters

☆ was banned multiple times from several games😭

Nishinoya

☆ LMAOOO OKAY FIGHT ME ON THIS ONE

☆ i just know this man has a soundcloud account where he posts his freestyles lsjsjskskskskd

☆ and tanaka hyping him up in the comments omg « fire bro🔥🥶🦍 »

☆ lets be clear

☆ its BAD

☆ tsukishima found it and played it on the gym speakers in front of everyone

☆ noya couldnt reach his hand to take his phone so he just kicked his shins until he paused it ☺️

Sugawara

☆ He just stalks everyone

☆ fr tho idk how he did it

☆ but he knows everyone accounts on every social media that exists

☆ doesnt follow them

☆ no no no

☆ he just looks at everything they post lmao

☆ kinda creepy

☆ he has tea on everyone tho

☆ already knew abt noya’s soundcloud acc

Asahi

☆ Im just gonna say it

☆ he writes smutty fanfics

☆ U can fight me on this one too lol

☆ Idk i just have the feeling that he writes smut abt his favorite characters of whatever show he watches

☆ has a huge fanbase too!!!!

☆ honestly really well written

#haikyuu!! #haikyuu fluff #haikyū!! #tsukishima kei #tsukki #tsukishima hq #tsukishima hcs #haikyuu iwaizumi #iwaizumi headcanons #hq nishinoya #yū nishinoya #haikyuu nishinoya #sugawara hcs #sugawara koushi #sugawara headcanon #haikyuu asahi #hq asahi #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu hcs #my hcs #iwaizumi hcs #hcs #headcanon

[contrabandhothead]

omg hi, i saw someone asking for a BoB ship and i wonder if i could get one too 🥺. so I'm greek, 1,58 (5'2''), i have chocolate brown hair and eyes and I'm veery light skinned. i have an older brother🥺, i like sketching (and painting sometimes) and i would like to study psychology and criminology or english literature. i never give a fuck about what people say, my favourite color is black, i love it when it rains and my fav season is winter. also I'm the clown friend 😎. & i love your acc :(

A/N: OH MY GOD I REMEMBER YOU!!!! i’m so sorry this took me forever to get to, thank you for your patience. i’m so happy you love my acc, thank you for stopping by for a ship! i love you so much, i hope you’re having an amazing day 💕

- RON SPEIRS -

- [ general ]

AGWJWIWJJWWJ I KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO SAY THAT IT’S BECAUSE OF YOUR USERNAME BUT IT’S ACTUALLY JUST BECAUSE IT’S A REALLY CUTE SHIP SO JUST BEAR WITH ME OKAY THANK YOU

Ron literally l o v e s how much smaller you are than him

it makes him feel like he’s your protector (even if you don’t need the protection), and therefore makes him feel more valued

it’s also great for cuddling, and he adores bending down a bit to press a kiss to your forehead

Ron likes to brush your hair for you if your arm gets tired, and he does it so gently because he’s worried he’ll yank your hair while trying to get out a knot

when i tell you he’s terrified your brother won’t like him... he’s t e r r i f i e d

he spends a lot of time making sure that he’ll make a good first impression on your family

Ron doesn’t usually care about how people perceive him (obviously i mean have you seen him react to rumors), but this is not the same when it comes to your family

he desperately wants them to like him, and oddly enough manages to charm every single one of them

he spends a lot of time with your brother, and is super relaxed about him being around, even if he wants your attention to be on him rather than your brother

this man adores just flipping through any of your sketchbooks, and almost loses his mind if he finds himself drawn in there

if you give him a sketch or painting, he’ll protect that thing with his life

god forbid anything happens to it, he’ll literally kill someone because it meant so much to him that you trusted him enough to give him one of your creations

he is MORE than willing to model for sketches or paintings if necessary

supports you in all your studies, and is always around to help you study

he’ll even rewrite your notes for you if you’re too tired to do it yourself, anything he can do to help

he loves that you don’t care what others say, especially about being with him

honestly, the only time he cares about what people say is when they say shit about you

even if you don’t care, he’s more than willing to throw hands with that person and put them in their place

he buys so many things that are black just because he looks at it and is like “that’s their favorite color. i need that.”

believe it or not, ron actually loves to stand out in the rain with you, especially if it involves dancing

he’ll take care of you after if you get sick out there

often relaxes with you by cuddling you and sitting close to the window while it rains, so you can see outside while he reads

don’t ever throw a snowball at him during winter. you will cause a snowball war, and he will win.

also loves winter, but hates being too cold

it’s nice to cuddle up to him during the colder months, since he’s practically a walking furnace

you’re the only person that can make him genuinely laugh, and he thinks all your jokes are the peak of comedy

he does not like to be pranked, but will tolerate it for you

if you do crazy shit, he’s doing it with you. ride or die baby let’s GOOOOOO

- [ how you two met ]

you were just like every other paratrooper in Easy, originally intimidated by the infamous Ronald Speirs

you hadn’t really seen him much, he was more of a legend than a man in your mind

that of course changed when you saw him sneaking around every once in a while back in Bastogne, darting between foxholes and trees

although he rarely spoke to the other men, he seemed to enjoy your company

checking on you between the nights, asking if you needed any extra supplies (you knew he stole them for you, but you let him do it regardless because you thought it was sweet)

you never thought anything of it. to be quite honest, it seemed to you like he had a begrudging respect for you, but never saw it as something more

in reality, ron was always watching you

he wanted to know what you liked so he could talk to you

he wanted to see your interactions with the other men, so he knew if he had to scare off any potential suitors (which he did do more than once)

he wanted to get to know you, he just didn’t know h o w to approach you

so for a while, he simply watched from afar

one night though, you decided to break the cycle

waiting in your foxhole, you glanced around, waiting for his shadowed figure to come darting through

this night, you were going to t r u l y speak to him

you were sick of how he danced around you. although it was entertaining for a while, it got old fast

you just had to take the opportunity to get to know him past his Ron Speirs™ persona

grinning, you watched as a dark shape moved quietly among the endless trees, making his way towards your foxhole

acting as nonchalantly as possible, you glanced at him as he crouched down beside you, watching as his every exhale turned into yet another cloud of white vapor

shifting closer slightly, you turned to him, mumbling “aren’t you going to sit in the foxhole with me for once?”

Ron tilted his head, surprised at your request

but after another moment he nodded, taking his place beside you

“you don’t talk much, do you?”

Ron simply chuckled and looked away, a blush beginning to dust his cheeks

“no, not really. it’s hard talking to beautiful people, they make me nervous”

you laughed, moving closer

“well, it’ll get easier talking to me with time... you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not”

#ron speirs #band of brothers #band of brothers ships

[harmonys-writing-void]

Hello hello! Mod Harmony graces the scene!

(i’m going to make two intros bc idk if i should consider this a writeblr or a fanfiction acc so fuck it, two intros.)

Hi! I’m Mod Harmony, she/her, and I’m excited to be here! You probably know me as Mod Tsumugi on @danganronpamess or Mod Kaede on @dangan-imagine-plus . I am always open to just chatting if you’d like!

my main account where i am the peak of comedy and shitposting is @just-some-danganronpa-fan​

My rules for requesting are as follows:

What Mod Harmony Will Do for You!

I will write:

-Fluff

-Angst

-Danganronpa, DDLC, the occasional YTTD fic but mostly i just do matchups with yttd characters

-Kin matchups

-Platonic relationships/ platonic readers (I love writing these, so go ahead and send them in!)

-Platonic matchups (Clarify it’s a platonic matchup if you send one please.)

-Soulmate and Hanahaki AU’s

-Child! Reader (no romance, obviously)

-Some sensitive topics (I would recommend asking if I write for one before sending in your request)

-I’m probably missing stuff but if it’s not in my won’t write list, I’ll most likely do it!

I WILL NOT write:

-Nsfw.

-DANGAN CHARACTER BLACKLIST: Ryoma, Nekomaru, Junko, Mukuro, Yasuhiro, Mikan, Korekiyo (or his sister), Hifumi, Teruteru, or the Monokubs. (Sorry for the giant list of characters here, I either get triggered by them or just don’t think I could do them justice.)

-YTTD BLACKLIST: Character x reader (unless otherwise specified), character x character (also unless otherwise specified), I will not (platonically) match you with the floor masters bc they hate everyone.

-DDLC BLACKLIST: I will write for Yuri, but not about the thing. you know the thing. 

-DANGAN SHIP BLACKLIST: Ships inbluding characters on my blacklist will not be allowed. at this point i have no other rule other than character x character is difficult, please go easy on me.

-All the normal stuff (inc*st, r*pe, p*dos, etc)

-Fantasy aus. This includes werewolves, vampires, etc.

-Yanderes. I just don’t really get them.

-The anime. (I have watched it, so if you want to chat about it I’ll gladly do that, I just don’t want to write for it.)

-UDG (excluding the WOH) -Along with that, the WOH in a romantic relationship.

-If a request triggers me for one reason or another, I have the right to refuse it.

I think that’s it! If I don’t have something on either or my lists and you want to know if I write it, go ahead and send an ask. I look forward to getting to know you all!

Could I possibly get a promo? Tags are under the cut! ^-^

@danganronpaximagines @hope-kaleidoscope @kuddlingkoalaofdanganronpa @drimagines​ @forbidding-souda​ @truth-and-lies-drv3-imagines​ @danganronpa-meh-imagines​ i’ll add more but i’m currently pulling a blank LMAO

[que-mint-tea]

Aos 7x07 thoughts!!

So many people are hating on AoS 7x07 bc they think its irrelevant and ok yeah maybe so but look at all the absolute gold we got!!

Deke being a sweetheart and not giving up on Mack even when he was pushing everyone away has my heart

Deke shaw wearing eyeliner. EYELINER GUYS And completely pulling it off!! im jealous??

May interrupting deke’s ridiculous story w that death stare like ‘u gotta be shitting me deke’ and him being all ‘see?? see?! i kNEW YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE ME—‘ is peak comedy and i will not be told otherwise

Mack painting cars?! Like I think we skipped over that part a little too fast!! He—he’s actually painting little tiny fucking cars with a tiny little paintbrush!!! Who in the history of AoS would look at the man/tank and think he would sit down and paint little toy cars to help him deal with his loss i’m—

Do I even need to mention The Deke Squad singing Don’t You by the simple minds? I think we all agree that shit was ICONIC

Kinda irrelevant but the base is lit by a disco ball and i think that’s pretty funky

MACK + SHOTGUN-AXE REUNION phew is it getting hot in here or what

Ok even though its stupid like the whole mismatched random team that deke put together is acc so cute like they’re just trying their best please leave them be. Maybe its just me but its pretty refreshing to see new faces even if its just for en ep. i trust the writers, its not like they’re never gonna come back to the og cast and like go off and do a spin off on these new characters! They’re just there to lighten up the ep so let them ;)

Also the whole ep gives off fun bubbly vibes and i really really missed that from the season one bus kids era, it brings back smiles..

Last, THE CAST HAD SO. MUCH. FUN FILMING THIS EP. They’re all posting about it non stop and as fans, shouldn’t it be enough for us to just see the cast and crew having fun to love an ep? Sadly, this is the last season :( these people have dedicated years of their lives to create this show so let them have one episode about getting stuck in 1982 fighting robots and singing. They deserve that

Finally, let’s just remember, the AoS writers probably know what they’re doing, i mean they have proven over and over again! Let’s just trust them and have a spectacular last season!! even if it involves fighting robots and jamming in 1982 ;)

#agents of shield #daisy johnson #agents of shield season seven #deke shaw #alphonso mack mackenzie #coulson #melinda may #tv coulson #aos #aos 7x07 #aos new ep #aos thoughts #agents of shield s7 #aos season 7 #shotgunaxe #the deke squad

[han-hoshi]

army check tag !!

I don’t actually consider myself an army, but this questions are so cute and brought a lot of memories somehow uwu.

Here is the original post with the copy/paste questions made by @bangtan-madi for anyone who wants to try it! Thank you so much for tagging me Madi~

Rules: answer the questions with the member/members that fit the answer best!

Who was the first member you noticed? // I think it was Taehyung, but at that time i didn’t even knew who he was or from what kpop group he belonged hshsshs.

Who was your first bias? // Yoongi i think? Looks played a big big role when i first got into kpop lol

Who is your bias now? // I don’t actually have a bias, mostly because I just have to much love to share (???) But I would say Jimin this time.

Who is your bias wrecker/wreckers? // everyone, literally hsshsh

Who has made you cry emotionally the most? // Maknae line, mostly Jimin because i can somehow relate to some things he had said/done.

Who is the funniest? // Jin, dad jokes are just my peak comedy. Also Jungkook, he weird (gen z kinda weird)

Who would you want to go on a date with, realistically speaking? // OOF, Jungkook or Namjoon maybe? i’m more into the kind of chill dates, and i feel like i could talk a lot with them once i get to know them.

Who makes you mentally not okay? // Yoongi, in a lot of ways.

Who is the most disrespectful? // Jimin and J-Hope (???) LMFAO

Who makes you smile the most? // I have a really soft spot for maknae line istfg.

What was your first album? // Wings.

What is your favorite album? // I like them all, but my spotify acc tells me that i’ve been hearing Love Yourself: Tear and Love Yourself: Answer on repeat lol.

What was your first comeback? // Blood Swear and Tears probably ;;;

What is your favorite era? AAAAA MADI YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME.

What was your first favorite song? Spring day and Baepsae.

What is your current favorite song? (more than one is totally acceptable) // again, MADI YOU CANT DO THIS TO ME AAA, there is just too many, but ones that gets on my feels are Run, Spring Day, Sea, Heartbeat, Euphoria and all of Cyphers.

What is your favorite collaboration? // everythingoes, The truth untold, Chicken noodle soup lol.

What is your favorite bts iconic line? //  “Love yourself, love myself, peace” "When something is delicious. It's zero calories."  I literally say that all the time so AHSSHHSS.

[nothing1995]

Desperately trying to keep a handwritten cometdy diary but like. It’s so much more effort and less comfortable so I just gonna carry on here . I bombed so hard last Tuesday like. With stuff I wasn’t really enthusiastic about , that I struggled to write, that wasn’t what I wanted to joke about really, but I thought I should and I did and it got fucking nothing lol ! Bombed so fucking hard ! Did NOT work! And almost 24 hours later I came up with a whole new thing that I’m genuinely thrilled about and obsessing and excited etc etc but due to Reasons the next open mic was gonna be the same one as last tues and like. Even after a good mic or with a bit I’m confident in a whole week without doing a mic is NOT good it is not advisable! But whatever that’s LIFE i said.

I’m writing me joaks in a cafe when a post pops up on the comedy open mics group advertising a new open mic, clearly mostly music but WHATEVER I need need need to say this bit out loud and I have no other space and I CANT wait till Tuesday cause if it rly sucks oh god. I turn up and . Up til now all the open mics have been in separate rooms. This was right in the middle/front of the goddamn pub. Which had maybe 10 ppl in it. The closest of them sat maybe 1.5 metres away. And they were not an audience they were just people . Trying to drink in a pub :) and the only other “”act”” was the guy whose open mic it was playing cover songs on guitar. That was um. I should’ve called it in then really but I DID NOT ! I’d learnt from my mistake cowering away from the bomb last week and I went RIGHT ON UP. I got , maybe 4 chuckles, 1 proper laugh when I joked about driving people out of the pub when . 3 people just stood up and walked out lMfaooo it was . An incredibly incredible embarrassing terrible experience and it . I can feel it making me a better comic already but Jesus Christ. Thank god nothing matters and life is just here because if it wasn’t and things actually mattered I would be dead. But I loved it and am genuinely worried I’m developing a humiliation kink but like . A. Who isn’t b. That would acc be super helpful with comedy it would make me unstoppable and very horny. Anyway I have . 4 times this week I can perform, is like all 4 of those to be this same bit I’m trying and to work it out, but the one on Friday is an acc showcase I’m like. An acc act lol crazy! Tho it’s a p bad venue and the gig is hit and miss so not that exciting. More exciting is I’ve been asked on a new material night for ~~~local comics which is like. A step up from an open mic any1 can sign up like I’m acc.... joining the “circuit” and I got acc asked to do this on wed and I’m so excited and scared bc if I don’t fuck it up I could acc get a regular wed mic which I desperately need ... it is kinda annoying at the low levels in smaller cities u have to like. Do the super shitty mics that are like 1x a week which means that u suck more bc u don’t practise and u kinda have to like .... power thru and almost do better at those early mics to make an impact on the local comics to then get on the slightly higher up open mics (and then the unpaid showcases then the paid then the well paid etc etc) it’s v like... comedy’s so about practice and stage time and it’s paradoxical that the higher up the chain you are the more stage time and! Good actual audience time you get . Tho I get it open mics is like .... boot camp and I’m tbh loving this part it’s .... no pressure and I’m having FUN!!!!

Anyway I loved this eves mic it was probably the worst set up I’ve done a mic in like it really I would say. In the uk. Is probs peak bad venue. And I managed it and acc held their attention and made them smile and laugh at a couple points like. That’s all I can expect reallyz also more importantly got to say my new bit out loud and see whether it was totally terrible or just. V v v v v tough crowd . And it was good! It’s ok material and now I’m excited not terrified of Tuesday night!

#personal #this is so long it wouldve take. me 30 mins to handwrite this #stup

[sharkydotjpeg-blog]

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[deniscollins]

A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland

If you owned a welding company, what would you do if informed that one of the welders was a committed organizer for the Traditionalist Worker Party, a Nazi-group, who did podcasts for Radio Aryan, and posted Nazi support material on his Facebook page: (1) do nothing and respect his freedom of speech, (2) speak with him about restricting his political viewpoints, (3) fire him, or (4) something else (if so, what)? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.

Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.

But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.”

It was a weeknight at Applebee’s in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, a few weeks before the wedding. The couple, who live in nearby New Carlisle, were shoulder to shoulder at a table, young and in love. He was in a plain T-shirt, she in a sleeveless jean jacket. She ordered the boneless wings. Her parents had met him, she said, and approved of the match. The wedding would be small. Some of her best friends were going to be there. “A lot of girls are not really into politics,” she said.

In Ohio, amid the row crops and rolling hills, the Olive Gardens and Steak ’n Shakes, Mr. Hovater’s presence can make hardly a ripple. He is the Nazi sympathizer next door, polite and low-key at a time the old boundaries of accepted political activity can seem alarmingly in flux. Most Americans would be disgusted and baffled by his casually approving remarks about Hitler, disdain for democracy and belief that the races are better off separate. But his tattoos are innocuous pop-culture references: a slice of cherry pie adorns one arm, a homage to the TV show “Twin Peaks.” He says he prefers to spread the gospel of white nationalism with satire. He is a big “Seinfeld” fan.

“I guess it seems weird when talking about these type of things,” he says. “You know, I’m coming at it in a mid-90s, Jewish, New York, observational-humor way.”

Mr. Hovater, 29, is a welder by trade. He is not a star among the resurgent radical American right so much as a committed foot soldier — an organizer, an occasional podcast guest on a website called Radio Aryan, and a self-described “social media villain,” although, in person, his Midwestern manners would please anyone’s mother. In 2015, he helped start the Traditionalist Worker Party, one of the extreme right-wing groups that marched in Charlottesville, Va., in August, and again at a “White Lives Matter” rally last month in Tennessee. The group’s stated mission is to “fight for the interests of White Americans.’’

Its leaders claim to oppose racism, though the Anti-Defamation League says the group “has participated in white supremacist events all over the country.” On its website, a swastika armband goes for $20.

If the Charlottesville rally came as a shock, with hundreds of white Americans marching in support of ideologies many have long considered too vile, dangerous or stupid to enter the political mainstream, it obscured the fact that some in the small, loosely defined alt-right movement are hoping to make those ideas seem less than shocking for the “normies,” or normal people, that its sympathizers have tended to mock online.

And to go from mocking to wooing, the movement will be looking to make use of people like the Hovaters and their trappings of normie life — their fondness for National Public Radio, their four cats, their bridal registry.

“We need to have more families. We need to be able to just be normal,” said Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party, in a podcast conversation with Mr. Hovater. Why, he asked self-mockingly, were so many followers “abnormal”?

Mr. Hovater replied: “I mean honestly, it takes people with, like, sort of an odd view of life, at first, to come this way. Because most people are pacified really easy, you know. Like, here’s some money, here’s a nice TV, go watch your sports, you know?”

He added: “The fact that we’re seeing more and more normal people come is because things have gotten so bad. And if they keep getting worse, we’ll keep getting more, just, normal people.”

Flattening the Edges

Mr. Hovater’s face is narrow and punctuated with sharply peaked eyebrows, like a pair of air quotes, and he tends to deliver his favorite adjective, “edgy,” with a flat affect and maximum sarcastic intent. It is a sort of implicit running assertion that the edges of acceptable American political discourse — edges set by previous generations, like the one that fought the Nazis — are laughable.

“I don’t want you to think I’m some ‘edgy’ Republican,” he says, while flatly denouncing the concept of democracy.

“I don’t even think those things should be ‘edgy,’” he says, while defending his assertion that Jews run the worlds of finance and the media, and “appear to be working more in line with their own interests than everybody else’s.”

His political evolution — from vaguely leftist rock musician to ardent libertarian to fascist activist — was largely fueled by the kinds of frustrations that would not seem exotic to most American conservatives. He believes the federal government is too big, the news media is biased, and that affirmative action programs for minorities are fundamentally unfair.

Ask him how he moved so far right, and he declares that public discourse has become “so toxic that there’s no way to effectively lobby for interests that involve white people.” He name-drops Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, architects of “anarcho-capitalism,” with its idea that free markets serve as better societal regulators than the state. And he refers to the 2013 science-fiction movie “Pacific Rim,” in which society is attacked by massive monsters that emerge from beneath the Pacific Ocean.

“So the people, they don’t ask the monsters to stop,” he says. “They build a giant robot to try to stop them. And that’s essentially what fascism is. It’s like our version of centrally coming together to try to stop another already centralized force.”

Mr. Hovater grew up on integrated Army bases and attended a mostly white Ohio high school. He did not want for anything. He experienced no scarring racial episodes. His parents, he says, were the kinds of people who “always assume things aren’t going well. But they don’t necessarily know why.”

He is adamant that the races are probably better off separated, but he insists he is not racist. He is a white nationalist, he says, not a white supremacist. There were mixed-race couples at the wedding. Mr. Hovater said he was fine with it.

“That’s their thing, man,” he said.

Online it is uglier. On Facebook, Mr. Hovater posted a picture purporting to show what life would have looked like if Germany had won World War II: a streetscape full of happy white people, a bustling American-style diner and swastikas everywhere.

“What part is supposed to look unappealing?” he wrote.

In an essay lamenting libertarianism’s leftward drift, he wrote: “At this rate I’m sure the presidential candidate they’ll put up in a few cycles will be an overweight, black, crippled dyke with dyslexia.”

After he attended the Charlottesville rally, in which a white nationalist plowed his car into a group of left-wing protesters, killing one of them, Mr. Hovater wrote that he was proud of the comrades who joined him there: “We made history. Hail victory.”

In German, “Hail victory” is “Sieg heil.”

A Growing Movement

Before white nationalism, his world was heavy metal. He played drums in two bands, and his embrace of fascism, on the surface, shares some traits with the hipster’s cooler-than-thou quest for the most extreme of musical subgenres. Online, he and his allies can also give the impression that their movement is one big laugh — an enormous trolling event put on by self-mocking, politically incorrect kids playing around on the ash heap of history.

On the party’s website, the swastika armband is formally listed as a “NSDAP LARP Armband.” NSDAP was the abbreviation for Hitler’s Nazi Party. LARP stands for “Live-Action Role Playing,” a term originally meant to describe fantasy fans who dress up as wizards and warlocks.

But the movement is no joke. The party, Mr. Hovater said, is now approaching 1,000 people. He said that it has held food and school-supply drives in Appalachia. “These are people that the establishment doesn’t care about,” he said.

Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, estimated that the Traditionalist Worker Party had a few hundred members at most, while Americans who identify as “alt-right” could number in the tens of thousands.

“It is small in the grand scheme of things, but it’s one of the segments of the white supremacist movement that’s grown over the last two years,” she said.

It was midday at a Panera Bread, and Mr. Hovater was describing his political awakening over a turkey sandwich. He mentioned books by Charles Murray and Pat Buchanan. He talked about his presence on 4chan, the online message board and alt-right breeding ground (“That’s where the scary memes come from,” he deadpanned). He spoke dispassionately about the injustice of affirmative action, about the “malice directed toward white people” in popular media, about how the cartoon comedy “King of the Hill” was the last TV show to portray “a straight white male patriarch” in a positive light.

He declared the widely accepted estimate that six million Jews died in the Holocaust “overblown.” He said that while the Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler wanted to exterminate groups like Slavs and homosexuals, Hitler “was a lot more kind of chill on those subjects.”

“I think he was a guy who really believed in his cause,” he said of Hitler. “He really believed he was fighting for his people and doing what he thought was right.”

He said he wanted to see the United States become “an actually fair, meritocratic society.” Absent that, he would settle for a white ethno-state “where things are fair, because there’s no competing demographics for government power or for resources.”

His fascist ideal, he said, would resemble the early days in the United States, when power was reserved for landowners “and, you know, normies didn’t really have a whole hell of a lot to say.”

His faith in mainstream solutions slipped as he toured the country with one of the metal bands. “I got to see people who were genuinely hurting,” he said. “We played coast to coast, but specifically places in Appalachia, and a lot of the Eastern Seaboard had really been hurt.”

Friendships Made and Lost

In 2012, Mr. Hovater was incensed by the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting, believing the story had been distorted to make a villain of George Zimmerman, the white man who shot the black teenager. By that time, he and Ms. Hovater had been dating for a year or two. She was a small-town girl who had fallen away from the Catholic Church (“It was just really boring”), and once considered herself liberal.

But in the aftermath of the shooting, Ms. Hovater found herself on social media “questioning the official story,” taking Mr. Zimmerman’s side and finding herself blocked by some of her friends. Today, she says, she and Mr. Hovater are “pretty lined up” politically.

As they let their views be known, friends left and friends stayed.

“His views are horrible and repugnant and hate-filled,” said Ethan Reynolds, a Republican and city councilman in New Carlisle, Ohio, who said he had befriended Mr. Hovater without knowing his extremism. “He was an acquaintance I regret knowing.”

Jake Nolan, a guitarist in one of the bands Mr. Hovater played in, stuck with him. “There are people who literally go around Sieg Heiling,” he said. “Then you have the people who just want the right to be proud of their heritage” — people, he said, who are standing up against “what appears to be an increasingly anti-white America.”

Mr. Hovater befriended Mr. Heimbach in February 2015 at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Mr. Heimbach, who two years earlier had founded a White Student Union at Towson University in Maryland, was holding a protest outside the proceedings and praising Vladimir Putin. The pair founded the Traditionalist Worker Party in the spring.

Soon Mr. Hovater was telling people that he would be running for a council seat in his hometown, New Carlisle, population 5,600. The announcement caught the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the heavy metal press. But he never filed papers.

On a recent weekday evening, Mr. Hovater was at home, sautéing minced garlic with chili flakes and waiting for his pasta to boil. The cats were wandering in and out of their tidy little rental house. Books about Mussolini and Hitler shared shelf space with a stack of Nintendo Wii games. A day earlier, a next-door neighbor, whom Mr. Hovater doesn’t know very well, had hung a Confederate flag in front of his house.

“This is kind of brackish territory here,” Mr. Hovater said. “A lot of people consider Cincinnati the most northern Southern city.”

The pasta was ready. Ms. Hovater talked about how frightening it was this summer to watch from home as the Charlottesville rally spun out of control. Mr. Hovater said he was glad the movement had grown.

They spoke about their future — about moving to a bigger place, about their honeymoon, about having kids.

#Freedom of Speech

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Eddie Izzard:’ Everything I do in life is trying to get my mother back’

Transgender hero Eddie Izzard has done standup in French and German, lead dozens of marathons, and is now in a period drama with Judi Dench. But, he discloses, his can-do stance has a doleful source

There was a literal turning point in Eddie Izzard’s lifelong pursuit of personal freedom. It came one afternoon in 1985 when he had gone out for the first time in a dress and ends and full makeup down Islington high street. He was 23 and he had been projecting- and eschewing- that instant for just about as long as he could remember. The turning point came after he was chased down the road by some teenage girls who had caught him changing back into his jeans in the public toilets and wanted to let him know he was weird. That quest pointed when eventually, faced with the screamed question” Hey, why were you garmented as the status of women ?”, he chose plainly to stop running and change and excuse himself.

He spun around to give an answer, but before he got numerous paroles out the girls had run in the opposite tack. The suffer schooled him some things: that there was capability in meeting anxiety rather than scaping it; and that from then on he would never let other people characterize him. After that afternoon, he says, he is not simply felt he could face down the things that frightened him, “hes been gone” chasing after them: street performing, standup comedy, marathon guiding, political activism, improvising his stage show in different languages- all these things felt relatively easy after that original coming out as what he calls” transvestite or transgender “.” You conclude, if I can do something that hard, but positive- maybe I can do anything .”

The ” anything” he has been doing most recently is to take over the challenge of behaving opposite Judi Dench and Michael Gambon. In Stephen Frears’s interpretation of the real legend of Queen Victoria’s late-life affection with an Indian servant, Victoria& Abdul , Izzard plays a full-bearded, tweed-suited Bertie( later Edward VII ), reining in his comic inclinations to colonize the cruelty and scheming of a son examining his mother apparently making a gull of herself. Izzard has done spate of cinemas before- he was in Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen alongside George Clooney and Brad Pitt and the rest- but nothing that has required quite this level of costume drama self-restraint. He loved it.

Watch a trailer for Victoria& Abdul .

He and Dench are old friends. She has been a regular at his stage shows and has been in the habit, for reasons forgotten, of sending a banana to his dressing room each opening night, with” Good fluke !” written on it. Realise her canal Victoria at close quarters was a daily masterclass. The film was shoot partly at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight( the first time any film crew had been allowed inside by English Heritage) and the shed would make their whisker down in the nights. One era, Izzard withdraws:” I was dancing with Judi to Ray Charles’s’ What’d I Say ‘. She felt like a young lady, a young teenage girlfriend almost. Judi has this amazing activated of vitality that discovers the whole way back to her youth .”

Watching the movie, you’re so ready to see Izzard slip into one of his rebellious rambles of consciousness that for a while it seems odd that he stays on write. Does it feel that method to him very?

” Not now ,” he says.” My early effort as relevant actors wasn’t very good because I only swopped all my comedy muscles off, and I didn’t know what to replace them with. I speculate I have learned more how to only’ be’ on movie now. It is similar to knowing how to both go a bicycle and drive a car. If you are in a vehicle you don’t want to lean sideways to turn a reces. You know the difference .”

Ever since he bunked off institution and conned his course into Pinewood Studios as a 15 -year-old and strolled the film sets for a period, he has imagined himself relevant actors. The first thing he did when his humor lastly took off after years of trying and often failing to represent parties laugh was to get himself a drama agent and see if he could haunt a twin vocation. He has never been satisfied with only doing one thing, and it appears that determination to alter has only just originated. He’s 55, and because of his running- which peaked at 43 marathons in 57 erasin the UK and 27 in 27 daytimes in South africans for Sport Relief– he looks lean and almost alarmingly bright-eyed. We are talking in a hotel chamber in London, and he is garmented crisply in” son with eyeliner” mode. He works on the faith, he says, that human beings were never made to sit still or adjudicate, but to residence themselves in challenging status, and then work out how to cope.

” World battle two is a good example ,” he hints.” People get sagged behind enemy lines with no plan of what they were going into. They had to learn to do a great deal under extreme push and on the move. And they demonstrated we are able to. In a most varied acces, I recall coming out as transgender let me to set myself in other terrifying situations and drive them out once I was in them. I knew I would get through the bad, panicking bit- and there was a lot of that when I was a street performer- and eventually get to a more interesting place .”

Loping one of many marathons for Sport Relief in July 2009. Photograph: Alfie Hitchcock/ Rex

He has, of late, paused to reflect on the motivations behind that inclination, firstly in a documentary film, Believe: the Eddie Izzard Story , made by his ex-lover and long-term collaborator Sarah Townsend, and then in an autobiography, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens . The first two elements of that latter subtitle predominantly guided Izzard back to his mother, who died of cancer when he was six years old. Inducing the movie, Townsend came to suggest that all Izzard’s stimulated digressive habits clique around this true, and in his work, in opening sections too poignant to read easily, he expands on that thought.

” Toward the end of the cinema, I started talking about my mother …” he recollects.” And I said something revelatory:’ I know why I’m doing all this ,’ I said.’ Everything I do in life is trying to get her back. I think if I do enough events … that maybe she’ll come back .'” When he said those messages, he says, it felt like his instinctive speaking. The thought bided with him that” I do conceive I started performing and doing all sorts of large-hearted, crazy, ambitious occasions because on some grade, on some guileles magical-thinking stage, I concluded doing those happens might accompany her back .”

I wonder, having went those circumstances out into the public, nearly half a century on, if it has changed how he thinks about himself?

” I surely feel I am in a better place ,” he says- but also it has given him a sense of his own strangeness.” There is that thought where people say wow about the marathons or whatever. And I kind of say wow more, because there are some things I did that, looking back, I don’t know how I did them. Running a doubled marathon on the last day in South africans. It was 11 hours of not fun. And about five minutes of euphoria. I’m not sure how I did that .”

One of the things about marathons- even if you are running, as he was some of the time in the UK, followed by an ice-cream van honk the Chariots of Fire topic- is that there is an horrid mas of day for envisaging. Does his thinker ever pause for breather?

” I have a luck situation ,” he says,” which is that I am interested in any question- how did we get here? all the religions. I can think about anything. For illustration when I did the 43[ marathons] I passed past a signaling saying’ the Battle of Naseby: 1 mile’ and I’m immediately off “ve been thinking about” Cromwell and Fairfax, Prince Rupert perhaps, and how this road I was guiding on would have been a trail back then and perhaps the cavalry came down it, how did they get cannon round that crouch, all that, at every moment …”

Campaigning for Labour during the general election in 2015. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/ PA

Talking to Izzard, and watching him play-act, you feel he has a kind of the requirements of not ever wanting to miss any scrap of event. It’s partly, he indicates, why he has widened his range of doing standup in different languages in recent years.

” German has been the more difficult so far ,” he says. He is doing Arabic next, proposing a show in the Yemen( he was born in Aden, where his father worked for a period for BP) to draw attention to the harsh civil struggle there, and after that, Mandarin Chinese. As he clarifies this, blithely, I’m reminded both sets of pieces in his notebook where he writes about the strategies he developed to overcome severe dyslexia as small children, and his uncomfortable affair with his late stepmother, Kate. The antithesis of performing as a younger soul for the storage of his mother was a refusal to be limited by Kate’s efforts to control him. She wanted him to be an auditor because he was good with quantities, if not with learning. He withdraws her once telling him:” You’ve got to understand that you are a cog in the machine. As soon as you understand that, they are able to fit in and get on with life .” You can only imagine how that went down. Does he ever think he has become still more accepting of restrictions?

” I have a very strong sense that we are only on this planet for a short period of hour ,” he says.” And that is only changing. Religion beings might think it goes on after death. My tendernes is that if that is the case it would be nice if just one person is coming and tell us know it was all fine, all strengthened. Of all the thousands of millions of people who have died, if just one of them could come through the clouds and say, you know,’ It’s me Jeanine, it’s brilliant, there’s a really good spa ‘, that would be great .” He delays.” Although what if heaven was only like three-star, OK-ish. You know,’ Some of the taps don’t work …'”

He employs his success down not to any particular knack, but to his being” brilliantly assuming. Some beings are maybe brilliantly interesting. But I have the opposite endowment .” That, and staman, and that limitless curiosity about the world.

For a BBC series about lineage he went to Africa to draw percentages per of his genetic make-up that was Neanderthal. It reinforced his sense that there was nothing brand-new under the sun, that people had always been the same.” We never think of cavemen being spiteful of the neighbours with the better cave, but no doubt the latter are ,” he says.

In hamlets in Namibia, dames were fascinated by his nail varnish; some of the men, more.” You know if you have a football and some fingernail refinement and a smile you can walk into any village in the world and find acquaintances ,” he says.” “Theres” 7 billion of us on the planet now and we should be associating up more. Ninety-nine per cent of us would be live-and-let-live and’ Hi and how are you ?’. But the 1% aren’t glad with that, they want to actively stimulated it up and tell us that is not the way to go on .”

Satisfying the Bakola Pygmy in Cameroon for a BBC series to marks his genetic make-up. Image: BBC

Talk of politics is a reminder of Izzard’s interventions in last year’s referendum safarus, in which he tried to use his experiences of doing humor in French and German and Spanish as an example of how Europe might be a place where you could share culture, rather than be defensive about it. In those fevered weeks, his arguments were sometimes made to look naive; the Mail and the rest ribbed him after an awkward encounter with Nigel Farage on Question Time .

He admits that he is sometimes still learning in politics, but is unrepentant about his efforts to try to advance a stimulate that he has been engaged in as a performer for a long while.

” Running and secreting from Europe cannot be the way forward for us ,” he says.” The hypothesi that Britain can go back to 1970 and it will still be all the same just can’t be an option .”

Does he think there is still hope for Remainers?

” It seems to me beings are always capable of being either courageous and strange or fearful and suspicious. If you track humanity all the way through, the periods of success for civilisation are those periods where we have been brave and curious .”

There is plenty of panic and mistrust in the world though. How does he think it will go?

” I don’t know. If you look at the 1930 s there are obviously clear examples of how each can spin this type of anxieties and twist them, and then you get what historians generally announce mass-murdering fuckheads in power .”

He have all along talked of looking to run as a Labour MP in the next election. Is that still the speciman?

” Yes, the scheme was always to run in 2020, though Theresa May has changed that with her failed superpower grasp. So now it’s the first general election after 2020.”

He will also set himself forward for Labour’s national executive committee at the party forum this year. He didn’t make it last experience, though he got 70,000 referendums. And if and when he has become a MP, he will give up behaving and play-act?

” I would. It’s like Glenda Jackson; she gave up playing for 25 times to concentrate on it, then she revolves up back as King Lear .”

With Ali Fazal, Judi Dench and head Stephen Frears for a screening of Victoria& Abdul at the Venice film festival. Image: Pascal Le Segretain/ Getty Images

I wonder if another aspiration, to eventually have children, still applies?

” I ever said girls in my 50 s. But I too ever felt that I had to do concepts first. Get this stuff done. But yes, I haven’t given up on that .”

For someone who was coped an early lesson about the fragility of life, his long-term scheduling bangs odd. Does he feel that opposition?

” I think we should all choose a year we would like to live to, and do everything we can to oblige that work. I entail it could all go wrong at any point, obviously. But we also know that if we don’t get malady or get hit by a bus we can help ourselves by drinking enough liquid and retaining as fit as you were when you were a kid. As we get older and we get a bit creaky we take that as a clue to stop doing substance. My sense is we should promoted through creaky. I was experiencing a bit sluggish lately, about a month ago, I fantasized right, I’ll do seven marathons in seven days. And off I depart. The first four were a little bit rubbish, but you push on through that .”

He must have good seams?

” I mutilated my knee up a while ago, trying to startle over a barricade ,” he says.” But it healed up, and now it grumbles only when I don’t use it enough .”

Is there some genetic rationale for his vigor?

” Dad desired football, played until his late 30 s. I don’t know about Mum. She liked singing and slapstick and Flanders and Swann but I’m not sure about sport .”

I discover his expression violate just slightly. Izzard still can’t really talking here his mother easily, at the least not in an interview. In his book he describes how in the immediate consequence of her death he and his papa and his brother hollered together for half an hour and then stopped in case they went on for ever. In home of therapy dad bought his sons a modeling railway adjusted and they built it in the spare chamber and immersed themselves in it. The make recently resurfaced when Izzard had it regenerated and donated it to a museum in their home municipality of Bexhill-on-Sea, another part of his excavation of that time.

” Dad encouraged us with it after Mum died ,” he says, by way of reason.” He made a counter for the americans and we wasted hours and hours constructing it. Then in 1975 my stepmother, Kate, came along and it was put away into containers and never came out again. It led from Dad’s attic to my brother’s attic, and he didn’t know what to do with it. I contemplated, why not give it to the museum in Bexhill? I suspected there might be spate of simulation railway lovers in Bexhill, and they rebuilt this thing, it’s kind of a collector’s item. They are now going to build another one, a Christmas version. We had a grand opening and Dad came down to see it .”

He likes the fact that he is in a position to constitute these kinds of things happen. Is he happier now than ever?

” I ever missed the kind of chart that you can leveraging to do the things you miss ,” he says.” There is no path into it. You have to work out how you get there- over the wall, or tunnel your behavior in. I always guessed doing the same event was actually going backwards. And if you start saying’ Hi, I like chicken’ on some advert, you know you have probably reached that extent .”

You hesitate a little to ask him what he is working on next, but I do anyway.

” I’ve written my first cinema ,” he says.” It is called Six Hour to Midnight , set in the summer of 1939. I’m developing a show in French in Paris. This December I am going to be on a ship, only below Notre Dame, doing two sees nightly. What else? I’m not a good reader but I always wanted to read all of Dickens, so I have found someone who will let me read them as audiobooks- I have done a third of Great Expectations and it took four epoches. So: 12 days. And then there is the premiere of Victoria& Abdul for which Dad is coming up from Bexhill to expend his 89 th birthday with Judi Dench …”

Out of all the things he has done, I ask, of what is he proudest?

” Mostly I hope I have done things that facilitate other people to do them ,” he says.” That was the thing with coming out as transgender, and it was the same event doing the marathons, or reading the languages. I hope people might ponder, well if that imbecile can do it, why can’t I? I represent, I’m just some guy, right. Nothing special ?”

I’m not quite convinced.

Victoria& Abdul is exhausted on Friday 15 September. Believe Me issued by Michael Joseph( PS20 ). To tell a photocopy for PS17 going to see guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over PS10, online guilds only. Phone orderings min p& p of PS1. 99

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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