#but then why do you still fkn hate me

[sungbeam]

nonidol!kim younghoon x f!reader

neither you nor younghoon were party people, but you did find love in the convenience store down the block.

▷ genre, warnings. friends 2 lovers, mutual pining, college au, swearing, fluff, humor, comfort, reader has crowd anxiety, reader has a lot of siblings lol, mentions of math/physics/chemistry/etc sorry it was necessary for the character, kissing, puns and pick-up lines, mentions of academic stress, lots of carbs haha, drinking, guys younghoon was my first bias and im remembering why

▷ total wc. 29.3k (TUMBLR MADE ME CUT OUT SO MUCH I FKN HATE THIS HELLSITE)

this is the seventh installment of the love in unity series! this should be fine as a standalone, but there are multiple references to party people & i highly encourage u to read it!; all other yns will be referred to as _!yn. (ayc occurs DURING party people)

a/n: in an alternate world, i would still be obsessed w kim younghoon, isn't that crazy. anyways, enjoy + reblog!

EPISODE ONE (PILOT): OF ALL THE COSMIC COINCIDENCES

KIM Jungwoo's message materialized on your lock screen in a bombardment of photons: Hey, you sure you don't wanna come with us tonight? Feel free to still join :')

You slung the strap of your bag over your head and shoulders before shooting him a reply. No thanks Woo :') Appreciate it though! Have fun tonight <3.

Some of the people in the social circle you orbited were heading to the bay tonight for a bonfire rager to celebrate (read: mourning) the beginning of the new university term. Though you hadn’t seen many of the people attending tonight in a couple months, you were never much for big crowds. Plus, the start of the school year brought a whole dumpster fire of things to worry about, so taking a quiet evening with yourself would be well worth it to keep your head on straight.

With the message sent, you hauled your apartment door open and headed out into the late evening. There was a convenient store at the end of the street a couple blocks over that you had been frequenting since freshman year, and you could taste the sweet brioche buns as the store’s fluorescent lights entered your view. It was a small corner store that reminded you much of a traditional 7/11, except there was a corner inside the store where patrons could eat and chill, and the food, arguably, tasted better than alright.

(The seating area inside this place had definitely seen many of your midterm and finals grind nights. And tears. There were lots of tear stains on those tables.)

Your roommate and good friend Miyawaki Sakura often accompanied you here whenever you came to do some studying, shopping, or recreational snacking. Tonight, she was holed up in her room video chatting with some of her cousins in Japan, but most other nights she would be online playing some kind of first person shooter game.

The walk to the nearby convenience store was a short, yet familiar one. You played a song at a faded volume in your earbuds, your hands tucked into the safety of your pockets. It was a warm night out, as late summer clung onto the coattails of early autumn, leaving a strange mixture of green, red, and yellow in the trees. The streets weren’t barren—plenty of people were out and about on a Saturday night—and still, you tilted your head up to the sky to appreciate the beauty of the obsidian sky.

When you reached the end of the block, you entered into the comfortable embrace of the convenience store. It was quiet, as expected, with only the muffled sound of jazz acoustics from the overhead speakers as white noise. The latter combined with the noise from your own device made it all the easier for you to be unaware of the other people here with you.

Your mouth was already watering from the mental image of brioche, and you made a sharp swerve into the familiar bread aisle when you realized—oh, you weren’t alone.

Standing exactly where you knew the brioche buns were stationed was a tall, lanky man with a pair of earbuds hanging from his own ears, one hand examining one of the bread packages while the other was tucked away in his pocket. His dark colored bangs were shaggy and hung in his eyes, but you could’ve recognized that side profile from a mile away. You’d spent nearly half a quarter staring at it, after all—the other half was looking at his front profile and forehead, but those were just as identifiable.

For a moment you stood at the mouth of the aisle weighing your options. Did you say hello, or did you walk away and pretend you didn’t see him?

He decided for you.

Kim Younghoon glanced up from the bread after feeling your eyes on him for a considerable beat of time. He blinked once before you saw the sharp surprise in his expression melt away into soft fondness. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he chuckled, tugging his earbuds out with a charming smile. “Long time no see, Yn.”

You mirrored his actions and slipped the wires into your pocket. “Long time no see,” you agreed, returning his pleasant expression.

You met Younghoon just last year when he stumbled into the math tutoring center with his head held high and a notebook full of question marks. While your friends on shift at that time (Chanhee coaching someone through their linear algebra worksheet; Jungwoo yanking his hair follicles out with a group of freshmen over trigonometry) were busy, it was you who ultimately became Younghoon’s go-to calculus tutor. For the quarter that he took calculus, you helped the drama major through it.

Of course, finding a drama major in a calculus class was a rare occasion, but you both blamed the university’s awful general education requirement. Either way, you’d both found a friend and good company in one another. It didn’t help that he was terribly charismatic, and often filled the spaces in between long text messages about how to calculate the cross-section area of a vase with “good morning”s, “good luck on your midterm!”s, and corny STEM-themed one-liners.

Younghoon was the kind of guy people took home to meet their parents. Not… not that you ever thought about him like that. It was just what you overheard from this group of girls in the tutoring center once—

“I guess we both had the same idea tonight then,” he chuckled as you came to stand beside him to scour the shelf for your victim tonight.

You hummed. “I guess so,” you said. “I usually don’t see you in this area of the district though.” Because you definitely would have seen him. You lived around here, after all.

“Oh,” he grabbed the back of his neck sheepishly, “it’s a funny story actually. I dropped my friends off at a party and I went to the store near them and they had no good selection of bread.” He made a helpless gesture. “So I couldn’t just accept defeat, and now I’ve ended up here.”

You plucked a package of soft brioche from the shelf, then passed him an amused look. There was something unfair about how the harsh LED lights fell so lightly over his facial features. “I guess some form of cosmic coincidence brought us bread-lovers here.”

Younghoon knocked his bread package against yours like he was cheering a glass of champagne. “And might I say what excellent taste you have.”

That drew a laugh from you. “Ditto.”

He pursed his lips then, considering you. “So what social event are you dodging tonight, Miss Mastermind?” Younghoon’s eyebrows arched upwards at you, and you suddenly took on the sheepishness he had before. Though, you definitely noted that familiar nickname that followed his question. You wondered if that was still the name your contact was saved under in his phone. (If he even still had your contact information saved.)

You raised the palm of your hand up to hide half of your face from comical shame. “Now why would you just assume that I’m here because I’m avoiding a social call?”

“Yah,” he chided jokingly, “because I know you.” His eyes turned up to the ceiling for a moment before he added, “And you’re friends with Kim Jungwoo.”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

He laughed. “Gotcha.”

“And you say I'm the mastermind?” You quipped back at him, all light-hearted. When he first dubbed you with the nickname, you hadn't known what to do about it. He claimed it was because you somehow made learning calculus fun for him—some “sorcery,” as he accused back then.

“You are!” He exclaimed with excited, wide eyes. “You've hexed me with a love for math puns and acute angles,” he groaned melodramatically, clutching his chest like his heart was about to burst for added effect.

You clicked your tongue, unable to hide your amusement. “Acute angles is a new one.”

“'Cause they remind me of a-cute-ies like you,” he said with his hand shaped into a finger gun, tongue between his teeth.

Your hand went over your face again. “I forgot that you did that.”

“You missed it!”

The smile on your face couldn't even be fully covered with your hand. Maybe you did miss it—or maybe it was just him. When the quarter had wrapped up last year and Younghoon was no longer taking calculus, neither of you had any “excuse” to be around each other anymore. Though you still had his number, you always chickened out of texting him to see how he was doing or if he wanted to hang out.

In your mind, Younghoon was always too cool for you. You didn't feel like you fit into his world.

Younghoon took your hand and drew it away from your face, a slow smile filling his lips. “There she is. You missed me.”

“If you stop asking, I will pay for your bread.”

“As if I'm going to let you do that,” he shook his head. “I'll take that as a yes.”

You both began making your way over to the counter to purchase your individual pastries. You always knew Younghoon liked bread, and you shouldn't be so surprised that he drove halfway down the district just to find a specific brioche bun. It was funny and strange how the universe worked. At times you wondered if the probability of fate could be calculated—

“So it's just you tonight?” You asked him as the two of you lingered just outside the convenience store with your freshly purchased breads in hand. You had both immediately torn into your brioche as soon as you cleared the threshold, and the fluffy pastry filled your mouth and stomach with utter joy. It was buttery and sweet and soft… perfection.

Younghoon shoved the piece in his mouth into his cheek. “For the most part, yeah,” he replied, his shoulder lifting in a half shrug. “You?”

“Yeah, Kkura's at home, but she's on call with someone. Jungwoo did invite me out to that big bonfire at the bay tonight, but…” You shook your head.

His head tilted slightly. “Oh yeah I heard about that.” For a second, he didn't say anything, and then he murmured, “Crowd anxiety.”

You hummed, eyes shooting over to his. “Hm?”

“Crowd anxiety, right?” He asked with more confidence. “I—you can correct me if I'm wrong—but I just remember you mentioning something about crowd anxiety last year.”

Your chewing slowed for a moment, and a small smile curled onto your lips. “No, you got it right.” He remembered. Of course, he remembered. A warm feeling made itself comfortable in your chest.

Younghoon seemed to brighten. “Good, I'm glad I remembered correctly,” he said while leaning his shoulder against the wall of the convenience store. “I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you ever happen to watch that performance of 12 Angry Jurors I recommended?”

Uh oh. You could physically feel your neurons spark at the familiar title. It was the equivalent to a bell—no, alarm—rattling around inside your noggin.

Younghoon threw his head back in a laugh at how your face rearranged into an expression of pure mortification. "You look like I just caught you with a hand in the canary cage—oh my god, you should see your face!"

You were helpless at this point, and no words were coming to your tongue to rescue you. Screw all the differential calculus—where was language ability when you needed it? “I can explain myself,” was all you came up with.

He crossed his arms over his chest, fixing you with a pointed look, albeit still amused. "I'd love to hear this."

“You know that some things just slip my mind—”

“Yes, and that's why I watched you put it into your calendar.”

“And you know that the school has a bad habit of scheduling big events on the same night—”

He cocked a brow at you, leaning forward slightly. “I don't like where this is going, you workaholic.”

You gestured at him with the piece of bread in between your fingers, and he had to cover his mouth to keep from snorting. “I am not a workaholic,” you said firmly.

“Sure you aren't,” he replied back in a tone that indicated he thought the exact opposite.

“Anyways, they put the research symposium on the same night as the last showing—”

“Ah-ha!” He cried with a triumphant finger pointed at the sky. You were convinced that any second now, he was going to start twiddling an immaculately curled mustache. “So you did procrastinate!”

You pressed your lips together as you crumpled your empty packaging, then raised a finger up to scratch your head sheepishly. “Maybe I did.”

Younghoon drew out an exhale. “Aye, I knew it. You know, I think you're just about married to your work, Yn-ah.” His mouth quirked to the side and he scratched the underside of his jaw. “But I guess that's not a bad thing.”

You gave a small wince. “You're not mad I missed the play?”

“Mad? No, of course not. It wasn't my play,” he joked. “I know you have priorities, and me being mad would just be silly.”

“But you are disappointed,” you countered pointedly.

“Disappointed for you,” he countered. “That was a pretty good performance of 12 Angry Jurors. Though… there is one part that I would have chosen to represent differently, but…” He shrugged, letting the thought float out into the ether.

“What is it?” You prompted.

His lip curled upward and he let out a little chuckle. “I'm not telling you; it'll spoil the ending!”

You were unconvinced. “I'm never gonna see the play, Hoon.”

“Not with that attitude,” he shot back.

You couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of you from his sass that came out of left field for you. The sound of your joy made his smile widen and his eyes narrow into pretty, upturned crescent moons. The warmth all around you wasn't just from the evening's temperature. You'd forgotten just how easy it was to talk to Younghoon, and you decided that yes, you definitely missed him. But with all good things, it was written with a curtain call.

Younghoon seemed reluctant to push off of the wall and away from you. “Well, I shouldn't keep you any longer,” he said. There was a down turned angle to the corners of his smile now. “I do need to go re-find parking for when I have to go hunt my drunk friends down.”

Your laugh was small. “Good luck with that. And… don't worry about keeping me anywhere too long.”

“Thanks, and I'll keep that in mind.” His tongue stuck out between his teeth for a second, his head ducking down to shake his hair out of his eyes. “Hey, you still have my phone number, right?”

“I do.”

Whether harsh or dim lighting, it highlighted his features beautifully regardless. His eyes twinkled. “Now I know you won't ignore me if I send you another calc pun.”

“I'll look forward to it,” you promised.

The two of you were beginning to step toward your opposite directions, but failed to make your legs move any further. “Get home safe, Yn,” he murmured in goodbye. The possibility of him never reaching out crossed your mind. It wasn't like you didn't have faith that he would; rather, it was your own thoughts creeping into your head that you two came from different worlds. Despite the friendliness between you, that was the whole reason you shied away from ever reaching out. It was nothing personal against him.

EPISODE TWO: PASS GO & COLLECT TWO HUNDRED

GRAVITY reminded you of its existence when a bundle of fabric hit you square in the head. (Then again, you were always reminded of gravity’s existence when you thought about it…) “Yah—hey!” You clawed the article of fabric off your head and whirled around in your desk chair with a scowl. “Kkura!”

Sakura blinked innocently from where she stood at your closet, hand on her hip. “Put it on.”

You made a face as you straightened out the garment in your hands, the frown deepening when you realized which top it was. Or rather, which dress it was. “I haven’t seen this since I unpacked my clothes from boxes two years ago,” you whistled lowly. It was a black satin piece, something you brought along with you from home in case you ever decided to go to an event that called for a cocktail dress. Most of the formal events you attended though usually allowed you to get away with dress pants and a blouse. This poor piece of fabric had been relegated to the back of your closet since.

Your friend resumed sorting through your clothes for any alternatives or more of that kind. “I didn’t even know you owned something like that. I thought all your bottoms clung to your ankles unless they were shorts.”

“I have variety,” you sniffed and draped the dress over the back of your chair. “And what's wrong with bottoms going to my ankles? I like when they get to be warm.”

“That's what socks and shoes are for.”

“Says the girl who wears jeans that pretty much cover her shoes.”

Sakura shot you a look that reminded you of when your mother was exasperated, but she didn't want to admit that you were right. “Okay, so maybe we both have problems. But that's besides the point!” She walked away from your closet to sit herself on the edge of your bed, her hand dragging the arm of your desk chair to roll you over away from your desk. “We're going to a party tonight!”

She beamed, waving her hands around. When you only gave her a blank stare, she cleared her throat. “Ahem, I said, we're going to a party tonight! Woo!”

You pursed your lips. “Not very woo, to be honest.”

“You're not very woo,” she quipped in a deadpan.

“No, no, no!” You cut in, waving your finger back and forth. “Don't pretend like you wouldn't rather stay home than party either. And besides, you know that I don't do crowds.” You gazed off into space as if recalling the Great War with glazed-over eyes, already smelling the sweat and booze, and feeling the suffocating pressure in your chest as people squished up against you, and as you lost sight of your friend or anyone you knew for that matter, in the sea of—

“I know,” Sakura pushed out an exhale, and your eyes shuddered as you came out of that headspace. “But I think it'll be good for us. I mean, you need to get your eyes away from that grant application for one second, and I—”

“Need to stop playing League?” You suggested cheekily.

Your friend's scowl coaxed a high pitched wheezing sound out of you. She pursed her lips. “I was going to offer to hold your hand while we were in the house, but I guess not—”

“Okay, now let's not get ahead of ourselves!” You countered. The glint in Sakura's eyes when you interrupted her told you all you needed to know. Damn her cleverness; she'd got you once again.

Maybe she was the real mastermind.

Two hours later—the both of you dolled up and willpower strong (ish)—you clung to Sakura's hand as you and she slipped into the lively host house for tonight's festivities. Sweat already dampened the lines in your palm, and you moved your grip on your friend to hold onto her arm instead. You hadn't been to a house party or a frat party in a while, the last one being a birthday party for one of your friends from differential calculus turning twenty-one.

This instance was different. For one, there were far too many people packed together per square inch. And second, who thought turning down the lights was a good idea? You were already half blind as it was…

“I think we should get a drink!” Sakura shouted as she sent you an encouraging smile.

Your eyes widened as you narrowly missed getting someone's shoulder shoved into your face. “Yes, a drink sounds great!”

It was a war zone as the two of you maneuvered yourselves through the crowded living room space. The only reason people seemed to converge in that room in particular was because it had been turned into a makeshift dance floor. There were also people seated on the stairs, leaning over the upstairs landing, and meandering around in the halls.

You could feel your head begin to fog up as you unconsciously shifted closer to Sakura's side. Your friend curled her arm around your shoulders, deftly guiding you through the fray to the light at the end of the tunnel—the kitchen. There was a distinct lightening of your chest as you stepped foot into the less crowded space. The kitchen was still only dimly lit with the most minimal of light switches flipped on, but it was still enough where you could at least see your hand in front of your face and the light layer of sweat on Sakura’s brow. You made a swift scan of the area and spotted three people over by the kitchen counter, one of whom was slumped over the countertop, dozing off.

Oh, to be him right now.

“Oh, hello,” greeted one of the trio. He was stationed behind the counter like a bartender, his purple bangs brushed out of his face. The girl with him lifted her hand in a friendly wave.

“Hi, we’re not—uh, interrupting or anything?” Sakura said as your hold on her arm loosened considerably now that you were in an area that was much less crowded.

The two of them shook their heads with too much enthusiasm. “No, no! Definitely not.”

You and Sakura exchanged glances of incredulity, but didn’t push the topic any further. With pleasantries aside, the two of you excused yourselves to peruse the display of alcoholic beverages on the island space. You knew Sakura could hold her alcohol a decent amount, and so could you, so you both looked around for bottles of flavored soju to hold you over for the evening.

You dug around in one of the coolers and withdrew twin bottles of strawberry-flavored ones. “Kkura!”

Her blue-colored head perked up and she brightened as you waved your treasures around in the air. “Ooh, yay! You know, I think we should restock our stash of melon soju at home,” she mused and came over to where you were.

With your drinks secured, you each took the first sip like a shot, then linked arms to face the crowd again.

Drinking either made your anxiety rocket or relax—it depended on the beverage and the kind of day you’d had, but as you nursed your bottle for moments longer, the heaviness in your chest began to gradually recede.

The crowd anxiety you harbored was a byproduct of being the middle child of five siblings. You loved your family to bits, but sometimes home life was overwhelming. It wasn't that you got nervous around people, but more so in large bodies of people. The first year or so of your university life spent in large undergraduate lectures were absolute hell; there was an appeal to the upper division classes besides specialized interests.

But your friends were all aware and took good care of you, which you were more than grateful for.

“Is it just me—” Sakura said to you loudly with blue and purple lights painting her features, “—or does this soju taste really good tonight?”

You smacked your lips together as you savored the sweet taste. “You're definitely right,” you said. “We might have to go back for more.”

“If we can remember how to get there,” she giggled.

“Wait, what's in here?” You steered the two of you into a doorway to your left.

From the looks of the massive table stretching from one end to the next, you had stumbled upon the dining room. The room was large enough for there to be a few different groups of people occupying sections, but the largest one took reign over the farthest end. Your eyes widened in delight when you recognized two people in particular. “Oh wow.”

“Yn?” Chanhee exclaimed in disbelief. He was partly hunched over what looked like a board game as his deft fingers counted out paper money. “You're here?”

Everyone—well, almost everyone—turned their heads to see who Chanhee was talking about. Nonetheless, there were still quite the amount of eyes looking at you and you felt your palms begin to get sweaty around your bottle neck.

Younghoon gasped. “YN!” He grinned, lumbering over with his jelly-like limbs, tripping over people's legs and chairs. You could see the alcohol in his expression before you smelled it, but you couldn't just not hug him when he wrapped his arms around you in greeting. You hadn't seen him since last week at the convenience store but even then, the surprise had yet to escape you. What a cosmic coincidence.

“Hey, Hoon,” you chuckled in amusement, patting his back affectionately. You didn't know he would be so affectionate when drunk, but then again, this was the first time you were experiencing him like this.

“Big guy's a little drunk,” Sakura observed, then lifted her bottle to her lips. “Are you guys playing Monopoly?”

One of the guys, who looked the most of sound mind and state, nodded. “Yeah. D'you guys wanna play?”

Younghoon placed his hands on your shoulders with a goofy grin slipping onto his face as he pulled away. “You should play with us! Guys—” he announced to his friends, “—this is my bestest friend, Yn!”

“And her friend, Sakura,” you cut in, gesturing to Sakura with jazz hands.

“And we would love to play,” Sakura added.

You passed her a glance. There was mischief dancing in her eyes. You supposed at least you knew what you were getting into before jumping into any game with the Miyawaki Sakura. These poor chumps never stood a chance.

“Okay, but Chanhee's the iron,” remarked one of the other boys while you, Sakura, and Younghoon made your way over to where they all were gathered.

You snorted at Chanhee's less than pleased expression. “Why does he insist that you be the flat iron?” You nudged your friend. You met Chanhee and Jungwoo in a shared freshman differential calculus class where the three of you weathered the war together.

Chanhee sighed, his tongue poking his cheek. “Because apparently I have no ass.”

“BECAUSE YOU DON'T!”

“NEITHER DO YOU!”

With none of that settled, a good majority of the people present gathered around the Monopoly board on the table to play. You, Sakura, and Chanhee all clambered onto the dining table to sit while the others rounded the end of the table. It also gave you a little room to breathe while playing with such a large group.

“Ladies first,” declared one of the boys, who's name you learned was Sunwoo, his eyes at half mast and cheeks flushed like red grapefruit.

“If you insist,” Sakura sang and did a little dance as she swiped the dice up to roll.

You placed a hand over your eyes jokingly. “Look away!”

Haknyeon blinked with his eyes wide. “Why?”

“Because she's about to win faster than you can say pass go and collect two hundred.”

In retrospect, you saw this coming. Even if the universe could construct more possible futures than you had atoms on the tip of your pinky finger, you definitely could have seen this coming.

The aftermath immediately following Sakura's utter domination of the Monopoly board left all of her opponents in a sputtering mess. Your friend dusted her fingers off as if there were crumbs on them, a very satisfied Cheshire's cat grin crawling onto her lips. “You can fight it or just accept it,” she shrugged, taking the last swing of her soju.

Eric stared up at her from where he knelt in front of the table, gripping the edge with his palms. He was all wide-eyed and full of wonder. “Teach me your ways.”

“If you get me another soju,” she offered, gesturing with her empty bottle. She probably didn’t expect him to take her up on the offer, because her eyes widened a comical amount when the kid rocketed up to his feet and darted out of the room, faster than she could blink.

“Is he usually like that, so hyper?” You jested to Chanhee as you and he began reorganizing the paper money.

Your pink-haired friend laughed. “Kind of. Youngjae's cute.”

“And what am I, Channieeee?” Came an inebriated Changmin. He teetered over to where you and Chanhee were, then unceremoniously draped himself over the latter's back.

“Ahhhhhh,” Chanhee groaned, “Ji Changmin!”

“Answer my question!” His friend slurred. “I think Yn thinks I'm cute. D'you think I'm cute?” He asked, gazing up with you in a deep pout and puppy dog eyes.

“Don't answer that question, Yn. It's like making a deal with the Devil.”

Changmin scoffed, straightening to a surprisingly perfect posture. He slapped a hand to his chest in offense. “How could you! Chanhee-ssi! We're supposed to be friends!”

You chuckled, leaning out of that dumpster fire of a conversation, and finding yourself in the company of one very loopy bread enthusiast. Younghoon had slipped back from watching the game about three quarters of the way through and slumped into a chair with a can of beer and his phone. At some point, you had given up on Monopoly, too, and considered joining him. Now, you really did move over to join him.

His head perked up when you leaned over and poked his shoulder, a smile coming to his face. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you smiled back. “Tired?”

He gave a slow, drawn-out nod. “Mhm,” he hummed. He lifted the can of beer to his lips and finished it off, then dropped his phone into his lap so he could rest his face between his hands. “I'm kind of hungry.”

You laughed. “I bet. How much did you drink, Hoon?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged.

“Long week?”

“Veeeery long week,” he nodded. “Like…” He spread his arms to his full wingspan, “this much.”

A giggle bubbled out of your mouth at how adorable he was when he was drunk.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Oh my gosh, Yn! I never sent you the joke I found,” he frowned. “I found it and thought about sending it to you, but then…”

“You forgot?” You offered.

“I just didn't wanna bother you, to be honest.”

Oh. Something in you softened a great deal at the confession. You were always so sure that you would have been the bother, because it was difficult to imagine that someone who seemed so sure of himself like Younghoon might also feel the same. You mimicked his position with your hands holding up your face. “You're never a bother, Younghoon.”

“Even when I ask dumb questions about factoring?”

“There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

He pursed his lips into a line, unconvinced. “You're too nice. No wonder I liked doing math homework.”

You laughed again at the unexpected compliment, and Younghoon smiled to himself. “I'm glad you enjoyed doing your calc homework.”

He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then snapped it shut with wide, doe-like eyes. “I was going to say a joke, but I realized that I probably shouldn't say that one in particular.”

“Wow, you have a filter when you're drunk?” You teased.

“Hey!” He pretended to sulk. “I'm not that drunk!”

A beat passed, and then he said, “I am still hungry though.” Yeah, definitely drunk.

Within fifteen minutes, you convinced Sakura to accompany you and Younghoon to the convenience store a couple blocks from your apartment. The three of you together managed to snag Chanhee to drive you all, as well as Changmin as an accessory since he and Chanhee lived together. Younghoon had once again insisted on this place in particular because he thoroughly enjoyed the brioche bun from the other day and had been missing it since. You and he settled down at the seating area in the corner of the store with your freshly-purchased bread, while the others traipsed around in search of other sustenance.

Younghoon's cheeks were full of brioche as he muttered a muffled, “You know why I like—calculus jokes?” He swallowed his bite, his eyebrows braiding together as he stared at his now empty package.

You quietly plucked the empty bag out of his hands and replaced it with yours.

He melted at the action. “I do.”

You bursted into a fit of giggles and Younghoon followed straight after you. Your face filled with fire and his bloomed like a blood red rose. The alcohol was slowly settling in. You were a lot more refreshed now that you were outside of the crowd setting, and your chest felt much lighter. “You do?”

“I do,” he reaffirmed, tearing the last bit of bread apart for you both to share instead. “You know why I like—” he hiccupped with the bread half in his mouth. His face morphed into one of confusion, then utter disdain.

You stifled a laugh with your bite of carbs. “Why do you like calculus jokes, Younghoon?” You asked to help him out.

He swallowed his bite. “Because—trig jokes are too graphic and algebra ones are too for—” He hiccupped again, his eyes shooting up toward the ceiling in exasperation.

“Formulaic?” You offered.

Younghoon frowned. “You know this one?”

“I enjoy guessing.”

“Hm,” he grunted, unconvinced. “There is one outlier though.” When he hiccupped for the third time, you patiently waited for him to fill in the blank. “Statistics.”

A small smile wormed its way onto your face. “I have to say, that was very subtle but very good.”

Younghoon beamed with pride. “I knew you would get i—” Another hiccup. He deadpanned. “I hate this.”

You stood up with a chuckle. “Let me get you some water.”

“Thanks,” he pouted. You felt his eyes on you the whole time you went over to the free water cooler over at the counter, and even as you brought him back the little paper cup of liquid.

As he drained the cup, you lingered next to where he sat rather than sitting back down. “Better?” You asked, then held your hand out to take the cup back if he wanted more.

He shook his head though, and he raised it up to his eyes while squinting one of them to aim it at the trash can behind your seat. “How do I get this exactly inside the trash?”

You blinked, eyeballing the distance between his seat and the trash can. The paper cup wasn't going to have a lot of weight while it was empty, but if he threw it with the opening facing him instead…

Younghoon made a noise that sounded a lot like a child's giggle. “Hehe, you're actually doing the math in your head.”

“You don't know that,” you muttered.

“Of course I know that.” He shucked the paper cup and it landed in the trash can with a clean swish sound. He threw his hands in the air. “Woo! Crowd goes wild.”

You laughed and slid back into your seat. “See, you didn't need math to get the cup into the trash can. Nice throw, Hoon.”

He grinned at you. “Thanks. You know how I knew you were doing the math in your head?”

“How?” You humored him amiably.

“Because you get this cute little wrinkle between your eyes, riiiight there—” He leaned forward and booped the place between your eyes, making you go cross-eyed for a split second. “—when you're processing info.”

“Processing info makes me sound like a computer,” you joked.

“Too bad you're not a keyboard,” he said with a sigh, “you'd be just my type.”

An unnaturally loud guffaw came out of your mouth and you slapped your hand over it. There was far too much mirth between the two of you right now. “You're telling me you're good at this drunk, too?” You shook your head, the laugh lingering on your tongue, “Y'know what? I shouldn't be surprised.”

If Younghoon could come up with pick-up lines to remember how to do calculus sober, then you should not have underestimated him drunk.

“Changmin, can you put the plunger down before we get kicked out?” Your head turned toward the sound of Chanhee's pure exhaustion as the three others rounded the corner. You imagined Chanhee dealt with drunk Changmin more than a few times to sound so exasperated. You didn't even want to know what Changmin was doing with the plunger.

Sakura, Chanhee, and Changmin bumbled over to where you and Younghoon sat, the supposed plunger nowhere to be seen. Chanhee brushed a lock of pink out of his eyes with a deep sigh. “Alright; shall we?”

EPISODE THREE: DO AS THE PHYSICISTS DO

THE hungrier Younghoon woke up, the more he likely had to drink the night prior. His stomach growled something horrific and he groaned, rolling his body over to squish his face into his pillow. There were no trains of thought running through his mind at the moment; there was only blissful quiet. And hunger. Goddamn it, he was hungry.

With a huff, he dragged himself upright as if he were rising from the dead. He gave his head a rough shake, eyes bleary as he blinked once… then twice… Oh, yuck. Sticky eyelashes.

There was something white on his desk that caught his eye. There was a yellow sticky note marked with Chanhee's chicken scratch beside it: Yn sent you home with this bottle of painkillers. In case you don't remember, lol.

Dear god, it was coming back to him now.

Younghoon lowered himself down onto the edge of his bed and dragged a hand down his face. Had he been weird? Did you think he was weird now?

His phone was buried somewhere beneath his mess of sheets, and he pulled up your contact that he still had saved from last year. The last message sent was from a brief conversation you both had after his calculus final about what you were both doing when you went home for the winter break. He could feel the warmth creeping up to his cheeks from his neck as he typed out the first message to you since: heyy… about last night…

It was a bit of a surprise when he saw your reply come in nearly straight away.

miss mastermind: LOL good morning, did u sleep okay? younghoon's phone: decently ig 😅 thanks for the painkillers btw i will def take a couple of those miss mastermind: yeah no worries younghoon's phone: how bad was i last night, yn 😭 u can tell me miss mastermind: 😭 u weren't that bad… okay maybe u started singing the calculus parody of bohemian rhapsody on the way to my apartment…

Younghoon snickered into his palm as he stared at the messages on the screen. That memory was definitely rolling back into his head now. It was that, along with the Monopoly game, then the convenience store, and finally, the walk to yours and Sakura's apartment before Chanhee dropped him off here.

miss mastermind: i can't say im too surprised u remembered it tho 😭 sometimes i forget that ur trained to remember things younghoon's phone: that's a funny way to describe being an actor LMAO younghoon's phone: but also i'd be lying if i didn't admit that im so embarrassed abt last night miss mastermind: nooo don't be!! it's all good, i thought u were a very cute drunk

He smiled against his hand. He typed: Well now I just have to make it up to you.

miss mastermind: u absolutely do not younghoon's phone: actually i do younghoon's phone: if i recall correctly, u gave me the rest of ur BREAD. that's like…|

He paused, having nearly written “marriage proposal.” Quickly backspacing, he replaced it with “donating an organ.” Maybe he was a little delusional, but he could've sworn he heard your laugh echoing in his head after he sent it and saw the indicator appear that you were typing. He reached over to grab the bottle of painkillers as he monitored your texts coming in.

miss mastermind: DONATING AN ORGAN… miss mastermind: yk, i knew u liked bread, but not THIS much younghoon's phone: but ofc :0 she's my first love miss mastermind: understood o7 now ik how to sway ur judgment ☝️ younghoon's phone: le gasp younghoon's phone: truly evil mastermind things only miss mastermind: the le gasp is taking me out 😭 younghoon's phone: how abt /i/ take u out instead 😗

As soon as he sent it, he grimaced. Oh no, this was going to be taken out of context. You were going to go through the whole “sorry, I'm not really interested in you” talk, and he would have to sit through it pretending like it didn't hurt—he didn't mean for it to sound like that. You were just friends after all.

younghoon's phone: I MEAN LIKE younghoon's phone: for watching over me and humoring me last night yk! it doesn't have to be something fancy either, just something that we can do as friends! and to say thanks

His grimace deepened. Those clarification texts did nothing to help his case. It also did not calm his nerves when you failed to respond immediately like you had been for the past few minutes. “Well, you've done it now,” he muttered to himself as he frowned down at the screen.

For a couple minutes, there was nothing from your end and he forced himself to drag his ass off the bed in search of sustenance. Hyunjae's door was closed, so the rest of the apartment was quiet as he bounded out of his room toward the kitchen. Periodically (read: every couple seconds), Younghoon would glance at his phone screen waiting for your reply. “What are you scared of?” He said to himself as he opened the fridge and scratched his jaw. “You literally came up with pick-up lines for calculus terms with her.”

There were leftovers from a couple nights ago, and Younghoon grabbed those to heat up. He closed the refrigerator with his hip, eyes darting to his phone, only to see his screen light up. He dropped the leftover container on the counter and scooped the device up.

miss mastermind: i really don't think it's necessary to pay it back or anything, but we can def hang out! miss mastermind: also sorry my sister stole my phone TT but i got it back haha It was sad how fast relief flushed through him at that moment. younghoon's phone: oh no dw abt it lol ur with family rn? miss mastermind: i am! my aunt's in town and so i was summoned home for brunch 🤧 younghoon's phone: …is there :’)) uhm french toast :’)) miss mastermind: *sent a photo* younghoon's phone: that was cruel. miss mastermind: HAHAHA SORRY 😭

Younghoon stuck his leftovers into the microwave to heat up, but was suddenly craving French toast. He knew for certain he didn't have everything to make it right this second though. Maybe he would wake Hyunjae up to go impromptu grocery shopping.

younghoon's phone: i don't wanna keep u away from ur family any longer, but lmk if u have any preferences for what we should do together miss mastermind: no prefs in particular and dw, talking to u helps distract me from the amount of chaos happening in this house :’) miss mastermind: i do have to go now tho unfortunately :l my sister looks like she's abt to snatch my phone again 😭 younghoon's phone: LOL 😭 okay i'll talk to u soon then younghoon's phone: enjoy ur toast :/ miss mastermind: HAHA i'll save u a slice hoon 😋

The microwave beeped its conclusion, and Younghoon pulled the piping hot bowl of leftover food out. As he took a stab at it with his fork, he came to the swift conclusion that he was not going to be full on this. As he shoveled the food into his mouth, he started toward Hyunjae's room to give his friend a very rude awakening. “HYUNJAE! WE NEED FRENCH TOAST!”

There was no better place than the convenience store at the ripe timestamp of ten o'clock to meet with a friend. You'd gotten back from your house at around four o'clock in the afternoon, so you weren't too tired, though the cleanup and all the social interaction was threatening to take you out. Any school work or grant application work would have to wait until tomorrow.

Nonetheless, you felt a giddy sort of excitement bubble up in you as you hustled yourself down the street to the convenience store to meet Younghoon. In your hands, you clutched a small, sandwich-sized Tupperware container with a slice of holy French toast within. It was your older brother's favorite thing to make when he had to contribute to a brunch (or, let's face it, any meal) spread.

Younghoon had never been tardy to your tutoring sessions last year, so you weren't surprised when you saw him seated at your usual table in the corner. He glanced up from his phone as you walked in, waving. There was a blue colored beanie over his head and a brown corduroy jacket draped over his shoulders.

He noted the container in your hands and his eyes widened like saucers. “You did not.”

“I told you I would save you a piece,” you said sheepishly as you set the container down in front of him and took a seat.

“You—” His bottom lip jutted out. “I can't accept this.”

“You have to. It has your name on it,” you insisted, pointing out the little “Younghoon” scrawled on the side in Sharpie with a smiley face. It was customary in your household to write names on containers if they weren't already color coded or marked with a label. Label makers cost more than Sharpies did, and most of the time, your family didn't mind scrubbing the ink off if needed.

Younghoon's smile was sweet like the pastry sitting in the Tupperware. “I literally made French toast as soon as we stopped texting.”

You laughed. “No way.”

“Yes way! I dragged Hyunjae's ass out of bed,” he told you with great energy, eyes alight as he recalled his late morning antics to you. “I really didn't expect that you would bring me a slice, Yn, you sweetheart.”

“We had lots of leftovers and I just knew the most enthusiastic bread fanatic I knew had to try some of my big brother's toast,” you told him, pleased with his reaction.

He seemed at a loss for words; he just kept looking at you like you hung the stars in the sky, and you wondered how you could replicate this reaction over and over again. “Thank you,” was what he settled on. “I—” He gestured to the container, to you, to the container, “It means a lot.”

“You're welcome,” you said simply.

Younghoon heaved a great sigh and stood up. “Now I have to buy you some snacks—no. Yn, sit your ass down.”

Your eyes widened a comical amount and you plopped yourself back onto the chair.

His lips wiggled as he held back a smile. “Don't move.”

“You don't have to do this, Hoon,” you shook your head as he began making his way over to the aisles.

“What's that rule in chemistry? Energy can neither be created nor destroyed?” He queried from within the drinks aisle.

“The first law of thermodynamics,” you supplied. “It's not just chemistry though. It's relevant in all the sciences.” You weren't sure where he was going with this.

“Yeah, well—” He paused. You couldn't see him from where you were, but even the rustling noises stopped. “Shit, that's not the right rule.”

You bit back a laugh. Oh, he was too adorable.

“What's the one where equal and opposite and…?”

Your brain tripped. “Uh, the—the 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’ one?”

More crinkling. “Aha! That's the one. Yeah, so for your actions, I must do as the physicists do, and react accordingly.”

Younghoon returned to you with an entire treasure trove of goodies that you swore amounted to more than what was due. (That number to you was technically zero, but for Younghoon's insistence, it was slightly over zero… maybe one one-thousandth.) It was a smorgasbord of peach drinks with lychee jelly, potato chips, daifuku mochi, and of course, bread buns. It was a feast in its own right. You both dove straight into the snacks before you. When life gave one lemons, one was to make lemonade.

Younghoon popped a chip into his mouth. “Do you come here often? Is this your hangout spot?” He suddenly asked, then dipped his hand into the bag and waved a chip around in the air, a quizzical kink in his brow. “I mean, you do live close by and you seem to be very familiar with the place.”

You screwed the cap of your bottle of juice back on and wiggled your fingers as you surveyed what snack to eat next. “I do hang out here often—you’re right,” you replied. The daifuku looked very appetizing right about now. “I've been coming by since school started to knock out my grant app.”

He perked up curiously. “Grant app?”

“It's for the Space Grant.” In partnership with the national space organization, your university offered something called the Space Grant, which would grant three applicants with a monetary award that could be used toward their education in aerospace. You'd had your eye on it even before you began attending this school, and you were determined to be one of the three who won it this year.

After you briefed him on the cause of much of your recent stress, Younghoon gave an indulging nod. “Mmmmh, I see. You're still aerospace engineering then, right?”

“Yep,” you chirped. “me and propulsion theory to the end. I guess I'm an airplane kid.” At the latter, you made a face. You were the space version of an airplane kid… the alternate of train kids and car kids…

“Don't think about it too much,” he said with corners of his smile peeking out on either side of where he pressed his fist against his lips.

You tried not to. “How about you? What have you been up to?”

He breathed out an exhale. “Hm? Oh, like, with drama?”

“Sure, anything and everything about you.” You leaned your cheek against your fist and peered over at him. “We've been talking about me too much.”

“Nonsense,” he tsked. “You already know I recite lines, dabble in the hilariously good pun on occasion, and am incredibly obsessed with carbohydrates.”

“What more could I possibly wanna know?” You played along.

“Exactly.” He chuckled then, tongue darting out for a second to wet his lips. “Jokes aside, nothing too much. Hyunjae's best friend, HJ!Yn—she’s a director and writer, and she's putting on her own play in the spring that I'll be auditioning for.”

Your eyebrows arched in interest. “Oh? What's it about?”

“No clue.”

You nodded. “Ah, well, good luck—or, break a leg. People say that, right? It's not just in movies?”

“People do say that, yes,” he affirmed. “And thank you. I'm gonna start a part-time teaching job at a school nearby for their theater program, which I think will be fun.”

“That does sound fun,” you agreed. Because you had two younger siblings yourself, you knew that taking care of young ones was a lot, but if anyone could do it, you knew Younghoon could. You imagined he would do quite well with them. “Let me know when they have a performance!”

His eyes twinkled in the fluorescent lights; you were beginning to grow more accustomed to the way the harsh brightness painted his features softer. “You have to promise to come though. This is more important than 12 Angry Jurors.”

You placed a hand against your heart in playful solemnity. “I, Yn Ln, do solemnly swear that I will try my very best to make it to see their performance.”

He cleared his throat, his expression falling into an expertly grave facade. “I accept your promise,” he said and extended his hand out to you across the table, “shake my hand, and may the deal never be broken.”

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from breaking out of character as you shook his hand. When you'd both withdrawn your hands, you watched him, fascinated, as he exited out of character. It was like a switch had been flicked off behind his eyes. Crazy.

Satisfied, Younghoon laced his fingers beneath his chin with a giddy, little smile on his face. “I'll save you an aisle seat.”

“I appreciate that,” you said. You really did—and he really remembered.

“And I'll make silly faces at you from the curtain wings.”

You laughed, telling him you couldn't wait.

EPISODE FOUR: TRAINS GO BOOM?

THERE were too many fires to put out at once. You were becoming the humanoid version of that dog in a burning house meme, and you didn't like it. It was not fine.

“Girl, I wish you'd told me, like, three weeks ago—”

You tasted the rejection a mile out.

“—I already committed to this robotics thing that night,” Jungwoo cried in anguish as he threw his head back. “I could've gone to the Space Gala! Instead, I'm watching people play with robots.”

You passed him a sympathetic look. “Robots are cool.”

“But I don't even get to do anything! I can only spectate!” You both stopped in the middle of your walk as he made unintelligible noises and gesticulations. Jungwoo grabbed your shoulders and shook them. “YN! WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? I have to pay to watch people have fun.”

Your head was wobbling back and forth like a bobble head. Thank god for spines. “Woo—I’m gonna be honest—”

He stopped shaking you.

“I have no idea,” you said to him. “But we are in the same boat.”

The two of you were currently situated on the engineering side of campus. Most of the buildings around you were geared toward the great spectrum of engineering students—from electrical and computer, to aerospace and nautical. You just got out of a numericals simulation course and caught up with Jungwoo coming out of the engineering library to present to him your newest dilemma.

Jungwoo's posture sank. “I only have regrets after pursuing MechE.”

You pursed your lips, lamely patting him on the shoulder. “I told you aero is cooler.”

“I won't dignify that with an answer,” he sulked. Jungwoo picked himself up, however, as he always did. He carded a hand through his floppy brown bangs, eyes flickering down to his phone screen before his eyeballs nearly fell out of his socket. “Oh shit—I’m gonna be late to advanced mathematics. Chanhee is gonna murder me.”

He bumped your shoulder with the back of his hand. “Good luck on finding a plus one, Yn-ie!”

“Good luck getting there before Chanhee,” you hollered back.

Jungwoo threw you an expression that needed no subtitles, but fitting ones would read, That was so unnecessary!

As your friend sprinted in one direction, you began walking in the opposite direction. You had a little more than a couple hours before your next lecture, so you could probably either walk around and enjoy the day's nice weather or find a place to work. All bets were off when you felt your phone buzz from your pocket, and you saw the message on the screen. It was a text from your older sister: hey mom's asking if u have something to wear to the wedding lol.

The “LOL” at the end really downplayed how much stress this was going to give you. The entire event of The Wedding had slipped from your mind over the past week—actually, you were pretty sure you forgot the moment you got back into your car to drive home from brunch last weekend.

If you thought you had a large immediate family, your extended one would silence all thoughts instantly. One of your cousins-in-law was getting married in December, which meant you needed to find an outfit and mentally prepare yourself for the amount of people there were going to be in one room.

The Wedding made you anxious.

You shot your sister a frazzled text back. It was something along the lines of: maybe… lemme check the back of my closet… or pray I have funds in my bank account.

You somehow made your way to one of the green spaces on campus. It wasn't the main lawn that people picnicked or hung out on, but it was still just as beautiful as the main one. It also sat right by the café located down here in the engineering corner; you and your friends liked to loiter around here when the weather was nice.

It was exactly why you thought you were hallucinating when you saw Younghoon walking toward you.

“Younghoon?” You voice incredulously. “What're you doing here?”

He beamed at you, reaching a hand up to cup the back of his neck. “Oh, you know, just taking a walk and enjoying this nice, autumn weather…”

“Down in the engineering buildings?”

He sniffed, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I wasn't purposely trying to look for you or anything,” he said and rocked back and forth on his heels.

You didn't need to know rocket science to read him. “Okay,” you drawled. “Say I believe you.”

“Divine coincidence,” he shrugged helplessly, jovially, even. His eyes were upturned in cute crescent moons. “Oh! And would you look at that—” He swung his backpack around to the front of his body and withdrew your plastic container from its depths, empty and clean, with even his sharpied name scrubbed off. “I just happened to have this on me.”

You sputtered out a laugh and accepted the container from him. “How funny that this pattern of events keeps happening.”

“Pfft, I know, right?” He brushed a hand through his hair. “So, uh, what're you up to?”

“What am I up to?” You parroted. “Not sure, to be honest. I've got a couple hours to kill. What about you?”

Younghoon gestured to the walkway that bordered the perimeter of the engineering lawn. You fell into step beside one another. “Nothing much, too. I kind of just needed a little walk outside to clear my head.”

You sighed, nodding. “I get that.”

“That sounded… very heavy,” he said, passing you a glance. “Something on your mind, Mastermind?”

“Oh, well,” you trailed off, uncertain of where to begin or how to begin. It seemed like Younghoon had something on his mind, too, and you didn't want to give him something else to hold onto. But when you looked over at him, there was a concentrated, concerned furrow in his brow; he was nowhere else but present with you.

You clasped the back of your neck and felt the knot in your muscles. “There's this thing.”

“Mhm.”

“Colloquially, it's referred to as the Space Gala, but it's kind of just an evening prepared by the Space Grant Consortium with a bunch of booths and a Q&A panel—things like that.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Wow, a whole consortium?”

“Yup.” You'd been a member of the student club associated with the consortium since freshman year, not just to keep up to date with information about the space grant, but because you enjoyed attending the events and learning about new innovations related to your desired field. “And it's a little formal where everyone dresses nicely to a degree, and each member can bring a plus one. Usually, Sakura comes with me, but something just came up for her that she can't avoid so—” You made a helpless gesture with your hands.

It was no fault of her own that she couldn't avoid the personal matter that came for her. You just needed to find someone to go with you now, but finding someone on such short notice was proving to be less than swift.

“Ah,” Younghoon said in understanding. “You'd like to attend with someone you're comfortable with because it's a large gathering of people, and—when is it?”

“Next Friday,” you grimaced.

He blinked. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah.”

Younghoon pressed his lips together. “Hey, I mean, if you're looking for someone to go with—I dunno if you're comfortable with me compared to your closer friends—and I don't want to seem as if I'm inviting myself, but—”

“Younghoon,” you cut in with the knots in your neck and shoulders suddenly dissipating. You pressed your hands together, touching them to your lips. “Would you like to go to the Space Gala with me?”

The most beautiful smile blossomed onto his face then, and you swore to go it was warmer than the sun's beams. For a second, his cheekbones darkened with something bashful, but it was hidden in the blink of an eye, and you were met again with the charming Younghoon you knew well. “Why, there's nothing I would love to do more.”

“You are a lifesaver.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it,” he laughed. “I'm happy to go with you, Yn. I mean, what does Sakura usually do to help you when you're in crowded places?”

Hold my hand. That thought was immediately cast aside. That was probably far too much. You coughed, “Uhm, just—you know—stick around me. I get kind of overwhelmed when there are a lot of people around.”

“Overstimulation?” He offered sympathetically.

“I suppose that's the word I'm looking for.”

Younghoon nodded. “Okay. Hey, that's okay. You just tell me what I need to do to make you feel safe and I'll do it.”

Your heart pounded in your chest and you couldn't figure out the right words to express your gratitude. It was hard not to downplay your own misgivings; it took time to practice being patient with yourself. “Thanks, Hoon. I don't really… know what to say, but I really do appreciate it.”

“You don't have to say anything,” he said easily. “And I think, personally, I'm a great plus one.”

If only all of your troubles in life could be fixed so simply by Kim Younghoon being your plus one.

Your stroll together took you down toward the environmental science building. It was a path through a heavily forested area, though a little strange even being located somewhere south of the main campus. The paved sidewalk faded into a worn dirt path, and sunlight filtered in through the layers of leaves crisscrossing overhead.

“I've spilled my guts,” you piped up, “now what's on your mind?” You added swiftly, “If you're comfortable with sharing.”

Younghoon blew out an exhale from his mouth. “You know that job I mentioned? The one where I'm working with a youth theater program nearby?”

You nodded. “Yeah, how's that going, by the way?”

“I'm not sure,” he admitted with his mouth shifted to the side. “I had my first day with them on Wednesday, and I'm seeing them again today. I think I'm just nervous that they'll get bored of me.”

Ah, you could understand that. Surely your years helping out with your younger siblings could lend some use. It was rare to see Younghoon in this state of unease, and it was even more rare to think of someone who wouldn't like him. Seeing him troubled even a little made your stomach churn, and you wanted to help find a solution. “How old are they?”

“They’re all older primary school kids,” he said. “Young enough to not be scary middle schoolers and old enough to have some kind of attention span.”

You smiled to yourself. “Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about.”

“I knew you would.” He brightened. “You have younger siblings, don't you? Any chance one of them wants to become an actor?”

“Oh, hm,” you murmured, “Sadie's got her eyes set on ballet right now and I think Quincey's really only fascinated about his trains. They can be swayed though, I'm sure.”

“How do I keep a kid's interest though?”

You wish you had a formula for that. You worried your bottom lip between your teeth. “To be so honest with you, kids just like learning about dangerous shit.”

Younghoon wheezed. “What?”

You grabbed his shoulder as you both stopped in the walkway so he would face you. “Listen—no, I'm being serious, Younghoon!” You were trying to get a hold of this man as if you weren't gradually losing it, too. “Do you know how many times my little brother has made his trains go boom?”

“Yn.”

“He has problems, I know; he's like, four and a half or something.”

Younghoon's eyes were filled with mirth as he pressed his knuckles against his mouth. “Yn, do you know how insane that sounds?”

Your eyes shuddered in a blink. “Huh?”

He grappled onto your shoulders with another wheeze, eyes moist with laughter and a twinge of something else you couldn't process. “Yn, are you free next Friday at three?”

“Yeah?”

“Come with me to see the kids?”

“Okay.”

His tongue ran over his teeth as he grinned. Younghoon's head dipped in a nod, and he dropped his hands to the side. You didn't know what the hell just happened, but you had a feeling a solution was very much found.

EPISODE FIVE: TO INFINITY & BEYOND

“PLEASE tell me you're leaving the medieval torture devices out of the discussion.”

You passed him a look from the passenger's side of Younghoon's Prius. (It was objectively hilarious to watch this man fold his long limbs up to get in and out of this car; you didn’t know how the laws of nature even allowed a human with his height to own and drive one of these things.) “You say that like you were sure I wasn't.”

It was currently the Friday following, and the day you and Younghoon would both be each other's plus ones. Presently, you were in his car as he drove you both over to the elementary school where he was part-timing. Once this class was over, you would split off to prepare for tonight's Space Gala before meeting again at the venue on campus.

He turned his signal on as he pulled into the parking lot. “I'm just making sure.” He glanced over at you. “Are you excited?”

“To have about two dozen pairs of eyes on me?” You had faced crowds before and they weren't your forte, but you supposed if they were all bite-sized people this time, it wouldn't be so bad. Plus, Younghoon said they would be sitting down and working in groups most of the time anyways. The appeal of this crowd was that you didn't have to worry about getting swept up.

“They're all nice kids,” he said as if consoling you. “It'll be fun!”

“But I can talk about the trebuchet, right?” You asked after he parked and you were clambering out of the car. That one time you went down a fascinating rabbithole of medieval machinery was about to come in handy.

Younghoon paused with his hand on the top of his door. “That wasn't the one with the horse-pulling, was it?”

“Oh, definitely not.”

He locked the door and the two of you began walking side by side to cross the parking lot. There was a plastic clipboard in his hand made of a material in a shade of translucent neon green, something you expected a PE teacher would carry around, except this clipboard was armed with scripts and instructor notes. The little drama program at this school was currently only an after-school occurrence, but if this all went well, they might be granted permission from the school to start integrating it into everyday classes. It was exciting—you could remember your first years of exposure to things like liquid nitrogen ice cream, egg drop competitions, and the National Geographic issue called Astronauts. Perhaps in another life you would've been an astronaut, rather than the engineer who designed the vessel that would take them into space.

Needless to say, these were some of their most impressionable years, and Younghoon was going to be a big part of these kids’. It made you warm and fuzzy inside.

Sometime between today and last week, Younghoon brought you up to speed on what the kids were currently working on. The head instructor picked out something from an adapted version of How to Train Your Dragon, which in all honesty, was cool as fuck. Immediately, thoughts about how to build a harness apparatus for an actual dragon model came to your mind, but you would need to take a look at the dimensions of the stage and preferably leave flamethrowers out of the end result. That was if you were allowed to or even had the time to.

It would be fun though. Of course it was going to be fun.

Younghoon was the first one to enter the auditorium room. It was a multipurpose building with a large, open concept space lined in carpet with a stage at the furthest end and the doors to the library across the way. With the impending introduction, you stuck behind your friend as he poked his head in. Instant squeals of delight erupted at the sight of him. (He was kidding when he said he was worried about the kids ever getting bored of him, right?) “Younghoon!”

Younghoon’s smile was so big that you could see it even when his face was half turned. “Hi everyone—I brought a friend today. Let’s give her a nice, warm welcome, hm?” Younghoon stepped completely into the room now, his hand coming over to gently sweep you in with him by your shoulder. “This is Yn.”

You raised your hand in a small, awkward wave, a greeting somehow managing to come out of your mouth. There were so many little ones present and they were all sitting in a misshapen blob in the middle of the carpet, their backpacks lined up against one of the side walls. Interacting with children who weren’t your siblings or relatives was a lot different.

“Oh my gosh,” you heard one of them gasp. “Is she his partner?”

“No, she is not my partner—she’s a friend,” Younghoon replied pointedly. “Boys and girls can be friends, Roni.”

There was a boy with a gray colored Lightning McQueen jacket on who said, “That’s exactly what my brother said before he asked his best friend to be boyfriend-girlfriend.”

Well. You angled your head toward your counterpart and murmured to him, “How old did you say these kids were?”

“Now you know why I needed your help,” he joked. “Their brains run too fast.”

“And you think the two of ours can measure up?”

Another small one—she had her dark hair in twin pigtails, knotted off with bows—raised her hand. “Are you an actor like Younghoon?”

“Me?” You pointed at yourself as if there was someone else she could’ve been asking. “Oh, no, I don’t have the skillset to be an actor,” you mused. “I basically make airplanes and rockets.” Basically.

A flurry of excitement kicked up like a snowstorm, and you could feel your skin warm at the sudden increase in energy. Perhaps you should have led with that..? But even so, it was abrupt, and you didn’t quite know what to do with yourself—

Younghoon cleared his throat, “Hey guys, let’s keep our noise level down, please.”

In response to his request, the kids miraculously managed to quiet themselves down to a buzzing chatter. It hit you at that moment; Younghoon wasn’t just good with kids—he was incredible. Why did he ever think he needed your help when you could barely stutter out a sentence about what you did instead of acting?

“I told Yn about the show we’re putting on,” he said with everyone’s attention now settled on him, including yours, “and she was very excited about seeing it.”

“Is she gonna make us fly?” Someone asked with their eyes wide and big, and you swore you could fit the whole Milky Way within the awe that was in their irises. Kids, man.

“Only if you guys do good today,” Younghoon said. “Why don’t we break off into groups and show Miss Yn what we’ve been practicing, hm?”

You managed to pick out the Star Trek theme over the volume of your hair dryer, and swore loudly as you cut the device off and scurried into your room to find your phone. “Hello?” You answered as you brought your phone back with you into the bathroom.

“Hey,” answered Younghoon, “I was thinking of just picking you up to go to the thing tonight instead of just meeting there.”

It was approximately two hours since you and Younghoon departed from the elementary school. You were back at your apartment now, attempting to get your bearings and clean yourself up for the evening's festivities.

You could feel the gears turning in your head as you weighed your options. “I mean—only if it’s convenient.”

“Okay, I’ll be by at say… 7?”

“Sounds good,” you replied as you finished up styling your hair. Though nicknamed the Space Gala, it wasn’t meant to be incredibly formal like dinner jackets and evening gowns—nice shirts, ironed pants and skirts, and non-sneakers or non-sandals would do fine. “Thanks, Hoon.”

“Mhm!” He chirped to the accompaniment of rustling in the background.

“Also—” You grabbed your phone and flicked the bathroom light off. As you were making your way back into your bedroom, you saw Sakura peer out through her open doorway with curious eyes like that of a cat. She wagged her eyebrows at you knowingly and you shooed at her playfully. “Kim Younghoon, you are such a liar!”

His laugh was sincere and bright. “Technically, I never lied.”

“You are great with kids.”

“Being good with kids is a subjective quality, my friend,” he replied, and you could hear the smile in his voice. “Besides, you did great with them, too. They loved you.”

You pursed your lips in a sad, silly attempt to stay petty, but you couldn’t deny that you had a nice time with him and his students this afternoon. Once the initial jitters subsided, you loosened up a considerable amount. Adults oftentimes underestimated how perceptive kids were, but you had a feeling that they caught onto what made you feel overwhelmed pretty quickly. At least, most of the groups you were working with did.

But… you had fun. That was all that mattered in the end. You would enjoy going back to see them again. You kicked your door closed with your foot. “I had a good time,” you replied at last. “Thanks for letting me tag along.”

“Yeah, of course. It was really fun having you there with me—us.”

You both paused on either end of the phone as the conversation reached a natural lull point. As you fitted on the freshly-steamed blouse you planned to wear tonight, you caught the time at the top of your phone screen. “Uh… so I’ll see you in about twenty minutes then?”

Shuffling from his end, and then, “Yep—twenty minutes! See you in a bit, Yn-ah.”

“Bye, Hoon!”

Twenty minutes flew by faster than 299,000,000 meters per second—at least, to you. One moment, you were ducking into the passenger side seat of Younghoon’s Prius, and the next, the two of you were being admitted in through the doors of the annual Space Gala. The usual “venue” that the consortium booked for this event was one of the campus’s main buildings that housed three large lecture rooms on the first floor, as well as two lecture halls on the second floor across from another large event space.

The lobby was filled with a crush of people, with some faces you recognized and others that you didn't. There were tables draped over with black cloth that hosted educational mini games where one could win free button pins and stickers, booths with companies associated with the consortium present to pitch potential internships, and everything in between. Younghoon stuck to your side like glue. You felt the warmth of his hand either between your shoulder blades or on one of your shoulders as the two of you maneuvered your way through the crowd.

It wasn’t until you hit the farther end of the lobby where there was a clearing of people that you felt the pressure in your sternum alleviate. You imagined your gaze appeared a little empty, glassy even, but it was all just an overwhelming wave of sensations on all ends.

“How’re you feeling?” You heard Younghoon’s voice close to your ear so you could hear him but anyone else around you couldn’t.

You focused on that—his voice. “I’m fine,” you assured him with a small smile. “I’m excited to be here and it’s just a lot.”

Younghoon smiled back at you and you felt his palm warm little circles on your back. “Take your time. The guy at the front says it’ll be another half hour until we can expect the panel to start.”

“Kkura and I—we, uh, usually go in a little earlier than everyone else.” Depending on the year, you and Sakura either occupied seats in the front couple of rows or one of the balcony seats. The former was to distract you from the idea of several hundred other people being in the room behind you, whereas the latter was so you had a large space between you and the crowd. Both were methods that you and your friend deduced were the best at soothing any feelings of overwhelm.

He nodded. “Okay, yeah, we can still do that. Are there any tables you wanna visit before we go in?”

“Actually,” you said, and your heart leapt at the memory of one booth you visited every year, “I have to show you this one thing—it’s so neat. It might be on the other side of the lobby, but we can cut upstairs and get to it that way.” Where there was a will, there was most definitely a way.

Younghoon’s expression mirrored the excitement in yours. “Lead on, Yn-ah,” he chuckled and let you grab his hand to show him why you loved what you did.

This year was dubbed a balcony year.

From yours and Younghoon’s perch up in the balcony rows, you could peer down at the hundreds of heads below, as well as the presentations given onstage. You were always blown away by the new information and possibilities brought up during the year’s presentations, as well as during the question and answer section where audience members could either line up to ask the panelists their queries directly or send them anonymously to an online platform.

Your preferred method was most definitely the latter because public speaking was not your forte, even though it meant you would have less probability for your questions to be answered. One year, Kkura had practically escorted you up to a panelist when everyone was leaving because you had a burning question.

But this year was different. All of your awe was coupled with the amount of marvel expressed by your partner for the evening. If you were fascinated by what was being discussed below, then Younghoon just entered a whole new galaxy.

You found yourself glancing over at him the whole night to watch his reaction. Periodically, your eyes would meet, and you might have been embarrassed to be caught looking at him, but it was completely dashed away by the pure reverence that was stark on his face.

At some point, the evening did have to come to an end, and you and Younghoon lingered up in the balcony to let everyone else below you trickle out first.

“That,” Younghoon whistled low, “was incredible. I’m so—” He made unintelligible hand gestures before coming up with a word, “—bedazzled. I’m positively bedazzled.”

You grinned. “I’m very pleased to hear that you’re bedazzled.”

“I mean, why don’t we hear about this on the news?” He queried, eyebrows knitted together in disbelief. He reached up to adjust the wiggly star headband on top of his head that he won from a spin-the-wheel stall earlier. “If they talked about finding organic chemicals on faraway planets on the evening news, viewership from my devices would skyrocket for them.”

“Don’t we all wish they talked about space on the news,” you sighed as you leaned your cheek against your fist. “But also, as Dr. Cho mentioned, we can’t get too excited yet. Organic chemicals for us might not mean organic chemicals for an alien species.”

Younghoon nodded slowly. “Right,” he drawled. “That’s so interesting to think about… that we’re possibly not alone and that they could either be very similar to us or very different, or maybe even somewhere in between.”

“Isn’t it crazy?” You couldn’t count the amount of times you got lost in a rabbithole of research when you were supposed to be working on assignments instead. Your eyes darted down to the lower levels to check the population density, and garnered that you could still wait at least a couple minutes more. “Hey, you know, if you're interested in this stuff, then you should come to some of the planetarium’s presentation nights sometime.”

Your counterpart’s eyes widened like the lens of a telescope. “We have a planetarium?”

You giggled. “Yeah, silly. What did you think the astronomy tower was for?”

“We have an astronomy tower?”

You smiled wide against your knuckles as you nodded. “Maybe you should wander down by the engineering buildings more often.”

Younghoon made an incredulous face. “Maybe I should.” He considered something for a moment and you watched the smile blossom onto his face again. “Though, I have a feeling that if I looked into a telescope, I'd only see you—’cause you're a star.”

“That was awful,” you snorted into your hand, shaking your head.

“Not my best work,” he admitted. He could admit defeat when he was met by it, but he wouldn't let it hinder his efforts. “You know, I think Galileo was wrong.”

“How so?” You asked as you motioned for the two of you to start gathering your things.

“You're the center of my universe.”

You were pretty sure the lower levels could hear your laugh echo against the walls. “Oh my god.”

“Or maybe that just makes you the sun,” he said to you in a singsong tone while trailing after you.

“I’m walking home, Younghoon.”

“You can try, sunshine.”

EPISODE SIX: THE ONE WHERE IT GETS WORSE

MURPHY'S Law stated that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” with an adage of “at the worst possible time.” You needed to have words with this Murphy.

You were now in the thralls of midterm season. It was common knowledge and experience among STEM students that once midterm season began, it didn't stop until finals hit. You hadn't even realized how fast midterms had arrived until it was pouncing on you like a predator in the brush. You were currently being torn apart by the jaws of a hungry lion called Life.

“I haven't finished the grant app, Kkura.” You stared at the white wall behind your desk with a blank glaze over your eyeballs. There were sticky notes and pieces of paper tacked there with reminders and diagrams like they were makeshift whiteboards, but you weren't looking at them.

“My aerothermo exam is in two days,” you continued on in a droning voice, “and the internship interview is the day after.”

You spun around in your chair to face where Sakura was perched crisscrossed on your bed with a sympathetic frown. The internship addition was a new one. You had sent in your application a couple months ago, and results of applicants who had passed to the interview phase were only recently released. While you were relieved beyond measure that you made it, the interview couldn't have come at a worse time.

“Well,” she began, “we already decided that I'm going to help you prepare for the interview, Yn. The grant app isn't due for another month. All you need to worry about right now is the aerothermo exam, right?”

When she put it that way… “You're right,” you sighed and lifted your hands up to dig the heels of your palm into your eyes. Sometimes it just took an outside perspective to knock a little logic into you.

The Star Trek theme song blared from your phone, and you both startled at the abruptness. You fumbled for the device, then quickly picked up the phone call when you saw that it was from your mom. “Hi, mom. Everything okay?”

“Your brother can't make it to the wedding.”

You made a face. “I'm guessing you don't mean Quincey…”

You could imagine the exasperation on your mom's face from the other side of the phone. “Yn, I call you because you're the logical one in the family.”

If only she knew what pain you were putting yourself through because of your current lack of sense. You leaned back in your chair, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “Why can't Justin make it?” Justin was your eldest brother who had the divine French toast recipe.

“He's flying to Paris for his culinary school interview. You know I always tell that boy to double check his schedules—he never listens,” your mom exhaled sharply. You could hear the loud clatter of the dryer in the background; she must be doing laundry.

“Sounds like Justin,” you murmured. “So what's the problem? Can't we just go sans Justin?”

“We already RSVP'd with the seven of us, and your cousin already paid for the reception meal in full. We can't have an empty, wasted seat, Yn-ah.”

You frowned. You supposed that would be a problem then. ���Why don't we just find someone to bring along as a plus-one?”

“That's what I was thinking,” she replied. “I was going to invite Rian, you know, the boy from next door.”

Somehow, your mood managed to sour further. You and Sakura made eye contact, and she tilted her head to the side in question. You gave her an emphatic thumb's down before replying to your mom, “Wait—can we—mom, can we not invite Rian?” You dragged your free hand down the side of your face, and you saw Sakura grimace when you said that guy's name.

“Why not?”

“Be… because,” you stammered, pushing out a sigh when you weren't sure how to describe your incredible disdain for your childhood next-door neighbor. He was your age, and fortunately, you were never matchmade with him. Unfortunately, he was a jerk with inferiority issues and delighted in competing with you in everything. “He wouldn't want to come with,” you said lamely. His presence would do the exact opposite of soothing your anxiety.

Sakura gestured with her hands. Tell her he's full of shit!

Oh, you wished.

“Yn.” Your mother could smell lies, even through the phone. “I wouldn't know who else to invite.”

“Daphne's partner!” You exclaimed desperately. Daphne was your older sister who attended another college on the other side of the city getting her master's degree. “Can't we invite Sam?”

“Sam's in Vietnam in December.”

“Goddamn it.”

“Yn.”

“Sorry.” Dear fuck, you were slipping. You needed a solution—anything at all. Something to put out one fire, even temporarily. “What if I came up with a plus one?” You regretted it immediately.

“Oh, like Sakura? I wouldn't mind if you brought her.”

Anyone but Rian, anyone but Rian. “Yeah,” you drawled. “That's who I had in mind.” You lifted your head to meet your friend's eyes again, and she knitted her brows in confusion. You mouthed that you would tell her in a moment.

When you and your mom hung up, you deflated in your chair, dropping your phone onto your chest. “I'm fucked.”

“Hit me with it.”

“I told her I would bring you to the wedding with us.”

Sakura sat there for a moment to process the information. “Yn, honey, I'm going to be in Japan in December.”

“I know,” you cried.

“Who are you bringing then?”

“I don't know.”

Murphy of Murphy's Law had better sleep with one eye open.

It was likely in your worst interest to be at the convenience store at midnight rather than in your bed asleep, attempting to let your brain process the concepts from your aerothermodynamics course. Against your better judgment, though, you were here, slumped over your usual table and seat as you watched YouTube and sipped on a box of chocolate milk.

In the distance, the door opened and closed, but the sound was muffled through your earbuds. Out of your peripherals, someone materialized next to you. You peered up at the tall man beside you now, blocking out the fluorescent LEDs from burning your eyes. “Hey,” you said quietly.

Younghoon took in your state with sad eyes. “I got your text.”

“I didn't think you'd be awake.” Didn't he have a rehearsal tomorrow morning? Or rather, later this morning.

“Well, I'm glad I was awake, for starters.” He frowned and then leaned over you to gently wrap you up in his arms. “Rough night?”

Your face was buried in the fabric of his hoodie. This was nice. “Rough everything.”

“Ah, one of those,” he sympathized. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really. Thank you for coming though.” You leaned back and patted the empty seat next to you. “Wanna watch squirrels with me?”

You watched his expression falter and fill with surprised amusement with a pinch of confusion. “Did you—you just said squirrels, right?”

“Yeah, they're competing in a backyard Olympics for this trophy of walnuts.”

He sat down with you to watch the squirrels. In your free time, you liked watching engineering or science-type videos on the internet. Most of them were as educational as they were entertaining, like the backyard squirrel series, where this man used his mechanical engineering degree to build advanced obstacles to test and observe the vast capabilities of the squirrel.

You shared your earbud with Younghoon so he could listen, and you were now connected by a wire. He mimicked your position, too, with his chin nestled onto his folded arms over the tabletop.

You weren't sure what possessed him to drive all the way over here at such an ungodly hour of night, but you were grateful for his company, nonetheless. Even if it felt like the sky was falling, you could let this moment in time exist outside the conventional timeline. It could be its own singular moment, just you and Younghoon.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wondered how it all came back to this. You'd never thought you were meant to see him again after tutoring him, let alone having spent so much time with him again these past few weeks. If you didn't belong in his world, and vice versa, then what was this?

You swore the monotonous buzzing from the lights above was making your eyelids slowly fall with the weight of lead.

Younghoon's eyes fluttered over to you just as you were about to doze off. He sat up and turned the video off. “Hey,” he whispered, gently shaking your arm.

You hummed, the bags under your eyes becoming worse by the second. “Huh?”

He chuckled under his breath as you put your head back down. “We can watch this another day,” he promised, patting your head. “We should get you home though so you can sleep.”

“Oh my gosh,” you groaned and picked yourself up, “you have rehearsal tomorrow morning—what time is it?”

“Hey, don't worry about it, love.” He was wrapping your earbud wire around his fingers into a neat, little bundle. “I'll be fine. Let's go home, though, yeah?”

You pressed your palms to your eyes in a desperate attempt to rehydrate them. “Okay, yeah. Sorry, Hoon.”

“Don't say sorry,” he cooed, pressing your earbuds into the palm of your hand and tucking your phone into your pocket. “I felt a lot better meeting you here. Do you feel a little better?”

You gave a small nod. Your brain was too muddled, too exhausted, to really comprehend what was being expressed as plain as the sun at high noon on his face.

“Then that's all that matters.” There was a pause. Your vision was blurry for the second that his eyes wandered somewhere else. You didn't know if you just didn't see it or if you just chose to not acknowledge it.

Then the moment passed, as all things did in the flow of nature, and he walked you home.

EPISODE SEVEN: PARTY PEOPLE (BBANGNYU'S VERSION)

“CHANHEE?”

Choi Chanhee swirled the straw of his melted iced americano around in its cup. “Yup.”

“Who would you invite to a wedding?” You posed, twirling around the mechanical pencil in your hand between your fingers. You didn't even know why you still had the writing utensil out—everyone had pretty much gone home for the evening.

He released a sigh indicative of a very tired data science major, who doubled-majored in math. “The person I'm marrying? I dunno.”

You and Chanhee were stuck with the late shift at the math tutoring center on a Monday night. The crowd usually cleared out by nine o'clock, but the two of you weren't technically allowed to leave until nine-thirty. Most nights when you were stuck with this shift, you and he didn't mind the quiet in order to finish assignments of your own.

Jungwoo would have been here to suffer with you, too, but he had an excuse tonight. Something about an emergency at the NCT fraternity house.

You blew a puff of air through your mouth. “Not your wedding; just a wedding. One that you're invited to.”

“You're not inviting me, are you?”

“You don't wanna be my plus one for a wedding?” You grinned.

“Depends…” He hummed pleasantly, “what're they serving?” That was a valid question that you lacked an answer to.

In front of you on your laptop screen sat your incomplete space grant application. After the hell that was last week, you somehow survived it by the seat of your pants. Now, you needed to focus on your two other exams for this week, the wedding debacle, this grant app, and praying that the interview had gone as well as you thought it had.

So many things to think about, so little brain cells.

You glanced over at the corner of your laptop screen to see how much time you had left to try and be productive. From the corner of your eye, you saw the swift movements of Chanhee's thumbs flying over his phone keyboard.

You turned to your application to read over your responses for the ten thousandth time. “Who've you been texting all night, Chanhee?”

“Huh? Oh, my best friend.”

You hummed. “The one that goes to the uni across the country, right?”

His response was cut off by the sound of the tutoring center doors opening. Both of you looked up in tandem, mentally bracing yourselves for—

“Younghoon?”

There was a weird fluttery feeling in your chest as he beamed at the both of you and bounded over from the front doors. “Hey guys! I was just walking past and thought I would swing by.”

Chanhee's eyebrows flew all the way up to his pink hairline. “Yes, because it makes complete sense why you would be meandering around south campus at nine o'clock at night,” he quipped.

Younghoon seemed, to his credit, unbothered by Chanhee pointing out the obvious. He stole one of the chairs from another table and sat down across from you and Chanhee. “You guys don't play any music when everyone's gone?”

“Sometimes we do,” you replied, glancing up from your computer screen before replacing your word choice somewhere.

Chanhee nodded his agreement as he set his phone down on the table and laced his fingers under his chin. “Oh, Younghoon-ah, I've been meaning to discuss something with you.”

Younghoon perked up. “What's up?”

“What're we gonna do about your friend and my friend?”

You figured out pretty quickly that you had no idea what they were talking about. Even after having played Monopoly with some of them a few weeks ago, it still hadn't hit you as to the full-scale of these two guys’ shared social circles. Sure, you orbited some friend groups of a decent size, but it felt like they all hung out with each other at least once a week.

“Ah,” Younghoon drawled with a knowing sparkle in his eyes, “Jacob and JC!Yn, right? I don't know; I find it kind of amusing.”

Chanhee frowned. A furrow had formed between his brows. “If amusing means to the extent where I'd like to rip my hair out, that is. Did you know that Jacob sent me to go intervene when Jaehyun was talking to JC!Yn at the hot tub?”

“Wait, really?”

“Mhm.” Chanhee made a vague flourish with his wrist in the air. “And did you see how they were at the movie night on Saturday?”

Younghoon pressed his lips together. “I did see that. He kept looking over when Juyeon was braiding her hair,” he chuckled.

“I am at odds, Younghoon-ah!” Chanhee groaned into his palms. “I just need them to kiss already and get it over with.”

“So you wanna meddle?”

“I'm not saying we should meddle, but…” He drawled with cheeky, puckered lips and his palms open upward. His gaze went to you on his right side, and he knocked the back of his knuckles against your arm. “Oy, Yn-ah. What do you think?”

You hummed and drew your eyes up from your laptop screen, meeting Younghoon's gaze first. Glancing over to the friend who addressed you, you said, “What are we talking about?”

“Girl, you need to get off that grant app.”

“This grant app needs to get off me,” you shot back. “I need it to be perfect, Chanhee.”

“Nothing is perfect, Yn,” he told you. “You know what you should do? You should ask JC!Yn to look over it. That might ease your mind.”

“I'll think about it,” you said at last in order to appease him. The smart thing would've been to heed his advice and ask his friend to proofread it. Perhaps you would later this week.

“Good. Anyways, I was asking you what you thought about how to matchmake our two friends,” resumed Chanhee. He tucked his limbs inward as he spun around in his chair.

“You’re going to have to give me more context than that.” Besides that, were you really the best option to ask for advice? You weren't in a relationship, and now that you thought about it, neither were the two of them.

You saw Chanhee and Younghoon exchange glances and there seemed to be a silent conversation taking place between the two of them. At last, Younghoon gave his counterpart a flourishing gesture with his hand as if saying 'all yours.’ Chanhee cleared his throat. “So Younghoon's friend Kevin, who is Jacob's best friend, introduced JC!Yn to Jacob.”

“And we're pretty sure they like each other,” Younghoon added on. “There was this pool party a couple weekends ago, and they came to the party together. This past weekend, they looked pretty cozy at the movie night that Jacob and Kevin hosted at their apartment, too.”

You had only ever met JC!Yn once in passing, and it was because Chanhee forgot his calculator at the library right before an exam, and she had been the champion to deliver it to him in the examination hall lobby. She was a real one, that was for sure.

You pursed your lips and rested your chin on your fist. “Aren't all of you guys single?” Was what you led with.

Chanhee deadpanned. “That's not the point…”

“I do have to point that out though because you ask me like I would know what to do,” you laughed, vaguely gesturing back to yourself. “I'm just as single as the rest of you.”

The two boys’ eyes whipped back to one another for a millisecond, before looking away.

You nearly leapt to your feet, exclaiming, “I saw that! What was that?”

“Nothing,” they answered at once. They did realize it made them look all the more conspicuous, right?

“We just realized that not all of us are single,” Younghoon raced to smooth over his and Chanhee's fib. “My friend Sangyeon—”

Chanhee snorted, “Hyunjae told me he doesn't believe him.”

“And you believe Hyunjae?”

“Touché.”

You unconsciously began spinning your pencil around your fingers again. “Wait, so Sangyeon is cuffed?”

Younghoon turned to you to explain. Apparently, his original group of friends that didn't include Chanhee's extension, kept a running joke that Sangyeon was either making up his girlfriend or was keeping her stashed on a secret island in the Bahamas. None of them had seen any evidence that she truly existed, but Younghoon wasn't convinced that Sangyeon was the type of person to go through all of this strife just to prove a point.

After all of that, you were more confused than before. “But why wouldn't he just show you a picture of her and prove that he met this girl?”

“That's what I'm saying,” Chanhee interjected, flinging his arms up in the air. “It would be so easy to just silence us with a little picture!”

Younghoon, clearly amused by the discourse taking place, leaned back in his chair with a shrug. “Beats me. I personally think it's because she works for a secret government agency, which is why she can't exist online.”

Chanhee's expression flattened. “Uh-huh.”

“But Juyeon says that it's probably because if he only shows a picture, we might accuse him of Photoshop,” Younghoon continued. “Which, in retrospect, says a lot about his faith in us.”

You made a face, your eyebrows arching high. “Oh, for sure.”

Debating on conspiracy theories about mystery girlfriends made the last thirty minutes of yours and Chanhee's shift fly by fast. Suffice to say, you hadn’t worked on your application nearly as much as you wanted to, but you were entertained for thirty minutes, which was just as well. Didn’t doctors say that it was good to laugh at least three times a day…? Good thing you weren’t going into medicine.

The three of you started packing everything up at exactly nine-thirty. There was no reason to stay any longer when there was literally no one else here anyway.

As you shoved your laptop into your backpack, Younghoon knocked on the table in front of you. “Wanna grab dinner after this?”

You opened your mouth to reply when Chanhee beat you to it. He hadn’t seen Younghoon grab your attention, and didn’t know who he was addressing. “Oh, that’s nice of you to as—”

“I meant Yn.”

You closed your eyes and sank your teeth into your bottom lip to have some dignity left (read: not start wheezing). Chanhee’s eyes had gone wide, eyebrows rocketing back up to his hairline. He scoffed, “Wow.”

Younghoon grinned cheekily. “Sorry, Chanhee. We have a routine.”

With Chanhee now thoroughly offended, your little trio filed out of the tutoring center. You locked the doors up behind you once you flicked off all the lights in the room. The walk down in south campus was arguably nicer than north campus, even if you were a little biased because this was where you considered your “turf” to be. South campus was much better illuminated than north campus with pretty, little lamp posts and five different styles of architecture from building to building. You were sure it was an eyesore to any of the architecture majors here, but they were interesting to look at when you were suffering in the engineering library. (And at least they had windows.)

You took up the position in between Younghoon and Chanhee, the latter of whom seemed to let his pettiness about the rejected dinner date go.

“Guys,” Younghoon suddenly said. The corner of his lips were turned upward in a degree you could only define as mischievous. “What is the most terrifying word in physics?”

You scrunched your brows together. There was no way you should get this wrong, but then again, physics wasn't exactly a subject where anyone got everything right—

“Oops.”

You snorted, and beside you, Chanhee's lip wobbled as he desperately held in a reaction. You couldn't believe you didn't see this coming and tried to think about it logically.

Younghoon shoved his hands in his pockets and swiped his tongue over his lower lip through a smile. “Aw, come on! I cracked up when I heard that one in a TikTok for the first time.”

“I've just heard some of your better ones,” you confessed. “Chanhee, did I tell you that Younghoon used to wax poetic to study for calc?”

Chanhee's mouth curled up into an amused little smile. “You did! I think it's cute.”

“You know, I think it's cute, too.”

In the dim lighting from the nearby lamp posts, Younghoon's cheekbones flushed something rosy. “You flatter me.”

As the three of you climbed up the stairs that would bring you to main campus, Chanhee piped up, “What if we just slipped Jacob and JC!Yn notes from the other person?”

You shook your head. “Not this again.”

“I'm serious!” He said in earnest. “It would just be innocent, little pick-up lines or something. Nothing like a whole ass confession.”

“We're reading Much Ado About Nothing in my Shakespeare lecture right now,” said Younghoon, “and the cast does something similar to one of the couples they're trying to get together. Sounds kind of fun, to be honest.”

“Not you, too!”

Younghoon slung an arm around your shoulders and flourished his free arm out toward the heavens. There was a pleasant feeling attached to the weight of his arm around you. “C’mon, use that mastermind brain of yours and imagine! Jacob's would just say something like—I dunno—if I whispered in thine ear that thou hast a body of beauty, wouldst thou hold it against me?”

“Wow,” you marveled, ignoring the amount of fluttering happening in your stomach, “that was pretty good.”

He flashed you a boyish smile. “Thank you.”

“But you're not doing it.”

The boys on either side of you released twin groans of anguish into the night, as if their mother had just denied them access to their Xbox for the evening. You rolled your eyes lightly. “I feel like relationships are like spontaneous processes—they’ll get to the right configuration eventually, organically. In other words, we should leave them be and let them figure it out for themselves.” You walked in front and turned around to face them so you could pin them both down with a firm look.

Younghoon raised his arms up in playful surrender. “Promise we won't meddle.”

“I hate when you use entropy statistics against me.” Chanhee gave a reluctant nod, sighing once again, “But I agree. We won’t meddle.”

EPISODE EIGHT: DON'T ASK ME THE COLOR OF ANYTHING

IT was the Star Trek theme song that blasted you out of your study bubble. In retrospect, the theme song was quite a subdued piece compared to something like the Star Wars theme, but for some reason you thought it was a good idea to turn the volume all the way up for your ringer whenever you were home. (God forbid you accidentally left it on when you were in class…) From your desk, you scooted over to grab your phone from where it was on your bed. Younghoon's caller ID beamed its cute smile up at you—the picture you'd set was of him and his dog from home, Bori. You had yet to meet Bori, but when you asked him for a picture for his contact photo, he sent this one.

You accepted the call. “Hello?”

“I just realized I pressed Call instead of Facetime. Please accept the Facetime thingy.”

Why did he sound so cute? You lifted the phone away from your ear and saw the request on the screen. While pressing the green accept button, you said to him, “What if I said no?”

“Then it must be Opposite Day,” he sang from the other side of the screen, his face manifesting before you. He was holding his phone up above him so you could see he was lying down in bed, his dark hair strewn over the pillow beneath his head. His initial smile widened to reach his eyes when your side of the screen loaded and he could see you. “There she is.”

“Hi Hoon,” you greeted with a small chuckle. You looked around your cluttered workspace for a place to prop your phone up against.

“What're you up to?” He asked while he adjusted himself to sit up against his headboard.

“I—” you made a sound of accomplishment as your phone stayed upright in the space between your desk lamp and a pebble paperweight painted like a rocket that your little sister made you, “—am brushing up on fluid mechanics.”

“Aah… fluid mechanics.” You could hear the slight intonation in his words.

“Don't say the joke.”

“I wasn't gonna say the joke!” He giggled. When he calmed, he pressed his mouth in a smile and made his cheeks look as squishy as a loaf of bread. “Is this a bad time though?”

You shook your head, slipping your pencil behind your ear so you could lace your fingers beneath your chin. “No, it’s not a bad time. This isn’t super important; I just didn’t want old material to jumpscare me when I go into our quiz this week.”

Younghoon nodded in understanding. “I see, I see. That means it’s good that I interrupted your workaholic tendencies.”

You glanced away with your hand half covering your face, and it coaxed a laugh from him that seemed to warm the room. You sputtered, “In my defense—” you paused, your lips parted; it hit you then that you had no defense.

His eyes were the shapes of upturned crescent moons, like shallow bowls filled with mirth. “It’s cute when you try to deny it.”

“It’s not denial—I didn’t deny it,” you pointed out.

“Uh-huh,” he snorted, completely unconvinced, “whatever you say, Miss Mastermind. I should call you Miss Workaholic instead.”

“Aish,” you chided weakly. You glanced down at the old notes that were splayed out before you on your desk. All of the concepts were relatively familiar to you; it was just to refresh yourself. To be frank, though, it wasn’t like you’d spent all evening reviewing old material. Every thirty minutes or so, you could spend another half hour on your phone, getting lost in the entertainment there. You weren’t that much of a workaholic.

You realized that there had been a pregnant moment of silence just then, and when you looked back over at the phone screen, found him watching you with a certain look in his eyes that you couldn’t quite place. You cleared your throat, reaching up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear and to take the pencil there down. “So, uhm, any reason in particular for calling?”

His eyelashes fluttered as he blinked, as if snapping out of a daze. “Hm? Oh, not really. I just wanted to see what you were up to.” He cocked his head to the side in thought. “Random question, but are you doing anything for Halloween?”

Ah, you nearly forgot that was coming up. With all of the chaos happening in your life at the moment, Halloween was the last thing on your mind.

“Not at the moment,” you told him. You mused, “I don’t think I’ve done anything proper for Halloween since I moved out of my childhood house.” Going Trick-or-Treating as an adolescent was definitely a core memory for you, and was still a prevalent tradition in your household because of the little ones, Sadie and Quincey. As you got older, however, you usually opted to stay at home and answer the door to hand out candy. You still dressed up for the fun of it, and decorating the house was always half the joy of the holiday. You always considered trying to build some kind of candy contraption or maybe setting up a haunted maze in the front lawn, but alas, maybe in the future. “What about you?”

“Well, there’s that party that Changmin and Chanhee are hosting at their place.”

That rang a bell. “Ohh, shit. I totally forgot about that.” Chanhee had mentioned something about that the other night at the tutoring center, but you didn’t make any promises about attending—he knew your crowd preferences, so he didn’t push it. You were sure his and his friend’s parties were a blast though.

Younghoon shifted his lounging position, so now he was laying on his stomach with his legs kicking up from behind him. “Would you wanna come with? I remember that you went to that party with Sakura in September, but I wasn’t sure if you were going to come to this one.”

You tapped the end of your pencil against the pages of your notebook. “I’m not really sure,” you confessed. “I think I originally didn’t plan on going.”

“Ah.”

Guilt swirled around in the pit of your stomach at the disappointment in his voice. “I’m sorry; I probably sound like such a party pooper.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” he rushed to assure you. “I get that it might not be something you’re into, and that’s completely fine, you know? I think it would be fun to go with you, but not if you wouldn’t have fun there.”

You inhaled deeply. “I mean… it’s not that I don’t think I would have fun once I—y’know, drank something—but yeah, I think a night of just horror movies or something will do me better.”

He nodded and carded a hand through his hair. “Of course; I understand. And your schedule’s been pretty packed lately, so it’ll be like a little break for you,” he offered.

“Yeah, thanks, Hoon.” You shot him a small smile. It was really cool that he was being so understanding, but you shouldn’t have anticipated anything less from Kim Younghoon. He’d always been this cool.

You learned to read the room, and the energy definitely was lower than before. “Do you know what you’re gonna go dressed as?” You asked in hopes of bringing that energy back up.

He perked up a bit at the question. “I—actually, I have no idea,” he chuckled. “I was thinking a vampire, but I feel like that should just be saved as my backup. That idea’s a little tired.”

Younghoon as a vampire—? Wake up, Yn. You laughed to yourself as a thought popped into your head. “It would be so funny if you showed up as Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

He snorted. “That's not a bad idea. I'm not a science guy, but I am an actor.”

“Hey, there you go,” you said. You pursed your lips. “Hm… I feel like your face is too pretty to fuck up—”

“Thanks?” He guffawed, hand propping his head up. “I'm scared to ask you what that even means.” You didn’t want to tell him exactly what you had in mind, but it seemed that he beat you to a punchline. “To be honest, I'd so let you fuck up my face.”

Your eyes widened. “What?”

“Hyunjae? Hyunjae, is that you?” Younghoon called out behind him toward his closed bedroom door. His ears were rosy as blood, and he was biting his lip through a grin. “I've gotta go, Yn-ie. Byeee!”

“Younghoon, hey! Don't hang—”

He hung up. You took a moment to collect yourself after what he said, as if you could even begin to unpack its meaning.

You could hear the partygoers even from the relative serenity of the back corner of the convenience store. It was Halloween night, and when the sun sank down into the horizon to signal the coming of night, so too did it mark the beginning of the Hallow's Eve festivities.

You had just dropped Sakura off at one of her friends’ house for a party, and she would text you later when she was done. The plan tonight was originally to chill at home and watch scary movies, but you instead found yourself at your second home with your laptop playing The Nightmare Before Christmas. On your head sat a deep purple colored witch's hat on a headband, with glittery black tulle creating a skirt at its base. Even if you didn't dress up completely, you would still pop on a bit of holiday spirit.

With you was a 6-pack of Halloween themed mini cupcakes and a carton of strawberry milk. They would function as your popcorn for the movie and your candy for the night.

From beside you on the table, your phone buzzed. You could see the words diffuse rapidly onto your screen, your eyes snagging on the parts where your older sister was asking about Sakura coming to the wedding even though she was supposed to be in Japan. Your eyes widened as you scrambled to text back. Fuck, the wedding. You texted back a very fast, ‘uhm abt that.’

daphne: ykw don't tell me anything ignorance is bliss daphne: okay what i came here to do originally… daphne: *sent images* your phone: awwwh how cute!! wait wtf since when was quincey into power rangers 😭😭 daphne: dear god don't get me started

You laughed and sent her a final text back commenting about the pictures she sent of her, Sam, Sadie, and Quincey all dressed up to go Trick-or-Treating tonight. As usual, your family extended an invitation to you, but you declined for this year.

“Damn, I should've dressed up like the power rangers.”

You nearly jumped out of your skin at the sudden voice right by your ear, and you ripped your earbud out, whipping around to see who it was. There was Younghoon, laughing at your expense with a very amused smile flitting over his face from your reaction.

About five different emotions passed over you at once, preventing you from coming up with an adequate response to his sudden appearance. Your mouth, frankly, had gone dry. His hair was colored and highlighted with strands of platinum silver, artfully arranged around a pair of black sunglasses atop his head. He was clad in all black—the leather jacket seated on his shoulders embellished with white detailing, and his skin glimmering with silver chains. He had on a pair of motorcycle gloves that he was now shucking off, and you realized his lips were a shade darker than they usually were—wait… were they moving?

“—Yn. Yn-iee—”

You blinked long and hard. “Yeah. I'm here.”

The corner of his lips curled upward. “I just said I was sorry for sneaking up on you.”

“Oh.” Wait, he smelled so good right now… Not that he didn't smell good every other day, but…

“Oh,” he parroted with a cock of his eyebrow. “So, what do you think?” He asked the question you didn't even realize you would fear him to ask, and gestured down to the outfit. Younghoon sighed and it sounded half like a laugh. “I feel ridiculous actually. Hyunjae was like—you should do the biker thing with me. And I was like, what do you mean 'biker thing?’ Apparently this is the biker thing.”

You were slapping yourself across the face internally to say something. “You went from Prius driver to motorcycle rider.”

Younghoon nearly keeled over and had to turn to the side to laugh. “I still am a Prius driver,” he said sheepishly.

Your eyes flickered up and down his form again, unable to string together words once more. “Uhm, your hair is silver.”

“Excellent observation.” He reached over and poked the little witch hat on top of your head. “This is cute, by the way.”

“Thanks,” you said with a smile, reaching up to touch either side of the headband. “I'm just here waiting for Kkura.”

“Oh, are you guys watching something together?”

You shook your head and turned back to your computer screen to wake it up. “No, I volunteered to be her chauffeur tonight. She's at a party right now, but I figured since I had time to kill, I could chill here.”

“It feels like a crime for you to be here all alone,” he said with one of his hands braced against the back of your chair and the other on the table next to your laptop. He was leaning over you now to peer at your screen because the brightness of the store lights made it difficult to see from where he stood, but it made him all the more apparent to your senses.

Goddamn, he was everywhere. “Well, I should be asking you as to why you're here,” you said with a cough. “Don't you have a party to go to, Biker Boy?”

He chuckled at the nickname and stood back up. “I do, but Chanhee and Changmin forgot to get triple A batteries for their battery-operated creepy candy bowl,” he said. “But I'm glad I was sent out to run an errand now.”

You shifted your mouth to the side in a sorry attempt to hide your contentment with that answer. “I'm glad, too. You—the costume looks good, by the way.”

Younghoon sat down in his usual seat across from you. “Thank you,” he replied, pleased. “I almost went out as a loaf of bread. Did you know Party City has these bread loaf costumes that you can wear around your head?”

“I'm not surprised at all,” you said, shaking your head in amusement.

You found yourself unhappy with the idea of Younghoon leaving after this. Once your conversation was over, you would go back to your movie and he would go back to his party. Before, you didn't mind the idea of having an evening to yourself, but with him right here in front of you, it was difficult to go back.

Him being here with you felt right. You couldn't explain why you felt that way. He looked like he was about to say something, and you rushed to beat him to it. “Want a cupcake?” You blurted. Before you could go back on your words, you gently pried a miniature cupcake out from its containment and offered it to him.

Younghoon lit up, delicately transferring the treat to his own hands. “I wasn't going to ask, but don't mind if I do. Thanks, Yn.”

You hummed happily as he peeled off the cupcake wrapper and took a generous bite. He did a little happy dance in his seat, and you smiled half into your fist as you leaned part of your cheek onto it.

“That's actually so good,” he said with wide, confused eyes as he reached toward the furthest end of the table for a napkin in the aluminum canister. “Why haven't I tried those before? I think I'm gonna have to take some back.”

“I don't have them often, but they are quite the guilty pleasure,” you agreed. “I would totally sponsor a couple packs for you to take to the party.”

Younghoon made a nodding motion with his head as he dabbed the napkin over his lips. He pulled the napkin away to inspect it, frowning. “Shit, I need to reapply,” he murmured and fished around in his jacket pocket for a tube of the shade that he had wiped off his lips.

Some force from the universe compelled you to do something fucking stupid. “I can help.” No, you can't! Why would you say that, why would you say—

Surprise flickered across his face. “Oh? Sure, I'd appreciate it,” he said, and held the lip gloss out to you. It was a muted brown-ish pink color that would leave a stain of itself upon the wearer's lips, but also had an initial glossy appearance.

With no room for backpedaling, you stood up and took the lip product from him. You stood before him now, between his legs with his hands resting on his knees.

He peered up at you through his dark lashes, lips parted gently.

You wiped the excess product off the doe foot applicator against the rim of the packaging, and then smeared the product over his bottom lip. You took your finger to smudge the color around, making quick work with a second layer for shine. When you were done, you hadn't even realized you'd been holding your breath the whole time. You passed the lip product back to him quietly. “All done,” you whispered.

He didn't even look at your handiwork—he didn't need to. He smiled; you thought you saw him steal a glance at some place other than your eyes. “Thanks, love.”

You were right before when you thought you would dread him leaving. He did go, at some point, after retrieving what he had come here for along with at least three half-dozen containers of cupcakes. He sent you a wave from the door, and then he was gone into the night.

You sat there without doing much or thinking anything for a moment or two, your fingertips stained with the color of his lips.

Regret wormed a hole through your stomach, and it felt like it was gaping wide open. Maybe you should've gone to the party, or maybe you should have asked him to stay. Maybe you should have said something different, and maybe… maybe you should have…

Kissed him?

Your eyes stared unblinkingly at the seat across the table from you, and you arrived at a truth you could no longer ignore.

your phone: how do u know u like a guy

kkuramon &lt;3 : IM LEAVING THIS PARTY RIGHT NOW.

EPISODE NINE: ARE YOU A CHICKEN, YN? I DIDN'T THINK SO!

“I'M not going to tell him.”

“Yn,” Sakura said gravely with a deep inhale, “for the last time, are you a chicken?”

You blinked. “I'm sorry, wha—”

“Bawk bawk. Are you a chicken?”

You narrowed your eyes slightly at her. It was a crazy image, this view of your best friend, as she stood in front of you with her futuristic spacecore outfit from the Halloween party she left early, squawking like a chicken. “I think you are drunk.”

Sakura deadpanned. “I'm not drunk.”

“And I'm in denial.”

“Oh, good. So you admit it.”

After rapid discourse in your texts, you went to pick Sakura up from her party, then brought her straight home so you could both deconstruct what exactly you concluded while at the convenience store. You recalled everything that happened while Younghoon was there with you, reliving that exact moment it hit you square in the face like an oncoming train.

And now you were here, being asked if you were a chicken and being accused of denial.

You huffed. “I can't just tell him that I like him! It's not—it’s not that big of a deal. It's not like I'm in love with him or anything!” You… you weren't in love, were you…?

Sakura braced both hands on her hips. “You say it's not a big deal, but here we are,” she said with a vague gesture to your bedroom. “Honey,” she continued, but softer, “whether you're in love with him or you just like him more than a friend, it's something. It's different. Are you sure you never felt anything for him before? Not even unconsciously?”

“I mean—” you started, “—I might have. I probably have,” you corrected, cradling your chin in your palm. “I thought he was really cool when I met him last year, but I think that was just one of those silly crushes, y'know? Like the ones you get on people you pass by and know you probably won't meet again?”

She hummed and lowered herself onto the edge of your bed. “Yeah, I get that.”

You scooted your desk chair over to where she was and flopped face first over your bed with a groan. You felt her hand gently smooth down the back of your head. “I dunno, Kkura. Maybe I've always felt something different about him.”

“That could be it,” she said. “And you just didn't realize until it was in your face. Sometimes it sneaks up on you.”

If that wasn't the understatement of the century.

“Why are you so scared of telling him, Yn-ie? From everything I've seen and heard from you, it feels like he probably feels the same way.”

“I'm biased.”

Sakura exhaled. “Logic your way out of this one.”

“Okay, if I logic my way out of this one, I could still get rejected.”

You could feel her eyes roll, even with your face smooshed into the sheets. “I know the prospect of all this is scary, but it's meant to be. That means you care, Yn. That means you care about your friendship with Younghoon, and that's inherently a good thing.”

When you didn't say anything else in response, she added, “You know your feelings will intensify if you leave them unaddressed. Murphy's Law.”

You hated when she was right.

You didn't see Younghoon for at least another week. Once Halloween had gone and passed, November hit everyone in one big fell swoop. Midterms the Sequel was abound, and it did not choose mercy. But amongst the abundance of fires cropping up, you managed to spray some water on a couple to keep the flames tame. (Do not do this to real fires; it won't help.)

It was the middle of the week when you and Younghoon agreed to meet back at the convenience store to hang out. Over the past few days, you kept your interactions with him over text and call as normal as possible, even though you felt like your newly realized feelings were glaringly obvious. If Younghoon thought you were being awkward though, he didn't say.

You and Sakura were in the kitchen right before you were about to take off to head to the convenience store. She was busy making a late lunch (read: dinner); you were busy worrying about everything.

“I've got an idea,” she said, raising the spatula in her hand into the air. “You should bring Younghoon to the wedding.”

You nearly choked on air. “I'm sorry? Say that again.”

With her back turned to you, she gave an emphasized shrug. “If you insist. I was suggesting that you bring Younghoon to the wedding instead of me. It would be killing two birds with one stone.”

“How in the world is that killing two birds with one stone?”

“Well, when you inevitably confess your feelings to him, and he confesses that he reciprocates, you will then have a date for the wedding.” She turned the stove off before twirling around on her slippered-heel, a proud smile on her face. “Ta-da!”

“I just think that if—and big emphasis on if—we do end up together, a wedding would be a lot as an outing.” You imagined how horrific and intimidating that would be, meeting your entire family and extended family after only just deciding to try out dating someone. Even thinking about it sounded overwhelming beyond means, and you couldn't do that to Younghoon.

She angled her head to the side. “But this is Younghoon we're talking about. He literally went to the Space Gala with you on short notice and made you feel safe and comfortable the whole time.”

You sent her a pointed look. “That's not the same thing and you know it.”

She sighed. “Alright. Then what about driving over to meet you at the convenience store at midnight when he had an early rehearsal the next day? He calls you and texts you day and night; he drops by the tutoring center on your shifts to keep you company… I don't know what else you need to convince you.”

You didn't like the spark of hope she was lighting up in your chest. You didn't want to lose a good friend if you were reading him wrong. Was he not charismatic to everyone he met though?

At some point, you got your ass up and down the street. There was a soft tune playing in the background as you wandered through the aisles in search of something to distract you from the anxious racing of your heartbeat. Younghoon had sent you a heads up about an hour ago that he was going to be late because he was coming from an outing, so you had a little more time to mentally prepare. Maybe you would chalk up the courage to tell him. Maybe you really could do it. If you just ripped off the bandaid, whether it be for better or for worse, you could at least say you tried.

You made up your mind then, somewhere in the bread aisle between the wheat and rye.

By the time Younghoon arrived, out of breath and grinning from ear to ear, you managed to hype yourself up to tell him.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said between breaths as he claimed the seat across from you. He paused, sniffing, then grimacing. “And also for the fact that I reek of barbeque.”

“Don't worry about it,” you assured him, teasingly, “the only thing you should be sorry about is not inviting me.”

Younghoon laughed. “You're very right, as always. My friends and I were having an emergency meeting about Jacob and JC!Yn.”

Your eyes widened. “Oh? Any updates?”

He groaned then, burying his face into the palms of his hands. Uh oh. “They almost kissed until Eric interrupted them.”

“No,” you gasped.

“Yes!” He wailed in agony, eyes screwed closed with imaginary tears running down his cheeks. “It was painful to hear but it was also painful watching those two idiots interact at the table. My friends and I, minus JC!Yn and Jacob—we met a little beforehand to talk about what went down when Eric interrupted, and the lovebirds just came in later.” Younghoon huffed a rough sigh from his lips, partnered with a shake of his head. Then he broke into a smile, the corners of the expression soft, as he looked at you from across the table. He rested his cheek against his hand, chin inclining toward you, “So what's going on with you, hm? I feel like we haven't seen each other in ages.”

“We did call on Tuesday,” you pointed out.

He wrinkled his nose with a frown and shrugged. “It's not the same. I missed you.”

Your heart was beating so loud that you could count them out—thump, thump, thump— “I—missed you, too,” you said in earnest. Tell him, Yn. Tell him.

“You know, I think it's funny how we lost touch for so long, but we eventually came back together,” he murmured as he absentmindedly traced out shapes along the table top. “I guess if it's meant to be, then it'll be.”

The way he worded it… you were spinning yourselves in circles in your head trying to define it, to crack it open and solve it like you could a word problem. If the rotator wheel spins at a velocity of—but at this point, you were certain that you could figure out one of those much faster than this. “Yeah,” you agreed quietly.

“Something on your mind, Yn?” He asked you then. His eyes returned to you and you were suddenly stuck. The earth stopped spinning for this single moment in time, all because of the way this man looked at you.

You swallowed. “I…” The words dissipated in your throat. You couldn't do it.

Younghoon waited patiently, though. He considered you and your wide eyes filled with something he didn't know how to label, and maybe a dash of another thing he hoped to find. “Why don't we take a walk?”

With no reason to refuse, you stood up from your seat with him. He smiled at you as he brushed his hand over your back to guide you to the door, then retracted it to tuck his hand into his pocket.

November had so far shown the city a brisk, deep autumn. The trees were already close to completely shedding their leaves for the oncoming winter, and they were often swept away by a cool draft. You zipped up your jacket as the two of you began walking in the direction opposite to your apartment. Whichever way the wind took you both, you supposed.

For the first time in a long time, you and Younghoon were quiet. You were trapped in your own head with the courage you had earlier having mysteriously disappeared. He seemed content enough to let you ponder on it and to speak whenever you were ready.

“My cousin is getting married,” you found yourself saying.

That didn't seem to be the thing he expected to come from your mouth. Surprise flashed across his features and he clambered for a response. “Oh, well, congratulations. When's the wedding?”

“Thanks.” You said, “It’s in December. I… you know I have a big family.”

“Right.” His gaze softened considerably. “I imagine it must be a lot for you then—a family event of that size.”

You realized that you didn't convey exactly what you wanted to get across, and yet, you were reminded again how much he cared. “Yeah,” you murmured. “My brother Justin isn't gonna be able to make it after we already RSVP'd under my immediate family of seven people, and so my mom and I are trying to find someone to fill that space. She wanted to invite this one guy—he was my next-door neighbor for some time. Not my favorite person in the world because he's kind of got it out for me,” you said next.

You were rounding the corner again to loop back down the street toward your apartment. The organ in your chest was flying against your ribcage now; there wasn't much time left to tell him. You could see the metaphorical sand in the glass draining.

“So you're not going to invite this guy then, right?”

You nodded. “And I offered up Sakura just to appease her for the time being, but Sakura's gonna be in Japan in December.”

Younghoon trapped his bottom lip between his teeth. “I see.”

“That's my… that's my dilemma.” No, that isn't your only dilemma, Yn! Tell him! But the apartment was coming up in view, and you would be at the entrance in just a few more minutes.

You and Younghoon slowed your pace as you rounded the block again to cross the street. When you glanced over at him, you swore you could see the conflict warring across his face. If he saw gears turn in your head, you could see a battle scene in his eyes.

“Is this all that's been bothering you?” He asked at last, and you didn't know what to do about the slight intonation in his voice, like he was hoping for something. “I'm not invalidating your stress or anything, I was just—you know, if you had anything else you needed to get off your chest—”

“No, it's just that.” You could practically hear Sakura clucking like a chicken from wherever she was. You quickly added as the apartment door came into view, “It's—it’s not a big deal—finding a plus one, I mean. I'll figure it out.”

Plus one. He'd been your plus one to the Space Gala, but this was different. This was so much more different than that.

But maybe your words sounded like a dismissal or he was thrown off today. He cupped the back of his neck with a small nod. “Okay. If you need anything, let me know.”

“Thanks, Hoon.”

He smiled then, the same soft-cornered one that reached his eyes, and that you'd come to be familiar with. You couldn't imagine seeing that face reject your feelings even if you knew he would probably let you down easily.

EPISODE TEN: YOU SPELL PARALLELISM WITH THREE L'S BECAUSE THERE ARE THREE LOSERS

THE engineering library at nine o'clock at night was a familiar environment for you, Chanhee, and Jungwoo. Dead week—the week before finals—meant that it saw the three of you twice as much, even on the weekend before Dead week began. It didn't mean you got studying done though. Sometimes you were just there.

“You guys are so fake! How could I not be updated on every single microevent in your lives?” Jungwoo cried, gesticulating his hands around far too fast for your brain to comprehend. He was about three shots of espresso and five hours in, if that explained things. You were all aware that your habits were not healthy, but no college kid was. “And you call me your friend?”

The thing that had triggered this reaction from Jungwoo had been Chanhee's fault. Or maybe that was your fault. Either way, the topic somehow had gone from calculating your respective grades with probable curves (calculating failure, at this rate) to you and Younghoon.

You liked to argue there was no you and Younghoon—it was just you-comma-Younghoon. Chanhee had sassed back at you with a swift, “Oh, so she's an English major now?” As if English majors were the only ones who could understand grammar and punctuation.

Jungwoo, having had no context given whatsoever, realized quickly that he was out of the loop. Now, you were here.

“I demand the tea!” He screeched, hitting the palm of his hand against the table. Thank god there was no one else here to listen in or shush you and your friends. If there was one thing about the engineering library, it was how out of the way it was from the main campus.

“I really don't think you should have anything else caffeinated—”

Jungwoo's head whipped toward you and his nostrils were flared. “You must think you're so funny,” he said with narrowed eyes and a saccharine smile. You would have been scared had you not seen this man once blow a massive snot bubble all over his differential calculus homework. (If anyone found out about that, it most definitely didn’t come from your lips…)

Your eyes shuddered, an innocent smile coming to your lips. “I was just saying.”

“Shuuush!” He stopped, thought about it, then retracted. “Actually, don't shush. Tell me what you and Chanhee know, but I don't.”

Chanhee snorted from his side of the table. “That's a long list.”

Jungwoo cut a glare toward Chanhee. “I despise you both,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Okay, but all jokes aside,” Chanhee said as he tucked his tablet stylus behind his ear. He cocked a high-arched brow your way. “What is going on, Yn? Do update us. Or for Jungwoo’s sake, start from the beginning.”

Your eyes widened like a deer in headlights. You hadn’t expected Chanhee to turn on you, too, but perhaps you should have seen this coming. A generous amount of time had passed since you last failed to confess your feelings to one Kim Younghoon. Between that day and today, you had managed to finally submit your space grant application and passed your second round of midterms by the seat of your pants (hip, hip, hooray). Since that day, you and Younghoon would continue to interact as normal, except for the fact that you were practically walking on eggshells around him.

Just the other day, you both fell asleep while on-call with each other. When you’d woken up the morning afterward, you discovered that, one, it was a good thing you plugged your phone into its charging cord; and two, that Younghoon was just as pretty asleep as he was awake.

To this news, Chanhee merely fluttered his lengthy lashes, unimpressed. “And you’re telling me you don’t think he feels the same way?” He asked.

At some point, Jungwoo had broken out a half-eaten granola bar from his bag to munch on as a replacement for popcorn. “I can’t believe I’ve missed so much,” he said, shoving the bite into his cheek so he could speak. “And Kim Younghoon, Yn? Wooooow, I see you girl. That guy was insane as Charles Bingley in freshman year.”

“You’re so right,” Chanhee chimed in with an indulgent nod, pointing his stylus at Jungwoo. “I don’t know if insane was the right word, but he encapsulated the Bingley gent essence quite nicely.”

“I never saw that one,” you confessed.

Jungwoo’s face scrunched up on one side. “Clearly. At least he knows that you’re not just in it for his celebrity status.”

You leaned back in your chair and dragged your hands down the length of your face with an embarrassed groan. Only your guy friends; Chanhee and Jungwoo, as expected, gave a light laugh at your expense. “I don't like you guys.”

“C’mon Yn-ie,” Chanhee teased and reached over to poke your arm with the butt of his stylus pen. When you peeked one eye out between your fingers, he puckered his lips at you like a penguin. “Love you.”

You reluctantly slid your hands down. “If I'm gonna be clowned for my feelings, I'd rather be in bed!” You declared, taking your phone from the pile at the center of the table to check the time. It was nearly ten o'clock at this rate. Ah, and had anything productive been done? Absolutely none. Perfectly on track for the three of you.

“Nooo, don't go, Yn! You're too sexy,” Jungwoo whined.

“I think you should tell Younghoon your feelings,” said Chanhee. He hiked his feet onto the chair, hugging his knees to his chest. “You need to razz him up.”

You frowned. “I thought it was ‘rizz.’”

“You don't have rizz, though, so I thought razz would be the next best thing,” he said flippantly.

“Burn!” Jungwoo exclaimed with his hand cupped around his mouth, and you were suddenly reminded that he was in a frat.

You leaned your cheek against the palm of your hand with a dramatic sigh. “You're right; I do not have rizz.”

Chanhee's brows scrunched together in concern. “Oh my god, I thought you would fight back—of course, you have rizz, Yn! You snagged Kim Younghoon!”

Before you could tell him you’d given up on fighting back or before Jungwoo could give up on his sanity, Chanhee's phone buzzed from where it was sitting at the center of the table. You expected it to be Chanhee's friend, CH!Yn, since she was the most probable person texting at this hour; instead, Chanhee let out a delighted gasp, slapping his hand to his mouth at whatever notification he found waiting for him.

Both you and Jungwoo leapt to your feet and scrambled to peer over his shoulders. “What? Who is it?”

“It's JC!Yn,” he shrieked. “She's asking about flower shops.”

You and Jungwoo stayed perched over either of Chanhee's shoulders to see what would transpire. It was a brief exchange within the group chat of three people that included JC!Yn, Changmin, and Chanhee. Chanhee somehow knew about a flower shop in the university district that was open until eleven o'clock. After all your years of attending this school, you had no idea it even existed.

But once JC!Yn was off on her way, Chanhee turned his phone off with a prediction that he would not be hearing from her until at least tomorrow morning. “Looks like someone's getting confessed to tonight,” he snickered to himself.

Jungwoo was back in his original seat—a generous wording, since he leaned a good eighty percent of his body over the table with his knees braced on the chair, legs kicking up behind him. “You know what you should do, Yn? You should sweep Younghoon off his feet just like that. I'm sure he adores receiving flowers.”

“Would it not be as special though if he gets flowers after every show?” You asked genuinely, pressing the butt of your pen between your lips. “I'm not against getting him flowers.” Flowers would be a good idea… you'd seen plenty of movies that had romanticized the idea of giving and receiving flowers in your mind, and it would be an obvious gesture. At the very least, you could pull a Younghoon and tell him the flowers reminded you of him because they were gorgeous—or something to that effect. Maybe you really didn't have rizz…

Jungwoo shrugged with one of his shoulders. “I'm sure it would be special coming from you. I dunno. It's just something to think about.”

“So,” Juyeon drawled with his head lolling over the back of the couch to look over at Younghoon, “now that Jacob's situation is solved, what about you?”

Younghoon glanced up from his phone. “What about me?”

There were five of them holed up in Sangyeon's apartment presently, and four of them had invaded the eldest friend's abode to hoard his TV and play Super Smash Brothers. He was the only one with a working TV and decent WiFi to game on that wasn't Jacob and Kevin's apartment. Only, a couple hours in, Juyeon received a text message from Eric with a live update that JC!Yn was going to confess to Jacob.

Eric had ended his update with an ominous: Tell Kevin hyung he shouldn't go home tonight 🤣. That definitely livened up the place.

Kevin sat up from where he had been lying on the floor. “Oh, yo, you're so right. What's going on with you and Yn?”

Younghoon's eyes widened. “Nothing.”

“Don't give us that bullshit,” Hyunjae clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Didn't you say that you liked her?” He teased with a glint in his eyes as he wiggled his fingers Younghoon's way.

The man at the heart of the interrogation rolled his eyes and smacked Hyunjae's hand away. “I will not object to having said that I liked her, if that's what you're getting at.” Frankly, he would own up to having admitted that was how he felt about you. So what, he liked you? He wasn't embarrassed by it. The only problem was living with this knowledge and not telling you.

Sangyeon came over from the kitchen to lean against the back of the couch. He had a drink in hand, tongue poking the inside of his cheek. “Do you have a plan or are you gonna pull a Jacob and be a chicken?”

Kevin arched a high brow. “Only I can call Cobie a chicken, thank you very much.” He turned on Younghoon next with an accusing finger. “And you—I can't even go home right now, so let's get down to business.”

Younghoon blinked. “What business—”

“Order in the court!” Juyeon interjected. He grinned like a bunny. “Sorry, I know I have to wait until I'm a lawyer first, but it's just so fun to say.”

Sangyeon sputtered a laugh against the rim of his drink, blindly patting Juyeon on the head. “It's cool, man. Very appropriate timing.”

“We should play Marvin Gaye,” said Hyunjae. “It'll get us in the mood to tell Younghoon how to properly woo somebody.”

Younghoon swore his face was probably the shade of a ripe tomato. This was in no way how he thought his evening would go. And to be honest, he never ever expected having this conversation with his friends, ever. The last thing he wanted to do was to make his feelings all the more forward in his mind, and he was already having trouble whenever he was around you, and all you did was remind him of all the reasons why he wanted to be with you.

The thing was that he couldn't tell if you reciprocated his feelings. Sure, he could flirt and insert himself into your life all he wanted. But you could just be playing nice!

…actually, you probably were just playing nice. Dear god, he was back at square one.

He simply didn't want to lose your friendship, at the very least. Even if you didn't want to be with him in that way, he would pull up his big boy pants and be a friend to you instead. Then he wouldn't have to live without seeing you smile or listening to you work out problems aloud while he did mundane things in the background—

“And we lost him.”

Younghoon cleared his throat, raising a hand up to scratch his jawline. “You did not lose me,” he protested. The amount of attention on him right now was uncanny. Of course, he could go up onstage and be a character—but reality was different. He couldn't put on a mask or another personality; these people knew him… wasn't that scary? And yet, somehow freeing, at the same time.

Kevin inclined his chin to him with a little smirk. “You did have hearts in your eyes, my dude.”

“Aww, he's in love,” Sangyeon gushed while standing up to go refill his drink.

“I'm not in love!” He said with his index finger pointed at the sky. (He was in love. Of course, he knew he was in love. Because when all he did for the past three months of his life besides school was be around you and think about you and you you you… how could he not? Younghoon could fake any emotion in the world in front of an audience of people, but your eyes alone would devastate him.)

The entire apartment, sans Younghoon, chorused altogether now, “Yes, you are.”

Younghoon balked, rocketing upright. “There is no way all of you agreed on something for the first time and it was this.”

Hyunjae patted his friend's thigh from his position on the floor. “Believe it, Lover Boy. So what're you gonna do about it?”

“I wouldn't even know how to tell her,” Younghoon huffed, leaning back against the couch cushion with his arms crossed over his chest in thought.

That day when you'd told him about the wedding, he had been so hopeful that you were going to say something about feelings. He was so certain that he read you right, but you said nothing else afterward. He would totally go to that wedding with you, though; he just figured you might not want him to go, considering you'd dismissed it so quickly afterward.

Sangyeon came back to the couch and perched himself onto the arm of the sectional next to Juyeon. “It doesn't have to be fancy—you just need to be clear and straightforward.”

“Flowers could soften the blow,” suggested Juyeon.

Kevin chuckled. “For him or for Yn?”

Younghoon clicked his tongue at him with a playful scowl. “Quiet, you. But thanks, guys. I guess I just want to do this right. I don't wanna ruin what we already have.”

Juyeon pursed his lips and reached over to clasp his hand on his friend's shoulder. “You won't, man. I guarantee you that.”

“So if I get my heart broken, I can sue you for false advertisement?” Younghoon asked with his lips stretched in a grin, eyelashes fluttering innocently.

“Pssh,” Juyeon laughed, “try me.”

EPISODE ELEVEN: THE USUAL TIME & PLACE

IT was a frightening sequence of events when you texted Younghoon and he texted you at the same time. The Monday after Chanhee and Jungwoo had hyped you up to confess, you went around different items of furniture in your apartment with your phone in hand, pencil behind your ear, trying to work up the courage again to send the text.

And you did… eventually.

The usual time and place was decided upon, and it had snuck up on you as the day went on. You tied your shoes on and slipped out the door, making sure to pat your pocket down for where you had tucked your secret weapon for the night. As soon as you and Younghoon had confirmed a meeting for today, you ran to your (favorite) grad student, Seulgi, and asked very nicely for her set of keys into the planetarium, promising to treat her to brunch if she did.

The walk over to the convenience store was a jitter-filled one. Your stomach was doing cartwheels alongside the flips your heart performed in your chest. There was still activity on the streets, even at nine o’clock on a Dead week evening. You jumbled through the routine you had in mind over and over, a broken record of hopes and wants. The plan was to take a walk to the planetarium and use said walk to work up the courage to tell him. If anything went wrong, then you could cover it up with a cool presentation of stars overhead.

This isn’t lame, is it? You thought to yourself as you let yourself into the store. You were so in your head, you nearly didn’t notice that Younghoon was standing right in front of you, having just walked out of one of the aisles. You startled, breath hitching in your throat.

He smiled, the expression soft. “Hey,” he said to you and had to clear his throat, a hand brushing through his hair. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

“All good; guess my head was just somewhere else,” you laughed nervously. You gripped the key in your pocket until you were sure your skin would smell like metal by the time you got to the planetarium. The two of you had met and hung out here a bundle of times before this, but this time in particular was different. The energy shifted in a way you couldn’t foretell if it was good or bad. For your sake, you hoped it was the former.

“Wanna talk about it?” He asked and took a step toward you.

You inhaled, nodding. “I do,” you said. “I—actually, uhm, do you want to go to the planetarium with me?” From your pocket, you withdrew the keys Seulgi gave you and wiggled them around by the keyring. “I bribed one of my seniors for the keys.”

Younghoon brightened, a laugh falling out of his mouth, and now he was standing right next to you. “Oh my god, you evil genius… my beloved mastermind, are we about to break some rules?” He teasingly bumped your arm with his, his eyebrows wagging up and down.

“Only if you’ll break them with me,” you beamed and reached for the door to the front door.

“But of course,” he played along with a giddiness shining through his expression. “Anything with you. Though, I’d like to stop somewhere on the way first.”

Without even visiting your table in the back of the shop, you and Younghoon took off into the night together. You couldn’t imagine where Younghoon wanted to stop by on the way, but you thought it was probably to run an errand of sorts. But for the moment, it was at the back of your mind as you tried to keep this as normal as possible. “Different” was so intimidating—you wanted to sink into the comfort that was whatever you and Younghoon had.

It wasn’t difficult to slip into that normalcy, though. He always made it so easy.

“—and they did so well, Yn-ah. You need to come back and see them in person; they’re always asking me where you are,” he told you with an invigorated passion. He gave a feigned sniffle. “Pretty sure they like you more than me.”

You shook your head, laughing, “You’re so dramatic. They love you, Hoon. I mean, I can’t even believe that they would remember me after having met them only once!”

“Well,” he drawled, glancing away for a spell, “that might be my doing.” He confessed sheepishly, “I do talk about you a lot—but hey! You can’t blame me! I like talking about subjects that mean a lot to me.”

Your heart made a full stop in your chest, and you nearly physically halted in the middle of the walkway. The gears in your head could barely process what he had just said without going into a spiral. It was a reminder of what this night was originally about. You sputtered out a reply, “You’re too sweet, you know that?”

“I try,” he jested.

“I do finish all my finals next week by Tuesday,” you told him. “I can totally come by that Wednesday and Friday for a little wing fitting. When’d you say the show was?”

He squinted one of his eyes in thought. “Err… it should be the Friday night after next, but if you do come through with those props, that should still give them enough time to get used to them before the performance.”

You nodded, mentally mapping out your schedule. Once your finals were through, you would have plenty of time to tinker with the props and have some proper fun after such a long quarter. “Sounds like a plan.”

“I appreciate it a lot, Yn,” he said, ducking his head as he nudged you with his elbow, “thank you in advance. I call you a workaholic, but here I am encouraging it.”

You chuckled. “It’s no trouble, Younghoon. Seriously. I like doing crafty things, and it’ll be a nice project. I promise.” To the end of that, you stressed further, “And if you think about it like you’re encouraging my hobbies and passions, then it feels a lot less like work.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re right.” His head perked up when his eyes caught onto something in the near distance. His fingers unconsciously caught onto your wrist. “Here it is.”

Wherever you expected to find yourself, it was not a flower shop. There was no shop name or title anywhere that you could see, just the sketched posters and advertisements in the windows of chrysanthemums and hydrangeas. Troughs of vivid blooms lined the front windows like testaments to the plants one might expect to find within. Hanging planters dangled from the overhang, vines and foliage spilling over in an elegant mess.

There was one other sign posted in the window of the door that read its opening hours from 8am to 11pm.

Younghoon's cheekbones seemed to flush in the light streaming out from the inside of the shop. “Shall we?” He asked shyly and grabbed the door handle to open it for you.

You stepped inside before him with the door closing behind the two of you softly. You weren't sure where to go first—the room was constructed with two long tables in the center to hold smaller planters, then the perimeter was covered nearly from floor to ceiling with the larger plants, as well as the hanging garden pots like the ones outside hung from the ceilings by the lights.

There was someone to the right side of the room with a large, green watering can in hand. She glanced up when she heard the two of you come in. “Hi! How can I help you two?” She asked, reaching up to take out one of the earbuds she had in.

Younghoon placed one of his hands on your shoulder. “Would you mind if we took a look around?”

“No, not at all. Help yourselves; if you need anything, don't hesitate to holler.”

He smiled, “Sounds good, thank you!”

Did he know what he was here for? You followed him toward the leftmost table, unsure of where to wander yourself since there was so much stimuli. He stopped at one of the pots and you stood beside him. Leaning closer, you whispered, “I don't really know what we're looking at.”

“Me neither,” he admitted with an embarrassed grin, but then he pulled out a planter tag at the front of the pot he was examining. “But these might help.”

“You're probably right,” you mused, patting him on the arm.

“Look, these are carnations.” He scooted over to the next one over. There were an array of different colors of them, ranging from white to the deepest red. He placed a finger against his lips, then pointed at the white ones. “Those mean innocence, and those—” these were directed toward the blush pink ones, “—something along the lines of 'I'll never forget you.’”

You still stood close to him, and you reached over to gently warm the velvety petals between your fingertips. “I hope it's okay to touch them,” you suddenly said, swiftly retracing your fingers and peering over your shoulder at the worker.

“I'm sure it's okay,” he chuckled. He pointed out a buttery yellow set of petals a few pots down. “Aren't these gorgeous?” He breathed in awe.

When you arrived at the petal of choice, you raised the tag to see its name—daffodils. They were beautiful indeed, with pristine petals and tall stems, the color of them a rich yellow as if it had been painted rather than grown.

“What do these mean?” You asked.

“Unrivaled love? I think,” he answered with a slight tilt of his head.

You considered him for a moment with lips parted. “You're incredible, you know that? How do you know all this?”

His smile sweetened into something that made your chest feel warm. “You say that as if you're not the incredible one. But, Google. Don't look at my search history,” he muttered sheepishly.

It made you smile anyway.

You turned your head to scan the rows upon rows of diversity in one room. You were never quite the foliage fiend, but you could appreciate nature's beauty as much as nature's laws. Even if you might never be able to grow flowers of your own (because trust that you'd tried), as long as these places still existed, you could still admire and appreciate them.

Your eyes snagged onto a bundle of tulips at the front of the shop and you wandered over to take a look. Younghoon trailed after you to see what you wanted to look at, and stopped with you to admire the tulips. Their buds were near perfect, and they varied in so many colors—all soft purples, reds, yellows, pinks.

“Wow,” you said.

“Wow,” he agreed. He caressed the outside petals of one of the bulbs, then took the individual flower by the stem. He took yet another in his opposite hand and faced you. “What did the tulip say to the other tulip?”

You blinked. “Do indulge me.”

“We should put our tulips together and kiss,” he answered, and he pressed his own lips together in a barely contained smile.

You covered your mouth with one hand, a smile of your own blossoming under your palm. “I don't know about that one…”

“I don't be-leaf you when you say you're not a fan of that one.”

At this point, you could feel your face heat up and you could no longer hide your smile. “You're incorrigible.”

“It made you smile,” he quipped back with a smirk. He placed the tulips in his hands gently back into their pot, then swiveled on the balls of his feet. “They’re beautiful.”

“They are,” you agreed.

“Like you.”

Your eyes snapped up to his, but he already had his back turned to you as he surveyed the shop for the person who was on shift. Yet, you still spied the bit of red creeping up the back of his neck, and found yourself content.

“Hi, excuse me!” He caught the worker's attention. “Could we get just a little bundle of these tulips, please? Thank you so much.”

Your eyes widened and you tugged on the sleeve of his jacket. “Younghoon, what're you—”

He had a satisfied smile on his face. “Getting you flowers.”

“You don't need to get me flowers.”

“I’d like to,” he said simply, and that was the end of the conversation.

Less than ten minutes later, you and Younghoon were back out on the sidewalk with a new addition to the group. You cradled a small bouquet of tulips in the crook of your arm. The girl working there tonight had told you that being open so late caught a lot of last minute gift-givers as she wrapped your flowers in a tan colored butcher paper. She seemed to be an expert at tying ribbon bows that were just as beautiful as the flowers she tended, too.

You were already spinning far from your original intentions. You hadn't accounted for Younghoon making this gesture, and you wondered if he planned something for tonight.

Your counterpart suddenly cleared his throat while the two of you resumed your journey to the planetarium. You were only a few minutes away from the planetarium now. “I know I asked earlier if there was something you wanted to talk about,” he said, “but there is something I wanted to also talk about.”

Your heart fumbled over itself. “Uhm, yeah—yes, what's on your mind?”

From where you were on the street, you could see the broad dome of your target building just across the street. There was a rapid leap in your heart rate as he faced you beneath the street light shining over your heads like some kind of strangely timed, solo spotlight. The crosswalk turned green, but you stayed rooted to your place.

“I've been trying to figure out how to tell you this,” he began. He sucked in a deep breath and swallowed. You could only imagine how long he spent training himself to hold a poker face, but it was the liminal spaces where you could see right through him. “I like you a lot, Yn. It's—it’s an overwhelming amount, what I feel about you.”

You peered over at him wordlessly and hung onto every syllable coming from his mouth.

He wrung his hands out; this perhaps wasn't a script he was prepared for. But who ever came prepared for something like this? “And I think it's pretty obvious what I was hoping for tonight to be like from the flowers and all, and I was hoping that I was being just as obvious with how I felt about you, and… I don't know. I just… I had to tell you.” His lips pressed together so that the small divot in the side of his cheek appeared.

You didn't know how to describe the wave of emotion that washed over you. There was the rapid heart beat thundering in your ears, the tingle of relief in your shoulders, the happiness taking flight in your stomach.

“I have to be honest, I—I feel the exact same way you do.” You ducked your head, tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, “And I didn't know how to tell you either because I was really scared.” Your voice tripped, and you picked yourself back up. He waited for you, as always, patiently letting you say your piece. “I didn't want to lose you as a friend, at the very least, because you've come to mean so much to me over these past few months.”

Younghoon's smile widened and the amber color from the streetlight above haloed around his head for one dizzying second. “I didn't want to lose you either. I'm literally head over heels for you; you're every… you're everything.”

You didn't know how else to express your feelings through words, and you wrapped your arms around his middle, the flowers coming around his back to avoid being crushed. “Not good at words, sorry,” you mumbled into the fabric of his jacket.

You could feel the vibrations of his warm chuckle as he slowly wrapped his arms around you, his lips pressing against the side of your head. Message received.

Not everything went to plan, and it was important to exercise flexibility in such times. You still snuck (broke) into the planetarium with Younghoon, hand-in-hand, but all feelings were already known and laid sprawled on the table.

There was a center platform in the main showcase hall that was carpeted in a layer of fake grass that you and Younghoon gladly lounged upon to watch the universe. The image projected above your heads now of faraway solar systems and galaxies was unfortunately not real—they were produced by a specific software rather than the lens of a telescope. It was breathtaking, nonetheless.

You laid with your back against the fake grass next to Younghoon, your arms pressed against one another. The light projecting onto the dome above filtered down and painted you both in colors of stars and dark matter, all of those swirls of oranges and purples and blues and white.

“There is one thing that's still on my mind.”

He hummed. “What's that?”

“I was wondering—and you can totally say no—but the wedding…” You glanced over at him, and you wondered if he could understand what you were probing at. “I was wondering if you'd be comfortable going as my plus one. It's just the reception, but I understand if it's a lot.”

He smiled at you, big and bright, “I'd love to go as your plus one.”

Relief and joy fluttered in your chest now. It was a miracle your heart didn't grow wings and fly out then. “Thank you, really.”

His fingers inched over yours until they intertwined as a silent acknowledgement. He knew. He always knew somehow.

In the silence, you returned your gaze up to the night sky. It was crazy how vast the universe was and how small you were in relation to it. When put into perspective, your problems here on Earth were so much smaller than the world—and yet, they were still important.

“When I was a kid,” you started to say, and heard a small sound from your right as he looked back over at you, “I wanted to touch the stars.” You turned your head to look back at him.

His lip quirked upward fondly. “Something of yours will touch the stars one day.”

“I hope so,” you mused back. That was the dream.

His eyes dropped down to your mouth now, and everything quieted, as if you were in a vacuum with only the two of you. In this reality, no one and nothing else existed.

You could feel the warmth of his breath on your skin as he leaned toward you and pressed his lips against yours. His body rolled half over yours, one hand cupping your jaw with a tenderness you were certain to become addicted to. It was your chest against his, your nose slotting beside his, your cheek beneath his thumb. His lips were a perfect marriage of pressure and softness at once.

When he pulled away, he didn't go far. “I think I just touched a star,” he murmured.

The breath in your throat hitched. “You're too good with words, Kim Younghoon.”

His eyes crinkled. “We can do something more your speed and study the space between us instead.”

You had to turn away to laugh, the sound of his own joining yours.

“Hey, it's a yes or no question,” he giggled, turning your chin back toward him. He bit his lip through a grin. “Can I kiss you again?”

You would be a fool to refuse him. In an instant, he lowered his lips over yours again, enveloped you in his embrace. And with every moment passed, you sank further and further into him. Maybe the universe was uncharted and alluring, but the universe could wait.

You had all the world right here.

a/n: tumblr fcking hates me and my dialogue, confirmed. anyways, pls remember to reblog + comment if u enjoyed! for now, i'll see u in hot commodity!

permanent taglist: @flwoie @vatterie @seomisaho @hqrana @ja4hyvn @outrologist @rikizm @tinkerbell460 @kaaimins @hyunjaespresent-deobi @otterly-fey @zzoguri @floatingpluto @winterchimez @ethereal-engene @gyulfriend @polarisjisung @jaehunnyy @shakalakaboomboo @loveliestfelix @bless-311 @zhaixiaowen @leaz-kpop-life @amourdsr @pxppxrminty @kqyutie @sseastar-main @kxthleen14 @fluorescentloves @mosviqu @jaerisdiction @super-btstrash-posts @jundundun @http-gyu @mvvnsseul @vernonburger @maessseongs @ericlvr @mars101 @moonyswolf @your-mirae @richasdiary @sunramzi @deobi0412 @kflixnet

#deoboyznet #kflixnet #the boyz x reader #tbz x reader #kim younghoon x reader #the boyz fanfic #younghoon x reader #the boyz oneshot #the boyz imagines #the boyz drabbles #the boyz scenarios #the boyz fluff #younghoon imagines #younghoon drabbles #younghoon scenarios #younghoon oneshots #younghoon fluff

[bunitivity]

I don't know if you've answered something similar but do you have any ZoLuSanUso headcanons for when they're sick? (Let's ignore canon for a moment, I know none of these monsters actually ever get sick, but that's no fun! We want angst, and hurt and comfort!)

No I’ve not lol but sure I can give some hcs. Out of the four of them I feel like Usopp would be the most likely to say anything if he got sick followed by Luffy and then Sanji and then Zoro who I believe wouldn’t even know if he was sick. He would just say something like I’ve been feeling weaker lately better up my training and then train harder like an idiot.

Sanji would be coming over with some refreshments and be like wait you’re breathing weird and you’re all red are you okay?/that’s what happens when you train maybe you should try it some time and then before Sanji has a chance to give a scathing respond Zoro just fkn collapses in front of everyone. Luffy would be fkn inconsolable thinking he’s dying bc anything that can fell someone like Zoro must be fatal and Usopp tries to explain that it’s just his hubris catching up to him and this is what happens when you train shirtless in the fucking cold.

Zoro would be the worst sick person bc he’d insist he’s fine and try to sneak out of the infirmary any chance he gets which is why it’s a good thing he has three boyfriends who can take shift to prevent that from happening. Though they don’t really need to take shifts bc Luffy won’t leave his side and is there under the covers with him fiercely holding him which was fine at first until it becomes too hot and it gets uncomfortable. Zoro is dying but would rather die before saying anything so it’s Sanji who has to break it to Luffy.

“You know I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing I’ve heard the easiest way to get rid of a fever is to sweat it,” Usopp points out.

Luffy’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Usopp darling my love,” Sanji pinches his nose. “I love you but please don’t encourage this. At this rate they’re both going to get sick and then we’ll have two ppl to take care of.”

“And here I thought you’d do anything for the people you love,” Zoro opens up the blanket. “Are you really going to let something like a measly cold stop you?”

Sanji sees the space Zoro opens up for him and the way Luffy looks so snuggly by his side and takes a step towards them and almost falls for it until Usopp snatches his wrist. Zoro clicks his tongue.

Usopp sighs. “God you’re so easy. I can’t believe you’d let him bait you like that.”

Sanji flushes. “What? No! I wasn’t going to fall for it! I was just going to check his temperature and nothing else!”

“Sure babe,” Usopp says. “Sanji you’re the cook you’re the last person we need getting sick please don’t let this idiot tempt you.”

“Yeah which is why Usopp should join us!” Luffy rises in the bed and grabs Usopp’s hand. “Double the people means Zoro would get better even faster!”

And then he drags him into bed.

“Wait Luffy! Ugh Zoro you’re so sweaty! Gross!”

Zoro just smiles before plastering himself all over Usopp making it that much worse. “Oi stop that! I fucking hate you!”

Zoro hums “sure” while Luffy just laughs. “Don’t worry Usopp you’ll get used to it.”

“That’s the last thing I want!”

“Wait wait wait,” Sanji interrupts their tomfoolery. “If Usopp sleeps here then who am I sleeping with tonight??”

“That’s what you’re worried about? This idiot is trying to infect me with his stupid germs and that is what you’re most worried about??”

“It just gets so lonely~”

“You’ll just have to figure that out because it’s already too late for Usopp I’m afraid,” Zoro kisses Usopp’s cheek and then looks up at him through his lashes. “But the offer still stands.”

“Well-“

“Sanji!”

“Okay fine! I’ll just sleep all by myself in our big stupid bed while the three of you get to cuddle here all warm and happy.”

He does not do that and just ends up sleeping on the infirmary floor because he’s an idiot and he occasionally reaches out to touch Usopp’s hand that’s dangling over the side of the bed because he’s crazy like that.

Of course the next ones who get sick are Luffy and Usopp. It doesn’t happen right away it doesn’t even hit them at the same time. Luffy is the one who goes down first because he’s the one who spent the most time with Zoro and unlike Usopp he was willing to kiss Zoro while he was sick because he genuinely didn’t believe he would get it but he does.

Luffy does not like getting sick. Does not like how weak it makes him feel and most of all how lonely it is when his boyfriends or friends aren’t there to keep him company. Reminds him too much of being small and being sick and alone because Ace went out to hunt and he couldn’t go with him. And now he’s thinking about Ace which is a whole bag worms and fuck being alone with his thoughts like this is just torture.

So he gets extra clingy because he can’t stand being alone. And of course his boyfriends indulge him holding his hand and talking to him to distract him to keep the bad thoughts at bay.

“I’m sorry,” he’ll tell Sanji. “I should have listened to you. If had none of this would have happened. It’s okay you can go back to work I’ll be okay.”

Sanji would normally chastise him but he hears the vulnerability in his voice and just squeezes his hand and then brings it to his lips. “Nonsense, my love. I’ll stay with you until you feel better.”

Luffy tears up a bit. “Even if you get sick?”

“Even if I get sick.”

Usopp would make a makeshift bed out of chairs and lay down so they’re at the same eye level and it feels like they are on the same bed even if they aren’t and reaches across the vast distance to hold his hand and make him laugh with his stories some fantastical some real(albeit exaggerated) about the things he has missed. Luffy will listen with rapt attention until he dozes off. Sometimes Usopp will fall asleep holding his hand and Zoro and Sanji have to come collect him.

Some nights Zoro will sneak in after the two others have fallen asleep. Just to watch over him and if Luffy is awake he’ll wrap him up in some sheets from head to toe to prevent himself from getting sick again and then cuddles him to sleep. Luffy is so happy despite how stuffy and uncomfortable it is. Just happy not to be alone.

——————

Sanji is just in the kitchen making breakfast one morning when Usopp comes up behind him and wraps his arms around him and rests his head on his shoulder. “Sanji I think I’m getting sick.”

“You too??” He checks his forehead and sure enough Usopp’s burning up. “You guys are going down like flies. But before we tell Chopper give me one final kiss.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea.” Then he laughs at the downtrodden look on Sanji’s face and kisses him. “Guess it’s fine I don’t think it’s that serious anyway.”

It’s that serious and he ends up joining an overjoyed Luffy in the infirmary. Hurray a sick buddy!

“I really do not like how happy you are that I’m sick. Feels like a red flag.”

“What?? I’m not happy you’re sick I’m happy we’re sick together!”

“Diabolical.”

“I’ll show you diabolical!” Then he just starts kissing him all over.

Sanji is just distraught that they’re both sick now. “I haven’t gotten any Luffy kisses in so long.” Okay maybe that’s not the only thing he’s distraught about but still!

“No one’s stopping you.”

“Shut up Marimo this is all your fault! If you’d just learn to wear a shirt none of this would have happened!”

“Oh please you love it when I don’t wear a shirt.”

“When it’s hot out! …wait did you just say nothing is stopping me?” Sanji’s eyes go wide. “Don’t tell me you have been making out with Luffy this entire time!”

“What moron would do that!”

Then they get kicked out of the infirmary for being too loud.

It hits Usopp a lot harder than the other two. Because unlike his boyfriends he’s just regular person and whatever felled them straight up knocks him out. He’s delirious and barely conscious for the most of it which makes the others quite distressed. Especially Luffy who is the closest to him(proximity wise) and who ends up seeing the worst of it. He will try and talk to Usopp but only gets short responses back and sometimes they aren’t even coherent and make no sense. This just makes him even more distressed which leads to Luffy staying up all night despite also being sick and needing his rest just to watch Usopp sleep afraid that if he falls asleep Usopp will just stopped breathing. No matter how much Chopper reassures him Usopp will be fine there will be this tiny voice at the back of his head whispering what if and he just can’t risk it.

Even after Luffy gets better he’ll lie and say he is still sick just so he isn’t forced to leave. He’ll wrap around him several times cocooning him in his arms in the dead of night whispering in Usopp’s ear to please not leave him he couldn’t bear to lose anyone else. And then sigh a breath of relief when he feels Usopp squeeze him back.

Sanji is just as bad as him staying up late at the infirmary not leaving until Zoro has to physically lift him and carry him out. He redoubles his efforts whipping up dish after dish that he hopes will help. Zoro often have to force to take a break. Zoro is worried too but unlike Luffy and Sanji he knows restraint(when it concerns others that are not him lol) so he ends up looking Sanji so he doesn’t overwork himself and ends up bedridden too. Two sick people are already bad enough.

Once he gets him in bed Sanji would still stay up worrying and confiding in Zoro that he’s afraid that they may not get better alluding but not outright telling him about his mother’s illness. She had been looked a lot better than Usopp and she still died and so what if the same happened to either Luffy or Usopp?? Then were would he be? Just all alone with stupid Marimo he would say all while burying his face in Zoro’s chest trembling. “Don’t be stupid they’re a lot stronger than some stupid cold they’ll both be fine In no time especially after you made that dish? What was it called again?”

He will try to distract by making him talk about those legendary dishes he learned from Iva until he falls asleep.

Zoro who’s usually so unflappable ends up infected by all Luffy’s and Sanji’s anxious energy and just ends up feeling useless since there’s nothing he can do but watch over Luffy and Usopp while they sleep and helping Luffy get out of his spirals once the waiting gets to be too much.

But because Sanji can’t be stopped(Zoro is too m he just isn’t as vocal about it) they end up sleeping in the infirmary too. Making a makeshift bed on the floor much to Chopper’s chagrin.

Usopp wakes up early one morning finally released from the ravages of his fever to see his three boyfriends in the room with him. Luffy clutching his waist and Sanji holding his hand which has started cramping from the impractical position. He looks up and makes direct eye contact with Zoro who smiles with heavy eye bags under his eyes and says “took you long enough.”

Usopp reaches out and touches his face and brings it closer so he can kiss it. “Thank you for waiting.”

There’s a little bit of a celebration once the other two wake up and everything is right with the world.

Until Sanji gets sick.

“And this is why I said you shouldn’t work so hard stupid cook.”

“Are we cursed? Is this why this keeps happening?? Feels like we’re stuck in a bad dream!”

“Don’t be stupid this is because Sanji was stupid and worked himself sick.”

“Maybe so but-Luffy!”

Luffy stops where he had been crawling into bed into Sanji’s outstretched arms who’s crooning sweet nothings to him.

“What? You can’t get sick twice from the same cold. I stayed with you even after I got better and I’m feeling just fine.”

“That cannot possibly be true.”

“You gotta admit he has a point.”

“I do not want to hear that from you patient 0. I blame you for all of this.”

Zoro just shrugs and makes Sanji scooch over.

But because there was no one there to correct them and both Zoro and Sanji agreed with Luffy outvoting Usopp 3-1 he had to let it happen. And to no one’s surprise they all got sick again.

#do they break the cycle? who knows #and you best believe sanji didn’t agree with them because he actually believed luffy he just didn’t want to be alone lol #this was supposed to be just hcs but I’m fkn diseased and as soon as I started writing I couldn’t stop lol #I just checked and it’s a little over 2k #I didn’t intentionally short Sanji I promise but this shit got too long😔 #nami ended taking over cooking and the cost is steeeeep #zoro ends up taking the brunt of it because this is all his fault lol and also bc she just likes tormenting him😌 #asks #zolusanuso #one piece #lusopp #sanuso #zosopp #lusan #zolu #zosan #i write sometimes

[sinclqir]

something?

warnings: smut, angst? idk?, unreciprocated feelings (but not really?)

papa emeritus iv x male reader

word count: no fkn clue

——

papas moans were loud, his hands gripping the sheets as his face was pressed against the covers. his back was arched as your hands gripped his hips, his paints were smudged on the bed as tears flowed down his face, not from pain, but from pure pleasure.

“s-sei così profondo! y-y/n!” papas voice was so broken, a mixture between a whine and a moan. with every thrust you gave to him, his cock rubbed against the bed, doubling the pleasure. he couldn’t get enough, but it was too much at the same time.

papa and you’s relationship was…complicated. this was a regular occurrence, fucking him ruthlessly at LEAST three times a week. you did have feelings for him, but he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in you that way. it was fine at first, just pure sex. aside from these interactions, he would barely speak to you, not sparing you a pacing glance. he was too busy flirting and messing around with other siblings of sin, it hurt. quite a bit. after every meetup, he would send you on your way, which only hurt more. after a while, it was just normal, the feelings for him faded away.

you started to talk to more siblings of sin, sleeping around more often. before papa, you were reserved, more shyer than anything. when he proposed the idea, you accepted, already having a crush on him. then when he showed he was only interested for the sex, the feelings died down, knowing your place.

papa noticed how you started to mess around more, a weird twinge of jealousy bubbling in his chest. he tried to suppress those feelings for you that started to come, not wanting to commit. but the way you talked to him, in and out of the bedroom, it made him feel like he was young again. he hated the look on your face whenever he told you to leave after a night of pleasure, he wanted nothing more than for you to stay with him, cuddle him to sleep. tonight, he wouldn’t do that, he wanted to see you in the afterglow, and whisper sweet nothings into your ear. he even stopped flirting with other siblings, only wanting you.

he snapped out of his thoughts as your cock hit his prostate, his eyes rolling back into his head as a moan rippled through his chest. you were the best he’s ever had, he was addicted, to not only your dick, but to you in general.

“i-i’m…im close, y/n,” papa whined, pushing back to meet your thrusts. your hair fell in front of your face, sweat dripping down your body. your hand laced into his hair, gripping harshly, “yeah? cum for me,” you groaned, feeling your own orgasm coming close.

with a few more hits to his prostate, papa came all over the sheets, his legs shaking wildly. his voice was gone at this point, but he managed to let out a raspy moan. you followed his release right after, cumming deep into him, painting his insides white. he panted, trying to catch his breath.

you already knew the drill at this point, pulling out of him and getting off the bed. papa whined at the loss, but was too much in a state of bliss to realize what was happening. he waited for you to check on him, but when you didn’t, he felt a pang of hurt. he flipped onto his back and looked at you, a complete mess. “y-y/n…wait-“ he breathed out. you were already buttoning your shirt back on when you heard his voice, “what?” you asked, still slightly out of breath. “where are you going, tesoro?” he asked softly, running his hand through his hair.

you looked at him with furrowed brows, “leaving.” you said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. you could see the flash of sadness go across his face, “y/n, you don’t have to go.” he said quietly.

then it came, those feelings that had died down for the man came rushing back, but the thought that he maybe wanted to go for round three whipped through your mind. you cleared your throat, “why do you want me to stay?” you asked, a bit harsher than you intended. papa flinched at your use of tone, “i-i just…want you to s-stay is all,” he lied. he wanted to tell you how much you meant to him, how he only wanted you.

you couldn’t help yourself, making papa feel bad made you feel like shit. you stopped buttoning your shirt, it halfway done as you walked over to him. you grabbed some tissues from his bedside table and cleaned his stomach, papa didn’t question it. you cleaned away the mixture of his and your cum, and sweat off his body. he closed his eyes, feeling sleepy now. “stay? please…” papa whispered, it sounded so sweet and those words were what you always wanted to hear. you nodded and took off your shirt again, stripping down to your boxers and laying down beside him. you didn’t dare to cuddle him, but when he snuggled closely to your side, you melted and wrapped your arm around him, holding him close.

he hummed in delight, laying his head on your chest. “y/n…i-…” the words died in his throat, nerves creeping into his being. your hand came up to play with his hair, and his anxiety faded away, “i love you.” he said, his voice barely audible. you froze, did he just say that? “really? you’re not playing with me?” you asked, hesitant to believe him. “y-yes, caro. i’m sorry i haven’t said it sooner…i was….nervous.” papa said, keeping his face away from yours incase your reaction was one he didn’t want. “papa…i’ve been waiting for you to say that.” he lifted his head up and looked at you, his eyes wide as a blush was spread across his face. (his paints were nearly gone at this point.) “really? you mean it, s-si?” he asked, looking for confirmation in your eyes. you smiled at his reaction and nodded your head, “si, i love you too.” and with that, you leaned in and kissed him softly.

papa was beaming, kissing your back just as softly but with his adrenaline, it was a bit more forceful. you chuckled along his lips and pulled back, resting your foreheads together. he kissed your cheek and laid his head back down on your chest, also giving it a kiss as well.

from that night on, it was just you two. the only person for eachother, soulmates.

#the band ghost #ghost band #papa emeritus fanfiction #papa emeritus iv #cardinal copia x reader #papa emeritus iii #papa emeritus iv x reader #cardinal copia #cardinal copia smut #cardinal copia x male reader #papa emeritus iii x reader #papa emeritus x male reader #papa emeritus iv x male reader #male reader #gay mlm #gay

[boxwinebaddie]

Is Chef alive? Like please tell me that man is still out there living his best life.

chef is...Alive.

but i wouldn't say he's living his best life, no.

( sigh...tw for sexual assault, coercion and violence )

so basically, when stan figured out that e.t. tenorman was cartman, which, an anon asked if if stan knows e is cartman...yes, he does.

and all too well.

his music savant boy synesthesia went crazy when cartman started talking the first time they reunited and he couldn't place why this man he'd never met before sounded oddly familliar and why...

his voice sounded like the worst sound in the world.

but he didn't need to wait long for his answer, because right before their first big band meeting ended and all the music/marketing execs, scott, jimmy and kenny left the room, cartman caught stan by his shirt front, yanked him violently towards him and whispered...

"hello, shannon." ;)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCK YOU!!!!

so basically cartman is black-mailing ravenstan into being complaint and doing whatever he wants and honestly, more than telling people that raven is stan...e knows that stan doesn't care about himself, he doesn't care about getting hurt/what happens to him...but that the way to hurt him...

is by hurting other people.

specifically the people he cares about.

so when ravenstan tries to back out of the band bc fuck this, who cares if it's his dream, it's not worth this...it's fucking not.

so stan is like "what. do. you. want."

and cartman is like..."what i've always wanted, of course..."

"your compliance, your undying devotion..."

"your body."

AAAAAAAAAAAA I HATE YOU I HAAATE YOU

i want to Scream, oh my GOOOOD!!!!! FUCK YOU

and then he's basically like "here's the deal, sh@n..."

( he misgenders stan a lot by the way...please die )

"either you give me what i want, whatever i want, whenever i want or else everyone around you, all the stupid, silly little people you love...will suffer for your spite and disobedience. is that clear?"

and stan just rolls his eyes like "fuck you, cartman. you're all talk; that's all you've ever been. all bark no bite, you fucking purse perro."

and cartman is like..."oh?" takes his phone out, dials a number & says

"do it."

and about ten minutes later, kenny calls him and is like

"stan??? S-STAN??? ARE YOU THERE???"

"DAD HAS BEEN SHOT."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCKFUCKFUFKC

and stan is crying and screaming like "oh my god, oh my god, fuckfuckfuck!!!!! is-is he okay...ken, is he--is he--"

glaring at cartman, ready to lunge, shocked, horrified...

Disgusted.

and ken replies "no...no he's...he's alive. it was just his shoulder, but, oh my god, stan--holy FUCK. we have--we have to go see him, stan!!"

and stan wants to tell them it's this PINCHE PENDEJO CARTMAN who terrorized him his whole childhood, but cartman just shakes his head and mouthes 'no' then lifts his finger to say 'shh' and then takes that same finger and runs it across his throat as if to say...

'talk and i'll kill him.'

so stan's face crumples bc he's Helpless and he has no choice, so he just chokes back a sob and is like 'no, we can't. we have this record deal. we have to sign the contract tomorrow. it's—it’s important."

and kenny is aghast like "mORE IMPORTANT THAN DAD ALMOST DYING??? STAN!!! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING, FUCK THAT WE HAVE TO SEE DAD, WE HAVE TO--"

and stan just goes "We’re. Not. Going." and hangs up.

cartman snickers and smirks and stan's face's so mad and sad. he wants to scream like this is so fkn horrible this is his worst nightmare

...then chef calls him.

dad.

the only dad he's ever known.

and cartman just smiles and goes

"tell him you hate him and you never want to see him again."

and stan is shaking his head, he's practically pleading, shouting

"nonoNONONO!!! anything. pl-please don't make me do this, p-ple--"

but cartman simply commands

"or else."

so chef on the phone is like "h-hey, blue. look, i'm okay, i'm okay. don't cry, i know how you are kid. i'm gonna be alright, it's gonna take more than some dumb bullet to put your old man in the ground. the whole thing was so odd...? they think it was...a stray bullet. crossfire. gang stuff. you know how it is out here. but it just 'minded me of how short life can be, how fast things can go. so don't worry. and i know...i know i was cross with you and ken for leaving. i know i said it was a useless dream and you two would come home all heartbroken with your tails between your legs...but you're making a real name for yourself! well, a fake one, i suppose, hah. but i just wanted to say...that i'm real proud of you, kiddo. and i--i miss you.

i love you, stanley."

and stan's just listening, crying wordlessly, clutching his phone so hard that his knuckles go white and all he wants to do is tell his dad he loves him and he's sorry, he's so fucking sorry, this is all his fault, this is all his fucking fault like always, for dreaming to big and being oblivious and a fuck up and getting everyone wrapped up in his mess

but he can't...so in a deadpan with his eyes shut, all he says is

"i hate you."

and chef's like "haha, real funny, stan. but if you're tryna hurt my heart to distract me from my shoulde--"

and stan just interrupts him in the same terse, robotic voice.

choking back sobs and screams, shaking so hard he can't see.

"listen to me. i never...i never want to speak to you again. ken...ken feels the same. don't call me. or them. don't call here ever again. ever. don't try and reach out, don't look for us. things are different now."

and chef is so confused and sad and scared like he literally just got shot and somehow this is worse...this is so much work. so with his heart breaking in his voice, he says...

"is that...is that really want you want, son?"

and stan just goes...

"it's..."

and he can barely say it, holy fuck. but he does and it's

"what i want."

but that's not all.

oh, no, my friends.

because it's time for the big finish.

the stan finale.

ravenstan grits his teeth, tears and blood in his mouth, then says

"and i'm not your son.

you're not...

...you're not my real dad.

never have, never will be.

goodbye."

and clicks off and FUCK. it's not true, it's all a fucking lie. but he needed to say something that hurt so badly that his dad wouldn't call him again...something so excruciating that it would end it all.

and cartman just gives him a round of applause while stan is sneering and seething and sobbing because he just had to do the second worst thing he's ever done in his life and cartman is...

clapping and cheering.

it's sick.

and cartman's like "bravo. that was quite the performance, marsh. you're quite the little actress, aren't you?"

AAAAAAAAAAAA I'M SO MAD!!! DIEDIEDIIIIE

this is all part of a very horrible flashback chapter way in the future and i will say that it ends...with cartman telling him to do something, the awful sound of his belt unbuckling...

and stan's knees hitting the floor.

I'M SICK!!!!! AAAA!!! and it's so horrible because it's his whole life, it's his dad all over again ( yes, i'm disgusted ) and him threatening to punish shelley and sharon if he doesn't comply, it's all the horrible men at ruffians, their horrible, hungry hands and mouths and stares all over him so he could sing on fridays. and now it's being indebted to cartman, being trapped again, forced to do disgusting shit. Again.

one bird cage to the next...who cares if it's golden, right?

but yeah, the boys get signed, everyone is super excited and stan's like yay...yippee...this is so fun. kenny, ofc, thinks that chef just cut ties, decided he doesn't support their dreams and that's that. also the other boys slowly get coerced by cartman in different ways...i will say that kenny is super addicted to coke and cartman is basically using that to control them and keep them disillusioned and devoted.

one last thing is that during marj's party in the cd manwhorsion during my second favorite chapter, cartman is talking to kyle and the blondies haus and is like 'i see you've met my songbird...pretty isn't she? well trained too. sings whenever i ask, isn't that right, raven?'

and idk his hand is like halfway up raven's shirt and raven is just laughing and nodding looking so ready to die, downing his drink.

and once he gets away, raven is bolting for the door and kyle's super concerned like 'hey...are you okay? that guy...i don't like the way that guy was talking to you." super protective crush mode jersey activate.

and stan's just like "don't, kyle. it's fine. i-i'm fine...."

and kyle is like "you don't--you don't look fine, raven...you look..."

and stan, who never raises his voice is like

"I SAID LEAVE. IT. ALONE. JERSEY.”

and storms out.....aaaaaaaaaa fuck we're in hell.

anyways! cheers! mazel! enjoy your horrible, deplorable, hurt no comfort lore that makes me want to literally Krill Myself.

-uncle nina, who is going to murder rm!cartman w/ my bare hands

#okay please don't read this post if you are at all uncomfortable with the tw topics or dark themes in general #unfortunately rm is not pep and while pep is dark...this fanfic is very fucked up v bad things happen to it and to the ppl we luv #god the way stan just continues to be trapped in horrible situations that make him sick and has no agency and is a marinette #i hate everything so bad he is just literally doomed i love him so much he sacrifices so much for everyone around him #my sweet sweet lovely kind angel boy #you don't deserve any of this i'm so sorry my love #oh my god i'm so fucking sad why am i like this #i couldn't just write a NICE fanfiction like man COME ON #oh i just know when kyle finds out its so over #like he is going to beat him bloody #everyone who has ever laid a hand on stanley marsh is going to lose it and then their life #not the kyle when he’s vulnerable and shaken but the jersey when he’s trying to push him away #I HATE IT HERE I LOVE U STAN I LOVE U BABY

[austinsastrology8991]

> Issues I have with you/occult / world < *long post* do not read if you don't want to waste your time < a subjective analysis of Astrology, numerology, manifestation, and a subtle exposé of my life

I got issues... but more importantly i got issues with you. I do a lot of research n i hate being told what to do/ and the occult gotta habit of telling me who tf i am.

and Im better at telling myself who tf I am.

THIs is who i am. <^> stop googly eyin me; foo

This is a fkn mess of a post > try your best to read; it was meant to be a story but im incapable > I just want you to have headache (me after reading this shit 20 times or whatever it is) i;m tired. now go away. or read. or die in a hole. all the same to me. astrology is a subjective subject. IDGAF how many books youve read or how many people you speak too; we are literally looking at a planet in space and are saying shit liek " oh im dat type of pretty (venus), im dominant over here (mars), and thats why my life sux (saturn) " meanwhile, the planet still just rotating and we like acting like we apart of its orbit. Its objectively a subjective subject... > its objective only in your natal chart - where the planets are etc.... but interpretations > subjective Sidenote- Im obsessed with astrology.... because my life sucks. and i need to like feel productive somehow - stfu i know this isnt productive, but tell me what you doing? don't act all jiminy cricket on me, when your soundtrack is that of a cricket beginning of rant Also: the mythology and practise of intepretating planets and asteroids, and well the complicated drama that is greek/roman mythology. while there is plenty of overlap, the sheer concept of 2 different intepretations created upon from, 2 seperate cultures, creates different texts and slight differences inherent within each story. this initself creates a subjective intepretation of aforementioned stories > not to mention other cultures who likely put their own narrative of these mythos > it allows us to also intepret it in our own way > it is all just imagination at the end of the day. Whilst the themes are uncannily similar, the form is always different, and thats why I like to intepret it in my own way, and i recommend you do tooo (Alike everything in this subject) ; however we need some clear rules, and guidelines, to make this subject actually palatable, but i fear this community would rather keep it confusing so we can treasure the secrets of the occult on our own. and to that I do understsnd, however, anyone reading tumblr astrology, I believe to already be taking that leap into the occult and should be granted at least some introductory access. and here is (1) problem

Astrology signs are the how, and the houses are the where, > yet you all describe 2nd house a whole lot like tuarus, 10th house lot like capricorn. I mean Ik its similar but yall acting like its different yet your intepretations aint all dat different from each other..... but if the how for you is the where for me, then how tf is it so hard for me to see the differences?… if there is such a startling difference like yall always claim.. to me the themes are so fkn similar whereby > i think its the same > degree, house, sign; same shit diff smell

This however made 4 years ago me, very insecure.:.. 😢I couldn’t figure out the difference and I felt dumb 🤧 but That was 4 years ago - I was noob…. made me realize things like: we got an attitude problem today - we youngins always apologizing, trying to make others comfortable about our bullshit (Anxiety skill issue), yet the old fucks are hella comfortable telling us what to do (authority skill issue), like bro. you dont even know me, and im supposed to bow to you, just so your gonna bread crumb me with some bs self professed 'useful' advice??? if you talked to each other youd realize you all have the same advice... and you too old to keep up with my problems, so stop acting like you know.....

and so like uh, its not bold of me to say that; if your a legit astrologer you know you can just read people. yes everyone has free will, and other explanations to undermine the importance of astrology, but we know whats going on > try me > *sales pitch noise*<

Tumblr astrology is good but not proffesional, just: posts about random asteroids, random observations, random sexytime, and the occasional ‘official’ astrologers bread crumbing us to incentivize us to pay for a reading…. Now I got nothing better to do with my life (nor do you clearly) so we all on here fucking around> but I made da sacrifice > I spent real money

And these 'readings' > dog shit I tell ya > oh don’t worry none of them were from tumblr people. But people in my city and they knew less than what I knew (from reading your tumblr shits)

So it turns out you guys lowkey experts - we done a million random astrology observations - and if your a lurker, you lowkey know more than some pros; and da concept of analyzing people in your life with astrology has made you a *drum roll* > an average astrologer. your not average, if the experts are only 20% better than you (lets say). so with this in mind your not that far off their expertise.. oh you cant measure it? tell me what i dont know < (tell me more) IM HUNGRY, MORE POSTS, MY FEED IS FUCKInG HUNGRY

Now however wasting my money > pissed me off… but its a blessing, becasuse i became >.....> not depressed!!! Finally I got my energy back >>> legs go...

So I learned to read astrology. I just kept reading these websites and interpreting them and well.. I think they overcomplicate a lot of things, and they say it like a report card, when obviously you and I are multiple planets, aspects, houses, degrees, house lords, persona charts, midpoints, asteroids, not to mention composite, synastry, transits solar return , and all da other fkn ones that I cannot be bothered mentioning. Yet there’s a whole fucking essay about one aspect… like bro you couldn’t make a summary? and im supposed to read each of my other aspects? (ofc i did) but like this is just trying to make me spend money (too much reading) and well Im a greedy little fuck so imma drain your resources and not give you a dime >t > SWIPER NO SWIPING <

and i hate watching people trynna act like they know shit yet eat their own words n adjectives like you aint a professional; you just labeled yourself one > wheres your doctorate at bitch? Had enough shitty readings to not trust another 'tarot reader', but its cool the 'psychologists' aint did much better > thank you mother for the birth of my existence but shi dis place a fkn willy wonkin fsctory - and its foul - most places that try to help you that is.... ' you need to be able to receive help' bitch stfu yall underestimsting my problems and overestimating your ability to make me feel better; BITCH I STFG you dont know shiiiiitiittttttttttt > and yall look happy dont you > "dont trust a bartender who dont drink bitch" - KanYe. Numeroloy 'master numbers' > So many sites only use master numbers from 11 > 22 > 33... but wheres the 44? the 55? the 66?????? dont tell me yall didnt realize that every 'master number' still reverts back to each number (9). > 11 =2, 22 = 4, 33=6, 55 = 1, 66 = 3, 77=5..... bro god stsyed outta this mess clearly..... and its always the ones that be inventing new gods that fuck everything too 🤫 furthermore annoyances of numerofuckology - because they reduce the number back down.. .e.g. you have life path 89 > which is simplified to 17 > then to 8.... why not use 89? why we dissin 9 ????? let alone the complete number??? why not intepret both numbers together???? yall just wanna do 1 because your simple with it. and 9 getting left out fr... and yall always celebrating how special 9 is yet he always left out (magic of math - adding 9 - always reverts back to original) honestly - sometiems its so obvious why yall became numerologists sometimes...... Dont even get me started on ANGEL NUMBERS i could neva stfu

i mean yall still trying to test how true it all is, but if you throw a fish at a pisces they gonna go all googly eye on you. tell a scorpio that you intimidated and now your their favourite informant... read their life path number, and you know what they wanna be doing with their life.... i mean it really is a key, and yall locks are looser than you think... watch yo back.. i wouldnt trust someone who can help me (what do they even want), let alone get help from someone who is useless; why would you? dont act like you dont have trust issues, its like our way of relating to each other at this point. your good at sex if you have.... what about the other person? i mean if you masterbate to yoself maybe.... but if a composite chart / synastry have say - chiron eros? pluto saturn? mars dejanira.... how much are you gonna be fucking yourself when you fucked a dirty fucka..... rip virginity - and rip yo self esteem - dangerous game to value your sex appeal as much as you do...... or maybe your living a fantasy on the internet, and that is healthier, but thoughts are manifestations.... oh shit what da fuck have i manifested oh shitttttttttt IM BEING SUCKED IN A VORTEX OF MY OWN SHIT, SOMONE CALL A MANIFESTOR AGHJH AGJJGH please dont be offended, i do like this community; im just a devils advocate... sometimes 👹

you guys put too muhc importance on manifeststion, and i mean if you think its facts, look at what the people around you are manifesting.... OH thats why you isolate so much. so your manifesting loneliness.... oh you try to help people, so your just a trash can for a rubish person.... you see what i mean, manifestation aint so clear cut as you seem to believe. I believe in it, but Im so used to receiving crap, I learned to enjoy eating shit (we all did) and what is "one mans trash is another mans soap" - fight club Oh and Pluto my favourite - every curse a blessing and every blessing a curse.... stop complaining > he gave you the sauce and the only way to show you was to make you cry > lil bitch > pluto profile pic winking at you rn natal > persona > midpoint > composite > synastry > transit > return charts this is the offical order governed by me- so much more imporatnt to understand yourself over what the world got installed / what your partner doing - work on yo insecurities rather than be worried about something you have no control ova

hmmm thats all the issues i have for now.... just look at me as the boy who cried wolf. they aint a wolf here yet; but they gonna be, and im warning yall > why people dont get it...its because there are too many contradictions > but i fully believe, ive had so many spiritual experiences where if i denied them, id be drinking alcohol and pretending i aint a alcoholic. and i do love yall, but sometimes your an eye roll 29th post requires. 29 degree typa energy - YOlo MOfo

#astrology blog #astrology #astro community #numerology

[darlenicy]

Winx Season 5 gives me physical pain part IV

Episode 7 to 10

5x7

Back in season 3 you would have had fairydust against everything. Broken wings? Fairydust! Blind? Fairydust! Omega portal open? Fairydust! But oil in the ocean? WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

valid, Diaspro!

Layla’s challenge is the hardest. Facing her fiancé’s death is nothing against Stella’s “You’ll never be a fashion designer” challenge, come on. They could have made Stella’s challenge about her parents. That would have been deep and season 5 does a lot with Stella’s struggle because of her parent’s divorce. But no. We have to remember that Stella is the silly fashion diva.

It was so much more fun when the trix were overpowered back in the earlier seasons.

5x8

Party at Alfea with the Red Fountain boys and who is not invited again? The cloud tower witches. And you guys really wonder why they are pissed about fairies? Why do they still exclude the witches??

Tecna is totally me when she has zero motivation for the party lmao

Tritacy being cute again

Darcy doesn’t agree

Layla being a fkn bitch to Stella even though she just wanted to cheer her up????

I present: the toxic couple being toxic again:

Why do the underwater portals only have those weak selkies to protect them?

At least they kept baby musa’s and musa’s mom’s designs from season 2

Well, musa, THAT’S your true form lmao

Of course bloom changes her outfit to meet sky. I mean, wouldn’t messy hair bloom bring his memories back more easily?

5x9

Stella being bratty is a new thing that I totally hate about the newer seasons

Bloom not giving a fck about Stella and just thinks of herself and her date 😊 seriously?

Stella as a small kid…. Not really?

But brandon would be a good dad xD

Tec vs. Layla: You know nothing, Layla. I can’t xD

5x10

Are there no seasons in Magix at all? Never winter?

The other alfea fairies are so useless. If the winx would have been like that in their first year too, everyone would have died

#leni watches winx #winx #winx club #winx season 5 #winx bloom #winx stella #winx tecna #winx layla #winx flora ...wait i did not mention flora in here #winx trix #winx darcy #winx icy #triticy being the only harmonic couple again #that's bitter

[lostfracturess]

nici i’ll have u know i just took two shots of tequila in preparation for this chapter 🤣🤣 and it’s close to 1pm on a tuesday

ALSO I CANT BELIEVE S&C IS OVER 100k NOW THANK U FOR THE NEVER ENDING FEAST QUEEN

“how can u stay so calm?” “drugs, sweetheart. it’s the drugs.”

i cackled so fkn hard 🤣

"Tell me," he whispered, his breath a warm caress against your ear. "Where would you want him to touch you?"

IM CHEWING MY MF KNUCKLES I NEED THIS MAN (or both men) IN MY BED IMMEDIATELY

Geto stripped the rain from his hair, then twisted the dark strands into a fresh bun. His eyes flickered between you and Satoru, a single raised eyebrow his only question. You wouldn't meet his gaze, the floor suddenly fascinating. 

stoppppp okay first of all the writing is eating so hard idk how but w every chapter i just fall more n more in love w the way u write 😭 BUT ALSO DON’t GIMME THE IMAGE OF A RAIN SOAKED GETO or else something ELSE is gonna be soaked out here🧍🏻‍♀️

ok i have to stop quoting every other line lmaooo

"Just so we're clear," Satoru's voice suddenly cut through the quiet, "I don't share. Not you."

PLS I KNOW I SAID I WLD STOP QUOTING EVERY OTHER LINE BUT THIS WAS THE NEXT LINE AND IM SCREAMING this is not fun to read while i’m in my fertile window

sighhh the conversation ab the 37 y/o pt passing n how he’s just a statistic now 😭 so heartbreaking yet realistically put

im loving the daddy dom energy satoru is exuding in this chapter i just love when usually flirty/amused men lock tf in when things get serious lol it’s so hot. also so sweet how all he’s concerned ab is her reputation & career ahead

“A familiar ache rose in your chest. You longed to reach out, to bridge the chasm he insisted on maintaining. But his posture, rigid as stone, and his clenched jaw, sent a silent warning. This was his battle, one he'd fight in isolation—as always.”

ughh i feel like this perfectly sums up their dynamic. also if s&c was a paperback book this wld 100% be a quote that readers wld highlight on the page n crop to post on pinterest lmaooo it’s so good

“He was falling apart. But all you could do was watch.”

🥲 pls. stopp im so fragile rn.

NOOOOO NOT SUKUNA BOOO BOOOOOO 🍅 🍅 GIMME FIVE MINS IN A ROOM W HIM RN 💥👊🏼

i have sm anxiety over this ethics hearing my palms r actually sweaty. its like i’m THERE rn.

wait nici can u explain again sukuna’s want for revenge towards gojo n wanting to tear him/reader down 😭 was it like the jealousy that he wasn’t able to become a successful surgeon like gojo n had to settle on educational matters instead? :”) im dumb sry. ik he’s the root of gojo’s addiction but i think i might be missing something here lol. or do we not know yet

ok i still hate sukuna’s guts but there is partial truth to what hes saying🧍🏻‍♀️not saying reader isn’t brilliant n talented in her own right, but for sure, satoru’s attraction to her has given her opportunities that other qualified students were potentially robbed of (we live in a society lol). but idk how exactly she ranks among her peers, so maybe she rly was the best student for the job, but that’s all very subjective

"Because you would do the same," you finally managed, the words scraped raw from your throat. "You would stay. You wouldn't leave me."

ok “why do you even stay?” sent a chill down my spine but THISSS. im gaspeddd :””(( reader loves him sm and if her commitment to not letting him take all the blame isnt evident enough, her sticking w him thru his drug addiction is truly a type of devotion that comes from a purest point of love

“You—you make me feel things I've spent a lifetime avoiding, things I don't know how to handle. It scares the hell out of me."

ouchhhh 😭 ok but i feel him on this. that avoidant attachment be hittin againnn lmao me n him are so same

"You don't need to deserve me, Satoru. Love isn't about deserving. It's about choosing each other, again and again, no matter what. And I choose you.”

CRYINGG YES 😭😭😭💕💕💕 this healed a part of me ngl

"If you don't come down in the next few minutes, you're the one getting folded, first-year."

WHY IS HE ALL OF A SSUDEN MR FUNNY MAN NOW PLSSSKDJDJD their chemistry this chap is off the charts

FFFFFUCKKK MEEE JUNKYARD BOY CHOSO!!!!????? I BET HE SMELLS LIKE GREASE N SWEAT N SOMEONE I WANNA FUCK. omg he called me pretty company 🤭🤭 bye dr gojo im all about them blue collars im sorry 😔🤚🏼

"I love you, first-year. Damn it, I love you. I don't care how complicated this gets, I want you."

god pls 🧎🏻‍♀️ if i’ve done anything good in life, then just give me this man

OMGGG HES GONNA FUCK US OVER THE HOOD OF A CAR ?!??!!?

"You give in too easily." A teasing smile played on his lips. "You don't really want me to fuck you on this hood, right?"

😐😐 this isn’t funny. im not laughing rn. i will not stand this sort of edging. gimme dick NOW

omg🧍🏻‍♀️ive no words to say about that smut. delicious, devious, dampening. he is my every fantasy and i desire him. i desire him so deeply

aaa he hurt her in his sleeeeppp 😭😭 for a man that cares so deeply like him that mustve really fucked w him. also this is so random and must be my daddy issues speaking lmao but satoru (minus his addiction) wld be such a good family man🧍🏻‍♀️the way he loves is sooo providing and stubborn to a fault but almost in a way that’s kind of grounding lol bc i feel like he’s almost always, at the end of the day, right about everything? haha i cld be proven so wrong ab this but i just had to share the thought

mannn im on the second court hearing n im just SO damn curious what is going thru satoru’s head rn 😭 it seems like something switched in there somehow, his demeanor is so different

him actinf so calm rn is scarinf the shit ourta me im ngl🧍🏻‍♀️like bb ur scaring me. PKS IN SO SCARED WHY IS HE SUDDNELY TELLINF US HE LOVES US

ah. and there it is. satoru’s impending fall from grace. i saw it coming from a mile away and that he wld do something like this, but fuck. the way it was written. i thought it would be something that came a place of more heightened emotions from him, something desperate to protect (kinda like in the first hearing). but THIS….so calm, collected, so sure of his love for reading that he’s willing to let go of almost everything that has given him purpose in life up until this point. it aches.

:( im heartbroken rn. amazing chapter 😭💕 thank u sm for writinf it, oh my gosh, jusf amazing

i need more tequila

giiirl!!! not the tequila ahhhhh 😭😭 that brings back bad memories omg.

& yes the story is over 100k already and still no end in sight. i never thought i would write so much lol. but also i'm already so sad when the story will eventually someday end. like i never want to not write about my unhinged neurosurgeon gojo help.

stoppppp okay first of all the writing is eating so hard idk how but w every chapter i just fall more n more in love w the way u write

thank you so so much!! that's such a big compliment coming from a fellow author <3

BUT ALSO DON’t GIMME THE IMAGE OF A RAIN SOAKED GETO or else something ELSE is gonna be soaked out here🧍🏻‍♀️

GIRL 😂 I'M SORRY.

i have sm anxiety over this ethics hearing my palms r actually sweaty. its like i’m THERE rn.

so glad the angst transpires well in this chapter!!!

wait nici can u explain again sukuna’s want for revenge towards gojo n wanting to tear him/reader down

so first: sukuna is an asshole.

second: sukuna is an asshole.

third: SUKUNA IS AN ASSHOLE.

no seriously, how i portray him is like a very power driven man, that thrives on the misery of others. moreover satoru being his lifelong rival and sukuna finally getting a change to push him of his throne is just something he wouldn't let slip through his fingers. so it's really all about power and control on sukuna's side.

also satoru's states in that chapter that he did something stupid in his past that sukuna is still mad about. feel free to speculate, given satoru's past 😂

ok i still hate sukuna’s guts but there is partial truth to what hes saying

yes it is!! satoru really has just eyes for yn and is defensively letting other students down in the process. this just adds to the overall mess their relationship is.

ok “why do you even stay?” sent a chill down my spine but THISSS.

hmmmmmm ahhhhhhh SO HAPPY that these lines landed well <333 love them!! they are so messy and raw ahhhhh

WHY IS HE ALL OF A SSUDEN MR FUNNY MAN NOW PLSSSKDJDJD their chemistry this chap is off the charts

he had a little bit of drugs and was all happy again lol.

FFFFFUCKKK MEEE JUNKYARD BOY CHOSO!!!!????? I BET HE SMELLS LIKE GREASE N SWEAT N SOMEONE I WANNA FUCK.

i was wondering, if i should just do a random character or one of the jjk cast and choso just came into mind at first. idk why but i think it fits ahaha.

omg🧍🏻‍♀️ive no words to say about that smut. delicious, devious, dampening. he is my every fantasy and i desire him. i desire him so deeply

here to serve!! so glad you liked the spicy scene. they are always a pain in the ass to write.

aaa he hurt her in his sleeeeppp 😭😭 for a man that cares so deeply like him that mustve really fucked w him.

YES!!! you're the first to comment on that!!! also thought that this is so so so SO BAD for him. like he would never (physically) hurt her and doing it unintentionally in his sleep??? EVEN WORSE. poor boy must have felt so miserable and angry at himself after.

the way he loves is sooo providing and stubborn to a fault but almost in a way that’s kind of grounding lol

honestly, love your observation about the potential family man side of satoru! his love IS fierce, demanding, and sometimes overbearing, but at its core, it's deeply protective, and i think you're spot on about that being grounding.

but THIS….so calm, collected, so sure of his love for reading that he’s willing to let go of almost everything that has given him purpose in life up until this point. it aches.

so happy satoru's fall from grace hit well!! wanted that choice of his to feel both shocking and inevitable. not a desperate outburst, but this chillingly calculated decision, born out of love. it just hurts so good!

thank you so so much for your lovely reactions to the chapter ellie, as always!! it means the world. also give me some of the tequila lol. sending you kisses and hugs ♡

#symptoms and causes #inbox

[winniethepugh]

CHAPTER 10 !!

THE LONG-AWAITED FIGHT SCENE... I'm very sorry for this one. I pray you can find the humour in it like me, but maybe it's a look back on it later and laugh type of deal. personally the angst makes me giggle and kick my feet cos its SOOOO HEAVILY miscommunication trope which I fkn love. i hope yall see it the same way and don't hate me for it, but even if u do, ill still love u. im dying to see your reactions so pls comment or reply or dm me or anything, just tell me how u feel cos im personally a whirlwind of emotions rn. the biggest one being my enteral love and gratitude for yall <3 enjoy

Synopsis: James has never been happier working behind the sticky, crowded bar than when he comes face to face with the most perfect stranger he's ever met. That is, until he realises that Regulus is engaged to Dorcas. Maybe if he spent a little less time arguing with himself about the morality of flirting with someone else's fiancé, and a little more time talking to Remus and Sirius, he'd piece together that Regulus isn't actually engaged at all...

Here's your chapter sneak peak

“I’m sorry Regulus,” James shook his head, trying to will his body to move away from the other man. It was no use, they were like magnets. The arms draped around his neck and the lingering warmth where another chest was once pressed against his made it all the more difficult. “I can’t. This is wrong.” Regulus moved a hand to gently stroke James’ cheek, shaking his head softly, “It isn’t.” James tried his best to shimmy out of the embrace. He moved barely a centimeter back before banging into the couch again. Regulus reached forward to hold his wrists. Maybe to keep him in place, if James couldn’t leave was it possible the moment would never end? Or maybe just to regain his attention. To break through the smog of thoughts and feelings, the thick hazy smoke of guilt and panic. It was the only way James could truly hear him, but that didn’t mean he liked what he had to say. “It doesn’t feel wrong James. Don’t you feel that?” He felt like an idiot. “Of course I do.” “Then why do you keep doing this?”

#ao3 #ao3 fanfic #au #author rec #bar au #bartender #bridesandblacks #fanfic #mauraders #marauders era #fanfiction #fic #fic rec #my fic #fanfic rec #wolfstar #jegulus #jegulus fic #jegulus fic rec #jegulus fic recs #james x regulus #james potter #James Potter x regulus black #the marauders era #regulus black #modern #modern au #real world au #pub au #bartender au

[golbrocklovely]

you know, I thought i might of been annoying with the amount of asks i send you, and that still might be true but people apparently love me… so im sticking around 😂 gotta build this aussie anon fandom… buy the merch (its just a tshirt with koala ears on the anon icon and ‘xplr me daddy’ across the shoulder blades)

also absolute fkn ditto to your post abt snc needing a villain era. especially colby. I learnt just the other day that apparently he goes thru this m drama every time he’s snapped with a girl. like every time, for years. that’s gotta be so horrible. like imagine being the constant reason your friends or dates get harassed online just for being around you. you’d feel like poison. i truly hope he finds someone who couldnt give two flying quacks abt that stuff. heck, if it were me (lemme dream, alright) and i knew this wasn’t just a once off thing… i was going to say my acct would be private and i’d have ‘message from strangers’ turned off… but i already have all that… Colby, I’m ready!!! lmao i jk i jk (or do I 👀)

anyway, back to colby fighting in the clubs. you said he’s possessive… im curious about that. like in a protective way over the people he cares about, or actually like “this is my person, back off” type? either way, hella shmexxyy

- aussie anon

omg this is such a long response so i'm sorry in advance lol

haha no you're totally okay to keep sending in asks. no one has a problem with it, especially me :)

and omg an "xplr me daddy" shirt would be hysterical and i'm surprised they haven't done one (even jokingly) before lol

and yes, it's not just girls colby is interested in either. it's EVERY girl - date, friend, stranger - it doesn't matter. if fans can find out who she is, they will send her hate. or at the very least bombard her with questions as to how she knows colby, what's he like, ect. it's honestly very embarrassing to be in this fandom sometimes strictly bc of that type of shit.

i've talked about how i've felt on colby's love life ad nauseum on here, but i don't mind speaking on it more. i genuinely believe this fandom needs a HUGE reality check. bc there are too many ppl in this fandom that believe they have a say in what he does with said love life. and now it's bled over into sam's.

the golden child apparently can do wrong now lol

like on xplrclub, they literally APOLOGIZED (half-heartedly, but still said sorry) for the pics of them with the girls leaking over new years. and that's just fucking bonkers to me. there is no reason two 27 year old men should be saying sorry to a bunch of random girls they have never met before and don't even know exist bc they are going out and having fun and dating. and what makes it worse is snc felt the need to do this. they don't need to explain anything to us, especially about their private lives.

and the amount of fucking fans i saw saying "well if you wanted to have a private life, keep it private. don't post things." and it's like…… idk how many times i have to say this, but SNC ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. them not telling you about a girl they are fucking with is not a betrayal. they don't know you. they couldn't even pick you out of a line up of two ppl. stop thinking your opinion is neccessary, especially when it comes to their personal lives. you aren't owed an explanation. idc if you've been in this fandom for years, given them tons of money, have a fan account dedicated to them on every site, repost their content all the time - NONE of that matters. you are a random person, you are a statistic. a view count. and while yes, snc care about us, that doesn't mean they KNOW you or that your opinion is VALID.

you wouldn't like a random person coming onto your account and bitching at you about your life choices, right? so why do you think snc deserve that? bc they're public figures? NOPE, not a good enough reason. you want to bitch at them about content and the choices they make on that? that's fine. but private, personal shit they do is none of your concern or business.

and i know there are plenty of fucking ppl that will call me a hypocrite bc god forbid i talk about snc's love lives - but reality is i know my opinion isn't worth shit. i'm not coming up into their comments, @ ing them every chance i get, just to give them my two cents. i do my best to keep it light hearted and silly. none of what i talk about is serious or direly needed info. which is also why i do it on a site they aren't privy to. they're not on here. me complaining into the void doesn't effect them. and i'm also extremely aware of the fact that i don't know everything. i don't know the full story, never will, and i'm not OWED it either.

sorry, that was a really long rant. but i'm just…. so done with the fandom rn lol i've been reading ppl complaining for too long about shit they don't deserve to complain about and it's just annoying at this point.

but to bring it back to your ask - i hope colby, and sam too, find a girl that fucking PARADES that she's dating him. of course, with colby or sam's consent. if i was dating one of them, i would rub in these fans' faces, and i mean that wholeheartedly. aww, you're upset i'm fucking your man? TOO BAD WOMP WOMP lmao

and as for colby being possessive, he's said it in some tweets in years' past. he's tweeted out before "Im such a protective, jealous person wow" and "I'm overly protective" followed by someone asking him "so that means if you had a girlfriend you'd protect her a lot" and he replied with "protect her with my life". so, i see him as being a very loyal person, who is protective of the ppl he deems as "his", so to speak.

in a relationship, my guess is that while he's not obsessive or demanding, he is very much like "you are my girlfriend". i don't see him to be the type to say you can't talk to this guy or be friends with these ppl, nothing like that. but he reads to me like the type to keep his arm around you while at the club, that way any guy that sees you know you're taken by him.

also side note, i know as a woman i should be like i'm my own person, i'm no one's but my own, blah blah blah. but a guy that's just a twinge bit possessive is hot. i'm sorry, it's my red flag and i know it is sksksks

#ask #personal #colby brock #sg ll #cb ll

[offmanntheoddman]

Alright hear me out:

-Purple and green for the win

-"How's the weather up there" club member

-With great IQ comes an even greater big fkn forehead

-Will bite off your kneecaps and go feral if given the opportunity and a (arguably) good reason to

-The only thing stopping them from being official and praised scientists is war crimes

-✨EYEBROWS✨

-Grumpy loner boi, but crave attention for his undeniable genius

-Flying menace

-Would never miss a single piece of content of Jupiter Jim/Lance and Janice

-Has built robot(s) to do their bidding and praising them

-"I'm gonna beat you with the power of drama and this gun I've made!"

-Evil gremlin with redeeming qualities

-Breaks the fabric of time, space and the rules of physics to invent cool crap on a daily basis and doesn't get nearly enough credit for it

-THREE FINGERS!!! THEY BOTH HAVE 3 FINGERS ON EACH HAND! THAT'S HOW FKN CLOSE THOSE TWO ARE!!!

-so many other things...

And this is why I present to you: ✨💜Dr Nefarious (Ratchet and Clank) and Donatello Hamato's (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) potential friendship💜✨

The only thing stopping them from being perfect nerdy friendship material is the obvious fact that one is more heroic and the other villainous, and also Nefarious' extreme hate for all organic life forms.

Fck it they can still be rivals with respect for each other's work.

#dr nefarious #nefarious #ratchet and clank #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #tmnt #hear me out #They would either love or hate each other #Most likely hate #RaC #purple #rottmnt shelldon

[the-sinking-ship]

Hey! Hi! Can I just say that I started reading Dwelling on Dreams, and already from the get-go I knew I would love it — your writing, characterization, dialogue, all of it. You have some beautifully quotable sentences that I wonder how you even come up with — like does this just seamlessly flow from your creative mind? ANYWAYS, Idk if you get asked this often but if you have any tips or lessons for writing in general, I'd be grateful for the wisdom. Thank you, master!

HEY! THIS IS REALLY FKN NICE!!! Thank you so much!!!!!

God, I wish I could say YES, it all pours straight from my mind onto the page exactly as you read it, but that would be a total lie.

The truth is, I’m an embarrassingly chaotic writer. I draft out of order, change direction 40k words in, leave names, dates, and transitions incomplete until I absolutely cannot go one more step without making a decision. This clashes with my need for everything to be perfect all the goddamn time, so the only way I will ever finish anything (and particularly those long fics I love to write), is by following a method that works for me. It isn’t fast. It isn’t organized. It can be tedious.

Everything starts with free writing. For me, that means turning off the brain-to-page filter and just spewing it all out there, no matter how bad it looks. We’re talking pure stream of consciousness, 1000 words in 30 minutes with no consideration for grammar or spelling. And I swear to you, those little nuggets of “oh shit that’s good” that have me rubbing my dirty little beetle hands together in glee, they come out of this stage. I use free writing to warm up, to wind down, to work through plot holes, smut, character development, or even how I’m feeling about things. Sometimes it’s just 500 words of “oh my god why is this so hard I hate this why do I sign up for this who decided this was fun maybe I’m just hungry—oh look! A squirrel!”

Of course, making the mess is the fun part, cleaning up the mess, less so. Next, I take those free writes and illegible outlines, and put them in some semblance of order. Then I rewrite. And rewrite again. And again. I will usually draft a scene between 2 and 6 times before I even attempt to consider spelling or grammar. If I bog myself down in the pretty details too soon, I lose the thread of the story or the natural flow of dialogue. If I’m thinking about where a comma goes, I’m not following my intuition and my story will suffer.

Does this result in a ton of unusable material that goes straight into the trash? YOU BETCHA. Take Dwelling on Dreams, for example. My scrivener binder for that fic clocked in at 420k words. That’s how many words it took to get 130k of them right. Or as right as they can be before I lose my damn mind and start wondering if I even really speak English at all.

Hell, in the interest of full disclosure, I used that process to answer this ask. I word vomited my thoughts (which mostly started with, wtf lakdfjafij I have no idea what I’m doing how could I possibly convince anyone that I do???!?!?!), figured out what the hell I wanted to say, still managed to say too much, and here we are.

Did I answer your question? PROBABLY NOT! But I’m still so grateful you asked.

#asks #nice things #i love writing process asks #because i love hearing what other people do

[talesfrom-theupsidedown]

Sink or Swim Pt 4 {Billy Hargrove x GN!reader}

Characters: Billy Hargrove, gender neutral!reader, other canon characters vaguely mentioned. 

Summary: After your maybe-date with Billy on the 4th of July, he suddenly doesn’t show up to work and it has you worried. But what can you do? Will your worry and curiosity be enough for you to finally act? What is keeping Billy away and why do you have a feeling that it’s worse than you thought? [Canon with a variation]

Warnings: mentions of physical child abuse and injuries. Then a touch of much needed fluffffff. 

Word Count: 3.8k

Author’s Note: Billy’s unexplained absence at the pool is finally clarified. Please heed warnings. This chapter is heavier, for canon-compliant reasons. :( I want my sweet Billy happy and loved and it’s coming. Please please let me know your thoughts. Feedback and reblogs help authors feel appreciated and more motivated to write. FYI. :) Love you all!! 

<<<<Chapter 3      Chapter 4      Chapter 5>>> Coming soon!! 

Sink or Swim Masterlist

________________________________________________

Previously: 

“I’ll see you tomorrow? You’re working, right?” 

Some sort of winged creature had taken flight in your stomach. 

“Yup,” you confirmed, a little too giddy. “I’ll be here. See you then.”

Climbing out of the car, you walked toward your bike and then watched as Billy offered a wave and then peeled out of the parking lot. 

That had gone…surprisingly well, you thought as you climbed on your bike and pedaled home. You were curious what Billy was trying to say earlier, but hopefully you’d be able to find out when you saw him at work the next day.

__________

Except you didn’t. 

Billy wasn’t at work on July 5th, contrary to what he had said the night before. From your spot at the Snack Shack, all you could see was that one of the other lifeguards was filling in for him. It was news for more than just you, however, as you could see the disappointment on the faces of Mrs. Wheeler and Company when someone other than Billy walked out the locker room door. Blech. 

During your lunch break, you might have peeked at the lifeguard work schedule that was posted in the manager’s office. Just in case perhaps Billy was mistaken and forgot he was off today. But no. He was originally scheduled the entire week. 

Huh. 

Getting back to work, you tried to keep your thoughts from Billy but it was damn near impossible. After the night you had together, you almost had hoped that there might be something between you. Something…romantic? You scarcely allowed yourself to believe it. That the Great Billy Hargrove could possibly feel the same way that you do. 

Billy was incredibly handsome and charming when he chose to be. That was obvious to anyone with eyes. However, it was the past few weeks of closing together and moments of vulnerability that had you falling for him. That realization hit you like a sledgehammer as you worked that afternoon. So much of your job had become second nature, serving food and filling cups with soda, that you had way too much time to overthink the previous night and the weeks before it. 

Maybe Billy was just a nice guy under the mask of asshole behavior. You couldn’t have been the first to get to see that side of him. After hours of letting it all roll around in your head, you decided that you could probably live with just being friends with Billy. Getting to know him had been the highlight of your summer so far and you didn’t want to lose him entirely all because of a stupid crush.

Closing by yourself was a much more boring endeavor without Billy. Katie had roped Freddy into staying late and helping her finish all the end of day tasks. Mostly you ignored them until you overheard Katie’s rather loud whining about her changed schedule. 

“Fucking Billy calling in sick with no warning. I mean, what the hell?” Katie yelled toward Freddy as she re-arranged the lounge chairs. “I had plans for tonight but I got called in.” You could hear the pouting in her voice. 

You rolled your eyes. Billy had taken the closing shifts almost exclusively for most of the summer. Could she really not help out just this once without complaint? And Billy was sick. The thought made your stomach clench with concern. He had been just fine the night before. Was it something contagious? You were in close proximity for a few hours together and you felt fine. So strange. 

All you could do was hope that it was a short-term illness. For his sake and also selfishly for your own. You missed him. Even with your newly-discovered feelings toward Billy and any outcome there may be, you would always wish him well. Hopefully he would feel better and be back at work in a day or two. 

Except he wasn’t. 

Day after day, you wished and hoped and watched and waited. No Billy. 

It had been almost a week since the Fourth and you were beyond worried by now. Almost seven days with the other lifeguards filling in and doing a shitty job of closing. Nearly a week of that gnawing pit in your stomach that no one should be sick for that long. 

Finally, there was a rainy morning where it was supposed to storm all day with lightning predicted so the pool was closed. After a couple hours of stewing and pacing around your room, you had the thought that maybe you could visit Billy, find out if he was really okay. Almost immediately, you reconsidered that. Going to someone’s house when you’ve never been invited might be an invasion of privacy. 

The bigger part of you just didn’t care. If there was anything—anything at all—that would help Billy feel better or at least know that you were thinking about him and missing him…then a potentially awkward encounter was something you were willing to risk. Even friends were allowed to worry. 

Right?

Waiting for a short break in the rain, you quickly threw on a jacket and hopped on your bike headed to the Hargrove’s address listed in the phonebook. A few raindrops began to fall as you hit the brakes and rolled to a stop in front of a single-story house with Billy’s Camaro out front. Leaning your bike against a nearby fence, you began to walk up the stone stairs toward the front door. 

Taking the last step, you could now hear some sort of commotion going on inside and you hesitated where you stood. Suddenly, the front door flew open and the volume of a male voice shouting reached you just as Billy rushed out and slammed the door behind him. 

Billy’s eyes flew open in shock at the sight of you, his sneakers skidding to a stop on the walkway. 

“I—what are you doing here?” he asked, Billy’s face turned to the left as his eyes flitted around nervously. As if he was caught somehow. 

He might have been trying to hide it, but you had already noticed in those first short moments that there was a discoloration underneath Billy’s left eye and a split in his lip that was healing. 

Oh god. 

“I’m sorry, I—well, they said you were sick but it’s been days and I just…I was worried,” you stammered out, your hands fidgeting in your jacket cuffs. 

The voice inside was getting loud again, Billy’s name easily heard. 

Fear splashed across Billy’s face as he dug a hand into his jeans, pulling out his keys. 

“I have to go,” Billy said as he walked swiftly around you and down the lawn to his car. 

Frozen a moment, you took a deep breath and then hurried after him, reaching the passenger side door and opening it just as Billy cranked the engine to life. You slipped inside and shut the door, catching Billy’s eye a moment, who perhaps was considering telling you to get the hell out. Instead, he put the Camaro in drive and roared down the street. 

Braving a glance backward, you barely caught sight of a tall, brown-haired older man bursting out the front door before trees concealed him. 

Billy drove in silence for a few minutes, heading for the main road through town and then stepping on the gas pedal. You watched as the speedometer’s needle climbed higher and higher, well past the legal limit and then into a worrisome height. Hands gripping the seat beneath you, finally you spoke up. 

“Billy, could you slow down a little?” you asked hesitantly. 

He scoffed at first, but then glanced your way, perhaps only now remembering who was in the passenger seat. Nodding curtly, he did as you asked, easing off the gas pedal. 

You weren’t sure Billy had a destination at all, but perhaps from habit, he eventually pulled the Camaro into the empty swimming pool parking lot and put it in park with the engine on. 

You waited. 

Billy stared out through the windshield, eyes unseeing, until he swiftly struck the steering wheel the flesh of his palm. You jumped in surprise. 

“DAMMIT,” he growled, then repeating it in succession with each following strike of the steering wheel. “Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT.” 

He gripped the wheel with both hands, bowing his head until his forehead touched. Billy’s expression was one of anger or anguish, you weren’t sure which. Possibly both. He muttered something into the worn leather, sounding much like “I hate him”. 

Concern and fear tore through you, the pieces starting to fall into place in your head. Inhaling a shaky breath, you turned in your seat to face Billy. You didn’t want to assume, but had to start somewhere. 

“So…you weren’t sick at all this past week. You were healing. Were you in a fight?” you asked at a near whisper, your gaze flickering to Billy’s unmarked fists. 

Billy scoffed, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said, his voice thick. 

You had to speak the question in your mind. “Your father?”

Billy leaned back in his seat, his head lolling to the side so he could stare out the driver’s side window, turned away from you. He didn’t confirm your inquiry, but he sure didn’t deny it. 

Shit. 

You felt your heart squeeze in your chest at the idea of a parent hurting their child. Any child. But this was Billy, the sweet, funny, caring man you had come to know and care for. Deeply. 

“Billy? Will you look at me?” you asked softly. 

He hesitated, but eventually turned your way and raised his eyes to yours, another punch to your gut to find tears there. Your gaze roamed over his crestfallen expression, confirming the healing black eye and split lip, but there was also a scab in his right eyebrow you only now noticed. 

Clearing your throat, you struggled to get out the next words. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” 

With shaking hands, Billy reached for the hem of the black, sleeveless t-shirt he wore and lifted it to reveal numerous fist-sized bruises in various stages of healing, some yellowed and other a fresh, new purple. Bile rose in your throat, fearing you’d be sick, but you took a deep breath as he lowered his shirt. 

Billy turned his head back to the side window, his hands in fists on denim-clad thighs. 

“It’s not usually this bad,” he muttered as the rain began to fall outside. 

Anger spiked through you. “It’s not usually…this shouldn’t be happening at all!” you spoke at a near-yell, then trying again to breathe deeply. Billy didn’t need your anger right now. “How long?” 

Two simple words, but he understood. 

Billy let out a heavy sigh, sounding weary as he lifted a shoulder. “Shortly after my mom left. I was ten.”  

The sick feeling returned as you buried your head in your hands, your heart sick for the boy he was once and for the man beside you who had to learn how to live in such an environment. That could be soul-shattering for so many but somehow, you’d already seen what a good man Billy was in spite of it all. Lifting your head, you focused back to Billy. Another deep breath. 

“Billy…what happened last week?”

Billy swallowed a few times, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his tanned throat. “I lied,” he croaked out. 

You waited, hoping there would be more to the story.

Clearing his throat, his voice came out a little louder the next try. “I lied. The day of the Fourth, I told my dad I was going to the carnival with Max and her little friends.” 

Your stomach dropped. “Oh. You met me instead. Oh god, Billy, I’m so—“ 

“No, no,” he broke in, finally looking your way. “It’s not your fault. And that’s not the whole story. I don’t regret meeting up with you, I want you to know that. I had a great time,” Billy assured you, attempting a smile despite it all. 

You tried to return it with trembling lips. 

He continued. “After I dropped you off, I headed to the carnival but I guess word had spread about the mall fire, so everyone was going home. I searched the crowd for Max, but didn’t see her or any of her little friends. I hoped that she got a ride, so I headed home but once I got there…” 

Billy swallowed thickly before speaking again. 

“My dad and Susan were getting in the car to head to the hospital. Max was in the mall when it caught fire,” he said in a whisper. 

A shocked gasp escaped you. “Oh my god. Is she—“

“Max is fine,” he said, answering your unasked question. “A bump on the head. Might’ve hoped it would improve her personality, but still the same little pain in the ass, trust me. She’s fine. A few other injuries with her friends, but I think they’re okay.” 

You slumped back into your seat in relief. “Oh, good.” 

“Once they got home, though…” Billy shuddered in a breath. “I knew it was gonna be bad. Slammed doors and heavy footsteps. He managed to tell me that Max was fine, staying overnight just for observation before—“

Billy’s voice quivered then, but you got the picture. 

“He took it out on you,” you finished his statement. “God, Billy…” 

A tear rolled down his cheek and you reached across the console, placing a hand on his clenched fist. Billy tensed at the touch but didn’t pull away. In the silence, he slowly relaxed the fist, then turning his hand over and gripped your fingers in his. Even given the circumstances, you couldn’t help the warmth of this small amount of acceptance and comfort flowing between you. 

“I should have been with her, though. It’s my fault that she’s hurt and—“

“Billy, no,” you interrupted his self-flagellation. “It’s not your fault that Max wasn’t at the carnival like she said she would be. You are not to blame that there was a fire where she happened to be with, apparently, a bunch of other kids? Shouldn’t the mall have been closed? Regardless, it doesn’t matter.” 

You paused a moment, then changing tactics. 

“I lied, too,” you declared, which brought Billy’s head up to meet your eye. 

“What?” he croaked. 

“I did. That same night, I lied to my parents. Told them I was going to the carnival, too, to meet some friends. Instead I met up with you. I was hoping to spare you the interrogation from my parents, but…” you shrugged. 

Billy sighed. “They sound like the type to be involved in your life and worry about you spending time with the wrong kind of people. I don’t blame ‘em.” 

“You’re not wrong, even if their assumptions would be misinformed,” you said, softly rubbing a thumb across the back of Billy’s hand as an attempt at comfort. “But that’s exactly my point, Billy. What do you think I’d deserve as punishment if they found out I lied? Same as you?” 

Billy’s head whipped around toward you. “What? No!”

“Then why do you think you deserve it? What happened to Max was an accident, and truthfully, she lied about where she would be, too. What kind of punishment will she get for it?” 

The answer terrified you, actually, but watching Billy slowly shake his head, it seemed like you were correct in thinking that it would all fall onto his shoulders. His bruised and aching body. This man beside you, nearly grown, but still the same frightened ten-year-old boy in so many ways. 

Silence hung in the air until Billy spoke again. 

“I never wanted to drag you into this shit.”

You shook your head. “You didn’t drag me into it. If anything, I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, I—I’m sorry. I just thought that if you at least knew you had a friend, then…you’d feel better? I don’t know…” you trailed off, now feeling awkward at how you just showed up at his door. 

Billy scoffed lightly. “I don’t know if I can be your friend.” 

Your breath froze in your chest, simultaneously feeling the heat of embarrassment in your cheeks. 

Of course. 

“Oh,” you breathed out. “Right. That—that’s okay, um…I understand. Still, if you need anything…just, if you could drop me off to get my bike—“

“I can’t go back there right now,” Billy whispered. 

Your stomach sank. “Right. Sure, I’ll just walk then, it’s okay…”

Reaching for the door handle, you let Billy’s hand slip from yours. 

“Wait,” Billy spoke up, fingers gripping your forearm tightly but quickly loosening. “I didn’t mean—shit, I’m fucking this all up. Can you…will you give me a second? Please?”

You finally looked his way, seeing the pleading in his tear-filled eyes. Nodding slowly, you released the door handle and dropped your hand in your lap. Billy released your forearm, but to your surprise he instead threaded your fingers with his again. Huh.

Billy leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes, taking a few deep breaths. 

You waited. 

When Billy spoke again, his voice was even. Calm. “I didn’t mean to say that we couldn’t be friends. What I was trying to…” he hesitated, fidgeting in his seat and shifting to face you. “What I was trying to say the other night—god, that feels like weeks ago—I meant to say that I don’t…I don’t think I can be only friends….with you,” he said, voice trembling and holding your gaze. 

Brow furrowed, you cocked your head in confusion. “I don’t understand…” 

But it became a little clearer when Billy reached across with his free hand and brushed his knuckles across your cheek, then leaning in closer. “Is this okay?” Billy asked, his face now inches from yours. 

Dazed and still a little confused, you nodded. You couldn’t quite let yourself believe what was happening just yet. 

Billy placed a hand on the back of your neck and gently urged you closer and closer…until his lips pressed tenderly against yours. His mustache tickled your upper lip as you leaned into the kiss, your eyes fluttered closed as your shock melted into a flash of desire. Heat coursed through you, your free hand grasping at Billy’s shirt, aiming to bring him closer. Your lips caressed his, teasing and tasting as his tongue prodded the seam and you opened wide with an inhale of necessary oxygen. Billy released your hand and cradled your face while your fingers threaded into his golden locks. 

The urge to be closer and closer was halted when Billy suddenly gasped and pulled away from you, a hand clutching his side as he winced. Right where a bruise resided. You suspected he struck it on the console between you. 

“Oh god, are you okay?” 

Billy inhaled through is teeth, breathing through the pain. “Yeah. Sorry. Kinda killed the mood,” he joked. 

Concern still coursed through you as you tried to smile. “Not at all. But I’d prefer you not be in pain while kissing me. Unless you’re into that,” you teased. 

Billy laughed for the first time since that night of the Fourth, you suspected, but he winced again and your accompanying smile wavered. 

“That’s why you’ve been wearing a tank at work, right?” 

He nodded, the mood sobering again. 

Then it dawned on you. “Oh god…that night when you were playing with my visor and I elbowed you, shit, I’m so sorry, I—“

“Y/N, stop,” he urged you gently. “You had no way of knowing. It’s okay.” 

None of it was okay, in fact. 

“Can I ask a possibly stupid question?” you inquired.

Billy sighed. “Shoot.” 

You recaptured Billy’s hand in yours. “Does anyone know? Like…the authorities?” 

Another dry laugh. “No. Neil’s pretty good at keeping up appearances. He’s very much the ‘upstanding citizen’ and a ‘pillar of the community’,” Billy said, using air quotes. “He’s the good guy and I’m the fuck-up. Who would believe me anyway?” 

Heart thumping in sympathy, you gave Billy’s hand a squeeze in response. He squeezed back. 

“I should let you get home. I’m sure your parents are worried about you,” Billy assumed. 

Sadly, you doubted the situation was the same at his household, but you didn’t need to voice it. 

“Sure.” 

Billy drove as the rain still lightly fell on the windshield. You were both quiet, listening to the rhythmic pattern of the wipers clearing Billy’s view of the road. He rolled to a stop two streets away from his house and put the car in park. 

“Thank you. For listening,” Billy spoke softly, turning your way. “I know that was a lot of shit to drop in your lap.” 

“Hey, I’m the one who showed up at your door, jumped in your car, and asked invasive questions,” you replied. “All you did was answer truthfully.” 

He chuckled lightly before a more serious expression overtook his handsome face. “Yeah. I could have kicked you out or evaded the question. I figured you knew in that first moment, though. And I don’t wanna lie to you.” 

“It’s probably easier to push people away than face the truth sometimes,” you guessed, watching the words settle on Billy. 

He just nodded, rubbing a hand under his sniffling nose. Tears were contained but threatening. 

“Will I see you at work soon?” you asked, feeling selfish again but also figuring the less time spent in that house, the better for Billy. 

“Yeah. Soon,” he confirmed. 

“Promise?” 

Billy cracked a smile. “I promise.” 

You had to return it, feeling brave enough to lean across the console and press a chaste but lingering kiss on his plush lips. 

“Okay. Bye,” you said, climbing out of the Camaro. 

Billy waved as you shut the door. You pulled your hood on and watched as he slowly pulled a u-turn and headed away from his own neighborhood again. Walking the two blocks in the rain, you finally reached your bike and straddled it, taking one last look at the Hargrove residence. One truly never does know what was happening behind closed doors. Fury pulsed through you, now privy to that information in the house before you. 

Pedaling home, you tried to unravel your thoughts and emotions, still reeling from the past hour spent with Billy. In such a short time, everything had changed. With all of the many horrors that were revealed, mixed in was also a new type of joy. Confusing. But at the anticipation of when the next time you saw Billy might be, well, you couldn’t help but smile. 

____________________

Chapter 5>>>>> Coming soon!! 

_________________________________________________

Welp. That was...a lot, huh? It all had to come out eventually. I hate Neil so fkn much!!! :(((( So, there’s my variation on the events of the Fourth of July and the Starcourt “fire”. I don’t think I’ll be mentioning the supernatural parts of Stranger Things in this story. It’s still happening, Billy just doesn’t know about it. :) So it doesn’t impact or ruin his life. :) :) :) It’s one of those butterfly wings moments where he never goes to meet gross Mrs. Wheeler and his whole life is different. Plus he finally has someone who cares and supports him so in my mind he's not as susceptible to Vecna or whatever. Anywho!! I’m working on chapter 5 but not sure when it will be out. I adore you all. Please please let me know your thoughts. Feedback and reblogs fuel writers. :D 

Billy tag list is still open! Please let me know if you’d like to be added. 

Billy tags: 

@every-dayiwakeup @feelmyroarrrr @someonehelpshit @ria132love @sebbytrash @withahintofpestoaioli @nogitsunbae @ickypuppi3 @billys-bitch @prettybillycore @bee-1n-space @bunniesofsteel @mindingmyownbusiness @averagestudent03 @let-love-bleeds-red @gracethieved @spacial-universe @kalinaselennespeaks @tayhar811

#billy hargrove #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove x gender neutral!reader #gender neutral!reader #billy hargrove fanfic #billy hargrove fic #stranger things fic #billy hargrove x gn!reader #stranger things #stranger things fan fiction

[silenthillbunni]

im 25 now but i havent accomplished anything. time's running out and im still useless, lazy, worthless and a nobody. i've never had a job, i still havent finished high school, i dont have any friends, only one family member is talking to me, i've never had a relationship & no one's ever been in love with me, i've never travelled, i have bad anxiety everyday, i have chronic pain, i get sick again and again and again, i dont have anything to do or anywhere to go so i spend all my days rotting in my bed. my life is so pathetic and i hate it so much. i genuinely dont understand why you are forced to live when your life is this humiliating and worthless. just wanna die bc im such a fkn failure.

[ego-meliorem-esse]

I understand why people dislike France. I kind of hate that smug mug too but it makes me so sad people call him rapist. Do you think it's going to stop eventually?

I thought that was out the methaphorical window in the year of Our Lord 2023? Pls fkn let me know if people still refer to him as such holy shit

Calling a country personification that is a bit uuhhhhh

#but ye if its still said then i dont think itll completely stop just cus ppl r insane fr fr #hetalia #hws france #ask meli

[andysorbit]

I wanna ask, from a parents perspective is having kids young worth it?? I turn 25 soon and have been thinking about having kids before 30, it started recently as all my friends have kids already and it feels like I'm missing out on something. I have a great partner and a few cats but we both still feel that....void i guess?? Do you wish you had your daughter at an older age??

okay baby listen everyone is different and parenthood might work for you and it might not but I'm gonna talk to you right now about all of the reasons why I regret not waiting. this will be kinda long.

I was 23 when I got pregnant, 24 when my daughter was born. it was not planned and I barely knew the guy. like he was literally just a sneaky link and we both have a breeding kink so 1+1 = 3 in this case. I was already knocked up by our 3rd date (yes it's that bad but hey I fucked around and found out)

I was in a bad place when I met him (sad girl with daddy issues whose daddy just died that's a whole different side story tbh it never ends) and I deserved better but I was honestly just happy that someone was giving me attention. plus his dick was huge and he knew how to use it so it was like "maybe I can change him. maybe he'll realize I'm worth loving." again daddy issues.

now you're probably wondering why I'm oversharing all of this but it's gonna make sense by the time we come back full circle. I promise.

things went south after i got pregnant and in order to protect myself and my wee lil dew drop, I ghosted his ass.

so now pregnancy alone is its own little monster. my body changed a lot. I gained so much fkn weight that I didn't realize that I wasn't as big as i thought I was. my face shape is different (lowkey to the point where I don't even look at old photos because it will ruin my entire day and I will cry) my bladder is fucked. I went from a c cup to a triple d cup so bra shopping is hell, my back hurts most days from the sheer weight of having big tiddies and I truly hate them

now as far everything else, your time will never be yours again. any parent worth their salt is gonna catch some hell. I have anxiety so a lot of my time is spent wondering if I'm going to outlive her. my dad used to say that even when your kids grow up, you'll be wondering if something bad might happen to them that you could've prevented.

now I have a daughter and men are scary enough so like... yeah.

now I had my daughter in the middle of the pandemic. that paired with my anxiety, trauma from what her father put us both through, and my poor decision to use her as comfort instead of going to therapy made her clingy.

your mental health matters so much and of course none of us are perfect and mental health shouldn't completely dictate whether or not you become a parent but you need to be self aware and honest with yourself or you'll fuck that kid up and fuck yourself over. my daughter is clingy as fuck and even now, if I can get a half hour alone, I'm lucky.

I have adhd and I'm bad with time and organization so keeping on top of the house and getting to places on time is hard as hell. I also lost my social skills during the pandemic so if you struggle around people, remember you're gonna have to socialize your kid and for me, that's hard. don't like doctors appointments? You're gonna have to deal with it. don't like going out? get used to it. even down to small talk with random fkn people who think your kid is cute- get ready. I literally had a whole ass chat with some random lady on the train the other day because she thought my daughter was cute so we chatted about her grandkids. random chats with random people are inevitable and will happen sometimes multiple times a fkn day.

now as far as having a second parent, I can't tell you about that. I absolutely do wish I had her father around but I also wish I could trust him enough to share this beautiful chaos. since I can't, I have to do it alone. I have my village but a village can only do so much and the village can't ever truly fill that void.

now I think communication is important for you and your partner. you both need to do it for you. if you have family pressuring you, ignore them. don't let them pressure you into making such a big and final decision. you're bringing a life into the world, not putting up a Christmas tree.

out of my friend group, only one of my friends has a child and she felt like she was missing out because picture of my daughter gave her baby fever. she also has some regrets.

you and your partner need to really talk about that void you feel because a baby will not fill it. figure out where that emptiness is coming from and work on fixing it because a baby is going to feel great and make you proud and all of that but at the end of the day, that baby is a shitting, burping, farting, helpless little human that has their own destiny. their job isn't to fill that void. their job is to grow and thrive while you pour into them. you'll never fill a void when you're pouring into that child's life.

parenthood is beautiful. hearing my daughter tell me she loves me, cuddling her, hearing her pronounce words wrong, watching her eyes light up over things she likes- the list is infinite. the love is infinite but before you both take that leap, you need make sure you're happy with yourselves, happy with the changes that will come, and ultimately happy with the chaos because even with this long ass tangent I'm going on, there's still so much more beauty and madness and hard times. some days I love being a mom and I couldn't imagine being anything else. some days, I wish I wasn't a mom and I envy parents who just walk out and never look back.

I think I'm learning to just be in each moment but if you need any more help or someone to talk to, I'm here for you. I'm a huge believer that not everyone deserves children and a lot of the time I think I'm one of those people because I'll never be able to look my daughter in her face and honestly tell her that she was planned and that those were happy tears when I found out my pregnancy test was positive. I think I've redeemed myself? who knows maybe not but I feel like Gru and she's my little Agnes.

#neoculturecollectives #andy's mail #Andy's perspective #Parenting with Andy

[yelenapines]

ik the girls in my class think i'm weird for hating the guys in my grade and are like "wHy Do YoU hAtE gUyS" but like. you are letting them be pieces of shit and just laughing it off. like i'm sorry but they're racist, sexist, homophobic and SUPER ableist and overall disgusting. Like tell me why being called "gay" or "autistic" at my school is the worst insult ever to them. TELL ME WHY you can't bring up one topic about queer people without them laughing. We had an assembly about feminism and what women go through which even included rape stats and they kept snickering and talking. THEN the constant use of words resembling the n slur to be NoT sAyInG iT but still do. AND their ableism is the most annoying thing in the world like you can't even BREATHE or care about other people or activism without being called autistic, which isn't even insulting, but it's fkn annoying that they don't even know what it is and throw that word around like nothing. like i'm not even neurodivergent but it's so fucking annoying. Not to mention how perverted most of them are. and then when i complain about them my friends are like YoU'rE bEiNg DrAmAtIc.

#personal