#:((( thank you so much pls youre so so sweet | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

miraclewoozi · 1 year ago

Text

🫶woozi loving gym rats rise🫶

DON'T SWEAT IT. - l.jh

Today — the first time in a small forever that he forgot to check the battery on his earphones (and subsequently had them die on him mid-workout) — Jihoon is forced to notice you.

pairing; lee jihoon x fem!reader. content; fluff / gym crush au / strangers to lovers / kinda idiots to lovers / smut towards the end (MINORS DNI). w/c; just a breezy 18k- and some change? warnings; swearing, this is only proof read once because if i read it again i was going to lose my mind. please let me know if i've forgotten any. smut tags under the cut ( not sure that this counts as a warning but a heads up: the gym weight units, whenever mentioned, are in kilograms not lbs because i’m british and the metric system, am i right? sorry if there are any other british-isms, i try really hard to avoid them/catch them on a proofread but there are inevitably some that have slipped through the net. )

note; gym-selfie jihoon, you will never not own my ass. ( screaming internally this is the first fic i've written since my dan + phil youtube era. i don't know what i'm doing. this has been in my wips for about two months. it's a bit all over the place. that's. literally just me. bon appetite. <3 )

smut warnings: making out, grinding, fingering (f rec), oral (f rec), blowjob started/implied (at the end), protected sex (be safe out there gang), little bit of biting, no huge power dynamics? reader & jihoon are both switches (and simps), some use of pet-names (good girl/baby).

—————

He first sees you around lunchtime on an otherwise unassuming Sunday.

As you walk in, the gym is wonderfully quiet. A handful of regulars mill about, making full use of the rare freedom of the machinery. One of the club’s personal trainers is marching an impossibly steep incline on a treadmill. It could just be any other weekend session in this criminally over-equipped and under-used gym: the town’s worst kept secret. But when the door slams shut behind you, his head jerks up; it, in this moment, is the loudest sound in the room. It’s sort of the only one he hears at all.

Today — the first time in a small forever that he forgot to check the battery on his earphones (and subsequently had them die on him mid-workout) — Jihoon is forced to notice you as he sits with dumbbells rested against his thighs. He catches his breath as he wonders who you are, if you’ve ever been to this gym before, why he doesn’t recognise you. Are you a new potential regular, maybe? Or just visiting the area and making good use of the cheap pay-as-you-go rates? Maybe, he considers, lips turning downwards in thought… maybe you’ve been coming here for a long time and he’s somehow just always been so in his own head that he’s never noticed.

The last, he thinks, is sort of unlikely. No. He would definitely remember a face like yours.

His heart rate slows more than he usually lets it as he finds himself watching you fill up your water bottle at the fountain, taking a long sip on your way over to one of the stairmasters. His brain blanks out when he realises that he’s not just looking anymore, he’s sort of staring, and swallows the saliva on his tongue hard, looking back at the mirror. He doesn’t want to be that guy. He isn’t that guy – he just got distracted by the loud noise, and this is exactly why he checks the damn battery on his headphones before he leaves the house.

The only problem is that now, he can’t remember how many sets he’s done. He lies back and stares straight into a slightly sketchy light-fixture, neglecting to pick up the dumbbells that he put aside for his next set of pushes. Jihoon adjusts the position of his shoulders against the bench, arches his back off it slightly, digs his heels into the spongy floor beneath them and pushes the ones still in his hands until failure.

Today, he finishes his routine and leaves the gym without allowing himself so much as another glance your way.

He neglects to notice that your eyes are avoiding him right back.

—————

You smile at him for the first time on a Tuesday. Not the following one – a week and a bit later.

Seungcheol is with him tonight. Jihoon prefers to train alone nine times out of ten: this is a truth widely acknowledged, accepted and respected among his friends. Gym time is his down time, his equivalent of movie marathons and comfort food, of face masks and glasses of wine. But it’s not a hard rule: occasionally, someone will ask to tag along and use one of his guest passes, and Jihoon very rarely says no. There are two reasons. One, he isn’t actually rude, contrary to approximately eighteen running jokes in the group-chat. But also, it adds a little bit of variety to his otherwise very set-in-stone regimen, and mixing it up doesn’t hurt. Like tonight, for example. Seungcheol is pulling him into the studio off the main gym floor, his own gym bag packed with boxing pads and gloves for them to play with.

Variety.

Jihoon grumbles a little at the idea, at first. He has a very love-hate relationship with cardio, favouring a simple steady-state run over everything else, and it just feels a bit against his moral code to use gym time for something like this. However, he comes to discover very quickly that smacking Seungcheol’s hands is very therapeutic; Jihoon knows he’s maybe getting a little too into it when his friend asks if they can switch around, grimacing and shaking out his wrist after a particularly beefy punch.

He agrees, albeit reluctantly, tugging off the gloves he’s wearing and pulling on the pads instead.

This half of the activity is considerably less enjoyable for Jihoon; he starts to cool down and loses his flow almost straight away and after about thirty seconds, his breathing is back to normal and he feels ready to go again. Even so, he does what he needs to do to be a good workout partner, and goes one step further into ‘good friend’ territory as he allows Seungcheol to vent about the bad day he had at work in-between hits, offering murmurs and looks of disgust when it feels appropriate. Suddenly, the impromptu request to come to the gym tonight makes much more sense, as does the slightly bizarre choice of activity, but Jihoon tries not to ask about it in too much detail.

They swing at each other for a few more rounds apiece, working up a healthy sweat and getting out a few frustrations as the hour wears on. On the last set, Jihoon switches out Seungcheol’s hands for a punching bag, putting a lot more of his weight behind every hit and really tiring himself out. By the end, his hair sticks to his forehead and his cheeks have flushed bright red; he only stops when he gets that weird, metallic taste in the back of his mouth that says he’s probably overdone it. Again.

“Hit the shower?” Seungcheol asks breathlessly as he finishes his last set of Russian twists and lies down flat on the floor, equally sticky and flushed all over.

Jihoon pats his face dry with his towel, shaking his head. “You go ahead. I’ll have one at home.”

He doesn’t give Seungcheol much of a chance to respond, already cleaning down anything he’s touched or managed to sweat on and riding out the high of the endorphins flooding his veins. Secretly, he hasn’t had a cardio session this high energy or this satisfying in a long time. He isn’t going to readily admit to that though.

“Nah, I’ll do the same,” Seungcheol agrees. He starts packing the gear he brought with him into his bag and they leave together after, heading towards the exit.

That’s when he sees you again.

He doesn’t notice at first; you’re stowing your things into one of the higher lockers, and you have your headphones slung around your neck as he walks past. It’s the sound of a song he vaguely recognises through your speakers that makes his head snap over from the conversation he’s in the middle of. They walk past at the moment you drop down from your tiptoes, and you flash a small (but insanely pretty) smile at Jihoon.

By the time he manages to process this fact, he’s already walked past you and you’re headed over into the main gym area, so even though he turns around to try and catch your eye, all he sees is your retreating figure. He stumbles over his own feet, not looking where he’s going, and just barely catches himself on Seungcheol’s upper arm before he actually does fall over. His older friend glances down at his bicep before he adopts a look that Jihoon has seen many, many times before: just never directed at him. His cheeks heat up further and he looks away.

“What was that?” Seungcheol asks, one eyebrow so far up his forehead that it’s disappeared almost entirely under his soggy hair. He looks so smug, so incredibly entertained. Jihoon wants to smack that expression off his face, immediately.

“Nothing,” Jihoon rushes, managing not to act on the violent thought even though he wants to. He clears his throat. “No-one. I-... they’re new, I think. I don’t know.”

Seungcheol lets out a soft laugh, pushing the door open for them both to leave through. “Yeah,” he scoffs, eyes glimmering with something Jihoon doesn’t think he likes the look of. “Nothing, my ass.”

—————

Three days later, he hears you speak for the first time.

Granted, you aren’t speaking to him – at least, not at first. But that’s not really what matters.

It’s late, and it’s a Friday night. Fridays are usually Jihoon’s days rest days, but sitting around his apartment had him feeling impossibly twitchy, with far too much energy to burn and no way to do so without leaving the house. And he knows that he needs to take days off, now and again. He knows that they’re good for recovery and that it’s healthy to take time to himself that involves not lifting weights. But what he also knows is that if he doesn’t manage to shake the weird buzzing feeling in his muscles, in his joints, in his veins, he’s never going to get to sleep. So, here he finds himself at almost 10PM, walking down the street to get to the gym.

To begin with, he doesn’t know (or really care) who it is that’s coming up behind him. He can hear quite clearly that the mystery person is on the phone, and that they’re in the middle of what seems to be a rather heated argument: his brain latches onto occasional words, phrases, curses. Every now and again, their voice drops to a deep, frustrated mutter and he cringes slightly, making a point to keep his eyes forward and down so as not to draw attention to the fact that this presumably private conversation has become everything but.

He touches his entry fob to the sensor on the door as he arrives and pushes it open. Jihoon uses the opportunity to stand still, to glance back at whoever it is that’s walked behind him for the past four and a half minutes, and his eyes come to land on you. He falters, noting how your eyes are a bit glassy and your cheeks are stained with what he can safely assume are tear-tracks. In this moment, he wants to run; he doesn’t want anything to do with that, and he certainly doesn’t want to hear any more of your call. It’s none of his business, and he feels plenty weird enough already with what he has overheard. But, for some unknown reason, he stays in place.

“No – no, you don’t get to-...” you hiss into your phone. “It was our fucking anniversary, you asshole.” Jihoon’s face tightens at that, lips drawn between his teeth and his eyes blowing slightly wide. You pass through the door in front of him, flashing a small smile as you go. Another smile, he thinks to himself, but he’d be an idiot to compare them in any way; this one is so dramatically dissimilar to the first, he thinks it could almost have come from a totally different person.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing ‘insanely pretty’ about it this time. Your smile is tight-lipped and exhausted, slightly apologetic. Maybe even forced. He does try to return a warmer one to you, but he doesn’t know if you notice.

“Look, I’m at the gym – we’re not doing this right now. I’ll call you later.” You hang up the phone with the kind of sigh that groans in the back of your throat.

A small part of him wants to take this moment and use it to ask if you’re all right, but an even larger part of him doesn’t. It isn’t because he doesn’t care. In a weird way, considering this is only the first time he’s clearly heard your voice and he knows absolutely nothing about you, he does care. But there are a few things that stop him. Not only are you a near-complete stranger, not only would he have no idea what to say to you if the answer happened to come out as a ‘no’, not only is he already coming over a little bit clammy at the thought of having a conversation with you… Jihoon isn’t stupid. He knows from the sound of your voice and the way you’re rather aggressively typing a message into your phone that it’s a ridiculous question.

You’re walking into the gym at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, your eyes literally brimming with tears. Of course you’re not all right.

He’s still standing in the open doorway mulling all this over, but Jihoon only realises when a gust of wind slaps over his calves and sends a draught not only through the reception area, but up the length of his spine. He comes inside fully as you close the locker you’re using – he notices, but he isn’t sure why, that it’s the same one as last time – and throws his things into the one he always uses. Two below and one to the left of yours.

It’s quiet tonight: just the pair of you and one middle-aged guy. Jihoon recognises him as the friendly man who seemingly knows everyone who comes in here – including you, apparently, judging by the way he strikes up a short but energetic conversation. When the other guy walks away, you clamp your headphones back over your ears and return to what you were doing before, occasionally bobbing your head or moving your lips in time with whatever it is that you’re listening to. Jihoon steals little glances at you now and again when you’re in-between sets, watching how you breathe deeper, how your skin glows with sweat as you tap your fingertips against your thighs.

He almost drops the bar he’s holding when you catch his eyes in the long line of mirrors. He turns away, swallowing hard, completely missing how your own gaze lingers.

Jihoon becomes so obsessed with not being caught looking at you again that he doesn’t even notice when you disappear off the gym floor completely. It’s only when he pulls his headphones off at the end of his session and glances around that he registers your absence: your third companion is long gone, and he assumes you must have snuck out without him noticing too. He settles the speakers back over his ears before pulling on an old zip-up, flicking the hood over his head to shelter him a little better once he gets outside. But he’s in no rush to get home so he takes his time, resting his bag between his abdomen and the lockers, replying to a few messages and clicking his tongue at some of the nonsense being spewed into the group-chat.

He isn’t sure exactly how long he’s standing there for, but he does know precisely what pulls him back to the world outside of the device in his hands.

To begin with, he doesn’t notice you approach, lost completely in his screen. He doesn’t hear your footsteps, or the way you politely clear your throat to announce your presence so he can move out of the way. He misses your moment of realisation that he’s listening to music and has no idea that you’re standing three feet behind him. He doesn’t even see you walk up next to him, your hair still damp from your shower and sitting loose over your shoulders.

It’s only when you try to reach over him to grab the last of your things that he snaps out of his trance. The fragrance of your body wash hits him first, and oh boy, does it hit him. Sweet, and delicate. Then, he gets something beautifully fruity: it’s not a perfume (it doesn’t smell like a perfume), but it’s you. Your shampoo, maybe? A conditioner? He can’t tell. Whatever it is, the combination of fragrances has him feeling like he’s been slammed into by a damn freight train. He drops his bag to the floor, freezing for a second, and then finally moves away just as the little door swings open.

“I’m so sorry,” he says hurriedly, tugging his hood down and pulling his headphones off completely. “I didn’t even think you were still here.” He can’t shake the smell of you, nor the feeling of your warm frame leaning so close to his own. God, why is his heart pounding like he’s just finished a round of sprints? Why can’t he breathe?

“No – hey, no, don’t be,” you rush, shaking your head. You finally succeed in pulling your coat free and start trying to get it on; Jihoon wonders if you often struggle to find your sleeves like this, if you’re always chasing them around like a puppy after its own tail. He does it too, sometimes. He gets it. It’s cute. “It’s okay. I was trying not to disturb-... I’m sorry.”

“You’re fine,” he tells you. For the first time, he’s able to smile back at you properly.

Why is it so hot in here, all of a sudden? Do they shut off the air conditioning after hours or something? He’s breaking out in a sweat.

“Call it even?” you suggest shyly, extending out a hand now you’ve managed to get both arms through your sleeves. He looks down at your fingers for a second before reaching to shake your hand once, a semi-firm grip securing the ‘deal’. (He feels a bit like he’s been electrocuted after, but he tries not to make that too obvious).

It goes awkwardly quiet for a moment then, and Jihoon wishes deeply that he had it in him to say something. Anything. But his brain has gone completely empty and apparently, all he knows how to do is stand completely still like a fucking statue. He shifts his gaze from you, to the wall behind you, to the carpet beneath his shoes, all the while tugging at the collar of his sweatshirt as if it might bring him a tiny breath of fresh air. The gentle sound of you clearing your throat has him looking back at your face again though; he assumes for a second that this is maybe you about to announce taking your leave. All the while, he’s cursing himself out in his own head for being totally inept, and he’s not entirely sure that it isn’t written all over his face.

“Alone, today?” you ask, idly fiddling with your zipper and succeeding in taking him by surprise. He really didn’t think you were going to continue this. And yet…

“Hm?” he questions.

You swallow before answering. “You… the last time, you were with a friend?” you explain, and now it’s your turn to look away. He wonders if you’re a little warm too, if he’s right in what he was thinking about the air-conditioning.

“Oh. Right.”

He nods. An annoying train of doubt in his mind wants to know why you’re asking about Seungcheol; if maybe it was him that you smiled at the other night, even though he knows your eyes weren’t looking up at the man he brought with him. He thinks maybe he should be used to these turns in conversation by now – you certainly wouldn’t be the first person to ask if one of his friends is available, after all – but somehow, he isn’t, and he has a slightly bitter taste in the back of his mouth as he goes on.

He really didn’t have ‘you being interested in one of his best friends’ on his bingo card for tonight, that’s for sure.

“Yeah. I think he’s with his partner, or… I don’t know. I don’t really bring other people, often. That was a one-off.”

You nod silently and Jihoon can’t quite get a read on what that means. He wonders if you’re upset at the revelation of Seungcheol’s partner, or maybe that he doesn’t tag along to every session. Or maybe, maybe, you were just being polite, and you don’t really care what his friend is up to that means he isn’t here. But whatever it is that you’re feeling, you do far too good a job at hiding it; he’s suddenly very overcome with the desire to run, again, except this time he might just bury his head in the sand too for good measure.

“How much were you deadlifting, just then?” you ask in the lull, just as he thinks he might have perfected the best way to say goodbye that doesn’t make him come across as even more of a tool than he probably already has. It throws him off kilter, but somehow, he manages to answer you in reasonable time.

“Oh, God… uh, one… 160?” He says uncertainly. “That’s not… I can do heavier-...” In his mind, he slaps his forehead. “Wait, no, that’s-... I mean, it’s true, but I didn’t mean-...”

You bite back your smile as he talks himself in a circle but Jihoon is too flustered to notice, convinced that he now sounds like every arrogant gym rat on the planet. God, he’s given himself the ick.

“I guessed you could,” you say.

Oh boy, this freezes him. Mid-thought, mid blink, mid-breath: he’s completely stuck. What does that mean? What does that mean? He only just manages to unstick his now suddenly dry tongue from the roof of his mouth, looking at you with surprised, confused eyes and parted lips. There aren’t any words on them, though. Like a deer in headlights, he just… stares.

“I mean, okay. Come on.” Your eyes visibly drop as you look him over, gaze lingering at his shoulders, his biceps, his waist. “You can get another twenty on that at least, right?”

He doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening to him, but if he thought he was burning up before? It was nothing compared to this, now. And there’s no way you haven’t noticed how everything from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears has suddenly started staining scarlet. He bows his head and pinches his lips tight, wrestling away the train of thought that appears as you drag your bottom lip between your teeth momentarily, still eyeing his arms. God, he’s never felt so overwhelmed in his life.

“Something like that, yeah,” he strains. He’s trying so hard to be nonchalant, even though he knows all of his personal bests by heart. Deadlift, 195kg. He hit it a few weeks ago: a couple of days before he first saw you.

“Mm. You can tell.”

Jihoon tries to shake off the compliment, but he fails. In equal measure he wishes you’d stop (he doesn’t know how much more blood can rush to his cheeks before he keels over) and never wants you to stop talking. It’s all going straight to his stomach, though, and he doesn’t remember having felt this specific brand of nervous and excited and stupidly shy since he was in high school.

He can hardly keep up. This is the danger zone.

Maybe it’s a bad idea that he says the next thing that comes into his head in a desperate attempt to change the conversation away from how much he can pull. But somehow, his voice doesn’t break when he asks, “are you parked far away?”

What? It’s dark outside, and this part of town isn’t exactly known for its upstanding citizens and pretty flowerbeds.

“Oh,” you say, eyes a little wide. “I’m-... just staying close-by. I walked here.” The space between his eyebrows must crease a little too quickly because you immediately hurry to speak again. “Really. It’s like… not even ten minutes. All main streets. It’s nothing.”

“Ten minutes longer than I’d walk around here at night on my own,” he says lightheartedly. In tone, at least. He’s actually completely serious.

You laugh at that; he lets out a chuckle, too. Now, Jihoon doesn’t believe in fairies but he thinks that if they were real, they’d giggle just like you do.

With a smile still on your face, you say, “what? A strong guy like you? Come on, now.”

Do you have to keep doing that? Fuck, he’s absolutely done for.

He tilts his head forwards, eyes closed, trying so hard to stop the muscles in his cheeks from lifting in a grin that it becomes a workout in and of itself.

“I mean it,” he says, taking what he hopes is a subtle breath to settle the fluttering in his chest. The next thing he knows, he’s leaning one shoulder against the lockers, a little reminiscent of every douchebag in every teen movie ever made. If he doesn’t think about it too much, he won’t cringe into oblivion until he gets home and replays this interaction over and over in his head instead of going to sleep. “Maybe I’ve just lived here too long. I might be jaded, but it’s still true.”

“How long is too long?” you ask.

“All my life,” he tells you.

“No way?”

“Mm.” A beat. “What about you?”

“I’m just staying with a friend, right now.”

“Oh, right.” He falls quiet again as he remembers the first time he saw you, remembers making the list in his head of all the possible reasons he hadn’t seen you before. The second was true, then.

Why does that feel like the worst possible scenario? He decides not to unpack that here.

“Maybe-...” you start, glancing down at your hands, which have been twisting in front of you for a few seconds now. Your chest inflates, filled with the words you’re about to speak, but only a breath comes out when you shake your head instead of saying them. “No, don’t worry. Scratch that.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, because he thinks that whatever you were about to suggest, there’s not much he would have said no to. He feels like it’s only fair to give you another chance to say it.

But you don’t.

“Yeah, it’s nothing.” You pause. “I… should probably get going.” He glances over your shoulder at the clock mounted on the far wall, squinting to see the time. 11:45.

“Shit. Yeah, me too,” Jihoon agrees. He didn’t realise it had gotten so late, so fast: he’s hardly ever out at this time. Lord, he already knows it’s going to be an open inquisition when he gets back to his apartment. His neighbours, Soonyoung and Seokmin, are about to have a fucking field day.

But it’s already long past the time he usually goes to bed, so he asks his next question anyway. He still can’t shake the thought of you walking back on your own at this hour. “Do-… you need a ride?”

He’s not sure if you actually consider it, or just wait a moment before you answer just to be polite. Either way, you end up shaking your head.

“It’s okay. I’ve-… got a call to make, so.” Your voice is a little quieter, lips tweaking up into a regretful half-smile, and Jihoon curses in his own head. How had he forgotten about that? “Thank you, though. Really.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Just… get back safe.”

You smile and nod, taking a step towards the door and Jihoon does the same. He reaches the exit first and holds it open for you; when you’re both out in the street, he suppresses a shiver and looks in the direction of where he left his car earlier. Feeling the full force of the cold, it crosses his mind to ask again if you’re sure about walking home, but you’re already pulling a beanie down over your still damp hair and tapping something into your phone, so he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll see you around, uh-…” you start to say, only looking back up when you falter, realising that this is the first time you’re about to use his name and it occurs to you both, at the same time, that you haven’t done this part, yet.

“Jihoon,” he introduces himself, lips quirking into a side-smile. His gaze is expectant and you respond to it perfectly.

“Y/n,” you introduce yourself.

“See you around, y/n.”

You split off in the opposite direction to where he’s heading. Before he clamps his headphones over his ears for the short walk up to his car, the last thing he hears is the retreating sound of a dial-tone.

—————

He doesn’t see you then for two whole weeks.

For the first couple of days, he only idly notices; it’s not a big deal — it’s not like you’re always there when he is, and he’s sure it’s the same vice versa. But he notices your absence, nonetheless. By the end of the first week, he casually wonders if you’ve had a change in schedule. Maybe you’re on a different working pattern, something that means you can’t be there on Monday and Thursday evenings and at 11:45am on Sundays.

It’s not weird. He only knows this because prior to that first conversation, acknowledging you as you crossed paths by the free-weights became part of his routine. It’s fine that he sort of misses those little interactions, isn’t it?

Maybe you’ve decided to start training ridiculously early in the morning instead? He tried that once. Never again. It then occurs to him, in the middle of a self-enforced rest day as he sits in the dark nursing a headache, that perhaps you’re not well. He sort of wishes he’d had the guts to ask for your number the last time he saw you, now: he thinks he’d check in, see if you were okay, ask how work was going or something.

Deep down he knows he’d probably actually just be staring at a blank text thread with a ‘casual’ message typed, tweaked a few hundred times, and ultimately unsent. But that’s fine. It’s the thought that counts.

The next time he sees you isn’t even in the gym, at all. It’s a Sunday afternoon — he finished his morning session, went home, showered, and headed back out into town after some lunch with a few errands to run. He finds himself spoiled with the luxury of a spare few hours to kill and dips into his favourite coffee place, thrilled beyond belief to find that it’s not obnoxiously busy and that there’s only one other person in the queue waiting to be served.

Oh, he thinks when he looks up from his phone and sees a vaguely familiar set of headphones sitting on top of a definitely familiar mane of hair, standing right in front of him. Oh, shit. It’s you.

Jihoon goes back and forth with himself over it but ultimately decides he probably doesn’t know you well enough to just say hello out in the wild like this, so even though the urge to do so strikes, he holds himself back. It’s agonising, though. He really wants to.

You step forward to order and he’s typing out a reply to a message in his, Seokmin and Soonyoung’s three-way group chat, in which he’s literally been fighting for his life as of late. He made the mistake of mentioning you in passing a few days ago and ever since, he’s had to vehemently deny that he has developed his first gym crush, insisting that actually, he’s just made a friend. They don’t believe him, because of course they don’t. That would be far too reasonable. Seokmin says that Jihoon wouldn’t be blushing just from saying your name if you were really ‘just a friend’. Soonyoung argues Jihoon wouldn’t have mentioned you at all.

“I’m so sorry — bear with me, just-…” your voice is quiet but Jihoon hears you apologising to the cashier in front of you, and it snaps him clean away from the tiff he’s having with the men who live in his building. He glances up and you’re elbow-deep in the bag over your shoulder, red in the face with your bottom lip pulled between your teeth. He turns his head slightly and sees the small hand-written sign that says the card machine isn’t working, and they’re cash only, today.

He can hazard a guess at your predicament.

After another few seconds of you trying to find whatever it is you’re looking for in your bag, he starts feeling bad for you. This, right here, is his own worst nightmare. Should the roles be reversed, he thinks he would’ve just turned around and walked out. It’s exactly why he doesn’t bother with backpacks and satchels day-to-day: if it doesn’t fit in his pockets, he doesn’t take it out with him. The system isn’t perfect but it has saved Jihoon a decent amount of public distress.

But the roles aren’t reversed, and he has his wallet already in his hand, so… he only gives himself a few seconds to wonder if it’s appropriate before he does the stupid thing anyway.

“Don’t worry — I’ve got it,” he says, stepping around you, pulling out the cash to pay for your order. You’re dumbstruck when you look at him, head tilted to the side. The person stood behind the counter glances at you, then at him, and back at you; you don’t see this, however, because your eyes haven’t left Jihoon’s face since he appeared — as far as you’re concerned — out of thin air.

“I can’t ask you to…” you start to protest, but your hands have stopped fishing around and he’s moving the cash further towards the barista, who hesitates just a second longer.

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. I’ve got you.” He says this with such finality that you quite literally can’t argue with him. The lady behind the counter accepts the cash and you nod, shyly, mouthing a thank you. He orders his own drink — an Americano, nothing exciting — and you both go to stand at the other end of the counter while you wait.

“Hi,” you finally say, and Jihoon can’t help but give a small chuckle.

He doesn’t have anything hugely witty or creative in his arsenal, though, so he comes back with a matching, “hey.”

“How… have you been?” you ask.

“Can’t complain, really,” he says. “Are you okay? I haven’t seen you around for a few weeks.” Oh, God — the second the words are out of his mouth, he wishes he could take them back. Why did he have to add that last part? Why didn’t he just leave it at the question?

“Yeah — about that,” you breathe, ducking your head to conceal the heat that’s spreading over your cheeks. “You know how I said I was staying with that friend?” He nods, and you continue. “I was waiting for some stuff to get sorted out with an apartment and it all finally got resolved, so… I’ve been moving my stuff over to a new place.”

Jihoon feels his heart sink for a moment, but he keeps his expression pleasant and engaged. His fingers threaten to give him away as they fiddle with the aglet on the drawstring of his sweatpants.

“Sounds tiring,” he says lightly, and you laugh again, nodding. It’s odd, having his heart taking residence low in his stomach and somehow also in his throat, all while hammering away at a mile a minute. All the caffeine in the world couldn’t have this effect on him. “Is it going okay so far?”

“Yeah.” You nod. “It’s a process, but… it’ll be worth it.”

The barista behind the counter announces herself by clearing her throat and slides your drinks across the marble surface with a little glimmer in her eye. Jihoon picks them both up, extending yours out to you. There’s a pause (in which he swallows a large helping of self-doubt) as he glances to the door, working through several combinations of his next words in his mind before he looks back at you.

“Do you… maybe have ten minutes to sit with these?” He asks. You light up immediately, not even checking the time on any of your devices, nor the wall clock behind your head. He doesn’t let himself think about why it makes him giddy that you’re accepting the offer, just like that.

“Yeah — yeah, sure.” You smile, walking through the lines of tables and sliding into one of the big, comfy chairs by the window. He unzips his jacket and slings it over the arm of the other chair before settling in himself, his long fingers wrapping around the to-go cup. The drink warms his perpetually cold palms and he sighs sweetly.

“You must be excited to get into the new place, then?” he asks after taking a sip, letting it heat him up from the inside. It could be argued that this job is already being taken care of, but Jihoon is not about to go there.

“Oh, God yes.” You nod, relaxing back in the seat with your own cup. Jihoon subconsciously leans a little forward in tandem. “It’s been fun staying with my friend, but…” You pause, lips slightly parted, before going on. “Okay, a warning: I’m a terrible person for this, I know. She’s done me a huge favour, letting me stay there — but I can’t deal with how untidy she is. It’s driving me nuts.”

A chuckle bubbles in Jihoon’s chest, cheeks starting to ache as his smile grows and grows. It hasn’t fallen since he sat down opposite you, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, any time soon. “That bad?” he asks.

“You have no idea,” you groan, covering your face with one hand. He wishes you hadn’t — he thinks you look quite lovely when you’re all lit up like this. “She doesn’t clean her dishes after she eats — she piles them up in the sink for like, three days. I don’t think she’s used the vacuum the entire time I’ve been there. I keep finding wrappers and packets and mismatched socks everywhere —”

His snort of laughter rolls off the back of his throat rather ungraciously and he settles back into his chair. You gently bump his ankle under the table with your foot, beaming at him. “I’m serious! I can’t live like this, Jihoon. I can’t!”

The more you speak, the less he can control the fits he’s descended into, and his abs start to ache after a while; there’s desperation in your voice but it’s just wrapped up so cutely in your lighthearted frustration and decoratively tied together with your sunshine smile… he can’t help it — he’s in pieces. It’s okay though, because you’re laughing too: it makes him think of fairies again, and he can picture you with dainty, intricately patterned wings under the soft lighting in the café. He wipes the corner of his eye with the heel of his hand as he starts to calm down, taking a few deep breaths all the way into his stomach.

“You’re so much stronger than I am,” he says.. “I couldn’t deal with that.”

“You know, I had a feeling you’d be a clean person, too,” you say, sipping at your coffee again. “I mean… I’ve never seen you use the gym showers, so I wasn’t sure, but…”

“Hey,” he says, mock-defensively. “I don’t trust the locks, okay? I shower at home!”

Your cup is lifted to your mouth and he can only see you from the nose upwards, but by the creases at the corners of your eyes, he knows you’re concealing a smile behind it as you nod back at him.

Ten minutes turns to twenty and then somehow becomes thirty — Jihoon starts feeling like you’re someone he’s known for years, and not just the person he accidentally ended up paying attention to in the gym just a couple of weeks ago. He bounces off you and you bounce off him. Both of you have long-since finished your drinks, too: there’s no real reason for either of you to still be here.

Except the obvious.

“So, the apartment,” Jihoon says, leaning forwards again with his elbows resting on his knees. “Is it…?” He makes a few circular gestures with his hands with which he tries to imply something to the effect of ‘local’, or ‘nearby’, but he can’t quite bring himself to say that out loud. You seem to catch on though. Somehow.

Then again, you did say — a few subject changes ago — that Jihoon is on your wavelength. Maybe that’s it.

“About… a fifteen minute walk from here? Give or take,” you say, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead so fast it’s like they’re on strings, being controlled by someone else. He doesn’t realise for a few seconds, by which point he isn’t even sure how to relax them.

“No way?” he says, trying to feign nothing more than an idle interest. Obviously, he’s soaring.

“Yeah. I’ll want to get back training soon, too, so there’s some incentive to get this done quickly. I miss it,” you tell him.

Jihoon comes out with what he says next without thinking. His mouth is moving before fully engaging his brain. It’s the coffee jitters. Apparently.

“Well, if you need any help with anything, I’ve got a car.”

“You’re too sweet,” you say. “I really couldn’t put you out like that, but…”

“You wouldn’t be,” he assures you with a shrug. “If I’m not working or in the gym… I’m never really that busy. It’s up to you, but-… I’d be happy to.”

You bite the inside of your lip for a moment, apparently mulling this over, before wiggling in your seat to pull your phone out of the front pocket of your jeans. You unlock the device and hand it over on a ‘new contact’ screen.

Jihoon goes completely stupid: he thinks his brain stops functioning as he takes it to put his number in — for a moment, he’s staring dumbstruck, struggling to even remember the order of the digits now he’s under pressure, but it comes back to him eventually. His thumbs dart across the screen and he checks, double checks and triple checks that he’s typed it right before placing it back in your waiting palm.

His fingertips brush against yours and it tickles, sending small shockwaves up his arms and straight into his chest. You smile down at your phone before glancing up at him.

“You need an emoji,” you tell him, and he raises an eyebrow at you.

“Huh?”

“Everyone in my contacts has one — I’ve been doing this since I was in high-school. You need to pick one, too.”

“Oh, uh-…” Jihoon swallows, and for some reason he’s completely forgotten every single little emoticon option there is. He draws a blank. “I can’t — you pick one for me. I don’t know.”

You narrow your eyes at him for a second, pouting your lips as you seem to scroll through the endless options. Now and again, you look up at him, as if trying to see what best fits him before you continue your search. He waits. And waits. And waits. He’s about to throw in an admittedly useless suggestion of some sort of boring animal when you turn your phone around to show him what you’ve chosen.

Jihoon, the contact name reads. And there’s the little angel face next to it.

“Oh, come on,” he says, blushing deeply. “You can’t be serious.”

“I totally am,” you say proudly, turning it back and pressing to save it. He hides his face in his hands. “If you won’t pick your own, you get what you’re given. You did this to yourself.”

“Wow,” he chuckles weakly, sliding his hands up into his hair and raking it back off his face. Your eyes move quickly across every inch and boy, does he notice. You shrug in response and test it, sending the same little emoticon to him. He blushes harder when it comes through and he saves your number into his own phone before placing it face-down on the table.

More than an hour after buying your coffee, Jihoon stretches his arms above his head and checks the time on his watch. He frowns slightly, not sure how the afternoon got away from him so fast, and lets out a sigh.

“I think I need to get going,” he says reluctantly. Leaving you is absolutely the opposite of what he wants to do, actually. Alas, “I have some friends coming over tonight.”

“Yeah — yeah, of course,” you smile, leaning to one side to pick your bag up off the floor. “No worries.”

You both move to stand up and he throws his coat over his arm, leading the way out. He holds open the door for you to leave first, then follows you outside into the afternoon sun.

“It was really nice to see you,” you say, turning to face him.

“You too,” he agrees. “Text me if you need anything, okay? But actually do. Don’t just say you will?”

You laugh sweetly. Fairies. His ears might have actually caught fire this time. “Okay, okay. I promise. I’ll text you — thank you.” There’s a pause, but only a tiny one. “And for the coffee, too.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he insists, waving it off. You shake your head. He thinks your hands are twitching when you stuff them into your pockets but he can’t be sure. Your breath definitely stutters, though.

“No, really. Um… next one’s on me?”

He blinks, and blinks again. Next one? The next one? He feels like he’s malfunctioned and been forcibly rebooted. The next one?

“I-…” he starts, his throat dry. “Yeah, okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” You nod, smiling with — what he doesn’t realise is — relief. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah — I’ll see you, y/n.”

—————

Jihoon has no choice but to admit defeat to the group chat that night when Seungcheol and Jeonghan come over for a takeout.

Within minutes, his oldest friend is asking about the girl from the gym — he’s been just as relentless as Seokmin and Soonyoung in quizzing Jihoon, except it’s slightly harder to deny to Seungcheol because he did witness, first-hand, the way you had his friend tripping over his own feet with a single smile. At first, Jihoon tries to shrug it off. Play it down. Change the subject. He doesn’t mention that he’s actually spoken to you since he and Cheol trained together, or that he accidentally bumped into you and paid for your coffee, or that you stayed talking with him for as long as you did. He definitely doesn’t say that you exchanged phone numbers.

He absolutely won’t confess to being smitten.

All Jihoon willingly admits to is that from what he’s seen of you around, you seem nice, and with a roll of his eyes he does agree that he thinks you’re attractive. He gets a bit of a glare later in the evening when Jeonghan asks if he’s thought about where he wants to take you on your first date, and Jihoon tells him to stop asking stupid questions and eat his chicken before he eats it for him. But all in all he thinks he evades the worst of it pretty well. For now, anyway — he knows their pestering isn’t going away any time soon.

Especially not when, on their way out, Seungcheol leans close and whispers that whatever is going on with his gym crush, it suits him. Jihoon jabs him on the arm and the two men leave, laughing brightly.

It’s about an hour after his friends have gone home, having washed the dishes and cleaned up his apartment that Jihoon is sitting on his living room floor doing a few lower body stretches before he turns in for the night. He finds himself tapping into your text thread — not for the first time this evening — and skimming over the short conversation you had earlier. You messaged him when you got back to your friend’s place to thank him for the third time, and Jihoon replied back telling you that if you didn’t stop being silly, he was never going to respond to you again. Your reply came in the form of a “:(“ and his was a simple “:)”. That was it, but he’s been thinking about the exchange ever since.

He’s not sure why. Nor is he certain what about that has him looking down at the messages and grinning like a fool in his apartment, alone, at 10:30pm on a Sunday night. He could probably take a stab in the dark at what it means, though. He rubs at the back of his neck with one hand as he changes conversations and types out a short message with the other.

jihoon: fine. you’re right.

seokmin: ?

soonyoung: probs true, does need context

jihoon: about the gym girl. you’re right.

soonyoung: OH

seokmin: Hahahahahaha

seokmin: Yeah, you’re definitely the last to know, dude

soonyoung: fr even chan and hansol know atp lmao

jihoon: they what?

jihoon: how do they know?

jihoon: they don’t go to my gym! i haven’t seen them in weeks!

soonyoung: because we told them?????

seokmin: So, we might have told everyone

jihoon: blocking both of your numbers immediately.

seokmin: Hey! We’re just glad you’ve accepted it

seokmin: When do we get to meet her?

jihoon: blocked.

Well, great, Jihoon thinks as he fights the urge to lay face down on the floor and let the laminate cool his searingly hot cheeks.

At least he’s admitted it now.

He’s vaguely confirmed in writing that maybe he has a bit of a thing for you — it’s out in the open and at minimum, two of his friends know that it’s real. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Fingers. Whatever. No doubt by morning, all of his friends will have found out. The point stands that he hasn’t confessed to something like this since he was approximately sixteen years old, so whatever you’re doing to him, whatever this… is, it matters.

So, he asks himself, standing up off the hardwood floor and stretching his spine, arms locked behind him and pushed back as far as they can go. He turns off all the lights, checks the front door, goes through the motions to get himself ready for bed. So… what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

—————

Come Monday evening, he’s about ready to hit the roof.

As far as bad days go, Jihoon thinks he’s in the running for one of the worst ever. He slept awfully, tossing and turning through the night despite the usual winning combination of freshly washed bed sheets and his white noise machine drowning out the occasional disturbance from the street below. He wakes up two minutes before his alarm is due to go off, only to discover he fell asleep before plugging his phone in to charge overnight, and it’s sitting at a very risky 13%. The gel he uses to keep his hair off his face at work has gone weird and only does half a job, strands tumbling back in front of his eyes the second he goes to leave his apartment, very nearly forgetting his keys. Then, to really put the cherry on top, he sees that — at some point between getting home yesterday and now — someone has scraped his car while parking up next to him. There’s a large scratch right down the passenger side, with no note nor reliable CCTV in his apartment’s parking lot to confirm who it was, and of course, the space is currently empty.

All this before he even gets to work.

He fundamentally knows that starting the week off with a bad attitude will only lead to a really shitty remainder, but when Vernon sends his routine ‘Monday Motivation’ booster message — “you’re going to have a great day, today!” — into the group chat, Jihoon responds with a crude photo of his middle finger, right in front of the massive scuff on the bodywork of his Hyundai. Jeonghan replies with an ‘oof’, Wonwoo with a ‘yikes’, and Joshua, ever the comedian, sends a picture of Garfield lying face-down captioned ‘Mondays’ that nobody replies to. All responses feel kind of appropriate. But he pockets his phone without sending anything else, sighing again; he locks the car and checks the handle just in case before he finally heads into the building.

It’s going to be a long day. He just has to get through it.

Things don’t necessarily improve. He ends up in and out of meetings all day, so when 5 o’clock rolls around and he’s on his way out the door, he’s feeling a bit like he’s done nothing of actual value. Just, for some reason, thinking about you and tapping out a catchy beat on the top of his desk as he pretends to pay attention to useless presentation after useless presentation. But it’s still somehow been exhausting on his brain and on the drive back to his apartment, Jihoon feels so drained that he contemplates skipping the gym altogether and going straight to bed. This internal argument takes up most of his journey, but it does keep him occupied during the rush-hour traffic if it does nothing else.

Nothing has ever been fixed by ruining a perfectly good routine, however — so no sooner than he’s back in his apartment, he changes out of his button-down and trousers and into his regular gym gear. His protein shaker is ready on the counter for when he’s home again, the lights are off, his bag is on his shoulder and the door is locked. He pushes against it a few times, checking out of habit, despite the fact that his only neighbours on this floor are Soonyoung, Seokmin and an elderly couple with a cat they’re not technically supposed to have. Nobody tells, though, because Boots has become everyone’s emotional support animal. The only actual security threat is Seokmin maybe stealing something from his fridge, but he’s only ever satisfied after the third test anyway.

A quick warmup and a few easy stretches later, Jihoon sets about his business. Mondays are for training legs (and often, as a result, incapacitating himself for the rest of the week), and these workouts are always some of his most intense.

So intense, in fact, that he’s sweating buckets and cherry red when he steps away from the squat rack, tugging up the hem of his t-shirt to dry his face, a brief flash of his toned abdomen on full view. He’s just about catching his breath when he glances in the mirror, and his knees nearly give out when he sees you walking in. You lock eyes and smile at him in the reflection as you start to walk towards him.

It’s not just any smile, but he’s way too flustered to notice.

He spins around to face you, mortally embarrassed that you definitely just saw that, but in a weird way… kind of elated? You drop your headphones to sit around the back of your neck to greet him as you get closer. He pushes his hair back off his forehead and tries to act as cool as he can, but Jihoon suddenly becomes incredibly aware of everything about himself in this moment: his posture, how his arms hang by his sides, the exact positioning of his feet. The fact that he’s breathing pretty deeply, that his pulse is so loud in his ears that he can see your lips moving but can’t quite hear what you’re saying.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit — you’re talking. Focus. He needs to focus.

“Sorry — what was that?” he asks, eliciting a soft laugh from you.

“I like your shirt,” you repeat, a fraction clearer. Jihoon glances down at himself, at the same sweatpants and tight black workout top he wears in here several times a week, and looks back at you with a raised eyebrow. God, he lets himself think for half a second, entertaining his own stupidity with the idea that you’re finding this as hard as he is, too. Maybe I’m not alone in this.

“Oh?” he says. “Um — thank you?”

“How’d it go with your friends last night?” you ask, hardly skipping a beat, and he’s a little thankful that you skim over his poor attempt at gratitude for a compliment he isn’t sure he deserves. Instead, his confusion wraps itself around the fact that you actually remembered what he was doing last night. Hell, even he’d forgotten in the heat of the day he’d had, but you remembered. He’s sweating over it a little and briefly wonders what the chances are of the gym floor opening up and swallowing him whole.

Slim, he decides. But not zero.

There’s hope.

“Yeah — yeah, it was nice,” he says, internally kicking himself for overthinking this so much that he’s apparently lost his ability to speak. In the space of 24 hours, he’s gone from giggling over coffee with you to completely weak just at the sound of your voice. It should be easier here, if anything — this is home turf for him. His comfort space. He supposes the tight fit of your gym clothes accentuating your hips and thighs isn’t helping matters, and neither is the wide neckline of your own t-shirt exposing your throat and a collarbone. But still. He’s not a teenager. He should be able to handle a little bit of skin.

He clears his throat, rolling his head side-to-side. Focus. “Sorry — I’m-… I just didn’t expect to see you back here so soon.”

“Yeah,” you chuckle. “I-… couldn’t stay away. Missed it a little too much.”

“I get that,” he concurs, willing his eyes not to drop down your frame to a newly exposed area of skin just around your waist, your t-shirt riding up as you adjust your bag on your shoulder. “It’s good to-… have you back, anyway.”

“Good to be back,” you agree. “Hey — can you leave that set up for me, when you’re done? I’m on legs today, too.”

Jihoon doesn’t want to say that he knows Mondays are your leg days, as well, so he doesn’t. Even if it is true. He wonders if you would find it odd that he’s remembered. “Sure,” he says with a small smile, which you return. Just as you’re about to walk off to drop your things into a locker, he pipes up again. “I mean — hey, if you wanted a spot, or to-… do, you know… anything…”

“Are you asking me to train with you?” you ask, eyes bright and smile wider than he thinks he’s ever seen it. This is torture. He’s not even lifting anything and his heart is about to burst out of his fucking chest — God, maybe this was a bad suggestion.

“I-…” he starts, but he lets the breath out of his lungs and shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah. I am.”

“Give me two minutes,” you agree, hurrying off to put your stuff away and fill up your bottle.

He manages to squeeze another set of squats in before you get back, which is sort of a miracle seeing as how his knees have gone completely weak ever since you arrived. He’s scrolling through his playlist as you cross the gym floor on your way back to him, but he looks up and smiles as you approach.

“You go ahead — I’ve just finished.”

He knows he’s really fucking done for when, after the first round, you add plates onto the bar to out-lift him. All before he’s even positioned himself behind you to be a good spotter.

Jihoon doesn’t go down without a fight though, and things get a little competitive from there. Both of you throw some of your favourite (see: most agonising) exercises into the mix over the course of the hour, taking it in turns on the equipment and creating a session that just about has him able to move by the time you’re finished. You talk to each other when you’ve got the breath to do so, otherwise focussing on your workout with more intensity than either of you remember training with for a long time.

And so what if he has to turn away from you once or twice to compose himself when breathless whines spill from between your lips on your last few reps, the sheer effort of the movements pushing your muscles to their absolute limit? So what if he feels his entire body run a thousand degrees every time you sweetly encourage him to manage just one more? So what if his palm stays tingling for fifteen seconds every time you high-five him for a set well done?

You slide out of the hamstring curl machine with a deep breath and legs like two sticks of jelly at the end of the session, and he holds a hand out to steady you as you regain your ability to weight-bear.

“You okay?” he asks, and you nod, patting what’s exposed of your chest and neck with your towel.

“Yeah. Yeah — just… fuck.” You laugh, laying your hand over the top of his and squeezing. Only for a second — not even, only for a breath — and really just to let him know that you’re okay to stand on your own, but Jihoon feels a bit like he’s been electrocuted straight up his arm all the same. “You don’t come to play, do you?”

“Says you,” he scoffs, only now moving his hand from your upper arm. “I was wrong about you — you’re insane. Clinically insane.”

Using the paper towels he went to gather while you were finishing up, he wipes the machine clean as you stretch out your now slightly exercise-swollen thighs.

“I was just gonna finish up on one of the stairmasters,” you tell him, taking a long sip of your water. His eyes widen to the point of comedy, eyebrows high on his forehead. You snicker at his horror, the rim of your bottle hovering tantalisingly over your bottom lip. “What?”

“That’s-… got to be a form of masochism,” he says, exhausted just at the idea of marching up the never ending staircase even for a minute. You almost choke on your mouthful of water, only just swallowing it in time before a sudden, uncontrollable laugh erupts from your chest.

“How?!” you ask, covering your mouth with your hand. Just like yesterday, the urge to pull your arm away, to reveal your hidden smile strikes him. He doesn’t act on it, but he wants to.

“What do you mean, how? Why would you put yourself through that after what you’ve just done?” It’s completely lighthearted, and the rush of heat on your cheeks intensifies at the cocktail of shock and awe in his gaze.

You shrug your shoulders once. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just better than you.” The way the tip of your tongue teasingly sits between your teeth as you grin at him sends bullets of adrenaline through his veins and Jihoon runs his hand over his face.

For about three seconds, he tells himself he isn’t going to take the bait. He’ll lose, he’ll admit it — he’ll put his hands up and say you’re absolutely, definitely better than he is, if it means he doesn’t have to push through a round of cardio after surpassing every single one of his physical limits. But God, he thinks you look completely irresistible standing there challenging him like this, your hands on your hips. His eyes don’t leave yours and yours don’t leave his; both of your chests stutter, just a little bit, and he can see your smile grow in his periphery.

How the fuck is he supposed to walk away?

“Ten minutes,” he concedes, matching your footsteps as you start to walk backwards towards his least favourite line of equipment in any gym, ever. “And you’re definitely getting the next coffee, now.”

——————

That Friday, you finally text him again.

His muscles have just about returned to a working state and Jihoon is quite proud to say that he has regained the ability to sit down without needing something to hold onto. He got home from work, showered the day away and has just settled down into the sofa to start on the book Wonwoo has been on his ass about reading when his phone vibrates on the side table. He reaches over for it, trying to figure out which of his friends might be trying to get hold of him early evening on a Friday, and already going over excuses in his head as to why he can’t go out to do whatever they’re inviting him to. But when your contact name flashes up on the screen, every single thought disappears from his brain.

y/n: hey :)

y/n: just out of interest, how good are you at assembling furniture?

He furrows his brows at this. There’s a very obvious answer, which is that he’s not. He doesn’t want to reply saying so, though, so he goes for what he thinks is the next best thing.

jh: well…

jh: what are you trying to put together?

y/n: a bed :(

y/n: today’s your rest day, right?

y/n: can i bribe you with dinner after? :)

Oh? His brain stalls, fingers hovering over the keypad. He can literally see your face forming a little pout before growing into a hopeful grin in his mind’s eye. He doesn’t see how he could ever say no.

jh: apparently yes, you can.

jh: text me the address? i’ll leave in 5.

He changes out of his basketball shorts and hoodie in record time, abandoning Wonwoo’s book on his couch in favour of attempting to look at least somewhat presentable for you. He tugs on a pair of jeans that he hasn’t touched in about 6 months and one of his nicer t-shirts instead, even going as far as to spritz aftershave on the column of his throat. You’ve sent him your address and he makes to leave, doing his regular essential item pat-down on his way out the door. He puts your new apartment into his phone as he crosses the parking lot, stupidly delighted to discover it’s only 7 and a half minutes away from where he lives, and settles into his car with a series of deep exhales.

The breathing exercises don’t achieve much. His head is still spinning when he parks up in the street by your new place and lingers just outside the building. He sends you a text to say he’s arrived and you reply saying you’re on your way down. You appear in the lobby just a few minutes later.

“Hey,” you greet him warmly, crossing the space and putting your arms around him in a hug. He goes limp for a fraction of a second before his arms slide around you, too. God, he hopes you can’t feel his heartbeat right now. He thinks that the effect you have on him should be considered dangerous. But whether you can or not, you tighten your arms to squeeze him once before you unwind them from around his neck and step away.

“Hi,” he says, feverish from the tops of his ears all the way down to his toes. His hands find his pockets as you take a few more polite steps back.

“Thank you so much for this.” Your bottom lip finds temporary home between your teeth before you’re nodding back towards the stairwell. “I’m on the third floor. Follow me.”

He does. He walks up the stairs behind you as you ask about his day at work, and he tells you that he thinks today has probably been one of the best he’s had in about 2 months. When he asks how your day went, you turn your head back to look at him and stumble on the next step, gently laughing and saying that you think you’re at your tether’s end with D.I.Y, but it’s been pretty good otherwise. By the time you reach your floor, his thighs are aching, a bit of residual fatigue from your session earlier in the week making it a little harder than it ought to be. He can’t imagine how you’ve coped every day since then; if his own building didn’t have an elevator, Jihoon thinks he’d have been sleeping in his car.

You give him a little tour of the apartment, and he stands next to you at the window as you point out where you were staying with your friend a few blocks away. He thinks the view is seriously pretty in the evening light, enchanted by how he can see the tops of the slightly lower buildings and the street below, lined with neon storefronts and currently alive with shoppers and bar-goers, but… He cringes at himself for thinking it, but the view through the glass is nothing compared to the one he has inside.

You’ve started to put up a few decorations and knick-knacks around the place too. He doesn’t know you very well, but he still thinks it’s very you — all of it, and he likes them. Even with the room full of boxes and half-unpacked cases, there’s so much personality in it already. Charm. He brushes off your attempts to apologise for the ‘mess’, as you called it, despite everything being neatly pushed out of the way of the main space. It’s easily tidier than any other mid-move apartment he’s ever been in.

“Did you want a drink?” you ask him, walking over to the refrigerator and resting a hand on the door. “I’ve got wine, or-… anything, really.”

“Just some water would be great,” he says appreciatively, and a few seconds later you’re handing him a bottle, turning another one over in your hand. “I really wouldn’t be much help after a couple of glasses, trust me.”

“Does this mean you are good at it, then? Before a drink?” you ask him. Is it hope in your voice? Or do you somehow know how hopeless he is, and are you teasing? He can’t tell. Regardless, clearly his evasion earlier wasn’t quite as successful as he hoped it would be.

“About that…” He chuckles, taking a sip from the bottle and glancing sideways at you. “I’m sure between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”

“My knight in shining armour,” you say with a laugh, closing your fingers around his wrist and leading him through the door to your bedroom. You’ve managed to separate all of the individual pieces, but you haven’t made any real progress otherwise. He settles himself down on the floor and reaches for the assembly manual, pursing his lips as he looks at the little baggies of screws and bolts and various other things he doesn’t know the names of.

“Okay.” He frowns, looking back up at you where you’ve kneeled down a couple of feet away. You’re grinning innocently back at him, but Jihoon’s lips are more aligned with a pout. “You maybe should have mentioned that the instructions are in Swedish.”

——-

Ignoring the fact that you can’t understand the directions printed on the flimsy little pieces of paper, you get to work. It’s… an interesting process, but somehow between the pair of you, you successfully manage to assemble the bed in just under two hours by mostly following the diagrams (and having to backtrack several times because Jihoon managed to miss a few steps). At three minutes to nine, you’re both finally standing up off the floor, stretching out stiff joints and tight muscles; the bed is fully assembled and made up with your sheets in the centre of the room, headboard against the back wall, the lamp you set on the dresser casting a pleasant orangey glow on every surface.

“We did it,” you say, a little in shock, a lot exhausted, and absolutely starving. At least, that’s what he assumes you’re feeling, because it’s what he is. “We actually did it.”

“I mean, you did most of it,” Jihoon says. It’s true; at a point, he was just handing you the pieces you asked him for and holding parts steady so that you could fit them together. But if you want to call it a joint effort, he isn’t going to stop you, and the roll of your eyes tells him that you do want to call it that.

“Shh. You helped,” you scold him, bumping his upper arm with your elbow. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“If you say so,” he chuckles, taking another sip of his water. Jihoon isn’t sure he believes you, but the way you’re challenging him to argue further with your tongue pressed against the inside of your cheek scrambles his brain. Any remaining argument dies on his lips. “We make a good team.”

“We do,” you agree, expression shifting into a shy smile, bumping his arm again, your elbow lingering against him for a second longer. “Come on, I think I promised to feed you, too. What are you in the mood for?”

A movie has been playing in the background for about an hour by the time your food arrives and you’ve eaten everything. Jihoon relaxes back against the cushions of the couch and you’re settled comfortably next to him: there’s plenty of space on either side of you both, so there isn’t really any need for you to have your upper arm basically pressing against his, but Jihoon is too comfortable to say anything and you certainly aren’t making any attempts to move away. You shift your legs after about ninety minutes, bringing them up underneath you so your thigh is pressed against his now, as well, and you’re twisted slightly so you’re physically facing him but your head is still turned towards the TV.

Everywhere your clothed body touches him is scorching, and he wonders if maybe he should’ve worn a thinner t-shirt, or at the very least something a little less heavy on his legs. His jeans, slightly tighter around the thighs than perhaps would be their peak level of comfort, are clinging to him everywhere and he’s so aware of himself, so aware of you, of your sweet body wash, your fruity shampoo, every single one of your breaths… He’s cursed people out for breathing too loudly around him before, but he thinks he could replace his white noise machine with an eight hour track of just this and he would sleep like a fucking baby.

One of your elbows is propped against the top of the cushions behind you and you’re resting your head in your palm, and (not for the first time this evening) he glances sideways to look at you. They’ve been fleeting glances thus far, only stealing fractions of a moment before he turns his attention back to the TV. But this? This is the wrong moment. Entirely the wrong fucking moment because as his head turns, so does yours, and you catch him in the act. Fuck, if he thought he was burning up, before? He’s pretty sure he’s somehow just descended straight to the second circle of hell, greeting all the other lusty sinners like old friends. Several of his thoughts tonight have been considerably impure, and in this half second of blistering eye contact, they all come rushing back.

The universe is really testing him this evening, and Jihoon is stumbling. It feels like any minute now, he’s going to explode.

He straightens his spine and looks back at the TV, trying to force his eyes to focus even though he’s completely swallowed by the feeling of your arm straightening across the back of the couch, your fingertips grazing over the skin at the bottom of his hairline. He can feel your eyes still on him, your gaze burning into his cheek, no doubt following as his tongue darts out subconsciously over his lips. But he can’t quite help himself, can’t get the image of how sweet you looked out of his head; he clears his throat quietly and looks over at you again, coming over almost completely blank the second he notices the glimmer your eyes hold when they’re trained on him.

Any. Fucking. Minute.

“Jihoon, I-…” you start to say, and he turns himself a little bit so that he’s facing you better, completely forgetting about the movie now. That’s not a great loss: he couldn’t explain the plot even if he tried. “I don’t know if-… you can tell me if I’ve read you wrong…”

“You haven’t,” he hurries. Relief starts to ease the tension between your brows, before you scrunch them again and cock your head to the side. “I’m sure you haven’t, I mean.”

In this new position, one of his legs is bent and sitting up on the couch beneath him and you’ve adjusted your own posture to accommodate. Your knee sits just over the top of his, more of your impossible body heat radiating through his clothes, and he glances down at the site of contact before he looks back at you.

“I just-... I don’t know, I think I knew I was interested in you from the first time I saw you, but the last few weeks especially…” You’ve been rehearsing this. He can feel it. It’s written in your eyes, holding the weight of the words you’re struggling to say, and behind them he can see cogs turning as you try to get the words in the right order. (He knows how that goes, because he’s been trying to figure out how to tell you, too.) He nods, urging you to keep going.

“I can’t get you out of my head. I really like you.”

He short-circuits, then. Even though part of him knew what you were going to say, hearing it out loud flips a switch inside him and he stops functioning. Blinking at you slowly, lips parted, heart racing – he feels as if his brain has been sucked clean out of his ears and is floating somewhere way above his head. Way outside of a contactable range, way beyond any level of rational decision-making. Jihoon knows what he wants to say, of course – he knows that he wants to say that he likes you, and that he has for a while, and that maybe you should let him take you out on a date or something, but all of that sits just behind the barrier of his teeth, so…

He leans forward and kisses you, instead.

He almost can’t believe that he’s only wanted this for as short of a time as he has; it feels like it’s been building inside him for so much longer. Relief floods through his veins, the emotional dam finally breaching. It only lasts a few seconds, but with his lips pressed to yours and yours pressing back, the static in his brain goes quiet, the movie falls silent: everything stops, except you. He thinks you could’ve been carved from stone around each other — he thinks something just feels so inexplicably right. Your hand tightens in his hair and he gasps softly as he pulls an inch back, eyes heavily lidded and looking straight at you through his lashes. You move forward, leaning your forehead against his, and the feather-light hold he has on your chin slides up to your cheek instead.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to-…” he says after a long, long moment of remembering how to breathe, how to blink, how to exist in your space without combusting on the spot. He still isn’t sure he knows how to do any of those things, especially not now he can see every single line of your face this close. He’s trying, though. “But — shit, I’m crazy about you.”

You kiss him, then, harder than before, colliding in a mess of half-finished breaths and bumped, stinging noses. His other hand comes up to sit against your rib cage, yours pressing into the material of his t-shirt over his chest. He smiles and parts his lips as yours move against them, your tongue gently sweeping into his mouth, finding his own; a soft, low moan tickles the back of his throat, his fingertips curling slightly to tighten his hold.

Jihoon isn’t sure how you end up on your knees, straddled astride his legs with one of his hands tucked between your thigh and calf, the other on the curve of your ass — he just knows that he doesn’t mind one bit. You’re warm and comfortable, the arch of your back pressing you into him deliciously. He’s kissing you like his life depends on it (he really fears that it might), and you’re doing the same back, licking against his tongue and rocking slightly with every separation and reconnection of your lips. He feels your fingers brush at the hem of his t-shirt and slip just underneath at the same moment as you pull away from him, and he’s so dazed, so fuzzy, so lost in you that he can only tilt his head back to stare up at your face. In your current position, you’re towering over him. It’s easily the best view he’s ever had.

“Can I-…?” you ask breathlessly. The new roughness to your voice goes straight to his cock and he has to restrain himself from bucking his hips upwards.

“Yeah,” he says, leaning forward slightly to try and aid you. Your hands tug at the bottom of his shirt and peel it up over his chest: he raises his arms slightly and soon, you can toss it to the unoccupied side of the couch. He shivers slightly as he relaxes back, both at the chill in your unheated apartment and upon noticing the way you’re staring down at him. It’s addictive.

“Oh my God,” you whisper, jaw a little slack, smoothing your hands over his shoulders to feel every ridge of hard-earned muscle. You travel down his arms, over to his chest, down his stomach… Jihoon sucks in a breath, your warm hands absolutely searing against his skin, and his abdominals tighten beneath them. Tilting your head, you press a line of kisses down the side of his neck, your lips brushing against one almost unbearably sensitive spot when you continue. “Fuck, you’re so hot.”

He smiles bashfully, rolling his head to the side and giving you all the access you want. Your lips tickle euphorically against him as he tugs you flush against his chest, both his hands now tightly pressing against your ass, fingers kneading the muscle concealed by your pants. You’re sitting right over his clothed cock and he’s reasonably sure he can feel your pulse between your thighs, letting out a soft grunt when you roll your hips deliberately down into his own. Your kisses travel to the swell at the curve of his shoulder before moving back up to his lips, where he meets you with a fire that he’s never kissed anyone with, before.

“Says you,” he murmurs into your mouth, your teeth clashing, his hips pushing slightly up off the couch. Just enough to make you sit back from him, just enough for Jihoon to open his eyes and look at you. His hair, thoroughly scrunched up and pulled around by your desperately gripping fingers, fans out at all sorts of angles and his chest has taken on a rosy hue since you last looked at it. With swollen, shiny lips, glossy eyes, breathing deep, he looks completely blissed out, like a man who could unravel beneath you if you moved just right. All from a little tongue action. He’d usually feel embarrassed, but it’s hard to when you’re the person on top of him; to be honest, neither of you would mind much if he did.

You’re pushing yourself up and off him before he can really get his bearings and an audible whine of despair parts his lips at the loss of your weight against his cock. Fuck, these jeans were a bad idea: he’s straining against the denim so much that it hurts, and there’s a near perfect outline of his hard-on. He stops pouting the second you take hold of his hand and tug him upright, though, your eyes dark and determined and intense. He thinks he might faint, actually: from standing too fast and feeling as though all the blood in his body is pulsing through his aching dick, he has to take a moment to stop the edges of his vision going dark before you’re pulling him through to your bedroom.

Something flips inside him the second you have him there. Jihoon, who was more than happy to sit beneath you and let you take all the control in the living room, is pushing you back onto the mattress by your shoulder and slotting himself between your parted thighs the moment the door is closed behind him. He’s past the point of wanting you, now: he needs you, and he needs you to need him, too.

And God, do you. You prop yourself up on one elbow, staring at where he’s now leaning over you with wide eyes and your bottom lip drawn between your teeth. He bends down and kisses along your jawline in response, nipping gently just below your ear. Your back arches up and in a flash, one of his hands is beneath you, snapping open the clasp on your bra with a few slides of his fingers.

“Wh-…” you start, giggling and panting at the same time. He smirks against your pulse point.

He flattens his tongue against you and licks a salty bead of sweat off your skin. “What?”

“Had no idea you could-…” You’re cut off by a gasp as one of his hands slides under your sweater, slipping beneath the garment he just unfastened. His fingertips graze over your breast and a pleading sob escapes you. His smile grows even wider. “You were so…”

“So what?” he prompts, pinching your nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Another one of those beautiful sounds breaks the air above you. He does it again, massaging your breast with the palm of his hand. “Come on… talk to me.”

“So good,” you gasp, lying down flat and tilting your head back against the pillows. He rocks forwards to press his cock against you again and your thighs tighten around his hips, one leg hooking around his to keep him there. “So-… fucking good.”

You’re so impossibly irresistible to him, especially like this, and he sits up, settling on his knees to look down at you. Jihoon doesn’t even get the chance to move his hands towards the hem of your sweater to tug it off you though: you’re already grabbing it yourself, crossing your arms to pull it over the top of your head. He can see your bra now, and hell, it’s pretty even if it is just hanging off you. Baby pink and lacy. He thumbs over the material as he helps you pull it down your arms, briefly letting himself wonder if-…

“If only you’d been patient enough to see the set together.”

Oh, so you can read his mind now, too?

You glance down to the small space between your bodies and his eyes follow, lips slightly parted, a heavy sigh on his breath. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck — he wishes he had. Even imagining it, he’s throbbing.

“You wear all this for me?” he asks, hands creeping up the insides of your thighs. You nod up at him and he smiles down at you. “Fuck. I bet you didn’t even need my help tonight at all, did you?”

You’re bucking your hips now as his thumb brushes, agonisingly slowly, over your clothed cunt. One arm has come up to cover your face: for the first time, he acts on his impulsive need to see you shy, see you needy, and leans over you to gently pull it away and pins your wrist down against the mattress. He kisses you, his fingers on the other hand pressing slightly more firmly to where he’s pretty sure your clit is.

“Y/n, you’re so pretty. Let me see you.”

“I didn’t,” you admit, voice wobbling as he works you up so much you’re actually soaking through not just your pretty underwear, but the leggings you’ve had on all night, too. He can feel it against the pad of his thumb and he raises his eyebrows for you to continue. “Just… really wanted you to come over…”

“Mhm. I know,” he soothes, bending low again and kissing down towards your chest. His lips purse over one of your nipples and he sucks it up into his mouth, flicking his tongue over the bud. He releases your wrist with the hand currently taking most of his weight and leans on his elbow, teasing your other tit with his fingers. The weight of it in his palm has him murmuring soft praises against your skin, telling you over and over how good you feel. You push up onto your elbows to try and press him closer — when his teeth tug just slightly, you’re about ready to beg.

“Jihoon, please,” you murmur. He short-circuits, again. Goes blank. His name has always sounded so much sweeter on your tongue, but this? This? Oh, he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to recover. That sound is going to stick in his head for days, months, forever, if he has anything to say about it. But even if his brain isn’t working, his body moves on autopilot: he sits up and hooks his fingers under your waistband, pulling your pants down your legs and discarding them onto the floor.

He’s staring between your thighs with zero functioning brain cells and literal galaxies in his eyes, trying to figure out what cosmic miracle brought someone like you into his life, how on Earth he’s ended up between your thighs. The question is so overwhelming in his mind that he barely notices that you’re moving, at first. Jihoon doesn’t know what causes you to try and bring your thighs together — if it’s shyness or arousal, desperation, a search for friction? — but he stops you as soon as he realises, laying a hand on each of your legs, pinning your knees down now, instead.

“Keep your legs wide for me?” he asks, to which you punctuate a nod with an assenting hum. “Good girl.”

You’re so wet that when he strokes two fingers over your covered pussy, pressing the fabric of your panties into your heat, they come away thinly coated in the arousal that’s seeped through them. He brings his fingers to his lips then, eyes fluttering as he licks your slick off them. You taste otherworldly and he doesn’t hesitate to tell you so with a groan.

“God,” he murmurs, tugging at the waistband of your panties with his other hand. His eyes ask if you’re ready — if you’re sure, and when you nod down at him, he pulls them off completely too. His middle finger slips between your folds, collecting the wetness dribbling out of you, and he drags it slowly upwards towards your clit. He repositions himself again, leaning down over you with his head at your neck, the heel of his hand resting against your lower abdomen. He draws small circles over the bud, laying open-mouthed kisses at your collarbone and listening to the gorgeous sounds you make, learning what you like, following each gasp and moan and chasing as many of them as he can draw out of you.

At the same time as you start rocking your hips up to meet his hand, your nails scratching gently against his scalp again, Jihoon slips his finger down from your swollen clit to press it inside you. You gasp, high-pitched and needy, your cunt spasming around his finger and pulling it in deeper. He’s only in up to his second knuckle but the way you keen for him has him pushing further until it’s buried inside your pussy completely.

“S’this okay?” he asks, but he knows your answer thanks to your vocal responses to him already slowly easing his finger in and out, in and out. You nod your head almost aggressively as he glances up at your face, your eyes squeezed tightly shut, jaw tense, throat bobbing as you swallow hard.

“More — please,” you say not long after. A breath hitches in your throat when he does exactly what you ask, pressing the heel of his hand against your clit and positioning another finger at your entrance. He flexes his wrist slightly to get comfortable, pumping both fingers into you now, and he curls them upwards at just the right time to make your back arch off the bed. “Fuck — mhm, just like that—…”

He moves down your body slightly, reattaching his lips to one of your nipples as he fingers you deep and slow. He’s in no rush: Jihoon thinks he could do this all day and just deal with the RSI later on. You look so unbelievably hot with your face scrunched in pleasure, your thighs quivering as you fight to keep them apart like he asked you to, with your hips twisting down against his hand to try and get his fingers deeper and faster. When he lowers himself all the way down, settling completely between your thighs, he flicks his tongue out over your clit and your back arches up off the bed with a gasp.

“Don’t stop,” you whine, all high-pitched and rushed, both syllables merging into one hurried sound. “Fuck, fuck — please, don’t stop.”

“I’m not going to,” he murmurs, keeping pace and rhythm as he works you towards your high. God, he thinks there couldn’t possibly be anything in the world more sexy than watching you come undone from this angle. Your chest rising and falling in stuttered breaths, your hips rocking down against his hand, your pussy right on his mouth. Just the thought of it has his cock jumping in his boxers. “You gonna come for me, huh?”

“I-…” you start, releasing your death-grip on the bedsheets to bring a hand to cover your face. He clears his throat deliberately — perhaps it’s sort of closer to a growl than a cough — and he thinks maybe you really can read his mind, or maybe you’re learning that he wants to see every inch of you (especially like this), because a second later, it’s tangled up in his hair and holding him in place. “Y-yeah, fuck, I…”

“Good girl,” he coos again, and that breaks you. Your pussy tightens around his fingers and you feel yourself convulse, muscles clenching and releasing as you go over the edge with a cry. He eases you through your climax, tongue laving over your clit, fingers slowing but not stopping inside your cunt until your thighs close around his head in your oversensitivity. He takes the hint, then, and he slowly pulls away, sucking his fingers clean of your arousal while you take a few breaths to recover.

“Oh, my God,” you sigh as he moves back up and starts pressing small pecks over your chest and collarbones, your fingers lacing through his hair again to pull him up to kiss you. You groan softly at the taste of yourself on his lips, and can’t blame you. He still isn’t over it, either.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he tells you in-between kisses, one hand supporting the back of your neck to keep you close. “So pretty. So sweet. So good.”

“Shh,” you giggle, but he doesn’t. Just about every adoring adjective Jihoon has in his arsenal is murmured against your lips until you’ve gathered enough strength to get up on your knees and push him back onto the mattress, fumbling with the button of his jeans.

He groans at the relief as you tug them down over his hips and thighs. “We don’t have to do anything else if you’re—”

“Shh.” This one’s a little more insistent, and he makes a show of clamping his lips back together. “You wore the tightest jeans on the planet, had your cock on-fucking-display for me all evening, and you think I wanna stop now?”

His jaw falls slack at the words that come out of your mouth. The incredulous way with which you say them has him involuntarily bucking up into nothing. Your expression matches his when you finally get his jeans all the way off and his thin, black boxer-briefs are the only barrier between you. The outline of his cock strains against them, tenting the fabric: Jihoon doesn’t miss the way you lick over your lips before glancing up at him through your eyelashes. It’s your turn to give him the look, now, asking that this last part is okay, with your fingertips hooked underneath the elastic waistband. He nods feverishly up at your heavy gaze.

“Please,” he groans, lifting his hips so you can pull them off. His length springs free the moment they’re pulled low enough, slapping back against his abdomen, sitting pretty against his toned muscles, thick and veiny and red-tipped. Desperate. His underwear joins the pile of clothes down the side of the bed as you throw one leg over him; sitting across his thighs, you take his cock into your hand, giving it a few gentle strokes. He fucks up into your palm when you squeeze your fingers around it.

“I need you so fucking bad,” you murmur, head spinning, and Jihoon isn’t in much of a better state himself; he’s fighting to keep his eyes open, fighting to keep his breaths coming. He sits upright, one arm behind him for support, and kisses you hard as you continue to tug at his length.

“Need you, too,” he breathes, shifting so he has both arms around you. In a swift movement, muscles rippling, he lifts you off him and turns you over so he has you sitting on your now impossibly scrunched comforter.

He finds home back between your legs as you reach over into the drawer at your bedside and fumble around for a few seconds. He hears a little clatter and a rustling and when your hand resurfaces, you’ve pulled free a small foil square. You don’t even give him a chance to lean forward and take it; you’re ripping it open and looking up at him with the biggest doe-eyed stare he thinks he’s ever seen. He nods at the silent question, a grunt tumbling free as you roll the condom down his length. This is the most pathetic little bit of contact and he’s fighting demons.

“Okay?” he asks, shuffling back a little and giving you space to lie down flat on your back. You nod up at him, already wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

“Mhm, just-... take it slow?” you ask him, anticipation rendering you already a little breathless. “S’been a while.”

A grin blooms all the way from his lips to his eyes and he leans down to kiss you again, positioning his tip at your hole and pressing forward just enough to tease.

Your thighs tighten around his hips and he pushes himself further inside you with a stuttered groan, agonisingly slowly, inch by inch. He stills every few seconds, both to give you the time to adjust and so that he can take a steadying few breaths and not collapse at how good you feel wrapped around him; he stops pressing his hips forward before he’s fully sheathed inside your pussy and you let a whine slip, the stretch slowly easing.

“You can move,” you tell him, laying a kiss to his chest. “I’m okay.”

Jihoon gives a soft laugh. Oh, he wishes this was just to be polite, but no. He’s in real danger of losing control any second. “Yeah, this isn’t for you, baby.”

“Oh?” you ask. You clamp around him and he gasps at the tightness, hips jerking forward until he’s buried up to the hilt. Fuck, there’s a bruised cervix if you’ve ever had one; a high-pitched whine erupts out of your lips and he ducks his head down to your ear.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You just-... fuck, you feel so good.”

“Mm, says you.”

It’s another moment before he thrusts with intent, though. But when he does? When he pulls out halfway before sliding all the way back inside you, losing and regaining the feeling of your heat enveloping him entirely, hearing your gasps against his collarbone? The invisible reigns holding him back unravel and he settles into a slow but intensely deep rhythm, guiding your legs around his waist. You hook your ankles behind his back and somehow, you suck him in deeper still, your bodies touching everywhere they possibly can, so impossibly close.

The arm not holding his weight slides beneath your hips and raises them just a little. Now, at this angle, every time he rolls into you he grazes against your sweet-spot and you’re reduced to an incoherent mess within a few minutes. Good, he thinks, because he’s not doing much better, himself.

You hug him tighter after one particularly well-angled thrust, sinking your teeth into the muscle of his shoulder. He hisses at the sting, and your lips part as if you’re about to apologise but he doesn’t give you the chance to; he bumps your nose with his own to ask you to lift your head slightly, before he bends down and kisses you hard.

“Do that again,” he gasps, almost all of his weight against you as the hand not around your hips comes up to rest on your cheek. When your brows tighten, he swipes his thumb over your spit-covered, swollen lips. “Please. ”

So, you do.

Maybe not as harshly as the first time, but your teeth find his collarbone and you suck a bruise into his skin, drawing from him the highest pitched sound you think he could possibly make. He squares his jaw, ducking his head back down, biting on his bottom lip before he has no choice but to speak.

“I’m close, y/n,” he confesses, fucking into you slower, trying to stave it off for a few more seconds, his hips stuttering. “Can-... can you give me one more…?”

You nod, the knot in your stomach already growing tighter and tighter with every movement he makes, and when one of your hands unwinds from around his back to slide between your sweat-slicked bodies, he moves slightly away, letting you reach down.

It’s the sight of two of your fingers finding your clit and rubbing your favourite movements out on yourself that takes him past the point of no return, his cock sliding in and out of you messily, desperately, chasing the high that he’s right on the brink of. He kisses and nips just below your ear, breathy groans tickling your neck, and your high-pitched whine tells him you’ve hit your orgasm just as he starts to spill his into the condom, gushing around him, your walls fluttering and milking him for all he’s worth.

—

You offer for him to shower first – an offer he gratefully accepts. While you’re taking your turn afterwards, Jihoon hunts down a fresh duvet cover in your room; he changes it, grabs you a glass of water for when you’re done, and sits on the edge of his bed with just the towel wrapped around his waist, scrolling through his phone. He looks up with a bright grin as the door opens and you emerge through it in your pyjamas, glowing from the light behind you, stray droplets of water clinging to your arms.

You pause gently rubbing your hair dry with the towel, eyes brightening when you see him. “You didn’t have to do all this,” you say, and he pushes a hand through his own still damp hair with a laugh.

“It was the least I could do,” he counters. You raise your eyebrows at him, crossing the room to sit opposite him. He drops his phone down onto the mattress. “I couldn’t leave and make you change them yourself.”

“Leave?” you ask, picking up one of his hands and playing idly with his fingers.

“I mean, it’s getting pretty late, so…” he says. “I probably need to get going at some point.”

“Or…” you say, tongue darting out over your lips. “Maybe you don’t.”

Jihoon looks down at your hands, then back up at you. Are you suggesting what he thinks you are, or has he still not quite come back to himself from earlier? It’s hard to say if the look on your face is hope, or something else.

“Are you… asking me to stay?” he asks.

“Only if you want to,” you tell him. He lifts your hands up, pressing a kiss to one of your knuckles, then using it to tug you closer to him until he can plant one on your own lips. “I’ve probably got an old t-shirt you could sleep in.”

“Of course I want to.”

So you slip away from him to go rummaging through your drawers, trying to find the promised article of clothing. The whole time, he’s awestruck. Jihoon can’t take his eyes off you.

——————

He wakes up next to you for the first time on a Saturday morning. His sleep-fogged brain registers lying on an unfamiliar mattress, tucked beneath new bedsheets, eyes fluttering open to take in a room he doesn’t quite recognise at first. Part of him wonders if he’s still dreaming. When he rolls over onto his side, and his eyes land on the curve of your shoulders, the fall of your hair down your back, he has to ask himself the same thing again.

All of last night must’ve been a dream, he muses, smiling shyly to himself and watching your frame rise and fall with every slow breath you take. There’s no way you really told him you liked him, too. There’s no way any of it could have really happened.

“Y/n?” He asks in the gentlest of whispers, only wanting to stir you if you’re awake already. When there’s no response, he moves a tiny bit closer to you, hesitating before he slips his arm around your waist and settles with his chest pressed against your back. A wildly insecure part of his brain tries to argue that just because you wanted what happened last night, that doesn’t mean you want all of this now. Maybe you only wanted to sleep with him, or maybe you’ll have changed your mind somehow now the sun’s come up. He considers moving away again, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling until you wake up and he can have a real conversation about where both of your heads are at with everything, but he barely gets a chance.

Those thoughts are silenced almost immediately, his brain falling quiet the second you roll over in his arms. You bury your head in the valley between his pectorals, tucked away from the world beneath his chin. His arms tighten around your sleep-warmed body.

“What time is it?” You ask. He contains a shiver at the softness of your voice, bliss running the length of his spine. Jihoon thinks that he could get used to this.

“I don’t know. Early, I think,” he murmurs, and you whine softly, burrowing deeper against his chest. “Go back to sleep.”

“Not if you’re awake,” you say. He’s not entirely convinced you can stick to that promise, though, with the way you yawn and he feels your eyelashes fluttering.

“Don’t worry about me,” he tells you, the tips of his fingers ticking against your side. He ducks his head, pressing a kiss to your hair. A soft hum rumbles in your throat and he can’t hold back the smile that spreads over his lips. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

True enough, you fall back asleep curled up against him and Jihoon, to the sounds of your slowing breaths, drifts off too. A few hours later, at a far more reasonable time, you wake him up with a press of your lips to the tip of his nose.

Innocent, exploratory kisses grow heated in the warmth of the sun that streams through your blinds. Hands start to travel, sleep clothes get discarded, and you have him lying on his back, pressing kisses down his chiselled stomach when his phone starts to vibrate on the floor next to the bed.

He groans at the distraction, again as you shuffle up to sit on your knees and look at him expectantly.

“Are you gonna answer that?” you ask, the tips of your fingers grazing his thighs. He shakes his head, no. “Come on, Jihoon. It might be important.”

“Not important enough,” he sighs.

“At least see who it is,” you laugh. Despite a huffed protest, he props himself up on one elbow, leaning over the side of the bed and glancing down at his phone screen.

Seungcheol.

The arrangement to go for a run this morning comes rushing back to Jihoon, who slaps a hand to his forehead and reaches down to grab his phone off the floor, looking at you apologetically.

“Give me two seconds,” he says, and you grin wickedly up at him, ducking low to press a kiss to one of the lines that disappears down into his boxers.

“Take all the time you need.”

He answers the call frowning, flopping his head back against the pillows.

“Hey, look – I’m really sorry,” he starts to say, but Seungcheol’s voice cuts him off almost straight away.

“Jihoon, where the hell are you? I got to your apartment and your car wasn’t here, and Seokmin said he didn’t hear you come home last night. We all thought you’d died,” he hurries. Jihoon can picture the expression on the other man’s face perfectly, which is pretty unfortunate seeing as how you’ve moved to start palming his hardening cock through his briefs.

“I stayed out,” Jihoon says, a little wobbly. “I can’t make the run, someth-... shit.” You press an open-mouthed kiss to the outline of his length, the heat of your breath through the fabric sending him into overdrive. “Something came up-...”

The line goes silent for a second, and his breath stutters as you do the same thing again. Each press of your lips is euphoric agony, and he’s really not hiding this as well as he wishes he could. One look down at you tells him that you’re very proud of that.

“Dude,” Seungcheol gasps, snickering suddenly. “Tell me you’re not with a girl right now.”

“Shut up. Go away,” Jihoon grunts. “I’ll call you later.”

“Oh my God, is it gym girl? Did you finally-...”

“Bye, Cheol,” he hurries, hanging up before his friend can say anything else. He drops his phone onto the mattress, fake-glaring down at you and shaking his head. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Yeah?” you ask, pulling at the waistband of his briefs to tug them down his legs. “Let me make it up to you, huh?”

#fb : don't sweat it.#THANK YOU🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 SOOOOO MUCH #sorry this is so late pls forgive me #i am in fact the little woozi gym worm. that’s me I’m waving at u from inside there. Hello 🫶#I’m so🥹 you’re so sweet thank you thank you thank you #THE MATCHING SET WAS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME im so glad you agree. We are on a level here. you understand me😭#hoping your water is crisp & your pillows are cold & your bedtimes are easy forever and ever 😭🫶 im so glad you’re here #thank you for the love 🫶 mwah #q

2K notes · View notes

nereidprinc3ss · 6 months ago

Text

you know the killer doesn't understand

in which spencer is so terrified he's going to hurt you after he gets out of prison that he can barely touch you. an argument ensues.

angst (+ comfort) warnings/tags: established relationship, fem!reader, mentions of violent intrusive thoughts (non-specific), arguing, yelling, use of the word rape, nightmares, happyish ending, mention of showering together, it's a bad time but it's also a good time for us woo i love angsty angst a/n: i miss posting for real so bad i dug up this draft which was mostly finished and polished it up. i think i really like this one and it was based on a request but i lost it:( i hope u guys enjoy this, pls lmk<3

Spencer is by no means happy with his sudden fear of touching you—it makes everything in his life significantly harder and less convenient and he hates that he’s constantly afraid he’s going to break you. He hates watching you hold back from attacking him with a hug when he enters a room like you used to, and he feels terrible every time you ball up on the opposite side of the couch as he reads, waiting for an invitation into his lap but too scared to ask for one (he’ll always hold out his arm for you, though—he’s not cruel.)

You’re adorable in the way you stand at the foot of the bed in your pajamas, arms behind your back like it’s not your bed too, but it makes him feel terrible. This isn’t at all what he wanted for you, and in all honestly he’s thought about ending the relationship because he knows he’s being an absolutely awful partner—but he just can’t bring himself to. Instead, he gestures for you to get into bed, and you curl up under the covers close to him but not against him, and he’ll play with your hair and read for a while because he can’t sleep very well. Eventually he’ll assume the position of sleep, but some sick part of him doesn’t know what to do with the sounds of the city and the fan instead of the sounds of a hundred men rolling and sniffing and shuffling around their echoey cells. He doesn’t understand warmth anymore, or softness, or nice pajamas or fluffy pillows. He’s starting to think he doesn’t understand you. And that’s the worst thought of all.

So he essentially dozes for the first week, on and off, always exhausted in the mornings but what’s new. When he can’t sleep, he turns his head to watch you breathe—some beautiful, sweet creature dreaming in his bed, unwaveringly loyal to him even though he can hardly stand to touch you for fuck’s sake. You’re beautiful, and it makes him feel better to watch you, even if he can’t touch you. Not now that he knows what he is capable of doing to another person. What if he has some sort of PTSD—PTSS, thank you, Luke Alvez—induced dream and does something terrible to you in his sleep? It’s not like you’re tiny, but he’s stronger, he knows he is, and lately every time you get too close he remembers exactly what it feels like to exert the full force of that strength, and what it feels like when someone else unleashes their own onto him.

They’re just intrusive thoughts, and in them he doesn’t hurt you intentionally, but he always feels a little bit sick now. He is so, so sick. A bull in a China shop. Spencer knows exactly how breakable humans are—it’s his job to know. If he left so much as one red mark on you by accident, he’s quite sure he’d drill down to a previously unknown rock bottom. And if he reaches that point, he doesn’t know if he’d ever deserve to come back.

Every day it seems to become clearer that the only humane thing to do is break up with you. But for now he’ll watch you sleep—the delicate rising and falling of your chest, the way you curl in on yourself because you can’t curl into him. In sleep you look so peaceful and content. You never look that way awake, anymore. Not when he’s around, which is pretty much always. At least he can’t disappoint you while you’re asleep.

Or so he’d like to think.

Until one night, about a week and a half after he gets home; you whimper in your sleep. It’s so quiet he could’ve missed it, but he doesn’t, and then he watches your smooth brow furrow with worry and he knows you’re having a nightmare immediately.

Spencer panics—before, he would have woken you up and held you and comforted you until you fell back asleep and it would have been so simple. Now he’s frozen, afraid to touch you but not sure if he can just lie there watching you so afraid and not do a thing about it.

In the end, you choose for him—and it only takes a few moments. You’re close enough to him that it’s easy for you to close the few inches even in sleep, and maybe you’re slightly conscious but not enough to remember you’re not supposed to touch him.

He stops breathing as you fold yourself against him, muttering worried nonsense—he catches his name, once—nestling against his chest, one searching arm gently draping over his waist. Every muscle in his body is rigid, and his thoughts—his mind goes… completely fucking blank.

Suddenly, all he’s known, all he’s ever known, is the smell of your hair, the warmth of you seeping through layers of clothing, and the weight of your arm over him. Everything he ever was ceases to exist, and he’s just this, right now. The person you’d turned to unconsciously for comfort, so sure, so trusting that he would keep you safe. He can feel your breath for the first time in months. Slowly every tense muscle unspools. For the first time in a long time he doesn’t feel dangerous. He doesn’t feel like his entire body is spring loaded and ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Spencer allows himself to hold you, and part of it feels like betrayal because he knows how badly you need this from him while you’re awake but mostly he feels like he could cry. His thumb rubs circles into the middle of your back and your head tucks so perfectly under his chin while he studies the rumpled sheets where you’d been lying a moment ago. He almost feels like sticking his tongue out to gloat at your half of the mattress—haha, look who gets to hold her now—but instead he sighs, shakily, and squeezes his eyes shut.

You don’t make another sound for hours.

He’s reluctant to let you go when you begin to stir around six AM, but forcibly holding onto you is so far from what he wants to do that he manages. You roll back over to your own side of the bed, and he continues admiring you from afar until he falls asleep. It’s the best three hours of sleep he’s had in a very long time.

Of course, you don’t remember it. When you wake up your sadness resumes, and so does the pretending like you’re not sad, but you’re a very good sport—and it helps that he’s feeling much better this morning than he has since he got back.

“Good morning,” you whisper faintly, still blinking as you watch him longingly from your spot.

Spencer pushes himself up onto an elbow, and you watch with big eyes as he leans over you, stroking your cheek with his free hand.

“Good morning. You sleep okay?”

Your brow flickers, and he realizes it’s not a question he asks every morning, and you’re probably distracted by this overt display of affection, but you answer it obediently anyway.

“I think so. I had weird dreams.”

He hums.

“About what?”

It’s quiet for a moment as he takes in the exact spattering of microscopically fractured pigment over your irises. Your voice is small when you finally speak.

“Do I have to tell you?”

That hurts.

“No. But it might help.”

Coming from him? Ironic doesn’t even begin to cover it.

You acknowledge him with a small hum of your own, studying him with soft, mistrustful eyes.

He can’t help it anymore—Spencer leans down and gently kisses you, so tenderly, so chastely, it makes his own head spin. He hasn’t kissed you like that since you picked him up from Milburn. It’s long overdue.

Which is why he’s not expecting you to start crying. He pulls back immediately, not far, just enough to assess your expression.

“What’s this? What’s wrong, angel?” He frowns. Your lip quivers in a way that feels like a blow to the chest.

“That’s not… you’re…”

“What? What is it?”

A fat tear finally traces a path down your cheek and when you speak your voice breaks in the most fragile, devastating way.

“You’re not being fair.”

He has no neat question to summarize all the bafflement your accusation inspires in his lately cloudy head, but the wildly confused look on his face must be prompt enough.

“I’m trying really hard to respect your space and boundaries and not upset you but my feelings are hurt, Spencer, I don’t know how they couldn’t be. I feel like you don’t even like me anymore. I’m embarrassed around you because I feel like I care about you so much more than you care about me. And then you—and then you wake up one morning and you think it’s okay to act like you love me again but I can’t—I c—” you stop, obviously frustrated—now crying in earnest and lacking the words. “You can’t be mean to me. I know you’ve been through a lot and I’m sorry but you can’t treat me like that. I’m a person, too.”

His chest aches and he swallows down barbed wire.

“I’m not acting like I love you. I do love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything in my life. That’s not an act.”

It’s not an adequate response, but your words are still spinning in his head until he can’t keep up with them. He’s not used to this, anymore. The language you two had developed is so foreign now.

Maybe he just doesn’t know how to talk to you.

Resignation—a too-calm recognition softens the stormy look that has brewed on your face. As soon as it’s gone, and you’re looking at him placidly, he realizes he’s afraid.

“Well, that’s not enough,” you whisper.

Spencer feels like he’s been shot as you push the covers aside and slip out of bed. And he knows what that feels like.

“Where are you going?” And then louder, when you don’t hear him because you’ve already left the room, “Where are you going?”

He follows you through the apartment as you march purposefully for the door, slipping shoes on and grabbing your keys and coat.

You barely look over your shoulder as you leave, slamming the front door behind you. Things shake from the impact. A mini earthquake.

Spencer is too stunned to follow you.

It’s not until a few minutes later when he goes to call you that he realizes your phone is still sitting on your bedside table. He stares at it, tasting metal, because he has absolutely no way to reach you or guarantee your safety. There’s no way for you to call him, or anyone, if you get in trouble—and he fears that you’ll retaliate against him by doing something stupid and dangerous.

He only just manages to stop himself from calling the police and asking them to start looking for you. Only just recognizes it to be an overreaction.

Besides, he’s not feeling particularly fond of the criminal justice institution these days. If it came down to it, he’d trust himself and his team over the cops any day.

The team. They’re always a resource. If worst comes to worst, he thinks, robotically making coffee as he tries to talk himself down, and she doesn’t come home before dark, I’ll call all of her closest friends. If she doesn’t come home before the morning—the thought makes him feel sick—I’ll deploy every fucking resource at my disposal.

Maybe that’s an overreaction, too, but he has to find a way to self-soothe somehow. Planning makes him feel better. Being prepared for the things you never see coming makes him feel better. It’s impossible, of course—but the illusion of control is stubborn and so seductive.

Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that.

At around 2 PM, he receives a couple of texts from Garcia that are a massive relief.

Penelope: She’s at my apartment

Penelope: BE NICER TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND!!!!!!!

The series of emojis that follow (including an octopus?), he doesn’t even try to decipher. He simply drops his phone and sighs deeply into his hands, releasing an extreme amount of paranoid tension that had been tying him into knots. Lately, he’s had this sense that everything is fleeting—that the things he takes for granted are painfully, violently impermanent. It doesn’t take anyone with a degree to figure out why he’s been feeling that way, but it’s so all-consuming he’s not sure how to cope with it. Just a few days ago, he’d been wondering how to break up with you. Now he’s asking himself how the fuck he thought he’d be able to do that when he’s barely functioning after a few hours without you.

It’s a question he still hasn’t answered by the time the front door opens at 10 PM. It’s clear by the deer-in-headlights look on your face that you hadn’t been expecting him like this—leaning over the counter, half-empty mug by his hand, staring at nothing in particular and waiting for you to come home. Neither of you have changed clothing since this morning—not that you could—but you look apprehensive as you close it behind you, never facing away from him. The whole thing is like a teenager being caught sneaking back in by a weary parent.

For a moment the silent confrontation stretches into the horizon, a non-specific point as neither of you seem inclined to be the first to talk. You just watch him watching you—leaning against the door rigidly as if you can’t get far enough away. But he’s too tired for this. Too worn out.

“How’d you get home?”

You swallow.

“Penelope.”

Spencer nods slowly, rolling his bottom lip between teeth and finally looking away.

“You really should have brought your phone.”

You scoff, peeling yourself from the door.

“Of course that’s what you’re worried about.”

It’s the same situation as this morning, but in reverse—him following after you down the hall as you storm toward the bedroom.

“Wh—should I not have been? You scared me—” he says your name, barely catching the door before it can slam in his face. “I was worried about you.”

“Why?” you face him, laughing bewilderedly as if the situation were at all funny. A kind of manic energy crackles from the surface of your skin and in your eyes that renders him unable to think of a reply. “Because you thought I would get raped and murdered and then you’d be sad?”

“Yes!” Spencer yells, eyes widening as he fails to contain his frustration any longer. “That is fucking exactly why I was scared!”

You step forward, getting in his space. It jars him, momentarily—he wants to get away from you. Being angry and so close to you is terrifying. What if he lashes out? What if he hurts you? He’s seen crimes of passion. His blood is freezing in his veins.

“Of course you didn’t give one single fuck that I left you. You didn’t think for one fucking second that I might be tired of this. That wasn’t what you were scared of at all.” For every inch you near, he backs away. Another scorned, bitter laugh from you that feels like poison coursing through his entire circulatory system. You notice everything, eyeing him up and down as he cowers from you. “What is this, Spencer? If you hate being near me that much, just fucking break up with me.”

You’re close enough that he can see the tears welling in your eyes, but he’d know they were there even if he couldn’t observe them. He would hear it in your voice. He would feel it. But he can’t do anything about it. Right now, he’s paralyzed.

“If the only thing holding you back is wanting to spare my feelings, just fucking do it. This isn’t better. I don’t give a fuck if it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me, too, but I’m not just going to ignore it anymore.”

There’s no more room. The wall is at is back.

“Honey, please back up,” Spencer breathes. Last time his back was to a wall, he’d been gagged and beaten. Don’t lash out. She never hurt you. It wasn’t her.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” you shout, as tears begin to spill over your cheeks. “Either break up with me or stop telling me to go away!”

At that moment, as you break down and your words become muddled with sobs, you raise your fist.

Spencer watches it approach his shoulder as if in slow-motion.

On instinct, he catches your wrist.

There’s a lull as he waits for something to explode, for something to go terribly, deeply wrong—

But it doesn’t.

He realizes his grip is gentle. He realizes you’d never actually hurt him like that. He realizes how little resistance he’d found when he stopped what was sure to be nothing more than a petulant, petty bump against his shoulder—a maneuver that wouldn’t have hurt in the slightest. It was nothing more than a desolate, childlike display of feelings bigger than you know what to do with.

In the second that it takes him to realize all of this, to realize he is not endangering you in the slightest, nor you him, you’ve begun to truly sob. Standing just inches from him, head angled down as he holds your wrist carefully, you are the picture of a girl who has been running on empty for a very long time and has nothing left to give. Spencer twines his arms around you, tucking your head under his chin and slowly rubbing your back like he’d never forgotten how to hold you. It stuns you, and the tears pause for just a second—before you’re wrapping desperate, weakened arms around him and sobbing even harder, albeit silently, into his shirt.

“I don’t want to break up,” he whispers, his own voice shaky with understated emotion. “I’m sorry. Please don’t say that. I don’t want that.”

“What’s wrong with you?” You cry, a desperate plead caught between sobs that wrack your body against his against the wall. And he knows it’s not an accusation. It’s not an insult. It’s a question borne of confusion and fear. It’s what a child might ask a sick dog while tears stream down feverish cheeks. And it’s completely appropriate, considering he never tells you anything anymore and he’s only just realizing how scary that must be. Spencer is back from prison but you may as well still be living alone for all that you know about him. He tangles a hand in your hair and holds you against his chest, breathing you like nitrous oxide.

“I don’t know,” he whispers. The room beyond blurs as he stares at nothing, focused only on the tingly euphoria of feeling you under his hands clashing with the ever-present and crushing shame that he couldn't do it sooner. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you—to be sorry.” Shuddering breaths and gasps still cleave your sentences in half, and Spencer listens so intently he thinks there might be harmonics hidden in the layers of your voice. He clings to every syllable like you’re wielding the word of god in a five-foot-something body. “I just miss you so m—much. I want you to—to love me.”

“I do,” he promises immediately, lips pressing to your ear. “I do love you. So much. So much.”

When you don’t respond, he’s not exactly surprised. He almost asks what he can do, what you need—but is quite sure that’s not the right move. Instead he doesn’t say a thing. Only holds you.

Later, you’ll pull back and he’ll swim in your teary gaze, and then kiss you. He’ll trace silent apologies into every inch of your skin under the torrent of the shower, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make you understand. But for now, for the first time in months, you’re holding each other, and that’s all either of you need.

#spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid angst #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds #criminal minds fic

3K notes · View notes

gojonanami · 5 months ago

Text

❝ 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄, 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐖 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 ! ❞

❝ PROF. GOJO SHOWS YOU JUST HOW THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION WORK !! ❞

✧ pairing: professor!gojo x f!reader (part one of the prof gojo series)

✧ summary: satoru gojo was only stuck at this weeklong conference to appease his new boss, so what happens when he finds you at the bar and can't stop thinking about just how attractive you are? and what happens when the conference is over?

✧ warnings: 18+, nsfw, smut, hooking up at an academic conference, reader is a professor, fingering (f! receiving), oral (m! receiving), gojo getting very horny around you, so much flirting, amateur's take on physics, art by found on Pinterest (pls let me know if you know the og artist)

✧ wc: 10,878

“Come here often?”

If someone had asked Professor Satoru Gojo that a few months ago, he would have said—no he would have scoffed and asked if he looked like a professor who had to beg for funding — and he didn’t. But now, he swirled his drink, ice cubes clinking against the sides of the condensation-ridden glass — who knows?

His new department head might have his termination papers drawn from the moment he returns to the university from his very extended research trip — with no results to show for it. Normally he wouldn’t be worried — not with his renowned academic record, but he had extended this trip twice — and one of those on the university’s payroll.

And it wasn’t a cheap payroll.

To top it off, the new department head was doing a lecture here today at this conference hosted by his university, He had heard the new head was a real hard ass, a person who had straightened out the department while he had been away — garnering more grants, but also cutting funding to continual failures. And he and his research had been asked about.

Fuck. He downed his fruity mocktail, the sweet syrupy fruit juice doing little to soothe the bitter aftertaste of failure that lingered on his tongue.

He usually wouldn’t be so worried. He was Satoru Gojo — he had been the youngest in his field to achieve a Ph.D. in the field of Quantum Physics, a respected expert and renowned lecturer, and one of the scientists most likely to win a Nobel prize within the next few years or so. Or so his biography on LinkedIn said.

But that had gone up in smoke — his research on the potential curvature of quantum space-time as a method to slow or speed up time between two points of matter had been a complete failure.

One of his first major failures.

He sighs, and here he was feeling sorry for himself — alone. Or relatively so. His glass clinked against the sticky bar top of the tacky bar of the hotel they decided to hold this conference in — the rings from long-gone drinks lining up and down the relatively empty bar, other patrons having left for their rooms.

But not you.

He hadn’t met you before — not really. Although it was not as if he had made a habit of befriending people at any academic event, he knew if he had seen your face before, he wouldn’t have forgotten. He stole a glance as he sipped at his drink, eyes flickering over your form as you approached the bar.

Honestly, if he had, he wouldn’t forget someone like you.

He had seen you earlier during the conference, a particularly biting question asked during a keynote presentation that had wiped the obnoxious grin off the pretentious guy’s face, his reply then ripped to shreds in seconds with a smile on your lips.

And you had left so quickly he didn’t get to thank you for your daring rescue of his captive audience as he finally ended his victory lap with a scurry out the door. But maybe now, he could thank you with a drink — eyes flitting to those pretty lips that hid your sharp tongue — or something more.

You order your drink, sitting a stool away, the creak of the rusty seat catching his attention, as your eyes slide to his, “And another of whatever he was having,” Satoru tilts his head as you shrug, “looks like you could use it,”

He gapes at you in mock offense, “Eh? I’ll have you know I’m the most excited person here,” he replies as the bartender places both drinks in front of you, “who wouldn’t be excited to be in some hotel for this prestigious academic conference?”

“Almost every sane person?” and he chuckles, swirling his drink with his straw, “and the good news is that it’s only just begun. We still have the whole week to be bored to tears and have our brains turn to mush when pretending to be interesting to get funding from stingy donors,”

“I don’t need to pretend — I am interesting,” his lips curl, and you snort, downing your drink, before setting it down, ice rattling at the bottom.

“Well, I’ll say your face is more interesting with a smile on it,” you take money from your bag and pay off the tab with a tip.

You’re slipping from the stool with ease, stepping past his stool, nearly brushing against his back, as you make your way out of the bar, and it almost feels as if you're slipping from his fingers, “Is that a compliment?”

You pause, looking back over your shoulder, “You’ll know when I’m complimenting you,” and your smile is far better than his is, a heat settling over his cheeks at the sight of it, “see you around,”

And you’re gone, and he’s left dumbstruck, bitter taste in his mouth slowly beginning to fade — but he knows that the only way it would completely sink into sweetness is if he could have your name roll off his lips — maybe something even sweeter.

He paid for his drink with a tip, sliding off the stool himself, running a hand through his hair.

He could only hope you came here often now.

~~~

It was pathetic how often he had found himself frequenting this bar over the weekend. How frequent? The bartender had learned his name by memory the third time he showed up, his order already known and being prepared by the time he walked in.

So his drink was present — but you weren’t.

He hadn’t seen you around, but he had walked the floors of this conference and hadn’t seen even a glimpse of you. But why was he so desperate for a stranger that he met once? He wasn’t one for people — even from when he was a kid. People always saw him and his intellect as something they could take, they could use — an attraction that he only wished he could repel just as magnets did. He always had been shelved as a commodity in his field, but never trotted out for events because he never wanted to bother kissing up — he was better for a blunt word than mindless dribble.

Fuck him.

And now here he was — possibly at the end of his career and all he could concern himself with was this mystery woman he met at the hotel bar. Maybe because it was easier to think about — motion was the only thing he knew how to keep doing. Easier to keep in motion after a force acts on him than to keep still.

And you were a force.

“Y’know when I asked you if you come here often, I didn’t think I’d have come here to see you again,” the now familiar squeak and groan of the bar stool makes him want to bite his lip, “how long you’ve been here?”

He bites back his own grin, hoping not to look so desperate as he felt — was this a distraction from his own impending problems? Yes. But you were a welcome one.

“One drink, about fifteen minutes,” he replies, “I haven’t seen you around either — get stuck inside a conference room?” And you order your drink, “put it on my tab,” he tells the bartender, and the man nods wordlessly, but adds a raised eyebrow when you’re looking away.

“Something like that,” and you’re wiping the counter with napkins before leaning against it with your arm, “but more like I was always doing something—I’m not one to—“

“Stand still?” you raise an eyebrow, as the bartender sets your drink in front of you, “staying in motion is the only thing I know how to do, especially these days,”

“Staying in motion?” you repeat, and Satoru shakes his head.

“I’m the type to go from thing to thing — my best friend always joked that I was no better than the first law of motion—”

You snort, cracking a smile, “Being in motion is better than being at rest,” you sigh, swirling the liquid in your glass, toying with the straw stirrers in your drink, “it’s easy to get used to stay still once you are,”

“Sounds like you speak from experience,” and you’re sighing, downing the rest of your drink, as the ice clinks against the bottom of the empty glass.

“Ever have a failure that feels so deep it feels like there’s no going back? Not even a failure — just even a gap, and it feels as more time passes, the chasm widens before you and it becomes harder to see yourself making it to the other side,” you order another drink, turning to face him again, “soon you become more preoccupied with the abyss than thinking about how to make it across,”

“If you asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said no, but now,” he sighs, as he asks for a refill himself, “now I’m in that sinking ship with you,”

“Who said I was still there?” you reply and he’s gaping at you, before a laugh escapes your lips, “I got to shore, you will too,”

“And how do you know that?” And you only shrug, a smile on your lips that makes something in his heart stir that hasn’t in far too long.

“You don’t look like the type to drown,” and he tilts his head, “you look like the type who stubbornly figures out to swim, despite the odds,” and he snorts, as his drink is placed in front of him, “so maybe don’t give up so easily, after all the first time is the hardest,”

And he chuckles, “Personal experience?” You shrug, tracing the rim of your glass, “No, I always get what I really want the first time,” as you pause to catch his eye, a smile on your lips.

“And if you don’t?”

“Then I didn’t really want it,” you smile, as you get to your feet, “I have a dinner to get to, but I’ll leave you with this,” you wrote something down on the napkin you had gotten with your drink, folding it and handing it to him.

He takes it, but his eyes remain on you, “You’re always disappearing — want to keep me wanting, Professor?”

“You’d want me anyway,” and Satoru is turning in the stool to watch you walk off, a glimpse of a small smile on your lips, as he looks at the writing on the napkin.

—because he knows you’re right.

~~~

“You want me right, Professor?” you murmured in his ear, hot words said as your warm breath fanned across his skin, but your lips were more sinful than your words — pressing torturously chaste kisses along his jaw, your front pressed to your back, as your hands ghosted along his chest. One of your hands toyed with the top button of his shirt, while the other traced along his collarbone, “you followed me after all.”

And he did, Satoru had caught you by wrist, a graze that had your head flicking back, finding his blue, and your lips curled — and he just knew he was fucked.

He just didn’t know how well.

You had him sat on the couch, back to the armrest, biting back needy noises that he refused to let leave his lips, not yet at least, “Y’know I want you, sweetheart,” a small shiver crawling up his spine as your lips graze the soft skin of his ear, “I’m not exactly playing hard to get by coming up to your room, am I?”

And your hand drags lower, brushing against his growing bulge, a low groan in his chest, “Oh I’d say you’re fairly hard, Toru,” and your forefinger presses teasingly against his clothed slit, “so hard already, wonder what would happen if I got you in my mouth, flicked my tongue over the length, made you moan my name as your cock fucked my throat?” And fuck, maybe he was wrong — maybe your words were worse, his dick twitched against your touch, desperate as he felt for more of your touch, “where’s that mouth of yours now, Satoru?”

And you’re rounding him, guiding his legs so he’s sitting properly on the couch now, feet on the ground, but he certainly wasn’t clear-headed — not when you climbed into his lap. A grunt left his lips, a weight that’s a comfort rather than a burden, something he welcomes because he only needs you closer and closer until there’s no space left between you at all.

“My mouth is desperate to do something other than talk, baby,” and his fingers winding their way through your locks before resting against the nape of your neck, and the other trying to slide down the swell of your hip only for your hand to stop him, “but only if you’ll let me I guess,” his lips curl into a smirk, one that you drag your thumb down.

“I will,” your lips are barely a breath away from his own, noses bumping, as the anticipation grows thicker than honeyed molasses one that seems to consume every one of his thoughts at a snail's pace as he remains stuck on two things — you and your lips, “once I’m done teaching you my lesson,” and your lips brush.

“Sir?” The bill is slapped down in front of him, as he snaps back to reality, the sounds of bar stools thumping against the counter as they are mounted on top jars him, as he shakes himself free from his thoughts, “bar isn’t for sleeping, go to your room,” His cheeks burn.

Satoru pulls several bills out and leaves a generous tip, before sliding off his stool with a shake of his head, and a distinct ache between his thighs, that he quickly hides with his suit coat draped on his arm in front of him.

“Not anything you serve here.”

~~~

You’re like a daydream, Satoru realizes when he’s making his way to the hotel bar again. One that he’s using as a distraction — but a lovely daydream all the same. His conference days are spent waiting for a respite at the bar in the evenings — the only time he felt intellectually stimulated at a mechanically orchestrated event like this.

And one that he couldn’t get out of his head. The daydream he had was so vivid, he could swear it was reality if he hadn’t been so rudely awakened. And right when it was getting to—

Oh, what the fuck was he thinking? He shakes his head as if it would rid his head of his thoughts (it doesn’t).

He ran his fingers through his hair, what was it about you? You were gorgeous, sure, and brilliant enough to match him barb for barb, but you were just —- gravitational. He could feel him pulled in by your orbit and he found himself not resisting your force in the slightest — only hoping to accelerate.

Was this the phenomenon of quantum entanglement? He knew it was true for the tiniest of particles, the very same forces that pulled him close, he knew were pulling you close too — doomed in the same downward spiral without having to spare a glance. But did he?

He didn’t know the first thing about you — he only knew you were someone related to the field of physics — you had to be a professor, far too smart to be a generous donor. He only knew your first name, and you knew the same about him — and there was a part of him that preferred it that way. He had grown used to the attention given to him for simply his name — and he felt as if it was as if he had been placed on a pedestal that no one would dare to climb to speak, but instead only looked up. He almost chuckled at the thought of you ever doing that — but you were more the type to kick the pedestal out from under him, and force him to meet your gaze.

And he much preferred that — and you.

And now, he glances at the bar as it came into view, a double take almost warranted at the sight — was he dreaming again, even before his head had even attempted to hit the pillow? Or was it true that you were sitting at the bar nursing a drink alone? Pretty eyes glancing at the time on your phone and he bit back a smile, stepping towards you — eager remark about how long you’ve been waiting for him? Even though he wasn’t one to talk — as he had spent his whole day waiting for this.

Waiting for you, rather.

He stopped when another man approached you — Satoru paused, and he supposed he had to wait longer. Who was this now? You didn’t seem to know him, leaning away as he stood near you, not too close, but he seemed to be talking shyly, and yet his words never seemed to stop. Even though it seemed you wanted them to.

And when he caught a glimpse of the man’s face, he realized just who the man was.

Well, well — he knew just what to do to get rid of him — appear.

“Hey,” Satoru walked over, leaning on the bar, meeting the man’s gaze with a smile, before his eyes slid back to you, “make a new friend?” He orders his drink with the bartender as he slides his gaze back to the man lingering, whose face had grown both soured and pale all at once.

“Sort of, yes, this is—“

“I actually must go, please excuse me,” the man abruptly says, bowing politely to the two of you before shooting a glare at Satoru before heading off towards the elevators.

“Nice seeing you too, Gege!” Satoru called after him, smirking at the man’s flinch just before he turned the corner, “that guy hates me,” he orders his drink, taking a seat beside you, “don’t know why,”

“I can see that,” you chuckle, glancing back where the man had disappeared off to, “he’s some sort of author?”

Satoru nods, as the bartender places his drink in front of him, “He is — a mangaka fascinated by physics, he pestered me with questions, but he didn’t like when I did the same,”

You snort, only imagining what kinds of questions he had bothered the man with, “You freaked out the freak?”

“Well, he couldn’t match me,” you smirked, as he leaned against the counter, sipping his drink, your head tilting, “can you?”

“We’ll have to find out, won’t we?” you raise an eyebrow, as he grins, “think I’m doing a pretty good job so far,” and you shrug, a wry smile pulling at the corners of your lips as he pouts, “so cruel to treat the man that saved you from an uncomfortable conversation,” and he sighs dramatically, “maybe I’ll call Gege back down,”

You raise an eyebrow, “He wouldn’t come if you called,”

Satoru pauses, “He might if I promised to leave,”

“Is this your way of trying to get me to ask you to stay?” You were far too quick-witted for his own good.

“No this is my way of getting you to tell me that you want me to stay,” but lucky for him, he had the same biting tongue to match.

And you laugh, and he wants nothing more than to make you laugh again and again — a better achievement than any academic accolade that graced his walls, “Well I do owe you one,” you order another round.

“I think I earned more than a round of drinks,” and you raise an eyebrow, as you down the rest of your drink.

“And that is?”

~~~

“When you said we would be doing research, I assumed we would be doing research related to your speciality in physics, not—“

“This is important research,” Satoru led you through the streets, the stuffy halls of the conference growing more distant, “crucial to the furthering of our goals, our destinies,”

Satoru grinned, his smile somehow brighter than the sun itself, and even more obnoxious — but begrudgingly charming. He truly was a paradox incarnate — somehow bright but blinding, sweet but sharp, and enticing yet out of reach. Even more so in the casual white t-shirt and dark blue jeans he had opted for today, sunglasses perched on the tip of his nose as he looked at you over the rim with that irritatingly endearing grin.

And that grin must have been hypnotic because how else would he have convinced you to skip half a day of this week-long conference that you had been preparing for months to attend (that and you had grown tired of simply chugging your drink of choice between workshops and keynotes and skipping almost every meal except for some stale pastries offered at one of a dozen talks).

“And this crucial research is the best sweets shop in the area—“

You snort, as you eye the crowd of people in front of this particular shop, “Because that’s a question the physics community has been pondering — not dark matter or Baryon asymmetry—“

“Well, I know your specialty is astrophysics now,” and you roll your eyes, as his hand finds yours, fingers laced together, as he pulls you into the throng of people in front of the shop, “don’t wanna lose you there,”

“Is that your excuse to hold my hand?” You reply, lips nearly pressed to his ear with how loud it was.

He leans closer, his body pressed against your side, lips brushing your ear, “was I that obvious?” He grins, and pulls away as quickly as he had come, fingers parting yours as you both reach the front of the line. And why was it — your heart sinks ever so slightly at the absence of his warmth — that you mourned his touch as if you’d had it all your life instead of the first time?

“You coming, sweetheart?” and you snap from your thoughts, and follow up to the counter — brushing your thoughts aside as you occupied your head with the sweets in front of you — instead of the man obsessed with them beside you. You realize what he’s said and you’re not one for pet names, but the way it rolls off his tongue and sticks syrupy sweet in your head almost makes you like it

“Noooo, don’t!” You shield your strawberry dessert from his fork, as it prodded gently at the back of your palm, “you already ate so many desserts, why do you want mine?”

You had watched this grown man down half a dozen different cakes, pastries, and cookies — he was a walking advert for what not to do to contract diabetes. For as sharp as his tongue was, you watched him lick a bit of frosting from his lip, it probably tasted twice as sweet.

“Exactly because it’s yours,” he still tried but you caught his fork again with your own, “it’s so much sweeter when you steal it,”

“So we’re adding thievery to your list of crimes,” and he clutches at his chest in mock shock, “theft, harassment—“

He gapes at you, “Eh? When did I harass you?”

“Gege,” and he rolls his eyes.

“He loves me, he lives for me,”

“I think he wishes you would do the exact opposite,” and he pouts only to dart his hand out quick and steal a dollop of the airy frosting from the top of the cake on his form, he grins in victory, but you only lean forward, grabbing at his hand and lick it from his fork, “you’re right, it is sweeter, when you steal it,”

His eyes find yours and fuck, your heart nearly contused itself against your ribs, what was it about him that made you never want to look away? It was a game of chicken for you — stare until the other flinches, because then you could see them and they would never see you — and you had never lost—but he made you want to lose. But you also couldn’t bear to look away all the same.

“Suppose that was my first lesson for you, sweetheart,” and that sweetness seems to stick with you, the pet names growing on you.

“You do have a way of making me look at things at a different angle,” you admit, and you wonder why a man like this was so lost as he seemed — he was definitely seen, wherever he went, but never understood, “is that a talent of yours?”

“I tend to do my best with my back against the wall,” and you can’t help but imagine how he’d look with his back to a wall — it’s not a bad image.

Your lips curl, “I bet you do,” and you continue walking off, taking another bite of your cake, not noticing the way his eyes watched you — the same way you had.

~~~

“I can’t believe you don’t trust me to choose a place for dinner,” Satoru sighs, as the two of them are seated at the bar for dinner, the tables all full for the night, “I could have found us a place that would have given us an actual table,”

“For all I know, you would have somehow found a place that only serves dessert,” he scoffs, and the two of you order your drinks, as the waiter parts to bring your orders, “Don’t scoff at me, I know you probably know at least one place, if not ten,”

“I don’t know—” and you tilt your head, eyebrow raised, and he shrugs, a small smile pulling at his lips, “none of them are in the area, but there is a good ice cream place—”

You snort, not glancing up from perusing the menu, as the waiter brings over your drinks, and the two of you order — and to your surprise, he orders something savory and not sweet, “Surprised you didn’t ask for the dessert menu first,”

“Well, I do like to take my time, after all,” his lips curl into a small grin, as he lifts his glass to his pretty lips, “dessert is better when you’re patient,”

Oh? Oh.

“You don’t look like the type that’s used to waiting for what he wants,”

“You keep saying I look like this or that, screw that,” he leans back in his chair, “I can wait for the things I really want — and I always get what I want, sweetheart,”

You were toeing a line you shouldn’t be toeing — it was Schrodinger’s cat, and a box you shouldn’t look inside — because until you did, there was always a chance the cat was alive, and there was always a chance that this wouldn’t be a mistake — but once you opened it — there was no going back. But still — the words are pulled from your mouth as if you had no choice, the box tipping open of its own accord.

“And what is it that you—”

“Huh? Gojo?” your eyes snap over to a woman — a far too gorgeous woman, in a long black dress that floated down to her ankles, her black heels clicking against the wood of the floor of the restaurant, her silver hair in a tight high ponytail, bangs framing her face.

“Mei Mei,” his attention falls to her, and you’re left sitting, fully out of the loop and completely irritated, but you didn’t know why, “I didn’t know you were in town,”

“For good reason, then you might have a reason to avoid me,” Mei Mei smiles, “I saw Geto recently. He told me you were coming back soon from your sabbatical,” and you see a flicker of emotion cross his expression and disappear as quickly as it appeared, “and who’s this?”

You offer your hand and introduce yourself, “And are you a professor as well?”

“No, I’m a donor,” and you nod, “and what do you—” but then her friend is calling her back, her head turning.

“I should go back to my party, it was nice to meet you,” Mei Mei offers a smile before her gaze slithers its way back to Satoru, “I’m sure we’ll be speaking soon, Satoru. Let me know about that night out we had discussed.” Her fingers brush his shoulder, giving you a wry smile before slipping off.

And a sinking feeling settles over you — as he waves at her — a night out? Was this all this was? Another night out?

And your skin crawls as she walks off, Satoru turning back to look at you, your lips a thin line as you force your gaze back to his, “What were you saying again? And the waiter comes soon enough with your meals, placing them in front of them.

“Nothing,” your lips curl, perhaps this box was better left unopened, “nothing at all.”

~~~

“What’s wrong?” This was why Satoru didn’t care to get invested in others. When he couldn’t make heads or tails of himself — they expected him to make heads and tails of them. It was easier to write people off, put distance between him and them, than it was to draw close. He was used to too many being far too close, gawking as if he were an illustrious painting, unable to make out a single brushstroke much less who he was. But he never cared to explain or have anyone understand and he paid others the same courtesy.

Except you.

“I told you, nothing,” you sighed as you and Satoru made your way back to the hotel that was hosting the conference, “it’s just been a long day,”

And he could let this go, fall silent with a sharp remark that would only push you away, the same distance but eons further than you had ever been — a space-time curvature of his own making.

“You’re a terrible liar,” but he doesn’t.

“Well, my specialty isn’t lying I guess,” you snap, scrubbing a hand down your face, “sorry, I—“

“What do you think I lied about?” and you pause, as the two of you stand a few feet from the hotel, people filing in and out of the structure as bellmen and cars pull up to help them in and out of their cars, “about my brilliance? I know it can be hard to believe how someone can be so handsome and—“ you glare at him, and he sighs, “c’mon sweetheart, just tell me—“

“Who is Mei Mei to you?” your question surprises him, but seems to surprise you more, words falling from your lips without a first thought, much less a first, “I-I mean, uh—“

And he can’t help the grin that spreads over his lips — “I didn’t take you for the jealous type, sweetheart,” and your words failed you for once, “or maybe I should be calling you, Princess, because being jealous isn’t usually so sweet,”

“Satoru—“

“Except maybe when it’s you,” he takes a step forward, and fuck, you look so cute like this — your eyes unable to meet his with the usual defiance or smugness, teeth baring down on his bottom lip, “think you’d be sweet no matter what you do,”

“I’m not jealous—“

“Uh-huh,” he smirks, “Mei Mei is just an old friend and tycoon of business — and she tends to have a night out to discuss opportunities and investment into education for a mutual benefit—“

“She wants a tax break?” And he nods, but your brow furrows, “then what was with the shoulder touch?”

“The shoulder touch?” and you click your tongue.

“She touched your shoulder, intimately,” and he raises an eyebrow, “it was! It was like this,” your fingers gesture over his shoulder, your thumb barely grazing over his shoulder blade.

He tilts his head, “That’s what you consider intimate?”

“Yes! Like,” you step forward, and he refuses to let his breath catch, but your perfume floods his senses, fingers nearly twitching to touch you — but he can’t, yet that makes it all the more tempting. Your fingers ghost over his shoulder, featherlike almost, and heat floods his body as if it’s his first time being touched by another — and it wasn’t, but it was his first time being touched by you.

“Like this,” and your words warm his skin, and it would be so easy to touch you — give you a taste of intimacy, and show that the only touch he craved was your own.

“I think I missed it, could you show me again?” he can’t help but tease when it’s so easy to do when you’re like this, “aw, come on, Professor, isn’t this supposed to be a hands-on lesson?”

Your body is far too close, yet too far all the same — had you managed to create the very phenomenon he had failed to study?

Your eyes finally found his, a spark of want that was only another match struck for the kindling, and your fingers drifted to his cheek. And he couldn’t help but lean into your touch, flames licking at his skin, but it was a burn he wanted more of, one he wished could consume him.

He leaned closer—until a group of people passing by, rowdy and drunk, made you flinch apart. And the moment was broken, flames extinguished—“I should go,” you murmur, and he nods, both of you taking a step back, “but if you’re not too busy falling asleep at keynotes, come to room 188 at 11:00 AM — I’m on a panel,”

“And you want me to come ask all the hard questions?” A smile graces your pretty lips, one he wishes he could memorize and map with his fingers — because it’s your smile and he’s the one who made you smile like that.

“I expect nothing less,” you turn to go inside as he calls after you.

“Was that a compliment?” and you cast a gaze over your shoulder yet again.

“Like I said, if and when I compliment you, you won’t need to ask that, Professor,” and with a flash of your smile, you were gone, and he was left outside in the humid air of the summer and the distinct sounds of cicadas and faint laughter and chatter of people outside the hotel. His fingers brushed against his shoulder, the ghost of your lingering touch still haunting him in the best way.

The flames were out, but the spark was still there — and that’s all you both needed.

For now.

Fuck, he was late — and this time not on purpose.

Usually there was nothing more Satoru would like than to be late for a moderated panel — it was an excuse to skip altogether, to get lunch, a treat, a drink — anything other than sit through another session of educators and researchers alike stroking their own egos. But this was different.

It was for you.

He tugged off his crooked and badly tied tie and stuffed it in his pocket, sprinting to the conference room where you said you would be doing the panel. He had to oversleep — but it really was your fault. He couldn’t get to sleep, not after last night. The scent of your perfume still clung to him tauntingly, the phantom of your touch still haunted him, and the sight of your smile etched onto his eyelids each time he closed them.

He was so fucking screwed.

He wasn’t the time for sentimental bullshit. No, the world had bullied that deep inside of him, softness only reserved for the few friends he had and his students. But you had ripped it all to the surface. And now he was stuck moving at the same pace you were — a quantum coupling without the couple.

He gets to the door and he bursts in, a dramatic entrance much too loud for a conference. The room fell pindrop silence as all eyes stared at him. But his eyes, flitting like comets, finding their landing with you, and he would burn up in your atmosphere all the same with the glare on your face.

“Sorry, got a little lost,” he offers a small smile, before taking his seat, his eyes unwavering from you.

The moderator clears his throat, turning his nose up at Satoru, “Well, let us continue,” he turns to you, “you were saying, Doctor?”

Oh, a doctor.

He leans back in his chair, how was it you got so much hotter? If that was possible somehow.

“I was explaining our current understanding of Hawking radiation, the theoretical thermal black-body radiation that releases out a black hole and its theorized to cause black hole evaporation,” and yet as you spoke, he felt himself grow hot, a slight flush settling over his cheeks — he was right when he guessed astrophysics was your specialty. And he should have known you would have been an expert while he was at it — how could you not be? Even now your lips and tongue formed sentences he could only dream of making, and he did dream of your lips before.

“There are many unknowns about quantum fields and electromagnetism, especially regarding black holes in particular — one of the counters to electromagnetism—” the other speakers go on to interject and bristle at one another, but Satoru barely hears any of it all — too preoccupied with you.

You were far too pretty for your own good — how was no one else completely distracted, shifting in his seat as he carefully adjusted himself — and turned on.

“And now we open it up to the audience,”

The first few questions are fielded by the others and then the one of the last questions is for you. A person stands from the audience, fiddling with the question card they had in their hand, “when you were speaking about electromagneticism, you said there are many mysteries still — there is a theory called the law of attraction,” there’s a few distinct murmurs and even a few chuckles, but even so Satoru still finds himself looking at you, “they say the energy you put out into the world is electromagnetic waves, and when that interacts with the quantum field, which helps you attract what you’re looking for, what do you think of this theory?”

And for the first time, your eyes find his, the corner of your lips tugging upwards, before your gaze settles back on the audience.

“I don’t think there’s anything in physics that can explain what brings something or someone into your life,” you lean back in your chair, “if it were that simple, I think a lot more physicists wouldn’t be married to their labs,” Satoru snorts, and you garner a few chuckles from the audience, “but although all that stuff about quantum fields and electromagnetic waves isn’t rooted in physics, I think there’s something to figuring out what you want and letting yourself have it,” and he found your eyes on him again, and he wondered if he could let himself have you — even if he felt like he didn’t quite deserve you.

And his phone buzzed in his pocket, he glanced at the name and groaned — why was Ijichi calling him now? He lets it go to voicemail, but then messages come through.

Four-Eyed Annoyance: please reply. I have some news for you about the department head.

He bites his lip, but hauls himself to his feet, slipping out right as the panel wraps up. He presses the callback button and grumbles as Ijichi picks up, “this better be good or I’ll slap the shit out of you when I get back—“

“Huh?” Ijichi cried, aghast, “you told me to call once I had news,” and Satoru groaned.

“Just spit it out,” he sighed, rubbing his head.

“The department head said they would like to see you attend the mixer for professors in the department — a chance to meet you more informally — it’s the day after you return,” and Satoru scrubbed a hand down his face, and a chance to grill him about his failed research, “I thought you should know so you could prepare—“

He spots you disappearing around the corner, and hes curses under his breath, “Ijichi, you’re in for a serious slap later,” and the man doesn’t have time to react before Satoru cuts the phone. Great, not only was his career definitely in jeopardy, without a buffer to bullshit, but now — he rounds the corner, following after you, but in the throngs of people he doesn’t see you — he had lost you.

He shoves his phone back in his pocket. Not that he really deserved you.

~~~

Satoru doesn’t see you for the rest of the day — he didn’t know how long he spent waiting for you at the bar, About how long it takes him for the bar to close his tab and the bartender to shoo him away, until he meanders back to his room. Were you upset? You had noticed he came in late and then he left before it was over—and now he hadn’t seen you. And he couldn’t even ask you because he hasn’t seen you and he doesn’t even have your number—

Because he was an idiot, who wanted to play coy, instead of being direct.

He strips off his shirt, undoing the buttons one by one, a heavy sigh caught in his throat, as he tosses the button down onto the desk chair nearby, knocking over his bag and spilling papers onto the floor.

Great. Was this supposed to be some grand metaphor for his life? He knelt down to collect them, maybe he should call Suguru and have him give him some philosophy bullshit to make him feel better. He picked up something scrunched underneath the papers, and it was a napkin — but not just a used one.

Well not exactly.

One free pass to take what you want.

He snorts at your scrawled handwriting — for how perfect he thought you were, your handwriting certainly wasn’t.

He continues to pick up the rest of the things scattered on the ground until he finds the cover sheet for his research. Messy doodles littered the sheet — ones he had messily scratched in frustration — including one of his own face breathing fire.

He presses his hand to his lips, how was he going to turn this into something remotely useable? The basis of research was that most of it never leads to great revelations or huge discoveries — it was a domino effect of building upon other research and one study tips it over. And research was also about framing — about seeing what was there and making something of it.

He was flipping through his research — and he pauses at a particular page that had the tables of his research, the one he had ruminated over for nights and days, but now — it seemed far less daunting.

You do have a way of making me look at things from a different angle.

Your words fill his ear, as if you were there whispering it to him — a different angle. He pulls his laptop out and gathers the papers in his hands before he pockets the napkin you had written on.

Maybe that’s just what he needed.

~~~

You had avoided him.

It was so fucking embarrassing. What were you? A rejected teenager hiding from her crush? And you down another drink at the bar, the alcohol burning down your throat as if it could erode away the words you had said during the panel.

But it couldn’t.

It shouldn’t have happened. The moment the night before, with his lips a breath away that hung like a promise in the air — if magnetism existed between two people, it was in that moment — because you never felt so drawn to someone, as if there were actual magnets between you both. But as much as magnets attract, they could also repel just as well.

And you supposed, as you swirled the bits of your drink with your ice melting at the bottom of the glass, that was what had inspired him to run after your little show. You hated being a fool — but you hated not taking a risk more — you drank the rest of the watered-down drink before setting the glass down — so you had made the right decision.

So, why did you still feel like shit? You hiccuped slightly, the buzz now settling into a haze over your head, clear thoughts lost in a slight fog.

It might be the alcohol.

But even so you ordered another drink, pushing the empty one forward, avoiding the bartender’s dubious gaze. What was it about this man?

You didn’t know the first thing about him — aside from the fact he was a professor, just as you were, and his first name was Satoru—and fuck, you didn’t even catch his last name. But you knew how his lips curled into a smile that was far too infectious, that he was flippant to a fault but he only used it to hide his vulnerabilities, and that for someone so intelligent and knew of his own abilities — he found his own failures and shortcomings unforgivable.

But you wanted to forgive all the same — even now.

Even after not seeing him, and avoiding this very bar like the plague for the last day and a half. But now, it was the last night of the conference, and you don’t know what possessed you to be here — but you did — it was him.

“Come here often?” your eyes don’t need to look up from the drink placed in front of you by the bartender to know who it is, “let me have what she’s having,”

You raise an eyebrow, “This isn’t the fruity mocktail you prefer,” and he slips into the stool beside you, his arm brushing your own, as the bartender heaves a sigh at the sight of you two, “think you can handle it?”

“Well even if I can’t, I have you to take care of me, don’t I?” and you snort, licking the salt rim of your glass, before washing it down with the drink, “c’mon sweetheart, I thought you were opening yourself up to me,” and you choke on it, a distinct heat settling over your cheeks and it wasn’t from the liquor.

You choose your words carefully, as you wipe your mouth with a napkin, “I did, but that was before someone ran out,” and you wish your words significantly less slurred.

He bites his lip, “would you believe that it was a life threatening emergency and only I, Satoru—“ and you cut him off with a glare, and he sighs, “I’m sorry, I got tied up on a call and by the time I had finished, you were gone,”

“And here I thought my little soliloquy scared you off,” you mutter, “but a phone call? Was it a life threatening emergency?” The bartender comes with two drinks for the both of you.

“Not exactly, it was about my research. Found out my department head wants to meet with me right when I get back,” but his lips were curled in a smile, until he lifted his drink to his lips and took a sip, a grimace replacing it.

“You don’t seem like you’re dreading it anymore,” you sip your own drink, pressing the cool glass to your too-hot cheeks, alcohol roasting you from the inside out.

“Well, someone said I had a knack for looking at things from a unique angle,” he gives you a grin, “so I just did what I did best,”

“I see that ego of yours has recovered,” and his gaze catches yours, “I’m glad this conference was good for something at least,”

“I don’t think that’s all it was good for,” and your eyes can’t pull away from his — a current that sparked between your gazes that only wished to pull you closer than further apart, “you’re selling it short — moderated panels, the workshops, the stale coffee, the networking opportunities,” and his fingers brushed yours, “what’s not to love?”

And any sluggishness from your intoxication is chased away by his touch, a live wire pressed to your skin, “Networking?” You repeat, the warm brush of his fingers against your skin feather-like, “what chances have you had to network?”

He decides to down his drink, a flinch as he swallows, “Not many, well, not many that hadn’t ended without people glaring or fleeing,” you snort, but still liking his thumb rubs across the length of your knuckles, “but the ones that went well have been more than satisfactory,” your eyes flit to his hand and then to his lips, before settling to his gaze.

“And you’re satisfied? With the conference?” you add, and it’s a dangerous game to play, fingers curling around his as if by instinct, a current completed by its circuit, and you were needlessly addicted to the feeling.

He hums, in mock contemplation, as he leans closer, until your knees brush, “Not completely, but that’s because I don’t think I’ve taken what I want yet,” and he pulls a napkin from his pocket, handing it to you, and you see your words scribbled on there.

And you know it’s already far too late for you.

You’re close. Too close — as you can see the specks of dark blue that you could map like constellations in his eyes and you were sure his cologne was melting every brain cell that told you this was a bad idea, and leaving only behind need — but still you spoke.

Your fingers brushed his as you took the napkin, next words far too breathless for your own good, as if the spark between you had caught fire from your touch and sucked the oxygen from your little bubble — and you were just waiting for it to burst.

But it didn’t. Instead, he leaned closer, a breath away, fingers cupping your cheek, “can I?” And you nod nearly out of reflex, and he kisses you — despite the alcohol, you can taste the hint of sugar from the sweets he undoubtedly had before. It’s chaste and much too brief, but you two fall into a second as if it’s second nature.

“Well, are you going to take it?”

“This is a such a fucking bad idea,” you manage to huff out right as the elevator doors close, but not before Satoru has you pressed to the mirrored wall of the elevator, “we shouldn’t do this—“

But all the same, your hand cupped his cheek, mapping the contours and curves of his jaw until it melted into his hairline, fingers running through his soft white locks with reverence, and his cheeks are flushed red, and even warmer than they look, “did one drink affect you this much?” you chuckle, and he pouts, drawing a full laugh from your lips, “oh this is definitely a bad idea,” not only because both of you were drunk, but he was far too cute to resist.

His eyes flutter close for a moment at the sensation of your touch, lips parted as he relished in your touch — and when had he been touched so softly before? Your noses bump, as the heat is engulfed in honey for a moment, caught between breaths.

“I have nothing but good ideas, Princess,” his nose brushes your cheek, as he inhales — fuck, how did you smell like everything sweet, even after a full day of conferences and two hours at a rundown hotel bar, “you may be my best one yet.”

“Flattery, Professor?” And his lips dare closer to yours again, as the elevator finally reached his floor, “you’ll have to do better than that,”

And as he steps forward out the elevator, fingers finding yours, he grins, cheeks warm from intoxication — and whether that’s the alcohol or you is a mystery. “Y’know I’d do just about anything for you, sweetheart.”

You follow him out, as he leads you to his room, tugging you along as your lips curl, “Anything?”

He catches a glimpse at the wicked curve of your lips as you grin while he unlocks the door, that curve soon pressed against his neck, and he knew he wanted nothing more than to be pulled into your orbit — because there isn’t a thing you could do to repel him.

“This isn’t—“ Satoru bites his lip, as he watches you sink to your knees, a shaky gasp parting those same lips, spit slick from your kiss, as you dragged your thumb down the kiss-ruined flesh, “what I had in mind when you said anything,” his words are slurred, and you’re seeing the glow settle over his cheeks, making you only want to litter the red flush with kisses.

“I see why you don’t drink often if one drink does this to you,” your nose bumps against his, “we don’t have to do this if you’re—“

“I’m fine, I promise,” he cuts you off gently, his fingers closing around your wrist, before bringing your hand against his cheek, “I don’t want to stop, please,” and your thumb rubs along his cheekbone, “do you need me to solve an equation? Motion? Velocity? Force?”

You snort, your fingers ghosting over his jaw, “There’s something else I’d rather do,” and you undo the button of his slacks, “or someone,” and his lips curl — which only makes you want to wipe it off his face, until his lips are only parted with your name on his tongue.

You had stripped him down to his boxers, every button of his shirt undone painfully slow, as your fingers ghosted up and down every inch of exposed skin, “such a good boy, Satoru,” you had murmured, as you finally had reached the last button of his shirt, choosing to kiss your way up his stomach and chest — and fuck, it was hard enough not to blow his load then and there, “gonna make you feel good, baby,” your hand slid up his body, dragging over his chest, and onto his cheek until sliding into his hair again, tangling in the locks before you tugged, hard, drawing a pretty gasp from his lips and sending a wave of heat throbbing between his thighs, “but not before you earn it,”

You take a step back, his hands twitching as they reach for you, “Just watch,” You strip slowly, your jacket already tossed aside, as you undo the buttons of your blouse torturously slow, as your lips curl at the sight of his pout.

Muscles winded and tense like a spring ready to snap at your word, but you didn’t let him, and when you step out of your slacks, his boxers strained against his erection, a dark patch over taut pulled fabric, “look at you, I’ve barely touched you, and you’re already about to rip through your boxers?” You click your tongue.

And your careful steps back to the bed have him swallowing thickly, resisting the urge to bite his lip as he watches you, “Please,” he’s murmuring, “please, baby,”

God, he looks too fucking pretty begging, and you were only that much sure he would look prettier with tears in those eyes of his, whimpers and moans parting those pretty pink lips.

“Please what?” you leaned closer, your knees pressing his legs apart, brushing against his inner thighs, teasingly close to where he wanted them most, “gonna have to use some of those big words you got your degrees with, Satoru,”

Your knee grazes his clothed bulge, “Fuck—“ your fingers find his undercut with ease, nails grazing the nape of his neck as you did, a delicious shiver running up his spine. He was so sensitive for all the bravado he had — for how intelligent he was, how high he held himself, it only took a few of your touches to reduce him to this.

And fuck, it was so hot.

“Not that word,” your hand draws up and down his thigh, tracing the muscle, before drawing a path over the elastic of his boxers, “tell me what you want — my fingers? My mouth?” Your fingers dip inside his boxers only to snap the fabric against his skin, earning a sharp hiss and a jerk of his hips.

His eyes flicker up to your lips, and you know what he wants, but you’re still waiting to hear the words, “your mouth,” and you tilt your head expectantly, “please,”

“Good boy,” you don’t miss the way his dick twitches at the praise, as your fingers tug his boxers down, pooling around his ankles. His cock slaps against his stomach, pretty precum dripping down his length — and how’s it possibly that his dick is as gorgeous as the rest of him? Pretty red tip that melted into a blush pink length, lovely veins that wrapped around as if it was made just for you. And you didn’t believe in the law of attraction — but you knew you’d welcome his dick inside you anytime.

You sink to your knees, and the sight must be pretty by the way his gaze grows dark, “Like the idea of me on my knees for you?”

“Can’t I like the idea of using that smart mouth for something other than a verbal lashing, sweetheart?” And your tongue darts out to lick the precum from his tweeting tip, making his head loll back.

“You can,” and your fingers ghost over his balls, “but don’t forget who’s in control, Satoru,”

You press a kiss to his slit, before letting the length slap on your tongue. And already his chest is already heaving, as your fingers curl around the base, slowly pumping and smearing precum along his dick. You hear the crumple of the sheets as he grasps at them.

“You’re so fucking big — can’t wait to feel you inside me, g’nna feel s’good,” and a pretty moan parts his lips, hips bucking into your touch, boneless nearly, as you watch his precum slip down your fingers and wrist, “does it feel that good?” your teasing only draws a pout to his lips that’s quickly fading into another moan as you thumb at his slit, making him whine, “so fucking whiny,” you goaded, but no snark can find it’s way from his lips.

“F-fuck, sweetheart, can you blame me?” And your lips curl, as his tip bumps against your lips, dragging precum along them, “you’re gonna be the death of me,”

“And you’d thank me for it,” and you finally let his cock slip past your lips, and his mouth falls open, muscles tense as he feels his length settle along your tongue, until it’s tracing up the bottom, flicking against the tip.

“F-fuck, baby, you take me so well,” and you do, so fuckinh pretty as your head bobs along his length, messily sucking and licking, cock growing impossibly larger, just as his tip grazes your throat, “shit, ngh,” and he’s threading his fingers into your locks, beginning to buck his hips so that his swollen tip bumps against your throat, even deeper.

His lewd groans send a wave of head straight to your needy core, and you can’t wait, a hand slipping up to grasp at his waist, but the other slips into your panties and your fingers brush against your drenched folds.

You’re a fucking vision when he glances down to watch his white pubes brush against your face, half spit and half pre dribbling from the corner of your mouth. He’s practically fucking your mouth at this point, tears slipping down your cheeks, he’s not sure if he’s drunk from the alcohol or from his cock anymore. And when he sees your fingers buried in your cunt, fucking yourself because sucking him off was too much—it was too late.

“F-fuck, not g’nna last much longer, need—“ but that only makes you suck around his length, letting his tip hit your throat, and his nails dig into your scalp, as he finally cums, hard, your name on his lips. Thick ropes of his cum paints your mouth, hot release burning down your throat. You swallow every drop, relishing in the soft groan of your name that leaves his lips, enough for you to hit your sweet spot with your three fingers stuffed in your cunt before cumming.

You’re panting around his cock nearly as you pull your mouth off, strings of spit and cum stick to your lips and his dick, as you hear the creak of the mattress as he lies back against the bed, probably too fucked out to think. And you’re getting to shaky feet after easing your fingers out, ready to have him taste your own juices. But no, you can’t.

He was too fucked out to be conscious.

“Satoru?” You asked slowly, but you were only met with soft snores and the easy rise and fall of his chest that told you he was asleep.

Well fuck.

~~~~

Satoru never drank. And it was for good reason.

He always felt shitty afterwards. Headaches, nausea, and body aches. And that didn’t account for the side effect that had afflicted him the most — regret. The events of the night flash through his mind, a slideshow movie of the worst kind as he shoots up in bed to find himself alone in bed. He glances around, rest of his body still frozen in place, as if he had stopped moving, you wouldn’t see him.

But no, you wouldn’t see anything — because you weren’t here.

Not a single sign of you. The bedside beside him empty, and no trace of your clothes left behind — you had left. His eyes flickered to the time, 10:00 AM, far too early this morning. But what had you expected? He scrubs a hand down his face, cheeks burning — especially when he had cum down your throat and then had thanked you for it by passing out like a virgin.

And still he woke up hard. He glared down at the erection tenting in the blanket, as if it was the reason for his own downfall, but it didn’t have the courtesy of falling down itself.

Oh, he was never going to live this down.

And then the phone rang, and his heart leaped, likely bumping against his ribcage, as he reached for the hotel phone, wondering if it could possibly be—

“Hello? Is this Mr. Gojo?” The receptionist asks.

No, of course. Perfect.

“Yes, this is him,” he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, this day could only get better, couldn’t it?

“I’m calling to remind you that you had selected the early check out time, and your check out time is in exactly an hour, and we are unable to extend it due to other guest check-ins,”

He shouldn’t have bothered to hope.

A frantic packing job and harried check out, he had slumped in his taxi to the train station. He didn’t even get your number. And he scoffs at the thought, like you’d give it to him after last night. He leans against the cool glass of the window, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone to see you that night. Maybe it would have been better to stop. But the two of you were always in motion — night by night rushing by each other, and last night was no different.

But now you both are still in motion — just not together.

And maybe it was better that way. But if so, his eyes open to take in rushing outside, why couldn’t he stop thinking about you?

~~~

Satoru forgot how much he hated this department.

Satoru found himself sipping his drink by the makeshift bar again. He had waded through the questions of the other professors, wanting to know the details of his research. He saw the sharp gazes behind plastered smiles, and they were just hoping to learn something to tell the new department head. But he told them nothing, hiding his smirk behind the rim of his glass at their sour glances. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

And then he spots a familiar figure.

“Oi,” Ijichi tensed at the sound of Satoru’s voice, he makes his way to Satoru’s side, “I thought you said the department head would be here,”

“She’s on her way. She got stuck in a meeting. Haven’t you been checking your email?”

“Who checks their email when they’re away?”

And Ijichi mutters under his breath, “People who are actually responsible,”

Satoru glances at him, “That reminds me, didn’t I owe you a slap?” And Ijichi squeaks in terror, before he takes a step back, as his phone goes off.

“The department head is on her way now,” and Satoru raised an eyebrow.

“Her?” And Ijichi frowned.

“Have you really not checked your email the entire time you’ve been away? The new department head’s name was announced months ago, and she’s sent consistent emails, and Satoru runs his hand through his hair.

“I’ve had all department emails sent to spam,” and Ijichi gapes at him, as Satoru pulls his phone out and opens his spam folder, scrolling through the hundreds of unread emails, “what’s her name?”

And just then the doors open, and he wonders if he’s dreaming, if he’s back in that hotel room again and he would wake up any second beside you.

But he doesn’t, as your eyes find his, stepping through the crowd of other professors, as Ijichi steps forward, “Ma’am, this is—“

“I know,” you smile, before your eyes slide back to his, “come here often?”

And he knew he was far too deep already.

✧ a/n: this took so long to write — I thought I would be done last week but I was not haha. I hope you guys enjoy. there will be a part two! I have plotted out part of it. thank you guys for being so kind :)

✧ taglist: @dazailover1900, @being-me-is-not-a-sin, @satorusmochis, @dreamtardisspace, @mixmatcheds, @kxouri, @kakashineedstotouchgrass, @happystrawberrytyrant, @mynahx3, @destinyrosexoxoxo, @iwannaeatthewolrd, @parkeronii, @nanasukii28, @9419x, @5sos-wdw, @zeee26, @saintlesssaint, @forest-fruits-jam, @cowgirlcujoh, @somrou, @satowooo, @buddhas-bunny, @spider-fan72, @daintyfaintyy, @flyingtranscatofeffed, @nightfloweruponahill, @xxemmarldxx, @hanxyy, @caramelmac-chiato, @faeryli, @penutjuice, @waterfal-ling, @buttercupblu143, @ilikeweedalot, @amy-chaan, @johannakhalafalla, @alexithemiyatic, @theshylittleelfgirl, @kittykattysstuff, @shervinss, @catsgomurp, @notgoodforlife, @anth0nyx, @caelestine-the-caelicatto, @fackeraccount, @fushitoru, @svt-backup, @suguwife, @mua-for-now,

#sab [mlist]#satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo smut #satoru gojo fanfiction #satoru gojo x you #satoru gojo fluff #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #Jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen smut #gojo x reader #gojo fanfiction #gojo x you #gojo satoru x reader #sab [prof gojo]

3K notes · View notes