#1 MANGA IN THE LAST 24 HOURS → IT'S ALWAYS BEEN YOCCHAN!
RANK: #1, IT HAS 12.3K MONTHLY VIEWS
AUTHORS: WTTCSMS
ARTISTS: COMMISSIONED @/HONNIISUN FOR HEADER
GENRES: JOSEI, MATURE [THIS WORK IS ONLY FOR THOSE 18 YEARS+]
UPLOAD STATUS: ONGOING
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2021
SUMMARY: AFTER GOING THROUGH SO MANY FAVORITE BOYS EVERY MONTH, OUR HEROINE HAS DECIDED THAT MAYBE LOVE JUST ISN'T FOR HER. WAITING IN THE WING THIS WHOLE ENTIRE TIME, THOUGH, IS NONE OTHER THAN YOICHI ISAGI. COULD TRUE LOVE REALLY BE MEANT FOR HER? HAS SHE ALWAYS BEEN DESTINED TO BE WITH THE BOY WHOSE OWN PARENTS NICKNAMED HIM CRYBABY YOCCHAN? IF THAT'S THE CASE, THAT MEANS LOVE HAS BEEN LOOKING HER RIGHT IN THE FACE THIS WHOLE ENTIRE TIME!
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✦✧ DIESEL IS DESIRE, SEBASTIAN SALLOW
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[ !!! ] masterlist is currently being updated + just started demon slayer
grumpy tenured professor Naoya x new, sunshine-y associate professor reader !!
lessons in intimacy, naoya zenin ;
pairing naoya zenin x f!reader
word count 4.5k
synopsis naoya zenin, phd, still has a lot to learn, and you are a surprisingly good teacher
content contains fluff!!!, academia au, and they were office roomies!, naoya-centric, he bashes the arts </3
Learning Objective One: Notice Things About Your Partner
Naoya Zenin stares at the heart-shaped cake you left on his desk and refrains from going absolutely batshit.
He can feel the pinpricks of irritation poking his insides, making him curl his hands in annoyance. Two weeks prior, there was a staff meeting informing the business school that they would be sharing their classrooms and offices with the English professors since apparently, due to poor plumbing and a lack of funding, their shack of a school building got flooded and was therefore deemed “unsafe” and “unusable.”
Naoya distinctly remembers making a snide comment about how majoring in something as worthless as English or literature should be deemed a safety hazard and that the degree is basically unusable. Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling everyone in the school to get a grip and let the entire English department just float away into a nearby swamp.
The business professors all agreed and considering that all of their students end up becoming wealthy alumni who donate money to ensure that their buildings don’t go under, Naoya doesn’t care about the enraged comments from the English department.
All his rude remarks seem to ensure that he’ll be left alone, which is exactly how he likes to be. It seems that he’s the most hated business school professor and no one is willing to share a space with him.
Because you are the youngest and newest member of the faculty, you end up being the unfortunate soul paired up with Naoya Zenin, PhD. When you first step into the office, big box filled with your printed lesson plans and desk supplies, he refuses to lend you a hand.
Instead, he sits back in his seat, staring at you with such an intense look in his eyes that you decide to look at anything but him, and he watches you struggle to maneuver around the tight space. Because of the funding, the business school offices are spacious, but to maintain some semblance of privacy, minor renovations were made. Crammed in a corner is a new desk meant for you. If he keeps staring daggers into your very soul, you’re going to make a request to have a room divider put in place so you can cower behind them and avoid his glare.
While your side of the office is small, you make it as unique to yourself as possible. There’s a Cinnamoroll plushie sitting on your desk, a cup holding glittery gel pens, and inside your desk drawers are scratch-‘n-sniff sticker sheets with colorful words of encouragement because the world has already beaten down your students enough — you might as well give them back some of their childhood enjoyment.
Naoya’s desk is vintage mahogany and rarely has anything sitting atop it unless he’s inside the office and on his laptop. Hanging on the wall behind him is his doctoral degree that is forever put on display in a massive, ostentatious frame. Naoya Zenin, PhD from Keio University. Economics, you recall him telling one of his colleagues. Because finance is the poor man’s idea of a prestigious field.
It doesn’t take a degree to know how Dr. Zenin feels about a degree in the arts.
Upon your first awkward meeting with Naoya (where he let you nearly trip and spill all your meager belongings onto his pristine office’s floors), you immediately head home and look at your new office buddy’s RateMyProf reviews.
⅕ OVERALL QUALITY BASED ON 986 RATINGS | 0% WOULD TAKE AGAIN | 5.0 LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY
Professor Zenin’s Top Tags
#lotsofhomework
#getreadytoread
#lectureheavy
#skipclass?youwon’tpass
Review 1: i dropped my econ major because of him. this wasn’t even supposed to be a weeder class
Review 2: DR ZENIN IS THE WORST PROFESSOR FOR ECONOMICS. HE MIGHT BE THE WORST PROFESSOR IN THE BUSINESS SCHOOL. HE MIGHT EVEN BE THE WORST PROFESSOR IN THIS WHOLE DAMN UNIVERSITY!!!!!! DO NOT TAKE HIM! I regret not taking everyone else’s advice and going with Dr. Gojo instead
Review 3: only redeeming quality is being hot, but he’s still an asshole
Review 4: Misogynist, doesn’t believe women can be leaders in the business world, has God awful takes that literally no one sane would agree with, teaches what HE thinks is right and refuses to acknowledge any opposing viewpoints, talks down on students, and that’s all i can say about him from the TWO DAYS i attended his class. i immediately dropped his course LOL
Review 5: Dr. Zenin’s rigorous coursework and unforgiving grading has prepared me for graduate school, and I still believe all the courses I had with him provided me with a better foundation than my other peers in my doctoral program. However, he did make my undergrad experience a miserable one. His lectures are hard to follow at times, and he creates his exams with the intent of making it unpassable. He’s the professor that you wonder why he hasn’t been fired yet.
You search for any positive comments about him, but it appears that the students hate everything about him, to his tests, his teaching style, and his personality.
In all honesty, it’s kind of sad. What must it be like, you wonder, to be so hated by the very students you’re meant to teach and inspire? You’re willing to give Naoya the benefit of the doubt — you know how one student’s misconception against a professor can paint a bad picture overall. Maybe Naoya is just a difficult person to understand! An undercover softie, if you will.
There’s no harm in trying to be friendly with him. After all, the two of you are going to be partners for the foreseeable future. You don’t have the energy to remain constantly on your guard around him.
You start off with little things, like burning candles in the office to fill it with sweet, welcoming scents. You offer to let him borrow your extension cord so his charger doesn’t have to bend all awkwardly when he plugs in his laptop. You make an effort to ensure that the classroom is clean before his class enters because that’s a courteous thing to do. You notice that when he eats his lunch on campus, he’s always unwrapping a sweet treat afterwards.
You can’t be a truly bad person if you have a sweet tooth, you rationalize.
So, you bake him little goods and leave them on his desk. When a week goes by and he doesn’t acknowledge your actions but the goods are always gone by the time lunchtime is over, you think you’re making progress. You notice that he seems stressed and annoyed every time he storms into the office, and so you start adding tiny notes of motivation alongside the goods, too.
Written on a pink sticky note that’s in the shape of a heart (probably to match the fucking miniature cake you baked), Naoya’s eye almost starts to twitch as he examines every loop and curve of the letters you personally handwritten for him.
I hope you have a great day today! Look on the bright side, you’re done with all your lectures for the week!
Naoya angrily takes a bite out of the cake as he waits for his laptop to turn on. The sugary sweetness does very little to alleviate his annoyance, but he can begrudgingly admit that the cake is good. Delicious, even.
This makes his scowl deepen.
How annoying, he thinks, tossing your note in the trash bin (not having the heart to crumple it up like he used to do with your previous notes). What are you, some kind of a stalker? How is it any of your business to know that Thursdays are his last days for teaching since business schools don’t believe in having class on Friday? And why do you always do that? Saying I hope?
“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Momo,” he remembers you telling your blonde-haired student. “But I hope you consider sticking with your creative writing major. We’ll lose a very talented student if you choose to go, you know.”
Naoya had let out a little snort of amusement at this. Who the fuck cares about whether or not students drop out? If they can’t handle the coursework, clearly they’re not cut out for the real world. He finds it annoying that you practically hold their hands, coddling them, always tacking on an I hope because you don’t want to demand people to do things. So much damn consideration, he wonders how you even survive in this big city. You’re probably the type of person who apologizes when someone else gets in your way at a busy store. You probably let yourself get cut in line. You definitely give money to panhandlers who are only posing as the homeless and needy.
Naoya wants to take joy in the fact that you are the type of person who could easily be taken advantage of, but as he finishes the cake you made for him, the idea of people purposely giving you a hard time just because you’ll take it lying down makes him feel even more irritated than before.
He takes out his frustration on his students. A first-year student emailed him asking for an extension, so Naoya tells them either they get it done by the original deadline, or he is more than willing to just give them the zero right now. In the real world, your boss and your clients will not give a single shit that you are hospitalized after being hit by a truck. Perhaps, if you used the brain inside your head and the eyes on your face, you would know better than to cross the road when a speeding truck is heading your way.
Then, he thinks that you would probably gladly give your students an extension if they asked. You’d probably even visit them in the fucking hospital, like the saint you think you are.
You’re so helpful to the point of your kindness being detrimental to your own wellbeing. You extend deadlines, and then have to beg and plead with the dean and bust your ass to get final grades in by the required date. All that struggle could have been avoided if you just gave the zero. You hear out your students, letting them speak their minds, and it cuts into your lecture time. Nobody is paying tuition to hear another student’s ramblings. And how long does it take you to bake him these desserts? It’s something different every day, always fresh, always seemingly made with care.
He doesn’t even know how you know he likes sweets. Lucky guess, he tells himself.
You see, Naoya knows that he is respected (somewhat) and feared (most definitely). He knows that he is not loved, not by his colleagues (who are all intimidated by him), not by his family (who thinks becoming a professor at a prestigious research university is dogshit when he should have been a global economist), not by his students (the university-mandated end-of-the-term class surveys are always sent to him). So to him, despite the ego he presents to the public, he cannot fathom the idea of someone noticing little things about himself. He definitely can’t imagine someone noticing and caring — it would honestly make more sense if they used private information against him.
He doesn’t think about you noticing him, and he refuses to think about all the things he subconsciously notices about you. He can recognize you by your perfume alone; someone had passed him by in the hall, and his eyes searched for your figure, only to be greeted by a student who just happened to favor the same fragrance as you. (He had snapped at the poor girl, telling her to walk faster or get out of the way.) He’s certain he knows the fucking HTML color code for the specific shade of lipgloss you’re always constantly applying in the office. One time, against his better judgment, he saves the place you’re at in your book. You had fallen asleep at your desk, your finger pressed on the page you were struggling to read, and then your head banged on the desk, hand slipping away. He doesn’t know why he didn’t leave you alone in the office; he had no business staying that late since none of his students were brave enough to turn in any assignments to be graded. There was an on-campus police alert the day before, though. Naoya rationalizes that he just didn’t want any criminals or deviants breaking into his office and destroying it. That’s all.
He actively avoids any thought of you, not realizing the irony of how, in his vehement attempts to ignore your existence, he is very much acknowledging you.
Learning Objective Two: Have Meaningful Conversations With Your Partner
“Why do you do that?” Naoya snaps, breaking the silence in the office.
Naoya is the type of person who does not simply say things — he snaps, he sneers, he smirks. And he has the exact tonation, voice, manner of speaking, of someone who grew up and was never told to shut the fuck up. With his current position in life, it seems like no one ever will.
“Do what?” You look up from the papers you’re grading, staring at him all doe-eyed and genuinely confused that Naoya discovers the unfortunate fact that he does, actually, possess a heart. An annoying one that gets all tight in his chest and starts beating against his rib cage every time you look at him. He’d charge you with a hospital bill from a top of the line cardiologist, but he knows you get paid like shit in comparison to him. Also, because he doesn’t like the idea of women spending money on his behalf.
“Give out pity grades.”
It’s like you’ll do anything in your power to not fail a student. You’re just pulling out participation points straight from your ass! And the comments — don’t get him started on the amount of comments you waste time leaving on your students’ papers. There’s a reason why his grades always get entered before deadlines. He’s efficient.
“And ruthless.” You tell him, after hearing him tell you all about his “efficiency.” “We’re here to help cultivate their minds. Get them to think. College shouldn’t be about getting grades based on your professor’s mood.”
Was that somehow an attack on him? He should be annoyed. Instead, he finds this side of you less annoying.
“I’m always in the same mood every time I grade.”
“Oh, yeah? And what’s that, vindictive?” You’re teasing him, and he wouldn’t let just anyone get away with such a comment. He’s bored, he tells himself. That’s why he’s entertaining this. Unlike someone, he doesn’t have anything left to grade.
“Nah. Irritated. They’re all idiots.”
You frown. “No student is an idiot.”
He gives you a look. “You teach English.”
“Intro to Classic Lit.” You correct him.
“Right.” He says this slowly. “Idiots.”
“Maybe yours, but definitely not mine.”
“Let's compare our students’ majors and potential earnings after graduation.”
Now it’s your turn to give him a look. “There’s nothing wrong with pursuing your passions.”
“Great. Do you tell them that when the cashier tells them their card declined? Or, does the passion end up paying the total? Are grocery stores accepting passion as a form of payment now?”
“Don’t be as mean as people say you are.”
His signature smug air of superiority momentarily dissipates at this statement. It’s not often that someone can get Naoya to shut up. To be bested by someone who grades using pink gel pens is so humbling, the only thing keeping him on his pedestal is the fact that he knows he’s the youngest tenured professor in this whole entire university and an acclaimed researcher (he always makes the list for top five most cited economic researchers). You’re fresh out of a doctoral program, and even being tenure-track would be a pipe dream for you.
“There’s nothing mean about being honest.”
“You can be honest without being mean.”
“It’s the truth. Students are idiots.” He shrugs, because what the fuck is he supposed to do about it?
“Then why become a professor?”
“Sweetheart, professors that work here are researchers first, teachers… no, not second. Maybe third? If they’re that dedicated to shaping young minds, or whatever fantasy you’ve got going on.”
“Well, I believe that the students are here to learn. And before you call them stupid again, that’s the great part about learning. You don’t have to be smart to do it.”
Growing up, Naoya had to be a lot of things, smart being one of them. No one in his household was ever capable of producing an ounce of empathy, and considering all the people he’s been surrounded by since his prep school, university, and internship days have all been raised in similar environments. The world is unforgiving. Naoya lives by the ever-so-poetic motto of “sucks to suck.”
He will go home and lay in bed and stare at the crown molding on his ceiling, and he will recall your sunny disposition. He wants to shame and berate you for being so damn optimistic, for believing in those words, and he will think to himself wouldn’t it be nice for it to be true?
Instead, right now, all he does is huff. The truth is, Naoya is well aware that his students aren’t stupid, even if he tells them that they are every time they’re in class and every time they dare to come to his office hours to debate their grades. They aren’t stupid in the booksmart sense, but they are very dumb when it comes to the real world, and Naoya considers it a ruthless kind of mercy that he exacts on them. They’re idiots because they have all the potential in the world and would rather waste their time on stupid shit and procrastinate on their assignments instead of putting forth any real effort.
If they tried, he would give them an A.
Learning Objective Three: Be Specific and Sincere With Your Praise
You’re crying.
In his head, Naoya tries to force himself to roll his eyes but finds his body unwilling to comply with the demands of his mind. He’s annoyed, but the irritation isn’t directed at you.
It’s at the man sitting across from you. Dr. Kimura got his PhD from Cambridge and thinks he’s hot shit, but out of pure curiosity, Naoya found his dissertation online and still uses it as free melatonin. Two paragraphs in knocks him out faster than a whole bottle of sleeping pills.
Dr. Kimura asks him to leave, into which Naoya reminds him that this is technically his office, and that Dr. Kimura is an intruder. Too much time spent with you in such a confined space has some of your little lessons rubbing off on him. Words are so important to you. Naoya decides that visitor and guest are too kind, too euphemistic, for Dr. Kimura. Call it like it is.
Kimura’s business for being here is to give you your first ever teaching evaluation. It’s actually just a poorly disguised attempt at trying to lowball professors’ salaries, but this is the type of schtick that only works on pushovers like you. Naoya leans back in his desk chair, arms crossed, and it’s obvious that he is going to be listening in on the whole entire ordeal. You’re embarrassed to be put on display like this, not knowing that he isn’t here to scrutinize you (for once), but rather he’s your backup.
Before things take a turn for the worse, you’re actually all smiles and sunshines and rainbows.
Stop smiling at him, Naoya thinks. He hates your smile. Hates it the most when it’s directed towards anyone but him.
Kimura begins with a compliment. That’s how all the professors in the arts are taught. Compliment sandwich! Praise, constructive criticism, more praise! What a fucking joke. Naoya thinks his way of handling things is much more efficient. Talk about all the stuff they need improvement on, and whatever isn’t corrected clearly is okay. Don’t you people know how to read in between the lines? Context clues ring any bells? Fuck, what did you all go to school for?
Disaster strikes, just as Naoya predicts.
“Listen, we know that this is your first year of teaching, and you’re still getting settled into your role of professor and not student, but clearly there’s some leniency when it comes to your grading…”
Kimura’s listing all sorts of shit. Grade inflation is what he claims one second, next he’s claiming you have subjective grading criteria. No other Intro to Classic Literature course has a similar class average to yours.
Kimura shakes his head, like he’s disappointed in you. Another tactic that would only work on someone as sweet as you.
“If this continues to be an issue, we may have to reconsider renewing your contract.”
And there are those waterworks Naoya is expecting.
The thing is, Naoya knows a bully when he sees one. Naoya knows all about being cruel just for the sake of being cruel. As cold, shriveled up, and worthless as it seems, Naoya does have a heart.
“That’s bullshit.” He inserts himself into the conversation. You’re staring down at your lap, twiddling with your fingers. Kimura turns to look at him.
“This is a private matter—”
“If it was private, you would have done it in your own office instead of mine.”
“This is a matter that concerns the English department, not yours, Dr. Zenin.”
He’s right. And yet—
“Have you even read any of her students’ papers?”
—Naoya is your backup.
“How is this relevant?”
“Read their papers. Read their first one versus their most recent one. Hell, read every single essay a student has turned in over the course. I guarantee you they deserve the marks she’s given them.”
“Their papers are filled with corrections and questions, and yet, she gives them an A.” Kimura knows all about Naoya’s reputation. He’s infamous. He’s the reason why everyone’s scared of majoring in economics. Naoya Zenin is the toughest grader there is.
“I’ve seen the mental state of your department’s students. She’s doing them a favor by not crushing them.”
“You’re saying they deserve those grades?”
“She lets them redo all their papers within a reasonable period of time and grades based on the overall improvement.” Naoya shrugs, like it’s just that simple. “I don’t see an issue.”
“She’s manipulating grades.”
“She’s giving them a second chance. I personally find that to be admirable.” Naoya is not lying. This is what makes you look up. “And she cares. I think she’s the only one of your faculty who gives a damn about whether her students are learning or not.”
Naoya doesn’t hate a lot of things because he doesn’t like giving certain things so much special attention, but he does dislike insincere people. People like Kimura are the worst because they hide behind fake niceties and table manners, but if you peel off their skin, they’re secretly lizards in disguise. At least in Naoya’s case, no one ever has the luxury of being shocked when he says something very mean and unpleasant because he will never filter himself or put on a mask that gives off the vibe that he practices civility.
As a matter of fact, Naoya has a nasty, serpent-like grin on his face as he locks in on Kimura, caging him in.
“After all, isn't that the point of becoming a professor, Dr. Kimura?”
Gotcha, you slimy bastard.
Learning Objective Four: Be Vulnerable, Put Yourself Out There
“Would you say I’m an asshole?” Naoya brings this up as he helps you pack up your belongings. He claims that it’s because he can’t wait to have his office all to himself again, but really, he’s starting to realize that lending a helping hand every once in a while can’t hurt. He hisses when a sharp edge from one of the many stacks of paper you possess cuts his finger.
That’s the last time he’ll ever help someone, he thinks bitterly.
“Not to your face.” You reply back, giving him a grin. He wants to take your smile and store it in a moving box and then keep that box underneath his desk and have it be one of his most prized possessions.
“Hm.” Then he tells you, “A student called me that.”
“To your face?” You look equal parts shocked, amused, and delighted. It’s a good look.
“No. RateMyProfessor.”
“Oh, I think I saw that one. They called you hot, right?” You’re busy packing up your sticker sheets and binders. Naoya wonders if he’s reading too hard into what you’re telling him.
“You’ve seen my reviews?”
“Of course I did. I looked you up on the Internet the day we became office roomies.” You throw this information out so nonchalantly that Naoya almost feels like he’s the weird one to have a reaction from it.
“You looked me up on the Internet?”
“Duh. Naoya, we live in a world where AI is writing essays for students. Of course, I would look you up online.”
“But why?” He presses you, latches on to the idea that there is a world where someone wants to look him up online and it’s not to find his home address so they can get revenge on him failing them.
“Because I wanted to know more about you, silly.”
It would be nice to be known. It’s already nice to have someone who wants to get to know you. Naoya Zenin does not settle in life, but he thinks he could settle for this and be content for the rest of his days.
Of course you would. He would say this, all snarky and egotistical, but he knows better. He won’t have an excuse to see your four times a week, won’t be cooped up in this office with you late in the night, won’t get to smell the remnants of your perfume when he’s up at the podium, lecturing his class. But there’s a chance that he could see you in different settings, too. Getting coffee together in between classes. Sitting next to each other during university-wide faculty meetings. Taking you out to dinner, because he’s reviewed your contract, and he’s not sure how you’re surviving financially.
“I would like that.” The words come out rushed, all jumbled and smushed together. He’s a grown man. He doesn’t blush. This is what he tells himself when he feels heat rise to his cheeks. “I would like for you to get to know me. And to learn more about you, too.” He swallows. Hard. “I sound stupid, I meant to—”
“It’s okay, Dr. Zenin.” You have the prettiest smile in the world. His dissertation should have been on that. “The fun part about learning is that you can still do it, even when you’re being stupid.”
move to europe and get a job there so u have less working hours my god u.u
it's so funny bc my team (which yes, is based in the us!) always complains abt our european counterparts bc y'all are never in office 😭😭😭 (we hate u guys because we can't be u guys)
i think the great divide between haikyuu & blue lock is that hq is full of silly, wholesome guys & blue lock boys are not only insane, but they are every toxic!hq au ever... you needed to tag skate rat!au for the hq boys bc they were sweethearts. blue lock has a canonical cheater who would spend money to get down 'n dirty with women and he looks like skate rat au kita shinsuke 😭
ur msgs and asks abt my boyfriend r so sweet but guys, i fear if i answer all ur questions, you guys will be reading essays bc i simply cannot shut up when i talk abt him and ik yall aren’t reading all that
a snippet of a long one shot i was working on for a beloved follower who requested a second chance romance with kiyoomi <3
title; my heart surrenders
question: where does the love go when we leave each other?
Hands shoved in the pockets of his black track pants, Kiyoomi Sakusa stands outside the MSBY Black Jackals’ private gym.
He likes to consider himself a level-headed person, someone who can remain calm and collected at all moments, but there’s nothing quite more anxiety-inducing than seeing your ex-wife not even two days after the divorce has been finalized.
Divorce.
He doesn’t ever anticipate the word meaning anything to him. Doesn’t expect it to hold much relevancy, doesn’t expect the weight of it to be as soul crushing as it turns out to be.
Separation. That’s supposed to be a euphemism for what’s happened between you two. When he shows up to events in the future, when he stops leaving the locker room first because he’s in such a hurry to come home to you and Masatomi, when the frown on his face becomes a permanent feature, he will eventually have to answer all of his teammates and family’s concerns with a simple, supposedly euphemistic we decided to separate.
It doesn’t cut as deep as the d-word, but it’s so hilariously inaccurate that even the idea of using it to describe what has been done between you and him leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Separated. You and him. Separate.
As if.
He’s known you since middle school, loved you since high school, has felt like he’s been with you since the creation of the damn universe. There’s no easy way to say this, but your life is so interlinked with his that it’ll take an eternity to ever get yourself fully untangled from him.
What that means is: there’s this whole long, legal, drawn-out process of changing your name once again, only this time, you’re reclaiming your original surname. He had foolishly hoped that the irritating process would prove to be such a hindrance that you keep Sakusa trailing after your first name, that you would recall the way just two years prior, you had excitedly practiced writing [Name] Sakusa.
(My given name, you point to your name. My chosen name. The tip of your index finger travels to your neatly written Sakusa. You look up at him smiling.
He keeps this memory tucked inside one of his arteries, wants every version of you close to his heart, wants you to be what gets pumped into his veins.)
How could you ever possibly be separated from him? He knows the specific shape you contort your body into when you’re in deep sleep, can communicate with you through microscopic facial expressions alone, has heard you whisper into his ear every birthday wish that you’re going to make before you blow out the candles on your cake. And you — will you set the dishes in the dishwasher how he does, because muscle memory guides your movements? Will you subconsciously keep his side of the bed empty?
(Will you find someone to fill in that empty space? Will you forget all about him, while he’s still stuck years in the past, dress shoes rooted to the altar where he still expects to see you as his blushing bride?)
“Is everything okay?” Your hair and makeup are done, makeup done in a way that’s a bit heavier than it normally is.
It all disappears on camera is what you told him when he first visited you on set. Believe me, I can’t wait to wash this all off.
You must have came as soon as you received the call.
That shouldn’t make him as happy as it does, shouldn’t make his heart do that annoying, excited pitter-patter that it always does when he sees you after a long time (it’s been less than forty-eight hours). The irritation of having his coach and the team medic both agree to contact you since his sprained wrist is considered “an important and noteworthy condition to report” disappears when he sees you.
(Like with most of his problems, the root of it traces back to Atsumu. The bumbling idiot tried to cover up a sprained ankle from his wife, and the way she chewed him out for hiding this from her could be heard from miles away. To protect everyone’s eardrums, the coach and medical team make an agreement to report any and all ailments.)
It’s barely been two days since the divorce; surely you don’t expect him to remove you from being his emergency contact.
Surely you know that there would be no one to fill in that blank.
“It’s nothing serious.” He tells you, and he knows that it’s the wrong thing to say when he sees your expression falter.
You’re an actress; started your career young, so you became a recurring character on a drama. Former recurring character — you decided to go into an early retirement to focus on raising Masatomi, but with Kiyoomi and you agreeing on frequent visitation rights that alternate equally between you two, you have more free time. He guesses this means you must be back on a part-time basis. The network was devastated when you left, it’s no wonder why they’re so happy to have you back, no matter how little they get of you. He can relate.
The reason why you’re such a beloved actress is the way a whole entire story plays out on your face. Kiyoomi is the opposite. He’s revealing nothing; no discomfort is evident even with the way his wrist still kind of burns, and you can’t even tell that him seeing you look so pretty in the daylight, set makeup on or not, is doing something devastating to him. He keeps his hands in his pockets, knowing that he can’t reach for you. He doesn’t have the right to anymore.
“Your coach said you sprained your wrist, though.”
“I’ll still be able to play this season.”
He’s not used to having awkward silences between you two. The two of you have been together for so long, he thought that there would be no more room for awkwardness to fit in.
“Alright. Well—”
“I just—”
The both of you try to break the silence at the same time, only to find the other fumbling for anything to say. Kiyoomi makes that microexpression on his face, a barely perceptible, incredibly slight raise of his right eyebrow. It means you first.
“Well—” you find yourself clearing your throat before daring to take a few steps closer to him. Somehow, the distance seems to grow despite every step forward you take. Kiyoomi realizes this and is terrified, panicking, drowning. “I just realized that things kind of happened in a hurry.”
That’s one way to put it. You told him that you wanted a divorce on a Monday morning, then handed him a stack of divorce papers already initialed and signed by you. He didn’t protest, didn’t even look over the documents — he just filled in the blanks as necessary, and you gave it back to your lawyer the same day. By Wednesday afternoon, it’s been finalized.
Obnoxiously fast.
Kiyoomi knows so because he holed himself up in the gym’s bathroom before practice, scrolling through search results, Reddit threads, and Quora answers on how long does it take for a divorce to be finalized. He supposes it’s different when the two of you are technically celebrities. Money talks, too.
He hates that you refuse to take any of his.
He knows that not looking over the documents is probably a poor choice. The realist part of him berates him for being so stupid; the part of him that belongs to you (so, basically the entirety of his very being) trusts you more than he does himself. You’d never do anything to ruin him.
congrats!! how did you and your man meet, if you don’t mind sharing the love story 🙈
haha, we met at work! with my firm’s hierarchy, he’s technically a level above me but he works in a completely different division that works a lot with mine. we’ve collaborated on several projects together & we mutually slid into each other’s teams chats (sliding into dms is so overrated now guys) and it’s been us two ever since LMAO. he’s genuinely such a sweetheart & he’s very well known in my division 🤭 partially because he’s so attractive but also because he’s the one who’s always chasing us on deliverables so everyone kind of hates him on my floor lol. what started our relationship was me testing the waters (read: seeing how far i could inconvenience this man to test how much he might like me) so i messaged him on teams one day at around 6 pm and asked if he had any advil on him. he’s about 19 floors above me in the building and the elevators are notoriously slow & i still asked him if he’d bring it to me (i didnt even need any advil!) he had to fix something on a presentation and he still rushed down to meet me & risked being late to his next meeting to make sure i was okay. i was already down bad for him but this + the fact that he saw me struggling to open the bottle & he immediately reached for it to help me before i could ask really sealed the deal.
"gallai fe wneud dim o'i le" wel a dweud y gwir rwy'n meddwl ei fod wedi gwneud sawl peth o'i le, a dyna'n benodol wnaeth fy nenu i ato yn y lle cyntaf
it’s been a minute since my last actual update on literally anything hehe. i just wanted to pop in and say thank you for the continuous support! i do want to continue writing and i will still try to, but with my current job in high finance, the hours are brutal & i just don’t have as much free time to allocate :( that being said, because of this fuckass job, (for all of my daylight readers, you’ll love this for me) i met my own colt grice 🤭 i know sometimes when im writing, you guys are like “ugh these men don’t exist irl” and i never thought i would ever meet someone who would be better than any of the impossible standards i’ve set in my posts, but i have. i hope all of you are doing well & i miss you all v much!!
hello gorgeous amazing fantastic author, will daylight come back? the widows (me) miss him everyday </3
AHHH, im so happy ppl still care about daylight!!! daylight is such a labor of love for me & writing it is both my favorite thing to do and such an exhausting venture 😩 im trying to get the next part out but my work schedule is very demanding 😭 but i do work on it in bits and pieces!! thank you so much for reading and loving it!!!
welcome to crownview country club, one of the most premier country clubs in existence. whether you're savoring a round on our championship golf course, enjoying the serenity of our world-class spa, or indulging in gourmet dining crafted by our award-winning chefs, crownview provides a retreat like no other.
as you navigate the greens, let the warmth of our renowned beverage cart girls, affectionately known as the club's crown jewels, enhance your experience. these girls are dedicated to providing exceptional customer service, and are here for your every need, on and off the course.
alternatively: you — young, sweet, naive you — think you just won the jackpot by securing a job this summer break as a beverage cart girl at a country club you can't even dream of ever joining. how unfortunate that you just didn't know what types of customers you'd have to service and how far the club's "above and beyond" approach really extends...
ᝰ.ᐟ a nsfw longfic one shot collection featuring a sweet, vulnerable reader + a different archetype of customer who will always hold the power in this dynamic
✦ meet the regulars ✦
the new owner aka satoru gojo
warnings power imbalance, dark content, degradation, extortion, misogyny
you're good at your job. you're hardworking and never let your smile slip off your face, even when the customers get too handsy or too condescending with you. you don't mess up orders, and you always maintain the position that the customer is always right. but with this new regular — who's arrogant and mean and downright nasty — you're not sure how long you can keep up with your fake smiles around him. little do you know, he's making a game of how far he can go before you break. oh, and that little stunt you pulled? where you tried to report his "awful behavior" to your manager? that was cute. really cute. but as the new owner of this country club, there's no one that can do anything about whatever he does. he owns this place, and by extension, that means he owns you.
attending your dream private college on scholarship comes with a lot more challenges than you anticipated. for starters, you don't fit in with any of your classmates and struggle to find friends. your scholarship covers tuition, and that's about it. while your peers are off on vacation, you'll be spending the summer break trying to save up enough money to cover rent and basic living expenses. it's shaping up to be a boring summer, until you keep running into one of your classmates: he plays on the golf team for your school, and apparently, he just can't get enough of the sport... or you.
the corporate powerhouse aka tetsurou kuroo
warnings dark content, praise kink, degradation, dubcon, slight fear play, misogyny
one of the worst groups of men to encounter on the golf course? definitely the men who work in corporate. the ones who conduct client meetings on the course and definitely contribute nothing beneficial to society. to them, employees of the establishments they frequent are no more than "the help", but when you're a pretty young thing, whipping out the pitiful broke college student story, you end up sparking the interest of a ceo with a major savior complex.
the soldier aka caleb
warnings age gap, size kink, possessive behavior, dark-ish content
forced to take a break from his special forces team, this soldier is restless and struggling to acclimate back to regular society. his old friends keep dragging him to their weekly golf meetups, but he can't see the appeal. that is, until he meets you. sweet and soft, the exact opposite of everything he's had to encounter these past few years, you are exactly what he wants — no, needs — in order to properly enjoy civilian life.
the not-so secret admirer aka yuuta okkotsu
warnings yandere, babytrapping, obsessive&possessive behavior, dark content
you're used to rich guys who are major jerks, and as one of the wealthiest members of this club, you're certain that he must be no different. but then he surprises you; he is different. where others are cocky, condescending, quick to remind you of your place (beneath them), he's kind and a little bit awkward. shy, and always apologizing, worrying that he's bothering you. he's sweet. you like him, but maybe not as much as he obviously likes you. first comes the insane tips, then the extravagant gifts (that you're not allowed to refuse), and any resistance on your end has him revealing a colder side to him, an almost scary side, that frightens you into agreeing with whatever he tells you to do. he's so rich because he never gives up, and never takes no for an answer — and you'll learn this lesson, too.
Any Headcanons on prof naoya and prof YN? What happened in my cs class was that the projection board was the prof’s computer, and sometimes there was notifications pings that we saw from Microsoft teams from another staff/prof asking him if he was going to a school event or sumn, so I could totally imagine that happening to prof naoya where prof YN asks if he’s going to like a staff function lol but just a thought
umm thank you for asking this because !!!! you mentioning what happens on your prof's computer is so silly and fun !!!!
i can definitely see dr. naoya projecting something from his computer to the class, and it's not just you dm'ing him through teams to ask if he's attending a university-wide staff meeting, but i think naoya is the type who is guarded enough to not leave too much of a trace of your constant presence in his life. you know that quote that's like "if you look for it, you'll see that love really is everywhere", and for dr. naoya, his love is shown when the students catch a glimpse of his outlook calendar and see "dinner - 8pm" on it, but no one really knows why it's on his schedule until outlook sends a notification (that he can't click away from fast enough) that says "DR. [SURNAME] HAS ACCEPTED 'dinner - 8pm'". i think dr. naoya zenin is silly enough and yet formal enough to not just text you (like a normal person) to go to dinner; he needs it sectioned off on his calendar AND he likes having you specifically click the "yes, i'll attend" button when he sends you the invitation via microsoft outlook 😭 he's so lame, and it's so endearing, and the students are definitely giving each other looks as they realize that a nice professor such as yourself would even go out to dinner with someone like him.
i know for a fact that in the future, when he proposes, he's secretly so excited at the prospect of you legally becoming dr. zenin as well 🤭
for any new readers, you can find prof naoya's fic here! 💖
hello daylight anon again i rr the fic bc i js couldnt help it why is it even better bc i can like see where you’ve sprinkled all the foreshadowing and stuff 😭 colt and reader r so precious tew meeeeeee 😭😭😭😭 also why did u have to make reader’s brother RAMZI pls 💔💔💔 en e ways um i wanna give colt a big fat smooch 😭🫶 aot as an anime means a lot to me personally and the way u’ve written the colonialism and imperialism of marley is so so good 🫶 also also the yearning… the YEARNING god i said in my last ask too that i could feel it in my throat like every time colt thinks sth like
“When his time is up, and he has to pass along the Beast to the next successor, he hopes they know how blessed they are to be able to hear your soft laughter in his passed-down memories. This is a melody that cannot be replicated by any trained orchestra.”
im being so fr i have to like put my phone down and do a lap of my room so i dont scream 😃 WHEN WILL IT BE MY TURN 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
colt/reader remind me sm of sunlight by hozier like idk it could b from both their povs but yuh .
i cant wait for colt to come back from war, kiss reader breathless, bring her a massive feast, worship her from dusk to the early dregs of dawn until she has no doubts of his devotion ( needing vs wanting , human vs animal is either gonna come here or during the war 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️ ) and then take her to visit his parents who r gonna smother her in affection .
also idk why but i pictured colt n reader n falco ( maybe ramzi too ) on the train from base to the internment zone to see the grices and reader n colt are sitting next to eo and falco in sitting across from them and reader is anxious and colt is gently reassuring her and like pressing soft kisses to her hands and her temples and falco is js watching their whipped asses like 😃 KEKEKEKEKEKE
sorry none of this is coherent but i love the consistent motif of light and darkness and life and death , memory and the sanctity of names . in a world like marley’s esp as non-marleyans , this feels so prudent and imp n anyway im gonna shut up now sorry my 5 yrs of lit jumped out LMFAOOOOOO love love love the way u write 🫶🫶🫶
ahhh!! sorry for the late reply; i have a bad habit of constantly rereading any nice, thoughtful comments but never replying to them (im working on getting better at that!). a man who yearns is a man who EARNS!!!! im so glad that you are not only enjoying but really looking deeply into daylight!! hozier has a strong influence on the soundtrack for daylight + i also recommend listening to "july" by him just because that also really makes me think of reader and colt!!! thank u so much for such a lengthy, detailed comment of ur thoughts, it's so motivating and just v heartwarming in general to know that i've created something that people, even just one person, would think about <3
