Chapter Text
It turns out, vet school is not an easy journey, even for those pursuing their passion.
It is 10pm on a Tuesday.
Laura’s room is plunged in semidarkness, the only source of light coming from her mushroom-shaped desk lamp, illuminating her woefully thick Pharmacology textbook. This particular chapter, which revolves around anesthesia, was already introduced last week and Laura has yet to wrap her brain around it. The semester has barely started and, as a diligent student who learned from her mistakes during the first year, she will not let herself fall behind this tight schedule. She hates being late. She has to finish reviewing her coursework from last week.
Or at least that’s what she keeps reminding herself, until she suddenly snaps back into full consciousness, the words before her eyes coming into focus. Blinking rapidly, she realizes she has been highlighting every single sentence of a whole paragraph without actually reading it. And as if on cue, she recognizes soreness in the back of her neck and what seems like the beginning of a headache.
‘Maybe I do deserve a break...’ Laura mumbles to herself, massaging her temples.
With her brain in a figuratively mushy state at the moment, she doesn’t feel like doing anything. So, naturally, she grabs her phone and taps its screen to open the evilest app of them all; TikTok.
She created her account a few weeks ago, despite the fact that this platform represents almost everything she hates in today’s society. In their discussions, her dear friends Kaitlyn and Emma were always referring to trends and memes they found on this app, and Laura being a curious person - sometimes a bit nosey - she yielded to temptation. So, she fully blames it on her friends. They make her weak.
Truth be told though, she truly enjoys watching Emma’s fashion and lifestyle content with her sarcastic comments sprinkled in, and Kaitlyn’s adventurous travel vlogs. Although it seems today that neither of them published anything new, which leaves her scrolling absent-mindedly through cat videos, study tips and cottagecore content.
This evening, one video in particular grabs her attention. She can tell that the person recording it is probably not familiar with filming - the video resolution is obviously not as high as the previous content she just saw, and the camera is shaky. The person behind the phone is moving what seems to be a portable stop sign in the middle of a road, a car at a standstill behind it. A sudden switch to the front camera shows a dark-haired, middle-aged man in a police uniform. He has a serious expression on his face, which is what Laura - although quite inexperienced with the police - would expect from a cop (even from a cop on Tiktok).
She notices however a small smirk tugging at his thin lips, before he says:
‘Sometimes being a cop is this. We serve to maintain law and order to protect you, citizens, but sometimes...’ He switches back to the rear camera, revealing a very curious scene.
On the concrete ground at his feet, a mother duck and six ducklings in single file behind her are swiftly waddling across the road.
‘... we may also have to protect our local wildlife.’ he continues. Laura can hear his breathing as he slowly walks behind them, his camera following the little winged family. When they finally reach the other side of the road, he crouches down and zooms in on the tiny ducklings. ‘I wonder what exactly makes them walk behind their Mama like that... It’s like they instinctively know they have to follow her to survive.’
The recording stops and the TikTok video is looped back to the beginning.
Laura cannot help the smile on her face. Of course, she always adores watching cute animals. But the pure candidness of this short clip makes her enjoy it even more.
She already knows the scientific answer to this man’s thoughtful question, but she decides to check out his profile first. To her surprise, ‘nksheriff7’ has thousands of followers (6521 followers to be precise) and a dozen Tiktok videos accumulating more than a hundred thousand likes. She assumes that this must be quite unusual for someone who posts what seems to be random videos in mediocre quality - no matter how endearing these videos are.
The cover photo of his very first Tiktok catches Laura’s eye; it is a shot of his forehead. She plays the recording.
‘My niece insisted that I should try this. So here I am.’ he awkwardly zooms out on his face, deep wrinkles visible on his forehead and in the skin between his eyebrows. He sighs heavily. ‘Good morning TikTok. Sorry I have no idea how this works...’
Again, she notices that this short video has more than a thousand likes. No way a jaded boomer - or almost-boomer - could randomly draw the attention of thousands of people, right ? There has to be a reason behind it. The same way there is always a rational explanation to the popularity of current social media trends. Astonishingly, Laura quickly finds the answer, as clear as day, in the comments.
Good morning, Sir! looking handsome as always :*
i want to kiss that forehead and bite that neck
ACAB but thank you, nksheriff’s niece, for letting us find out about the dilfest cop out there!
Her theory is confirmed when she swipes to his next video, this time clearly recorded by another person as he can be seen sitting in a coffee shop, a warm drink nestled in his hands. He is bundled up in a soft-looking scarf and a brown wool coat, the only skin visible is of his face and hands - large, veiny hands, she cannot help but notice. Okay, focus now, Laura Kearney.
This was a seemingly innocent snapshot of his private life, and yet, the comments did not falter.
looking very respectfully...
Your hands would be a beautiful necklace
it’s cold here, warm me up daddy
To the latter, he replied: I don’t have children, only a nephew and a niece :-) Wrap yourself up warm!
Laura is not sure whether this man fully picked up on the sexual innuendo, or if he is just playing innocent. More generally, she’s uncertain if he understands everything that is written about him on this app. Blame it on the unavoidable generation gap, she imagines.
In any case, she will not partake in this absurd, collective horniness. And she will certainly not embarrass herself in front of god-knows how many strangers on this platform, when she can instead share to the world her zoological knowledge - for which she has worked so hard for, every single day of the past few years. Although she will never admit it out loud, Laura always relishes being the smart one in the room.
So she returns to the very first clip she’d watched, and starts typing out a new comment. Of course, the character limit interrupts her midway - damn you TikTok -but she manages to write as best she can a concise explanation in two separate comments;
It’s a phenomenon called imprinting. During the first days of a duckling’s life, the image of its mother leaves an impression on its brain, - (1/2)
- guiding it on who to follow. If a duckling is separated from the mother during this period, it might bond with someone/something else entirely (2/2)
Laura rereads each comment before posting them. Satisfied with this reply, she puts down her phone and returns grudgingly to her studying session for another 40 minutes, before she gives up to her weary body begging her to go to sleep.
***
The next time Laura hears about nksheriff7, she is holding dog shit in her hands.
She is diluting out a Canis familiaris scat sample for today’s lab work on a new microscope slide, when she feels her phone buzzing faintly in one of her white coat’s pockets.
‘Can you please check my phone for me?’ she asks, her eyes still focused on the task at hand. She is now slowly lowering the cover slip against the slide, careful to avoid air bubbles.
‘Really, Kearney? Can’t you do that later?’
‘Sam, I will be handling literal dog shit for the next hour here.’ she laments. ‘Your hands are free. It could be my mom or something... pretty please?’
Her lab partner, Samantha, is always the first person she gravitates towards whenever they have to work in groups. She is kind, resourceful, and most importantly, laid-back. The last thing Laura wants is personal drama interfering with the academic path to her dream job, which is already laid out for her. She has also known her since the first year, and they’ve gone through the ups and downs of vet school together. One could say that nothing bonds people more than suffering together. Or equally, studying together.
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Sam rolling her own upwards dramatically - barely a moment of hesitation before she’s walking up to her, fishing Laura’s phone out of her pocket. A few seconds later, she hears her snort.
‘What is it?’
‘Since when do you have a TikTok account? It says that someone answered your comment.’
Her head snaps towards Sam, still balancing her microscope slide in one hand, and a blush already creeping up her cheeks. She completely forgot that she still has notifications on for this stupid app. Laura looks left and right, hoping that their gossipy classmates were not eavesdropping. She’ll be damned if they started spreading rumors about her social media activity when there really isn’t much to say about it. But it seems that everyone, except them both, are focused on their own samples.
‘Okay, you can put that down. You’re right, I can check on it later.’ she concedes, ignoring her question and the heat on her own cheeks.
Laura can almost feel Sam’s eyes burning holes through her as she turns her back on her. Good job Kearney, that couldn’t have been more suspicious.
Focusing back on her poop sample, she places down the slide under the microscope lens and fastens it with the stage clips. She takes a look through the eyepiece and adjusts the knobs until the image comes into focus. There, she identifies some fibers and bacteria, which is nothing abnormal for this kind of sample. Until she spots an oval-shaped, single-celled organism. And another.
‘Coccidia for scat sample #1’ states Laura, confidently. ‘Do you wanna double check?’
Sam shakes her head, already writing down the results in their lab report. ‘Nah, it’s fine.’
She is quiet for a moment, her head still turned down to their report, and Laura assumes she is busy reading the instructions for her part of the work. So she reaches out for the next scat sample, but her gesture is stopped midway when Sam lays a hand on her forearm.
‘Go on and check your message.’ she sighs. ‘I’ll do the second sample.’
‘You’re an angel, Samantha Giddings. An actual angel sent from Heaven. Or technically, should I say devil as you are pretty much pulling me away from the path of righteousness?’
‘Oh, shut up.’
Laura, who doesn’t need to be told twice, is already taking her soiled disposable gloves off, while her savior is putting new ones on and grabbing the necessary materials on the lab bench.
‘Can’t believe you would just so carelessly put a boy over me.’ she mumbles.
Laura bites her tongue, refraining herself from blurting out: ‘He’s not a boy’.
He’s a middle-aged cop for God’s sake. But in the end, she doesn’t even know if it is actually him who replied to her comment. So instead, she scoffs, waving a dismissive hand at her. She fishes her phone out of her lab coat’s pocket, and just with a quick look at her notifications, she can see that it is indeed ‘nksheriff7’ who responded to the two comments she posted yesterday. All at once, she feels her heart rate pick up in her chest.
Okay.
Now. Why is she nervous about it?
It’s not like he’s a celebrity or something. Just a random guy, with an amateur account on Tiktok, that turned out to attract some horny people who probably just have a daddy kink. Nothing remarkable in today’s social media world.
Opening the app, she discovers that he not only replied to her comment. He also pinned it, so that it now appears at the top, above all of the other comments.
Nksheriff7:
Well, you learn something new every day, thank you ma’am!
Ma’am? Laura winces.
She is confused at first, wondering how he could have correctly guessed her gender when she has never published anything on her account and her username ‘victoriousotter’ cannot quite exactly be used as a clue here. But then she remembers her profile picture, which is a very zoomed out picture of her during a hike she did with her friends two years ago. It is a nice picture, with her posing in front of a picturesque scenery - towering mountains reflecting in the turquoise water of a beautiful lake she can’t remember the name of. She is standing in the middle of it all, and you can barely make out her silhouette in it. So, that means he probably had to take a close look at her picture before typing out his reply. Maybe she should have used a nicer picture of her-
She shakes her head. Nonetheless, she was not brushing aside the fact that he actually called her a ma’am, when she’s got at least 10 years before looking like one - in her opinion. And she does not think that she looks older than her real age in that picture either.
Laura finally decides that she is probably just overanalyzing the situation. She touches the little heart next to his comment with the pad of her thumb to like his reply, but she does not write back to answer. There is no need to, after all.
And after a short moment of hesitation, she also decides to follow him. She is just being nice. This is just a small gesture to thank him. I am just being cordial, she convinces herself.
‘Speaking of boys... are you going to Ryan’s house-warming party?’
She turns her head to see Sam perched on her lab stool. Her upper body is hunched over the microscope, one eye closed, and the other carefully examining the new scat sample through the eyepiece.
‘Of course I am.’ Laura says, putting her phone back in her pocket. ‘It’s Saturday night right?’
‘Yep.’
There is a short pause, in which Sam is sitting still, the only movement coming from her is of her right hand slowly turning the adjustment knob. She then shifts away from the microscope, both of her clear blue eyes now open and fixed on Laura.
‘Second sample is healthy.’ she says with a bright smile.
***
The rest of the week was uneventful, which Laura is immensely grateful for, as it allowed her to catch up almost fully with her studying. Until Friday came.
The day started out really well actually - as she was informed during the morning that her afternoon classes were canceled, due to their Veterinary Pathology lecturer catching the flu. It seems that fall has rolled over upstate New York not only with a new chill in the air, and vibrant shades of orange and red in the leaves, but also with the unwelcome seasonal viruses.
Laura is fully aware that she cannot, for the life of her, focus at home on a Friday afternoon. And to her dismay even Sam has abandoned her this time; she chose to enjoy her earlier than planned weekend instead. She is, after all, indisputably more on track with their studies than Laura is at the moment.
So there she is, sitting alone at a vacant table in a corner of the library. It is uncrowded, unusually so, but she also doesn’t remember the last time she was at the library on a Friday afternoon. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
She relishes in the serene silence of her surroundings for a while, her focus uninterrupted during her study session. Laura allows herself a short break when her mind starts to drift away from the illustrations of the nervous system in front of her, illustrations that she had been trying to draw as meticulously as she could after their last Anatomy course.
Stupidly, Laura checks her phone. She knows that it is very likely to be a bad decision. It is the end of the week, she is tired, she knows that she can easily lose her focus. She even turned off her notifications prior to entering the library, attempting to stack all the odds in her favor, but it seems neither the odds nor her reckless decisions played in her favor this time.
‘nksheriff7 just posted a new video.’
Laura forgot about the fact that she followed him earlier this week.
She may be a fool, but at least she knows herself. She is too curious for her own good. If she doesn’t take a look at the video right now, she will be thinking about this notification for the rest of her study session - which she can guarantee would be completely ruined as a consequence. Hence, it is her best option. She puts her headphones on, and taps directly on the notification.
The TikTok video starts, and she vaguely recognizes ‘One Way Or Another’ by Blondie playing as the background music. Then, her full attention immediately gets caught by the zoomed in, masculine jawline, neck, and hands moving seductively in the middle of her phone screen. His large, thick fingers are dexterously pulling at a black piece of fabric. He is tying his uniform tie. The camera zooms out, and he is playfully dancing to the song, his hips swaying in a ridiculously sexy manner, his black shirt and pants fitting in all the right places. Laura watches, hypnotized.
And as if it wasn’t enough, it zooms in again, pretty much on his crotch area, as he is now slowly putting on his utility belt, securing it tightly around his hips.
Laura lets out a noise between a gasp and a moan. Maybe more like a moan.
The sound almost echoes in the room, and she looks up, horrified, to see that the few students left there have turned their heads to her, some of them looking amused, some of them giving her a dirty look. She closes her eyes and wishes, at this very moment, to be buried six feet under.
There is no point in pretending to get back to studying. She hastily grabs her belongings scattered on the table, stuffs them in her backpack, and takes French leave - hurtling down the stairs to exit the building entirely. She welcomes with great relief the chilly, autumnal air. However, she still cannot escape the many thoughts running rampant through her mind.
This was like the opposite of a striptease. Still, there are no other words to describe what this was; this was a thirst trap. There is no way he wasn’t conscious of what he really was doing before publishing this video. She was wondering earlier this week whether he understands the needy comments he often gets on his posts. Now she has her answer. He is very much aware of the effect he has on people, and he probably loves it. Laura is positively pissed. And what pisses her off the most, is that she doesn’t know why exactly she is pissed about it. Why it affects her so much.
She mechanically continues her way back home, hopping on her bus. As she attempts to make some sense out of her racing thoughts, she comes to a conclusion: whether this man did it voluntarily or not, he has declared war.
And there is no challenge in this world that Laura Kearney cannot overcome.
She comes up with an evil plan in her mind. This man needs to go through what she went through.
First, she needs to create her own thirst trap, whether through her profile picture or through a post of her own. Then, she will write a comment on his video, whatever she can do to grab his attention. If she is lucky, he will see it and check her profile. It is possible. He doesn’t have that many followers commenting on his videos.
As soon as she sets foot in her apartment and closes the door, she takes off her clothes and puts on her favorite, best-fitted sports leggings, as well as a matching long-sleeved crop top. She picks up her pink cap, pulling her high ponytail through the hole she cut herself at the back of it. Though it is still light outside, she remembers that the sun sets earlier at this time of the year. She hurriedly laces her running shoes, and takes her handy tripod before leaving. She goes for a slow, light jog until she reaches the nearest park in her neighborhood.
Running is out of the way. She wants a pretty, exercise-induced blush on her cheeks at most, she definitely does not want to look like she is dying on camera.
Looking up, she notices how the sun is getting low on the horizon. The golden hues of the leaves are highlighted by the low sunlight filtering through the trees. It is the time the photographers and Instagram influencers alike call the ‘Golden Hour’.
She finds a quiet spot under some oak trees, where she sets down her tripod. She uses it often for landscape photography, something she likes to do in her free time. Now though, she utilizes it in a purely narcissistic way. She tries not to think too much about how ridiculously unhinged she is acting right now, and all of that for nothing more than a complete stranger.
This is a retaliatory act. She was provoked.
Making sure that her toned exposed stomach can be seen, she takes some pictures and full body shot videos of herself in the lovely autumnal scenery the park offers freely to her. She is not familiar being in front of the camera, so she takes as much content as possible, and hopes for the best to be able to get something out of it in the end. She is forced to stop when the sun actually starts to set.
When Laura gets back to her apartment in the evening, she takes about an hour working on her raw footage. It is clearly not on the same level of lasciviousness as nksheriff7’s latest content, but she has to say that she doesn’t look bad on it, and she likes how tan and healthy her skin looks under the warm sunlight. Bless this excellent lighting for making her dark circles disappear almost completely. She ends up eventually with a new profile picture and a short video montage of her impromptu excursion. She edited it with the most basic tools on TikTok and her little knowledge in the matter.
As she deems everything ready to be published for the world to see, she almost chickens out last minute. But she remembers how Kaitlyn and Emma - especially Emma - would sometimes make the most random content on this app. She recalls them saying how it was kind of liberating, not caring anymore about the image you can give to others on social media. The moment Laura decides to change her picture and post her short TikTok, she agrees with them, and is actually satisfied with how she managed to achieve her own petty aims. He did ruin her sacred study session after all.
Then, exactly as she has planned it, she goes back to his cursed video and writes:
You look ducking fine today!
She ends her comment with a duck emoji.
This is a bit embarrassing. But fuck it. She just wants to catch his attention, and make him suffer a little bit. One way or another.
Step 1 and 2 of her plan are now complete.
***
Laura is a bit disappointed when she wakes up the next day with no notification from nksheriff7, however she forgets it quickly when she sees both likes and comments from her friends. To her surprise, nobody commented or sent her a message to inquire why, out of the blue, she decided to start being active on the app. Which is perfectly fine to her, she would rather avoid explaining them exactly what was the true motive behind this new content. In fact, she doesn’t know how she would explain it.
Kaitlyn instead wrote:
‘I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t see that after the many times you ditched my plans to go running together :*’
Laura smiles at the kissing emoji she added in her comment. Kaitlyn is a good friend.
And talking about good friends, she has to get ready now to see Ryan, whom she hasn’t seen for a very long time. Last time she heard about him, he was about to graduate from animation school and was looking for a place of his own. She guesses he did find it in the end. Pretty much all of her friend group is going to his house-warming party, despite the address he has given them being quite in the middle of nowhere. Ryan is a charming guy, and everyone liked him for a reason of their own. She knows Kaitlyn has been nurturing a crush on him since forever, albeit being aware he is unattainable - that is, when you’re not a 6 foot lanky boy named Dylan. Laura likes Ryan for his quiet and easygoing nature, and she was looking forward to seeing him again.
It is the middle of the afternoon when Laura exits her apartment to get in her car, her trusted sneakers on her feet, and the strap of her duffle bag on her shoulder. She stuffed it with her toiletries, a change of clothes, and some snacks in order to survive the - she checks the itinerary on her phone - two-hour-and-ten-minute drive to Ryan’s. She has also opted for a simple, forest green spaghetti strap dress, in which she hopes she will not sweat too much before the actual party starts.
After less than an hour on the road, the urban landscape gets quickly replaced by a more natural one, never-ending rows of conifers and colorful trees on either side of the highway. She is very pleased to notice that there is no traffic in sight. She gets lost in her thoughts and in the music of her road trip playlist, driving absent-mindedly for a while.
Undisturbed, until she realizes that there are flashing police lights in her rearview mirror.
She immediately slows down, and bites her lip when she sees in the control panel that she has been driving over the speed limit. A little bit. But there was no one else on the highway!
‘Well, fuck me.’ she mutters, defeated, using her turn signal and pulling over.
There, she kills the engine, taking a deep breath in to calm herself down. She was just driving a bit too fast. This is her first time being pulled over, but this happens probably to a lot of people. It’s nothing serious. She is not a criminal.
She looks up to the rearview mirror, mentally ready to face the consequences of her own actions.
But nothing could have prepared her for the cop walking towards her. A tall, dark-haired police officer.
His face looks familiar.
Too familiar.