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#and also if I start anything fun I can’t really enjoy it bc I know I gotta either do smth else or it’ll take time and effort or

brairslair · 3 months

Text

op monster trio x fem!reader nsfw headcanons

EVERYONE IS 18+ (minors need to scram)

a/n: remember, these are hc’s and just my opinion!

don’t forget to like, reblog, and comment to support my work! mwah <3

“just enjoy this”

luffy:

very talkative and vocal during sex

always just says whats on his mind

“wow, you’re so wet for me already”

“you look so pretty when your face scrunches up like that”

“that feels good. go faster”

not shy at all about moaning and can get really loud sometimes

like there will definitely be noise complaints

kinda a pleasure dom, but can also get really needy sometimes

wants to make sure you feel just as good as he does

“does that feel good?”

“how’s this?”

“you like it when i do that?”

loves bringing food into the bedroom (obviously)

aphrodisiacs? yes

licking whipped cream, hot fudge, caramel, etc, off your body? yuh huh

and his stamina is HIGH

he also gets really excited about trying new things, and will try pretty much anything once if it’s something you’re into

one of his favorites is mirror sex

spreading you out on his fingers or his dick and making sure you watch yourself

he just wants you to see the beautiful view that he gets to see

plus then he gets double of you, and more you is always good

loves when you get vocal, so if you’re on the shyer side he will definitely work overtime so he gets to hear you

will make it a game to see how loud he can get you

he also speaks portuguese bc it makes sense and also i said so !!!!

sometimes his language setting accidentally switches to portuguese when he’s fucked out

“vou meter em você ate você gritar meu nome”

goes crazy when you say his name

even crazier when you get so cockdrunk that you start babbling nonsense

honestly he can’t help but laugh

like full on belly laughing like a maniac while he’s breaking your brain

but he just thinks you’re the cutest and he can’t contain himself

sometimes he’ll have a conversation with you while you’re in that state, acting like he can understand anything you’re saying

“feels good huh?”

you’ll whine out something indecipherable in response

“yeah i know!”

he’s always happy if you tell him what you want and how you’re feeling

because he just loves you so much and he wants you to enjoy it too

because he thinks you deserve the world

can also get pretty dominant/demanding sometimes without even realizing it, just because he’s so blunt

he’s just a man who knows what he wants and goes for it

if he’s especially needy, he gets a little more rough with you

holding your hair as he fucks your mouth, because your eyes look so pretty when you look up at him like that

or fucking you hard and fast to chase his own release, leaving bruises on your hips from how tightly he’s gripping them

even then, he’ll always do frequent check ins to make sure you’re still enjoying it

messy kisser

loves kissing and licking and nibbling all over your body

definitely leaves marks

he’s also not shy about PDA, (mostly because he does not understand the social construct of what is and is not appropriate to do in public), so he loves when he gets to see his love marks on you the next day

thinks u look rly pretty with his love all on you

he’s really good with his mouth

could eat you out for hours, and wont stop until your whole body is shaking

big fan of face sitting

definitely more of a tits guy

always smiling into your kisses, wether he’s sweetly kissing your lips, leaving a trail down your body, or teasing your clit

loves to make you squirm, so edging you is definitely fun for him

he likes seeing you be all needy for him, especially since he’s usually the needier one (can you blame him)

definitely also challenges himself to see how many times he can make you cum in one day, and keeps track of his records

really enjoys using his devil fruit powers on you too, and laughs in excitement when it makes your eyes roll back

always gets you both water and plenty of snacks afterwards, falling into a comfortable conversation or putting on your favorite movie

zoro:

you’re the only person he feels comfortable enough to be this vulnerable with, and he trusts you with his life

you are always his number one priority, no matter what, and that naturally carries over into your sex life

he’s extremely attentive to you, in and out of the bedroom

knows your body better than he knows his own

always knows exactly what you need and just how to make your eyes roll back

he’s a “just relax and let me take care of you” kind of guy, and all he cares about is making you feel good

after all, you always make him feel good, even without doing a single thing

but of course he soaks in anything and everything you graciously give him

he quietly feels undeserving of your love, so he’s really big on being praised

your sweet words only spur him on to make you cum even harder

usually more of a soft dom

but if you ask nicely, sometimes he’ll let you take care of him when you know he needs to just relax

he’s gentle with his strength and careful not to hurt you

likes to fuck you hard but slow, wanting it to last as long as possible

he lives to hear your pretty noises of overstimulation as he makes sure to hit the right spots with every agonizing thrust

your legs held over his shoulders so you can feel every inch of him

doesn’t pick up his pace, even when you’re trembling and trying to move your hips against his

“i’ve got you. just enjoy this”

not super talkative, but definitely gets more vocal the more comfortable he gets being intimate with you

lots of grunts and groans against your neck

sometimes an occasional moan or curse will slip out

when he does talk, it’s soft and low, whispered for only your ears to hear

his voice gets a little deeper when he’s like this, and it grounds you and shakes you to your core somehow at the same time

he loves kissing you, and pouring every feeling he can’t put into words onto your lips

rly likes watching your face to see every pretty little expression you make

likes seeing how good he’s making you feel

also really big on eye contact

wether he’s fingering you, eating you out, fucking you, you’re giving him head, whatever, he wants to look into your eyes and watch them as they get all glassy

“hey, look at me. keep your eyes open”

a little bit into dacryphilia , because it feels so intimate to him

making you feel so overwhelmed with pleasure that it brings you to tears, then kissing all your tears away as you fall apart for him

he’s also really good with his fingers because of how much dexterity he’s built up in his hands from all those years of swordsmanship training

the reason he also has insane stamina ^

if you get bratty with him he’ll get bratty back (he’s a part of the sassy man apocalypse)

sometimes if you’re being particularly bratty, or when he gets cocky after a really good training session, he can get a little more riled up into being more talkative and commanding

but he still never loses that softness, because to him you’re angel on earth, and his love and adoration for you is overflowing

“if you’re that needy, just ask for it. don’t need to make a fuss”

“that’s it, keep going”

“go ahead, you can let go for me”

“tell me what you want me to do and i’ll do it, but you have to use your words”

if he’s feeling really confident, he might pin you against his surface of choice while he ruts into you, licking into your mouth to savor your taste

^ he feels guilty at first for being rough with you, but any fears of him being selfish fly out the window when he hears you moan his name all desperate and hoarse and fucked out

“you like it when im rough like this, huh?”

“what was that, honey? you gotta speak up”

“i know you’ve got one more in you, baby, don’t hold out on me”

no matter what, he always makes sure you cum at least twice before he does

he’s not super into pda, but he secretly loves when you leave marks on him

especially when you scratch up his back or his chest

they feel like battle scars and make him feel all proud and shit

he’ll “discreetly” show them off walking around topless, but he’ll still glare at anyone if they make a comment about it

he also joins the pda train anytime he sees you talking to another man that isn’t a part of the crew

or any time he’s drunk off his ass ^^

thigh/ass guy

he loves feeling your body shutter and twitch from his touch

he doesn’t smile too often, but you sometimes get lucky enough to see it

he’ll hold your jaw up and smile lazily into your sweet kisses while he fucks you deep with his fingers

constantly longs to show his devotion to you, and takes his time to make sure you feel it

lots of sleepy and lazy sex

also shower/bath sex

he lives to hear your sweet sounds

he will not stand for it if you try to hide your pretty little noises from him

“c’mon, don’t do that. let me hear you”

“don’t get all shy on me now”

“there’s my girl”

he’ll always put a pillow under your hips

he likes to wrap his arms around your waist to pull you as close to him as possible

he also just finds it really hot when you arch your back

he’ll fuck you so good that you genuinely cannot stand after he’s finished with you

then he’ll run you both a warm bath, hold you to his chest, and wash off your body and your hair as you both relax into the comfortable silence

sanji:

worships the ground you walk on (seriously considered starting a religion)

loves to be romantic and set the mood

cooking you both a nice intimate dinner, lighting candles, peppering rose petals, giving you massages, etc etc

but once you guys actually start getting intimate, he cannot WAIT to get his hands on you

but he still respects you and treats you like a fucking queen, because to him you are

not an exaggeration by any means either, he will build you a throne

he asks permission before kissing you

won’t touch you unless you give him permissiom

will do or say genuinely anything you ask him to, no questions asked

but will also pathetically rut his hips against your clothed cunt while you make out and cum in his pants if you allow it

he can get rock hard just at the sight of you

not even in a pervy way, it’s just that you’re sooo sexy and everything you do is like his siren song

definitely a sub

loves receiving, and feels blessed with every ounce of pleasure you grant him

but making you feel good gives him just as much pleasure, because he worships you after all

knowing he’s the one making you feel good really gets him going

he’ll worship your body for HOURS with no expectations to receive anything in return

he can get off untouched just by knowing he’s making you feel good

loves eating you out, and is extremely talkative

more than willing to be on his knees for you at any time

loves praising you (of course) and is always eager to encourage you

“you’re the most beautiful woman i’ve ever seen”

“you taste so sweet, mon amour”

“want you to cum so badly, sweetheart”

“please let me help you come undone my love”

he loves when you praise him too

however, he also goes crazy when you get a little mean

likes it when you use him for your own pleasure after a restless night or a frustrating mission

or when you edge him for hours as punishment for making a flirtatious comment towards another woman (atp he only does it to get this result)

he is also not beneath begging !

sucker for romance during sex too

loves holding your hand while he makes you see stars or while you let him use your mouth

kissing all over you while you both fall apart

babbling and whining against your lips about how much he loves you

loves when you mark him up, and will proudly show them off

practically gets heart eyes every time he looks at you, but his eyes are BULGING when he sees your perfect tits

loves sucking on them while you ride him

very cheesy and dramatic lines and pet names, but they all come straight from his heart and he means every single word

really likes it when you pull his hair

definitely whimpers and whines and moans your name like a prayer

says “thank you” when you let him cum because he’s so polite

probably has a breeding kink

definitely has low stamina at the beginning of your relationship and doesn’t last very long, but builds it up over time

still makes sure you’re more than fully satisfied even if he’s already finished

would let you tie him up, blindfold him, gag him, whatever you want, and he would enjoy the fuck out of every second

he would still complain and whine about not being able to touch/see/praise you a bit though

super passionate kisser

also always extremely sensitive, because it’s you

lots of cuddles and kisses and sweet words after the two of you are done until you fall asleep with your limbs tangled

asks are open!

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lemonlover1110 · 2 months

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Hello! I hope you are doing well 😌 you are my fav writer and I just wanted to to throw out this crazy brainrot request to u bc I am SICK over it

So Florence nightingale syndrome right? Toji is like a professional boxer or whatever something athletic bc he's a fucking beast and he gets hurt, like his leg or something, and you become his at home occupational therapist. So you're like taking care of him and he's getting feelings for you while also being a stubborn ass bc u push him constantly so he can get better. and he's super hesitant to accept his feelings bc he's a Playboy of course.

I'm just picturing this one scene where you're helping him up and he's leaning on you and he says something like "are you sure you can handle me princess?" Idk I'm insane I'm sorry 😭😭😭😭

Pairing: boxer!Toji Fushiguro x f!caregiver!Reader

Warnings: Fluff, frustrated Toji, Florence nightingale syndrome, Toji has an injured leg and is a little bitch for a bit

*This was so fun to work on and now I'm having thinking a little too hard about boxer toji (I'm ovulating) sofjsof enjoy!

Discord 18+ - Twitter - Ko-Fi

Toji never really thought he’d be dependent on someone, yet now he can’t even take a shower standing up. After an unlucky boxing match, Toji ended up in a cast and crutches. That’s what he gets for not listening to his son who told him it was around time to retire.

“I’m not a fucking skeleton, I’m good in my field. I can do this for a couple more years.” How he wishes he could swallow his fucking words. He thought that after getting the cast off he’d go back to normal, and he’d have no issue with mobility. He shouldn’t have an issue moving his fucking leg again, he’s been moving it for more than thirty years, why should three months of not moving it change much?

Apparently he can’t do anything, which is why he has someone with him all day every day, helping him so he can get better. Toji’s main issue? He gets frustrated when someone tries to help him.

“Be careful, it’s hot.” You smile at him as you put his dinner in front of him. He has a scowl on his face as you set it down in front of him. He tried to help make dinner but he couldn’t stand for too long. He’s mad, but not at you. He could never be mad at you.

Toji wasn’t necessarily fond of you when you started working with him; he hates being dependent on someone else, and he knew that he would have to depend on you for pretty much everything. You try to help him though, and he should be more appreciative of you because of it, but in reality he feels like a fucking baby. He’s grown to like you though… A little too much for his liking.

You leave him to eat, going to wash the dishes since he can’t do the task yet. Perhaps his own bowl and spoon, but not everything that needs to be cleaned. You watch him from the counter, watching his refusal to pick up the spoon and eat the soup you made him. Earlier he was so prideful, telling you that he would help you every step of the way during dinner, and he couldn’t even finish one third of it. You were proud of him regardless.

“It’s really good, Toji! The potatoes you helped peel really added a touch to it.” You’ve gotten close enough to be on a first name basis. You see each other every day, you stay in the same house, of course you’re close enough to talk to each other so casually. It doesn’t mean you should though. You’ve always managed to keep a very professional relationship with patients, but there’s just something about him that makes it hard for you to be normal around him.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking kid.” He says, pushing the bowl of soup away. He’s not hungry anymore. Toji stands up, his hands holding on to the table to support himself before grabbing his crutches.

“Toji, if you’re not eating it, can you try to bring it over to me, please?” You ask. You know the soup has cooled down, if he spills it, he’ll be fine.

“If you want it, pick it up yourself.” Toji is clearly mad. You don’t take it to heart though, because you know it’s with himself and not you.

“How about we go to the park tomorrow? It’s supposed to be a nice day out.” You talk to Toji who tries to watch a documentary. He’s not all that interested in what he put on, caring more about what you have to say. He might not show it, and he tries to deny it, but he has the biggest soft spot for you. “We can also get some ice cream, if you’re in the mood!”

“Hey… I’m sorry about earlier. I was just—” It’s hard to get an apology out of him, but sometimes he knows he’s in the wrong and he feels the need to apologize. He doesn’t want you to be mad at him, even though you’re clearly not upset with him. You’re so understanding and patient with him, he feels like he doesn’t deserve that.

“You’re fine, Toji.” You reassure him with a smile, your hand going over his balled up fist. You feel your heart skip a beat as you touch him. You’ve crossed the line past a professional relationship, and you should set some boundaries within yourself– But his other hand goes on top of your own before he brings it up, softly kissing your knuckles. It’s hard to set boundaries when he feels the same way.

“I’m tired.” He tells you, and you stand up to help him get up. Toji usually denies your help, but this time, he has no problem accepting it. You just want the best for him, and there’s some things that he can’t do completely alone. He has to take baby steps. He’s using you for support, and he’s scared that he’s too heavy for you. He asks you, “Are you sure, princess? Can you handle me? I know I’m pretty big.”

“You’re fine. I can handle you.” You reassure him, and you begin to walk to his bedroom. His room was previously on the second floor, but ever since his injury, he’s moved his bedroom to the first floor. You get him to his bedroom, helping him on the bed. You smile at him before saying, “Let me grab your crutches. You left them in the living room, right?”

Before you can walk away, he grabs your sleeve. Toji’s slowly realizing that he can’t fight off the feelings that consume him when you help him, and he’s usually not a fan of them. Toji’s been tied down once before, he certainly doesn’t want that again. But with you, it’s different. He doesn’t mind the idea.

“Will you lay down with me?” He asks, and you suck in your bottom lip between your teeth. You shouldn’t. He caresses your cheek with the back of his hand before he prompts himself up to kiss the corner of your mouth.

“Toji, you know this isn’t something I can do.” You tell him as he looks lovingly into your eyes. “I’m here to help you get better.”

“You can help me get better by laying down next to me.” Toji responds. You grab the hand that so lovingly touches your cheek and kiss it, before bringing your lips down to meet his momentarily. He swears he hears fireworks when your lips meet, even after you pull away.

He’s most definitely in love with you.

“I’ll go get your crutches. Good night, Toji.”

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pupyuj · 3 months

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GP! Yujin "accidentally" (girl never wears condoms who we kidding) knocking you up 🙊 now you have to tell her about being a possible baby daddy🤭 what if I say she might be into it🤔👀 like her thoughts drift to you walking around carrying HER kid for the next few months. 🤭She's possessive your honor😊 honestly her reaction is totally up to you

- 🧇

oddly enough i enjoyed writing this ask but mostly bcs it's on the softer side lmao 😭 might be the only time i indulge in something involving pregnancy but who knows! baby daddy yuj was just something i could NOTTTT pass up 😳

[cw: pregnancy!, lactation kink.]

oh my god she would be flabbergasted??? 😭 yujinnie likes to tell you that she'll give you babies whenever the two of you fuck but 78% of the time she doesn't mean it!! 😣 so one day when you sit her down and tell her you're pregnant and that you have absolutely no plans to 'get rid' of the baby... well, yujin was literally speechless 😭 but she wouldn't hate it... in fact seeing you so confident about your decision to keep her child really helped her come to her own conclusion about this whole situation herself! you best believe she'll raise tf outta that baby with you 😤💕

anw back to the nasty stuff—yk how turned on yujin would be afterwards?? just staring at you while you go about your day... her boner situation so fucking bad bcs she can't stop thinking about the night she put that baby inside you... and you don't even have your little bump yet but she acts like you do!! she's always caressing your stomach while making out, makes sure to plant the sweetest kisses on it before she goes down on you too! :3

every time she's staring she's so desperate to knock you up again that she just wants to bend you over and fuck you but she gets kinda afraid?? 😭 yujinnie doesn't want to hurt you or the baby so she refrains from doing anything too crazy... but then you'd tell her that you'll both be careful so that none of you three will get hurt and suddenly she's back to being a huge fucking pervert! oh and don't even get met started on how she acts when your tits start leaking... lord.

yujin would have you sat on her lap all the time, your shirt off and perky nipples on her mouth,,, yujin has no problem getting messy with it too!! sucking on your nipples like she’s the baby 😭😭😭 makes a joke about your tits drying up by the time the kid gets here bcs she really does get addicted to them! 😵‍💫 sometimes it gets annoying how she just wants to touch you all the time but most of your anger comes from the mood swings 😭😭 all yujin has to do is kiss you and pull you around for a dance with fun music playing in the background and you’ll be fine! 🥰

about the possessive thing… well yes! 😵‍💫 yujin also gets overprotective to the point it becomes something the two of you argue about… 😭 daddy will be nagging at you a lot but that’s bcs she’s only concerned about you and the kid!! most of the time you can’t even get mad at her bcs yujin’s just being a good daddy mommy 🥺 see, she’s usually so haughty and reckless but getting you pregnant would definitely bring out a sweeter side of yujin that you’ll fall in love w her all over again 😔💕

okay now she really needs to breed me—[SIRENS BLARING]

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lavendertom · 6 months

Text

My Favorite Prize

Mike Schmidt x f!Reader

wc: 1.7k

warnings: none! just fluff and fun 🤗

so this is my first time ever writing a fic and posting it, so apologies if it isn’t great and has mistakes, i just felt so drawn to this idea i had to attempt to write it! i hope y’all enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it :)

this is kind of an au where nothing bad ever happened to the pizzeria (i’m an optimist if u can’t tell), mike still has the security job there, but it’s all good vibes bc he deserves happiness :’) basically just mike, abby, and reader having a fun day out at freddy’s ☺️

also was written w a female reader in mind, but i don’t think there’s any explicit use of she/her pronouns so do what you will with that

keeping this intro short as possible, but i’ll include another a/n at the end!

——————————————————————————

You would’ve never thought that taking a babysitting job for a neighbor down your street would lead to some of the best memories you’ve ever had. Not to mention it also led to you and Mike, your boyfriend, meeting each other.

Naturally, you spend a lot of time with Mike and especially his sister, Abby, who you’ve been babysitting for about 6 months now. Your bond with her feels like so much more than just being her babysitter, even more so after starting to date Mike. You are always more than happy to do all kinds of activities with her, even if you’re “off the job.” After all, you’re at the house almost everyday now.

“Can we please go to Freddy’s today? I’ve been collecting quarters for months now, I want to use them!” Abby begged as you, her, and Mike finished your breakfast.

“I’m sure your brother doesn’t want to go to work over the weekend, but I can take you if you really want to go.” you said with a smile as you got up to wash off your plate.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t want to join in on this?” Mike asked looking back at you.

“You need a break, Mike.” you answered. “You stay home and rest, Abby and I will go. Plus it’s your job, you don’t want to be thinking about work over the weekend. I don’t mind taking her, trust me.” You often needed to remind him it was okay to stay home and rest. He works his ass off, mostly to provide for Abby, but also because he can’t help but spoil you as well. Even if you didn’t need anything, he still cared too much.

“Please y/n!” Abby shouted from her seat. “Let Mike come too. It will be extra fun then!”

“Yeah, y/n.” Mike said, giving you that look you couldn’t say no to. You looked into those brown eyes, shaking your head smiling.

“Okay, okay,” you responded laughing at the siblings, “let’s go then.”

The three of you piled into Mike’s sedan. On the way there, you and Abby sang some of her favorite Disney tunes, occasionally getting Mike to sing a line or two.

When you arrived, Abby immediately ran up to the stage of three animatronic animals who were singing and dancing. You and Mike followed behind, hand in hand. The pizzeria was full of children playing games, eating pizza, and running around doing whatever kids do.

“I don’t know why she loves those damn robots so much.” Mike said as the two of you walked in. “They’re creepy.”

“I think it’s cute.” you replied. “I think it’d be fun to hang out with them sometime, you know? Like, play arcade games with them, eat some pizza. I mean, you practically have a sleepover with them every night, Mike.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you had to be their guardian every night.” he said sarcastically.

“I don’t buy it, you love them.” you responded, squeezing his hand. He gave you a dramatic eye roll and you couldn’t help but giggle at him. You finally caught up to Abby, finding the girl still in awe of the animatronic show. “Alright Abby, what are we doing first?”

The girl thought for a moment, until her eyes lit up and that mischievous little smirk she makes was on her face. “Skee ball competition.”

“What does the winner get?” Mike asked.

“If I win, you have to get me ice cream for dessert.” She replied confidently. She always knew what she wanted, and she was gonna get it no matter what.

“And what if I win?” you asked.

“Then Mike has to get you a prize.” She replied grinning at the two of you.

“Why’s it always me who has to pay the price?” he asked. Abby already began skipping towards the arcade games.

“You’re the one who asked.” you replied giving him a shrug. “And by the way, I’m so winning this.”

“Yeah?” he asked smirking as the two of you followed Abby. “What if I win? What do I get?”

“I guess something can be arranged if you win.”

“Well you better start thinking of something because there won’t be an ‘if I win’, just a when I win.”

The three of you found the skee ball games, each picking a lane to play on. You all agreed whoever had the most points after three rounds of playing was the winner. Abby decided she would count down before shouting “go!” and the game was on. Surprisingly, Abby did very well, and the game ended with a win for Abby, and a draw between you and Mike for second place.

“I win!” Abby shouted jumping up and down before giving Mike a hug. “Now you have to get me ice cream for dessert!” You couldn’t help but smile at the two, their bond was unlike any other.

“Okay, okay, Abby!” he said with a laugh as Abby pulled away from him. “But before that, it looks like y/n and I have a tie to break.”

“Oh, we’re doing this now huh?” you said, crossing your arms. “You can’t stand a draw?”

“I was told there would be prizes and I am not letting my efforts go to waste.”

“Okay, fine, best of three wins.” You grabbed a handful of quarters out of the cup sitting on edge of the game.

“Ready to lose, sweetheart?”

What he didn’t realize was Abby slowly making her way towards your skee ball lane, silently noting she was on your side.

“Don’t get so ahead of yourself, babe.” you said with a playful scoff. What ensued after was the best mix of chaos and fun.

You and Abby were both trying to throw as many balls as you could in the somewhat small skee ball lane. The two of you were laughing at how terribly it ended up working out. Mike finally realized the team you two had formed to which he kept playfully shoving the balls out of your hands, while somehow still maintaining control of his own with his other hand. By the end, you were so out of breath from not only playing the competitive game, but laughing at the madness that occurred.

“I can’t believe you let Mike win, y/n!” Abby said, sounding more upset than she should’ve been.

“I would never let your brother purposely beat me at a game of skee ball.” you said, still out of breath. “He sabotaged the game!” you shouted, giving him a knowing look while pointing an accusing finger at him.

“I believe I deserve some sort of prize for my victory.” he responded smirking as he stood looking at you with his arms crossed.

You finally caught your breath as you looked into his brown eyes, then down to his lips which still held the small smirk. You walked closer to him, putting your hands on his shoulders as you stood on your tip toes to place a soft, small kiss on his lips. He put his hands around your waist, pulling you in just a bit. You could feel him smile, and you did too, letting out a small laugh.

“I’m still here you know.” Abby said, making you both turn to face her, still standing by the skee ball lane. She wasn’t the biggest fan of the two of you showing affection, but you knew deep down it made her happy. After all, she was the one who got you guys to realize your feelings for each other. “So am I getting my ice cream or not?”

“How could I forget.” Mike said sarcastically to his sister, giving her a small smile. He wrapped an arm around your waist as you stood next to him. “Does pizza sound good for dinner?”

“Of course, but don’t you dare forget her ice cream. She’s scary when she gets mad.” you said that last part in a whisper just loud enough for Abby to hear.

“Hey!” she shouted, knowing you guys were messing with her.

“Believe me, I know.” Mike said, ruffling his sister’s hair as they all made their way to the dining room.

The three of you enjoyed a delicious pizza dinner at Freddy Fazbear’s, making sure not to forget Abby’s ice cream she so rightfully earned. Before you left for home, Abby traded in some of her tickets for prizes at the prize counter. She ended up choosing a Bonnie plushie and a little Freddy keychain. She had been working towards collecting all of the Fazbear plushies, having just a few more left to complete the collection.

“Today was so fun!” Abby squealed as the three of you left, her Bonnie plush in hand.

“It was pretty fun.” you said smiling, taking in the final sights, sounds, and smells of the pizzeria as you walked out the doors. The three of you somehow ended up spending most of the day there, continuing to play games and eat tons of pizza.

“You know what, I think we should do this more often.” Mike chimed in.

“Really?” you said, genuinely surprised.

“Yeah. I know it’s technically work, but this was really fun. Thanks for letting me tag along, y/n.” he held onto your hand again.

“Don’t just thank me, Abby was the one who really convinced me to let you join us.”

“I find that extremely hard to believe.” he said while bumping his shoulder into yours.

“Fine, you’re kinda fun too I guess.”

“Just kinda?” he asked raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe a little more than kinda.” you admitted. He placed a kiss on the top of your head as you reached his car.

“Y/n?” Abby asked.

“Yes Abby?” you replied.

She took the Freddy keychain out of her pocket, handing it to you. “This is for you, since you never got a prize for winning skee ball. And because you’re my favorite.”

You nearly teared up at the gesture. A huge smile had come across your face.

“Abby, you are too sweet. Thank you.” you said as you held the small keychain in your hand, giving her a hug.

At the last second you decided to pull Mike into your hug, savoring every moment of having your two favorite people right by your side. “You guys are my favorite prize.”

——————————————————————————

A/N

i hope y’all enjoyed :) depending how well this is received i may consider writing more for mike and whatnot. hopefully it didn’t feel too long, once i start writing i can’t really stop myself. don’t be afraid to lmk ur thoughts in the comments!

i thought we needed more of these kinds of fics for those of us who had our inner child healed from the fnaf movie. these r my fav kind of fics and there just isn’t enough of them 🫶

if ur one to listen to music while reading, i recommend the first 4 songs off of Mylo Xyloto by coldplay. that’s exactly what went thru my mind while writing. 🤗

#fnaf #fnaf movie #mike schmidt x reader #mike schmidt #josh hutcherson #five nights at freddy’s movie #fnaf x reader #five nights at freddy's #abby schmidt #mike schmidt x y/n #michael schmidt

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vhagarlovebot · 1 year

Text

JUST A FRIEND TO YOU ── PART 2.

♡. ── gif credit. ; ( aemond targaryen masterlist. )

pairing: modern!aemond x fem!reader and a little bit of cregan stark x fem!reader.

summary: after you agreed to go on the date, aemond realizes what a big mistake he has made.

warnings: pining, aemond regretting all of his life decisions basically and getting what he deserves, and angsty shit bc you know i love to make you all suffer.

note: hi besties! i didn’t wanna do a part two of this one shot but since a lot of you were asking me, i heard you and here you have. and i’m already thinking about writing a part 3? or maybe a mini series? even tho i said i don’t like it. i need help!! btw if there are any mistakes i apologize, but as some of you may know english is not my first language. hope you enjoy! reblogs and likes are greatly appreciated.

read part one here.

YOU REALLY DIDN’T WANT to go on that date but, as always, you couldn’t say no to aemond.

and it turns out, you had fun.

aemond’s girlfriend —or date, or girl friend? you don’t really know— is actually nice and you hate yourself for not being able to dislike her, she’s so freaking sweet that it makes you want to throw up. and as nice as she is, her friend is also very nice and a total gentleman. and also the quarterback of the college footfall team.

cregan stark made you forget all about aemond targaryen in just a couple of minutes with him. he knows how attractive he his and also how to use his charm with girls, because he had you flustered all night. he didn’t do anything more than just smile at you, pay for the dinner and drinks and walk you back to your dorm, kissing you goodnight. on the cheek. and just a couple of minutes after leaving, your phone buzzed with a new message asking for a second date.

but as much as you enjoyed the date, once you were alone with your thoughts your mind wandered back to the last person you wanted to think about.

you knew he was on a date too, he told you it was that day. you didn’t want to know but he told you anyways because you’re his best friend, he wants to share that kind of things with you. but you wish he wouldn’t, that way your heart wouldn’t break every time he opens his mouth.

and as you thought about aemond kissing another girl, you typed your answer to cregan.

when the next day came, you didn’t feel any better.

and it only got worse the second you bumped into aemond outside the coffee shop you were supposed to meet cregan.

“there you are! i’ve been looking for you everywhere.” he says, kissing you on the forehead.

not everywhere because you were in your dorm all day and he never, not once, came looking for you. weird it wasn’t his first option.

“here i am.” you try to sound nonchalant, your lips barely curling upwards.

“aren’t you going to ask me how it went?” aemond looks excited to tell you all about his date and you feel guilty for not wanting to know at all.

“i really want to know,” what a fucking liar you are. “but i can’t right now. maybe tomorrow?” you try convince him with that smile that says ‘pleaaaaaseeeee’ but aemond, for the first time in forever, it’s not convinced. even his smile instantly disappears.

“why?”

but you don’t have time to give him an answer because the answer walks out of the shop, two coffee in each hand and a big and radiant smile that only grows the second you make eye contact. and it’s strange, because your face lights up just by seeing someone that was a total stranger less than 24 hours ago.

“i was starting to think you stood me up.” cregan says, not acknowledging aemond at all, and leans to kiss you on the cheek just to hand you one coffee. “to show you i was paying attention last night.” just by the smell you know he got your coffee order right.

aemond clear his throat and you both turn to face him. your cheeks are impossibly red and you avoid his eyes, choosing to look at your shoes instead.

“oh sorry,” cregan chuckles, and gives aemond a pat on the shoulder. “i’m going to steal her for a while, you okay with that?” you didn’t know you could be any more embarrassed, but it is possible. and you hate it.

aemond nods, looking at you one final time before turning around and walking away, leaving you with a strange and awful feeling in your heart.

but cregan soon makes you forget about almost everything. and it keeps happening for the next couple of weeks. but even him and his friends can’t make you forget about him.

you have barely seen aemond since that day in the coffee shop. you tried to call him the next day to apologize but he only texted you that now he was busy and he would give you a call when he could; but that never happened and since that day your friendship has been reduced to short and cold text messages. and it hurts. but you’re decided to not let another day pass without talking to him. or just seeing him. you miss him and you wonder if he misses you too.

but after trying to communicate with aemond all day, calling him and messaging him over and over again, you give up. he clearly doesn’t want to talk to you and as much as it hurts, it angers you too.

“i’m sure he’s just busy and will call you as soon as he can.” cregan tries to calm you as he walks by your side, his thumb brushing a strand of hair out of your face.

you only nod as an answer, looking at your phone hoping to see a text from aemond.

“hey, look at me.” he stops walking, his hands cupping your face, softly forcing you to look at him. “forget about him and enjoy the party, okay?”

it’s very sweet how he’s always making sure you are fine and listening to you talk about your best friend, not once telling you that he actually doesn’t like the guy.

you thank him by standing on your tiptoes to kiss his cheek, making him chuckle and hold your hand resuming your walk.

the first thing you notice when entering the living room are cregan’s friends drinking and chatting, but what draws your attention the most is aemond. sitting on a couch in a corner, cigarette between his lips as he looks annoyed at you two.

you fight the urge to walk to him. you miss him so much but it looks like he doesn’t miss you at all. he probably hasn’t even think about you. and that’s why you accept the drink cregan hands you, sitting by his side and trying to ignore the pair of blue eyes on you.

unbeknownst to you, aemond hasn’t stopped thinking about you since the day you accepted that date. he really thought you were going to say no and he still doesn’t know why he asked you to do it, but he regrets it so much.

but he also knows how selfish and childish he’s being.

he can't keep his eyes away from you as you laugh about something that has everyone laughing too. but he only can hear your laugh, loud and clear, and it's like a knife cutting through his chest. he wants to talk to you so badly, he has missed you like crazy, but doesn't know how to do it, what to say. he's pretty sure you're going to snap at him.

however, that doesn't stop him from following you when he sees you standing and walking away.

you're pouring some vodka in a cup when he enters the kitchen. his hands are sweating and he feels so nervous it's pathetic.

"so," he says, but you don't look at him, you just keep doing what you are doing. and that makes him even more nervous. "enjoying the party?"

there's a lot of noise, between the loud music and people talking, but the silence coming from you is louder than that.

"i was thinking," aemond says again, trying to make you talk or at least react. "maybe tomorrow we can go watch that movie you told me about."

you laugh and aemond smiles, feeling relief. but then you turn to face him and all that disappears.

"are you serious?" you ask him, but you don't give him time to answer. "that was months ago, i stopped asking you to go with me because you always had an excuse." you shake your head, looking at the liquid in your cup, not wanting to look him in the eyes; it's easier this way. "and when you did say yes, you never showed up."

it's his time to avoid your eyes, looking down embarrassed.

"i don't have time for this, aemond. you wanted me to meet new people? i'm doing exactly that, i don't know what's your problem."

"you don't have time for me." he whispers but you hear it, and your blood boils.

"it doesn't feel nice, does it?" you try not to cry in front of him but the more he stands there, looking lost and sad, the harder it is. there is something about finally giving you your place that makes you say the thing you never thought you were going to say out loud. at least not to him. "i'm in love with you, aemond, but loving you is hurting me. and i know it's my fault for never telling you and i'm not asking you to say or do anything... i just wanted you to know now that i feel things between us can never go back to the way they were."

aemond takes a step towards you, hands itching to touch you, but at the same time you take one step away from him. you know that if he touches you, the little wall you've created will come crashing down.

when you finally make eye contact, you can see the fight inside his head. you don't hate him, you hate yourself for not telling him sooner, for letting things go this far.

you smile softly at him before turning on your heels and walking back to the living room, swallowing all the tears.

cregan knows something happened the minute you sit and he doesn't hesitate to wrap his arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his side, placing a kiss to your temple.

aemond watches everything frozen in place, your words replaying in his head over and over again.

maybe he did know you were in love with him and that's why he did what he did. the real question is, is he in love with you? aemond realizes that doesn't matter anymore as he watches you and cregan together, and how comfortable you are around your new friends.

he's got a lot to blame for too.

the question now is; is he really willing to lose you?

#📮 ⌇ my works ˖⋆࿐#modern!aemond #aemond targaryen x reader #cregan stark x reader #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen scenarios #aemond targaryen angst #aemond targaryen x you #aemond x reader #cregan x reader #hotd fanfic #hotd imagine #hotd x reader

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starlightkun · 7 months

Text

❧ word count: 22.3k ❧ warnings: cursing, inaccurate descriptions of constellations bc this is a fantasy world ❧ genre: fluff, mild angst, slow burn, blind date, strangers to idiots friends to lovers, modern magical creatures au, college au, werewolf sungchan, human reader, ft. siren shotaro & various magical neos (and another extra special guest appearance!), same universe as strawberry sunday ❧ extra info: this work is set in the same universe as strawberry sunday but can be read as a standalone! there is no continuing plotline between fics in this universe, they simply take place in the same world/magic system and may have overlapping characters (neos may pop up in more than one work!) ❧ author’s note: so this is technically the spiritual threequel to my two werewolf jeno fics (pupsick + abh) but you still don’t have to read those to understand this one at all! this is absolutely meant to be read by itself! and this one is also very self-indulgent, from the a.c.e song title to werewolf sungchan, i had a very great time on this one, hence the word count. if you guys have even half the fun reading this as i did writing it, you’ll have a blast. enjoy! ❧ sequel

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ explore the strawberry sunday universe more here!

baby i’m your changer, changer, love is not a danger

Reclined on the plush, soft grass of the front lawn of your college with your hands behind your head, you basked in a particularly lovely patch of sunlight. It was January, the very beginning of the year and the semester, meaning that this would normally be a very chilly and unpleasant endeavor. Except you were sandwiched between two dryads. Dryads weren’t in and of themselves extra warm like dragons or werewolves, nor could one dryad on their own change the weather—and would most likely be influenced by it rather than the other way other—but if you got two together, and they were in a good enough mood, they could generate a little bubble of springtime around them. And for some reason, Jaemin and Donghyuck were in exceptionally high spirits today.

You knew the two dryads from Magical Botany Club, which you had joined your freshman year after you’d managed to kill the small cactus that your parents gave you as a housewarming present for your dorm. They were the only ones who didn’t immediately label you a lost cause, and instead saw you as a challenge. Now, your junior year, your apartment was a jungle to rival that of a dryad’s home, and you were even Vice President of the club this year.

After a long, refreshing inhale followed by an even longer exhale, you finally asked, “So what’s got you in such a good mood? It certainly can’t just be finalizing the calendar of club activities this semester.”

Jaemin was club President, and Donghyuck the Secretary/Treasurer, so this little sunbathing session before the start of the semester on Monday was really supposed to be an Executive Board meeting.

“Who, us?” Jaemin replied innocently.

“No, I was talking to the cardinal on Donghyuck’s leg,” you retorted sarcastically, gesturing to said bird that had also settled in to enjoy the cozy rays.

“We’re not planning anything,” Donghyuck said in the same tone as Jaemin.

You propped yourself up on one elbow to look down at your friend properly, narrowing your eyes at him suspiciously. “I just wanted you to share whatever good news you had, I didn’t think you two were planning anything, but now I definitely do. What’s going on?”

“Donghyuck, you idiot!” The other dryad hissed at him.

“What is it? Don’t tell me you and that fairy are going to try to convince your human friend that aliens are real again. Leave that poor guy alone, he’s got enough on his plate just dealing with all of you being real and jerks to him.” You scoffed disapprovingly, remembering when they recounted that story to you at club a couple years ago. You had been tempted to check on Renjun yourself when you spotted him at the library the next day, but you didn’t know him personally, and didn’t think he’d appreciate it in the moment. Especially not since he looked like he was really focused on his work at the time, so you just let him be.

“It’s nothing like that, I swear,” Jaemin promised. “It’s nothing bad at all.”

You sat up all the way to be able to look at both of them at once. “Okay, what is it then?”

Donghyuck sat up too, the cardinal hopping up to his shoulder. “Long story short, we have a friend that we want to set you up with.”

“No thanks, guys.” You shook your head.

“You won’t even let us tell you about him?”

“I’m not really looking for anything right now. Not after my ex—”

Jaemin pushed his phone screen in front of your face then, a picture of a guy on it. It was presumably the friend they wanted to set you up with. He was around your age, tall—if where his head was in comparison to the doorway of this building was to be believed, wearing a black leather jacket. It looked well-worn, though, as if it might not have been his originally, handed down or thrifted at least. And yeah, he was cute, you weren’t blind. But you also knew not to just eat with your eyes, or else you’d get a tummyache.

“Seriously, Jaemin?” You looked at your friend over the phone screen. “You think I’m that shallow? One picture and I’m going to throw everything away?”

“Dude, show her the—” Donghyuck flapped his hand at the other dryad insistently.

“Oh, right, right.” Jaemin nodded as he began swiping and tapping on his phone fervently.

Donghyuck kept talking to you, “Of course we don’t think you’re shallow. We always meant to tell you about him, too. His name’s Jung Sungchan, he goes here, too, he’s a werewolf, he’s really nice, uh… Jaemin? Some help?”

You let out a sound that was a mix between a snort and a scoff. “Yeah, he sounds great.”

“Okay, he’s really more Jaemin’s friend than mine, sorry,” Donghyuck admitted. “Jaemin? What’s taking so long dude?”

“I don’t know! I can’t find it for some reason, I think he deleted it!” Jaemin muttered, his voice panicked. “I’m checking Jeno’s Instagram right now.”

“So Jeno knows him?” You asked. You didn’t know Jaemin’s werewolf roommate as well as you knew the two dryads, but you did know that they were all friends. “Are they in the same pack?”

“No, they actually know each other through Jeno’s… Ha! Found it!” Jaemin yelled out in celebration, flipping his phone around for you to see.

It was another picture, this time of Jeno standing next to the person you now knew to be named Sungchan. They were at what looked like a u-pick strawberry patch, each proudly holding up a large bucket filled to the brim with strawberries. Sungchan was in a white tank top—a brave choice for a strawberry farm—and shorts. Despite the outfit showing off a lot more of him than the last picture, it was his bright, happy grin that caught your eye, and you had to consciously make sure your gaze didn’t linger too long on the picture.

Turning your attention back to your friends, you prompted Jaemin, “Well? Do you know any more about him than he goes to our college and is a nice werewolf that knows Jeno?”

“Right! Yes!” Jaemin sat up straight at attention as you saw Donghyuck do a little fist pump of victory out of the corner of your eye. “He’s tall—”

“I can see that, he’s like almost two heads taller than Jeno; I meant his personality. This isn’t me saying yes, by the way.” You pointed to yourself and Jaemin talking. “This is me gathering data. I wanted to take time for myself after what happened with my ex, remember? I think it might be enough time, but I need a bit more than ‘he’s nice’ to get me out there.”

“Of course, of course. I really appreciate you even considering this for us,” he squeezed your arm for a moment before letting it go. “He’s really smart, Dean’s List every semester, uh, it might take a minute for him to warm up at first, but once he does, he’s funny, and insightful. And he doesn’t have that constant go-go-go energy that werewolves usually do, he’s so much chiller, so if you were worried about that, don’t be.”

“And, sorry, I know he’s your friend, but I have to ask…” You winced. “He’s not one of those werewolf guys that only dates human girls as like… you know… an ego thing?”

Donghyuck snorted, “Oh he’s not, promise.”

Tension you didn’t know you’d been carrying in your shoulders relaxed at that. “Good.”

“We do have to tell you one thing though,” Jaemin grimaced.

“What?”

“This isn’t just a random set-up because we think you guys would be cute—”

“Oh God, what’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing! Nothing!” He rushed to reassure you. “Like, that part is true, we do think you’d be a good match.”

“Let me guess: the ‘but’ that follows that sentence is related to the ‘long story’ that Donghyuck mentioned earlier?”

Jaemin nodded reluctantly. “Yeah… long story long, Sungchan made a deal, and his end of it was letting us set him up with anybody of our choosing.”

“You’re using a date with me to punish him?” You stood up, brushing the grass off your back. “Yeah, hard fucking pass. Thanks, guys, you really know how to make a girl feel special.”

“No, not a punishment!” Jaemin scrambled to get to his feet as well. As you walked off, the air around you turned cold again, marking when you left their bubble of spring. He called after you, “Y/N! I’m sorry! Please!”

You didn’t want to go back to your empty apartment yet though, so you found yourself meandering into a familiar storefront. Jasmine & Pearls, a boba tea shop just around the corner from your college campus. There was only one customer ahead of you in line, and you stared blankly at the menu just to look at something. You weren’t feeling very adventurous today, so you’d probably get your regular go-to order. After the customer before you had been helped, you shuffled up to the counter, messing with your phone case to pull your punch card out of the back of it.

“Hey, Y/N!” Shotaro, the siren working behind the counter today, greeted you cheerily.

The iridescent pink scales under the tip of his button nose and apples of his cheeks shimmered in the fluorescent lights, making him look like he had a perpetual hint of rosy blush across his skin. That, and his cherubic smile could almost make you forget what those scales and his flashing silvery eyes really meant—he was a siren, could lure you to your death if he so wanted to. Obviously, he didn’t want to, had no reason to, and that would literally be a murder charge nowadays, but you nevertheless found it fascinating that such a being was just here serving you boba tea.

A few months ago, you realized that you came here probably too often once all the workers knew your name, but by then it was too late. It was just too convenient, delicious, and pleasant of an atmosphere for you to feel ashamed enough to stop coming.

“Hi, Shotaro.” You smiled back at him. “Just a regular honey milk tea with boba, please. No charms today.”

“On it!” He accepted both your punch card and credit card from you. After handing them back, he spun around to make your drink, and you went to go wait for it at the bartop at the other end.

Curious, and with nothing better to do in that moment, you pulled up Jeno’s Instagram on your phone. From the main grid on his account, all you could see was pictures either with or of his partner. Cute. Then you finally saw one of them at a strawberry patch, Jeno in the same outfit as the picture Jaemin had shown you before. You clicked on that one, and sure enough it was a whole set of photos. You swiped through to find the one of him and Sungchan holding the buckets of strawberries. And Sungchan was tagged.

You looked up at Shotaro. The customer ahead of you still hadn’t gotten their drink. You checked the notifications on your phone. Nothing new to reply to. Well, here it goes. You clicked on his account.

And he was private. Well, good for him. Internet privacy.

You went back to Jeno’s Instagram to check if Sungchan had maybe appeared in any more posts. You just wanted to see if you could glean anything more about him.

You finally found him again in what looked like a big group trip to Cape Solaria at the end of last summer. There were probably fifteen people here at least. He popped up in a few different shots, playing beach sports with Jeno and some other guys that you didn’t recognize; joining in on throwing some poor small guy—who you presumed to be a witch, judging by the ritual tattoos he was covered in from neck to ankle—into the ocean; and sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows with Jaemin and Renjun. And in every single one, Sungchan had such a genuine, pure, joyful smile. Like he was fully enjoying the moment and the people with him. Yeah, maybe you were projecting, but... surely it wouldn’t hurt to give it at least one chance?

“Y/N? Hello?” Shotaro was calling for you from the counter, shaking a drink that was presumably yours.

You snapped your head up, sheepishly turning your phone off and stuffing it away in your pocket. The other customer was nowhere to be seen; it was just you and the siren.

“Sorry, sorry.” You rushed up to accept the cup.

“It’s alright, you seemed like you were in the zone.”

You grabbed a straw, punching it out from the plastic wrapping. “In the zone of a little cyberstalking, as much as I hate to admit.”

“No shame here, we all do it. Who was it? Can I see?” He grinned mischievously.

“No,” you said flatly, stabbing your straw through the top of the drink. “My friends want to set me up.”

“Want to? Sounds like you haven’t said yes.”

“Perceptive.” You took your first sip.

“But you were cyberstalking them... So, you’re considering?”

“Ugh, I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Why not? Human lives are short.”

“Right. Thanks for that reminder.”

The bell above the front door rang then, announcing the entrance of another customer.

“Always here to help,” Shotaro patted your forearm before walking back to the register to greet the newcomer.

Two weeks later and you were nervously double-checking the name of the restaurant and the time that Jeno had sent you. Yep, this was it, and you weren’t weirdly early. You couldn’t believe how strange this felt, going on a date again. Comparing your outfit to the casual café as you walked in, you felt only a little better that you weren’t overdressed or underdressed either.

Your eyes scanned the building for Sungchan. You’d done enough cyberstalking on your own time in addition to the photos that your friends kept showing you to hype you up that you were certain you’d recognize him easily. It looked like you’d gotten here first. It was seat-yourself, so you might as well grab a table for the two of you.

You’d just come to a stop in front of a little two-seater and took your purse off to hang off the back of your chair.

“Y/N?” A voice came from behind you, accompanied by a gentle tap on your shoulder.

You spun around, immediately face-to-chest with someone. Looking up, you did, in fact, recognize the face of Jung Sungchan. He was admittedly cuter in real life than in the multitude of pictures that Jaemin and Donghyuck had continued to show you in preparation for the date. You didn’t want to know what they’d been doing to prepare Sungchan.

“Hi, Sungchan?” You still phrased it like a question, watching as the man’s features relaxed into an easy smile of recognition.

“Yes, hello.” He raised his arms up slightly at the same time that you did, and you realized that the both of you were now presumably having the same internal debate about if you were supposed to hug your blind first date hello as a greeting.

Ultimately, the two of you did go in for an awkward short hug, and you let out a nervous chuckle, feeling the warmth radiating off of him in the brief contact. You immediately looked down at the table, “Uhm, should we sit?”

“Of course, yeah.”

And as the two of you sat down on opposite sides, you looked up from your fidgeting fingers to your date’s face, not expecting his brow to be furrowed as if he were troubled by something, his gaze affixed on you.

You shifted in your seat uncomfortably. “Is everything okay?”

“You’re not wearing any perfume...” He commented, and you let out a minuscule sigh of relief. That’s all it was, he was just a bit put off that you hadn’t put on a perfume like one might’ve normally done for a date. A detail that he would’ve of course picked up as a werewolf.

“Not that I expect any brownie points for this, but I uh, I didn’t want to overwhelm your nose, in case there were any smells you’re particularly sensitive to,” you explained, picking up the menu that was already sitting on the table.

“You did your research.”

“Oh, I’ve dated a couple werewolves before, actually.”

“Really? You got a type or something?” As soon as the word were out of Sungchan’s mouth, he went to take them back, seeming surprised even at himself, “Sorry, that was—”

“No, no, I get it,” you cut off his apology, your tone reassuring. You knew that there were people who had a disturbing preference for werewolves, so you could understand why you dating now three werewolves might initially look a little suspicious. “Uh, I went to a kind of small high school. Private school. There were a couple of packs in my area that sent like all of their kids there, so my graduating class ended up being like 75% werewolves. It was just kind of statistics, I guess.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry about that, again,” Sungchan apologized once more, relaxing in his seat a bit more as he actually started to peruse his own menu.

“Anyway, that’s not a great first date topic.” You forced out a light-hearted chuckle.

“What’s not?”

“Past relationships? I think that’s third or fourth at least, don’t you?”

“Mm, yeah, of course. Sorry.”

Desperate to redirect the conversation to a much lighter, neutral one, you asked, “So what’s your major, Sungchan?”

“Earth Sciences.”

“Geology or Climatology track?”

He perked up at this. “Meteorology and Climatology.”

“And what made you want to study that?”

“Well, at first I thought I wanted to study astrophysics, but it was too much math and too little actual space. But I really liked my Intro to Weather class I took my first semester to cover a random credit so I switched to that and it stuck.”

“Wait, was it a morning Monday-Wednesday-Friday with Professor- Professor...” Suddenly, the memory struck you. “Oh! Hwang? Fall semester three years ago?”

“Yes, I believe so...” He answered, head tilting with intrigue.

“I think I had it too!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! I took it to get that Science credit as well.”

“I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember you at all.”

“It’s okay, I don’t remember you either,” you laughed, just amazed at the coincidence. “It was a big auditorium.”

Sungchan must have figured out what he wanted, as he set down his menu and leaned his elbows on the table to give you his full attention. “So what are you studying?”

“I’m an Interdisciplinary Major,” you told him happily, thrilled that the conversation was going much more smoothly now. “I was a bit indecisive, too. Except I couldn’t find one thing that stuck like you did. So I chose two: Sociology and Magical Creatures Studies.”

His eyes dropped from yours as he scoffed under his breath, sitting back in his seat.

And there went your pleasant conversation again.

“What was that?” You asked tersely.

“I didn’t say anything.” He shook his head like he was trying to clear the unpleasant tone from the conversation, but you weren’t going to let him go that easily.

“No, but clearly you have an opinion. So go ahead.”

“Not really, I was just wondering if you’ve even dated anyone that wasn’t a werewolf.”

You crossed your arms over your chest. “You think my major is just me cruising for a new boyfriend or something? Very expensive and essay-intensive compared to dating apps.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Y/N,” Sungchan held his hands up, looking back up at you again. His features turned apologetic. “I just… I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“So were you going to actually ask me that if I didn’t confront you, or were you just going to make assumptions?”

“That really was rude of me,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “But, I mean… how do you ask someone something like that without coming off as a bit rude?”

“I suggest phrasing it like a genuine question instead of an accusation.”

“Right.” He took a second as if to compose himself, then asked, his tone much more conservational, “So, you said you dated a couple werewolves in high school. Uh, have you dated anyone else since coming to college, then? Before this?”

You did your best to return your own voice and manner to civility as well. “Dates here and there, but as for serious relationships, just one, I dated a human guy briefly.”

“And why did you break up? If you don’t mind telling me. I get it if it’s too personal.”

“It’s fine. He cheated on me.”

“So you’re of course looking for loyalty. Like, you know, a dog.” Sungchan fired back spitefully.

“Okay, I think we’re done here, Sungchan,” you declared, putting both your hands on the table to prepare yourself to stand.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry,” he rushed to try to apologize for the umpteenth time that night, but you’d heard plenty by now.

“No, it’s fine, really,” you assured him, still moving to get up out of your chair and grab your purse. “You’ve obviously had some bad experiences in the past, none of which I’m privy to. It’s not fair to you to constantly be suspicious that your date has ulterior motives for being with you. But it’s also not fair to me to have to constantly defend myself either.”

He was quiet at that.

You continued, “We both deserve to be able to relax and have fun, and that’s clearly just not going to be able to happen. It’s okay, sometimes things just don’t work out. So, I’m going to go, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.”

And with that, you turned around and left the café.

The ringing of the bell above the door of Jasmine & Pearls barely registered in the back of your mind as you lumbered right up to the cash register the next day.

“Good afternoon, Y/N!” Shotaro greeted you cheerily.

“Hi, Shotaro...” You couldn’t muster up anything close to his level of enthusiasm, letting out a sigh. “Same old, same old, please.”

“Uh oh. Sounds like the date didn’t go so well?” He surmised, ringing you up then starting on your order.

“No, it didn’t,” you leaned against the counter to keep talking to him. “Barely lasted ten minutes.”

“That’s rough. You end it or did he?”

“I did. It was for the best but still... I thought I was going to really like this guy.” Based off nothing but social media posts and word of mouth from friends, but you really were hopeful. You’d had a good feeling, and had trusted Jeno, Jaemin, and Donghyuck. And it blew up in your face.

Note to self, never fucking trust those three again.

“Don’t feel too bad, Y/N. Seems like it’s going around.”

“What do you mean?”

“My roommate’s date last night was a bust too.”

“We should make a club,” you chuckled cynically.

“Or I can set you up?” The siren offered hopefully.

“Thanks, but I’m good. I said I was going to take some time to focus on myself after my last relationship, and I meant that. Last night was me testing the waters, and I fucking drowned.”

“That special, huh? Or, I guess not, in the end.”

“Well, at least now I know, you know? No ‘what if’s to mess with.”

Shotaro enthusiastically slammed your drink down in front of you. “Hell yeah, Y/N. A clear head.”

“Exactly.” You pulled the cup over to you.

He put the packaged straw down on top emphatically. “Fuck that guy.”

“Bit extreme, Shotaro, but I appreciate the sentiment,” you grinned, hitting the straw against the counter to pop it out from the plastic wrapping.

“You’re coming to our Valentine’s Day event next month though, right?” Your friend asked, pointing to the poster taped to the wall advertising the event. The evening of February 13th at the boba shop, with a special themed drinks menu and activities to do.

“Of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Great!” He beamed at you.

“Anyway, I’ve got to go, and you’ve got more customers. See you.” You took your drink with you towards the exit that a whole gaggle of high schoolers had just come through, waving to the siren over your shoulder.

“Bye, Y/N!”

Pulling open the door of Jasmine & Pearls some weeks later, you were immediately greeted by an array of red, pink, and white. The entire store had been redecorated for the event. A short stage was set up against the far wall of the dining area, a small photobooth in another corner, and a station where you could learn to make an origami heart, if the pictures on the instructions taped to the wall above it were anything to guess off. The shop was already bustling and buzzing with energy, filled with couples and groups of friends. All in all, it looked like it was shaping up to be a successful night for them.

You got into possibly the longest line you could remember having waited in at Jasmine & Pearls in a while—you’d learned the rush times and had become a pro at avoiding them in order to get your boba fix as quick as possible—and continued looking around with a smile on your face.

Unfortunately, you were flying this one solo. Your friends were all either working or studying tonight, and you weren’t going to flake after already promising Shotaro just because you couldn’t find someone to come with you. But you could have plenty of fun by yourself. And, you didn’t make any promise to stay the whole night. You’d stay just to finish your drink and maybe make an origami heart or two, depending on how good you were at them.

Finally, it was your turn to order, and you walked up to the register already with a big smile on your face.

Shotaro was manning the register while another employee fulfilled the orders. Your friend’s face lit up immediately. “Y/N! You made it!”

“I told you I would. Did you doubt me?” You questioned in mock offense.

“Not for a second,” he declared. Pointing to the little standee menu that was on the counter, he asked, “So what’ll you have? I recommend one of our specials for the occasion, obviously.”

You looked over the three new drink options that were advertised as for tonight’s event only. One in particular caught your eye, strawberry milk tea with heart-shaped brown sugar tapioca pearls, and an added feel-good charm. “That Lovebug sounds good.”

“Perfect! I knew you’d get that one! Coming right up!” He rang you up, but only took your credit card from your hand. “Sorry, no regular punch cards tonight. Instead, every purchase of a drink comes with a special event-only punch card.”

“Oh?” You raised your eyebrows as he handed you a small pink card with four circles on it, one already punched out with a heart-shaped hole punch.

“Yep! If you complete all the activities we have tonight, you can redeem it for a free drink! You’ve already gotten a punch for purchasing a drink, then we’ve got the photobooth—” he pointed to the large box. “Just bring your photo strips up here, and I’ll punch the card for you. And the origami, same thing. They don’t have to be professional, as long as you tried, just show them to me, and I’ll give you another punch. And then my boss, Baekhyun, is going to be hosting Valentine’s Bingo in like ten, fifteen minutes. He’ll punch everyone’s cards who participates.” He gestured to the stage, where you now saw a man starting to mess with a microphone and small table. “Don’t worry, you can play single.”

“Huh. Sounds good to me.” You tucked the card into your pocket. “Thanks, Shotaro.”

“Your drink will be out in a second!”

When you finally heard your name being called out by the other employee, you walked up and took the cup from him gratefully. It was another siren, who you weren’t nearly as familiar with as Shotaro, but you still offered Yuta a smile as you accepted the drink.

You looked at the heart-shaped boba at the bottom of the cup fondly. “Cute. Thanks, Yuta.”

“Of course! Now enjoy the ambiance.” Yuta shooed you away with a smirk.

You saluted him casually. “Heard.”

Meandering around the store, you took in the kitschy decorations in various heart, Cupid, rose, and arrow shapes all around. Despite your own striking out in the romance department as of late, you couldn’t find yourself wanting to muster up any morosity for the atmosphere. It was too endearing, and you were someone who just loved love. And maybe the feel-good charm in the boba pearls was doing its job pretty well.

Legally, Jasmine & Pearls couldn’t sell any charms that had effects as strong as alcohol, drugs, or hexes, or they’d need special licenses for that, but the little charms and enchantments available in some of their boba options could influence one’s mood for a short amount of time. Feel-good, tranquility, energy, focus, that kind of stuff.

A lot of the tables had been pushed to one side to make room for the stage, so you took your drink to the bar seating that was against a window, keeping your eye on the figure on stage. As he was readjusting the microphone, you caught a flash of scales under his skin, realizing that he too was a siren, and suddenly the employment choices felt a bit more intentional than coincidental.

Red and pink heart-shaped confetti had been sprinkled along the bartop, and you brushed some of it aside to be able to set your cup down. You were humming along to the love song playing over the speakers as you scrolled on your phone when you swore you heard your name. Straightening up a little, you listened carefully for it again.

“Y/N?” Someone gently tapped on your shoulder this time.

You turned around atop the stool you’d been sitting on, not prepared for who was behind you. Jung Sungchan was standing there, hands stuffed in the pockets of his worn black leather jacket. Honestly, you hadn’t thought much about him since your date five or six weeks ago. Your focus had been on school— with this being your junior year, you had a lot to get together in order to be ready to apply for grad schools, Botany Club, still going to work, and keeping up with friends around all this somehow. One failed date that wasn’t even in your top five worst dates hadn’t really been keeping you up at night. And yet somehow here he was.

You were sure that the surprise was evident on your face, and you probably left just too long of pause hanging in the air before you finally said something. “Oh, Sungchan, hi.”

“I thought that was you. Hey.” He offered a friendly smile.

“How are you?”

“I’m—” He was cut off by a distant shout of his name that only got closer.

“Hey! Sungchan!” It was Shotaro, the siren approaching with a prepared drink and straw, shoving them in the werewolf’s hand. “Dude, you can’t just walk away from the counter like that while we’re making your drink, then I have to come chase you down when you don’t hear your name.”

Sungchan accepted it from the employee guiltily. “Sorry, Shotaro.”

“Anyway! I’m glad you two have met.” Shotaro beamed at the pair of you, throwing an arm around Sungchan’s neck. “Y/N, this is my roommate I was talking about, Jung Sungchan. Sungchan, this is Y/L/N Y/N, she’s a regular here and goes to our college.”

Your eyes widened minutely in alarm as you suddenly connected way too many dots. Oh god, Shotaro’s roommate had an awful date, Sungchan is Shotaro’s roommate, you and Sungchan had gone on a date that night, the very same date you had also complained to Shotaro about. And who knows what terrible things Sungchan might have told the siren about the date, about you. After all, you had been the one to walk out on him.

You felt like you were going to puke as Shotaro gave Sungchan a sharp slap on the shoulder, winked at you behind his roommate’s back, and walked back to his station behind the counter.

After a heavy, long, awkward pause, Sungchan finally spoke up. “So… what did you get?”

“Oh, uhm… the Lovebug. What about you?”

“Me too, same. Lovebug.”

Another pause as you watched Sungchan open his straw and poke it through the plastic seal covering the top of the drink.

“So are we going to address the elephant in the room?” You decided to just get it over with.

“Which one? I feel like we have a whole herd at this point.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Okay, fair. I meant Shotaro. I’ll be the first to admit that I confided in him after our—I’m sorry to say but—disaster of a date.”

“That’s a generous assessment, actually.” Sungchan agreed. “And I told him about it too. I mean, we live together, it was hard for him not to notice when I came back home less than an hour after I left.”

“Ah, yeah…”

“I didn’t say anything bad about you, by the way. I told him it went horribly, because I ruined it, of course, but you were perfectly lovely. Truly way more level-headed than I deserved.”

“Oh, no, Sungchan,” you tried to reassure him. “Really, like I said before— Sometimes things just don’t work out.”

“I know. But still, I treated you awfully, and I am really, really sorry about that.”

“Thank you.”

A crackling came from the speakers up front, snapping your attention back to the man on stage. Baekhyun had gotten the microphone connected, and you saw Shotaro darting from the stage to his spot at the register as his boss called for everyone’s attention. “Hello? Hello? Great, this is working.”

He flashed a dazzling smile to the small crowd. “Hi, if you don’t know me, I’m Byun Baekhyun, I own Jasmine & Pearls here. If you’re in line, don’t panic, we’re not starting quite yet. I just wanted to thank everybody for coming out here tonight, this is honestly a much better turnout than we had expected. I, of course, also want to thank my two incredible employees, Shotaro and Yuta, for working tonight too.”

The two sirens behind the counter both waved as they got a round of applause, then everyone’s eyes were back on Baekhyun.

“We’re going to be starting Valentine’s Bingo in about five minutes or so. I just want everyone to know that you will need a partner for this. So if you came out here by yourself, find another single person out there and you know… get talking.” He grinned, and you swore his gaze lingered on you and Sungchan for a millisecond too long to be coincidental. “Okay, awesome, I’ll be back up here in five to get it started.”

Your eyes flashed over to your friend that was working, remembering exactly when he told you that you could play the game by yourself, and now suddenly you needed a partner. Shotaro was contentedly ringing up a customer’s order, though, seemingly not even paying you nor Sungchan any mind.

“So, uh, want to partner up? For the bingo?” Sungchan asked, then rushed to tack on, “Unless you’re waiting for somebody?”

“I’m not waiting for anybody,” you smiled, gesturing to the stool beside you for him to sit down.

“How have things been with you?”

“Good, they’ve been pretty good. Just a lot of school and Bot Club.”

“Bot Club?”

“Magical Botany Club. I’m the Vice President this year.”

“Oh, cool. So that’s how you know Jaemin, then.”

“Yeah, yeah. Him and Lee Donghyuck, we’re all on the board together.”

“How’d you get into it?”

“Because I sucked at gardening,” you admitted with a laugh. “My freshman year, my parents gave me this cactus to have in my dorm, and I killed the thing somehow. They can survive in deserts and the most extreme climates in the world, and it perished in my dorm room. I joined Bot Club hoping for some tips, and everyone just immediately thought I was beyond help. Jaemin and Hyuck were the only ones who actually took the time to help me. And it took a lot of time.”

Sungchan was smiling too, genuinely. “You must have grown to really like it, to stick around after getting your cactus caretaking tips.”

“Yeah, I do.” You nodded. “What about you? How’s school been for you?”

He grimaced a little. “Could be better, honestly.”

“Oh no? Why? What’s wrong?” You frowned.

Before Sungchan could answer, another person had approached the two of you. It was Baekhyun, a stack of square bingo cards in one hand and box of markers in the other. His silver eyes seemed to glitter in the lights as he smiled at you, his opalescent scales refracting a whole rainbow of colors where they sat just under his skin along his cheekbones, bridge of his nose, and forehead.

“Hi!” He greeted the two of you cheerfully. “Are you two together?”

“Oh, uh, yes,” Sungchan nodded, reaching out to grab your bingo sheet and marker before the store owner flitted off to the next pair of customers.

He set them down on the counter in between the two of you, but your focus was still on your conversation.

“So what’s wrong, Sungchan?” You asked, taking another sip of your drink.

“I mean, it’s just been a bit stressful is all,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “One of my professors asked me to do research with him, and then I took an SI position with another professor too, on top of all my classes. Just kind of got a lot on my plate.”

“Oh, okay. But that sounds like a great opportunity, at least. Your professor asking you to do research with him.”

“It is, it’s some seriously cool stuff.”

“What’s—”

Baekhyun clearing his throat into the microphone from the front cut you off, and you gave the werewolf an apologetic look.

“Sorry. But I do want to hear about it later, Sungchan,” you squeezed his arm before turning around to face the stage.

“Alright, we’re going to be getting started then.”

As Baekhyun kicked off the first round of bingo, you found yourself tapping the marker against the bingo card as you sat there. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Sungchan awkwardly leaning over as he tried to look at the sheet too, and you realized you’d been hogging it.

“Oh, sorry, here,” you moved the sheet more into the middle, at the same time that you scooted your stool over towards him to lessen the gap between you. “Is that better?”

Sungchan’s shoulder was just behind yours as he looked over you at both the card and the stage. “Yeah, yeah, thanks.”

“Did you want to mark them off? Sorry, I just grabbed it without thinking.” You offered the permanent marker out to him.

“No, it’s all yours.” He shook his head, then tapped his finger to the middle spot. “But you did forget the Free Space.”

“Oh, shit, thanks.” You crossed it off with an X.

Baekhyun called out number after number, and you and Sungchan worked together to search the small card for them.

You clicked your tongue as you couldn’t find the one the shop owner had just called out, and were about to pick your cup back up to take another sip of your drink, when Sungchan spoke up happily.

“Found it!”

“Oh, where?” You hovered the marker over the card, scanning the little letters and numbers.

“Right there.” He’d pointed, but his hand was gone too fast, and you lost it again.

“Wait, where?”

“Right…” he reached over to wrap his own hand around yours that was holding the marker, and dragged it over to the correct square. You giggled as he guided your hand to draw a messy X like you were a toddler learning to write your letters for the first time. “…There.” He finished, letting go of your hand.

“Ahh, okay,” you nodded slowly. “I see… I’m illiterate.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say it.”

“Hey!”

Sungchan laughed as you gave a half-hearted smack against his chest, and you couldn’t help but smile too. After all, it was your self-deprecating joke first.

He patted your back, apologizing through his chuckles, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Apology taken under consideration.”

“Oof, I don’t like the sound of that. Anything I can do to better my chances here?”

“Hmm,” you hummed, pretending to think as you tapped the capped end of the marker against your bottom lip.

Sungchan watched you, his elbow resting on the bartop and his cheek in his hand. The only thing separating you two was the bingo sheet, the game which you weren’t even focused on anymore. Your back was entirely turned to the stage now, gaze set only on the werewolf next to you.

Just as you’d parted your lips to make your proposal, you happened to hear Baekhyun announce the next number.

“O13!” The siren’s voice carried well through the speakers. “O13!”

You let your eyes flick down, immediately catching on that open square on your card. And it completed the row. You marked it off, a giddy grin spreading across your face as you went to elbow Sungchan. “Look!”

“Oh damn! Nice!” He raised his hand, as did you, as he called out. “Bingo! We got bingo!”

Baekhyun’s features lit up as he stopped his progress of reaching for the next bingo ball. He practically purred into the microphone, “Well, well, seems like we’ve got our first bingo. If one of you could read it out so I can double-check it, then we’ll see about getting you two your prizes.”

Sungchan called out your five spaces, and Baekhyun nodded with each one, the room erupting into applause when he declared that you two had won that round.

“Alright, come up here so I can give you your prizes and punch your tickets.” The siren waved you up.

You looked to Sungchan expectantly, and he gestured for you to go up ahead of him. Instead, feeling a bit uneasy with the entire café’s eyes on you, you latched onto his forearm and dragged him up right alongside you.

“So you each are getting a gift card to the shop—” He handed you two small cards, then turned around, where Yuta had appeared with a couple more items. Baekhyun then handed each of you a denim baseball cap that had the logo of the shop on the front in lilac purple thread. “And Jasmine & Pearls embroidered hats. Thank you so much for coming here and playing.”

You accepted both prizes from him, feeling over the embroidery on the cap with your finger.

“And if you’d give me your event punch cards, I’ll go ahead and give you your punches now, since you unfortunately, won’t be allowed to play to win again. Fairness and all that.”

You and Sungchan handed over your punch cards, and the siren gave each of you another heart-shaped punch before giving them back.

“Now, we will be playing two more rounds, so don’t worry if you didn’t win this time,” he announced to the rest of the crowd as you and Sungchan headed back to your seats. “I’ll hand out brand new cards to everybody, and we’ll restart. Y/N and Sungchan, you’re free to play again for fun, if you’d like. You just can’t play for profit.”

Sungchan looked over at you in a silent question, and you shook your head. You were happy to play and win just the one time. After all, with everybody else still occupied, this would be the perfect time to do the other activities with little to no lines or crowding.

“No thank you, we’re bingo-ed out for tonight,” Sungchan called out, and the host nodded graciously.

“Very well. Everybody else hold tight while I come around to distribute new cards.”

As the two of you finally sat back down at your seats and looked over your prizes, you realized that you had never introduced yourself to Baekhyun. Not when he had passed out the cards, nor when he was giving you your prizes. But he knew your names. You snapped your head up towards the counter suspiciously again, but Shotaro was once again minding his business, cleaning out one of the machines.

Sungchan was readjusting the sizing of his hat, then finally pulled it on, offering you a lopsided grin. “What do you think?”

“Looks good on you.” You tapped the brim of it, feeling a familiar airiness in your chest, one that you hadn’t felt in some time. “You wear baseball caps a lot?”

“For sure, so I’ll get good use out of this.”

“Wear them for fashion or do you play a lot of sports?”

“Oh, uh, both, I guess? I like how they look, and I usually wear them when I’m out playing whatever to keep the Sun off my face, yeah.”

The pictures from Jeno’s Instagram of Sungchan on their trip to Cape Solaria suddenly came to mind, and you diverted your eyes down to the gift card in your hand as your skin started getting warmer and warmer. At this rate, he was going to be able to hear your heartbeat picking up the pace and the idea of that in and of itself was embarrassing enough to make it gain even more speed.

“So…” Sungchan inhaled, and you looked up with both your eyebrows raised.

Admittedly, you’d completely forgotten where the two of you were in your previous conversation. “Hm?”

“Do you want to finish the other two punches together?” He asked. “I know they’re not partner things, but we’re both here, and everyone else is busy doing bingo, so it’s probably the best time to do them and—”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” You grinned at him, standing up off your stool. “I’d love to, Sungchan. Besides, you’re still supposed to tell me about your research, remember?”

His features lit up as he followed you over to the origami station. “Right, right! Are you sure you want to hear about it, though? It’s on climate change and how it affects human disease, it’s a little doomsday-ish.”

“Ah, perfect for the holiday.” You pointed to the giant paper cut-out of a cartoon Cupid hanging above your heads, then reached for your first square of red paper. “I’m sure, go for it.”

“Okay, cool,” he beamed at you, grabbing a piece of patterned pink paper.

As Sungchan walked you through all the intricacies and machinations of the topic that his research with his professor was on, you were genuinely happy at how much you understood. He didn’t mind slowing down to answer your questions, or explain concepts that you didn’t know already. And you two could have an actual conversation tangential to the topic, because you had taken a Magical Conservation class just last semester that dealt directly with how climate change was affecting a lot of magical creatures, such as sirens who typically lived in and around glaciers that were now losing much of their native habitats due to the lack of year-round sea ice at the poles. And all the while, you both tried your damndest to make an origami heart.

“Okay, what the fuck?!” Sungchan huffed, cutting himself off in the middle of a thought about disease vectors. He smacked his crumpled piece of paper that looked nothing like a heart onto the table. “I’ve taken engineering classes, how am I getting bested by a primary school arts and crafts project?”

“It’s not a—”

“It literally says ages 8 and up on the instructions.”

You pressed your lips together in a line. “Ah. So it does.”

Yours didn’t look much better. It seemed as though you were both getting bested by a project meant for children.

“Well, Shotaro did say we just had to show him we tried and we’d get the punch,” you reminded him.

“No, no, I can get this,” he shook his head, grabbing a fresh sheet. “I just need to focus, and not talk while I do it. You’re too much of a distraction.”

“My apologies, I’ll be quiet this time,” you chuckled, covering your mouth with your hand as you leaned against the table to watch him try again.

He made every fold with precision, but you found that you weren’t really watching him fold so much as you were watching him. His brow was set in concentration, a small crease emerging in the knit of his brows, his eyes narrowed slightly, and the very tip of his tongue poking out from between his lips. It was cute, adorable, endearing, everything in the thesaurus, and you could’ve sat there and watched him fold origami hearts all night if he wanted to, punch card and free drink be damned.

Sungchan stood up straight, his features relaxing into a proud grin as he held his completed piece up for you to see. It was definitely a heart this time, a simple baby pink color, and you were amazed at how straight the lines were.

“Nice, Sungchan!” You praised him. “That’s what those engineering classes were for, huh?”

“I wasn’t going to let some project for ages 8 and up that Shotaro picked out get the best of me!” He declared, and you could practically see his chest puffing out with pride. “I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “So that’s what this was? Fragile STEM major ego?”

He narrowed his eyes at you. “Isn’t sociology a science?”

“I think you’re the first hard science major to ever say that.”

“It ends in -ology.”

“So do phrenology and astrology.”

“Fair. But seriously, is it not?”

“It is. But usually, you engineering and whatnot majors don’t like to consider us ‘soft sciences’ like sociology and anthropology and psychology to be ‘real sciences,’ whatever the hell that means.”

“Ohh, yeah… I’ve got better shit to do than tell a scientist that they’re not a scientist.”

“Like make children’s crafts.”

“Exactly.” He gave you another smile brighter than the Sun.

You nodded firmly. “A much better use of your time. Now, are you ready to take these to Shotaro?”

“Yeah, let’s go!”

As the two of you walked up to the counter, you continued your earlier conversation, “And I will remind you that I’m actually an Interdisciplinary major, and also study MCS. Both of which are considered humanities, a label that I wear with pride, even more so than the ‘soft science’ one.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Sungchan’s mouth as he looked down at you. “Noted.”

Shotaro was standing at the register, hands folded over each other and a smug smile on his face as he watched the two of you approach together. “Well, hey, guys! Congrats on your win!”

“Thanks, Shotaro.” You smiled back, holding your paper heart out to him. “We did the origami too.”

Sungchan held his up too, and you could see the proud look on his face as he did so.

“His is a lot better than mine,” you admitted as the siren took just a second to appraise them. Seeing the two side-by-side, yours was a bit misshapen, folds across parts that were supposed to be flat from you having to undo and redo parts over and over again.

“That’s okay! You guys just had to try,” Shotaro reminded you, picking up the hole punch. “Punch cards please?”

With just one punch left, you and Sungchan headed over to the photobooth in the corner. It was set up so that you didn’t have to pay for any of the films. Sungchan climbed in first, and you watched nervously where his head almost hit the top of the entrance.

“Goddamn this thing is tiny,” he observed as soon as he had poked his head in past the curtain.

“Is it small or are you a giant?” You asked pointedly.

Sungchan had fully entered the photobooth then, and retorted back, “Get in here and find out.”

As you parted the curtain and put just your first foot in, you immediately realized how cramped the two of you were going to be. “Okay, maybe a bit of both.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sungchan was already sat on the bench, and pressed himself as far back into the corner as he could to give you enough space to sit next to him. Your leg was squished in next to his, and his arm ended up around your shoulders. He was warm, as expected for a werewolf, whose body temperatures all ran naturally higher than humans.

As he shifted his shoulders and arm to settle around you, he double-checked, “Sorry, is this alright? It’s tight in here—”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” you turned your head to give him a smile, but were instead caught off-guard by just how close his face was to yours. If either one of you shifted forward right now, you would hit noses. Your breath hitched in your throat as you made eye contact with him. Oh, he could definitely hear your heartbeat in the tiny space afforded by the photobooth, surely as clear as you could hear it thudding in your own ears. God, you’d always thought he was cute, but something about being so close, and the lights in here hitting the angles of his face just right, he was striking, handsome. You curled your hands into fists in the material of your pants, not trusting yourself not to grab him and do something too wildly out of pocket.

The screen played a short melody at you, knocking you from your trance, and you turned your focus back to your task.

Pressing a couple buttons on the touchscreen, you looked between the height of the camera and Sungchan, squinting. “Is your head even going to show in frame?”

Sungchan swallowed, then cleared his throat before he spoke, as if his mouth had gone dry. “Guess we’ll find out after.”

“Alright, it’s a four-cut.” You announced after skimming the easy illustrated instructions. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.” He gave you a thumbs up.

“Okay. 1, 2, 3.” You pressed the start button before sitting back in your seat against him again.

You smiled and held up a peace sign for the first one, and in the split second of the flash going off, you heard the werewolf next to you curse under his breath, “Fuck! That’s bright—” accompanied by the feeling of him flinching back, and immediately followed by a distinct thud.

Turning around as much as the space could allow for, you saw Sungchan curled in on himself, his eyes squinted shut presumably both in pain from the flash and from where he had just smacked the back of his head against the wall of the photobooth, judging by the hand he was cradling it with.

“Ooh! Sungchan, are you alright?” You asked through giggles, unable to get over the comical thunk! sound that his head had made.

Another flash went off, startling him into hitting his head again with another bonk! and this time you couldn’t help but burst out into full-bodied laughter, turning back toward the camera to not laugh directly in the poor guy’s face. You could barely see the third and fourth flashes because your eyes were squeezed shut as you laughed, running out of air and having to prop yourself up with a hand on Sungchan’s knee to not keel over.

Finally, you started sobering up enough to squint your eyes back open, and through your tears, you saw Sungchan smiling down at you as well.

“Alright, I don’t know if it was that funny…” he sighed, still holding his head.

“I’m-I’m sorry,” you tried to apologize through your wheezes. “It was the sound, and the two in a row, it was just too much for me. I’m not laughing at your pain, I promise. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. Thanks.” He reassured you, dropping his hand from his head and resting it on the one that you still had on his knee. “I… I really like your laugh.”

Your hand suddenly tingled. “Oh. Thank you…”

After a beat, he shifted his gaze from yours. “So where do the films print out at?”

“Uh, on the outside of the booth. Should be two, one for each of us.” You said quickly, getting up to exit the booth and put some space between the two of you again.

Sungchan followed you out, and you easily found the dispenser, where there were in fact two film strips. He grabbed them for you, looking over them first. A smile spread across his face as he continued holding them, and you started getting antsy the longer that you hadn’t seen them.

“What, are they that bad?” You asked with a light chuckle.

“What?” He snapped his focus up to you.

“You’ve been smiling at them for an awful long time. Did I blink or something?” You joked, knowing very well that you were laughing for half of them.

He sucked in air through his teeth, shaking his head regretfully. “Yeah, I think for your own sake, I should keep both of these. I mean, I look great but—”

“Sungchan, let me see!” You reached for them, but he yanked his hand back from you at the last second.

You lunged for them again, but he once again kept them just out of your reach, a sly grin on his lips. The next time you tried to grab them, he held them above his head, and he most unfortunately had a significant height advantage over you.

You were already in his personal space from grabbing for them before, practically chest-to-chest (well, really chest-to-face), and now had to crane your neck straight up to look at them. With a huff, out of breath, heart racing for more than one reason now, you weakly pulled on his shoulders as you pouted, “Sungchan, please!”

“Here, I warned you.” He said melodramatically, handing you one copy of the film strips.

You eagerly held it in both hands, scanning over the four pictures on it. The first one was normal, it looked like Sungchan had taken your lead and both of you were smiling and throwing up peace signs. The second one was where everything went to chaos. Sungchan was wincing in pain in the corner, holding his head, as you had the back of your head to the camera, one hand reaching uncertainly towards him. In the third, you were turned back towards the camera, a little blurry as you laughed, and Sungchan was squinting one eye open to look at you. And in the last one, you were still laughing, leaning on Sungchan for support as there was nothing but simple joy on your face; and Sungchan’s features had relaxed out of pain as he gazed down at you with a fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Not as wide as yours was, but no less dim.

“These are so cute! You liar!” You elbowed Sungchan in the side.

“You didn’t let me finish. I look great, but you look radiant.”

“Good save.” You joked, but couldn’t suppress the smitten grin that wormed its way across your face. “And I’m keeping mine.”

Sungchan reached into the pocket of his jacket then, pulling out his pristine, baby pink origami heart from earlier. He held it out to you. “I-I wanted you to have this, too.”

“Aw, Sungchan…” You accepted the paper heart from him.

“Feel free to throw it out when you get home, I get it.”

“Hey, stop that.” You pinched his forearm where the sleeve of his jacket had fallen down. “Don’t do something sweet and then immediately take all the sincerity away by covering it with a layer of self-deprecation. If you’re going to be a sweetheart, own up to it or don’t do it at all.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, and you could see a flush creeping up from his collar to his cheeks. “You’re right. I wanted to give you that, sans trash can.”

You were beaming, tucking it into the inner pocket of your jacket and patting it. “Thank you, Sungchan. I’d offer you mine, but I think it really should go in the trash.”

“Look who’s not taking her own advice, hm?”

“Alright, if you want it,” you sighed, taking your own lumpy attempt at the origami heart out of your pocket and handing it over to him.

Sungchan plucked it from your fingers smugly. “Thank you.”

“I expect you to be buried with that now, by the way.”

“I’ll be sure to write it in my will.”

The two of you were still chuckling as you walked up to the counter again, your film strips and punch cards in hand to show them to Shotaro. Your siren friend reviewed the pictures with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“You guys are so cute,” he commented so very subtly. “But uh, what happened here, Sungchan? Did you hit your head on something? How did you manage that one?”

As you covered your mouth to hide your giggles at the memory of the double bonk! resurfacing, Sungchan took his film strip back from his roommate. “Alright, are you going to give us the punches or not?”

Shotaro punched the final heart-shaped holes into both your cards. “And with that you’ve completed all the punches! Unfortunately, you can’t redeem the free drink tonight, but by all means, you are more than welcome to stay and hang out some more. We’ve got extended hours tonight, so you can keep doing the activities if you like, or just, you know… stay and chat or something.”

“Right, thanks, Shotaro.” Sungchan led you away with a hand on your back.

You ended up back at your original seat that you had sat at for the bingo game. The game finished while you were in the photobooth, the other patrons now milling around the shop again. Some were sitting, sipping on their drinks and enjoying each other’s company, others at the origami stations, others lining up at the photobooth, and still others back at the register ordering again. You looked down at the film strip in your hands before tucking it away safely with Sungchan’s origami heart. Looking around, you saw that Baekhyun was making rounds now that he was done hosting bingo, greeting customers and having conversations with everyone he stopped to talk to.

You didn’t want to leave yet, to have this night be over, to have your time with Sungchan be done. At least not without knowing if you’d see him again. This had been fun, really fun, and you wanted to see him again. Every bad first impression of him you’d gotten from your date had been wiped away.

“Hey, Y/N?”

You snapped your focus back over to him at the sound of his voice, trepid and unsure. You offered him a reassuring smile as you replied, “Yeah, Sungchan?”

He had taken his hat off, and was messing with the seam along the bottom band nervously. “I know I already said this, but I really am sorry for everything I said to you before. I was so incredibly wrong about you.”

“And I’ve already said thank you, so I suppose I’ll say I forgive you this time.” You squeezed his forearm. “So would you stop apologizing now?”

“I know we can’t start over completely, but…”

“Yes?” Your voice pitched up hopefully, your heart soaring along with it.

“Friends?”

Splat. Your heart plummeted back down with tremendous velocity.

It took all your willpower to keep your face from showing the disappointment you’d felt, and even then, you were sure it still fell minutely. You slapped on a rehearsed, customer service smile for him, too shocked that you’d apparently misread everything so badly to do much more than go through a script of what you should say. “Yeah, sure. Friends.”

Sungchan beamed at you, another heart-stopping, adorable, lopsided grin that now made your chest squeeze painfully. “Okay, great! Thank you, seriously!”

You threw open the door to Jasmine & Pearls the next morning so violently that it swung back the other way and rang the bell twice.

“Shotaro.”

The siren perked up to greet you. “Oh, Y/N! Back to redeem that free drink already, huh?”

“Sungchan here?” Your eyes flicked around the shop warily. You couldn’t see him, but now that you knew that the two of them were roommates, you had to be more careful.

“Oh, I see.” Your friend grinned, crossing his arms over his chest. “No, you just missed him, actually, he had class, popped in on his way to campus.”

“Thank god,” you groaned, collapsing into a stool near the pick-up counter, face in your arms.

“Uh, I’m going to make you a drink. Your usual?”

“Sure…” You mumbled, the sound even more muffled by your arms.

As Shotaro prepared the drink, he picked your conversation back up. “Now, what happened? You two looked like you were having a lot of fun last night. Not to pat myself on the back too hard.”

You lifted your head up just enough to rest your cheek on your arms so your friend could hear you when you spoke. “Did he tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Remember that awful date I went on last month?”

“Vaguely.”

“And Sungchan went on a bad date the same night.”

“Yeah. Did he do some kind of ‘all cards on the table’ confessional with you to try to scare you off?” Shotaro sighed, tossing his hand towel over his shoulder and putting his hands on his hips. “Listen, don’t worry, I know he says he ruined his date that night, but really he’s a big puppy—don’t tell him I said that, he’ll tear my throat out.” He paused, as if realizing what he had just said. “And don’t worry about that ‘tear my throat out’ thing either, I swear he’s super sweet. Honestly, something must have been wrong with that girl, he’s not—”

“It was me.” You cut him off bluntly.

“Huh?”

“Sungchan and I were each other’s terrible date that night.”

The siren slapped a hand over his face with a groan. “Oh my god, what did he do?”

“Now you think he did something? Two seconds ago, you swore there was ‘something wrong with that girl.’” You raised your eyebrows.

“Yeah, but I know you, Y/N. Him saying he fucked up and made you walk out? I can believe that.”

“We don’t have time to unpack all of that, but thanks, I guess.” You settled your cheek in your hand instead. “Anyway, it was all a mismatch at the time. He had his reasons, and I had mine, and I left. I didn’t harbor any ill will towards him, nor had I even thought about him until last night.”

Shotaro snorted, placing your finished drink in front of you. “Oh, well, can’t say the same for him.”

“What?”

“Whatever he did, he felt terrible about it. He kept talking about how he wanted to apologize to you, but he didn’t think you’d want to see him.”

You blinked at him. “Seriously?”

“I just thought it was like when you accidentally say ‘you too’ when the waiter tells you to enjoy your food and then you can’t stop thinking about that interaction for the next six months.”

Remembering the gist of your very short conversation from your one and only date with Sungchan, you shook your head. “No, not quite.”

“But it seems like you two made up last night, right?” Shotaro asked, head tilted.

“Yes, last night was so much fun. It’s what our first date should have been. We got to talk, and get to know each other, and joke, and laugh, and maybe flirt a little bit; and he’s funny, and smart, and a lot of fun...” You explained, trailing off pitifully at the end.

“So what’s the catch?”

“Well, I don’t know why I thought that at the end of the night, when he said,” you dropped your voice to mimic Sungchan, “‘I know we can’t start over completely, but—’ I don’t know why I thought that was going to be followed up by him asking me out, but it wasn’t.”

The siren’s jaw dropped. “It wasn’t?”

“Nope. Friends...” You said with weak enthusiasm, giving him two thumbs-up and a feigned smile as if you were being held at gunpoint.

“Ooh, Y/N...” Shotaro grimaced.

You dropped your head into your hands in defeat. “And somehow I feel even stupider than I did leaving that date.”

“I’m going to ask him what the hell he’s thinking.”

“No the fuck you’re not!”

“Y/N—”

“I told you this in confidence, Osaki Shotaro, not so you could you blab how pathetic I am right back to him!”

“But I just did that with him to you.” He pointed out innocently. “Seems a bit unfair.”

“Thanks for just agreeing with me on the pathetic part.”

“Well—”

“You’re not helping!”

“I’m trying!” He threw his hands up in exasperation. With a sigh, he came up to lean against the counter, voice turning sympathetic once more. “Look, Sungchan probably just thinks that you would want nothing to do with him romantically after he ruined it so stupendously last time. So he doesn’t even want to put you in the awkward position of rejecting him again— or, he at least thinks you would reject him again.”

“You really think so?” You asked quietly, watching a bead of water run down the side of your cup.

“Best I can come up with.”

And all the hope in your chest puttered out like a limp, half-filled balloon. “So that was a guess.”

“I’m a siren, not a mindreader, sorry.”

“Ugh, I’ve got to go. Thanks, Shotaro. For the boba. You were useless otherwise.”

“Bye!” Your friend waved to you cheerily.

Being friends with Sungchan was pretty easy, actually. You already had a lot of the same friends (it was sort of weird that you hadn’t met before that date, you realized), and as long as somebody else was there, it was easy to ignore the ever-present, ever-growing crushing pain in your chest whenever you were with him. You didn’t like that it was like this, you hated being that person pining over one of their friends who had explicitly said that they just wanted to be friends. You’d tried to get yourself to feel like this about other guys—the cute phoenix in your Criminology class, or the funny gryphon that you were partnered up with for a project in your Introduction to Interdisciplinary class. But it was useless, your thoughts always came back Sungchan. And you weren’t friends with him in hopes that one day it would be different, either; you really didn’t want to be that friend. You were just enjoying Jung Sungchan, in whatever capacity you got him in.

And right now, that was a rather tenacious study buddy. When you’d off-handedly mentioned an upcoming test that you hadn’t studied for yet, he immediately made you compare schedules so that the two of you could do a study session before it. So now you were reviewing flash cards of some key concepts as Sungchan was hunched over a notebook of his own. Working on his research with his professor, you were pretty certain. He switched between his computer and handwritten notes so frequently that you weren’t sure how he kept it all straight, and all the numbers and Greek letters and letter letters made your head swim trying to decipher it. As long as it all made sense to him.

It all mostly made sense to you when he would explain it to you, if you were actually listening to the words he was saying and not just thinking about how nice his voice sounded, or how pretty he looked that day. Your brain was truly rotting from the inside out.

And you two were alone. You didn’t know if he had invited any of your other friends and they couldn’t make it or if this was a “just us” thing. That was something that he did that always made it so hard for you to keep your rule of never hoping for more. Sometimes you two would hang out and invite Shotaro and Jaemin and Jeno and Jeno’s girlfriend and maybe even some more of their friends that you weren’t as familiar with; and sometimes when you’d ask if you should invite anybody, Sungchan would reply with a shoulder shrug and a casual non-explanation that this should be a “just us” thing. You could never delineate what made an activity worthy of a group invite or a “just us” thing.

You stared at your screen with immense focus. Not on what was on the screen, your thoughts had long drifted from dryad folk tales and were now in an endless rumination on what the hell a “just us” thing was. You’d been to group study sessions and study sessions with just Sungchan. Group movie nights and movie nights alone with Sungchan—those were an especially bittersweet kind of awful, as he liked to share blankets. Group dinners and dinners with just the two of you. So what made something a “just us” activity? What was the—

Something in your periphery caught your attention, and snapped you out of your pensive thoughts that you’d been stewing in. It was a small, white, origami heart being pushed up from the bottom corner of your computer screen. You took it, smiling at Sungchan across the table from you, who sat up straight now that he no longer had to reach so far to deliver it to you.

Upon second glance, it looked like the heart was made out of notebook paper from his spiral notebook with notes on it in blue ink. You squinted to make out some of It in his messy scrawl, but gave up after reading just a portion of a complicated, technical word.

“Thanks, Sungchan.” You ran your fingertip along the crisp edge of the paper heart.

This had been one habit he’d picked up since the Valentine’s Day event at Jasmine & Pearls, he now made origami hearts whenever his fingers grew restless and he had access to a suitable piece of paper that could be torn to size if needed. You were usually the target of receiving them and now had a steadily growing collection in a small jar on your coffee table. You didn’t have it in you to throw them away.

“Something wrong, Y/N?” Sungchan asked. He had presumably noted the intense way you’d been staring at your screen the moments prior. “Or is the material just that bad for your test?”

“Ehh…” You sighed, rolling your neck out. “Just tired. Ready for the semester to be over, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Is this made of your notes, by the way?” You held up the origami heart.

“Stuff I had to rip out and redo, I messed it up.”

You then stood up to crack your back, groaning at the cathartic cracking sounds that came with it. “God, I think my spine needs to be folded up like that origami, holy shit.”

“Fix your posture,” Sungchan snorted. “You sit like a little shrimp using a computer.”

Your jaw dropped as you put a hand to your chest, unsure of whether to laugh or be offended. Ultimately, you keeled over with laughter, having to plop back down in your desk chair—hunched over—to catch your breath again. Sungchan was watching you with a fond smile, reclined back in his chair with some not very great posture himself.

“A shrimp?”

“A little shrimp,” he corrected you. “A cute little shrimp using her little computer and fucking up her back in the process.”

“Alright, it’s not my fault you’re literally a tree. Anybody is a little shrimp compared to the man who almost broke a photobooth because he was too tall for it,” you teased him back through the fresh squeezing of your chest at him calling you ‘cute,’ even if it was followed by the words ‘little shrimp.’

“You’re never letting me live that one down, huh?”

“Never. I’ll be telling that story at your funeral, where you’ll be buried with my mangled origami heart, remember?”

“You’re banking on the fact that you’re going to outlive me in this scenario.”

“Right, my bad. Werewolves are the hardier species, so obviously you’ll outlive me.”

“Well, statistically—”

“Statistics say nothing about the power of spite, Sungchan. I will outlive you out of spite, so that I can tell that story at your funeral. And if not, I will have a backup recording of me telling that story, and in my will, have orders that it be played at your funeral.”

“You’re going to put it in your will to make sure you have the last word in case I outlive you? Which, statistically, I will.”

“Yes.”

The two of you held your defiant eye contact for another moment before you burst out in coordinated laughter, all tension fizzling out.

“I do expect that fucked-up origami heart to go down with you, though,” you pointed at him through your laughs, still only half-serious.

“Only if one of the hundreds I’ve given you by now makes it down with you,” he nodded, holding his pinky finger out.

You linked yours with it. “Deal.”

“Deal.”

As you walked out of the library together after you’d finally determined that your studying was over, Sungchan checked his watch.

“You doing anything else tonight?” He asked.

“Nothing in particular.” You shrugged. “Eating dinner. Sleeping. Why?”

“Want to come over?”

“Is Shotaro going to be home?”

“He’s closing at the shop today I think.”

You bit the inside of your cheek. Apparently sensing your hesitation, Sungchan nudged your side as he teased, “What? Am I not fun enough for you? You need Shotaro there to convince you to come over, too?”

“Yeah, you’re such a snoozefest, Sungchan,” you wrinkled your nose, elbowing him back. “Taro’s the only thing that keeps me from falling asleep every time I’m over at your place.”

“You hurt me, Y/N.”

With a melodramatic sigh, you relented, “I suppose I’ll make an exception. But I will nap where I see fit if you bore me too much.”

“I’ll take my victories where I can get them.”

At Shotaro and Sungchan’s place, you followed Sungchan into his bedroom. Normally, if Shotaro were home, the three of you would all hang out in their living room. But it was just you and Sungchan.

He toed his shoes off and flopped onto his bed face-first, spread-eagle.

“Oh, and who were we worried about taking a nap?” You scoffed, taking his desk chair. He had a gridded whiteboard above his desk that was mostly taken up by a to-do list of upcoming deadlines. But a small area labeled “Notes” by the company who made it was dedicated to pictures instead: the film strip of you two from Valentine’s Day at Jasmine & Pearls hung there by a magnet in the shape of a hurricane, a picture from the group trip to Cape Solaria from last summer under a tornado, and another of a younger Sungchan and Shotaro (early high school if you had to guess) at an arcade pinned by a tsunami.

Your friend rolled over onto his back. “I’m not napping, just basking.”

“Basking? In what?”

“Being done with today.”

“Have a bad day?”

“Just long. Had a long week, long semester, long three years.”

“Mm, felt that,” you agreed, knocking your own shoes off and folding your legs up in the desk chair.

The two of you were quiet for a while, and you would’ve thought that Sungchan had actually fallen asleep, if you couldn’t see that his eyes were open as he apparently just stared at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling with even breaths. You let the silence remain, content to just rest your arms on the back of the chair with your chin atop them, and look at him.

“Y/N?” He finally spoke, his voice soft.

“Yeah?”

Sungchan’s head lolled so he could look over at you, his warm brown eyes focused on your face. He had an unreadable expression on his features; not one of sadness, or pain, or really much of anything. It was like he didn’t even know what he was feeling. “Have you gone on a date? Since... you know, the one we went on?”

You blinked. You weren’t sure what exactly you were expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. After a moment, you shook your head. “No, I haven’t. Have you?”

The corner of his lip twitched, but from your positions, you couldn’t tell if it was pulling towards a smile or a frown. “No.”

Another beat of silence. You continued staring at each other.

“Do you want to?” He asked, his voice so unnaturally devoid of intonation that you once again couldn’t glean the purpose of this discussion.

“What?” The word tumbled out of your mouth fast, defensively.

“I-I mean, are you going to? Like, is there anybody...?”

You looked at him, taking a good few seconds before you answered. He at least seemed nervous now, stuttering, his eyes flitting between you and the ceiling fan.

“No.” You answered plainly. No qualifying statements: any attempts at expounding would just land you in trouble. “You?”

“No...” He echoed. “You would tell me, right? If you were?”

This felt like a trap. Not from Sungchan, you knew he wasn’t like that, but from the Universe, somehow. And no matter what you did, you were going to fall into the spike pit.

“Yeah, Sungchan, of course.” You mustered up your well-practiced casual smile. “Always need approval from the counsel of friends for that kind of stuff.”

He did smile at that—not a full one with teeth, and it didn’t reach his eyes—but he smiled and nodded. “Good. Got to make sure they’re not a weirdo. You know there’s all kinds of magical creatures who will just date human women for the ego trip in bed, right?”

“I did know that,” you chuckled. “But thanks for looking out for me.”

“Always am, Y/N. And I always will be.”

Rocking back and forth from your heels to your toes nervously, you kept your eyes trained on the apartment door in front of you. Sungchan knocked on it. Your actions were stopped by your friend grabbing your arm and pulling you back down to flat feet.

“Y/N, I told you it’s going to be fine, seriously. They’re your friends, too,” he reminded you for probably the twelfth time that day.

When he’d randomly texted you earlier that morning asking if you wanted to go to Jeno’s birthday party with him tonight, you were very hesitant to accept. Mostly because you hadn’t received an invite from the birthday wolf himself. But after some more pestering from Sungchan, you gave in. Maybe if you didn’t have such a weak heart, you would’ve been firmer on your no. But instead, here you were, having signed your name under Sungchan’s on the birthday card the two of you bought on your way over, a gift card tucked inside with enough money pre-loaded on it to cover a nice meal for Jeno and his girlfriend.

“Then why didn’t he—” Your whispered question was cut off by the door swinging open, the bright smile of Lee Jeno greeting you.

“Hey guys, come on in!” The werewolf opened the door even wider, not seeming surprised at all to see you there next to Sungchan. He gave the both of you hugs after closing the door behind you.

You patted his back in the hug, offering a sheepish smile, “Hey, Jeno, Happy Birthday. Sorry to just show up. Sungchan insisted it was fine…”

“Oh, don’t worry about it! Everyone knows if we’re inviting Sungchan that we’re inviting you, too. It’s cool.” He said brightly. “You want something to drink?”

Trying not to get stuck on that little information bomb he’d dropped so casually, you looked around the fairly packed apartment, recognizing most everyone who was there, including a couple people by the drinks table. “You know, I see Jaemin and Donghyuck over by the drinks, I’ll go get it myself. Thank you, though, and Happy Birthday again.”

Jeno perked up in a different direction as if he’d heard his name being called—which he very well could’ve with his superior hearing—and he took off, disappearing into the kitchen. You’d been to Jeno and Jaemin’s place a few times before, mostly to hang out with Jaemin over the time that you’d known the dryad from Bot Club, and more recently, a couple times for group hangouts since Jaemin, Jeno, Jeno’s girlfriend, and Sungchan were all friends.

“I’m going to get some food,” Sungchan nodded towards the same direction Jeno had gone in. “Want anything?”

You stood on your tiptoes, unable to discern any of the options they had available, other than the fact there would be a lot of it to feed the werewolf guests. “Just get extra of whatever you think I’ll like, I’m not very hungry right now.”

“On it.”

While he went to do that, you made your way across the living room to the two dryads you had spotted earlier, both standing by the drinks table.

“Hey…” You said, still feeling awkward despite Jeno’s easy acceptance of you.

“Y/N! Hey!” Donghyuck greeted you cheerily.

“You made it!” Jaemin gave you a one-armed hug.

“Sounds like you were expecting me then?”

“Well, yeah.” Donghyuck said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world (which was bewildering to you, considering you didn’t even know you were coming until this afternoon).

The two dryads exchanged a look.

“I mean, Sungchan was coming, so…” Jaemin shrugged.

Donghyuck peered around the party. “Speaking of, where’d your wolfboy go?”

“He went to get some food. And he’s not. my. wolfboy, you little shit.” You glared at him. “And don’t call him a wolfboy either, you know he doesn’t like to be called stuff like that. Call Jeno ‘puppy’ or whatever all you want but leave Sungchan out of it.”

“I thought he didn’t like dog terms, but wolf terms he was fine with, since he is a werewolf.” Jaemin said.

“Yeah.” Donghyuck nodded.

You put your hands on your hips with a frank sigh, “As if wolfboy isn’t also diminutive and meant to—”

“Woah, abort, abort, Y/N’s going into Renjun-mode.”

Jaemin looked over at the other dryad regretfully. “Worse than Renjun-mode, this isn’t just educational.”

“You two are so obnoxious, I’m going to stage a coup in Bot Club one of these days,” you declared with a scoff.

“Hey...” Another voice entered the conversation from over your shoulder, and you looked up to see Sungchan stepping in between you and Donghyuck, a plate loaded up with food in his hand.

“Speak of the wolf and he shall appear.” Donghyuck had a wicked grin on his face. You were amazed sometimes that he wasn’t a fairy.

“What were you guys talking about? Y/N didn’t look happy.”

“It was nothing, Sungchan, don’t worry about it.” You tried to reassure him, sending pointed stares at each of the dryads with you.

Donghyuck was apparently not going to let up, though. “Hey, Sungchan, you down to do a little thought experiment with me?”

“Thought experiment?” The werewolf echoed.

“Yeah, just real quick. I ask you a hypothetical question, you give me a hypothetical answer. Just for fun.”

“A thought experiment with Donghyuck. Sounds thrilling, sure.” Sungchan agreed humorously, popping a piece of food in his mouth.

“So, if someone were to call you dog-like terms—which we know you’re not cool with and would never do—who would you most be okay with doing that?”

The werewolf narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why would anybody do that?”

“It’s a thought experiment, Sungchan, come on. Play in this space with me!” Donghyuck whined, shaking the other man’s shoulder.

“Let’s rephrase then,” Jaemin joined in, a mischievous glint in his eye. You looked around to make sure Chenle wasn’t secretly listening in or something, because this surely had to be the work of your fairy prince acquaintance. You spotted the fairy very engaged in his conversation with his dragon roommate Jisung and a few other people. It seemed like the two dryads really were just deciding to be the absolute worst all on their own.

“Narrower scope. Would you be okay with, for example, Y/N calling you stuff like that?”

“Why would she do that?” Sungchan asked, confused.

“Yeah, why would I do that?” You asked, angry. They were clearly trying to get at something specific, make him admit something.

Jaemin offered an example, “Well, you know, Jeno’s girlfriend calls him ‘pup’ as a term of endearment.”

“And why would I do that?!” You repeated, feeling your stomach drop to the floor at how exactly he stressed those words.

“We’re getting off-topic here, it’s all hypothetical, remember?” It was amazingly Donghyuck who sort of saved you. “We know Y/N would never do it. But like… if she did, for some reason unbeknownst to us, what would you do? Would you be okay with it?”

Sungchan’s brow was furrowed as he seemed to genuinely contemplate this while he ate another bite of food. You, meanwhile, were plotting how best to kill two dryads. You knew enough from Bot Club, maybe a super-strong version of the magical weed spray you used would work... Were dryads more plant or more person?

“Well…” The werewolf finally began his answer, seeming to choose each word carefully. “Since I know Y/N, I know that if she were, in this batshit, hypothetical scenario, to do that, that she wouldn’t mean it in a derogatory way. So I guess I’d be more okay with her doing it than other people. Definitely more than you two weirdos who are posing this thought experiment that isn’t fun at all.”

“Thank you, Sungchan.” Donghyuck grinned at him, then turned to Jaemin. “I thought that was very fun and enlightening. What about you, Jaemin?”

Jaemin nodded thoughtfully. “I had a great time. Y/N?”

“You guys are so fucking annoying.” You groaned, grabbing a piece of food from Sungchan’s plate. “Leave me out of your thought experiments next time, please.”

The spring semester ended not long after Jeno’s birthday party, and you very thankfully didn’t have to take any summer classes, freeing up a lot of spare time for you. Sungchan, on the other hand, had to take a couple courses in order to make sure he would graduate on time. While you jokingly whined and complained when he told you about it, you were secretly relieved to have extra reasons to avoid him. As terrible as that sounded.

This afternoon, while he was in class, you had gone down to the river with Shotaro and Yuta, who miraculously both had a day off work at the same time. You didn’t even realize Jasmine & Pearls had enough employees to let the both of them take the same day off.

You were sat in your pop-up chair on the small beachy area, pulling your phone from your bag to check it while the two sirens continued lazing about in the waist-deep water. There was a text from Sungchan from a few minutes ago, and as you opened it up to read it, you realized that he was just sending you a funny picture he’d found somewhere online.

[you: aren’t you supposed to be focusing on class right now?]

“Sungchan?” Shotaro called out to you knowingly.

“What?” You yelled back, holding a hand up to shadow your face from the sun. Looking around your chair, you grabbed your baseball cap that you’d won in Valentine’s Bingo, pulling that on now that you were out of the water.

“You’ve got this little smile on your face that you only get when Sungchan texts you.”

“No I do not.”

Yuta stood up from where he had been floating on his back, shaking the water out of his hair as he asked you with a smirk, “So you don’t have a text from Sungchan on your phone screen right now?”

Your phone buzzed then, a welcome excuse to not have to answer that.

[sungchan: allegedly]

[you: i don’t want you whining to me when you fail that class]

You clicked your phone off, showing them the blank screen. “Nope, nothing on my screen.”

“You’re such a liar,” Yuta sighed, saying it as if it were as simple of a fact as the sky being blue or the grass being green. He trudged through the water up the shore until he could join you, plopping down in his chair next to yours. They had both kept their legs this afternoon instead of bringing out their tails, and he kicked his apart as he got comfortable.

Shotaro jogged up from the water too, grabbing the cooler and rooting around in it for a second. After securing the other half of his sandwich from the lunch that you all had eaten earlier, he sat down next to Yuta, taking a big bite from it.

You took Yuta’s lead and settled back in your chair, closing your eyes and just enjoying the warmth of the late afternoon Sun.

“He talks about you all the time, by the way.” Shotaro cut into your peace and quiet. If you had something within arm’s reach other than your metal reusable water bottle, you would’ve thrown it at him.

“Shotaro...” You groaned, rolling your eyes. You didn’t even need to ask who he was talking about.

“Seriously! ‘Y/N and I did this today.’ ‘Don’t wait up for me, I’m going to the movies with Y/N.’ ‘Y/N told me this funny story today.’ ‘Did you know such and such about this or that? Y/N’s so smart.’” He admittedly did a pretty good Sungchan impression. You would’ve laughed at it in any other context, but instead you were just annoyed.

“Yeah, well, we’re friends. We hang out, and do things together. He’s going to be talking about me,” you snapped. “He talks about you a bunch too. Because you guys, you know, live together. He also talks about his professors, and Jeno, and—”

“But it’s not the same.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He insisted.

Shotaro clearly wasn’t going to let up, so you momentarily engaged this line of thinking, hoping you could squash it. “What’s so different, then?”

“He’ll find just any reason to bring you up, for one. We’re grocery shopping? ‘Oh, Y/N likes this flavor.’ ‘We should pick this up for when Y/N comes over.’ ‘Shotaro don’t get that, Y/N doesn’t like it.’” His impression turned more high-pitched and whining. “We’re watching TV? ‘This reminds me of when Y/N and I did this...’ ‘I bet Y/N would love this show, we should watch it the next time she comes over.’ ‘Y/N has a shirt just like that character.’ We’re hanging out with other people? ‘Hey Sungchan, what uh, what are you giggling at on your phone over there?’” He first kept his normal tone of voice, then switched into his over-the-top fake-Sungchan. “‘Oh, Y/N just texted me something funny. But it’s an inside joke, so you guys wouldn’t get it, sorry.’ ‘Man, I wish Y/N could’ve come, sucks she had to work.’”

“Are you done?” You asked tersely, unamused.

“I could go on ad nauseum—”

“One could argue you already have.”

Yuta snickered.

“—but let’s call it there.”

“Thank God.”

Shotaro wasn’t done with his spiel yet, though. “I have had multiple friends, when he’ll first bring you around somewhere, quietly ask me if you’re Sungchan’s girlfriend and they like, missed when you two started dating.”

“I get it, I get it.” You said firmly, bringing a hand up to rub your face.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Y/N, you’re an MCS major, I’m sure you’ve heard about what can happen to werewolves if there’s something discordant in their lives that isn’t alleviated?”

“You think he’s going to get pupsick because he’s allegedly got a crush on me?” You sputtered out in disbelief, your voice caught between a chuckle and a scoff at how absurd that sounded to you.

“It happened to Jeno.”

“Yeah, but he’s Jeno. With all due respect and no intention to kinkshame, he probably lets his girlfriend put a collar on him.”

Yuta shot up as he cackled, slapping his knee and coughing. He scrambled to grab his water bottle, taking a couple sips as he struggled to catch his breath.

Shotaro pushed on like you hadn’t said anything, “Now, I don’t want to have to put up with a pupsick Jung Sungchan, do you? That sounds awful. For me, obviously, since I live with him.”

“Shotaro, you are half-right about one thing.”

“And what’s that?” He asked smugly.

“I am kind of an MCS major. So I also know that Sungchan isn’t overly touchy with me, he hasn’t given me anything of his that smells like him, he doesn’t feed me, or do any other pre-mating behaviors that are ingrained in werewolves.” You ticked them each off on your fingers. “Look, I hate stereotyping you guys by your species. But if he’s apparently so down bad that he can’t help but talk about me every waking second of the day, wouldn’t at least one of these things that are literally instinctual to him have happened?”

Shotaro raised an eyebrow. “You do know that he’s half-werewolf, right?”

“What?” You blinked at him.

“Yeah, his mom’s a werewolf, and his dad’s a human.”

You’d had an MCS class on the Effects of Modern Integration, which had a unit specifically on the subject of cross-species offspring. Some species could have offspring together while others couldn’t, it depended both on genetic similarity and compatibility of their magic. With humans having no magic, that left only genetic similarity as a factor, making them a lot more compatible for producing such cross-species offspring. Werewolves and humans were one of the more common pairings to have such offspring, as they had one of the most extensive histories of living together.

Sungchan’s behavior on your first and only date immediately sprung to mind. His hesitance around humans dating werewolves just because they’re werewolves. “Are they...?”

“Happily married. They helped us move into our apartment last year.” Shotaro apparently knew exactly where your question was going. “But yeah, Sungchan’s half-human. As best I can tell, he’s kind of like a super-zen werewolf. Able to control everything a lot better than full werewolves because all of the wolf instincts and stuff aren’t as powerful.”

“He still shifts?” Despite the estimated number of half-werewolves being greater than the confirmed population of sphinxes, unicorns, and phoenixes combined, there was little actually known about them academically. It was all word of mouth, as no large-scale study had been able to be done on them. They were apparently reluctant to come forward and make themselves known to researchers. And their friends.

“Yeah, every full moon. Which I think is why he really just considers himself a werewolf.”

“I didn’t know,” you admitted, biting the inside of your cheek as you were still absorbing this information.

“Anyway, he can probably control whatever pre-mating instincts he does have a lot better than full werewolves!”

“And he’s probably doing that because he knows that you know what pre-mating behaviors look like and thinks you would get weirded out.” Yuta suggested, finally entering the conversation instead of just letting you two go back and forth over him. “Since you’re kind of an MCS major.”

“Exactly!”

You pursed your lips, an uneasiness creeping up on you about the whole situation. “I don’t know guys…”

“You said he doesn’t feed you?” Yuta questioned thoughtfully.

“No, he doesn’t. And you two are around us plenty, have either of you ever seen him try to?” You asked pointedly.

“No, but what Shotaro was saying about grocery shopping. He always buys your favorite foods, flavors he knows you likes, even makes Shotaro put stuff back that he knows you think are unappetizing.”

“I’ve never asked him to do anything like that.”

“And yet he does. Now, overly touchy is subjective. Does he—”

“No, we’re not doing this.” You cut him off, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Doing what?”

“Dissecting mine and Sungchan’s friendship and putting it up on a conspiracy board. I’m not playing. And if that’s all you guys are going to do, then I’m leaving.”

Shotaro jumped in, “Y/N, why can’t you even consider that—”

“Because he already asked to be friends and I said yes,” you said angrily, feeling your blood finally reach its boiling point. “I knew what I was getting myself into, and having you guys trying to convince me that it’s something that he already said it’s not, isn’t fucking helping.”

They were both quiet for a beat, and you clenched your jaw. You couldn’t keep sitting right now, you had to go somewhere, do something. If you stayed here, somebody’s feelings were going to get hurt. You stood up, stuffing all of your things haphazardly back into your bag. “Actually, fuck it, I’m leaving anyway.”

“Y/N, we didn’t mean to—”

“I know, you think you’re trying to help or whatever the fuck. But just drop it, okay?” You shoved your feet back in your shoes and slung your bag over your shoulder. “I need to go or I’m going to end up saying something nasty that I don’t really mean and regret it. I’ll see you guys later.”

And with that, you took off, leaving the chair you had borrowed from Yuta on the shore. You took your baseball cap back off to mess with your damp hair as you speedwalked down the city sidewalks. All the angry energy from wanting to just go off on your friends was still coursing through you, and despite Yuta having to pick you up and drive you the couple miles or so to the river, you figured that you might as well walk the whole way back home to blow off steam.

A little more than halfway home, your phone buzzed in your hand with a call, and you glanced at it intending to just send it to voicemail. But it was Sungchan. You stared down at it as you waited to cross a street, an unsure thumb hovering over your screen.

Glancing between your phone and the crosswalk signal, it changed to walk, and you rushed to cross. The call went to voicemail.

Just a few seconds later, your phone lit up with the missed call, a voicemail, then a text from him. You sighed, clicking on the voicemail first.

“Hey, Y/N,” Sungchan’s voice came through clearly. It sounded like he was outside, probably on campus and fresh out of class, if you had to guess by the time. “It’s Sungchan. Obviously. Uh, anyway, I just got out of class, wanted to see if you maybe wanted to come over? I know you’re supposed to be with Shotaro and Yuta, but Shotaro just texted me and said—well, it’s kind of a long story. Just let me know if you can come over, and I’ll tell you when you get here, okay? I’m headed back to my place right now. Okay, bye.”

Shotaro.

Still fucking meddling after you asked him to drop it. If you were less than halfway back from the river, you’d turn around and throttle him.

You checked the text from Sungchan.

[sungchan: hey! i’m out of class. are you busy?]

[you: i can be over in twenty. is that okay?]

You shifted uncomfortably as you stood in front of the front door to Shotaro and Sungchan’s apartment. Your hair wasn’t as damp thanks to your long walk in the hot Sun, and your skin was dry, but you still held yourself as you stared down the center of the white door. You hadn’t knocked yet. You didn’t want to know what Shotaro had told Sungchan, having already convinced yourself that it was everything. That you were about to walk into Friendzoning 2: Electric Boogaloo, this time with Letting Y/N Down Easy. It made your stomach churn, your chest squeeze like a vice around your heart, and your head feel like it had been cast in lead.

You shifted your weight between your feet on the welcome mat, trying to muster up the strength to just knock on the fucking door, when it swung open.

Sungchan was in a pair of dark sweatpants and a dark red t-shirt from your school’s astronomy club—dated for fall two years ago. He offered you a familiar smile, stepping back from the doorway to make room for you. “Hey, I thought I heard you. Come in.”

“Hey. And thanks.” You nodded, slipping by him into his apartment.

Wordlessly, he started leading the way further back towards his room. You longingly looked at the wide-open space of the living room as you disappeared down the hallway. In his bedroom, you saw his desk taken up by his laptop and a spread of notebooks and papers. His bookbag was in his desk chair.

“Sorry, I know that’s your usual spot, but I was doing some homework.” Sungchan had noticed where your gaze was focused. He patted the foot of his bed as he went to sit down against the headboard. “Come on, you can sit with me for once.”

You swallowed and nodded, stepping back out of your shoes and setting your bag down. Climbing onto the end of his bed, you sat with your legs criss-crossed, fidgeting with your fingers in your lap.

“So why did Shotaro text you?” You decided to just go straight into it. No small talk or pleasantries about his class or what homework he was working on. “What’d he say?”

“He told me that he told you that I’m half-werewolf,” Sungchan said bluntly. “I figured I owed you a bit more of an explanation.”

Oh. Well that wasn’t what you were expecting at all.

“You really don’t owe me anything, Sungchan,” you shook your head, your eyes trained on his comforter. “You don’t have to explain who you are to me if you don’t want to.”

“I want to.”

It was a touching sentiment, but it felt like a hot knife right in your gut. He wanted to because he cared about you as a friend. Not in the same way that you cared about him.

You could only manage a soft, “Okay…”

“It’s not some big secret, really. I’m not ashamed of my dad or anything. I love him, he’s a cool guy.” Sungchan started, and you felt like that first part was more to reassure you that it was okay for you to know. He was pointing to a picture that you’d seen a countless number of times before, hanging next to the mirror above his dresser. It was of him at his high school graduation, flanked on either side by his parents, proud, beaming smiles on all of their faces. You’d always assumed they were both werewolves when you’d looked at that picture, and only ever noticed that Sungchan got his smile from his mom, and his nose from his dad. The height difference between his mom and dad never really registered to you, as Sungchan towered over both of them, but now you did see that his mom was almost a head taller than his dad. Not a trait intrinsic to either species, just more of a trend.

But then, his tone turned a little more pensive, “I just... don’t tell people at first because I get a whole slew of questions, from the mundane stuff like ‘How was it growing up with one werewolf parent and one human parent?’ Which like... I don’t know, it was like growing up with two parents? To the people who think that I’m some oddity and therefore they can just ask me completely unprompted about what my dick looks like. And then at the end of it, it doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m just some dumb mutt to them, no matter how you look at it.”

“Sungchan—” His name came out of your mouth instinctually, pained, as you could only imagine what he had experienced to ever be able to call himself that, even cynically as he was doing now.

“It’s okay. I don’t really care about those kinds of people.” He reassured you, offering a small smile. “That’s why I don’t waste my time on them anymore. I just say I’m a werewolf, and eventually they’ll find out more if they need to.”

“I’m sorry, that Shotaro just—”

“Y/N, it’s fine, seriously. I’m okay with you knowing. I know you’re not going to be weird about it. And Shotaro knew that too; I’m sure however it came up in conversation, it made sense for him to tell you.”

You thought about the context of when Shotaro revealed Sungchan’s lineage, wincing minutely. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You can ask me questions, I don’t mind since it’s you.” He then added teasingly, “Come on, Miss Magical Creatures Studies, I know you want to…”

“Not because I think you’re some oddity to be studied, but because I care and I want to understand more about you…” You prefaced your question. “Shotaro said that you still shift every full moon. Are your shifts any different than full werewolves?”

“From what I can tell watching other wolves shift, it’s not as painful, for one. So, bonus!” He said the last word with mock excitement. “The shift itself doesn’t last as long. And some wolves, especially younger ones who are going through their first shifts, tend to get kind of moodier in the days leading up to the full moon. I never got that. Just, everything is kind of… less for me.”

“Everything?” You asked, brows furrowed with confusion.

“My senses are more heightened than a human’s but less than the average werewolf, when I’m not shifted.”

“Ah.”

“And I probably wouldn’t fare great in a werewolf arm wrestling championship,” he tacked on lightheartedly.

“Damn, I had you signed up in one for this weekend,” you joked, clicking your tongue in the back of your throat in fake disappointment. “Put money down and everything.”

He played along, “Well, I guess I can still try for you.”

You smiled to yourself, then looked up at him as you took a deep breath. Whether or not you two were here because you cared about each other in different ways, you at least still cared about each other. And you’d be an idiot to throw out that kind of connection. You’d have to suck it up, hunker down, and connect with him on his terms.

“Thanks for being so open about this with me, Sungchan. I know it wasn’t your choice to tell me, and I know you already said it wasn’t a secret either. But still, I feel... very grateful that you would want to share any part of yourself like this with me.” You tried to pick your words carefully, to convey as much genuine emotion as you could without veering too far into romantic territory. You could still easily picture yourself saying something like this to Jaemin, or Shotaro. Maybe not Donghyuck, though.

“Ah, what’s that?” Sungchan squeezed his eyes shut, a bashful smile coming to his face.

“What’s what?” You asked with a breathy chuckle, feigning offense. “Am I not allowed a moment of sincerity?”

“No, you’re not.” He said it in an overly joking tone, so you knew that he wasn’t actually upset with you.

“And why not?” You mimicked his tone.

He sighed, teasing falling from his voice as he fully leaned back against his headboard, seeming to take you in for a few seconds before answering. “Not if you’re going to be looking at me like that when you’re being all sincere.”

“Like what?”

“Never mind.”

“No, no sir. You do not get to start an avenue of conversation like that and not finish it,” you pointed at him accusingly. “What am I looking at you like?”

The werewolf held your gaze steadily as he said, “Like you want something more.”

You felt your stomach drop as you rushed to get up from his bed, putting even more distance between the two of you. “I’m sorry, Sungchan. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

He knew, he knew, he knew.

“Y/N, don’t get me wrong, please.” Sungchan stood up after you, grasping your hand before you could run out on instinct. His grip was loose so that you could leave if you wanted, but the presence was enough to let you know that he still wanted you there, to listen to him. His hand was warm as it held yours, but it burned like you’d grabbed red-hot metal. “I-I think you’re one of the most incredible, smart, fantastic people I’ve ever met. And I’m so grateful that you gave me a second chance.”

“But you don’t like me like that. Yeah, I can see where this is going.” You shook him off, searching the floor for your bag and shoes. This was going to be embarrassing, putting sneakers back on after getting rejected like that.

“No, I do.”

Sungchan’s words stopped you in your tracks, and you slowly turned back around to face him again. Your heart was a drum banging in your ears, you couldn’t trust that they weren’t all—your heart and your ears—playing tricks on you.

“You… what?” You were dumbfounded, staring up at him with a mixture of disbelief and thinly-veiled suspicion. You’d spent far too long convincing yourself that he just liked you as a friend to throw it all out over three words.

“I was going to ask you on another date, that night at the boba shop, I really was,” he explained. “But I realized just how lovely and wonderful you were. And I thought that you didn’t deserve... all the hatred that would come with it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I love my parents, but growing up I got to see firsthand just the worst sorts of people… The things that my parents would be called, that I would get called, by other humans and other werewolves. It’s gotten a lot better, but I mean, Jeno’s girlfriend got called a knotslut at the park out of nowhere. And you don’t deserve to have that be your life.”

You narrowed your eyes up at him. “You think you’re not worth it?”

It was his turn to be thrown off-guard. “What?”

“You think that you, and being with you, aren’t worth it?” You reiterated.

“I wasn’t really thinking of it like that,” he admitted, scratching the back of his head.

“Do you think that? That you’re not worth it?”

“Well now that you say it like that, no, I don’t think that.” He frowned thoughtfully, his brow set with determination.

“And, I know you didn’t mean it like this, Sungchan, but you took the choice away from me. For a very sweet reason, I acknowledge that. But you didn’t give me a say in the matter. Imagine how that makes me feel.” You sighed, watching guilt flicker across his face. “I’m not going to pretend like I know at all what it was like for you growing up. Or what it’s like now. But I can tell you that I want this, that I want you. I want to be there for you, just like I know you’d be there for me if something ever did happen.”

“Of course I would be,” he declared.

Taking a step closer to him, you tentatively let a familiar airiness return to your chest, chasing out the painful squeeze that had been suffocating you since February. “See? We’ll have each other, Sungchan. Someone calling me something won’t matter as long as you’ll be there with me afterwards. You don’t have to prevent everything bad ever from happening, just hold my hand afterwards until it’s all better, okay?”

“Okay,” he nodded resolutely. “I can do that.”

“And I’ll do the same for you. Deal?” You held your pinky finger out to him.

He hooked his with yours. “Deal.”

Sungchan lowered your connected hands, and you watched curiously as he unlinked his pinky, only to turn your hand over with both of his and trace gentle circles into the palm of your hand with his pointer finger.

“Y/N?” He murmured.

You snapped your focus back up to his face at the sound of his voice, trepid and unsure. He was still gazing down at your hands as you replied, “Yes?”

“I know we really can’t start over completely now, but…”

“If you say ‘friends’ right now, even as a joke, I’m going to kill you with my bare hands, half-werewolf strength be damned.” You whispered through gritted teeth.

He sputtered out a chuckle, shaking his head fondly and the circles on your palm never slowing. “No, no, I wouldn’t do that to you. That would be a terrible joke.”

“Good.”

“I was going to ask...” He inhaled shakily, finally drawing his eyes up to yours. “If we could try that date again?”

A smile pulled at the corners of your mouth, and you nodded quickly. “Yeah, Sungchan. I’d love that.”

Sungchan beamed at you, a heart-stopping, adorable, lopsided grin that now made your chest flutter with hope. “Okay! Thank you, thank you!”

You couldn’t help but giggle at his enthusiasm. “You’re welcome.”

Leaping to your feet at the knock that just came from your front door, you ran to answer it. You threw the door open, abuzz with excitement.

It was just about a week later, and you and Sungchan were finally trying that date again. You’d actually seen him once in the intermittent days, at a previously scheduled group movie night at Jeno and Jaemin’s place. The two of you were all knowing smiles and questionably accidental bumps and brushes of skin under the blanket that you shared that night.

But tonight Sungchan was in your hallway, smiling nervously down at you. “Hi.”

“Hi, Sungchan.” You fidgeted with your shirt. He had specifically told you to dress casually and comfortable, but you still felt weirdly underdressed, even seeing that he was in a t-shirt and jeans himself.

“These are for you,” he said quietly, bringing out a bouquet of flowers from behind his back.

As you accepted them from him, you immediately realized that they were made of paper, intricately folded tulips, lilies, and roses of all colors. You couldn’t help but let out a small gasp, thinking about how much time it must have taken him. “An origami bouquet. Oh, Sungchan…”

“I figured you had plenty of hearts by now…” He said as he flushed from his neck upwards.

“They’re beautiful.” You got on your tiptoes, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady yourself as you pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”

His cheeks were bright pink as you turned around to set them down inside, then looked back to him expectantly. The werewolf led the way out to the parking lot, except you didn’t see his car anywhere around. There was a familiar old blue pickup truck, however, which he was walking towards.

“Your car in the shop or something?” You asked curiously. “Why are you driving Yuta’s truck?”

“Utility.” He answered cryptically, opening the passenger door for you.

“What does that mean?” You questioned with a chuckle, scooting into the middle of the bench seat.

You’d gotten your seatbelt situated by the time Sungchan had walked around and opened the driver’s side. He didn’t seem to have been expecting you to be in the middle, pausing for a second, and looking around flustered as he climbed into the truck too.

“It’s a surprise, like I said,” he muttered, fastening his own seatbelt and starting the truck.

Sungchan drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on his leg next to yours. You drummed your fingers on your own knee contemplatively.

“Sungchan?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I hold your hand?”

“Wh— Yeah, of course.” He laughed shakily as you laced your fingers with his. “You don’t need to ask me about stuff like that.”

“Well you’re so tense right now that I was afraid that if I just grabbed your hand, you might freak and crash the car.”

He cringed. “So you can tell?”

“Yeah, I can tell.” You patted his arm with your other hand. “What’s got you so wound up? It’s just me.”

“Well, yeah, it’s you,” he repeated. “I’ve already messed up so many times with you. I don’t want to fuck up again.”

You contemplated this for a second, watching the passing streetlights. “Think about it like this: Could you possibly fuck up again worse than our first date?”

“I hope not.”

“Then you’re already off to a great start.”

“Y/N, I think you need higher standards,” he said without an ounce of humor or joking in his tone.

You couldn’t help but burst into laughter at that. “Sungchan, you made me an entire origami bouquet and organized a whole night out to surprise me. I think my standards are pretty okay.”

“Alright, but you’ve got to promise that this is my last chance. Like, three strikes and I’m out. Seriously, if I was some other guy, I would’ve told you to throw me to the curb a long time ago.”

You looked over at him incredulously. “Are you seriously advocating against yourself right now? Is this some kind of reverse psychology flirting technique that I’ve never heard of?”

“No, I’m just not going to stop being a good friend because you’re on a date with me. I told you I would always look out for you, and I meant it, even if it’s not in my best interest.”

Nodding with a raised eyebrow, you decided to take his advice at face value. “Okay, your input is noted as part of the council of friends’ round table on my new guy.”

You saw a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Good.”

“So, did you tell Shotaro what we were doing?” You asked, curious now that the topic of friends had been brought up.

“I told him we were hanging out.”

“Did you tell him it was a date?”

“No. Did you?”

“If I did, do you think you would have gotten out of your apartment unscathed?” You snorted.

“Fair point.”

The car ride passed with mostly idle chitchat, until he made a turn away from the city center, off onto a back road that you were unfamiliar with. The buildings gave way to trees, the streetlights being replaced only with moonlight and the headlights of the truck or any lone car that you would pass occasionally. A while later, the asphalt became a dirt road, the trees around you getting thicker and thicker. You looked around in interest as he slowed the truck to a stop in a clearing.

“We’re here?” You asked, looking over at him. Your eyes had long adjusted to the nighttime, and you could clearly make out his features.

“We’re here,” he confirmed with a nod, turning the vehicle off.

Sungchan climbed out, helping you down with a hand, and you immediately knew why he’d had both of you dress casually. You were in the middle of the woods, being led to the back of the truck by the hand by your date. He opened the tailgate, and let go of your hand to hop up into the empty bed.

“Wait there,” he requested, now well and good towering over you.

You nodded.

He retrieved a large duffel bag from the truck bed, and you looked curiously at everything he brought out of it. Pillow after pillow, blanket after blanket. The truck bed soon looked like a bed bed, and Sungchan came back over to plop down on the tailgate, toeing his shoes off and setting them aside at the end. He gestured to the bedding with little fanfare.

“All done!”

You hopped up next to him, pulling your shoes off as well and putting them away next to his. Looking at him with a knowing smirk, you nodded to the fact that the two of you were still sitting up. “Now what, Sung?”

“Ah, you’re going to make me spell it out?” He rubbed the back of his neck, ducking his head awkwardly.

“No,” you laughed. “I’m not.”

He took that as his cue to lay down first, leaving an open space right beside him. You settled into his side with no hesitation, resting your head on his chest as he pulled a final fluffy blanket over the two of you. Being a half-werewolf, Sungchan was pretty warm, but you were grateful for the extra comfort anyway.

Up above you two was a gorgeous expanse of a night sky. A waxing gibbous glowed down at you, stars twinkling and winking in and out at irregular intervals.

“It’s so peaceful…” He murmured quietly, shifting under you, still settling in.

“I don’t know, it’s kind of scary out here…”

Sungchan moved to sit up slightly, looking down at you with concern. “Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, what if there’s wolves?”

“Oh my god you’re so annoying,” he groaned, even as he readjusted his arms to hold you closer.

You, meanwhile, were giggling maniacally at your incredible joke, hiding your face in his shirt as you tried to recover. “You mean I’m the funniest person you know.”

“In your dreams.”

Looking back up at the sky, you pointed to a random speck of light. “Do you know what star that is?”

“Which one?” Sungchan asked, craning his head to try to get in your line of sight.

“I don’t know, any of them.” You dropped your hand back down to his front. “You’re in astronomy club, tell me about them, you big Earth Science nerd. Which I say with great affection and fondness.”

“Okay, so you see the Moon?”

“That’s not a star. I do know that.”

He chuckled, which you felt underneath your cheek. “I figured as much. So, starting at the Moon, if you go due North—” he pointed, and you tried your best to follow the path of his index finger. “The first and brightest star you can see. See it?”

“Yep!” You nodded, seeing the exact star he was talking about.

“Then go the right, just a little, there’s a pair of twin stars, see them?”

“Mm… mhm! Yes!”

“Okay, down, and over to the right some more, we’re tracing out the top of a head, then we’re going back up, there’s another pair of twin stars, you see?”

You squinted, losing the top of the head he was talking about, but finally found the second set of twin stars he’d mentioned. “Yeah, found them!”

“Cool. Straight down from that pair, we’re going to find one, two, then over to the left to get the chin, over and up to get the other cheek, and up to round out the head.”

You nodded, vaguely able to picture what he was talking about. “Okay… so whose head was that?”

“Oh, I get to teach Miss MCS Major something!” Sungchan teased.

“Interdisciplinary major…” You reminded him under your breath.

“So that was Lykos, the great wolf in the sky. As in, lycanthropy.”

“Back when scientists thought werewolves were humans with an affliction that could be passed on to other humans. The quote ‘condition’ they were diagnosed with was lycanthropy.” You easily pulled a basic definition of it from class. “Of course we know now that’s not true. Like witches, werewolves are an entirely different species, not just a variety of human. And there’s never been any credible account of a werewolf turning a human into a werewolf.”

“Why is it that humans just think everything is also a human, even when it very clearly is not?”

“Well, if I were to give us humans benefit of the doubt? Uh, to relate to it? Empathy? Recognition of yourself in the other? I mean, it’s better than labeling everything a monster and hunting it down. Which, we also did a bit of.”

“Us monsters did plenty hunting of you guys, too.”

“You say as if you’re not also half-human.”

“Hey,” he frowned down at you suspiciously. “Are you recognizing yourself in the other with me right now? I think we should really save that for the second date—”

“Oh, shut up!” You gave his front a smack as you let out an indignant scoff.

Sungchan was kicking his legs under the blanket as he laughed from his stomach, and when you looked up at him, you saw his eyes squeezed shut tight as he cackled. You watched him with a smitten smile, unable to even pretend to be annoyed for any longer as his guffaws petered out to chuckles then to giggles until he eventually sobered up, and settled his gaze with a heart-stopping grin on you.

The two of you were quiet for a moment, just looking at each other, then he broke the eye contact, turning his eyes back up to the stars. “Uhm— I didn’t finish telling you about Lykos.”

You settled back into your spot, and with your ear to his chest, you could hear that his heartbeat was faster than it’d been before. You wondered if he was thinking the same thing about yours in that moment.

“So, Lykos,” Sungchan picked up where he’d left off before. “You can easily find him by starting at the moon to find his left ear. According to werewolf stories, Lykos was the very first werewolf that we’re all descended from. Because he was so great and powerful, once he passed, his soul ascended to be in the stars to watch over all of his descendants.”

“Wow…” You looked at the stars harder, willing Lykos’ shape to be a little more visible to you than before.

“In astronomy, though, the two twin stars that make up his left ear are called LK 1C04 and LK 2C04. They’re both red giants.”

“Are they going to explode any time soon?”

“Stars are kind of always exploding,” he explained enthusiastically. “They’re perpetually combusting and performing nuclear fusion. Well, most stars, if they haven’t run out of fuel yet.”

“What about when they run out of fuel then?”

“Depends on how big they are. LK 1C04 and 2C04 are both red giants, so when they run out of fuel, they’ll turn into white dwarves. So instead of being a burning ball of gas, they’ll just be emitting a very faint light from the remaining energy leftover from their previous nuclear fusion reactions that they can no longer perform.”

“So they don’t get to go out with a bang.”

“No, not really.” Sungchan pointed up at the sky again. “Okay, you remember Lykos’ chin?”

“Yes…”

“So that’s actually the end of the tail of a squirrel, according to some dryad traditions, or a gecko in some human ones.”

Sungchan sketched out the next constellation for you, then relayed the accompanying folk tale. Some scientific factoids would be interspersed too, and you loved hearing the enthusiasm in his voice as he told you about something he was very clearly interested in. And at some point, with his legs tangled up in yours, your hand curled around his waist, your cheek pressed against his chest, his hand casually rubbing up and down your back underneath your top as he still spoke so eagerly, you found your attention slipping away from black holes and how legends of ancient wyvern society said this or that about some other constellation. You were suddenly grabbing him by the collar with two hands and yanking him over to look at you.

“Y/N?” He asked, absolute bewilderment in his features.

“Jung Sungchan, I’m going to say this once, and please don’t take this the wrong way,” you murmured, holding eye contact with him very seriously. “You’re very attractive when you talk about things that you’re passionate about, and if you don’t kiss me right now I think I’m going to explode.”

Sungchan didn’t need to be told twice, reaching up to cup your cheek. Despite your rather blunt and unromantic request, he still tenderly guided your lips to his. Your eyes fluttered shut as you melted into the kiss, the grip you had on his collar relaxing. His mouth was soft as he moved it ever so slightly against yours. His thumb stroked over your cheekbone, the hand on your back pulling you even closer to him. One of your hands grabbed his waist to anchor yourself down to something on Earth.

It ended all too soon for your liking, though. You were pretty sure you could kiss Jung Sungchan forever. He pressed one more quick kiss to the corner of your mouth before leaning back to drink you in.

“You’re so beautiful…” he murmured, stroking your cheek again.

“Sung?” You whispered.

“Hm?”

“Do you want to kiss me again?”

He nodded, and you leaned forward to bump your nose against his. A giddy smile spread across your face.

“Good. Me too.”

sequel :･ﾟ✧｡･:･*

⤷ blog masterlist ⤷ anthology masterlist

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lumiinix · 1 year

Note

Hey, Pardon for the Intrusion and sudden ask but is the request close? If yes, you can delete this ask and message me but if not. I appreciate it a lot

Could you make a headcanon of Suna, Osamu, Oikawa and Iwaizumi with Silent and Mean but secretly caring S/O (Like Raven from Teen Titans. S/O is snarky, sarcastic, dark and grounchy but secretly gentle to kids, their boyfriend and animals).

Haikyuu boys with a secretly caring S/O.

Pairing(s): Suna, Osamu, Oikawa x gn!reader.

Summary: To others, you are snarky, sarcastic and dark, but to him. You’re someone else.

Warning(s): None

A/N: Hey there, sorry but I only take 3 characters so I will only take the first 3 characters you choose. Other than that, enjoy!

Suna:

He’s your classmate and the two of you actually sit next to eachother.

He saw how people fear you and avoid you and honestly, he kinda did the same for a while.

That is until he saw you stay behind and feed the stray kittens that had just lost their mothers. He was just sneaking away from the Miya twins when he saw you playing and feeding them. There’s a box that have little blankets on them and milk and food around it.

And there was you, your annoyed and gloomy expression change into a much softer one as you play with the kittens, and did he even heard a giggle from you??

He was about to dip out when you caught him, your expression changed into a sort of flustered but still scary one. Clearly trying to intimidate him.

But he isn’t scared anymore, he knows your secret now and he began to teased you about how you’ve gone soft for kittens, which flustered you very much. And the rest is history.

When you two started to date, your favorite activity is to wait for him to finish volleyball practice and then the two of you to go to where the kittens are.

He values this so much as it lets him see a very different you compared to the you everyone else sees.

And boy does he feels special when you suddenly become soft for him, kissing him and holding hands after literally roast the shit out of a guy for breathing wrong-

Osamu:

The first time he meet you is when Kita told ordered him to save Atsumu’s ass from you-

He reluctantly went there when he saw you just verbally bullied the piss haired Miya, and honestly, he’s impressed.

Like it’s not everyday you get to see someone more brutal than Miya Atsumu.

When you saw him tho, you were about to verbally insult him too bc you thought he was with his twin. And he notices this.

So what does he do? He also started to verbally assault Atsumu to show you that he’s on your side and it honestly becomes fun as the both of you just straight up roast the other Miya. And the two of you begin to bond after this encounter.

Yeah Kita did not like that-

When you two started dating, it was Atsumu’s worst nightmare when the two of you were together. Like he literally cower in fear when you started to walk into the room.

And to add salt to the injury, you would become very soft to Osamu, making him bentos and such and acting like a genuinely sweet person. Which freaks Atsumu out even more.

He would love to call that out but didn’t dare to ask you both will verbally assaulted him more.

Kita is now very pleased about the fact that your present cause less fight between the twins, he even personally request you to be in their practices.

Oikawa

Nah yah gotta be childhood friends or smt cause anything besides that you’ll both just hated eachother’s guts for sure.

Like as your childhood friend, he will really hold a grasp on your true soft self and why you always have that mean and dark facade.

And you would know his facade too. A very mutual understanding.

So that’s why you both work so well with eachother…Is what close enough people like Iwaizumi would say.

The rest of the world, they still can’t get a grasp on how the fuck are you two together in the first place, much less together for years.

The volleyball team thought that you’ll be another Iwaizumi until they saw you softly comforting Oikawa when he ran into your arms after he got hit by Iwaizumi.

Yahaba tried to get to your soft side to only to be roast into crips. He took a while to recover from that.

Oikawa’s fangirls hated you because they thought of you as “too mean” but never actually have the balls to do anything about that.

Takeru lowkey loves you since you were soft with kids, it actually makes Oikawa a little jealous tbh, because he thought that he’s the only one that can see it. Let’s just say it took you a lot of milk bread and kisses for him to stop pouting (what a baby).

REBLOGS ARE APPRECIATED!

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here4kpopfics · 1 year

Text

Put It Out | JJK

just a quick little something to put our minds at ease about that stupid candle. @minttangerines asked and I...I don't know, honestly. Here we are. I'm tired. Enjoy. Thank you beautiful @mikrokcsmos for the edits and being wonderful. 💜💜 also gonna tag @pamzn @minisugakoobies and @sugakookitty bc i can. hi i love you all.

Masterlist | AskBox | Taglist | Coffee? | Patreon

jjk x reader | fluff/stupiness | 1863 words | pg15 but really 13 but really who cares | Jungkook better put that shit out before his house goes down in flames.

“I’m gonna go live, jagi.”

“It’s two in the morning, Koo. Let army sleep.” You turn over in bed to see your boyfriend throwing a shirt on and fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror before turning back to you with a pout.

The dumb pout that wins every argument. You hate it and love it.

“I’m sure some of them are awake! I’ll make it a chill live. Put the galaxy light on and get a candle. They can fall asleep to it.”

“Like any of them can fall asleep to you singing to them.” You mumble under your breath, getting up and grabbing your phone and a charger. “Let me grab something to drink and a snack first.”

“You’re gonna watch?” Dumb bunny smiles with the cute crinkles around his eyes. You want to kiss him stupid but you’re too tired.

“Someone has to make sure you don’t do anything dumb.” You quip, quickly pecking his lips with yours as you make your way to the kitchen, grabbing supplies. You hear his feet following you and smile.

“I don’t do anything stupid!”

“Unholy. Body roll. While not stupid, I'm pretty sure a good handful of people had heart attacks that night.” You grab your laptop off the dining room table, “Boxing. Moaning and groaning while on the floor and out of sight. Stupid only because you were out of sight and that led people to have ideas about things that only I get to experience.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Yes you were. But it’s fine. I accept that you’re a flirty hoe, it’s who you are baby. Embrace it. Have fun. I’ll be in the room waiting for you to come back to bed.” You take a quick inventory of the room, making sure he moved anything of yours out of view when you spot the candle.

“Why the candle, though?”

“To lighten it up in here…and it smells nice.”

“Baby, you have a ring light.”

“Ring light doesn’t smell nice.”

You groan in defeat, shaking your head and walking past him, back to the room, “blow it out when you’re done!”

“Kay!”

You settle back in bed, charger plugged in and a pillow acting as a laptop stand while you snack on whatever it was you blindly grabbed. You hear the music starting before you get the notification about him going live on Weverse pops up. You pop in your AirPods and get ready for a long night.

You scroll through tumblr and Twitter as he finally appears on the screen, quietly giggling at everyone freaking out over specific songs and him and his hair. You can’t blame them, though. His hair still makes you giddy when you see it.

A few songs in and you realize quickly what playlist he’s going through. The playlist you created together, tossing random shit that either reminded you of one another, was just a fucking vibe, or was just something you personally wanted him to sing because you knew he could.

One of the very few perks of dating him that you participate in.

But he’s doing that thing, that thing you hate. You do it, too. You’re not afraid to admit it. But it’s worse when he does it because he’s singing at the same time.

He gets a little more than half way through a song, either reaching the second chorus or even the bridge, and then just skips to the next song. But not just the song right after, no. The man skips and skips and skips and skips, letting you hear a second of each song and getting excited before he skips to another one, repeating the process. It drives you mad.

Thankfully, it drives army mad as well, so at least you have that to validate your annoyance.

You accidentally laugh out loud when he starts singing along with Leave The Door Open and you pray no one had heard it, watching the chat to see if anyone says anything. Thankfully, no one heard a thing and you relax, but only a little because he’s got the damn candle in his hand and he’s moving the melted wax around and you have to bite your tongue to suppress yourself from laughing again when the flame goes out.

“Serves you right.” You mutter.

He continues on with this “chill night” of blasting his music, getting more drinks, watching Hoseok’s new music video twice without saying a word, accidentally swearing while singing a Charlie Puth song, and unabashedly flirting with army again.

You watch his mood start to dip when he gets to some slower songs, one that you put in when you were feeling insecure about your relationship with him.

He looks exhausted as he talks about the current situation he’d been forced into with ‘fans’ not respecting his privacy and treating him like he’s not human and your heart cracks for him. Part of you wants to run out there, turn off the live and hug him. The other part knows he needs to get it off his chest. Even if he’s tipsy, it’s something that needs to be discussed. You can comfort him after.

But of course, never one to let the mood be sad for too long, he switches to a fun more upbeat song and says he needs to go to the bathroom.

A few seconds later, he’s opening the door to your bedroom and leaning over your little set up and grabbing your face, pulling you in for a deep kiss.

“I love you” the words fall off his lips quietly and you repeat them back without hesitation, smiling when he gives a shorter kiss before bolting to the bathroom. He comes back out, stealing some of your snacks and snickering at your reaction, throwing up a finger heart as he leaves the room.

He seems to have woken up a little bit, but not by much from the way he keeps laying back on the couch for a minute or two at a time.

“I swear if you fall asleep on camera…” you whisper at the screen, glaring at the slow rise and fall of his chest.

“I'm not going to sleep.” He groans, trying to wake himself up, “if I’m gonna sleep, I’ll tell you and get off but I don’t feel like sleeping right now, okay?” He’s whining which you know perfectly well he’s about to fall asleep. He turns into a toddler, confused and upset that his body would betray him like this.

Not even five minutes later he’s picking up the candle again, placing it in front of the camera for aesthetic reasons, you’re sure.

“I’m gonna rest a bit. Just a few minutes. Promise.” He disappears out of sight and you’re sure he’s laying down.

Aw, fuck. He’s gonna sleep on camera.

You wait five minutes and then you hear it, clear as day in your AirPods, the sound of his snoring. It’s so light, but so very obvious your boyfriend has fallen asleep on camera and millions of people are now watching him. Although, not really watching him, because he’s off camera. But it’s close enough!

You quickly send a text to Taehyung, praying he’s still awake.

Y/n: Koo fell asleep on camera. What do I do?

Tae: you have to end it or I’ll see if any of the team can…did he really fall asleep?

Y/n: yes! And he has a stupid candle burning still right next to his phone. I can’t go out there until it’s over.

Tae: oh my god he’s going to get so much shit for this from us, that’s amazing.

Tae: I’ll call and see if anyone can turn it off, but I doubt it since it’s four in the morning. Try to do it in the meantime.

You groan, tossing your phone to the side and looking back at your laptop. He’s still asleep. And that candle is still burning. The chat is yelling about it, tumblr and Twitter are both freaking out about it.

Fuck. You’re gonna have to do something about it. You take out the AirPods, getting back out of bed and throwing one of his sweaters on as well as his sweatpants.

You quietly and slowly open the door, thankful the door can’t be seen from that angle on the stream, and slowly drop to the floor.

Time to mission impossible this shit.

Using the sweater and pants, you’re able to softly glide on the floor that you’re very thankful was cleaned earlier today and Bam wasn’t here to ruin. You make your way behind the couch until you’re on the opposite side of his phone. He’s just off to the side, very clearly out of sight and you sneak up on the floor next to the couch, keeping yourself hidden.

“Baby?” You whisper it as quietly as you possibly can manage, but he doesn’t respond except with a soft whimper of a snore. He’s too adorable.

The sound of the tv going into sleep mode makes you jump.

You can’t wake him up without either making noise or him saying your name when he wakes. So you sneak away from him again, creeping directly behind his phone and reaching around, trying to keep your finger out of sight as you tap where you're sure the end live button is located. You stay sitting behind the camera, grabbing your phone and checking if the live is off, and thank god it is.

You stand up, blowing out the candle and taking it to the kitchen to set it somewhere safe. You turn off the galaxy light and make your way back to your tired and dumb boyfriend, crawling on top of him.

“Jungkoooookie. Baby. Wake up, dumb dumb.”

He groans in annoyance, and as suspected, the first thing he says is your name.

“Y/n? I’m live right now. You can’t be out here.” He whines, but his hands find their home on your thighs, squeezing softly.

“I ended it, you goober. You fell asleep on camera. Snoring and everything.” You grin, cradling his face in one hand and kissing his nose. “Come on, let’s get you to a real bed.”

“Here’s good.” He says, pulling you down to him and flipping you both on your sides.

“Nuh-uh. To the bed, mister. You’ll thank me in the morning.” You reach out, patting his butt and laughing when he bucks his hips once towards yours. “Not that either. Let’s go.”

You climb out of his grip, pulling him off the couch and grabbing his phone, leading him to the bedroom. You quickly remove your stuff and he quite literally flips over onto the bed while you plug his phone into your charger.

You have to maneuver him to get under the blankets, doing so yourself when he’s finally in bed, getting comfortable when a giant tattooed arm reaches around your waist, dragging you to have your back against his chest.

“Goodnight, jagi.” A small kiss on your temple.

“Goodnight, dumb boy.” Your free hand wraps around the hand on your waist and you both fall asleep.

He’s gonna be in so much trouble when he wakes up.

Booga Booga I'm tired

#Jeon Jungkook #Jungkook x reader #Jungkook fluff #Jungkook drabble #jjk x reader #jjk fluff #jjk drabble #kelly posts #kelly writes #drabble requests

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gold-rhine · 5 months

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Inazuma Rewrite Act 3

Please start reading from part one before reading this. It will make no sense otherwise.

Act 3 pays off for Acts 1 and 2, and I made some major changes in them, such as change to reasons of vision hunt\Raiden motivations, Ayaka arc, entire resistance storyline, Transience setup, Yoimiya arc setup, so without reading them first, this part will not make sense.

In this installment:

Transcience pay off

Yoimiya arc

Kazuha conflict

Raiden confrontation

Kujou Sara arc

and more

All disclaimers from part one also apply, I’m not gonna copy paste them.

Yae Miko \ Raiden Preparation Training

ok, let’s start with the fact that current “raiden fight training” sucks. Like I get what they’re going for, and training episode idea is very anime, but like. Running in circles around a trashcan that hits you with boss moves is not fun. it is, in fact, super annoying.

i want to keep the training angle, but make it more... spiritual. and thematic.

so, yae miko is like blah blah, you need to prepare to face Raiden, and I will train you, as the person who knows her the best.

Paimon is like wow, you’re gonna teach us to fight??

Yae Miko is like haha you’re so stupid, no, of course not. Your goal is to change raiden’s mind. For that, you need to know and understand her and where she’s coming from.

We will know you’re ready, when you can pass the Sacred Sakura trial

she leads traveler to the sacred sakura. there are like stone plates with symbols at the base, you know, the puzzle ones.

Yae goes like, do you know what Transience means? Transience is the dream of the nation of thunder. We find the greatest joys in mortal life in fleeting dreams, for is life itself not like the shadow of the thunder? Pursue your dreams into the clouds if you wish, and enjoy the unexpected silence of the dim lamp-lit nights.

traveler and paimon is like yeah wait, we saw smth like that in inazuma shrines and ruins

yae is like great, then show me the symbol of Transience. traveler looks at the puzzle stones, but there weren’t really anything like this in the prev locations which mentioned transience

player can fiddle with puzzle stones, but whatever combination they try, it doesn’t work

after a couple of tries, yae is like okay, it seems you still have much to learn! lets go, i’ll teach you

you go through the inazuma city with her, but seemingly only do bullshit. like, eating ramen, shopping, doing some light novels bs, and like traveler is paying for everything. not too long, like just few minutes, with a couple phrases per activity and fading to black, kinda montage of more and more exasperated and confused traveler and paimon until they’re like wait what the fuck is this. how is supposed to teach us anything??

yae does her signature bullshit smirks like hehe you’re too close-minded, you clearly haven’t understood ~Transience~, so buy me more stuff

paimon does her Angry Stomp, you know the one, like ugh! you’re just fucking with us to get us to pay for stuff, we’re done!

yae narrows her eyes menacingly with a smile like haha is this how u wanna talk to me you little flying shit, paimon hides behind traveler like oops sorry i didn’t say that, but then like, resistance messenger runs up to the traveler and traveler and paimon use this us an excuse to fuck off

Kazuha conflict\ Reveal of the true reasons for Raiden Gokaden fall

turns out messenger is from Kazuha. we meet up with him. he’s in the city despite being fugitive bc he’s heard some maniac is killing ppl, searching for the last scion of the Isshin school bloodline

listen, i love kazuha and i overall like his story quest, but it ends up being more character development for the cursed sword, not kazuha. and like i get it, it’s hard to write conflict for Kazuha bc he’s already escaped samsara, he’s the sole receiver of all therapy in genshin, he rolls 20 on every Wisdom roll, etc etc.

but that doesn’t mean we can’t explore his character more in depth and give him a conflict, even if his beliefs do not change as the result, but just better articulated.

We’re keeping the quest mostly same, as I said, I like it fine, it’s still about kazuha going on a therapy tour with the cursed sword, but with like. actual stakes

because in canon, when the sword says like oh, together we will have power to defeat raiden, its obviously not really a temptation for kazuha. bc like. the war is already over! kazuha has already won! AND he personally blocked legendary ublockable move that his friend dreamed of doing. why would he go back and fight raiden again?? it makes no sense

so it ends up being just like. kazuha psychoanalyzing cursed sword the entire time. which cool and all, but i want to play quest about kazuha and not the sword??

but, if it happens DURING the war, it’s much more impactful. this is not just revenge, there are lives on the line and no way to fight raiden. so when the sword is like I will give you power to stand up to raiden, then its not only in memory of his friend, but to protect the resistance. It is now a believable choice that can give Kazuha a pause, because situation is dire and they need every advantage they can get

this is also to rhyme with the Delusions motif, the “my own strength is not enough, so I must turn to the corrupted source of power for which i know i will pay”

of course, in the end kazuha decides to not give in to the cursed sword, bc he sees through its facade that the sword is actually weakening and falling apart, but also because he is narrative foil to both scara (scara believes in doing anything to gain power to pursue his obsession, even at great pain to himself, this is why he’s tied with delusions, and then in sumeru quest gets into dotorre’s torture mecha) AND raiden, which i think fandom largely misses.

both Kazuha and Ei had friends and loving, supporting family, but were kinda sheltered and isolated from people. Ei because she was Makoto’s shadow and didn’t really interact with public, and Kazuha because he was an heir of a falling noble house and he was feeling trapped and focused on trying to live up to his own expectations and anxieties (this btw was beautifully dramatized in his domain in prev summer’s golden archipelago)

both of them were quiet and kinda introverted, Ei allowing her sister take a central stage and Kazuha admitting that ppl with grand aspirations always captivated him, which obv references his friend. then, they lost everything in one fell swoop.

Ei lost her friends in the cataclysm and then, her sister. Kazuha’s family died, and later he had to flee his estate, becoming fugitive and then his friend was killed in a duel with Raiden. they both had their small-ish isolated worlds and lost them violently

and Raiden tried to catch the shards of her falling world and keep them in place, cover them in stasis, as if it could restore what was broken. She saw eternity as the lack of change and decided to never change herself. She closed off from the world, literally destroyed her physical body and isolated her mind in a little locked world, focused solely on “preserving” herself.

in contrast, Kazuha opened up to the world. He didn’t try to stop the winds of change, he followed them. One of this themes is being a part of the world, “One with wind and clouds”, “One with the nature”, “Life has just begun and maybe, the whole world can be my home,” this is why his kit heavily features element absorption and his character stories emphasize how he’s sharp, notices little details in surroundings, even has sharp sense of smell.

He reached out to people instead of isolating himself, and so he found new friends, he saw the endless beauty in the bigger world even after his own cozy snowglobe was shattered.

His theme is not only about being open to the world, but also bringing different elements together, and he’s the one who brings people in inazuma arc together. He brings traveler to Thoma, then through him Gorou reaches Beidou and the mercs, etc. this is why he is the one who blocks raiden.

he is her foil precisely because he can let go and doesn’t let his grief blind him, he will fight her because she needs to be stopped, but not because he wants to take revenge or fore her to suffer. He is the breaker of cycles of pain, not perpetuator

so kazuha refuses, like in original, sword deteriorates more and more, and in the end, becomes weak, but regains memories about his creator in exile in snezhnaya.

but, with the added twist to the scene where kazuha sees memories of the sword. In our version, Shogun instituted vision hunt decree because vision holding blade smith collaborated with fatui and led to the fall of Raiden Gokaden, 5 sword art schools.

But now we learn that Kazuha’s ancestor who made this cursed sword, was this very vision-holding blade smith, and he never betrayed Inazuma, instead, he was slandered by Fatui and it was all Scara’s plan on his misguided revenge against Raiden Gokaden.

as in canon, Kazuha reforges the sword with the last shreds of its power. It does not hold its previous cursed strength anymore, but it is a last sword made in lost technique of Kazuha’s family tradition and he swears to restore it, just as he does in canon

Vision Loss exploration\ Yoimiya was always relevant

after this, paimon and traveler are like ugh, we don’t want to go back to yae, we don’t know the answer to symbol of transience puzzle and she will just mock us more. Lets go see how Yoimiya is doing instead!

ok so, I want to address what I see as a problem in how genshin handled vision loss. like obviously, vision loss stands for trauma. and “wow after their vision was taken, they turned into a completely different person” works as initial impression, bc often when someone you know changes drastically, it can feel this way

where this narrative fails is that it never explores further, bc all characters we meet with vision loss are random NPCs we see for 15 minutes, so it ends up being shallow “this guy was very kind and selfless before, but after losing vision he completely ignores ppl he helped with “new number who dis” response”, which like???

framing ppl who are already going through inner turmoil and struggle as like, complete strangers who are not themselves anymore and also completely lose positive qualities tied to their visions, is so tactless and wrong. It’s still the same person, no matter how drastically changed, and they need support, not demonization like “inherently incapable of caring about people after losing vision”.

this is why i think its better to focus on one character players know and care about instead of several NPCs no one gives a fuck about

so we go visit Yoi and meet her with her dad during discussion. it’s festival time and their family always made fireworks for it, they have several orders now too. But, due to Yoi being caught as part of resistance, her family was blacklisted and they can’t get necessary supplies to create fireworks, specifically like special chemical powder.

so now, Yoi needs to go to all the clients and tell them there will be no fireworks for them for this festival.

Yoi’s dad is very supportive and doesn’t blame Yoi, but she still feels its her fault. She’s not a firecracker she was before, now quieter and harsher, and it does feel like she’s someone new, who traveler and paimon do not know.

we go to the clients to inform them with Yoi, and while doing so learn what fireworks meant for each of them. for some, it was friendship, how now matter how different their lives were, they would get together and celebrate with fireworks. for old couple, its ritual to celebrate their marriage and so on.

they are all sad, but understanding, and supportive and concerned about Yoi. she puts on brave face, but its obvious for the traveler that its hard for her to pretend to be fine.

on the way back, they have a convo about how its tacking a toll on Yoi, and how she feels bad, but also hopeless, and it also feels like something as joyous and frivolous as fireworks is meaningless in the middle of the war and vision hunt

we get back and find Yoi’s dad talking to customers. Its a refugee family, they explain that they live on another island, but once in a few years would visit Narukami for the festival and buy fireworks. They were forced to go to Narukami right now bc of the war, but since they are here already, they want at least something good to come out of it. And they have a cute little girl who is too young and never before saw fireworks and she’s sooooo excited, and the whole time they were running from their home they were consoling her by saying they go to Narukami to see the festival and the fireworks

Yoi’s dad starts defeatedly explaining that unfortunately they cannot make fireworks right now, but Yoi interrupts him, and for a moment she’s her old self, bright and joyful, she reassures the little girl that its okay, they will have fireworks for sure, and these will be the prettiest fireworks ever!

family leaves, excited, and Yoi drops the facade. she wasn’t “cured” in a moment, but she is determined

traveler and paimon are like - oh but how will we get fireworks??

Yoi is like “tenryo commission has this confiscated powder in their warehouse and we are raiding it, bc this little girl is getting her family fireworks if its the last fucking thing i do”

bc she realized, viscerally, that actually, fireworks will be more meaningful now BECAUSE of the dark and uncertain times, not despite of them, and whether its someone childhood OR last years of life, time is fleeting and impossible to get back, so giving people joy and hope is more important than ever

she’s not “healed”, she’s not back to her old self yet, but we see that there’s still spark in her and hope for recovery, even if she struggles, and deep down she is still same kind and caring Yoi we’ve met at the start

we do the warehouse domain, fight, do puzzles, get powder, Yoi and her dad make fireworks, we watch basically same cutscene as of the end of Yoi’s first quest now, with ppl looking up at the sky and seeing fireworks and Yoi and traveler watching from the hill.

at which point i want to mention that like, despite some part of fandom calling canon Yoi irrelevant, she always supported inazuma themes, which i will illustrate by using the dialogue from the quest verbatim and showing how i don’t even need to rewrite it to make it fit

Yoimiya: It was by chance that I happened to be born into the Naganohara family, so it was by chance that I ended up learning this craft from my pops.

Yoimiya: It's also by chance that I've met so many people, learned so many things, and discovered that people associate watching fireworks with the things that are most precious to them.

Yoimiya: Fireworks that disappear in a flash of light are probably the furthest thing away from the eternity that our Shogun desires.

Yoimiya: But people's feelings don't just disappear, and it's those feelings that give fireworks their purpose. If nobody wanted to watch fireworks, then they wouldn't exist.

Traveler: That's another kind of eternity.

boom! Yoimiya was always a representation of transience philosophy, hoyo just didn’t dramatize it properly and without transience explored during main quest, she felt like she doesn’t belong, while she was an actual Inazuma spiritual end game goal all along.

Makoto Reveal

anyway. traveler, pauses, repeats themselves. “Another kind of eternity... Eternity in fleeting things, because people’s dreams give them meaning...”

they get up and run to yae, looking determined, confused paimon following behind

“i know the answer,“ traveler tells to yae and she smirks, leads them to the puzzle stones near Sakura

“So, show me the symbol of transience“

but instead of fiddling with the stones, traveler gestures at the sakura petals, gliding on the wind and people watching theim

“This is the eternity in transience“

yae chuckles in delight “oh, finally, i thought you’ll never get it. How could be fleeting dreams be captured in stone puzzles?”

paimon is like ooooh is this why you led us around eating ramen and shopping? you were not just fucking around on our money, you wanted to make us think about enjoying momentary fleeting things?

yae gives her signature facetious response like oh of course how could you think i was scamming, how ungrateful of you etc etc, but its clear that she both actually was trying to give a hint AND enjoyed scamming them for free stuff

then she gets quieter, says pensively “but it seems the company of your friends was better help with figuring it out... She always did say that we immortals cannot understand beauty of transience the way humans do...”

paimon and traveler are like “She???”

thats when the cutscene revealing that there were two shoguns and that raiden’s sister died at the cataclysm plays. nothing much to add here, i think the existing cutscene works well, but because in canon it’s played AFTER raiden’s defeated, it feels a bit weird, like post-factum excuse.

like raiden goes oh well ok, i’ll get rid of vision hunt decree, by the way i had a twin sister who died, like?? i think pacing-wise its better to learn why raiden is Like That before “punch her until she changes her mind” fight than after she had already changed her mind

so, paimon is like ooooh, so this is why it seemed that raiden changed so much! she didn’t change, we just saw the ideas of the first shogun

yae is like yes, ei’s grief for her sister and differences in their views is important for you to understand for when you will try to change her mind in her hikikomori mind palace

Storming the palace\ Signora interlude

then yae does the ok lets get Kojou Sara quests, which I don’t really feel like changing, bc like. it does its job fine enough. we need to establish that tenryou commission was corrupted and working with fatui AND that kujou sara will go against her only family for justice

the ayato infiltrating like 5 rebellion guys with gorou and kazuha to take the palace is kinda dumb logistically, but tbh this is not game of thrones. genshin works mostly on anime logic where things happen bc its cool and fitting for the character\narrative beats. making actually realistic attack plan i feel like would be too long, complex and derail from the storyline, so i’d say lets keep it roughly same

What I’m gonna change is Signora cameo. And by change I mean remove it completely. I spent a lot of time trying to make her death work, but it just doesn’t. She has nothing to do with Inazuma story or themes, shows up for 2 seconds and dies immediately. This is a shitshow, like, we’d need to derail whole archon quest to insert her and it still wouldn’t be good.

if Signora has to be dead for like, the strategic plot reasons, here is my version of how it should go down

ok but we need an opportunity for raiden to do her one hit boob kill move, and how are we gonna do this if we remove Signora?

easy, sara confronts her tenryuo adoptive dad in front of raiden. like, rn she runs to him, he has a speech about how he basically doesn’t care about raiden herself, but really only worships the Boob Nuke. he gets defeated and then sara runs off to raiden and gets knocked out off-screen, like??? this is so awkward. what the fuck is the point

instead, sara is like right now is the time when Tenryuo chief is reporting to raiden, we need to tell her he’s lying to her!

we follow sara to the palace and confront tenryuo dude in front of raiden. he’s like you have no proof u insolent girl and this is after everything i’ve done for u!

sara challenges him to a duel before the throne and raiden agrees.

we fight the dude and defeat him. he launches into basically same unhinged speech, but now raiden is here to hear it.

She realizes that even those who she considered the most loyal of her servants worship not her, but her power, because she removed herself from inazuma and all people know of her is to fear the Boob Nuke. this is a important step in her development that we will explore a bit later

then she annihilates him which i think is much more thematically relevant bc he died from the same blade he worshipped

then, raiden is like well, i’ve dealt with a traitor, but don’t think that it gets YOU off the hook, a criminal is a criminal and I’ll destroy you

then we duel, bc like. her using boob sword at the start of battle is thematically wrong. its a finisher, a kill move. in the first duel she used it at the end. she needs to charge her burst first, you know

so, we go to the plane of euthemiya and fight. it basically goes the same, first traveler has elements disabled, then wishes of inazuma people awaken and empower them.

raiden is shaken, but not convinced. bc this is the Gives a Fuck raiden, it’s not that she didn’t know her people had ambitions, tho she could underestimate them, its that she thought these ambitions can only lead them to ruin and she, as an arbiter of eternity who sacrificed her body to lock her mind in a sword and evade “corruption“, is the one who knows best.

she rallies up and counter-attacks. similar scene as in the first duel happens, she throws traveler to the real world and follows, readying the kill move

and thats when kazuha blocks her

i think in canon this isn’t given appropriate weight for raiden. bc like. that was her legendary UNBLOCKABLE strike. she one-shot gods and monsters with it. this was her personal proof of perfection, she knows she might not be a philosopher and leader like her sister, but she is The best warrior. like if you want to change her mind, you have to fight her in a duel, her mastery of sword is how she justifies that she’s right to herself

and now a mortal blocked her most perfect move

and not just any mortal! She recognizes the style of the blade he wields. Isshin blade, even though Isshin art died as Raiden Gokaden schools fell

she asks him how did he get this blade and he tells her the truth he learned from the cursed sword

her people never betrayed her. instead, she was mislead by the fatui and pushed her own subjects into running away to the enemies because they didn’t believe she would listen and be merciful to them

the worst thing is that she knows they were right. she would not have been merciful.

and now she watches the bitter irony of how her eternity crumbles.

tenryuo commission, who she thought of her most loyal and closest servants, upholding laws and traditions, in truth were corrupted from the inside, tradition nothing but a hollow form, a fake shape kept just to appease her, with no true soul or meaning, lusting only after power

but the last scion of the clan she though betrayed her, an exile and criminal, a vagabond and pirate, is the one who embodied isshin art she thought lost wholeheartedly, the one who preserved the last true blade of his school. the one who blocked her strike that she thought of as the truest.

and with the vision of a man she had once already defeated in a duel

with all of that, with countless visions rallying up to support an outlander against their own god, with the proof that even killing rebels would be useless because ambitions of the dead will be picked up and reignited again by the living, with proof of the corruption rotting in her government, she cannot see herself in the right anymore

this is why she lifts the vision hunt decree

Raiden’s First Story Quest

I think there’s general agreement in fandom, even among raiden fans, that her first story quest is one of the worst in game. its so boring and pointless. you go on a date with raiden and then she fights some nerd in a duel. who gives a fuck.

it also takes for granted that all players even WANT to hang out with raiden, which like, at this point she was only a giant dick to everyone around and not everyone is a boob worshipper. for people who already disliked her, being forced to babysit her around and take her photos only feels more annoying and antagonizing

Again, our main change in characterization for raiden is that she actually gives a fuck. like, in canon her country is on the brink of complete collapse after civil war and fatui schemes, 2 out of 3 commissions are barely functional, her robot-sona is malfunctioning the storm, and she not only does not give a fuck, but traveler has to jump through hoops to get to her. and she just goes on a date, trying sweets and light novels. like. guuuuurl. come on, get a grip for 5 fucking minutes and do your damn job. we had to randomly stumble into tenryuo nerd being bullied for her to take ANY part in inazuma’s politics

so, logical thing to do for Raiden Who Gives a Fuck is to go out and try to sort out mess she’s now learnt her country was turned into.

like, she summons traveler and goes hey, i know we’re not exactly on bestest terms, but I need to root out corruption and fatui’s shit specifically, and i don’t trust my government officials right now, so i need your help in being a guide bc i haven’t left the room in 500 years.

kujou sara is also there since raiden deemed her trustworthy bc sara was the one who exposed tenryuo corruption to her

i got an ask about how canonically Kanjou commission was in a vulnerable state due to commerce falling with sakoku decree, and so they could be an easy first foothold for fatui to get themselves into the country, and i think raiden quest would be a good place to explore it, while she’s investigation corruption.

i’m not gonna write the whole plot, it doesn’t really matter, the main points is that raiden sees isolation actually doesn’t protect her ppl, but harms them, that when ppl are not allowed to do smth that they want, they will turn to illegal and much more harmful ways instead, for which delusions are an allegory.

raiden can still do fluffy stuff like trying mango milkshakes or whatever, but while going from one commission to another instead of just wandering around on a date

tenruyo nerd can also be there if hoyo wants to include him for some reason. they can even have same useless duel with raiden at the end that makes her appoint him head of commission

Kujou Sara

as I said, Sara is also there, going with raiden on investigation, showing her competence, until its clear that she’s the sole hinge on which entire tenryuo commission depends.

raiden praises her for her loyalty, and Sara, incredibly earnest and grateful, explains her backstory, how she was a kid falling to her death from a mountain while enemies were storming it, and how she received vision during the fall and thus survived, so she now not only owes her life to raiden, but can’t imagine better cause to serve, as clearly, raiden is omnipotent and all knowing and caring enough to save an insignificant tengu child like her

raiden frowns. she does not grant visions herself, in fact, she is not even aware when electro visions are granted - this is canon btw, it’s from raiden’s own voicelines.

tenryuo nerd sees that raiden is about to speak up, and even though he obv doesn’t know vision secrets, he realizes from her expression alone that she’s about to contradict sara’s story

he interrupts her, apologizes profusely, but takes her aside and begs her to not say to sara anything that can shake her loyalty, because again, this commission is going to crumble without her. These are temoulteous times and they need sara the most, raiden can tell her whatever she wants after inazuma is stabilized

but the thing is that being truly honorable is supposed to be raiden’s redeeming grace. she might be stubborn and inflexible, ruthless and inept, but she is straightforward and honorable, she cannot accept loyalty given on false premises, and we need to show that in action

raiden tells sara bluntly that she did not give her a vision, that she was not aware that sara was in risk of death at all

sara is shaken. her world crumbles before her. this is not just bc of her own vision and life that she thought she owed, but in fact, did not. no, much more it’s about vision hunt decree. its about all the people she was sent after, talked to them and their crying families for hours, telling them that this is for their own good, that shogun knows better, sara herself is an example, is a proof. it’s about all the people she didn’t convince and had to take their visions by force, comforting herself in the knowledge that she personally might not understand shogun’s plan, but what she knows is that is infallible.

and now it turns out it’s not true at all.

this, she cannot take. she asks raiden to free her from service. and bc again, raiden is honorable, even knowing the damage it will do, she lets sara go.

after that, she shows up in events and side quests, showing her on a journey to find herself.

we see her in yae miko’s story quest, protecting ppl from the guy who was possessed by the oni spirit, and later, watching yokai spirits dance in the skies and yearning

we see her in an event with a ghost umbrella, being strict and cross with yokai kids for causing so much ruckus, but secretly fond and protective of them, and playing off her funny rivalry with itto

we see her in itto’s quest, in a part where traveler asks ppl about itto’s character, and she’s being fair, says that he might be an idiot and hooligan, but he would never harm or kidnap innocent ppl

we see her in irodori festival, organizing the community, bc she knows how to do it and she’s good at it and *someone* has to (and bc she cares about ppl without any order telling her to)

then, she’s in kokomi quest, bc kokomi asks her to be present at negotiations, bc she’s the only one from tenryuo in whose honor kokomi can really trust. sara tells her that she has no official standing anymore, but kokomi asks her to be there anyway. later, when dishonesty from tenryuo side is revealed and sara helps to stop the ppl who are trying to sabotage negotiations, kokomi asks sara to vouch for what happened in report to raiden, so that this is not blamed on watatsumi and fair deal can be cut

sara says again that raiden has no reason to listen to her and take the worse deal just on her word. and yet, after a couple of days, report comes back. raiden listens to sara’s word and does not force watatsumi to accept the bad conditions. we can see this affecting sara, her being conflicted

sara\kokomi shippers, ur welcome btw

then, raiden’s second story quest. it starts as of now. we accept commission to deal with abyss wolves spawning, go to the mountain of sacred sakura. but instead of just meeting raiden, we first see kujou sara.

she’s there to protect people because this is who she is, this is the ambition that summoned her vision to begin with, and no lies and manipulations can change that.

like at the beginning of her story, she’s on the mountain, protecting her home from the enemies

like at the beginning, she falls and survives the fall, but she’s too injured and about to be killed by the wolves

but this time, inazuma’s archon has not locked herself in a room.

raiden appears, destroying the wolves and saving sara. this time, she is not just an idea based on false belief of a child. she is there in flesh to finally take action that sara believed she was doing so many years ago.

as in canon, raiden says that she will fight the monsters alone, bc its her duty to protect inazuma.

and this is when sara pledges her allegiance to raiden again.

raiden tells her that her saving sara’s life does not mean that sara now owes that life to her, as raiden’s duty is to protect all of her people

but this is not why sara wants to follow her now. finally, she sees real raiden and not childish illusion of an omnipotent goddess who always knows better. but real raiden is honest, honorable, and despite being strongheaded and often misguided, someone who cares deeply for her ppl and is driven by the same goal to protect as sara

sara tells this to her, asserting that she will not serve her out of obligation or with blind loyalty like before, that she will now think critically and question and tell raiden if she believes she;s wrong, but she will believe in her nonetheless as long as raiden cares about inazuma over herself

raiden says that then they will share an eternity in service of inazuma people, as they should

as sara is injured, raiden sends her to organize evacuation instead of fighting, and quest goes on as in canon

sara\raiden shippers, ur welcome btw

Ancient Sakura Blooms Again

I don’t want to change much else about raiden’s second quest, bc its already pretty fucking good and manages to speedrun raiden’s character development in 45 minutes.

instead, all of my rewrite is meant to be a setup to establish both raiden’s conflict and makoto’s personality and philosophy beforehand, instead of getting infodump from old man ghost in 1.5 scenes

this way, raiden coming to accept the eternity as transience is natural progression instead of speedrun and makoto’s appearance has bigger impact, since she was haunting the narrative from the start and we came to know about her gradually

also, irodori festival can go pretty much the same. scara being behind raiden gokaden fall is now more significant, bc for our version it was inazuma’s inciting incident, and now just like. random lore bit.

also, both raiden and yae miko show up in comedic cameos during festival, but after they learn it was scara, there is a brief serious scene as raiden realizes that while she was blaming fatui for corrupting inazuma, it was only possible bc she neglected her own creation, which is a metaphor for inazuma’s isolation as a whole. she doesn’t explain that ofc, just looks striken

“i thought i’m giving him peace...“

“i’ve told you we should’ve destroyed that puppet“, yae miko spits out (she did canonically wanted to off scara after raiden decided he’s not fit for gnosis bc he cried)

ofc, we won’t give proper backstory before sumeru, but it would be a nice tease that will get deeper meaning once we do know, and also illustrate that both raiden’s solipsistic abandonment and yae miko burning bridges instead of dealing with ppl is not great governing strategies

also, irodori has additional ayaka storyline about how she got involved in all this investigation stuff as a distraction to get away from the house bc ayato asked her to wear family jewels for the festival finale and she sold them in act 2, but she’s too afraid to tell it to ayato

finally, after learning of kazuha’s family keeping secrets from each other that hurt them in the long run, she finally gets brave enough to tell ayato what she did

he stops her mid-sentence and tells her to go check the chests

she’s confused, but obeys. she runs back holding the jewelry, being like oh my god what?? how is that back?? did u buy it back??? did u know the entire time???

of course he knew the entire time. he’s proud of her. he only wished she trusted him enough to ask for his help directly.

you didn’t use the commission funds for this, right? ayaka hesitates for a second and ayato laugh.

of course not. why would he need to steal from commission when there are so many fatui assassins to loot

oh, i always knew you wouldn’t. wait what....

ayato’s quest i’d rewrite completely. he’s still manipulate mansplain manslut, but in better political machinations then sabotaging a wedding of npcs and giving hannibal lector speeches to random goons

we’ve scorched out inazuma’s corruption in raiden first quest, now is the time to restructure and modernize commissions which were gutted by said corruption, for which raiden assembles yae, sara, traveler and ayato, who is the head of only commission that did not sell out to fatui

ayato and yae miko are incredibly petty cunts to each other in a very smiley passive aggressive manner, but they team up to come up with devious machinations for the greater good

sara is there not only for military expert role, but also to speak up for the common ppl which she is finally closer to, and to ground the schemers

raiden sometimes thoughtfully says “why don’t we duel them to death?“ as solution to many problems, and when everyone yells no, shrugs

overall, its kinda rough going and obvious that there are a lot of problems ahead, but also clear that inazuma did change and grew, raiden is no longer a solipsistic tyrant and she has a diverse council she listens to and actively engages with her country’s problems

btw, in ayato vs yae miko schemes off he gets to win and be smug bc its his birthday story quest

Yoimiya’s second story quest

Yoi’s second quest is already v good and obv has a lot of soul in it, i wouldn’t change too much, except for the premise

bc this quest is the reason i decided to make vision loss plotline at all. bc this quest is already perfectly written to be culmination of that plot line, and frankly, gets a lot of ??? without it

like, it starts bc yoi just randomly decides to go on vacation to wish on falling stars. like ok i guess. and she’s like i didnt really care but the whole village really got into it and want me to see it, so i’m doing it for them. like?? why would they be invested in random vacation like that?? mb ok they just love yoi

but then traveler goes to nahida and she’s like sorry, meteor showers happen like once in 200 years. but traveler and paimon are very insistent that they have have to do it for you, they can’t disappoint her. when like. its a random vacation! and yoi is not a type of person to be like ugh i didn’t get to see falling stars, my trip is RUINED

but no, they beg nahida to help like its big deal, and nahida agrees to involve aranara, despite no adult being able to see aranara is a big deal in lore. and then they have a whole conversation about is it ethical to trick yoi into believing this meteor shower is real if it’s just a dream, even if she’ll learn truth later, when like.... it’s a vacation????? she’s just there to have fun???? why are you all so serious

basically, beginning of this quest makes little sense, bc it has no actual stakes until girl in a wheelchair shows up, but narrative treats it very seriously when like “yoi has fun on vacation“ is the only stated goal for the start

BUT, if taken as part of vision loss story, everything snaps into place.

after vision hunt ended, visions were returned to their owners. but not all of them reignited on the spot, and Yoimiya is one of the people whose vision did not activate

and is it any surprise? after all she’s seen in a war, all she’s been through, how could she go back to believing that the world is a good and happy place, in the inherent wonder and joy of it?

her vision stayed grey and silent in her hands. she feels bad and guilty that she can’t be happy go lucky as before, when her father and all of the villagers care so much about her

they nudge her to go on a trip to see the falling stars, inspiration for fireworks, in hopes it will remind her of why she loved them so much before

this is the stakes, this is why inazuma ppl care, why traveler cares enough to ask nahida and why nahida would be moved to break tradition and let yoi interact with aranara, why they have this long convo about if it’s right to trick yoi. bc f it’s about reigniting her belief in world’s miracles, then yeah, it makes a lot more sense to worry about truth of it

not only this, but the disabled girl turns from just random npc to a mirror parallel to yoi. both of them were harshly and suddenly hurt by the world, both lost will to live. and the kicker is that yoi is going along bc she feels bad and bc her family and friends are worrying about her, but she only *really* get into this when she meets this girl

because this is what she was always about, not just happy go lucky girl, but a gold koi, a light of happiness and luck talisman for other people, especially for kids. for this girl, she will believe is the wishing stars

of course, her vision reignites when in aranara dreamland she takes girl’s hand and jumps onto the falling stars to fly across the sky. because it’s not about how the world is cruel. its about how good we can be to each other. what if it’s just a shared dream? We find the greatest joys in mortal life in fleeting dreams, for is life itself not like the shadow of the thunder? Pursue your dreams into the clouds if you wish

#genshin impact #genshin #rhine talks #kujou sara #raiden shogun #inazuma #inazuma rants

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gothamslostboy · 5 months

Text

TLB Characters Favorite Type Of Blanket

A/N: I have no idea what this is or why I made it but I haven’t posted anything creative in so long. Yall ever love something but the thought of actually doing it makes you stressed? That’s what writing has been for the past couple months ugh :[ I miss it sm but I never like anything I end up making and keep deleting my progress. Oh well, hopefully I stop doing that soon and enjoy this pointless headcanon

ALSO: yes most these characters sleep upside down from the ceiling, but I like to ignore that bc tbh I want to erase the fact they have those weird ass feet. To me those monstrosities don’t exist. If you like the fact they hang from the ceiling then these headcanons are just for sitting on the couch or cuddling. They also don’t really feel temperatures but again I’m ignoring it:]

————————————————————————

DAVID

Duvet

A big fluffy one filled with cotton

He’d never tell anyone, but it makes him feel safer

It’s similar to one his mother gave him in his human life

He rolls it up like a cocoon

He doesn’t even leave a hole for his face bc he doesn’t need to breathe

Paul and Marko use this to their advantage and prank him atleast 2 times a month

Dwayne shoos them away if he notices them trying to bother David when he’s asleep

MARKO

This man is weird ngl

He just sleeps with a sheet

He doesn’t mind using a different blanket when sharing

But if he’s alone it’s a sheet

He doesn’t like feeling any weight on him when he’s asleep

Might as well sleep with nothing

But he also likes to cover his eyes with it

It’s just soothing to him

PAUL

Weighted blanket

He LOVES to cuddle with ppl bc of their weight being on him

So when no one wants to sleep with him he pulls out this blanket

The boys and Star made him a custom blanket bc he wants it to be HEAVY heavy

If he was human this thing would crush him to death

He sleep walks/flys and this stops him

He needs help getting it off of him bc he’s usually still too groggy to put in the effort when he wakes up

STAR

Patchwork Crochet Quilt

She made it herself

Everytime she finishes a new project she added a new square made up of all the colors she used

Whenever David would see her adding a square he said something like “another square? That’s gonna be a big ass blanket”

She stopped the blanket when it reached 80x80 4 inch squares

She realized that that is, infact, a big ass blanket

She can’t even fit the thing on her bed

Most of it is just hanging off the side

She started a new one to give to Michael

But that one is gonna be smaller

After that she’s just gonna make one for each boy

MICHAEL

Normally shares with Star

She doesn’t even notice he’s using it most of the time

Once it gets big enough he uses the one she made specifically for him

Uses David’s blanket when laying with him

But the fluffiness makes him feel trapped sometimes

Just holds on to David for comfort

Can occasionally convince star and David to sleep in the same bed with him and they use Star’s blanket obviously

He and David sleep under the sheets when using Star‘s blanket tho bc it’s a lil itchy

But she doesn’t seems to notice the itch

DWAYNE

I’m just gonna insert a picture bc idk what it’s called

But this kind of blanket^ along with Satin sheets underneath

He’s like Marko where he doesn’t like as much weight

But really likes making fun of Marko’s sheet and doesn’t want to be a hypocrite

If he’s cuddling with someone he puts their head under his chin and wraps them up together tightly

When alone he keeps the blanket lose

Just in case something happens and he needs to get up quickly and protect the pack

————————————————————————

•TAGS•

@crustyboypix @britany1997

if you want to be added to the tag list just let me know

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under-the-cherrytree · 1 year

Note

Hiii:D

Can I request Hanako, Tsukasa and Teru with an S/o who doesn’t let anyone truly know them and it doesn’t matter how long they know them they just won’t open up bc of trust issues?

tldr; Hanako, Tsukasa and Teru with an S/o with very bad trust issues and never opens up to people

Thank youuuu:D

Hanako, Tsukasa, and Teru with a s/o with very bad trust issues and never opens up to people❣︎

Warnings: talk about trauma, trauma in the past

A/n: hello!!!

I HAD WAY TO MUCH FUN WRITING THE HANAKO FIC BECAUSE HE HAS TRUST ISSUES TOO-

And sorry for how late this came out!!

But enjoy and have a great day or night<3

- Hanako thought he knew everything about you

- He is your boyfriend, after all

- However, he soon realizes he doesn’t know much about you at all

- Or your past

- He can’t really speak, he doesn’t want you to know much about his past ether

- But he still wants to know more about you

- He will ask questions hoping you will open up

- He wants to know you more

- But when it doesn’t work he will start being more blunt about it

- Saying he wants to know about your life

- If you say no, he won’t press

- But he might be a bit more stubborn to tell you about his past if you wont tell him about yours

You screamed as you fell outside of Hanako’s stall. You have had a crazy day. You were kidnapped by who you learned was Hanako’s younger twin brother and then you were forced into a random door boundary. You had to escape a bunch of doors that lead to different places at different times. Then you remember him. Hanako but when he was… alive. You saw him through one I of the doors. He was crying and has bruises all over his arms. It hurt you to see your boyfriend this way. Then his wisp found you before you could even talk to him.

“Got you!” Hanako quickly caught you, holding your shaken body in his arms. “Did you have a nice trip~”

“Hanako…” You sat up, looking at him. His eyes trailed down to your clothes as he frowned. His wisps circled you, putting you back in your normal school uniform.

“Sorry! I just prefer you in your normal clothes!” He held your hands in his. You felt your heart sink inside your chest. You couldn’t help but see that crying boy when you looked at him. He was so hurt. Does he still have those injuries on his arms…?

“Hanako… can I ask you a question?” You held his hand tightly.

“Anything”

“When I was looking through the doors, I saw… you” His smile dropped when he heard you say that. “And you were hurt.. and crying. And i just want to know what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to but I want to be there for you”

“I don’t want to talk about my past.” He said boldly which caught you off guard. His past was a very sensitive topic for it. It also slightly irritated him to think you would question his part if you refused to tell him yours.

“I just want to help, Hanako-“

“You won’t even tell me about your past, why should I tell you about mine?” He bit his bottom lip, regretting his words. He just hated the thought of you asking him to reveal his hard past if you got mad at him for not wanting to reveal yours. He was afraid of what would happen if he told you what he did. If you couldn’t trust him, how could he trust you?

“Hanako, I…” Your eyes were wide as gripped your sleeves. He was right. You wouldn’t even let him know who you truly were, what right did you have to ask him the question you hated. “I’m sorry…”

Hanako now felt like the guilty one. He shouldn’t have brought up what was burdening you and he never would have. He knows better. He just doesn’t like you bringing up such a sensitive subject for him. He has trust issues too.

“No, I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have brought up something so sensitive for you too… I just thought it was unfair for you to ask me that..” He looked down.

“It’s okay… I also shouldn’t have asked something to personal if I didn’t wish to open up myself”

“Maybe… we can both work on opening up to each other” he took your hands in his and pulled you close to him, a small smile on his face.

“Work on opening up to each other? You think it will work…?” You asked

“It might… shall we give it a try?”

- He didn’t know anything about the real you?

- What does that mean?

- Do you not open up to him…?

- At first he wouldn’t care

- If you don’t want to tell him, why should he force you! (He is really chatty about his life when he was alive)

- But then he started to have questions about what your life was like before you met him

- He would ask Mitsuba to make the mirrors show him you in the past

- But you didn’t go here

- He is completely in the dark

- He will be subtle, not wanting you to close up

- He will constantly ask you, wanting to know

- The moment the conversation switches to something personal, he will ask

- Oh boy will he ask

- He wants to know more about his lover

Tsukasa’s cheeks puffed. For the past half hour, he’s been asking you about different things you liked when you were a kid but he still doesn’t know anything about your past. He has learned interesting information about things you like and dislike but he wants to know why you won’t talk to him about your past.

“I just want to know about your past…” He whined and you tensed up. What part of your past does he want to know…?

“Don’t you know enough? You asked me my favorite ice cream, if I have any pets, and other stuff like that… what do you want to know?” You chuckled a bit until he leaned in. Your face flushed as he was staring at you.

“I want to know about your life before we met.”

“My… life?” You repeated, slightly in shock. Why does he want to know about your life? Could you really trust him..?

“I don’t think you want to know about my life-“

“I do want to know what happened in your life!” He gripped your shoulder and you bit your bottom lip.

“Well I don’t want to tell you about my life!” You shouted slightly which shocked the ghost. “It’s none of your business…” you felt your eyes starting to water up. You expected him to be mad at you but he hugged you instead. You wrapped your arms around him and hugged him back.

“I want to know more about you…” Tsukasa whispered and you felt your heart tighten.

“I know… I been hurt by people I trusted before, Tsu.” Your brows furrowed as you wiped the water in your eyes away.

“But I’m not like that! I promise you I’m not…” He got sad at the thought of you not trusting him but he knew that it was the thought of trusting that scared you.

“I don’t know…” you stayed silent.

“I promise I will never hurt you! I only want whats best for you!!” He took your hands in his, giving you a sad look “I promise I won’t hurt you like others did…” You felt your heart pound inside you chest.

You loved this man.

“Thank you, Tsukasa.. maybe some day I will tell you about my past” You smiled softly as you hugged him. He hugged you back, squeezing you tightly with a grin on his face.

“Don’t worry, my love… I’ll make sure no one hurts you again~”

- Teru didn’t think that talking about your past to your lover is really that important

- He doesn’t talk about his past so he won’t force you

- However, he notices your past has a hold on you still

- While his childhood (or lack of) effects him as well, he will talk about it with you (he will talk about it like it isn’t a big deal but at least he’s talking about it-)

- Why don’t you want to talk about yours?

- He can tell you aren’t yourself around him

- He doesn’t like that thought

- Do you not trust him?

- What harm do you think he would do to you?

- Why can’t you be yourself…?

- He will wait for the right time to bring it up

You had a small smile on your face as you read a book. This was a very interesting part for the two main love interests. You were very comfortable on the couch in the student council room. You often spent time in there doing work as Teru would do his. You looked up to see Teru looking at you.

“Teru? Are you okay?” You frowned.

“I have a question for you” He stood up from his desk and a walked over to you.

“What is it?” You could sense his serious tone. He wanted to talk to you about this.

“Why don’t you show me who you really are?” He asked bluntly “does it have to do with your past?”

Your eyes widened. It sometimes shocked you how blunt he could be.

“Why are you asking this..?” You leaned back into the couch.

“You aren’t yourself around me… I don’t want you to feel like you need to hold yourself back.”

It’s true. You always keep him away from your personal information. Biting your tongue so you don’t accidentally spill something from your past. You couldn’t tell if you can trust him.

You wanted to.

“You don’t tell me much about your background, you know…” Your brows furrowed. Teru opened his mouth to say something but stopped. He sat down next to you, holding your hand in his.

“Ever since I was young I was an exorcist” he paused for a moment “That’s really it. There isn’t much to say~” he gave you a smile. You couldn’t help but think that that lack of childhood might be a problem…

“But I don’t want you to feel like you need to hide from me. I love you, Y/n” He held your hand up to his lips and kissed your knuckles. You blushed softly and looked down.

“You don’t need to tell me now, but know I will never hurt you” He gave you a reassuring look. He wanted you to tell him in your own time and he was willing to wait for you.

“Thank you, Teru, I love you”

“I love you too, my darling”

#jshk hanako #hanako x reader #tbhk hanako #tbhk tsukasa #tsukasa x reader #teru x reader #tbhk teru #teru minamoto #tbhk #toilet bound hanako kun #jshk #tbhk x reader #tbhk anime #toilet bound x reader #hanako kun #jshk x reader #jibaku shounen hanako kun

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betty-gb · 2 years

Text

characters x short s/o

———————————————

alright here we go, this is hc of some of my favourite boys and one girl with a short s/o. like quite short, like 4’11/5’0. this honestly became more general hcs but they still focus on height factors.

includes: leo valdez, connor stoll, gilbert blythe, carter kane and kate bishop

disclaimer: these are just my personal opinions so please don’t be mean if you don’t agree. also lmk if i’ve made any mistakes regarding canonical facts about these characters.

pronouns: i think i only used pronouns once in this and it was they/them so anyone could read this although some head cannons were more geared towards a female audience as i myself am female.

warnings: some mild language

*not proof read*

leo valdez:

-starting off strong with our short king, mr. leo valdez

-he is canonically about 5’6 so we’re going to go with that

-he’s a little shit

-just putting that out there

-1000% using you as an armrest

-asking you to grab something for him that he knows for a fact you can’t reach

-the whole package of teasing

-but can we really blame him

-he’s been the shorty for a while and he enjoys finally having someone shorter

-now leo i hc as a little spoon

-just because our boy has some major trauma

-but if you were a demigod too you would probably have a whole lot of trauma as well

-we love

-anyway with the height difference i feel like he would big spoon a bit more but you bet he is still laying on your chest with his face in your boobs (for anyone who has them) or just your chest (for everyone else)

-you would probably come up to his nose area so perfect height for him to give you forehead kisses

-although i feel like he prefers to kiss the tip of your nose

-especially when it’s all rosy from the cold

-in terms of clothes sharing

-i feel like leo is more of a ‘let me try on your clothes that are too small for me for laughs’ guy than a ‘wear my clothes that are too big for you and i’ll swoon’ type of guy

-which makes me sad

-but it’s okay because he will still give you clothes if ur cold and he will most certainly blush and pepper your face with kisses

-now with you being tiny and all he feels a certain sense of protectiveness

-not that you can’t handle yourself yk being a demigod and all

-but he’s lost enough people and he will not let anyone hurt you

-anyone messes with you they mess with him

-which isn’t very intimidating as he’s also short

-but he makes up for it with attitude

-all in all leo will be a bitch about your height but he will also love being taller just the same

connor stoll:

-next comes my one of my favourite demigods

-idk why i love him so much but i do so ya

-let’s start with his height bc he’s a tall lad

-all we get from the books is ‘tall’

-so i hc him to be around 6’3

-i also think travis is about 6’2 so a little bit shorter than connor

-and boy he will not shut up about it

-but i’m getting carried away

-as you can imagine this is a biggg height difference

-probably the biggest one i’m gonna be writing about

-it’s like 15-16 inches so ya

-you don’t even come up to his shoulder

-kisses are always a struggle but you make do

-he picks you up

-you stand on a chair

-he sits on a chair

-it works fine

-he is another little shit

-wow i seem to have a type

-this time it’s even more extreme of a height difference tho so it’ll be sooo fun for you

-that was very sarcastic if you couldn’t tell ^

-he will toss you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and parade you around while you whack at his back

-and if you ask him to get something for you

-don’t expect it within the next hundred years because he will hold it just out of your reach so you have to literally climb him to get it

-unless it’s something you need of course because he’s secretly a sweetheart that would so anything for you

-in terms of cuddling, im assuming you already know it would be very hard for you to be the big spoon

-wow i just realized that this height difference is giving those draco fanfics where y/n is like 4’11 and not like other girls

-back to cuddling tho

-i think it would be okay because i see him as more of a big spoon anyway

-or he would like to have you lying on his chest

-omg i’m just picturing the whole him in sweatpants like rly low down on his waist with no shirt because you’re in his shirt which is way to big lying for you lying on his chest in bed

-i’m swooning

-but ya

-i feel like occasionally he would lie like lower on the bed with his head between your legs on his back

-so like the back of his head is resting on your stomach

-idk how to explain this properly i hope that made sense

-speaking of clothes tho

-i think he is more of a ‘wear my clothes that are too big for you and i’ll swoon’ guy

-only because he may rip your clothes if he tried them on

-if you were more similar in height he would totally be stealing your shirts and putting on a goofy fashion show for you

-and like i mentioned before his shirts are huge on you

-it’s adorable

-now for him the whole protectiveness is stumping me

-i feel like he would kinda respect you and know that you can handle yourself

-because you are like a badass

-but i feel like his whole protectiveness would come out more if a guy was like hitting on you and got handsy

-scary boyfriend privileges coming out

-in battle he would for sure try to protect you but not rly any more than you would try to protect him

-your amazingness makes up for the height in battle

-i generally feel like protectiveness in battle would be about equal both ways

-and he’s the quiet jealous type so i feel like if a guy was like flirting he wouldn’t necessarily do anything

-only if the guy got like to touchy or aggressive like i mentioned before

-wow i really rambled for connor

-i’m sorry i just love him so much

-so all in all he would be annoying but he would have so much respect for you and your abilities even with your height

gilbert blythe:

-alright we’re switching fandoms now

-for the first time in forever i don’t think he’s a little shit about your height

-gilbert is around 5’8

-but for my self indulgence let’s say he’s around 5’10

-because he gives decently tall guy vibes

-so that means we have ourselves a height difference of around 10-11 inches

-he really just sees your height as a way to coddle and protect you

-which obviously you don’t need

-but it being the late 19th century we got all the big strong man stereotypes

-he’s not possessive or anything though

-just protective

-especially from a certain someone

-*cough* billy *cough*

-we all know billy is a grade a asshole

-and it’s even better that my phone just tried to autocorrect billy to bully

-quite fitting

-as for cuddling

-gilbert is a big spoon

-and i am set on that

-he also loves being on the couch and just holding you in his arms while your head rests on his chest

-maybe he’s reading to you

-gosh i’m soft for him

-so the height difference works perfectly for you guys with cuddling

-and yes he is a ‘wear my clothes that are too big for you and i’ll swoon’

-i will stand by this until i die

-wear his sweater and he might just blow up on the spot

-from how adorable you are of course

-gilbert is just a sweetheart and such a simp that will do anything for you

-he doesn’t really look too much into the height difference

-he just loves you

carter kane:

-were heading back to the riordanverse because i am unorganized as heck

-i haven’t read the books in a while so bear with me if i make some mistakes

-i saw somewhere on the internet that carter is 5’6

-and sadie is too

-i think i can see this for the age he is in the books

-but when he’s older i’m picturing like 5’11

-because i hc that our boy had late puberty and a late growth spurt

-sorry sadie

-i hope you enjoyed the small amount of time being taller than him

-so ima talk about little carter when he’s still a shorty

-i don’t think he ever really payed attention to his height

-or others heights for that matter

-my guy was travelling so much and had like no friends his age so i don’t think he had much of a perception of how tall he should be

-at least until him and sadie were reunited

-then the teasing was relentless

-for the sake of this let’s say you either came to brooklyn house with them or were already there idc

-so then he saw you and noted that you were short

-yk a little mental note

-‘hey sadie y/n’s shorter why don’t you tease them instead’

-but it’s a sibling thing

-even considering that i don’t think he cares that much about height

-he just wants an inch on his sister

-cuddling with him is awkward but i think he’s pretty flexible with big spoon/little spoon stuff and your height difference isn’t so drastic that you can’t spoon him

-cuddling with him is pretty versatile

-i’m terms of clothes

-i saw someone say that he will leave his sweaters in random places for his s/o to find and hopefully wear

-i love it

-it’s perfect because he’s so awkward but he is definitely a ‘wear my clothes that are too big for you and i’ll swoon’

-i can’t remember who said this tho so if you find them please lmk and i’ll give credit

-now protectiveness is difficult for him

-he’s such a worry wart

-and a total mom

-so he like wants you to be safe and wants to protect you in battle and stuff

-so he used his height to help with that

-even though you’ve told him so many times that you are fine

-now when he’s in his godly avatar thing

-major height difference

-i’m joking

-let’s not get into that

-imaging kissing like this big chicken warrior head

-no thanks

-again i just think carter doesn’t really care about his height difference with you

-he just loves you

kate bishop:

-last but not least is miss kate

-i was originally going to do all boys for this but my bisexual ass couldn’t resist kate

-so kate is about 5’8

-and i like that

-nice solid height

-a bit tall for a girl

-perfect

-but isn’t everything about kate perfect

-i feel like she lies somewhere in between being a little shit and a sweetheart

-because she is so confident and cocky

-but it’s hot and she’s a woman so it’s okay

-on the other hand she gives massive simp vibes

-because she is my favourite golden retriever character

-i feel like some people may disagree but i feel like she’s a big spoon

-that also may be biased though as i love to be the little spoon sooo

-it’s okay tho

-i feel like she likes you to be facing her while cuddling though

-and size works out for you guys because she is bigger and also the big spoon

-if you desperately want her to be the little spoon i can see that too

-and for little spoon kate i feel like you wouldn’t really have an option no matter your size

-you just gotta make it work

-because i see her as a little whiny poop

-big spoon kate is too tho

-who are we kidding

-she was spoiled growing up

-she’s not bad spoiled tho

-now onto clothes

-i think she’s both a ‘let me try on your clothes that are too small for me for laughs’ and a ‘wear my clothes that are too big for you and i’ll swoon’

-but i think she is more the latter

-for protectiveness i have two different cases here

-let’s say that you are an avenger/super hero/fighter or wtv for our first scenario

-she would totally be protective

-you’re her love

-she needs to keep you safe

-and you are also small

-more excuses for kate to be protective

-i feel like no matter your height tho she is just a protective person by nature

-so in battle she would be watching you in her peripheral vision all the time

-not that you aren’t doing the same tho

-option two

-you are not an avenger/super hero/fighter

-you are an average person

-don’t you just love the idea of have a tall sexy woman as your like personal body gaurd

-because i sure do

-dream come true

-but honestly

-you would probably get roped into her business with the tracksuit mafia so you are in danger a lot during that period of time

-and she’s the sweetest

-it’s a sad fact but we all know that shorter people are easier targets for bad people

-so she would be so cautious

-only because she loves you though

-she definitely protective

-especially of you

-and she for sure loves the height difference

thanks for reading and lmk if you want me to do hcs for a tall s/o!!

#leo valdez #connor stoll #gilbert blythe #carter kane #kate bishop #leo valdez x reader #connor stoll x reader #gilbert blythe x reader #kate bishop x reader

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subskz · 7 months

Note

i like most to least rankings so i’d like to hear your thoughts on these:

most to least bratty member?

most to least masochistic member?

most to least to enjoy rough bdsm sex over soft sex?

sure! ^_^

bratty:

lino

seungmin (i think he’d be a good boy most of the time, but the reason he’s so high up is bc when he’s bratty, he’s most definitely the most difficult and stubborn of the boys…even worse than lino bc i think he’d be a bit harder to break 😭 he has a lot of patience! but he’s not always confident enough to be a tease w you so i think he’d usually be pretty well behaved, for all his teasing he can still be quite shy after all~)

hyunjin (like seungmo i think he’d be good for you most of the time, but he can also be sooo spoiled n smart mouthed. if he feels like he isn’t getting enough attention or affection he’ll pull out all the stops: mimicking u, teasing u, rolling his eyes, huffing, snide remarks, making a big show of lil things like stretching to expose his skin or licking up food from the corner of his pretty lips so you’ll notice him…luckily he’s very easy to break once he gets that attention hehe he’ll be whining out apologies n begging for mercy in no time)

jisung

jeongin (the perfect equilibrium of sweet eager puppyboy who wants to do well and hear your praises, and fussy, sharp-tongued catboy who’s too shy to admit what he wants <3 i think he’d get bratty as a way to play hard to get bc looking too eager and actually having to admit what he wants makes him super embarrassed…but at the end of the day innie is a bit of a pleaser n he cant mouth off too much without taking it back once he sees ur reaction)

felix

chan (definitely has his moments…but i think when he’s bratty it’s mostly playful teasing that he can’t keep up for too long without breaking into giggles…it’s more endearing than anything else <3 unless he really wants a reaction out of u…we all know channie is good at saying very out of pocket things then backing down immediatey after heh)

binnie (the ULTIMATE good boy!!! very whiny but rarely bratty)

masochistic:

hyunjin

jisung (hannie can be kinda sensitive so he may not be into the degradation/humiliation aspect as much…if ur degrading him you have to be physically treating him gently, and if you’re inflicting pain on him u have to be praising him through it all for taking it so well! or calling him a good slut, pretty whore, stuff like that. he likes it when it’s one or the other, but i think both degradation + rough treatment at the same time would be too much for him)

seungmin (he likes physical aspect of it more than verbal…lest we forget “it’s more fun to get hit than attack” hehe. i think he can handle degradation/humiliating acts sometimes but he does get self-conscious, so getting him to really relax into it might be a challenge. when it comes to pain though…i think he’d like testing his limits. him, lino, n hyunjin seem like the type to smile at you after getting their face slapped 💓)

chan

felix

lino (he’d never admit it but i think he wouldn’t endure pain as well as lix might…even when he holds it in quietly it doesnt take long for him to run out of tolernace and start writhing n squirming around, whining abt how mean you’re being </3 i think he’d like that mix of degradation/praise though…calling him pretty n filthy in the same breath, wrapping your hands around his throat n murmuring abt how well he’s taking you, stuff like that!)

jeongin

binnie (our big boy…he is so bad at handling pain he always thinks he can take it then crumbles after just a few slaps or flogs. and i think his poor leo heart wouldnt always be able to take it if u were too mean to him…if you do degrade him expect a lot of whining and you’d better be ready w lots of praise to make up for it after!! but he is into lighter forms of pain like biting/marking)

rough bdsm (this one varies a lot bc i think it’d really depend on the day and the type of mood they’re in!)

hyunjin

lino (curious kitty #1…he’s softer than u think and some days he would much rather be spoiled rotten!! but he still loves the thrill of rougher scenes and would definitely want to try all kinds of toys and kinks and at least once…he’s very intense n passsionate underneath all that playfulness after all~ it’s important to him to be able to trust u w complete control over his pain n pleasure)

felix (curious kitty #2…i think he’d really like being babied and taken care of but when he wants it rough he wants it rough! he wants to be crying and shaking and covered in marks n bruises by the end of it so he can admire them for days to come afterwards n blush over the memories associated w them <3 smth abt trying to be so good for u even when ur being so mean to him just excited him like nothing else, as long as u scoop him up and treat him so sweetly afterwards 💗)

jisung

chan (as much of a soft sub i see channie as, he’s still more than willing to give anything a try for you <3 i think most of the time what he needs is to just be taken care of so gently n sweetly after a long day, but on certain days he wants nothing more than to forget his own name, surrender every bit of control and make himself useful to you, whatever it might entail he’ll be so good through it all!)

jeongin

seungmin (weirdly enough seungmo is high on the brat/masochist scale but not on the bdsm…but i personally think that while he’d be into harder elements like painplay/breathplay etc. he might be a lil more vanilla when it comes to restraints/toys/extreme kinks etc if that makes sense. i think he’d rather keep things simple without getting a bunch of contraptions involved hehe the most he’d probably be into is a collar or smth along those lines! i think he’d just prefer the intimacy of you n him without making things too complicated)

binnie (clearly my softness for binnie is showing in these answers LMAO sorry but him being so low doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be into it at all! i just think he’d often prefer softer scenes where he gets to obey you without any high stakes or super intense play involved, simply bc he wants to be good for you and get showered w lots of praise n affection in the process! i can definitely see him being very into bondage though, shibari that accentuates his big gorgeous muscles and has him at ur mercy to use him however u see fit!)

#ask #💌 skz #why did i elaborate on seungmo for all 3 of these….google search how to get s puppyboy out of ur house

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shentheauthor · 1 year

Note

These are not cringe at all! But uh... headcanons on what would make the Harbingers laugh? 👀

Ty ty lol… I have a habit of thinking x reader requests are cringe even tho I like writing them sometimes

Anyway, harbingers laughing hours!

Pierro:

This man knows no joy, only pain /j

Fr tho, I think he would laugh at the harbingers doing insane shit

On the rare occasion when he isn’t completely done with their shit

One time Pierro snorted at Childe getting a glass of wine thrown at him, and nobody believed him when he tried to tell them

Usually this man is a stone wall of unflinching apathy in the face of humor tho

Capitano:

Hear me out— dirty jokes

This man is a soldier. He may be a very serious person, but he will chuckle at a dirty joke. Any group of people in close quarters will start making horrible dirty jokes

One time he giggled at a cucumber bc it reminded him of something a trainee said when they thought he wasn’t listening

I won’t go further bc this is a sfw blog, but you get the idea

Dottore:

If you’ve read the webtoon, you know this man will literally just giggle spontaneously

At absolutely nothing

He will laugh at other people in pain too

An assistant fell down the stairs, and he just laughed for ten minutes instead of helping

Yes this does include the older dottores

They all have the same sense of humor

He also finds Scaramouche’s insults hilarious

Hehehohoaha man

Columbina:

Honestly she would laugh more at people attempting to tell jokes than the joke itself

She finds it amusing that people find it funny

Like if Dottore is laughing at Childe, she will laugh at Dottore

It’s impossible to get her to do anything more than a soft giggle or a chuckle, tho

Don’t even try, it won’t happen /hj

Arlecchino:

Step 1 to get her to laugh: be Childe

Step 2: get hurt

Step 3: profit

She’s another one who laughs at the pain of others

If she isn’t rolling her eyes

She finds complaining annoying, but she will absolutely laugh when bones break and recruits cry

These people are all horrible people lmfao

Pulcinella:

Finally, someone wholesome

He will laugh at kids getting up to shenanigans

So like, Childe’s siblings putting on a little kid show

He will laugh and clap along

Me inserting my papanella hcs into everything I do lmfao

Basically this man likes kids, so he finds their silly shenanigans funny

Scaramouche:

Another who likes the pain and suffering of others

Especially if the others are yae, Dottore, and ei

His voice line about Kazuha is just him losing it over that man blocking Ei’s sword

He also finds mortals in general amusing

As long as they don’t bother him

He’ll laugh at someone offering him food, like a jackass

Evil little man. Absolutely horrible (affectionate)

Sandrone:

A genuine laugh is hard to get out of her

She’ll chuckle if someone has the balls to touch one of her dolls

And then she’ll kill that person

Very bold of that person to assume she would be ok with that

Basically she laughs at the sheer audacity of people

Signora:

Another one that’s hard to get to laugh

But she will give an amused “hm” if one of her subordinates is confused or upset

Like Childe lmao

She thinks him being angry is hilarious

Also, if venti ever gets hurt, and she finds out, she will cackle

The only time she will ever belly laugh lmao

Pantalone:

Most of his laughter is fake

But the jokes he actually does like are, shockingly, ones with puns

You can’t tell me he doesn’t enjoy wordplay

Also he tends to laugh with other people. You know how some people have contagious laughs? Pantalone catches laughter like it’s a disease

So basically, if someone else is laughing, you bet he’s holding back giggles behind that smile

This is especially bad if it’s someone like Dottore or Tartaglia

He will cry laugh if they’re having a fun time

Also dark humor

Tartaglia:

Dirty jokes, puns, physical comedy

Dark jokes too

He makes REALLY dark jokes, and will laugh at them himself

The kinds of dark jokes that make people suggest you go to therapy

It’s his way of coping

He isn’t actually a sadist, contrary to popular belief, but he sure will laugh at his coworkers in pain

Unless it’s the top 3 harbingers

He prays for the day Signora trips or even bumps into a table so he can lose his absolute mind

He’s also similar to pulcinella, finding kids amusing

He also laughs during battle. It’s kinda terrifying Kskgkbkdkgkelvkkegm

#genshin impact #harbinger headcanons #Shen’s headcanons #fatui harbingers #pierro #capitano #Dottore #columbina #arlecchino #pulcinella #Scaramouche #Sandrone #Signora #Pantalone #Tartaglia

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peachesofteal · 3 months

Note

Hii you're one of my favourite creators on here, I really love your writing, and your Simple Math series is just so good no words can describe or do justice, I love it.

I wanted to ask, I've been writing for a long time but only recently started posting my work online, and I've been wanting to try and make a series with ghost x soap x reader. I have a good idea, and a simple outline of the plot, but I was wondering if you have any tips to share since you've made a few series by now? It's alright if not, i also just wanted to let you know that your work is really great :))

Hi! Thanks so much, I’m thrilled you’re enjoying Simple Math. I’m happy to try to give you advice but can’t guarantee how good it will be (I am really bad at this). I wasn't sure if you meant throuple specific or just writing in general so:

Let me preface this with: for me. I do it this way, because it works… for me. I do this not that because I like it… for me. You might be different. Other writers might be different, and that’s okay.

The only way I’m able to successfully write a series is by outlining it. I outline everything by chapter, and include events/plot pieces, key dialogue, and anything else I think belongs in that part of the story. I then write it in chunks, focusing on the pieces I really want to write, and then filling in the rest. Writing a series is a marathon, not a sprint. It's really easy to get excited about a concept, write three chapters and then be completely over it (I do this) and the way I try to combat that is by using my outline like a roadmap. It keeps me on track. I HAVE to outline otherwise if I'm directionless, I'll start changing the story or shifting the narrative and then it won't make sense. Dead Disco was originally a one shot, and if I could do it over again, I would not have started the story where it did in Chapter 1. I made it work bc I became obsessed with them obviously but still. If you have a plot and a storyline in mind, plan it alllllll out. Trust me.

Throuple wise, I found it really difficult to write (and still do most times) M/M/F smut. Otherwise I think key points of writing the throuple is really ensuring you capture everyone's emotions and the inner dynamic to the best of your ability. The relationship between partner A and B is going different than the relationship between partner C and A, or C and B, or all three together, and that's something I find really, really enticing about writing a throuple and I encourage you to explore it. It's so fun to develop these relationships and all their multi faceted roles within their characters' lives.

Also @ceilidho has been posting some very solid writing advice lately so I would check that out too!

#peaches asks #idk if this is helpful at all honestly but

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