shape of you - ed sheeran x reader

chapter one: the encounter

*first off, thank you for giving this story a chance. secondly, this was originally written as a joke, so please don't attack me 😅 i hope you enjoy and please comment/vote :)

Everything had been bad.

A sharp knife laced with deadly poison slowly but surely cutting its way into your heart type of bad.

But there was nothing a drink couldn't fix.

This week had been pure torture, unpleasant news always meeting you around each and every corner you thought you could confront successfully- but of course, that didn't happen. You were honestly confused as to how you hadn't completely given out and crumbled into a six-foot deep hole of miserableness and self-pity. But there you were, drinking away your worries until the early hours of the morning.

You checked the clock sitting behind the counter and over the bartender's shoulder, it was 1 am, the weekend had finally started. Today now being Saturday, the tumbling snowball of disappointment initiated its heart-wrenching and revolting journey on Monday.

After studying until three in the morning and a couple of glasses of wine on Sunday, Monday started with a microbiology exam. This exam held a high percentage of your overall grade but much less than your finals- which you knew you would be screwed with when the time would eventually come.

You tried your best on this exam, but it just didn't go well. Ultimately, on Wednesday you found out that you had gotten a C. The news sent you moping around and encouraged you to isolate yourself in your dorm after class, having a couple of drinks here and there to numb the eventual disappointment that settled deep into your soul.

When Thursday came around, you prayed it would be better than Wednesday. Boy, were you wrong.

Thursday was an extremely important day, as you had an internship interview further into the busier side of town. This internship meant a lot since it was centred around your eventual earning of a master's degree in microbiology (which you knew now wasn't quite going in the right direction).

Still, you persevered and went to the internship, as ready as you could be with an alcohol-induced headache courtesy of your self-isolation. It wasn't exactly a total surprise when things didn't go well. You just couldn't catch a break.

A traffic jam.

Not the biggest of problems, sure, but it's pretty significant when an intern shows up to a scheduled interview nearly 20 minutes late. Not to mention, your stress from fearing you had already ruined all your chances at getting the internship- let's be honest, who would hire someone who arrived 20 minutes late- caused you to stutter and appear super unprepared throughout the whole interview.

You didn't exactly expect a call back from them at any point.

The cherry on top of your miserable week was when class had been dismissed on Friday and you opened Snapchat. You expected the usual post from your favourite celebrity and the few messages from your friends, only to be met with something you desperately tried to convince yourself wasn't real.

There, on one of your friend's profiles, was a clip of your boyfriend clearly cheating on you with another woman.

It wasn't exactly a surprise when your toleration for bullshit had completely crumbled.

That was why you sat where you were now, at the bar the most decently distanced from the campus, wondering how you could be so stupid. The video played on repeat in your mind like a broken record, sending a stab of pain to your spirit repeatedly.

The trashy bar music played over you having your crisis, though it barely drowned out the infecting thoughts of self-doubt and unworthiness that swam in your mind.