#Alex was just laughing at him the whole time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

junedenim · 15 hours ago

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sit there and watch

one day here, part five

warnings: dad!al, fluff, smut, piv, probably something inconsistent

word count: 12k

They come here every summer. It’s become a family tradition for their own little family. Lottie’s maman, Agathe, moved to Meux right after Franny was born. She had a boyfriend, Emmanuel, out here, now her husband and Lottie’s stepfather, even if it is only technically speaking. She lives just on the outskirts of the town with vibrant green grass in her backyard that right upon arrival Alex always seems forced to mow.

But Lottie loves it. She loves being with her mother and speaking French and the way the air smells slightly of Brie cheese and lilies. Franny loves it because it’s summer vacation and she gets to see her mamie. Lulu loves it because she seems to love everything. Ever since she learned how to giggle it is all she does.

Franny from the moment she met her sister, Eloise, she called her “Lulu.” She climbed into Lottie’s hospital bed, burrowed into her mother’s side, peeked over at the other little baby girl who was now her living, breathing sister, and declared, “This is Lulu.” She tapped Lulu’s little baby nose that curled up in response and from then on everyone has called Eloise “Lulu.” Lottie thought Eloise was tired anyway, but they couldn’t think of anything else. They should’ve known to just ask Franny.

They took the train down to Paris a few days ago, spending a few nights there in one of Lottie’s out-of-town friend’s apartments before driving to Meux. Franny has been looking forward to this trip ever since Alex promised her that he would teach her how to ride a bike. She has been jealous ever since last summer when Lottie and Alex went for a bike ride while she napped. She still hasn’t quite wrapped her head around why they would want to spend time without her.

It’ll be Lulu’s first time there. She’s no more than ten months old, sucking on her thumb, born with a giddy smile. It’s hard to predict who she’ll look like more but just like Franny, she seems to resemble Lottie more. She’s blonde, which knocks out the whole hair claim Alex had before. She does have Alex’s eyes, only they look much better on her—big and wide on her little cupcake face—than they ever did on him.

Franny is Lottie’s mini-me. This was established from the moment she popped out. Besides her tresses of brown hair courtesy of Alex, Franny got everything from Lottie, even a little French accent on certain words that Alex is terrified will slowly become more and more British as she gets older. He can’t bear the idea of her not saying squirrel like skweerul. It’s adorable and heart-achingly cute in her little high-pitched kid voice.

A week after his birthday, he had put Franny to bed and returned to the living room to find Lottie typing on her laptop. Alex slumped down on the couch, picked her feet up, and rested them in his lap. He rubbed them as if it was as soothing for him as it was for her.

She stared at him intensely waiting for him to feel the weight of her stare on him. His head was tilted back and his eyes closed, resting from wrestling Franny to sleep. But he feels it eventually—the pull of her, dragging the tether between the two of them, demanding his eyes.

He rests his cheek against the couch cushions. “What?” He laughs because her gaze is too much for him sometimes. He’d do anything for those eyes and what a terrifying prospect to one day fail those eyes, to lose the glint in them, the special upturn that pokes into her cheeks just for him. He loves her so much and he doesn’t care how plain it is, he’ll think about it every day, every minute, every second.

It’s equal. It gets her heart pounding. He can tell because it takes her extra long to respond. She shuts her laptop and puts it on the floor. She curls herself up against him like she’s a little cat. She makes herself so small and tucks herself into all the corners of him just as she did to every corner of his life. “I have something to say.”

“Okay?” He questioned. She’s not usually one for preamble. She spits it out and her sudden hesitancy left him worried.

She reached up and stroked his cheek. She drew a line along the bone, pointing at his lips. She spoke in riddle, “I thought I’d be better at this the second time. I mean, we’re not freaking out in a little apartment. We’re married and we have Franny and the space for it but still it’s not…planned.”

His face was a puzzle. She couldn’t make sense of what he was thinking. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you pregnant?”

She shrugged because she had to be nonchalant about these things. She makes a big deal out of small things but rarely does she jump up and down and rub things in your face. “I think.”

Maybe because Lottie gets to carry the kid. She knows her body inside and out and she can feel whatever is inside there. But he doesn’t understand how she could just shrug her shoulders. It’s where they differ. “Did you take a test?”

She nods.

“When?”

“Halfway through Little Red Riding Hood but I found out before you finished Rumplestiltskin.”

He laughed and he’s pretty sure he cried too and he couldn’t make a single move, his brain was completely fried, but he wanted to hug her so tightly that neither of them would be able to breathe. “Fucking hell, Lot. Are you serious?”

“No, I decided to do April Fools’ in January. It’s not definite but I feel it.”

Then, they both were crying like a freeing mist on a hot day. He hugged her and they laid back against the couch and he kissed every inch of her face but also just wanted to stare at her. “Holy shit. Can I tell Franny?”

She giggled and ran her hands through his hair, pushing it back, and scratching her fingers against his scalp. “Wait until morning. She took long enough to get to sleep tonight.”

When Franny found out she declared that the baby would be allowed to play with her Barbies but not her stuffed butterfly, Legos, markers, toy cars, or even look at her stuffed animals because they might like them more than her. They were worried that might be a child worried their new sibling would take away their parents’ attention from them, but Franny insisted it was because she doesn’t care that much about her stuffed animals but she didn’t want anybody else getting them. Lottie joked about calling family services on Franny.

They’ve been here for two days. Agathe has doted over the children since they first placed Lulu in her arms. Agathe met her after she was born but she hasn’t seen her slowly becoming a real human being. Lulu giggles and ducks her head into Agathe’s neck, feeling at home in that maternal hold.

Franny runs for miles in the grassy fields. She’s a child of nature and he wonders if children were meant to be raised among the birds and insects and grow out of the soil like flowers. She comes back with her feet covered in dirt, a tuft of grass and flowers in her hands, and a big toothy grin on her face. She’s a pain to clean but he can deal with all the splashes she shoves at him as long as she stays happy forever.

Lottie spends her days doing odd jobs. She gets crafty and only opens her laptop to answer emails. She’s unplugged in the way humans are supposed to be. She tells him on the first night that she doesn’t have a headache from staring at her laptop screen for too long. She sat up and said, “Everyone’s asleep but I’m not tired. This might be a first.”

He ruffled his head on the pillow. He rounded his arms around her waist, tugging her closer. He hummed in agreement. “Do you think we could sleep in? Your mum will make breakfast and the door locks, right?”

She leans down, hovering her face inches from his. “Yeah, Al, the door locks.”

Franny has some attachment issues. They’re trying to work on it. She’s clingy and most of the time this attachment applies to Lottie. She talks and talks and talks to her and can’t seem to let her go. It’s a likely offshoot of it being Franny & Lottie against the world for months at a time then quickly followed by a new chic in town. When Lottie showers, Franny will barge in and continue to not leave her alone. The lock on the bathroom door has been broken ever since Franny locked herself in there last year. Alex has been trying his best to allow Lottie to get some alone time but it’s been difficult since Lulu was added into the mix.

One is always crying for something from her, usually, it’s either cuddles or her boobs (Alex wouldn’t mind either). Alex felt insecure about being unable to help out more until Lottie rolled her eyes, brought Lulu to her nipple, and said, “Then grow some boobs, Al.” Sometimes it’s biologically something he can’t change, but he should probably do a better job when it comes to Lottie’s shower time.

But the door locks here and last night Lottie gave him the head of his life because she didn’t have a headache. In the end, still panting from the orgasm, Alex says, “I think we should move here, Lot.”

She shakes her head and tells him to reciprocate. So, he does until she begs him to stop.

Lottie is one of those people who wakes up beautiful. Alex hasn’t wrapped her head around how she can get barely three hours of sleep and look fully rested. She barely runs a brush through her hair, she rarely wears make-up, and yet her face is blushing and her blonde hair falls in glorious waves. But, perhaps, that’s just the way Alex sees it.

Lottie misses the days when her boobs didn’t leak and she didn’t have stretch marks and a C-section scar. She’s lucky if she gets to wash her hair once a week, she doesn’t have time to do make-up because there’s always something pulling on her leg or crying or asking where she put away that shirt he hasn’t worn since the Y2K bug was a threat.

But this morning she takes her time because for what feels like the first time this year, she can. Alex is awake but he is facedown on the pillow, slowly adjusting to the sunlight creeping through. Lottie shifts onto her side, rubbing her pointed foot against the back of his legs. Her hand combs through his hair until he lets out a sound of pleasure. She puts her mouth against his ear and whispers, “It’s like we’re the only two people on Earth.”

He comes out of his shell, slightly tilting his head to take her in and just enough for her to see that grin peek through. “At least in this room,” he responds.

“We could do anything we wanted,” she teases him. Her touch is no longer just soothing but taunting. He has a clear view of her breasts because she slept topless last night because he likes her boobs too. She comes close again, right next to his ear, blowing a toe-curling breath against his sensitive skin. “We could sleep for another hour.”

He loves her so much. He pushes her onto her back and smiles so wide he’s laughing. “You love me so much.” His whole body covers her, kissing her excessively over her whole body so much it tickles her and she’s laughing so hard her stomach tenses up and she struggles to breathe. The little urchins definitely hear her laughing. It’s loud enough that the dog is barking.

Agathe has this dog, Skippy. He is the bane of Alex’s existence. He barks and jumps on top of Alex and he’ll find dog hair on himself for the rest of the year. Skippy loves Lottie. He’s quiet and calm with her, laying his head on his black-furred head on her lap and making soft little snores while Lottie’s hand pets his fur. Alex can’t believe he’s jealous of a dog.

“That fucking dog,” Alex curses, falling on top of Lottie, which only increases her giggling. She places her hands on the soft skin of his back, her nails faint on the line of his spine.

“It’s your fault,” she says. “You have to learn your lesson.” Lottie talks to him like he’s a child. She’s always been motherly. She’s his oracle, giving him the prophecy to lead the way. She’s his guidepost.

“Another hour of sleep is probably out now.” He sighs and rolls onto his back.

Her eyes follow his body. “I don’t think we were ever going to get another hour of sleep, Al.” She flicks the sheets off of her and gets out of bed.

Alex groans. “I don’t even get cuddle time.”

She looks so beautiful in this light. The sun peeps in just right, intruding on their time politely shining directly on her like a spotlight. She looks good in any light, even in the dark when he can’t see her, but he can feel her and picture her so clearly, she’s ethereal. “T'es belle,” he says.

She heads for the guest bathroom and hides half her face behind the door as she tells him, “Ta gueule.” He’s smug. His French is getting better and is now good enough to embarrass Lottie. He can now make her blush in two languages.

Franny eats apple slices with her two hands. It’s the same way she eats carrots like she’s a rabbit. She chews on it in little bits with her front teeth that her dentist said she’ll probably lose first because of the pressure she places on them. She didn’t inherit the best dental genes. She’s desperate to lose a tooth and Alex suspects she prays to the Tooth Fairy after finding letters addressed to her with a drawing of a tooth and a fairy like the Tooth Fairy goes by symbols like Prince.

This morning, she’s chowing down on apple slices like her life depends on it. Alex kisses the top of her head as she chants the words to “Au clair de la lune.” Lulu squirms in her highchair, kicking her chubby legs and shaking her body. She blabbers gibberish and he kisses the top of her head too before grabbing a cup of coffee.

Agathe is cutting up another apple for Franny. “You’ll need to get Johnny Appleseed to replenish what she’s eaten.”

Alex laughs. He likes Agathe. She’s the least intimidating parent he’s ever met. The first time they met was at her Parisian apartment. She had a cigarette in her mouth when she opened the door and was dressed as if she was about to have her portrait painted. She talks about herself so excessively that Alex didn’t have a question directed his way until months later when Lottie told her mother she was pregnant. She asked him, “Do you have any other children?” She was joking but he didn’t know that until she let out a cackle.

It’s strange that such an oddball raised Lottie. Agathe wears purple eyeshadow and spent half her life working as an elevator operator and now she sells odd things at the local flea market. To him, Lottie is by the book and proper until she comes here and has a glass of wine with her maman then he finds out things about her that he never knew like how when she was younger so wanted to be one of those living statue people and practiced holding her body still for several hours. Agathe says she was very good and could’ve had a successful career if she kept at it.

Alex takes the plate of apple slices over to Franny, who is drawing with crayons in the colouring book Emmanuel gifted her. He sits down opposite her. Lulu is at the end of the table, still wiggling in her high chair. Alex takes her out and holds her in his lap to calm her down. She still kicks her legs but doesn’t try to get out of his grasp.

Franny lifts her head, takes a itsy bitsy bite out of her apple slice, and asks, “Where’s mummy?”

“In the shower. What are you drawing?” He asks to distract her. She lifts up the page, covered in the colours of the rainbow. It’s a picture of rabbits, relatively coloured inside the lines. Alex earnestly tells her, “That’s really good, Fran.”

She puts the book down. “It’s not done yet.”

“But it’ll be great, I know it.”

She stares at him trying to decide whether to believe him or not. She tilts her head and he can see Lottie in her eyes, cross-examining him, trying to detect the lie. When his face doesn’t budge, she smiles wide. “Thanks, daddy.” She returns to colouring and he just watches her.

There might be something egotistical about having kids and wasting long hours staring at them like Narcissus with his reflection, but Alex can’t help it. He is completely and utterly fascinated by everything they do. The things they smile at, the things they laugh at, the things they reach for, what they try to say. Every time he looks, there’s something different about them, something new, and that both captivates him and scares the shit out of him. He doesn’t wanna miss anything, especially the big stuff.

Franny has these little red rain boots Alex’s mum got her for her birthday because Alex used to have a pair of his own. Lottie said it was her favourite photo of him. He can’t be more than six years old and he’s got the two boots on, there’s not a single drop of rain on the ground and he’s got a smile so big he could steal the part of the Cheshire Cat. His smile is tilted upwards even though the camera is right in front of him.

He doesn’t remember the photo but he remembers how much he cherished those little red boots and how devastated he was when he outgrew them. He hopes against every scientific belief that Franny will never outgrow her pair, even if it means foot-binding practices.

Lottie comes out dressed in a pair of his trousers and one of her detailed blouses with a towel wrapped up in her hair. She grabs her coffee first knowing once Franny gets a whiff of her she’ll be pulled away before she can get caffeine.

Franny squeals when Lottie sits beside her and starts rattling off about colouring and apples and bunnies and Lulu’s wiggly legs and Lottie listens intently to every word and asks questions back. It’s a good way for Franny to understand that it takes two people to make a conversation and you’re not supposed to talk over the other person. Franny hangs on every word her mother says. She copies are mannerisms and asks for help with her colouring. So, Lottie picks up a crayon and assists under the instructions of Franny. Alex and Lulu just watch.

Agathe handmakes dolls. They are stuffed little ragdolls that have short chopped pieces of yarn for hair, two buttons for eyes, a stitched-on smile, and leftover handkerchiefs for a dress. Franny is utterly terrified of them. She screamed and cried and bawled her eyes out when she was given one for her second birthday. She curled up into Alex’s arms until it was put away. Getting older hasn’t diminished her fear much.

The dolls must be hidden away in the craft cupboard where Agathe keeps all the materials she uses for items sold at the Sunday flea market. Growing up Lottie used to help her make them, that’s where she got her crafty art skills from. Last night, Lottie pulled up a chair and helped her mother. Alex tried to help. Lottie took him through step by step, but he kept poking his finger with the needle.

Lottie has become the mother who crafts her children’s Halloween costumes. Franny wanted to be a witch last year so Lottie made sure she was the best darn witch ever. For Franny’s birthday party, she spent the night before bossing Alex around on how to hang the streamers just right. She was about six months pregnant and it wasn’t advisable to stand on a ladder, but she refused to let up.

She considers it to be the fun part of motherhood. After all the tantrums and crying and early awakenings, she gets the look on Franny’s face when she wakes up the next morning to purple balloons and a chain of letters that spelled out “Happy Birthday!”

Lottie has always been more physically creative than him. He still struggles with a straight line. Alex thinks she should sell her paintings or put on an art show but Lottie continues to insist that it’s only a hobby. Alex thinks that if her mother can sell these scary little dolls for a living, Lottie could make a fortune off of her art. She denies it but kisses his cheek.

Once Franny declares she is done colouring she insists upon going outside and demands Alex teach her how to ride a bike now. Alex is only about halfway through his coffee and holding a whiny Lulu which means she’ll be in need of a diaper change soon.

Lottie anticipates everyone’s move. She grabs Franny’s hand and declares they will go outside together. She challenges her to a game of hopscotch and searches the drawers for chalk so they can draw the outline.

Alex lays Lulu down and changes her. Once she’s all dressed again, Alex blows a raspberry on her and she erupts into giggles. It’s his favourite sound ever. If he could package it up to keep it with him forever he would. He would pay any amount of money it would take. She looks up at him with a toothless grin and he sighs feeling every load come off of his shoulders.

He holds Lulu close to him and joins Lottie and Franny in the front yard. Lottie is hopping one foot, two foot, one foot, two foot when he comes out. The sun pours down in a perfect fashion. The day is bright but there is no sweat collecting on his skin. Last summer, it felt like the weather was inflicting pyrexia on his soul, but this year the breeze blows just right.

The two girls are too engaged in their game to notice the onlookers. Lulu’s body is turned out looking eager to join the fun. Alex would let her if she had gained control of her two legs but she’s too wiggly. By the time Franny was Lulu’s age she was walking but Lulu hasn’t tried to stand yet. They’re not worried about it. She’s an active baby, just a tad clumsy, always on the move, a flimsy move, but a move nonetheless. Alex was the same. Maybe still is the same.

The girls were quick but detailed with the sketching of the hopscotch court. Lottie drew the boxes and then Franny drew the numbers in. On the side of the outline are flowers and two butterflies. One done by Franny and one done by Lottie, but the one each drew represented the other. The butterflies are tangled together. The one drawn by Franny is bigger than the other but is coloured yellow, Lottie’s favourite colour. Lottie’s drawing is smaller, but detailed, outlined blue but dotted with pink and purple with a red body, all Franny’s favourite colours because she just can’t choose.

Lottie makes it to the end and notices Alex. She sends him a smile but stays silent. Franny tosses the lagger and hops away, slow but steady. Franny says, “Watch me! Watch me!” Lottie obeys and watches closely, cheering Franny on.

Back home, a few months back, when the icy winter began to melt and give a glimpse of brighter times, Alex built Franny a swingset. Alex doesn’t claim to be a handyman. He can’t fix your sink and he sometimes struggles with the correct batteries to use for the TV remote, but he’d like to think he’s pretty decent at building things. He put together each crib and bed frame in the house. He’s no woodworker but with some help, he can manage.

So, with the assistance of Lottie reading out from the instruction manual, Alex took his time, let out a few curses, and built Franny her swing set. The entire time they were setting it up, Franny ran around the yard in one of the boxes, truly proving the point that kids have more fun with the box than whatever is inside it.

But Franny does love the swings, specifically making Alex push her. She really really knows how to milk it too, pouting her bottom lip out and saying she just needs help getting started. She hasn’t quite mastered the whole pumping your legs in and out mechanism or maybe she doesn’t want to because Alex will push her for as long as she asks.

There’s a cherry tree that grows in that backyard. It’s been there since before Alex owned the place. Franny is obsessed with it. She reaches her tiny hands up, begging for one to plop right into her lip. She hates eating them because she’s terrified of the pit, but she loves the shape and colour of them. She’ll whine until one of the taller folks pulls one down for her. She cries when they are out of season, no longer growing.

Lottie says it’s a lesson not only on nature but that things won’t stay the same forever. Alex thinks there’s nothing wrong with wanting things to stay the same forever. He isn’t fighting to change anything. He hasn’t been a fan of growing pains since puberty. Plus, he likes the cherries too and he’s annoyed when the tree loses its leaves and beauty.

However, Lottie says that she finds that is when the tree is the most interesting to look at. You can see the true shape of it, how its branches are shaped, and the way it blows with the wind. She made this breathtakingly scenic painting of it that now hangs in their living room. It’s one of the few Lottie will confess she actually likes. Alex has been trying for years to break Lottie’s self-deprecating habits, but he admittedly shares the habit too, which Lottie is also trying to break.

Lulu loves the tree too. Unfortunately, it’s becoming an issue. One day, Franny asked for a cherry. Alex, with Lulu on his hip, pulled one down for her. He didn’t pay attention to the other one with just enough height and grubby little hands that were apparently strong enough to break one of the branches. She stuffed it into her mouth quickly.

Lottie came out a few minutes later and asked, “What’s all over Lulu’s face?” Lulu isn’t well-coordinated and only has a few teeth. The cherry was smacked around her mouth with barely any making it inside. The remains stained her shirt, but she smiled and giggled and Lottie took a picture before they gave her a bath.

Agathe and Emmanuel’s home is in a quaint part of Meaux, just on the outskirts, where every house is separated by a perch of land then lined with shrubs. The house is small but has more rooms than two people need thus each member of the Turner family gets their own room. Lulu will room with Franny when Gabriel and his kids come into town in a few days.

Lulu and Franny tend to get along. Franny loves hugging Lulu and squeezing her cheeks, but they’ve never shared a room. Franny can whine near bedtime and Lulu doesn’t always sleep through the night. It could end in disaster, but Lottie, filled with optimism hopes it’ll bond the two girls even more. Alex is wary.

The Meaux home could qualify as an arboretum. The backyard vicinity has trees that are so tall that Franny believes they are part of the sky. Giants roaming around among humans. She hugs every single one. She’s always treated plants as a creature of their own kind in need of love. She’s terrified and fascinated by them. She leans her back up against them and tells tales that Lottie and Alex don’t understand but believe they contain a secret message from her to the trees.

“Daddy!” Lottie hollers. His eyes snap out of the sky and to the little creature standing before the first square. “Watch! Watch!” She hops one foot, two feet, one foot, two feet until she reaches the end and declares, “I win! Now, bike time?”

She’s been patient, even if she’s pestered on about it for a near-month now. The area is much more secluded here, not running the risk of a freak accident happening with traffic. Gabriel’s youngest son outgrew his kiddie bike and left it here for Franny. She endured all day yesterday and to hold her off any longer would be torture.

“Okay,” Alex agrees. Franny is cheering before the full word has even left his mouth.

There are these moments that he can tell Lottie will remember forever. She’ll tell stories of them for the rest of her life. She’ll talk about them at the dinner table when everyone is older and there are more people than chairs and she’ll tell everyone about the day Alex taught Franny how to ride a bike. He can see it in her eyes with the way they glisten as she takes Lulu from his arms.

She twinkles at him with her smile and tells him, “The bike is in the garage. Tell maman to come out here. And will you bring a chair for me too?”

“Yeah.” He stands there for a moment with his hands on his hips, watching her sway with Lulu to keep the transfer from her father’s arms to her mother’s arms calm. Her body moves slowly and he thinks of the many different situations he’s seen her body move like that. He feels like he’s lived a whole lifetime with her in these short swaying moments.

He squeezes her shoulder and kisses her cheek before heading inside. He hears Franny cheer and jump around as he leaves. Lottie says to her, “Waouh! T’es trop cool!”

Alex sets up two chairs for Lottie and Agathe, who brings out two iced cold lemonades with straws that Alex is envious at the sight of. Lulu sits contently on her mother’s knees and her tiny little fingers grab on the buttons of Lottie’s shirt. She gurgles and listens in on the chit-chat shared between her maman and mamie.

He strolls out with the bike and Franny delightedly claps her hands. Alex lowers the bike seat for her and Franny tugs on his back pockets losing her willingness to wait. Alex bends down and puts the bike helmet over her Lilliputian head. She grins wildly as he clips the buckle. “Are you ready?” He asks.

She aggressively nods, knocking the helmet back and forth. She grabs the bike handles and mounts her horse. “Only let go when I tell you,” she commands.

Franny has been confident through the whole process. It comforts him to know she isn’t being overly confident and reckless. She’s always been a sensitive baby. She likes holding hands, piggyback rides, and lying on chests.

Alex hopes what Franny will remember about her early years is the naps they took together with her head planted in the nook of his neck, her soft quiet little snores, and the way she hiccups in her sleep. The night before Lulu was born, Franny fell asleep on Alex’s chest. In her last few moments as an only child, he hopes she’ll remember falling asleep together.

Lottie doesn’t like napping and when she was pregnant Franny couldn’t lay on her body, so Alex considers this to be just for him and Franny. She’s inherited his ability to nap. Lulu is more clunky with sleep. She’s been a colicky baby and a light sleeper. Franny will conk out in the middle of rock concerts. For his livelihood and parenthood, he’s thankful for both.

The bike has a little basket in the front of it and Franny declares, “I can put all my toys there!”

Alex puts his hand on Franny’s back and holds the bike still under his grasp. “Your feet on the pedals?” She nods. “Good grip on the handles?” She nods. “Helmet tight enough?” She nods. “You ready?” She nods.

For a few rounds, Alex simply pushes the bike up and down the street with Franny steering so she can get a feel for it. At each pass, the audience of Lottie and Agathe clap. Lulu starts to attempt to clap as well, though her hands are too itty and soft to make much noise, but it’s an adorable sight.

Franny begins to pedal with Alex stirring and she’s much better at this legwork than she is at the swings. “Mummy! Are you watching me?”

Agathe answers for the group, “We can’t stop looking at you, Francoise!”

“Is Lulu watching?” She asks as she readjusts her grip.

“Yes. I’m sure she wishes she could be learning to ride a bike right now.”

“I can teach her!” Every day Franny teaches Alex something. He can’t imagine what knowledge an infant is soaking up from her. The other day Franny corrected his French pronunciation. She’s a total smarty pants.

When Lottie first moved into his London home, she was about five months pregnant with Franny. She sat on the floor in her last few days of being able to wear her own jeans. She sorted through her boxes of things and mixed her books with his books.

“We both have The Stranger,” he said.

Without looking up, she said, “Mine’s in the original French.” She only possesses the pretentious French stereotype when it comes to proving French is far more beautiful than English, even though he agrees with her every time. Lottie is wicked smart and he feels dumb as a doorknob next to her.

Still, she told him that he’ll never be able to understand the beauty of the opening line “Aujourd’hui Maman est morte.” He can’t but he’s trying. He attempted to read her copy of The Stranger when she was in labour.

She swatted at him and corrected every other word and said he shouldn’t read a book that starts with the line “Maman died today” when she is about to give birth. Still, he kept trying, intentionally getting worse and worse to distract her from the pain.

He’s getting better. He can read Le Petit Prince to Franny, though Franny has started correcting him too. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she said last night. Alex thinks she spent too much of the day with Agathe.

“I want to try now,” she decides, feet on the pedals and a white-tight grip on the handles. A few seconds later she adds, “But stay close.”

“I’m always right behind you,” he promises.

Franny takes her time, hesitating to take off before she is fully prepared and balanced. He doesn’t rush her, already impressed by her bravery. She’s more insistent and gallant than he ever was. He fears she’ll be attempting the death ramps soon.

She takes a deep breath, something Lottie always tells everyone to do before a big, scared moment. He does it before shows now, even when he’s not nervous. It feels like Lottie is there right beside him when they are oceans apart. Franny lets the big breath out and kicks off. She pedals quickly and pants heavily like she just finished a marathon in her first few pedals.

Suddenly, she sails by, riding down the street as Alex jogs after. She u-turns with no issues and as she reaches back to Agathe, Lottie, and Lulu, she yells to Alex, “I don’t know how to stop!”

Alex is an idiot. After learning how to start, the next thing you should be taught is how to stop. He forgot about that part. Franny panics and starts screaming despite not being near anything that would cause her to crash and she’s riding at about a turtle’s pace.

Alex grabs the handlebars and stops her. She’s already crying, her face completely wet and red. “I didn’t like that,” she cries.

She hobbles off the bike and into Alex’s arms. She cries into his shoulder. He already feels the wetness soaking through. “You’re okay. You're doing great,” he whispers softly in her ear and rubs her back in circular soothing patterns.

Lottie joins them, placing her hand on top of Franny’s head, playing with the braid in her hair. “Baby, you’re okay,” she says. Franny whimpers in his neck, wanting to hide away. Her grip is tight on his collar. All he can do is keep rubbing her back. “Take a deep breath,” Lottie says.

“You know, I can’t ride a bike, Francoise!” Agathe yells from the lawn. “Neither can Lulu!”

Franny lifts her head. Her long lashes are wet and her cheeks are red. She places one of her hands into a fist and bites down on it. Lottie directs her with a deep breath until she calms completely. “Can I have some lemonade?”

“Of course,” Alex says.

Franny sits in Lottie’s lap and sips away at her glass. Lulu is content in Agathe’s arms, babbling nonsense to herself. After a few burps, Franny says, “I want to try again.”

“Are you sure?” Lottie questions.

Alex gets the feeling Lottie is more nervous than Franny. “I want to ride bikes with you.”

Lottie hugs Franny close to her and kisses the top of her head. “You have your whole life to ride bikes with us.”

“I just want to ride a bike, mummy. It’s no big deal.” She hops off Lottie’s lap and says, “Come on, daddy. We’ve got business to attend to.” She leaves laughter in her wake and eventually, Alex gets it together to walk with Franny.

They go over braking multiple times before Franny tries by herself again. With no issues, Franny rides her bike down the street and when she returns to her audience she announces, “I did it!” She hops off the bike and runs over to Lottie. “Can I dance now?”

Alex has tried teaching Franny piano. They’ve accomplished “Chopsticks” but Franny’s fingers are too short to do much else without assistance, but she likes to watch. He tried to teach Lottie piano years ago but they got into a big argument because Lottie doesn’t like to fail at things and Alex wasn’t the best teacher back then.

They’ve matured since then and Lottie can now do “Chopsticks” with Franny. She says she prefers to watch. She’ll sit on the floor and do one of those Montessori puzzles with Lulu. Lottie always claps Lulu’s hands together when Franny and Alex finish a song.

Alex thinks Franny has grown too accustomed to applause after everything she does. She started to curtsy after finishing basic tasks so they put her in ballet. She wears these tiny little ballet slippers and a black leotard with a flowy pink skirt. She dances everywhere now; the park, grocery store aisles, during dinner, she even does a little wiggle in the bath.

So, when she wants to dance, Lottie tells her to dance out on the front lawn. Alex brings a chair out to sit beside Lottie, sitting Lulu in his lap, and steals a sip of Lottie’s lemonade. Franny flails around the grass. Her dancing is limited but in her head, she’s a prima ballerina. Alex can’t help but watch.

“She has a feisty spirit,” Agathe says. “Quite a mignonne.”

“I guess we did pretty well in that department,” Lottie says.

“Yes,” Agathe agrees, curling her index finger in a wave to Lulu, “you were an ugly baby.”

Lottie snorts. “I know. You don’t have to pull out the photos.”

“I was so worried that you would stay that way, but by the time you were this old” she points to Lulu “you grew into your looks. You’ve only gotten more beautiful.”

“Hush, maman,” Lottie tells her.

Agathe doesn’t argue with her plea. “Were you an ugly baby, Alex?”

Alex chuckles. “I don’t think so.”

Lottie grabs his shoulder, squeezing it a few times. “He was a very beautiful baby. That’s where the girls get their eternal cuteness. I sent you the rainboots photo.”

“Oh, yes,” Agathe says. “Francoise looks just like you.”

“Really?” Alex questions. He wonders if Lottie has trained her mother to say this. Nobody else has ever attempted to tell Alex he and Franny look alike.

“Certainly. She’s got your head of hair. Lottie didn’t learn how to smile until she was 10. She would bite her teeth down and show them like she was an animal. Her cheeks were never wide and bright. Franny’s got that grin of yours.”

“Yeah and you both dance the same,” Lottie says with her eyes watching Franny.

She twists and turns and jumps around. Her hands point and she makes up the choreography as she goes but looks as if she’s putting on a Broadway show. For a moment, Alex can see himself in her. She has no shame as she whips her head around, searching the grass for butterflies and fairies, her own secret world.

She imagines whole new places for herself. She talks about them, draws them, and plays in them. She wore these sparkly pink costume fairy wings for a week because she claimed to have been magically transformed into one and couldn’t return to human form until she completed all her tasks. They never found out what the tasks were but she spent a suspicious amount of time digging in the backyard.

Agathe looks at her watch and says she should be heading to the market. Lottie helps her mother load up the car with all those ragdolls and Alex makes sure to distract Franny until they are all concealed. The whole car ride to the flea market Franny chants, “Market time! Market time! Market time!”

Typically this would annoy the shit out of Lottie but there is something so endearing when Alex joins in making a little song out of it. Lulu joins in with her little squeaks. Lottie allows it, but only for the five-minute car ride. She forbids it for the whole time they are at the market.

Alex walks around with Franny while Lottie helps her mother set up. Franny tugs on his hand, pulling him to the booths she finds most interesting. The first is a candle booth that Alex feels like he might barf because all the scents are so overwhelming. The second is a fruit stand where he has to hold Franny’s hands back from contaminating every piece of fruit. The third is a pastry stand where Franny presses her face up to the glass and demands a chocolate croissant. Alex’s mouth begins to water and he kind of wants one too.

“Bonjour. Uh, deux pain au chocolat.” He holds two fingers up to assist with his request. Franny digs into his pocket and pulls out his wallet for him because she wants to “pay” for it. The cashier takes the money from Franny and gives the bag to Alex. “Merci. Beaucoup.”

She tugs on his leg as they walk back in the direction of Agathe’s booth. “Gimme. Gimme.”

“Keep your greedy little hands to yourself or I’ll eat both,” he warns.

Her paws come back to her side. “Please.”

Alex takes one out and bites into it, moaning at the taste. “God, I’m so hungry, Franny.”

She crosses her arms. “Don’t tease, daddy, it’s rude.” Everyone can say Franny looks or acts like Alex, but she’s Lottie down to her core.

He quits testing her patience and gives the bag to her. “Thank you,” she says in her cutest voice—a grade A manipulator in the making.

They stroll through the market like two old pals. Franny devours the treat so quickly you would think it evaporated into the air. Chocolate is smeared around her mouth. Alex hands her a napkin and says, “You got a little something there, mate.”

“Cheers, love,” she imitates. She dirties up the napkin and hands the trash back to Alex. “Merci beaucoup. We should eat those every day.”

He wouldn’t mind that either but he smiles and tells her the parental thing, “I think we’ll settle for special occasions. Nothing is as good as it is in France.”

“That’s what mummy says.”

“I know.”

Franny clings to his side as they near the rag dolls. She looks anywhere but the table they’re sitting on. “They better sell out or Franny will never go near me again,” Agathe says.

“I want to keep walking around,” Franny says.

“I’ll watch Lulu,” Agathe offers Lottie. It’s not much work, Lulu is conked out in the stroller anyway.

Lottie promises, “We won’t be long.” Mainly because she doesn’t want to hang around here too long. These things bore her and Alex swore last night to take her to Saint Stephen's Cathedral. Churches are an aphrodisiac for her and they’re only a couple of blocks from it.

But Franny wants to see the florist booth first. She walks a few paces ahead, skipping away, giving a chance for Alex to put his arm around Lottie. “We got two pain au chocolat and the cashier didn’t think I wasn’t French for a second.”

He’s exaggerating a little but the dramatics make Lottie giggle. “Did he say you were the greatest French speaker of all time?”

“Oh, yeah, he said I should run for president.”

In these short few moments, it feels like it’s just him and Lottie on a street. They could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter. It feels like the whole world is in her eyes. “Well, I bet you sounded very sexy.” She taunts him by wiggling her eyebrows too. She’s playing his game.

He stares at her then at her lips then at her again. Sometimes she makes him feel young and horny like he could fuck her in the middle of the street. His blood is pumping and he sees the image of it in his head. It would be nice if everyone else could piss off and just let them fuck here.

He reaches down and pinches her butt just to get one touch in. She squeals and knocks into his chest. “Oui oui,” he says.

She fist bumps his arm but reaches down with her other hand to give him a pinch of his own. He shrieks from surprise and covers his mouth in embarrassment. Lottie giggles. He supposes his shame is worth that much.

Franny loves sunflowers the best because that’s what was embroidered on her favourite overalls, which she’s since outgrown. She goes through the stand and smells each flower one by one trying to figure out which one smells the best.

Lottie buys a small bouquet of lilies. She holds them down to Franny to smell each offering first before she selects which group of lilies smells the best. She pays for them and sets off for whatever Franny deems is the next booth.

She stops Alex first. She pulls a flower out of the bouquet and snaps the stem off. “For you,” she says, brushing his hair behind his left ear and placing it there.

It’s evocative. He could cry. It pulls on every piece of him. It takes him a deep breath to remember how to compute. Then, he does the same thing he did the first time: he kisses her. It’s slow and gets the job done. It’s romantic, not sexual, purely a kiss to say “I love you” because he does.

For good measure, when he pulls away he says, “I love you.”

She smiles and says, “Pussy.” She leaves him behind and follows Franny. He takes his first few steps slowly just to make sure he has control of his legs and they don’t give out from under him. He watches her move from behind. She fills out his trousers perfectly like they were made for her. He adds it to the list of things that are a perfect match between him and her.

He feels like a dork for having a list but he’s always thinking these things. One night he wrote it out. They had a fight before bed, something inconsequential, but he could tell Lottie had been hurt by the things said, frustrated by him. After a night of tossing and turning, he debated waking her up to apologize but he figured that would piss her off more.

He went into the living room and dug out one of the legal pads and wrote out those things about them that align in all the right places from the gift of children to how their hands fit in one another to their first conversation to all the books they have duplicates of, except hers are in French and his are in English. It made him feel better and he finally fell asleep after.

She woke him up with a kiss, clutching the list in one hand. It was a brief interaction before she told him to go back to bed. When he woke up she wrote a note of her own about how they’re puzzle pieces that slide into one another and how he picks up where she ends off. She wrote that he fits the hole inside her. That night he said he’d like to fit the hole and she got mad at making a sex joke out of her love note. She’s under a sick twisted belief he’s secretly always mocking her. But after she showered, they had sex and she said they’re learning to understand each other every day and there is no one else she would rather get to know. She’s the romantic poet, not him.

He catches up to them at a jewelry booth. They poke around and Alex offers to buy something for Lottie but she fiddles with the blue pendant hanging from her necklace and says she has all the jewelry she needs. That’s enough to make any boy blush.

They buy Franny a little charm bracelet. She shakes her wrist in the air to jingle the charms together. She stares at it for the rest of the day when they return to Agathe’s booth, she rushes up, paying no attention to those evil dolls, and presents her new dazzling charm bracelet. It seems to yield magic to fight off the dolls’ curse.

Agathe shoos Alex and Lottie off, allowing them momentary alone time to head to the cathedral together. They walk on the stone road hand in hand, in pace with one another, repeating patterns from a thousand times before. There’s a version of them from hundreds of years ago that walked these roads before they were made of stone, only following the natural path they had with one another.

“Franny will probably have a doll nightmare tonight,” Lottie says.

Alex swings their hands. “She’s got her bracelet now. I think we can play up the narrative that it fights off the dolls for long enough that she’ll no longer be scared of the dolls when she realizes it isn’t true.”

“Then, Lulu will probably be scared of them. Franny will tell her stories of them coming to scare her in the middle of the night. Gabriel did that with me, scared me for years with stories of phantoms.”

Alex sighs and shakes his head. “Kids. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

Lottie grants him a laugh. “If they weren’t so cute we’d probably eat them.”

“I’m glad evolution has moved us past that point.”

They come up on the cathedral, the steeple covers the sun and the sky is a clear blue. He feels like he’s looking at a giant. They come here each time but Lottie likes to stand across the street for a few minutes to take it in all over again. During that time, he takes her in. “I should build an altar to you,” he says.

She casts her eyes down from the sky to him. “You’re corny. It’s pathological.”

He moves forward, pulling her behind him. “Most women would swoon at that.”

“Well, I have to stay on my own two feet unless you want to carry all of us girls back home.” She takes his arm and wraps it around herself, personally hugging herself to him. It’s her version of corny words, her whispering back her love. He knows this. It’s just the way they work.

“Emmanuel is going to make dinner tonight, which means maman can watch the girls and you and I can…” She trails off suggestively.

Alex leans closer, rubbing himself up against her. “Can?”

“Have a romantic evening,” she vaguely says because they’re in a church and she can’t start speaking of vulgar things even if they are both thinking it. “I meant you take me out to dinner, not whatever you’re thinking.”

His hand trails lower but doesn’t grab her ass because she would yell at him and say the eyes of god are watching, even though she doesn’t believe in that kind of thing anymore. “I was thinking dinner. And dessert.”

“Of course you were. We have to be back to tuck Franny in and kiss Lulu goodnight.”

Alex corrects her, “You mean, I have to be back in time to tuck the girls in and you have to be back in time to have wine with your mother.”

She smiles at him, her lips are close by but they can’t kiss in a place like this with Saint Stephen watching. He’d throw a brick at them or something. “You’ve been trained very well.”

“Good teacher,” he replies with darkened eyes. He’s dirty. Something about a church makes him filthy. It’s something about not being able to that makes his flirtation stronger. He can’t lay one on her so he has to speak it, to convey it in a look.

He conveys it all right. Enough for her to pull away under the claim of looking around, but more not wanting him to see the look on her face and how she squeezes her thighs together. He’s too much; it feels like she could choke. One day, she’ll choke on all the things he says and does and end up spitting everything out, not being able to contain all this love inside her.

He lets her be and looks around on his own. His eyes forever attracted back to her, the unavoidable magnet pulling him closer and closer. It’s irresistible. She’s too alluring to keep away from.

Alex slides up next to her. “Can I take you out sometime this evening, ma’am?” He bows his head like he’s tipping his imaginary hat to her.

“Are we roleplaying now? Are you in a play and you didn’t tell me?”

“There’s this lovely place on the Marne I thought we could go to.”

She smiles because he always seems to remember these things. The ones she can’t even perfectly recall. “La Péniche?”

“Yes. Have you been before?”

“Once or twice.” The first time they came to Meaux they went to La Péniche. They got hammered and had sex in the car. It was the first time they had sex after Franny. The locale could be perceived as unromantic but they both would argue otherwise, mainly because there were no crying babies, among other tantalizing things.

La Péniche is a restaurant on the water. It’s a tiny little boat with beautiful views and a feeling of seclusion even when surrounded by people. Alex gets a steak and Lottie gets foie gras and they share a cheese platter. Lottie ends up eating most of the cheese and Alex ends up eating most of her foie gras.

“I forgot what it’s like to have a meal without having to feed someone else,” Lottie complains. They’ve had plenty of meals without the kids but she’s been a bit hazy these days. He can tell she is hungry by the way she munches the cheese two cubes at a time.

“Does that mean I can’t count on you spoon-feeding me dessert?”

“I thought I was getting the special treatment tonight.”

He smirks. “I was referring to other things.”

“Foot massage?”

“Oh, I’ll give you a massage.”

“You’re gross.”

“I could go under the table right now if you’d like.” He’s trying to embarrass her. He does everything to prompt the blood rushing to her cheeks.

Alex begins to bend down under the table when she kicks him. “Will you stop it? I don’t want to get thrown overboard.”

“Too wet?”

She focuses back on her food before changing the subject, “Gabriel is only bringing Elias. Sacha and Lena are staying with Brigitte.”

Alex groans. “He’s got to bring the annoying one.”

“Al,” she lightly scolds. “Gabriel is upset according to maman. All this divorce drama.”

They’ve all been on the receiving end of a mouthy Gabriel about his divorce from Brigitte, still stretching on. “Let’s promise to never get divorced.”

Lottie smiles across the candlelight to him. She places her head on her chin. “If only for your assets.”

“Like my dick?”

She scoffs. “What is with you tonight?”

“We’re on holiday. I’m horny.”

Her brows furrow. “You’re always horny. What’s so special about tonight?”

He becomes timid, placing his chin to his chest. “I don’t know how else to say this, Lot, but…I’m pregnant.”

She throws her napkin at him. “Don’t mock.”

Across the bridge, they get ice cream. Lottie gets coffee-flavoured. Alex gets one scoop of salted caramel and one of marshmallow but ends up not liking the salted caramel so Lottie has to spoon it out of his cup for him before it infects the marshmallow. He could almost be mistaken for another child.

Alex fails to spoon-feed her ice cream instead ending up getting it on her cheek instead of her mouth. She refuses to let him try again, even if he begs on the drive back home.

Franny scurries across the room in her pyjamas right when they walk in. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she says with her hands on her hips.

Alex has always been in charge of bedtime. He likes it, especially after over a year of not being able to do it. Franny always demands two stories unless she falls asleep before the first one is finished. Lulu is too young to comprehend more than the sound of his voice is soothing. She’s already asleep in her crib when Lottie goes in to kiss her goodnight.

Lottie and Agathe uncork a bottle of wine and sit in the sunroom. They could gab for hours and hours in the same ways they did when Lottie was Franny’s age. They gossip, Lottie told him that.

Franny knocks out halfway through storytime. She’s had a long and big day. Alex nearly falls asleep next to her. He checks on Lulu adjusting the stuffed polar bear that now belongs to her. Franny gave it to her when she was born. Something in him reels every time he sees it.

Alex pours himself a glass of wine and sits beside Lottie. The three of them smoke enough cigarettes to put the Zog of Albania to shame, but when in Rome or Meaux or France or wherever. Emmanuel went to bed before Franny. He seems like a ghost in this house, coming home from work, eating dinner, and then crashing.

“He was such a brilliant child and now he’s an idiot,” Agathe said. “I love him. He is very special but he’s never been able to handle women.” Alex tries to play catch-up.

“Ma, you hated Brigitte,” Lottie says while swirling her wine glass around. Ah, Gabriel, yet again.

“Yes, but she’s a smart, strong woman. He was off sticking his cock in the wrong places. I didn’t set a good example.”

Lottie ducks her head down. “Gabriel will get mad at you for saying these things to me.”

“So sensitive,” Agathe snips. She relaxes back into her chair. “You’re right. Alex, supply.”

He looks around. Agathe has never prompted him to come up with a subject matter. “I can’t help you much there. Only child.”

Agathe softly smiles at him ending in a yawn. “I should be heading to bed. Wash the glasses out for me.” She kisses each of their cheeks good night, leaving them alone with the moonlight.

“If it wasn’t so dark I’d suggest a bike ride,” Lottie says.

“Franny would curse you out for that.”

Lottie shushes him. “It could be our little secret.”

Alex shakes his head at her. He doesn’t speak, sending the room into a quiet comfort. He leans his head onto her shoulder wanting to feel like her pet for a moment, wanting to know what it’s like to give his weight over to her. She knows exactly how to move up his back before combing her hand through his hair. He feels settled.

He drifts away for a moment, shutting his eyes and letting the tension in his shoulders go. Eventually, he flashes back and raises his head. She looks toward him expectantly, waiting for his words. “What was the name of that porn addict boyfriend?”

She giggles confusedly. “What?”

“We’ve told so many jokes about him and you’ve never told me his name.”

She smiles at him and something ticks away in her head that he can’t read but her eyes shift all over his face as if she’s trying to read him as well. “Hans.”

“Hans was handsy.”

She laughs again. This time she lays her head on his shoulder and he flops his on top of hers like two books falling on each other. They sit there until her neck begins to ache. She stands and silently holds her hand out.

They go about their nightly routine. He’s in bed reading when she supposedly goes to the bathroom to brush her teeth but suspiciously shuts the door behind her. He’s not shocked when she comes out in lingerie but he won’t complain.

She crawls into his lap but he stays focused on the book. His mouth quirks up before he turns a page. Lottie sits there in unusual uncertainty, feeling space between them even when they are so close together. She touches his forearm greeted by warmth and hardness. She straddles his waist and waits, but he keeps his eyes on the pages. She scowls. “Okay, I’m sorry, but there’s no way whatever you are reading is more interesting than me.”

“Yeah? How do you figure?”

She snatches the book away, tossing it somewhere over her shoulder, and he gets all affronted. “Hey, I was reading that.”

Lottie manually puts his hands on her thighs. His grip there tightens on his own. “Don’t play games with me. You talked a big game today just to ignore me.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t get all riled up crawl into my lap. It’s very cute.”

“Conniving,” Lottie accuses.

He grins, pulling her closer, and wrapping his arms around her waist. Their foreheads touch. “It’s nice to know you want me too.”

“If I haven’t given you that impression then you’ve been checked out.”

His voice is low, face in the crook of her neck now like he’s talking right to her heart. “I like it when you get all hot and bothered like Hans for me.”

She snorts. “Are we including him in our foreplay now?”

“If it gets you flustered.”

She sighs and pulls away from him. “Remember when we used to talk about intellectual things.”

“I’ve watched too much Teletubbies, my brain’s fried.”

She rubs his ear in between her fingers. “Alright, Tinky-Winky.”

“Eh-oh!” He exclaims before pushing her onto her back. He kisses down her neck. His hands feel up her breasts, sitting low in her barely-there bra. He squeezes one, unleashing a yelp from her. She pushes the tight grip off of her and sits up.

He chases after a kiss. A static shock is sent through him and he continues to follow after her. His fingers fiddle until her bra is undone and off. She caresses her way down the planes of his chest. She pushes like he pushes her bottoms off until they’re both pleasantly naked.

She places her hands on either side of his face and leans up to lock her lips on his. It’s carnal. They rarely get time to do just this. Just sit and kiss. He can’t remember the last time they took it slow and weren’t racing against a privacy clock.

Despite their desperation, neither wishes to rush this. He gets to feel every inch of her, refamiliarizing himself with how soft her skin feels up against his. She grows warmer from his body heat and remembers what it feels like to be moved.

His cock rubs against her bareness, planted right between their two bodies. He lays her down on the sheets. He nuzzles his nose against her collarbone. He lightly kisses down her breastbone. His fingers feel along the indentations of her ribs. He licks her midriff before raising his head when he meets her pelvis.

“What do you want?” He asks because all he’s ever wanted to do is please her.

She bends her legs around him, pulling him back to her. He skims his finger along the curve of her leg. Lottie responds with a shiver. “Get in me.”

Alex’s smile and dick grow about twice as large from that. He runs himself through her folds. She lets out a whimper giving him permission to slide into her. He pushes in until he meets the bottom of her and then he stays there with them lying skin to skin. He breathes her in. Her hands run through his hair, combing her fingernails down his back, so faint it makes him shift into her. She moans against his ear and it almost breaks him right there.

He tries to replicate it, repeating the small movement to pull the same noise from her. She reciprocates until they are going back and forth with the slightest of moves. It’s so little but so erotic. He whimpers. He can’t remember the last time something so vulnerable fell out of his mouth.

Everything is breathy, each noise a whisper in the wind. She quivers under his hand and clutches his back. Her fingernails scratch down his back. He thrusts harder into her. He starts to move in and out of her. He pulls out to the tip gradually. She wiggles around the tip of him, savouring every piece of him.

She reaches her hand down in between them and starts to rub her clit. He feels like he has to touch every inch of her. He begins mouthing her breast as he rocks in and out of her. He groans at how tight she feels and she begins muttering words so gently he can’t understand them.

She pushes his hips down, wanting him to hit the back of her. She grabs his back, trying to grab a hold of something before she flexes, arching her back up, coming. The sound of her moan escapes through her shut lips. He keeps moving to let her ride it out. “Feels so fucking good,” he whispers to her.

Alex pauses when she finishes, holding himself away in the back of her. He kisses her to let the memory sink in. He waits his turn simply wanting her to bask in this feeling first before he makes it about himself. She hugs him to her chest as her panting slows.

When she lifts her hips up, he resumes, shifting up to feel the core of her. He bucks his hips as he approaches that edge. She starts bouncing up. “Fucking hell,” he says because he can’t take it anymore. Before he can manage to say anything else he comes in her. His eyes squeeze shut and press all the way into her.

“That’s it,” she says. Her hand idly strokes down his spine, making him tremble in her arms. He lays there with her like he’s done so many times before. He relaxes into that familiar way she holds him. His heart rate calms and soon he’s just resting with her.

He tucks his head into her neck and feels her pulse against his cheek. It’s a lullaby to him. He almost falls asleep before she shakes him. “You have to let me up, honey.” She only calls him pet names like that when she’s being schmaltzy, the moment too tender for their own names. Honey, love, sweetheart, snookums.

His skin peels from hers, his arms pushing him up and out of her until he sluggishly lands on his side of the bed. She sits up, putting her feet on the floor. He grabs her hand, pulling her attention. She looks at him with those eyes he could drown in—probably already has drowned in, a complete goner. She’s a siren and he’s shipwrecked.

“What?” She asks.

Alex takes each part of her in. He’s seen her like this so many times before but sometimes he likes to hold her here and take her all in for a few minutes. She looks the same as she did at 21, at 32, at 36, yesterday, and yet there’s always something new to admire. He always finds something to tick up his smile in a new way. One day he might know all of her, every bump, freckle, eyelash, that small scar she has on her knee from the time she fell off her bike and kept picking at the scab.

She leans down over him with a grin. “I’m gonna make a mess on the sheets if I don’t move.”

He squeezes her hand just to hold her a little longer. “Okay. Come back quick.” He lifts his head to kiss her.

She’s amused by him but doesn’t laugh. She knows that look in his eyes. “I won’t be too far.”

He watches her go, keeping his eyes trained on her until she disappears into the bathroom. He shuts his eyes to see her. In this lifetime of coming and going, it’s nice to feel like this will always remain. He’ll end every night for the rest of his life with her either next to him or on his mind. He’ll think of all the little details and trace them in his mind. He can feel her right beside him, even when she’s not in the room.

It’s been a line throughout their entire relationship. Her presence in his life has been permanent since he met her. She’s an expanse, a horizon, setting out across the sky with no end in sight. He can reach his hands out, touch every piece of her, and never reach the end. There is always something new to hold on to. There’s an immensity to this sentiment.

The bed dips and she lands on his chest. “Hi.” She smiles, greeting him like a long-lost divinity.

He pets her hair back to see her clearly. “Where have you been?”

She giggles at him, reeling him back into her. His arms embrace her, grabbing a hold of her and bringing her body as close to him as possible. “I was just in the bathroom.”

Alex’s smile pokes through. “I know.” He kisses her nose first. He grabs her arms and pulls her up more until her face is right above his. He strokes her cheek before passing his hand down to her shoulder. She gets lost in him when he kisses her, falling straight into him. They break apart to breathe. “I know. I just wanted you here.”

She hooks herself around him and reverently kisses his cheek. Her thumb brushes the part behind his ear that gets him exhaling. She whispers, “I’m right here.”

a/n: this might contradict facts in previous parts but if you noticed that then you care more than i do. also this takes place in the future i think. if my math is right this is july 2025 but i'm sure nothing new will happen before then because alex probably won't be spotted again until 2030. thanks. i always like writing them, it just takes me a while to figure it all out. but i like this. hopefully, you did too. okay. bye. also can we get another alex recent? it took me forever to decide on this picture and it's not even that good of quality but i couldn't find anything else. okay. bye again.

#alex turner #alex turner fic #alex turner x fem!reader #alex turner x oc #alex turner x reader #alex turner x y/n #alex turner x you #alex turner smut #junedenim

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finn95o · 2 months ago

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THE VID I WAS TALKING ABOUT HES SO CUTE

#DTM LIAM DTM LAIM DTM LAIM #I LOVE HIM #HES SO TINY #Alex was just laughing at him the whole time #Liam and his fear for small flying bugs #being wasps and butterflies #HIS LIL RUN #DINCONQCIGWID #f1 #formula 1 #formula one #liam lawson #ll30

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no-144444 · 7 months ago

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the grid reacts: getting caught making out!

featuring: Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, Daniel Riccardo, George Russell, Alex Albon, Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris

-------------------

Oscar Piastri

It was just meant to be a small peck, but then he wrapped his arms around you, and it escalated. It had all started with a tiny peck, just before you left his driver’s room to leave him time alone before the race, but Oscar had very persuasive lips (and a very persuasive tongue). He lifted you into his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist as he deepened the kiss, holding you impossibly close. Then he sat down on his physio table, making you straddle him as you got as turned on as he was. You two had time, right? His hands grabbed anywhere and everywhere, exploring your body, despite knowing it so well. You whimpered into his mouth as he squeezed your ass, making you jolt forward. He smirked as you pulled back, throwing him a look of annoyance.

“Let me kiss it better?” he smirked and you playfully hit his chest, and he pulled you back in for another kiss. "I love you."

“Oscar! We’ve been calling you for-” Lando’s voice rang out as you scrambled to get off of him, but Lando had already seen. You buried your head in your hands, embarrassed and trying not to laugh as Oscar pulled his cap off of his head and covered his bulge. Lando burst out laughing, nearly falling to the floor as he realised what he’d walked in on, and you got up to leave, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek and giving Lando a kick on your way out.

You: We are never doing that again. Top 10 most embarrassing moments of my life.

Oscar: Ok WatchMojo.

You: Sassy man apocalypse.

-------------------

Charles Leclerc

Charles was a horny man after races. No matter how tired he was, he had to have you. That’s how you ended up in his driver’s room with his lips on yours. He was intoxicating. His sounds, his lips, his tongue. Everything.

“Mon coeur,” he bit down softly on your collarbone. “Tu es trop belle pour être vraie-” (you are too beautiful to be true)

“Shut the fuck up and fuck me Charles,” you said, out of breath. He had a habit of trying to take things slowly, especially in risky places. You were almost sure he had a thing for doing it in public. He smirked down at you and pressed his lips to your again, using one hand to start to undo your trousers.

Suddenly the door flew open and you both sat up, hitting your head off of the other’s head, both of you groaning out in pain.

“Connerie,” he hissed, holding his forehead.

“Motherfuck!” you groaned as Arthur stared at the two of you dumbfounded, his cheeks red.

“I’ll just… come back later,” he said, then closed the door behind him.

“We’ve just traumatised your little brother,” you sighed, hiding your face in the nape of his neck.

“He will survive,” he chuckled, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

“Too bad my pride didn’t,” you added, making him laugh. God, you loved his laugh.

-------------------

Daniel Riccardo

He was a slick bastard. One ‘I need help with my suit babe’ and there you were in his driver’s room, your shirt being pulled off and new hickies being left over the fading ones. It had been 2 weeks since you’d seen Daniel, too busy to come to the last race, and then you were travelling for a friend’s wedding. Now you were back, and Daniel was planning on showing you just how much he missed you, 40 minutes before the race started, aka, when he was already supposed to be in the damn car.

“Daniel, we should stop just-” You started, thinking about someone walking in on you two. Sadly RB didn’t give their driver’s fucking locks on their doors, probably because of Baku 2018… yeah, you and Daniel weren’t exactly quiet, and he wasn’t exactly happy after that race. “Slow down.”

He pulled back, smirking up at you. “Baby, come on, we have a bunch of time, and I haven’t seen you in 2 whole weeks, who’s going to walk in?”

You nodded and pressed your lips to his again, allowing your conscience to fall away with the way he was kissing you. Kissing Daniel was like nothing else. Everything else fell away, there was only him.

But who would walk in? Yuki, probably.

“Daniel- WOAH! LOCK THE DOOR!” he screamed, alerting the entire motorhome of your actions. You quickly pulled your shirt back over your head as he ran out. As Daniel laughed for a solid minute, you tried to get over your loss of dignity. Yuki sure did make things interesting.

“I have no lock arsehole!” Daniel laughed.

“You do! It’s the weird thing above the handle!” One of the mechanics shouted back. You walked over to the door, turning the thing above the handle, and the door locked. Daniel laughed even harder.

Once you finally stopped Daniel from laughing, you both walked out to the whole team clapping and whooping.

Yeah, not your finest moment.

-------------------

George Russell

His stupid dumb pretty face. He just looked so kissable, and you couldn’t help yourself. He was covered in champagne, and he was supposed to be using these 5 minutes to shower and change, but you had other plans. You ran him to his driver’s room, started kissing him, and didn’t stop. He didn’t seem to mind, even if it meant he wouldn’t get to shower and he’d just be champagne-y all night. He pushed you against the wall, his hands on your waist as you ran your fingers through his hair. His soft, gorgeous hair.

His hands travelled up, taking your top with them and you smirked.

“Getting handsy?” You smirked.

“Never,” he shook his head and pulled your top off, beginning his assault on your neck.

“George! Get out of the fucking shower, you can condition later- OH FUCK OFF!” Aleix, his trainer shouted and ran back out the door. George did the gentlemanly thing and covered you, but not without laughter.

“George!” you hissed as he laughed. “Give me my top!”

He handed you your top and quickly changed into a new suit, spraying himself in deodorant. He pressed a quick kiss to your cheek with one last chuckle. “It's a good story for the grandkids,” he shrugged, leaving you with a smile as he went off to do interviews.

-------------------

Alex Albon

Alex had finished in the points again, and you were just so proud of him. Since he’d gotten out of the car you’d kissed him many a thousand times, but he wasn’t complaining. Actually he’d started making out with you about 3 minutes ago, and something in his kisses told you he wasn’t planning on stopping.

“Your mom will be here any minute,” you reminded him, pulling away. He rolled his eyes.

“Did you seriously just mention my mom while I had a semi?”

“Had?”

“You mentioned my mom!”

You chuckled and pressed another kiss to his perfect lips. He pulled you back in, kissing you deeply as his hands ran through your hair, messing it up, but you didn’t care. It felt too good, he felt too good. He nipped at your lips, coaxing them open so he could push his tongue into your mouth. His hands slowly went further down, dangerously close to where your top zipped.

“Alex,” You warned, breathless.

He smirked up at you. “For a minute?”

“Alex-”

“Alex? Are you in here?” George asked, walking in. The Brit was stopped in his tracks when he saw you on his lap, hiding your face in his neck as you tried to contain your embarrassment. He hadn’t even seen anything, but your cheek heated and you wanted the floor to swallow you up. “Oh, sorry for cockblocking, chat later.”

You both started laughing when he left.

“We need to start locking the door,” he sighed.

“I think I’m in shock, I thought that was your mom!” you cried, your breath finally going back to normal as Alex laughed at you.

-------------------

Lewis Hamilton

It wasn’t fair how good he looked in his media day outfits, and he knew it too. He knew you’d pull him to the side and tell him to meet you in his driver’s room, he knew he’d come, and he knew he’d get to fuck you.

So there you were, in his driver’s room, his lips on yours as you both desperately pulled each other’s clothes off.

Too bad you forgot to lock the door.

“Lewis have you- HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK MY EYES!” Lando immediately covered his eyes, turning around as you dressed yourselves. Did you feel guilty? Yes. Did you care at all? Not really. As soon as he left, would you two continue? Probably. “HAVE SOME SHAME AND HUMILITY PLEASE?”

Lewis laughed. “What do you need now?”

“Bleach for my eyes, maybe!” Lando’s voice cracked and he turned back, his cheeks red. “I need an extra ice pack if you have one.”

Lewis nodded and got one of his ice packs out of the freezer in the corner of his room. “Here.”

Lando took it and left without another word. You looked at Lewis, shaking your head.

“I thought you locked the door,” you smirked, allowing him to wrap his arms around your waist and kiss up your neck.

“That’s funny, I thought you did,” he smirked.

“You’re going to get us caught,” you whispered.

“I don’t really care.”

-------------------

Max Verstappen

He’d won (again), and he was horny afterwards (again). As soon as he was done with the podium and the main interviews, he ran to his driver’s room and called you to meet him there, needing some ‘support’.

“Max,” you hissed as he cupped one of your breasts in his hand, kissing down your neck.

“Yes?” he answered innocently, pressing his lips to yours again.

“You have interviews-”

“Fuck the media,” he whispered. “I want you.”

“Max this is a bad idea-”

Just then, the door swung open to reveal Daniel, holding a camera.

“You two need to keep it down, we can hear you down at RB!” he laughed as MAx started blushing, pushing his friend out of the room. They fought for a moment, but Daniel eventually left you two alone. Max sat beside you, letting you lean into him.

“He’s going to post that, isn’t he?” You asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

You’d never have a day of peace with him, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

-------------------

Lando Norris

He was a sly bitch. It started as small pecks on your neck and the top of your head, then it was kisses on the lips, and now he had his tongue down your throat as you ground down on him, even though you both knew he was needed elsewhere.

"That's it," he whispered, loosing himself in the feeling of the both of you. "Feels so good."

You nodded, in pure ecstasy as you felt his hands and lips on you. "So good Lan."

His hands pulled you closer (if that was even possible) and you smiled into the kiss. This was the perfect moment-

"LAN!" Zak brown's voice pulled you both out of it, and you scrambled to get up.

Lando sighed as you left his lap and groaned out a simple "What?"

"We need you for a marketing thing, come on, chop chop!" Zak was as oblivious and cheery as ever and you could barely contain your laughter at Lando's 'annoyed teenager' face, as you and Oscar had started calling it.

"Bye baby," you pressed a kiss to his cheek, and he fought back the urge to ignore his duties and just go back to the hotel and spend the rest of the day with you.

-------------------

navigation for my blog :) (masterlist)

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verstappen-cult · 1 year ago

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GETTING CAUGHT MAKING OUT WITH THE BOYS | F1 GRID

INTRODUCING THE BOYS. lando norris. charles leclerc. oscar piastri. max verstappen. alex albon. daniel ricciardo. mick schumacher. logan sargeant. BONUS. . . lance stroll.

★ — LANDO NORRIS (4)

it stared with a couple of innocent kisses in lando’s driver room before the race. you don’t usually engage in that kind of behavior at least until after a race, but lando was feeling a little under the weather and while you were only trying to comfort him, he had other plans. and, well, if that makes him feel better you won’t deny him a little bit of fun. now, you’re straddling your boyfriend’s thighs, it’s hot and you want to rip your top and his fireproofs off, and lando, as always, is one step ahead of you. his hands slip under your shirt, the pad of his fingers softly caressing your skin as his lips find the pulse point on your neck. you don’t know if the whimper you hear belongs to you or lando, the only thing you know is that the race can wait a few minutes.

“lando it’s time to g–” you don’t hear the end of the sentence because lando’s race engineer it’s too stunned to finish speaking. you’re quick to jump off of your boyfriend’s lap, but you’ve been caught and it’s impossible to deny what you were doing, there’s evidence on yours and lando’s face. the man just laughs and closes the door, saying something about keeping his head clear of any distraction.

★ — CHARLES LECLERC (16)

you were just trying to help charles clean his shirt after you spilled your drink on top of him. but he was so close to you, his breath tickling your cheek and sending a shiver down your spine, and it just happened. the kiss was shy at first, both of you uncertain of what you were doing. but then you were being lifted up by charles and sat down on the sink, legs immediately parting to make room for him. you didn’t care that you were in dani’s guest bathroom and anyone could walk in on you, you also didn’t care when charles’ hands found your thighs, squeezing the soft flesh while his mouth kept the assault in yours, neither did you care when those same hands lifted your dress up, up and up until you could clearly feel the effect your kisses were making on him.

you were ready to ask charles to do something when the door opened startling you both. charles stepped away and you jumped off the sink, trying to brush your hair and looked presentable to the owner of the house who was now looking at you, surprise written all over his face before bursting out laughing. “guys! you won’t believe this!” it only took a panicked looked between you and charles for the boy to sprint down the hallway to try and shut his friend up.

★ — OSCAR PIASTRI (81)

you don’t know if australia has something in the air or if being in oscar’s childhood bedroom is making you feel a certain way. but the second the door closes, you’re leading him to the bed. oscar is a little uncertain at first and looks like he’s about to say something, but the words die in his throat the moment your lips find his. he doesn’t wait a minute in taking control, and lays you down on the bed, his body on top of yours. then your impromptu kissing session it’s not enough, you need to feel him closer, you want his hands everywhere.

“would you like some lemonade?” it’s too late for you to pretend to be doing something else than being in an intense making out session when oscar’s mom, the woman you’ve just met that same day, opens the door. when she sees the scene, she quickly closes her eyes, hiding behind her hands. it would make you laugh if it were any other situation. oscar doesn’t move but looks like a deer caught in the headlights. “i did not see a thing!” you would pretty much prefer for the earth to swallow you whole than to face the woman again.

★ — MAX VERSTAPPEN (33/1)

it’s not max’s fault that you look so, so good in that damn dress that all he wants is to rip it off of you. if the FIA gala wasn’t so important—it’s not. not for him, at least—he would get out of there immediately. instead, he has to settle with crowding you against a wall in a secluded corner of the building when he finally has some time for you. he can barely keep his hands to himself, and is touching you even before you can feel his lips against yours. max whispers sweet nothings as his lips go from your mouth to your neck and then up again, making you feel dizzy. he lifts your dress up around your thighs, and you allow him access in a heartbeat, not caring about anything but how addicting his kisses are.

“ejem,” a cough makes max pull away, and doesn’t hesitate on shielding your body with his, giving you enough time to fix up your clothes. “we’re next.” christian horner tries to look at anywhere but you, and you don’t know if you’re supposed to laugh or feel ashamed. both, probably. max dismisses him with a simple nod of his head, and once you’re alone, max goes back to what he was doing before. you still have a few minutes to spare, he says.

★ — ALEX ALBON (23)

you were having the time of your life choosing an outfit for a party next week, your boyfriend waiting for you just outside the changing room; you actually were focused on trying to zip up a beautiful black dress you had chosen when the door opened, revealing alex with a mischievous smile on his face. as quick as he opened it, he closed it behind him. you didn’t question him, it’s definitely not the first time he’s done something like this, so, you, more than happy, welcomed him with open arms and a set of pink and plump lips. and alex is immediately swiping his tongue across your bottom lip and kissing your properly—kissing you so slow while gently cupping your face, trying to take as much as he wants from you, and you’re ready to give it to him freely.

“is someone there?” a girl’s voice startles you both, but before you can think of hiding alex or saying something—not that you can with your boyfriend’s mouth against yours—she’s opening the door. neither you nor alex know what to do other than to stay very still and very quiet, as if that would make the girl forget what she saw.

★ — DANIEL RICCIARDO (3)

you told daniel that hiding in the airplane bathroom to make out wasn’t a good idea, but you still got up and went voluntarily when he gave you the signal. waiting for him to knock was torture, you were pretty sure you were going to get caught. but when you opened the door and your boyfriend pulled you in to finally kiss you, you forgot about everything. the way daniel kisses should be illegal—how he lets you take the lead until your kisses become sloppy and your head feels dizzy and you can’t keep up with it because it feels so good. then he takes control, gripping your waist with such force it’ll leave marks; the mere thought makes you weak in the knees.

“open up! you can’t do that in here.” a huge knock on the door makes you pull away, but daniel doesn’t let you go, chasing after you until you give up and kiss him again. this time the kisses are more intense and the tiny bathroom it’s too warm and you’re wearing too many clothes. the person behind the door is forgotten the moment daniel gets so close that you become one. you’re already in trouble, so, it’s doesn’t matter if you stay a few more minutes in there.

★ — MICK SCHUMACHER (47)

kissing at clubs is not something you would’ve done in the past, not even when lights are so low and no one cares what the person next to you is doing. but ever since you started dating mick, there are a lot of things you’ve already done that you never thought you would do. and making out in a corner of the club with mick pressing against the window, his body molding into yours just in the right spots is definitely one of them. mick is practically knocking the air out of your lungs with the way he’s kissing you, and you have to hold onto his shoulders afraid of melting to the ground. you don’t know where you are, and you really don’t care as long as mick keeps kissing you like that, so you don’t push him away when you feel his hand making its way up your thigh, getting closer to where you need him the most.

but then you hear people laughing. mick pulls away first, groaning for being interrupted, but then you look around and you’re right next to the bathroom from where a group of girls are walking out. you feel all the blood in your body rushing to your face, they look amused but you want to disappear. you hide your face in your boyfriend’s chest and don’t look up until mick is the one lifting your chin up to kiss you. this time he takes your hand while saying something about going home to finish what you started.

★ — LOGAN SARGEANT (2)

it’s childish. and all of you are adults. you definitely should not be playing truth or dare in a party like thirteen years old. however, you don’t say anything when oscar dares you to spend seven minutes in the closet with logan. it’s true you both have been dancing around each other for a while now, what you didn’t know it’s that it was so obvious for everyone around you too. the cheering from your friends dies down when the door closes and you and logan are alone. you look into each other’s eyes for a minute, pure silence in the secluded space, then logan glances down at your lips and you suck in a sharp breath when you realize he’s asking for permission. your eyelashes flutter as you take a step closer, and he wraps his arms around your waist without a trace of hesitation. you’re gasping into his mouth the next second, his lips warm and soft. his fingers brush along your jaw and, in that moment, you decide this won’t be the last time you’re gonna be tasting his lips, you want to do it every hour of every day.

but then the door opens and you immediately pull away as if you’ve been burned. there are a lot of eyes looking between you and logan for a moment before someone shouts “fucking finally!” and everyone’s laughing and cheering. when you look at logan again, he has a lopsided grin plastered on his face.

★ — LANCE STROLL (18)

lance made sure you two were alone in his parent’s house before taking you in his arms and sitting on the couch. he smiles at you with the same bright and pretty smile that stole your heart one time two years ago as you run your hands through lance’s hair, down his neck and over his shoulders, letting them rest on his chest. lance grabs onto your waist and meets your lips halfway, all his body relaxing immediately. he kisses you so softly but determined, licking into your mouth when you give him access, like it’s his last day on earth and he needs you to keep breathing, surviving. you let his hands roam freely over your body and you can feel your heart pounding so hard, almost as if it’s gonna jump out of your chest and you can’t do anything about it. when your boyfriend’s hands graze your lower back for a second before grabbing your arse, a tiny mewl escapes you.

and as you’re about to grind down, “oh my god!” lance’s sister screams in surprise. you both look at her, more embarrassed than afraid. you know your cheeks and ears are as pink as the shirt you’re wearing, and you feel like your skin is actually burning. ”well, i guess we had the same thought.” she says stepping aside, her boyfriend coming into view with a shy smile on his face.

requested by @biancathecool. . . The boys (individually) Nd fem!reader getting caught making out, with the driver having thier hands shoved down their gfs pants or up their shirt 🫠❤️ Alsin if you could please add lance in this one.

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pedriscroquettes · 6 months ago

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐔𝐘𝐄𝐑𝐎 ✮ FRANCO COLAPINTO

summary. you hated franco for stealing your friend’s seat not knowing that it’d lead to a night of regret.

warnings. enemies to fwb’s, p in v, semi public s3x, major plot twist at the end, & cheating. franco & reader match each other’s FREAK! 18+

a/n. gif by argentinagp! i love latinos!

YOU HAD PROMISED everyone on the paddock that you wouldn’t judge the new driver too quickly. The week leading up to his arrival had been spent reminding yourself that he didn’t steal Logan’s seat on purpose yet you were still mad. You had grown quite fond of the american over the past months and losing a friend had made you bitter. You couldn’t bring yourself to blame Logan for losing his seat so you resorted to the newly arrived brunette.

“He doesn’t bite.” Alex whispers as he notices the glare you’re sending the brunette.

“But he scavenges.” You murmur as the press surrounds the rookie.

“It’s not like he killed Logan.” Alex scoffs.

He didn’t but it felt like he had. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at the way the media had already forgotten about your friend and put Franco on a pedestal. He had just arrived a day ago and already he was flaunting himself as the next Hamilton reincarnate. You turn around too frustrated with yourself for hating him when you didn’t even know him.

“Hola.” A thick accent interrupts your thoughts. You hesitantly turn around only to be met with the guy who took your best friend away. “Those colors don’t suit you.”

“Excuse me?” You replied shockingly wondering where his sense of entitlement came from.

“Ah, lo siento. I meant blue would look better on you.” His cheeks change hues realizing his words came out wrong.

“It would If I cared about Williams.” You smile sarcastically watching as his smile falters. “I’ve gotta go but score at least one point, yeah?”

Franco stays still in disbelief wondering if his comment on your clothes had completely pissed him off. Was his english really that bad? Did he come off too strong? He wondered if the rest of the paddock would hate him or if he was just overreacting.

“Don’t worry about her mate. She’s very reluctant to new people. Give her time.” Alex shrugs.

As the weekend progresses you spend your time between the Alpine garage and the trailers. You were lucky Alex and Lily had agreed to spend the whole weekend with you. You stared at the street as Leo climbed into your lap making you pet him. Practice had just started and you couldn’t help but keep a close eye on Williams. You had began to mindlessly rant to your friends over your encounter with the rookie and how it would most likely take him months to replace Logan.

“When this weekend is over I’m taking you with me to workout because you need to relieve that anger.” Lily laughs.

“No, seriously. You’re acting like he’s committed first degree murder when he had nothing to do with Logan leaving.” Alex sounds concerned.

“Look, I know I sound crazy but I swear there’s something off about him. Plus, y’all do remember the comment he made about me right?” You tried to validate yourself.

“English isn’t his first language it was an honest mistake. Either way he just took that Williams to Q1.” Lily motions towards the screen.

“Whatever. Are we all still on for Sunday?” You asked referring to the plans the drivers had made after the race.

“Obviously. Although we may need to monitor you all night to make sure you don’t damage the new rookie.” The two of them laugh as you sit there annoyed.

The sun was beginning to set as you made your way back to the Alpine garage. Your short white dress was the perfect outfit to keep you cool during the blazing heat of the summer. You were excited to spend the afternoon debriefing with Pierre until you run head first into someone. You try to balance yourself by holding yourself against their chest and as you slowly bring your head up you brace yourself for the apology you’re about to make. But then you see his face and that apology never makes it out your mouth.

“Do you not watch where you’re going?” You scoff at the Williams driver.

“I do. I do it very good actually. Or I wouldn’t be here.” He jokes. “It was you who couldn’t see well or else you would’ve seen me.”

“You’re quite full of yourself aren’t you.” You murmur as you fix your dress.

“People pay me to drive of course I am.” He pulls his sunglasses out his face to look at you directly. He has a glint of confidence in his eye and you can’t help but roll your eyes at his ego.

The two of you stood there alone as practice was long over and the drivers had gone back to their trailers to wind down. Your friends were probably going to ask you why you were late and you couldn’t bear the thought to tell them that you’d gotten into another argument with the rookie. You would get teased for it until the season ended.

“You know this whole hating me thing because you think I stole your friend’s seat, when he lost it because he wasn’t good enough, is so hot.” He smirks.

Any quick remarks you once had were now completely forgotten. His words completely took you by surprise and now you were just confused. Had he taken your witty words as flirting? Had you mistakenly led him on? Or was he just being a prick?

“Though, you could put that mouth to better use.” He says loud enough so only you can hear.

Your cheeks heat up at his comment and you can’t help but feel flustered at his words. Suddenly even the short dress you were wearing wasn’t enough to keep you cool. You instinctively bite your lip as you try to think of anything to say to him but you’re utterly speechless. He’s finally gotten under your skin and he hasn’t even raced yet.

“There’s something genuinely wrong with you.” You say.

“Adiós nena.” He smiles at you before wandering off leaving you all alone to process what had just happened.

The rest of the walk to the Alpine garage is awkward and quick. You try your best to store the encounter with Franco in the back of your mind. You do a bad job at it because his words echo in your mind for the rest of the day. You don’t tell anyone what happened that day because it was weird and also you weren’t even sure what had happened that day.

It’s finally race day and you brush off your white skirt as you walk towards the paddock. You’d meet the girls in the Ferrari garage as Charles had wanted to surprise Alex with a girl’s day. You kept your hands above your eyes to protect them from the sun while subtly trying to ignore the camera flashes headed towards you. As you approach the garages you pause for a little. It had become a tradition for you to greet Alex before any race, a superstition that began when Pierre won the Italian Grand Prix, but now you were hesitant to visit the Williams garage.

You sighed coming up with the decision that an awkward conversation with the Argentine rookie shouldn’t stop you from visiting one of your closest friends. You do a 180° heading straight for the garage. It’s a short walk due to you walking as fast as possible to Alex’s booth. The engineer’s greet you already recognizing your face from the past couple of races. There’s a huge group of familiar faces in the room except the Thai. Your eyes drift around hoping to find him so you’re not late to meet up with your friends but you can’t find Alex anywhere.

“He’s with Lily.” A voice spooks you.

“Franco.” you sigh. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here. The real question should be why are you here?” His condescending tone irks you as he plasters that dumb smirk on his face.

“That’s none of your business.” You reply. “Tell Alex I was looking for him. I’ll be on my way now.”

He grabs your wrist before you can turn on your heels stopping you. You’re now completely face to face with him that you can practically feel his body warmth.

“Something tells me you came looking for me using your friend as an excuse.” He says below a whisper.

“Did your parents teach you that the world revolves around you? Has it ever occurred to you that you are not as important as you think you are?” You scoff. “I’m here for Alex and I would be here for Logan too but you ruined that.”

“Ay, boluda.” He laughs in disbelief. “It seems the only condescending person here is you because guess what? I earned this seat. My parents sold our house so I could be here meanwhile your little friend just spent his trust fund and wasted it.”

You run out of remarks at that. You’d spent all this summer terrorizing him unaware of who Franco really was. Although you weren’t going to apologize, you were too proud for that.

“It’s okay though I wouldn’t expect for a pretty dumb little thing like you to get it.” His voice goes hoarse. Your mind goes blank at his words unable to register his hand ending up on your waist pushing you into him.

Those are the last words he says to you before he abruptly pulls away leaving you alone to process the encounter. Your hand instinctively goes to the necklace on your neck caressing it as you try to regain your breath. You can feel how warm your cheeks are and instantly feel embarrassed at the weird tingly feeling in your stomach. Most importantly you couldn’t believe that out of all the people here Franco is the one who put you in this state.

“Oh, good you’re here! Hopefully I’ll get points today because of you.” Alex smiles at you.

“Go crush them. I have to go though have to meet Gasly before the race. You know go over his strategy for the race.” You stammer trying to find an out of the Williams garage.

“Yeah mhm.” He waves you off. “The two of you better show up to the party! Last one before the break!”

The Ferrari garage erupts into cheers as Charles makes it on the podium again. Alexandria and Lily both scream into your ear as both their boyfriends score points for their teams. Meanwhile you stare blankly as the screen as it shows both Alpine cars outside of the points. Then as if the Universe was making fun of you, Franco shows up on the screen celebrating his P8. You hated him, you hated his confidence, you hated the way he took Logan away from you, but most importantly you hated him because the sweaty messy hair he was showing off made you weak. Your mind instantly replayed this morning’s conversation and you found yourself dizzy.

“Are you okay? Is it cuz you guys didn’t get any points today?” Lily tries to console you.

“No, it’s not that.” You give her a fake smile. “This whole weekend has been kind of too much for me and I think I’m starting to feel the effects. I’m gonna go to the trailers but I’ll see y’all at the party later?”

“Feel better love! Wear something slutty!” Alexandria yells as you walk off.

The pink dress you had picked out for tonight was beginning to annoy you. It was incredibly short so you didn’t know if you should pull it up or down. And knowing Franco would be there made you overthink your idea not wanting to give him the impression that you had dressed up for him. You internally roll your eyes at yourself for even thinking about changing clothes because of a man. That wasn’t you. The effects of the rookie began to scare you.

You don’t waste anymore time heading out the suite and straight to your Uber. It was a short drive and the bouncer didn’t last long finding your name on the list. Lily and Alexandria immediately started screaming at the sight of you and welcomed you into the round table. Most of the drivers were still at the track recovering from their race so thankfully you sat next to Lily with no one to your right. You hoped Alex would hurry up so you’d get to gossip with your friend.

“That rookie ended up with points. I think your hate fueled him.” Lily teases you.

“Are we really going to talk about him, right now?” You sigh.

“He proved you wrong of course we’re gonna talk about it.” She says

“It was pure luck.” You spit out unaware of the brunette walking towards your table.

“What was?” The familiar voice makes you shiver. Lily can’t help but laugh as how wide your eyes go. You slowly turn around to meet the guy that had been torturing you this whole weekend.

“Oh, nothing-” Lily tries to save you.

“Your race today. It was pure luck.” You say defiantly being too stubborn to retract your words.

“Pure luck?” He repeats in disbelief.

“She didn’t mean it-” Lily tries to come to your rescue again.

“Oh, no. I meant it. He’ll be ending up P12 in the next races. I guarantee you won’t see anymore points after this. You’re just here on a test drive and then? Every one will forget you were ever here.” You take a swig of your drink. You don’t even register the malice behind your words being too heated to even comprehend what you’re saying.

His face heats up and his cheeks change hues as he registers your words. You blink and he’s gone. He wanders off to who knows where and it’s then that you register what you’ve told him. You warm up and suddenly you’re dizzy.

“What the fuck?” Lily whispers. “You better go find him and apologize.”

“He started it!” You whine.

“No, you did. You’ve hated him since he arrived when he’s done nothing to you.” Her words make you feel bad. “Now, go find him.”

You stand up adjusting your dress as you scan around the club looking for him. You wander off in hopes of finding him before he leaves. Why was it so hard to find a tall brunette in a crowd of average height people? You give up after five minutes resorting to asking the bartender if he’d seen your ‘friend’ and suddenly you found yourself outside. Franco is leaning against the wall looking at his phone but he’s wearing glasses now.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses.” You squeak afraid that you’d scare him off.

He looks up at you not saying a single word. Your presence pisses him off and he starts to walk away. You follow him to the back of the bar stopping him before the two of you got lost.

“Look, I didn’t mean anything I said. I’m sorry.” You play with the hem of your dress being too afraid to look at him.

“Did he fuck you good?” His face is stern.

“W-what?” His words catch you off guard. The temperature around you somehow getting warmer.

“Logan. Did he fuck you good?” He asks again with a meaner tone. “That’s why you’re mad at me, right?”

What you and Logan did behind closed doors was private, something no one else knew. Something you thought the two of you had managed to keep in secrets. Your cheeks flare up at Franco’s discovery. Were you really so bad at hiding your secrets? If he knew then who else did? You were fucked.

“Franco you don’t know what you’re talking about.” You try so hard to lie. His smirk makes it known that he doesn’t believe you.

One minute you’re lying to his face and the other he’s right in front of you eyeing you down. You can practically feel his body warmth as he invaded your personal space. He had one upped you, again. The innocent facade he had in front of your friends was completely gone.

“Ay, que linda que sos.” His thumb traces your cheek. The touch lingers, your cheeks heating up at the contact. “You’re such a terrible liar.”

“There’s something seriously wrong with you, you know that?” You barely say above a whisper.

“No, there’s something wrong with us.” His hand travels down your cheek to your neck.

That last word throws you off because it’s true, the indescribable pull you felt to him was insane, the two of you were insane. You were tired. You were tired of hiding secrets, Franco’s personality, but most importantly you were tired of pretending. Pretending that you didn’t want Franco. So, you do what you do best when you’re tired. You relieve yourself. You pull Franco by the shirt and kiss him ignoring the feel of his glasses hitting your face. He quickly turns the two of you around your back hitting the wall allowing for balance.

The two of you barely pull apart for air losing yourselves in the kisses. His brunette curls find their way into your fingers while his hands sit perfectly on your waist. The kiss grows heated as you pull him closer to you, feeling him. His hand begins to wander down your thighs, pulling them apart and wrapping your leg around his waist. You can feel yourself grow wetter at the new position and then you remember that your friends were still waiting for you.

“Franco, wait.” You groan.

“What? What happened?” He pulls away quickly.

“Everyone else is still waiting for us. You need to be…” You pause debating if this was really a good idea but had anything you’d done lately been a good idea? “Quick.”

He takes that as a challenge immediately pulling you in for a kiss again. The kiss is messy and needy with your hands in his hair and his hands massaging the inside of your thighs. The cool breeze hitting your exposed skin as he lifted your dress up. The roughness of the wall is soon forgotten as he brings his fingers down to your thighs, gliding them teasingly before placing them on your clothed core.

You can’t resist the groans that escape your throat as his cold fingers come in contact with your core. It’d been many weekends since anyone had touched you like this. He swallows your noises with his mouth as he kisses you. Your hands grip his arms as he begins to move his fingers around your folds, spreading your wetness. You remember that it’s been a while since the two of you walked outside and pull his fingers away.

“Franco. We don’t have time.” You gasp in between kisses.

He picks you up adjusting you against the wall while you dig your hands into the hem of his boxers. It doesn’t take long for your hands to venture down and feel him. Your stomach flutters at his size and how he feels. He quickly pulls you away before placing his tip near your entrance. Your morals long gone you grind on him wanting to feel anything. It’s pathetic the way you’ve gone from wanting him out of the sport to wanting him inside you and he notices it too by the way he smirks at you.

You’re about to lash out when he starts entering you slowly. If it wasn’t for him holding you then you’d have lost your balance already at the intrusion. He stills himself waiting for you to adjust to the new feeling. When he notices that you’re ready he pulls out before thrusting back into you, this time filling you to the hilt. It was almost as if he fit perfectly inside you.

“Fuck.” He groans as he fills you completely.

You’re not quite sure anyone’s ever felt so disgusting. You don’t even try to contain your moans as he continuously thrusts into you at a fervent pace. He feels so good inside you hitting spots no one else had before. His fingers leave mark on your hips as you take him fully. He looks down to where the two of you are connected and audibly groans at how well you’re taking him.

“Oh my god.” You whine as he increases his speed.

His hands come back done to your folds rubbing them in circles as he tries to pleasure you even more. Your hand joins his showing him where you need him the most. You can feel your slick coating his dick as he rubbed you. You begin to feel a familiar knot in your stomach as he fucks you into the wall. His hand cups your jaw as he pulls you into a long sloppy kiss.

It doesn’t take long after for you to come undone around him, your walls squeezing him as you reach your peak. He won’t last long with the feeling of you milking him. Soon enough he’s coming inside you, his warm cum filling you up. The sight of the two of you is disgusting and nasty.

The two of you break away from each other and catch your breaths. You lower your dress back down while Franco takes his glasses off to clean them. You check yourself for any runny mascara, or smudge lipstick, and even run your hands through your hair making sure you don’t look insane.

“We should head inside.” You murmur.

“We’re not gonna talk about this?” He scoffs.

“There’s nothing to talk about Franco. At least not know when everyone’s waiting for us.” You scold him. “We’ll talk next weekend.”

You head towards the bathroom first, Franco surprisingly waiting for you outside. The two of you walk in within a minute difference a smile adorning both your faces. At least until you spot Pierre next to Lily and you’re brought back to reality. You don’t waste time running towards the frenchman hugging him as you sit right next to him. Franco can’t help but stare at you in confusion as he notices Pierre’s hand trail too far down when hugging you. But then he spots it. Pierre wearing an identical necklace to yours but instead of a P it adorned your initial. His eyes go wide.

“I see you and my girlfriend have finally made up.” Pierre greets him.

“Your girlfriend?” His demeanor changes with the news. “I didn’t know.”

Pierre begins to explain how the two of you don’t like to be very public about your relationship. You can visibly see the moment in which Franco’s face goes pale. The next few weeks for you are hard racing between the Alpine garage and your girlfriends. Not to mention the quick pit stops to the Williams garage to wish Alex good luck. It’s a shame you get very little time with the rookie but he makes it work. In the end you really hope he doesn’t get a seat for next year, you can’t keep doing this.

#i like really really hate this but fuck it we ball #franco colapinto #franco colapinto smut #franco colapinto x reader #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 smut #f1 imagine #f1 fic #gabri writes #hey… first f1 fic ☺️

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starkwlkr · 8 months ago

Note

HUGH AND ACTRESS READER WHEN THEIR CHILDREN ARE STILL YOUNGER PLEASE I NEED DADDY HUGH (no filth intended...)

set visits | hugh jackman

an: thank you for the request!!

X-Men: The Last Stand set

As Hugh finished shooting a scene, your two boys were eager to hug their dad. Your oldest, Alex, couldn’t wait to tell him about his day at school while your second boy, Reese, was just happy to see his dad. You held your two month old baby girl in your arms as Hugh walked towards you. The boys laughed at his hair. They called it his ‘cat hair’.

“You look silly!” Alex pointed at his hair.

“I do? I think I look awesome.” Hugh lifted both of his boys up in his arms.

“Where are your claws?” Reese frowned when he saw his dad without the claws.

“Daddy put them away so he doesn’t hurt you.” Hugh said. When the boys saw the first X-Men movie a couple months ago for the first time, they were convinced their dad had metal claws that came out of his hands.

“But Olivia doesn’t know you have claws! She has to know!” Alex pointed at his baby sister.

“She’s a baby, Alex, when she’s older she’ll know.” You explained to your son.

“It’s Storm!” Alex’s eyes wandered around the set and eventually found Halle dressed as her character.

“Want to go say hi?” Hugh asked, making Alex and Reese nod their head. “I’ll be back, love, my trailer is not too far away if you want to go with Olivia.”

“I’ll wait for you there. Stay with daddy, okay? And do as your told.” You said to your boys as you adjust the baby in your arms.

“Okay mommy!” They replied. Hugh and the boys then made their way to Halle. Before you left, you watched Hugh place both boys on the floor. Halle gave them both hugs and high fives. The whole interaction made your heart melt.

“Okay, come on my love, I’m sure daddy’s trailer has a comfortable bed waiting for us.” You kissed your daughter’s head and off you went to Hugh’s trailer. This wasn’t the last set visit of a marvel movie. Your kids were practically raised on marvel movie set. If you asked the Jackman kids what their favorite childhood memories were, they would reply with being on set with their superhero parents.

@kellyxo1

#marvel actress!reader #hugh jackman x reader #hugh jackman one shot #hugh jackman imagine #hugh jackman fanfic #hugh jackman #wolverine fanfiction #wolverine fluff #logan howlett oneshot #logan howlett x reader

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pomegranatesarchive · 3 months ago

Note

Female f1 driver!reader where she looses a bet and dyes her hair blue

thank you for requesting!! i chose to make this redbull!reader

series masterlist

“I’m staring to thing this was a bad idea guys,” you mumbled, feeling as Alex poured a glob of blue hair dye onto your head.

Franco laughed, slapping his knee, pointing at the top of your head, Alex waved you off, “Too late to back out now,” he murmured. He paused, looking down at his gloves before bringing his hand down to your head, smearing the blue dye, “Way too late….”

Franco giggled, “This was your idea!”

You shook your head, pointing a finger at him, “No. No. I was drunk!”

“You said that if I scored points this season you would color your hair blue.” Franco beamed.

“Well I didn’t actually think you would get points,” you grumbled, leaning back into Alex's hands, “You drive Williams.”

“That Williams gave me four whole points.” Franco smugly leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.

“Just my luck…” you grumbled, “Alex make sure you make it even.”

“I know what I’m doing.” he scoffed, “It was my idea to put vaseline on your big forehead so it didn’t stain.”

“I know mister receding hairline isn’t talking about anyone’s forehead.”

“You really want to have said that while I’m in full control of your hair?” Alex smirked at your silence, "That's what I thought."

Your mouth was open, ready to rebuttal, but you were cut off by Franco, who let out an adoring sigh, "I'm going to miss you two."

Both you and Alex paused, frowning, "What do you mean?" Alex questioned his movement in your hair coming to a stop.

Franco laughed, waving you two off with a weak smile, "It's just--I'm not getting a seat next year, so I won't see you two anymore. That's all."

"C'mon you might get a seat," Alex tried, but Franco shook his head with a smile.

You tilted your head, reaching over and tapping his knee with your foot, "Just because you don't have a seat for next year doesn't mean we won't hang out."

"Really?" the doubt was evident in his voice.

"Really," you laughed, "I'm coloring my hair blue because of you, you think I won't want to hang out just because you're not racing? Cmon."

Alex nodded in agreement, resuming his work, "Plus me and Lily love Argentina, maybe we can visit."

Franco smiled a real smile this time, leaning back into his chair.

You three were still in comfortable silence for a moment, before you felt something cold drip down your next and down your shirt, "Um.." Alex froze, glancing at Franco with wide eyes.

"What did you do?"

"I think some dye might've run down your back..."

#f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #f1 fic #f1 x y/n #f1 x female reader #f1 x you #f1 social media au #f1 x female driver #f1 fluff #redbull driver!reader #redbull!reader #franco colapinto imagine #franco colapinto x reader #franco colapinto x you #franco colapinto fluff #alex albon x reader #alex albon x you

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lewisvinga · 9 months ago

Text

fashion help | charles leclerc x fem! reader x alexandra saint mleux !

summary; how charles, y/n, and alexandra came to be all because of y/n wanting to help a clueless charles in a mall

warnings; ?? none i think

word count; 635

all works taglist; @goldenmclaren @namgification @c-losur3 @minkyungseokie @lavisenri @ollieshifts

note; requested !

masterlist !

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆⋆ ˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡⋆

“Alex! These are cute too, no?” Y/n questioned as she ran over to a pink dress and a matching red one beside it. The couple were searching for a matching outfit for an art exhibit event which led them to the large department store in Monaco to find outfits.

“These are quite cute, amor.” Alexandra quietly says. One hand was interlocked with her girlfriends and the other ran down the fabric of the dress. “The fabric isn’t the greatest but-“

She turned to look at Y/n but she was seemingly distracted, staring at the men’s side of the department store.

“Why is he grabbing those blue pants? They’re hideous.”

Alexandra followed where Y/n was staring and saw a confused brunette looking through the racks of clothing. He held up a pair of patterned blue pants which the Art student had to admit was hideous.

“Maybe he’s shopping for a friend?”

“Then I have to help him! If someone gifted me those pants I’d be offended.”

“Y/n, no-“ Before She could finish her sentence, Y/n was already walking towards him.

Alexandra loved her girlfriend, she truly did. She just hated sometimes how extroverted she was and was willing to go up to a stranger to tell him about his poor fashion choices. She hesitantly shuffled behind. She was already preparing to apologize to her girlfriend when she suddenly heard the mystery man thank her.

“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. My friends always say I’m bad at this.” He says with a chuckle, causing both Alexandra’s and Y/n’s hearts to skip a beat. “But thank you. I didn’t quite catch your name?”

“I’m Y/n and this is my girlfriend, Alexandra.”

“Charles, it is a pleasure to meet you both.” He smiled as he shook their hands. Any other man would’ve probably been shocked at Alexandra and Y/n’s relationship, which was common because men always hit on them, but Charles was different.

Both girls were bisexual, so they weren’t new to romantic feelings towards the opposite sex. But they had been dating for a few months and only had feelings for each other. Until the confused-looking Monegasque caught both of their attention. Even Charles felt intrigued, noticing how Alexandra stared at him or how Y/n’s touch lingered for a second too long when shaking his hand.

There was a tension that fell over the three of them and neither could quite decipher what it was. Y/n cleared her throat after a few seconds of silence had passed.

“Good thing Alex and I have good fashion taste.” She said with a smile. With one hand she holds onto Alexandra’s hand and with the other she grabs Charles. “Now, looking at you, I think these would fit well.”

Her girlfriend gave the Monegasque a look before they both laughed at Y/n’s enthusiasm about what pants style and what color looked best on him.

Hours had passed by the time the girls finished picking out a whole new wardrobe for Charles, although it felt like it was just a few minutes.

“I’ve got to thank you both. I really do appreciate the help.” Charles said with a smile, the three of them walking out of the store with bags in hand.

“Oh, it’s no problem. I’m a fashion major so this is kind of my thing.” Y/n said with a smile.

“She just really likes to help people.” Alexandra nudged her girlfriend’s side as she chuckled.

“Are you two busy?” Charles suddenly asked, “I’d like to treat you both to lunch as a thank you.” He wore a hopeful smile as the two girls shared a glance.

Y/n being the most straightforward one, linked one arm with Alexandra and the other with Charles. “Well, lead the way!” She exclaimed with a laugh and the rest was history.

#formula one x reader #f1 x reader #f1 scenario #formula one scenarios #f1 imagine #formula one imagines #formula one imagine #f1 scenarios #charles leclerc x reader x alexandra saint mleux #charles leclerc scenarios #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagine

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ari-ana-bel-la · 1 month ago

Note

Hey love. Could I please request some dad!Carlos, where he is super protective in front of the media but a huge softie in reality. Like playing dolls and princess with his darling.

Thank you🥹🥰

Carlos' little princess

The early morning light bathed the Spanish villa in soft hues of gold as Carlos gently lifted his four-year-old daughter, Yn, into his arms. She clung to her Papá sleepily, her tiny arms wrapping around his neck as she nuzzled into the crook of his shoulder. Today was a big day—race weekend had arrived, and while Rebecca couldn’t make it due to a modeling commitment, Carlos had insisted that Yn come along. He couldn't imagine a weekend without his little princess by his side.

“Are you excited, mi princesa?” he asked softly, smoothing back her unruly curls as he carried her to the car.

Yn yawned, rubbing her eyes before nodding. “Will I see tío Lando?” she asked sleepily.

Carlos chuckled. “Sí, mi amor. You’ll see tío Lando, and many more of Papá’s friends.”

With Yn safely buckled into her car seat, they set off for the track. Carlos glanced at her through the rearview mirror, smiling as she played with her stuffed unicorn, one of her favorite toys. The drive was peaceful, filled with the occasional question from Yn about the race, who would be there, and most importantly, whether there would be snacks.

When they arrived at the paddock, the media was already present, cameras clicking as soon as Carlos stepped out of the car. He wasted no time unbuckling Yn and lifting her into his arms, holding her protectively close.

“Papá, so many people!” she whispered, clutching his shirt.

Carlos pressed a reassuring kiss to her forehead. “Don’t worry, princesa. They just want to take some pictures, but they won’t come too close.”

The photographers kept their respectful distance, capturing the heartwarming sight of the usually intense driver cradling his daughter with so much tenderness. Unbothered, Yn buried her face in his shoulder, sighing contentedly as he carried her into the paddock.

Inside, the Williams team had set up a small play area for Yn. Carlos trusted their staff, and since they had a few younger mechanics who loved kids, he felt comfortable letting her play while he handled his team duties.

“Now, princesa, you be good and listen to tío Alex and the others, okay?” Carlos crouched down to her level, making sure she understood.

Yn nodded enthusiastically. “Sí, Papá! I will!” Then she leaned forward and whispered, “Can I have ice cream later?”

Carlos laughed. “We’ll see. Only if you eat all your lunch, okay?”

With that deal struck, Yn happily went off to play, leaving Carlos to focus on his meetings and practice sessions. Still, his gaze often flickered towards her play area, making sure she was happy and safe.

During lunch, Yn sat on his lap, her little hands holding a small sandwich as she ate. “Papá, you drive so fast,” she said between bites.

“Of course, mi amor,” Carlos grinned, tapping her nose. “That’s my job!”

She giggled, kicking her tiny feet. “I like it when you go vroooom!”

After lunch, Yn tugged on his sleeve insistently. “Papá, play dolls with me!”

Carlos raised a brow. “Right now? But Papá has to prepare for the race.”

Yn pouted, her big brown eyes widening in that irresistible way only a child could master. “But only you play dolls right, Papá!”

With a dramatic sigh, Carlos gave in. “Okay, okay. But only for a little while.”

What he didn’t expect was the media capturing the whole moment.

There he was, one of the fiercest competitors on the grid, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hospitality suite, holding a tiny plastic doll in his large, calloused hands. Yn, looking completely in her element, was instructing him on how the princess should be dressed for her royal ball.

“No, Papá! She needs the pink dress, not the blue one!” she said, her tone exasperated but affectionate.

“Oh, lo siento, princesa,” Carlos said, barely containing his laughter. He swapped out the dresses, following her lead.

The sight was nothing short of adorable. The cameras outside the hospitality suite snapped pictures through the windows, capturing the moment a world-class driver played dolls with his daughter, occasionally kissing her cheek and making her burst into giggles.

Meanwhile, in the paddock, Lando, Charles, and Alex had spotted the scene and were watching with amused grins.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Lando whispered. “Carlos playing with dolls.”

Charles smirked. “He’s completely wrapped around her little finger.”

Alex chuckled. “Honestly? It’s adorable.”

Inside, Carlos finally put the doll down, stretching his arms. “Okay, princesa, now Papá really has to work.”

Yn huffed dramatically. “Fine. But we play more later!”

He scooped her up into his arms, pressing another kiss to her cheek. “Deal.”

That evening, as he got ready for his qualifying session, he couldn’t help but smile when he saw his little girl cheering him on from the sidelines, waving enthusiastically.

Carlos may have been a racing driver, but first and foremost, he was a father. And nothing, not even a championship title, could compare to the love he had for his little Yn.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Authors Note: hey guys. I hope you enjoy me first story. My requests are open for everybody!

-💙🦋

#formula 1 #formula one #carlos sainz x daughter!reader #carlos sainz x reader #carlos sainz #carlos sainz jr #f1 drivers as fathers #f1 x reader #f1 x female reader #dad!carlos sainz #sainz!reader

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isaadore · 2 months ago

Text

YOURS TO KEEP CONNOR BEDARD

‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎‎‎‎ pairing connor bedard x reader

SUMMARY connor has always kept his personal life private, but during a blackhawks family skate, he surprises his teammates and the media by introducing you as his girlfriend. word count 0.9k

warnings fem!reader, use of y/n, fluff, established relationship, teasing

note requested by anon <3 i'm sorry i made connor seem so tall; he definitely isn't… (he's only two inches taller than me)

CB98 MASTERLIST MAIN MASTERLIST

CONNER WASN’T ONE to draw attention to himself off the ice. He kept his head down, focused on hockey, and left the spotlight to the bigger personalities. It’s not that he was hiding anything—okay, maybe one thing.

You.

You’d been together for years, long enough that Connor’s rookie season with the Blackhawks wasn’t your first brush with the hockey world. But he had always kept your relationship private. There were no Instagram posts, no public outings, and no “soft launches.” He didn’t see the point in inviting unnecessary attention.

Then, out of the blue, he brought it up over takeout one night.

“So, there’s this family skate coming up,” he said casually, too casually, as if he hadn’t been rehearsing the line for days.

“Okay…” you said, raising an eyebrow as you speared a piece of broccoli with your fork.

“I was thinking, maybe you’d want to come?” He said it so fast that it almost sounded like one word.

You froze, mid-chew. “Wait, are you serious? You want me to meet your teammates?”

He shrugged, trying—and failing—to look unbothered. “I mean, yeah. It’s no big deal.”

You stared at him, a slow smile spreading across your face. “Are you blushing?”

“Just forget it,” he mumbled, looking anywhere but at you.

“Hey, no! I want to go,” you said quickly, reaching across the table to grab his hand. “I just… I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

“I do,” he said, quieter now. “I want you there.”

A few days later, you found yourself at the United Center, lacing up your skates while Connor hovered nearby. He was fidgeting with his gloves, glancing toward the ice, then back at you.

“Are you nervous?” you asked, half-laughing as you tightened your laces.

“No,” he said immediately, then paused. “Maybe. I just… I don’t do this stuff.”

“Connor, it’s a family skate, not a press conference.”

He huffed a laugh but didn’t look convinced.

The second you stepped onto the ice, Connor was right there, his hand in yours, steadying you. It was sweet how he acted like you might fall at any moment, even though you’d skated plenty of times with him before.

“You good?” he asked, glancing down at you.

“Yeah,” you said, smiling up at him. “Are you?”

Before he could answer, you caught movement out of the corner of your eye. A group of his teammates was gathered near the bench, and they were definitely watching.

“Wait a minute,” Lukas said, his eyebrows pulling together as he looked between the two of you. “Who’s this?”

Connor stiffened, his fingers tightening slightly around yours, but he didn’t let go.

“This is… uh, this is my girlfriend, Y/N,” he said, his voice steady despite the blush creeping up his neck.

The group fell silent for half a second, then erupted all at once.

“Shut up.”

“No way.”

“You’ve been hiding her this whole time?”

Taylor skated closer, eyeing Connor with disbelief. “You’ve been holding out on us, man. How long has this been a thing?”

Connor shifted awkwardly, his free hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “A while.”

“A while?” Alex said, his mouth falling open. “That’s all you’re giving us?” He turned to you, a teasing grin spreading across his face. “How do you put up with him? He’s, like, the least talkative guy on the planet.”

You laughed, shooting Connor a playful look. “He’s not so bad. When he talks, it’s usually worth listening to.”

A few of the guys laughed at that, while Connor just muttered, “Real funny,” under his breath, though he couldn’t quite hide the hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

By the time the group had mostly dispersed, Connor was still at your side, his hand brushing against yours every so often, as if he needed the reassurance.

At the end of the skate, the team gathered at centre ice for a group photo. The team photographer directed everyone into position, and Connor stood with you off to the side, watching.

“C’mon, Bedard!” Lukas called out. “Bring her in, too. It’s a family skate, isn’t it?”

Connor hesitated, glancing at you. “You okay with that?”

You nodded, smiling. “Of course.”

Without another word, he led you into the group, sliding his arm around your waist as you both smiled for the camera. It felt natural, like you belonged there.

The photo was shared on the team’s Instagram later that evening, captioned: Family Skate Day ❤️

Almost immediately, fans noticed the small detail that sent the internet into overdrive: Connor Bedard, standing with his arm around a girl.

The comments section exploded.

user01 WAIT WHAT

user02 who’s the girl next to bedard??

user03 No idea but it should be me

user04 user03 preach

user05 wake up this is not a drill connor has a gf 💔

user06 Oh my day is ruined

user07 talk about a hard launch

user08 she’s so pretty stoppp

Connor didn’t notice the post until his phone buzzed with a flurry of notifications. He frowned, pulling it out of his pocket.

“Uh,” he said, staring at the screen. “I think the team might’ve… posted something.”

You leaned over to see, a soft laugh escaping as you read the caption. “Clearly.”

Connor sighed, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “This is why I don’t do social media.”

You reached for his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Hey, it’s not so bad. They’re just happy for you—for us.”

He looked at you, his expression softening. “As long as you’re okay with it.”

You smiled. “I am. Are you?”

Connor hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice soft. “Better than okay.”

‎‎‎‎‎ ‎‎‎‎‎ CB98 MASTERLIST ✷ MAIN MASTERLIST

#connor bedard x reader #connor bedard #nhl x reader #nhl fanfic #nhl imagine #connor bedard x you #connor bedard imagine #connor bedard fluff #connor bedard angst #nhl x you #nhl fic #nhl #hockey #✷ isaadore

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requiemforthepoets · 6 months ago

Note

hii do you write for franco? if yes can i request a fic where reader is short and insecure about her height so she’s afraid their relationship won’t survive his “f1 career” cause of the lifestyle and all the girls he’s going to meet so despite really loving him she tries to breakup with him but he won’t let her?

tell me that you’re still mine, tell me that we’ll be just fine 𖦹 FC43

PAIRINGS: franco colapinto x female!reader

SUMMARY: when you found out that franco will be racing for williams racing, you were so proud of him. though at the back of your mind, you can’t help but overthink about your relationship with him now that he’s finally in f1.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hi! thank you so much for sending your request. it’s my first time writing for franco, but i really had fun. i hope you’ll like this one and it’s up to what you were expecting. enjoy! :)

REMINDERS: this is purely fiction, the way how the character is portrayed in my story does not reflect the person that is portraying my character in real life. always separate fiction from reality, and do not repost or copy my work in any way.

WORD COUNT: 1.6k

WARNINGS: not proofread, typos, insecurities (mostly comparing self to others), cursing, low self esteem, overthinking, anxiety, and no use of y/n

As you stand in the Williams garage, you can clearly hear the hum of the whole circuit buzzing all around, and you can’t help but feel so proud. Franco had just achieved what he had been dreaming of since childhood—his first official race in Formula 1. It should have been one of the happiest moments of your life, watching him stand there, helmet in hand, chatting animatedly with the engineers, that wide grin plastered on his face. You knew how hard he worked for this, how many nights you spent listening to his dreams, encouraging him through the frustrations of karting, and celebrating every win, every milestone. You were there through it all, and here he was now—your Franco, living his dream.

However, alongside the pride that you were feeling, a bitter feeling also crept in. It had been lurking at the back of your mind for days now, only growing stronger with each passing moment. It was not about Franco’s career, but more about where you fit into his new world. The glitz and glamor, cameras that seemed to follow every move, the polished and perfect people that surrounded him—people you had never imagined yourself fitting in with.

Lily, Alex’s girlfriend, had been nothing but sweet to you all weekend. You bonded with her quickly, her kind words and warmth is a welcoming comfort amidst the chaos. Yet, as much as you liked her, being around someone so gorgeous and effortlessly poised had only made you feel even smaller. You weren’t tall or glamorous like her or the other WAGs, nor were you used to the attention, and you barely have a successful career. You were just…you. A university student trying to get by through her classes, someone who barely knew what to do when a camera pointed your way, and someone who couldn’t help but wonder if you were truly cut out for this kind of life.

When Franco finally made his way back to you, you could hardly breathe. He greeted you with that same wide smile and a soft tender kiss on the lips, his eyes still sparkling from the thrill of the race.

“Can you believe it?” He laughed, pulling you into a hug. “I can’t believe I just raced in F1. This is really insane.”

You smiled weakly, arms wrapped around him. Trying to steady your racing heart. “I’m so proud of you,” you murmured against his chest. But the words felt heavy, there was something you needed to say, something you dreaded.

After the media frenzy died down and the team began to clear out, you knew it was time. You asked Franco if the two of you can go to his driver’s room, away from the lights, cameras, and the noise. He nodded and led you towards his driver’s room, completely oblivious to the storm brewing inside of you.

When you reached his driver’s room, he locked the room to give you two some privacy. Franco quickly sensed that something was off with you, immediately frowning.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, as your hands shook as you fumbled with the words. “Franco…I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Do what?” His voice is gentle but confused.

“This. All of this.” You gestured around vaguely. “I don’t belong in this kind of world. I don’t look like the other girls in this kind environment, I don’t act like them. I just feel like…I’m not cut out for this, you know. For you.”

He blinked at you, and then—he laughed. A soft incredulous sound that only made your chest tighten. “You’re joking, right?” But you just shook your head, throat tightening painfully. “I’m serious, Franco.”

His smile faltered, eyes searching your face, and then he grew serious. “You’re breaking up with me?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing at all.

You bit your lip, feeling your resolve crack under the weight of his words. “I think I have to.”

Franco stepped closer, shaking his head in disbelief. “No. No way. Hell no. You’re not doing this.” He grabbed your hands, holding them tightly. “Tell me why. What’s really going on?”

You stared at the ground, unable to meet his eyes. How could you even tell him? How could you put into words the overwhelming insecurities that you had been drowning in.

“I’m not enough for this life, for your life,” you whispered, voice barely audible. “I’m just…me. You deserve someone who can handle all of this, someone who doesn’t feel like they are drowning every time the cameras turn their way. I’m scared that this will change us, that it will change you.”

Franco squeezed your hands tighter, forcing you to look at him. “You’re scared?” He asked softly. “Of what exactly? That I’ll stop loving you because I’m in F1 now?”

You nodded, chest tightening as tears began to fill your eyes. “I’m not like them, Franco. I don’t belong here.”

He pulled you into his arms, resting his chin on top of your head. “Listen to me, and you listen well,” he whispered. “You’ve been with me through everything, literally everything. Since my karting days. You’re the one I want with me, not some random model, not someone from this kind of environment. You.” He gently cupped your face, making sure that you were looking directly into his eyes. “I’m not breaking up with you. Not because of this, not because of anything. I love you so much. If this life makes you uncomfortable, we’ll figure it out. Together.”

You shook your head, still overwhelmed with doubts. “But I don’t know how to—”

“I don’t care,” he interrupted softly. “I don’t really care about any of that. All I care about is you. I’m not losing you just because you think that you’re not enough. You’ve always been more than enough for me.”

Tears finally spilled over, and Franco wiped them away with his thumb. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, okay?” He added.

You let out a choked laugh, burying your face in his chest. “Okay,” you whispered, feeling the weight of your fears slowly start to lift.

Franco kissed the top of your head as he kept you close, his voice soft but firm. “Look at me,” he said, lifting your chin so your eyes met his. “There’s no one else I see in my future but you. No one else who matters like you do. I don’t care about the noise or what other people say. Let them talk all they want, I don’t give a shit. You’re the most important person in my life.”

His words wrapped around you like a warm blanket chasing away the chill of insecurity. You couldn’t help the way your heart fluttered, how much you wanted to believe him. “But people will judge, Franco. They already are.”

Franco shook his head, brushing a strand of hair away from your face. “I don’t care about them. They don’t know you like I do. I’ve seen you at your best and your worst, and I’ve loved you through it all. That’s what matters, not their opinions.”

You bit your lip, trying to push away the lingering doubts. “It’s just I don’t want to hold you back. You deserve someone who—”

“I already have someone I deserve,” he cut you off, voice unwavering. “You’ve been there for me through everything, you believed in me when no one else did, even when I wasn’t sure I believed in myself. I’m not letting you go because of some stupid insecurities about fitting in with this world. I don’t need someone from this world. All I need is you.”

Tears welled in your eyes again, but this time they weren’t from doubt or fear. They were from the overwhelming love you felt at that moment. “You’re sure?” You whispered, voice trembling. “You’re really sure?”

Franco smiled, the kind of smile that made everything else melt away. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. You’re my future, not them. Not anything else. Just you.”

As you stood there in his arms, you let yourself believe it. Because the way he looked at you, the way he spoke, it left no room for any doubts. You were the one he wanted, and that was enough.

After a long moment of silence, just feeling the comfort of being in his arms, you finally pulled back, wiping the last of your tears and giving him a small and sweet smile. The tension that had been weighing on you had lifted, already been replaced by the familiar warmth you always felt around Franco.

You wrinkled your nose playfully, trying to lighten the mood. “Okay, as sweet as this moment is, you really need to freshen up. You stink.” You teased, giving him a playful nudge.

Franco let out a laugh, the sound light and easy. “What? No way, I smell like pure victory,” he grinned, pulling you back into his arms, purposely trying to rub his post-race sweat on you.

“Franco!” You squealed, trying to push him away. “Ew, Franco! You’re all sweaty!”

He laughed harder, his arms tightening around you for a second before he finally let you go, raising his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, I’ll go and freshen up,” he said, his grin still wide. “But don’t think I didn’t notice how you were crying on me. If anything, you owe me for that.”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t help smiling. “Fine, fine. I’ll owe you. Just go clean up before I regret taking you back,” you teased, earning an exaggerated gasp from him.

Franco winked at you before heading off to freshen up, not forgetting to steal a kiss from you. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ve got plans for us to celebrate.” He threw a playful look over his shoulder.

You shook your head with a laugh, feeling lighter than you had in days. The doubts that once felt overwhelming now seemed small in comparison to the love you shared. Franco was right—together, you could figure out everything, just like how you both always do.

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jamminvroomvroom · 10 months ago

Note

congrats on 5k queen! you’re writing is so brilliant beyond belief and you deserve all the love and support this site has to offer. can i request lando+angsty smut (the best combo)…prompts along the lines of “i don’t think im ever going to love anyone the way i love you”//“i don’t think i want to love anyone else”

how did it end?

ln x famous fem!reader

in which it ends, until…

i love this fic with my whole heart. thank u sm for this request, anon, and for being so absolutely for gorgeous and kind <3 kicking off the 5k celebration with a big, sad, sexy bang! lemme know what you think, hugs n kisses

songs to set the mood: how did it end? by taylor swift

warnings: 18+!! minors dni!! smut, angst angst angst, fluff, happy ending! exes to lovers, just. a lot going on. sad!lando, sad!everyone, so many feels, r is a big deal model, alcohol consumption, mentions of smoking

4.1k words

one gasp, and then…

“how did it end?” the woman strokes your arm, soothing, tentative.

you don’t know her all that well, she’s signed to the same agency as you, you see her in the halls sometimes and sit next to her in makeup chairs.

you stare blankly at her, registering. news travels fast apparently.

you smile, small, fake, tilting your head to the side. you mumble something about different schedules, timezones, right person, wrong time. she watches your face intently, with sympathy. you want to throttle her. she’s being kind and you despise her for it right now.

“i won’t tell anyone.” she affirms, her fingers still smoothing over the skin of your arm.

yes you will, you think. all of her friends, the rest of the building will know exactly what you’ve told her by the time you get to your meeting. you don’t begrudge her, though, that’s the nature of the industry.

“well, it was good to see you.” you nod, even go in for a quick hug, and then you speed away, beelining for the elevator. the ride is short, your managers office somewhere on the third floor and you shuffle down the corridor, ready to be informed of what your life will look like for the next three months.

fittings, shoots, paris trip.

mhm.

swimwear season, charlotte tilbury, meeting with the vogue journalist.

cool.

week off, few days in london, monaco grand prix.

no.

“what? no.” you splutter. out of habit, you reach for a necklace, frown when you realise it’s no longer there.

“what do you mean, no?” she narrows her eyes at you.

“i can’t go to the race. no.”

“girl, i love you, but did i ask?”

“you know i can’t-“

“you won’t have to see him.” she reasons.

“but what if i do? he’s obviously gonna be there, and the events before and after- no. no.”

“lando norris is not gonna be the end of you.”

you stifle a laugh, one that sounds more like a strangled cry.

what if he already was?

look who we ran into at the shops,

walking in circles like he was lost

lando stares at the shampoo.

specifically, the one you use. used. he can’t be too sure anymore, he supposes.

he’d popped out for a loaf of bread, about an hour ago. he didn’t want to acknowledge how long he’d been staring at the women’s toiletries section.

you seemed to live on, everywhere. lando could see you in his apartment, the passenger seat of his car, the back of the garage. even the fucking supermarket wasn’t safe. you were very much alive, moving on with life, and yet you haunted him like he’d killed you himself.

perhaps he had, in a way.

the basket grazes the outside of his leg.

that’s the shower gel he’d buy for you, the one you only used when you stayed with him in monaco.

there’s the tampons you asked him to buy, crying back at home on your- his bed.

oh, and there’s the shampoo that you made him buy, the one that you told him made his curls feel extra fluffy when he was between your legs-

“lando?” a voice calls, drawing lando out of the mist.

“oh, alex. hey.” lando croaks. he hasn’t noticed the lump in his throat until now. he clears his throat, running a hand through his hair.

“what you doing, mate?” alex asks, eyebrows furrowed. he scans lando’s face, puffy eyes, watery.

“shopping.”

“for women’s shampoo?”

“no, no, just… looking.” lando stutters.

“when was the last time you slept?” alex’s voice is laced with concern, apprehensive. he doesn’t know what to say to his heartbroken friend.

lando smiles weakly.

“i’ve been sleeping.”

alex sighs.

“okay, when was the last time you slept properly, then?”

lando’s shoulders visibly sag.

“about a month ago.”

we hereby conduct this post-mortem

“we can’t do this anymore.”

the words fall from your lips in a whisper, but they reach him like you’ve screamed them at him. he sits opposite you, in the arm chair, so far away, only a metre or so.

“i know.” lando breathes shakily.

“i don’t want this but…”

“yeah.”

it’s been such a good year. you’re in love. it’s not enough. there’s too much distance, too many outsider opinions, too much longing for someone who’s on the other side of the world.

he’ll be in london. you’ll be in brazil.

he’ll be in australia. you’ll be in amsterdam.

it’s too much.

“i love you, though.” you remind him meekly.

“don’t know how to not love you.” he sniffles.

your heart shatters, the pieces flying over the room, spilling across the floor. they mix with the splinters of his, painting the room red. all you feel is blue.

you cry in his arms when he takes you to bed, his own tears spilling over your collar bone when he buries his head in your neck, licks over the marks he’s left there. to remember me by, he’d muttered dryly.

when you’re both finished, he lays there for a moment, still on top of you. damp with sweat and tears, the taste of one another still lingering on your tongues.

“how is it possible that i miss you already?” he pants, lips grazing just below your ear.

“i get it, lan. i’ve been missing you for a while.”

you’re gone when he wakes up.

and so, a touch that was my birthright became foreign

come one, come all

it’s happening again

the empathetic hunger descends

there are about six cameras pointed at you when he asks the dreaded question.

you’re in new york, sat on a talk show hosts sofa, lit by stage lights and his inquisitive eyes. two hundred people sit in the audience, on the edge of their seats waiting for you to spill your secrets.

“so, what happened there, with lando?”

you plaster on the fakest smile to date, crossing your legs anxiously.

“we’re both just so busy, you know? he’s doing amazing things in f1 and i’m all over the place with work.”

“we love both of you over here, it was sad to hear.” he sympathises, adjusting his tie and leaning back in his chair. his fingers drum over the wood of his desk, waiting for more.

vultures. everyone is a vulture.

“and we still have a lot of love for each other. he’s a wonderful person.”

there are tears in your eyes and bile rising rapidly in your throat when you shake hands with the crew, the host, and retreat to your dressing room. you stumble into the en-suite and throw up. then, you fall onto the sofa and cry. you fix your makeup at godspeed and reply to the text from your team, inviting you to drinks at some rooftop bar, promising to meet them there. you punctuate the text with one too many exclamation marks, feigning excitement.

“we still have a lot of love for each other.”

translation: i can’t understand: how did it end?

lando watches your interview. of course he does. he watches everything that you do, watches the way you set the world on fire.

he can’t help himself where you’re concerned, like an addict craving the next hit. you look so pretty on tv, glowing. you look fine.

god, why do you look fine?

he hates himself for hating just how fine you look. he is not fine.

“he’s a wonderful person.”

your words ring in his ears. they anger him, because if he’s oh-so-wonderful, why aren’t you here? why isn’t he there with you, waiting backstage? why can’t you just hate him? why can’t he just hate you? maybe you will, if he shows you just how not wonderful he can be.

he gets drunk that night. forces max to hit the clubs with him. sticks his tongue down a pliant woman’s throat. doesn’t ask her name. let’s her invite him back to her place. it has to be her place, he can’t fuck someone else in your bed, the one you used to share. he leaves minutes after he’s pulled out. he’s sure she’s lovely, too good for him and his bitter fucking heart. he feels utterly disgusting.

lando goes home, scrubs his skin red, and then does it again. he doesn’t go to sleep, watches from his balcony as the sun begins to rise over the sea. he hikes to the highest point he can reach in monaco, where it’s quiet and there’s no one to judge him, or worse, sympathise with him.

he stands at the edge of the cliff. screams once, twice. he sits on a rock, and lets himself cry.

the deflation of our dreaming

leaving me bereft and reeling

my beloved ghost and me

sitting in a tree

d-y-i-n-g

your stylist is plying you with options.

you can wear the denim with the cream OR you could do the red and white? or we can go full glam! or! or! or! we could-

you drown her out. you don’t give a fuck. not a single one.

what you wear to the monaco grand prix is quite literally the least of the your problems. your biggest problem, of course, is that you have to go to the fucking thing.

visibility is important, get people talking! the words of your manager ring in your ears until you have a dull migraine brewing behind your ears.

you leave the fitting not entirely sure what you’re wearing, but your stylist will be sending the clothes over so you can pack.

when you land in all too familiar nice, there are cameras. when you get to the hotel in monaco, you and lando are already trending on twitter. well, at least he knows you’re coming. when you’re getting your makeup done before your first event, you get a text.

i’ll try and keep my distance.

try.

try is such an interesting word. the fact that he has to try to stay away makes your belly flutter with embarrassing, self loathing butterflies. don’t try too hard, you want to respond. you don’t.

should’ve told you i’d be here you shoot back.

you think i didn’t already know?

of course he knew. he’d probably asked god knows how many brands to invite you. you try and feign an illness but your team drag you kicking and screaming to the event.

there are no two ways about it: you’re drunk, on a tuesday night, somewhere in the principality. a few cocktails with a jewellery brand turned into a night on the town, bar hopping with people you hardly knew and barely recognised.

you’re shaking your ass in jimmy’z, pretending to have fun when you see him.

lando stands at the bar, watching you, jaw tensed, eyes solemn. you exit the club faster that his car down a back straight, stumbling into the smoking area. you bum a cigarette from a guy who tries really hard to convince you that he’s the son of a british lord, and sink into the corner, ignoring the people recording you.

depressed model shame smokes outside monaco club because she is fucking pathetic, the headlines will read.

“thought you quit that shit.” his voice washes over your body like you’ve been set on fire, smooth tone, ambiguous accent making you ache.

“i did but then i got forced to come to monaco, so.” you shrug.

“forced?”

“‘m here for work.” you sigh.

“i guess i am too.” he mumbles. you raise an eyebrow.

“you live here, lan.” you tease. lan rolls off of your tongue too sweetly.

“doesn’t feel like it anymore.”

how can it, without you? he wants to scream at you. he can’t, you don’t deserve it.

“how are you?”

you want to touch him.

“shit.”

he needs a taste.

“yeah.”

you put your cigarette out. it tastes like shit, half smoked.

you stand there, stare at each other.

take me home, you want to beg.

come home, he clenches his fists, trying not to grab you and remind you how you’ll always be his, right here, up against the side of the club.

“good luck, if i don’t see you.” you whisper. you linger, praying that he’ll beg you to stay so that you can crumble into his arms, without having to make the first move.

lando ponders his options. his head and his heart wage a war.

logic wins, unfortunately.

“thank you.”

you take that as your queue to get the fuck out of there, and disappear into the night.

it’s raining on sunday. the dreary weather seems to perfectly sum up what has been the worst week of your life.

you’ve seen your ex boyfriend more times than you can count, ended up with about four hangovers as a result, and with a pounding head, you have to sit in the paddock club and wait for the sound of engines to split your head in half. it was your own doing, so you’d suck it up, recognising that you were a disgustingly privileged bitch, and there are people who would sell their kidneys to do what you’re complaining about.

you never complain, not usually. but your heart hurts and your body hearts and your mind hurts and it’s just not fair. lando is gorgeous, and you miss him so badly, and your shoes are digging in. who the fuck thinks it’s a good idea to wear heels to an f1 race?

you see him before the race, mouth good luck from afar. he winks. it’s something you used to do before every race. old habits die screaming.

the rain falls harder, the track slick. you say a prayer and take your seat.

“norris has this in the bag, he’s bloody good in the wet.” you hear some old guy say behind you. you are cursed with the knowledge of just how good in the wet he is, and you end up flushed.

he wins. his second one in three races. you pray that no one notices the way you weep. everyone notices.

you make a mistake and rush for the podium, your pass giving you access. he graces the top step and you sob, grinning like a fool, soaked through with rain. the anthem plays, the champagne pops. he finds your eyes in the crowd. your hair falls, stringy and curled, mascara smudged. you are the most breathtaking sight. he stands still, washed with an onslaught of champagne, watching you like he’s scared to take his eyes off of you. his boyish grin and hopeful eyes render you weak - you’re there for him, after all - and he can’t help but bask in that little fact.

dangerous territory. you break, and disappear.

say it once again with feeling…

the photographers barely get a second to snap a picture of the top three, because lando is gone. he takes the stairs two at a time, descending from the podium and throwing his pirelli cap and a shaky apology at his pr rep. the adrenaline spike makes his blood rush; he needs to find you and stop you and tell you that he will never be able to stop loving you.

the exit is the natural assumption, and he nearly slips a thousand times as he sprints through the paddock. the ground is wet, but he figures that if his car made it, so can he. the gates are in sight, and so are you, your clothes sticking to your shivering frame.

he calls your name, thunderously travelling towards you, his voice hitting your ears like a sonic boom. you freeze, turn slowly until your facing him. the rain splashes around you, not letting up.

you’re within his reach, and he pulls you in, hugging you tight. you melt into him, clinging like he’s a life force. he inhales you, your scent that he’s missed so horrifically. you crumble, and so does he, pieced back together as one.

“i can’t do this, i can’t.” he kisses the words into the cold skin of your neck.

“no, neither can i.” you choke wetly with emotion.

“miss you too much. it’s too hard, it’s stupid, it’s-“

“wrong. it’s wrong. ‘m sorry.” your breath fans his face, breathing life into him, life that he’d lost four months ago.

he grabs your shoulders, lowering so that his eyes are level with yours. his curls fall over his eyes, sodden from the rain.

“i don’t think, no, i know: i’m never gonna love anyone the way i love you.” lando speaks slow, convincing. your chest is tight.

“i don’t want to love anyone else.” you croak, the lump in your throat making it hard to breathe.

“come back to me.” he mutters, pleading.

“don’t think i ever left.” you breathe, hushed.

your lips slot over his easily, it’s like breathing. the kiss is messy, helpless, and he engulfs you whole, his body wrapping around yours like a blanket. you latch onto his race-suit, drawing him in, and then you both seem to remember where you are.

lando norris caught kissing ex like horny teenager in monaco paddock!

you pull away with breathless chuckle. the air is fresh, and you feel alive. he steals another peck.

“wait for me at home. i’ll be quick.” his hand finds you ass, just for a second and you scold him playfully.

home.

yeah, home.

“don’t make me wait.” you grin.

his brain short circuits.

“do you still have your key?” he splutters, refocusing.

you scoff. “never took it off the chain.”

you pace the apartment, taking in the space. it hasn’t changed, but it’s messier, a visual representation of lando since you left. the pit of your belly swirls with anxiety, anticipation. he’ll be back soon, and he’ll kiss you, make love to you, remind you that you’re home and that it’d be stupid to leave again.

you’re still damp from the rain, shedding layers until you’re left in your vest and jeans, ridiculous heels kicked off by the door, your jacket airing over the back of a chair.

he hasn’t taken down the pictures of you together. he hasn’t moved your ugly collection of magnets from the fridge. he hasn’t changed the blinds that you chose, but he didn’t really like. your candles sit on the bookshelf half burned, the teddy he’d won you at a fair sits neatly on the sofa. the L pendant and it’s chain is strewn over the coffee table, right where you left it the morning after it ended. your breathing is heavy.

the front door opens behind you.

you don’t move, your eyes still fixed on the silver chain, overwhelmed by how empty your neck feels all of the sudden. he comes up behind you, his head resting on your shoulder, arms finding home around your waist. you often used to find yourselves in this exact position; while you brushed your teeth, made coffee. the room is deathly silent, breathing and the distant buzz of post race festivities the only thing you can hear. lando follows your gaze.

“kept it. knew that one day, you’d come back for it.”

“i came back for you.”

“and that necklace will stay with you when i can’t be there.”

you nod. he kisses your neck.

“missed you so bad.” you gasp. he licks your skin, bites down softly.

you spin in his arms, his hands pawing at your hips and everything blurs when he kisses you.

shaky fingers work over zippers, buttons, clasps, and then you’re both bare. you sink into the mattress that you missed so much, his body moulded with yours when you both tumble into the sheets. this is messy and frantic, utterly lovestruck. the lightning strike of his touch has you keening, sweating beneath him already.

“missed you. missed this.”

“do something, lan.” you cry, quiet against his shoulder.

“missed my perfect girl.” he grunts, lips working your chest while his fingers leave a trail of goosebumps over your inner thigh.

“please.” you sigh when his fingers dip between your folds, sliding over your wet flesh. his lip catches between his teeth, eyes fluttering shut at the feeling of you.

he thumbs at your clit, stroking over you in slow, firm swipes, and then he’s sinking a digit into you, slow and steady. your toes curl, tears pricking your eyes at the intrusion, but you don’t have much of a chance to adjust, a second finger joining the first. he fucks you full, the stretch of just two fingers making you whine, one hand threading into the sheets while the other slams over your mouth. you want to hide, the pleasure rendering you a mess across the pale grey linen.

“no, let me look at you.” lando rasps, spare hand tugging at your wrist. you whine, writhing when he curls his fingers. “why are you hiding?”

you can’t hold back the choked cry that sounds from the back of your throat, his palm bumping your clit as he grinds his fingers deep.

“gone shy on me, baby? where’s my good girl gone?” lando coos, moving so that he’s leaning over you. the angle change sends your legs flying, kicking out at the sweet torture. “‘s because you haven’t been fucked right in so long, hm? can’t remember how to behave?” he’s smirking down at you, scanning the changing lines of your face.

“need it, need-“ you stutter, the words dying on your tongue.

“words, pretty girl, words.” lando encourages, false sympathy dripping from his tongue.

“need to cum, want you to make me…” you trail off.

“was that so hard?” he tuts, and everything speeds up.

the sound of him working you so sweetly makes you shake, your thighs clenching tight around his hand. the wet squelch hits your ears and you blush, cheeks coloured deep with embarrassment, awe, desperation.

your mouth drops open, screaming silently when it hits, your thighs slick. you drip down his wrist, his hand covered in your release.

“there’s my girl.” lando sighs, diving down to kiss you hard.

you can feel the damp press of his fingers as they dig into your thighs and you squirm beneath him, finding your way into his mouth.

“fuck me.” you slur, teeth knocking with his. he swallows you whole, groaning into your mouth.

“not so shy now, hm? been dreaming of hearing you beg for it.” lando shudders, shifting between your legs.

you can feel the press of him, thick against your cunt and you wiggle your hips, pushing to meet him halfway. the stretch burns deliciously, and you grab at his shoulders, dragging him in.

“fuck, baby.” he breathes, sinking into you slowly. “feel like heaven.” disbelief coats his voice, like he can’t reconcile that this is real; you’re back here, his, in the bed you were always supposed to share.

“it’s so good. feel so good for me, lan.” you whisper, lacing your fingers through his hair.

“love you so much.” he kisses you like he means it, rocking into you with purpose.

“can’t believe i lived without this.”

“can’t believe you’re all mine.”

the release builds, every thrust reminding you of what you could have lost for good. there was no lack of love, in fact you were starting to wonder if you had loved each other too much before.

“never losing you again. can’t live without you. my beautiful girl.”

your tummy grows tight, and he finds your clit when he feels you clamp down on him. he pulls you through the pleasure, guides you to your orgasm and you blindly follow him. you’d follow him anywhere, you decide.

you tell him you love him when you let go, spilling all around him, warm. he’s panting, kisses your forehead gently. he rolls off of you, and you feel the slow drip instantly, but you curl into his side and he wraps around you.

home.

“promise me something.” he whispers. you feel the way he shakily inhales.

“hm?”

“don’t leave again. you belong here, too. with me.”

your eyes are watery.

“i’m staying. ‘m yours.”

“about that…”

lando springs from the bed, naked, disappearing from the room. you watch, confused, cold all of the sudden.

you can hear his footsteps padding through the hallway, and then he’s back, his figure in the hallway. he runs, jumps, lands gracelessly next to you. endeared, you laugh softly.

“sit up.”

you do, leaning up to sit next to him. his fingers skim your shoulder, pushing your hair out of the way. cool metal dances over your skin.

“back where it belongs.” lando smiles at you, eyes wide and stunning.

you toy with the L. something heals in your chest, right around where your heart is.

“the sweetest boy.” you shake your head in disbelief, grin up at him like a fool.

“bath?”

“you know me so well, noz.”

come one, come all

it’s happening again

oh, my heart. there is something deeply wrong with me

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2K notes · View notes

misojunnie · 6 months ago

Text

COVET 𖣂

how far would you go for love?

your boyfriend jungwon has always been a kind soul. he refused to hurt a spider, much less a human, but when a new, younger, attractive admirer enters your life, something in him changes. as jealousy begins to consume him, and the competition between the two boys ensues, you watch your life turn upside down.

pairing: bf!jungwon vs. admirer!riki x fem!reader

genre: psychological thriller, horror, love triangle, established relationship au

warnings: violence, dark and disturbing behavior, substance use, murder, slow burn (only gets scary at the end) no mature themes! enha’s behavior and personalities are not a reflection of reality, it’s just a story

featuring: enhypen

playlist: runaway by kanye west, nowhere to run by stegosaurus rex, S.D.O.S by alex g, sour times - live version by portishead, violent youth by crystal castles, goth by sidewalks and skeletons

word count: 12.6k

taglist! @enhacolor @jwnghyuns @theothernads @adoredbyjay @firstclassjaylee @dollschan @enreveriee @surrik-i @jwonistic @laurradoesloveu @laylasbunbunny @tmtxtf

network tags: @kflixnet @kvanity-main @k-radio @enhypennetwork

see the trailer.

a/n: hello all! welcome to the first installment of fright night, my halloween series! I hope you enjoy ❤️

You had never considered yourself an overtly desirable person.

You spent the majority of your school years being ignored. You didn’t have many friends, and you spent most of your lunches eating alone. For a long time, school felt like torture.

Meeting Yang Jungwon felt like a breath of fresh air.

You met in your junior year. Neither of you were exactly popular, and you both seemed to have an innate ability to blend into the background. But upon meeting each other, you realized you didn’t have to hide yourself. Jungwon valued you for exactly who you were. And he valued you very, very much.

Before you knew it, you were spending every waking moment with him. He would sneak into your bedroom window after dark. You’d stay up until the sun rose, speaking in hushed whispers, talking about anything and everything. You quickly realized that he was the only person in the world who you could tell everything to.

The last day of junior year, he kissed you under the willow tree in your front yard. You didn’t think you’d ever felt happier in your life.

And suddenly, your life was all about Yang Jungwon.

You spent almost every day of summer by his side, doing everything imaginable. Picnics in the park, walks on the beach, night drives, your hair whipping in the cold nighttime wind as he sped down the highway, laughing. You had never been this happy before, and neither had he. Then, summer ended.

You didn’t think Jungwon had changed, but the people around you disagreed.

Jungwon grew a few inches over the summer. His clothes suddenly fit him awkwardly as he filled out in the shoulders and the arms, and his pants were now just a little too short. He dropped the rest of his baby fat, his cheekbones emerging from underneath his young skin. He cut his hair, and his long brown locks were suddenly gone, shaggy against his forehead. You had always thought Jungwon was beautiful, but suddenly, it seemed like the whole world thought the same thing.

You returned to senior year together, and the entire school began treating him like a different person. He received love notes in class, giggles and looks of desire as he walked down the hallways.

You were terrified that he would change upon receiving this newfound attention. But Jungwon never changed. He showed you off to his new friends, dripping praise. He took you to the parties he was suddenly invited to, and stayed by your side the entire night, even when beautiful girls approached him and asked him to dance. He told everyone he met that you were perfect, and nothing about you needed to change. And slowly, you began to believe it. At the same time, the world began to finally see you for who you were.

Jungwon was loyal. He knew he had found something special with you, and he never considered for a minute that he might abandon it. And despite rising in the ranks of high-school-high-society, he made sure you never felt left behind.

That was what you loved about him the most. He really never changed.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Halloween was your favorite time of the year. After summer, of course.

You loved the scary movies, the gaudy costumes, the foggy weather with golden leaves. Not to mention you were a horror connoisseur, which meant you knew exactly what movies to play to make Jungwon freak out. He wasn’t a big fan of scary things.

But you loved Halloween, and Jungwon loved you, so he did too.

You sat in the back of your class, brainstorming your plans for the month. You were 19 now, Jungwon being a year older. You were in your sophomore year of college. It felt like an eternity ago that you spent those carefree summer days on the beach with the man you had now been dating for four years.

You were a semester into the year already, and you generally got to know everyone in your class. But the door to the lecture hall swung open, and in walked a face you knew you had never seen before.

He was tall, very tall. It was the first thing you noticed; how he towered over the rest of the men. His face was striking, catching the attention of everyone in the room. He looked a little younger than yourself. It was as if he brought in an icy draft with him as he walked inside, and you rubbed your hands, suddenly a bit colder than before.

As he walked past your desk, he slowed. He looked at you briefly, before walking to the farthest seat in the class, setting down his bag and crossing his arms. He didn’t speak to anyone. You attempted to ignore him, taking out your notes. But something in your gut told you to turn around, and there he was. Staring at you. You shook it off, too afraid to turn around lest he was staring again.

But when you inevitably did, he didn’t break eye contact.

You were a bit shaken by your interaction with the mysterious boy.

He intrigued you. Since you started dating Jungwon, you viewed thinking about other men as a kind of unrepentable crime. You had always been the kind of person who saved their heart for only one person. The lecture hall was almost empty by now, and you packed your bag. Only after a moment did you notice you weren’t alone.

“Hey.” he said. You startled, turning around to meet the eyes of the very boy you had just been thinking about.

“Oh, hi.” you said, attempting to be casual.

“I’m Riki. What’s your name?” he asked curiously, and you indulged him.

“I’m y/n.” you responded, unsure of how to introduce yourself, so you settled on reaching out a friendly hand. He stared at it for a moment, before laughing, shaking your hand firmly.

“Nice to meet you, y/n.” Something about him was inexplicably charming. He had seemed cold and unapproachable when he first walked in, but you felt the warmth of his smile, heard the wind chimes of his soft laugh. “Today’s my first day here.”

“Ah, new transfer.” you said, chipper as you began walking down the stairs. He followed you, a step behind. “Welcome to Decelis University.”

“That’s the first greeting I’ve gotten.” he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Nice to know I’m welcome.” You felt bad for him somehow. He was intimidating, that was for sure. With his angular face and dark energy, you bet people had been misjudging him.

“Of course. Always nice to meet a new student.”

“So, tell me about yourself.” you raised a brow at his odd question, but complied.

By the time you responded, you were in the halls, still walking together.

“Well, I’m a sophomore. I moved from Seoul, and I’m a psychology major. But I like literature.” you said, satisfied with your answer, confused when he shook his head.

“No, not that. Something real.” You considered it. Did you really want to tell something real to a man you had just met? It felt traitorous somehow.

“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it.” you responded, shrugging, and he smiled abstractedly at your answer. “Why don’t you tell me something about you?”

“Well, I’m a freshman. I just moved here a couple months ago from Osaka,” he added, and you nodded curiously. “I’m double majoring in forensic science and neuroscience, with a minor in psychology. Oh, and I like to paint.”

“Oh, an overachiever.” you said with amusement, and he shrugged, hands still in his pockets. “I know your type.”

“Trust me, I don’t think you do.” he grinned, and you laughed. You didn’t realize how far you had been walking together, and suddenly you were in the courtyard, rapidly approaching your usual meeting spot with your boyfriend.

And he was there. He was smiling, excited to see you, but his expression dropped when he saw you walking with a man he had never seen before, a man with the face of an angel and the eyes of a devil.

“Shit, that’s my boyfriend.” you said, suddenly aware of Jungwon’s presence and hoping he didn’t get the wrong impression. Riki hummed, a light smile playing at the corner of his lips.

“Oh, your boyfriend.” he said, enunciating the last word in a way you didn’t like.

“See you tomorrow Riki.” you said quickly, leaving his side to speedily walk to Jungwon, not waiting for a response. “Sorry, have you been waiting long?” Jungwon didn’t answer, his eyes still trained on the boy standing a few yards away.

“Who’s that?” he asked, and you tried to discern the tone of his voice, unable to. “A new friend?” You scoffed, waving your hand dismissively.

“Hardly. He just transferred to my class today. I barely remember his name.” you responded hastily, and Jungwon raised a brow. He chose to ignore any begrudging thoughts, placing his hand on the small of your back with a smile.

As you both turned away, Jungwon looked over his shoulder, gazing back into the eyes of the man behind you. He was still staring.

As a pair, you strode away to your favorite lunch spot. Jungwon didn’t want to think about this new boy, who he was, or what his intentions were. He assumed this was a confused freshman who needed help navigating the new school, and flocked to the nearest friendly smile and set of kind eyes.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that this boy was going to be a very big problem.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon was upset.

He tried not to show it. He didn’t consider himself a jealous man, but he was. Underneath it all, he hated the idea of other men thinking about you the way he did.

Back in high school, a part of him regretted inviting you into his newfound popularity. You were beautiful. You were intelligent. You were funny. You had all the good qualities; the issue was that nobody but him could see them. By bringing you into the spotlight, suddenly everyone finally recognized you for what you were. And he quickly realized that he preferred when he was the only one that could see you.

But it made you confident, and certainly happier, which was all he cared about in the end. He let go of those resentments because he saw how much you loved being loved. You were a human being. He couldn’t be angry at that.

But this man, this new man, Jungwon didn’t trust him one bit.

The truth was, Jungwon didn’t trust men at all. He thought men were loathsome, foul creatures. It was why he preferred spending his time with you. Every man he had ever met had some kind of twisted, sick problem on the inside. They just didn’t show it. But Jungwon saw it. He noticed the little things.

And his gut was telling him that this man was up to no good.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

You worked at a charming American diner near your campus. Even with you and Jungwon both contributing to rent, you were barely able to afford your little apartment, so you took almost every shift you could.

You were surprised to see Riki walk into your restaurant.

“Hey.” he greeted you with a nod of his head, seating himself at a booth in the corner. He didn’t seem surprised to see you at all. “You work here?”

“Uh, yeah,” you stumbled over your words. You were shocked that he had so easily managed to invade an intimate part of your life, but it was close to the college, and you shook it off, knowing he likely wanted a warm meal after a long night of classes. You glanced at your watch. You closed in twenty minutes. “What can I get for you?”

He rolled his shoulders, not bothering to look at the menu. “Oh, just get me whatever your favorite is.” You scrawled an order down on your notepad.

“So, how’d you end up in my restaurant?” you joked, and he shrugged casually.

“What can I say, I like American food.” you hummed, turning around to take his order to the kitchen. He followed you with his eyes, leaning back further in his seat.

You tucked the slip into the order wheel, hesitating to go back as you observed the frantic kitchen. It wasn’t like you had anything against Riki, but he seemed like the type of guy you tried to stay away from in high school, and that combined with his apparent interest in you made you nervous. Not to mention the fact that your boyfriend probably wasn’t fond of seeing you together.

“Your food.” you said, eventually deciding to return to Riki’s table. He didn’t seem remotely interested in the food.

“Sit down with me.” he requested, and you raised a brow at him. “Come on, it’s not like you have anything better to do.” he chuckled, gesturing at the nearly empty diner. It was now twelve minutes until closing time, and he was right, you had nothing else to do. So you took a seat.

“Aren’t you gonna eat?” you asked after a moment, looking pointedly at his food, which he hadn’t touched. He smiled, picking up a fork and taking a bite.

“It’s good,” he said, chewing. “But I’m more interested in talking to you.”

“And why is that?” you questioned with amusement. He shrugged.

“You’re interesting.” he replied, and you scoffed. “What, you don’t believe me?”

“So that’s why you’ve been bothering me?” He put a hand over his heart.

“Ouch. That wounds me. I thought we were friends.” You rolled your eyes, but couldn’t contain a mild smile. He noticed, and smiled as well.

“Sure. We’re friends.” you said, resting your chin on your palm as you propped your arm up on the table. “So, you like American food?”

“Sure,” he said, not seeming very opinionated on the matter. “I was more drawn in by the ambiance. It’s a nice place.” He was right. It was a nice diner, with checkered floors, vintage movie posters, and intimate little booths. You were suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the romantic atmosphere, and swallowed dryly.

“Yeah, I agree. The ambience is kinda the whole appeal.”

“So you like nice restaurants.” His gaze was intense, and the way it drew you in made you uncomfortable. His charisma felt dangerously sharp, like a knife.

“That’s one way to say it.” you said. He grinned.

“So when can I take you out to one?” your amused expression dropped.

“That’s not funny.”

“It isn’t?” he said innocently, and you stood up, a hand lingering on the table before you glanced at your watch. Luckily your shift was over, and you had an excellent excuse to get out of this situation, and out from under his piercing eyes.

“My shift’s over. Goodnight, Riki.” you said firmly, untying your apron. He watched carefully as you strode quickly to the kitchen, ducking behind the metal doors.

You didn’t come back out, and after a moment of waiting, he left his money on the table and walked out the door, not bothering to finish his food.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Riki had been thinking about you all day.

He wasn’t sure what it was that attracted him, but he found you interesting. What he liked the most was that you were genuine. He had a good eye for superficial people, and you weren’t one of them. You meant everything that came out of your mouth.

Riki had been a heartbreaker in high school, and he planned on being the same in college. Not a week went by where his breakups didn’t scandalize the school, and that was just how he liked it. Some people thought he was a womanizer; he disagreed. He thought that attraction was power, and people should use it to their advantage.

The truth was, Riki wasn’t fond of men. He thought they were liars. Maybe he and Jungwon had something in common in that regard. He liked that women were honest, open with their emotions and intentions. Men hid their motivations, hid their secrets, hid everything. Riki was an open book. He told every girl whose heart he’d broken that it would end up badly. And when it inevitably went wrong, he said I told you so.

And because Riki didn’t like men, he wanted to take things from them. When he found a man he didn’t trust, a man he knew was rotten, he robbed him of his worth. His happiness. His girlfriend. And he was going to do it again here, he was determined.

He didn’t trust your boyfriend. He may seem perfect on paper, but Riki could tell there was something rotting beneath the surface. Everyone had something to hide. And he was going to expose whatever your boyfriend was hiding.

It’s what he always did.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon had been watching you.

In his heart, he knew it was wrong. He had never not trusted you before, and he wasn’t sure what was happening to him. He was uneasy, anxious, and upset. Yesterday, the two of you had lunch and he barely touched his food. That night, he didn’t sleep.

It wasn’t like guys hadn’t pursued you before. In the past four years, boys would hit on you at parties, in class, even on your dates. He’d tell them to scram, and then you’d laugh about it together afterward. It had never bothered him when other guys were interested in you; if anything, it made him more proud of himself for being with you. In fact, he wasn’t even certain that this particular man was interested in you at all.

That was until he saw you having dinner together.

You were sitting in the corner booth. Through the foggy glass, Jungwon could see his face, smiling. His eyes were crescent moons as he chuckled at something you said, neither of you eating, just speaking. He couldn’t tell if you were smiling back at him, and he wanted to know desperately.

When he saw you get up and go to the kitchen, he checked the time on his watch. Your shift was over, which meant he needed to get a move on, and he shoved his hands in his pockets before speeding in the direction of your shared apartment.

He felt horrible about what he had just done. He knew he was your boyfriend, but watching you without you knowing felt like a crime. He walked with a pit in his stomach, anxious to beat you home. He didn’t want you to know he had been acting strangely.

He trusted you. He trusted you with his entire heart, as he had been for the past four years, without regret.

But could he trust the people around you?

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Riki was back in your diner, as he had been every day for the past week. You had given up on lecturing him about righteousness; clearly he didn’t care. You just served him his food, and as usual, he asked you to sit down with him.

The scent of sweet violet, cedarwood, and a little cigarette smoke filled the air as you sat across from him, and you found it extremely pleasant.

“New cologne?’ you asked. You didn’t like that this was becoming routine for the two of you, but you engaged anyway.

“You noticed,” he said happily. “Yeah, it’s new. You like it?” You looked out the window, resting your chin on your hand as you attempted to ignore him.

“It’s nice.” you grumbled, and he smiled in satisfaction.

He was Jungwon’s complete opposite. He was demanding, flirty, and charming in an aggressive way. His voice was deep and smooth, unlike Jungwon’s soft lilt. He was sweet, but not kind. Jungwon was the kindest boy you had ever met.

He forked a bite of food for himself before chewing in satisfaction. “So, are you ready to answer?”

“Answer what?” you asked, bemused.

“I told you I wanted to hear something real about you.” you laughed, recalling your first conversation, and it seemed like an eternity ago.

“You go first.” you suggested, and to your surprise, he obliged.

“Well, that’s a tough question. I suppose something real about me is that I don’t believe in love.” You raised a brow incredulously.

“Why is that?”

“Not sure. I just never have.”

“Something must have happened to convince you love wasn’t real.” He considered telling you, but his brain resisted. He wasn’t ready to spill his guts to you. Sharing his secrets would mean opening himself up to be vulnerable, and Riki hated being vulnerable. You sensed his hesitation, saying; “You can tell me.”

And despite himself, he told you.

“My parents never really loved each other.” he said simply, and you frowned. “For as long as I can remember, they’ve been cold to each other. Sometimes they fight. Violently.” He sighed, and you felt pity welling up in your chest. “I guess I don’t believe in love because I don’t believe in marriage. I don’t think human beings are capable of loving each other forever.”

“I’m sorry, Riki.” you said, and he shook his head, looking away. “But you’re wrong.” His eyes drifted to yours, and he raised a brow. “Love exists. Deep down, everyone has love in their heart.”

“People spend their entire lives chasing for love, and they still don’t find it.”

“That’s because love is work. Everyone has the potential to find it one day. You just have to start looking.” Your words touched him. He had never considered that love was something he had to work for, not just a concept that was driven by fate.

“Agree to disagree.” he snorted, and you shrugged, taking a bite of his food.

“There’s love everywhere.”

Instead of running away at the end of your shift, this time you allowed him to walk you out. The two of you strode into the cold night, you shivering in your tee shirt.

“Are you cold?” he asked, and you shook your head, covering your waist with your arms in an attempt to warm up. Wordlessly, he pulled off his jacket and hung it over your shoulders. You glared at him, but accepted it. From the pocket of his jeans, he removed a pack of red Marlboros, slipping a cigarette out of the packet. “Smoke?” he asked, and you shook your head. He propped the cigarette in between his lips.

“You’re a bit young to smoke, aren’t you?” you asked, and he chuckled.

“Every teenager has a bit of fun. Even if they’re not supposed to.” you smiled.

He was a total cliche. The leather jacket wearing, cigarette smoking, flirtatious rebel that flirted as easily as he breathed. And somehow, despite hating that overplayed trope, you found it endearing when it was him.

“Hey, Riki?” you said, and he hummed, taking a drag from his cigarette. “I’m actually glad we became friends.”

“Friends?” he said, blowing smoke as his lips curled into a smile, leaning against the wall, a mere couple of feet away from you. His cheeks and nose were red from the cold, and he looked ethereal under the moonlight. “We’re not gonna be friends.”

You were about to respond when someone called your name.

Your eyes widened in fright as you turned to see Jungwon standed a few paces behind you, his breath visible in the fall climate. He looked upset, his pockets in his hands as his brows furrowed.

“Jungwon?” You quickly moved away from Riki. “What are you doing here?”

“My shift ended early, I thought I’d surprise you.” he was speaking to you, but his eyes weren’t on you; they were on Riki. He didn’t falter, taking another drag of his cigarette as he watched silently. “But I see you’re busy.”

“No, not at all.” you said nervously, taking Jungwon’s hand from inside of his pocket. “I just finished working. Let’s go home.” Jungwon didn’t respond, just turning around, your hand slipping out of his as he strode away from you.

“See you tomorrow.” Riki called after you when you didn’t bid him farewell, and you turned around to give him a glare, before dashing after your displeased boyfriend.

Riki was already making cracks in the foundation of your relationship. And that was exactly what he wanted.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

You were wearing his jacket.

Jungwon was certain of it. After two years of living together, he knew your closet inside out; and he had never seen this jacket. The sleeves were too long for you, and they protruded just past your fingers. Jungwon could kill a man. Specifically, that man. After a moment of walking in agonizing silence, he spoke up.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” His cold tone chilled you to the core. You had never really seen Jungwon mad. Sure, you had your fair share of fights, every couple did, but they occurred strangely infrequently. “Who is that guy?”

“Just a classmate.”

“Why was he at your job?” You weren’t sure what degree of the truth you should tell him. You didn’t want him to think you were being unfaithful, that wasn’t it at all.

“He just likes the food, Jungwon.” That wasn’t technically a lie.

“I think he likes more than the food.” Jungwon was refusing to look at you. You had never seen him this put-out over something you did. You wondered if you had done something very wrong by being around Riki.

We’re not gonna be friends, you remembered his words. The smile on his face when he said them, how he sounded like he really meant it.

“Look, he’s just an underclassman. He’s new, just moved here. I’m pretty much his only friend.” Jungwon scoffed.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I feel bad for him.”

“He likes you.”

“But I don’t like him.” You stopped walking and tugged on Jungwon’s sleeve, and for the first time he looked you in the eyes. They were dull, a stark contrast to the usual youthful shine of his eyes. “Jungwon. I only care about you.”

“That can change.”

“No, it can’t.” You pressed a warm hand to his cheek, and you saw his gaze soften. “I’ve loved you faithfully for four years. That’s not going to stop now.” He stayed silent for a moment, then sighed, removing your hand from his face. But he took your hand in his, which you took as a sign that everything would be okay. You looked into each other's eyes, cold air flushing your faces until it began to rain lightly.

“I’m not mad at you.” he said after a moment, his hair dampening from the rain, clinging to his forehead.

You brushed it away from his face and resumed your walk in silence.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

You couldn’t be friends with Riki anymore.

You told this to Jungwon, who seemed more content than he had been in the past week. You, however, had a pit in your stomach.

You didn’t know why, but the thought that you would never see Riki again bothered you. His messy hair, proud smile, the scent of his smoky cologne. You weren’t certain why Riki had suddenly become important to you, but you knew it was wrong.

“So, your boyfriend told you you couldn’t see me anymore.” he said, holding his jacket in his hand. It still smelled like his cologne, and a bit like you, and he held it tightly between his fingers. He was frowning, and you realized this was the first time you had seen him without a smug expression on his face.

“No.” you replied. “I decided myself.” He sighed.

“That’s disappointing.”

“C’mon, Riki. You’re pursuing me. I have a boyfriend. It’s wrong.”

“That’s the great thing about life. It’s all about doing what feels right, even if it’s wrong.” he said elusively, and you frowned at him. “You should do what you want.”

“This is what I want.” You could smell his cologne everywhere, that stupid violet and cigarette smoke. It was distracting you from your thoughts.

“I don’t believe that.” You knew he was right, but his obstinance was pissing you off. You tucked a piece of hair behind your ear.

“I don’t care what you believe. It was nice being friends with you.” you readied yourself to leave, turning when he called after you.

“I told you,” he smiled for the first time during your conversation. “We were never going to be friends.”

It weighed heavy on your mind, but you had other things to worry about.

There was a party this weekend that you and Jungwon would be attending. Parties had never really been your thing, but a part of both of you missed the drunken fun of your time in high school, so when invited, you decided to go together.

It was being thrown by some boy in your year, a man named Jake who was infamous for his ragers, where people would fight to get in, and leave not remembering how they got there. Jungwon was friends with him, and assured you it’d be worth the while, which you hoped was true.

You pulled an old dress out of retirement, a lacy pink number that you hadn’t worn since Jungwon got it for your anniversary a year ago. There was something exciting about bringing it out of your closet, like a new start.

As you put on your earrings, facing the mirror, he circled your waist.

“You look beautiful.” he said, and you turned to kiss him, a chaste kiss that lingered on your lips. You looked back in the mirror, and you weren’t smiling.

Something about this situation felt extremely wrong, and you didn’t know why.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Despite the hectic environment of the party, you actually felt at peace for the first time in the past two weeks. The music was beating in your ribs like a pounding heart, and smoke furled through the air as college students went to-and-fro. Jungwon and you did shots in the kitchen, hands intertwining as you poured vodka down your throat, a burning sensation on your tongue. After a couple more, you were ready to dance.

Jungwon pulled you onto the makeshift dance floor by the hand, and the two of you swayed to the music together. You caught glimpses of faces you recognized, but in this moment, it was just you and him. Locking eyes, twirling and laughing as you erratically danced to the pounding beat of the music.

Eventually, Jungwon got dragged away by a friend of his named Jake, a classmate that he had grown quite close with. You were alone, but you didn’t mind.

You had never been the kind of person to be embarrassed to dance. You felt like yourself when you were dancing, and you didn’t care what company you had; you just enjoyed the feeling of being free underneath the spell of the music.

And then, the crowds shifted, and everything felt still.

There he was. Alone in the center of the floor, holding a bottle of beer in his hand, his free hand moving with the music as he danced rhythmically to the music. Girls tried to dance with him, but he deftly avoided them. The way he moved was entrancing; you had never seen him look so light and airy, as he swayed and rocked, not caring about the people around him. You should’ve known he would be there, you could smell his cologne from a mile away, and suddenly it flooded your senses.

He turned, and as he did, he caught sight of you. His mouth curled into a smile as he continued dancing, and you just watched.

“Come dance with me.” he said to you through the crowds, and though his voice was quiet, you swore it reverberated over the sound of the music. As if in a trance, you walked to him, weaving through hordes of people. Were you drunk, or was he more beautiful than usual?

“What are you doing here?” you asked the instant you reached him.

“Am I not allowed to be here?” he replied. He didn’t stop dancing as he spoke to you, and you felt odd standing still. But you couldn’t bring yourself to dance.

“They usually haze the freshmen.” He gestured to himself with a shrug.

“Well I’m fine, aren’t I?” You didn’t know what to say. A mere two days after swearing you wouldn’t speak to him again, you had already broken your promise to yourself, and you cursed yourself for it. “C’mon, you’re not having any fun. Dance.”

“I don’t want to dance with you.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” he said, but he paid no bother, continuing to dance on his own. You felt the eyes of the people around you as you spoke to him, some jealous, some curious, some judgemental. “Why do you care what people think?” You startled, wondering for a second if he was able to read your mind.

“I don’t.”

“If you didn’t, you’d be dancing with me right now.” He was right. That was the most frustrating thing about him; although he may be self-centered and smug, he was always right. Everything he said about you was as accurate as if he knew you for years.

So, to spite him, you danced.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon had been watching you dance while he was talking to Jake. He liked Jake, he really did, but he found his attention drifting from his conversation to you, swaying carelessly to the beat with a smile on your face.

“Your girlfriend’s cute.” Jake said, gesturing to you with his cup, clearly able to tell that his companion was distracted.Jungwon sighed, pouring himself another hefty drink. He filled it to the brim with rum and orange juice. “Something wrong?”

“Yeah, well, she’s cute. That’s the problem.” Jungwon took a sip of his drink and wrinkled his nose at the harsh flavor. “Some guy from one of her classes has been all over her. Some younger dude.”

“The constant struggle of being someone’s boyfriend.” Jake said, clapping him on the back. Jungwon chuckled, taking another sip. “But try not to stress about it, man. You’ve been together for what, four years now?” Jungwon nodded in confirmation. “She’s only got her eyes on you. I wouldn’t worry.”

“Thanks, Jake.” Jungwon said, feeling a bit lighter, and a considerable amount woozier. He poured himself another drink despite himself, attempting to tune out the sound of the music. Suddenly, it was too loud, and everything was a little bit too much.

When he looked up, his heart had dropped to his stomach. You were no longer dancing, and it felt as if a spotlight was shining on the man in the center of the dance floor, his hair gloriously messy from the moving crowds, face red from dancing and alcohol. You were speaking, he could tell from the way your lips opened and closed.

Jungwon was seeing red. He felt as though the air was being choked out of him, and he struggled to take a deep breath to center himself. The alcohol felt like acid pumping through his veins as he stared at the two of you through the crowd, buzzing like a live wire. He was angry, but most of all, scared. If you had gone back so easily on your devotion, did that mean something? Did this man mean something to you?

“Jungwon?” Jake called his name but he barely heard it, crumpling his cup and throwing it into the trash as he stormed outside, slamming the door behind him.

Jungwon had been sitting outside on the stairs for nearly ten minutes, and he had managed to cool off.

He had never been so angry in his life. Jungwon wasn’t an angry person, he never had been. He had always been calm and collected, bottling up any rage or resentment he felt until it subsided. But that rage was brewing within him like an overflowing pot, and something about this man brought it out of him.

The smell of cigarette smoke flooded his senses, and he turned. Behind him was the last person he wanted to see, smoking a Marlboro, and Jungwon wondered how he didn’t hear him come outside. His face was still flushed from dancing, and his lips were tinged with the faintest trace of pink lipstick, smudged messily across his mouth.

Jungwon had stood up to go inside when Riki addressed him, saying;

“Hey.” Jungwon didn’t respond. “Looking for your girlfriend?”

“You really get under my skin.” Jungwon grumbled, and Riki smiled. He should handle this like a mature adult, he knew that. So he attempted to. “I would like it if you’d just leave me and y/n alone.”

“Come on, Jungwon. You know that’s not gonna happen.” He tossed the stub of his cigarette to the pavement, crushing it under the heel of his boot. Jungwon didn’t remember telling him his name at any point during their conversation.

“Why,” Jungwon started to speak, feeling like bile was rising in his throat. “Why, out of all girls, does it have to be my girlfriend?” Riki crossed his arms with a smile.

“Because I see her for what she is.” That tipped Jungwon over the edge. He could no longer have this conversation, he couldn’t handle it. He strode to the front door, pulling it open as he rushed into the crowds. “Oh, c’mon,” Riki’s voice haunted him as he followed him inside. “Let’s talk, man to man. I’ll pour you a drink.”

“Get away from me.” Jungwon poured himself another cup and chugged it. He was going to find you, and he was going to end this. He had to end it somehow.

“Let’s not be enemies. It’s just friendly competition.” Riki said.

“What does my girlfriend see in you?” The alcohol was speaking for him now, and he slammed his empty cup on the table. Riki gestured to the dance floor with a smile, and only then did Jungwon realize that the crowds were watching him in anticipation.

“Why don’t you ask her?”

You were watching Jungwon from the dance floor, and the crowds parted like the Red Sea. You were frozen in fear, shaking as you brought a hand up to your lip while Riki snickered. The sound of his laughter faded into the background as Jungwon noticed your smudged pink lipstick.

His fist was in connection with Riki’s face before he could even think about it.

He heard you scream in the background but paid no mind, the crowds chanting ‘fight!’ as the two men tussled. Riki was tall, but Jungwon was stronger. Riki’s mouth spurted blood as Jungwon landed a punch on his face with a sickening crack.

Jungwon’s hand found the counter somehow, and his hand latched onto the handle of a knife, unsheathing it without thinking. Only when he whipped it in Riki’s direction and the crowd gasped in unison did his head clear, and he dropped it, his opponent barely able to kick it away from him in his weakened state.

He wanted to kill him. For a moment, he was truly prepared to kill him, and he almost did.

Jungwon was so shocked with himself that the younger boy was able to pry himself away from his grip, getting to his feet and wiping his mouth.

“Psychopath.” he spat blood, grabbing his jacket from the floor where it had been pulled off, swinging it over his shoulder as he removed another cigarette. But as he walked out the door, he smiled, an ugly smile of sharp teeth and blood.

He had found it. That rotten part of your boyfriend, the reason he didn’t trust him in the first place. He had exposed it, and you had seen the side of him that you didn’t know existed.

He had a feeling that Jungwon didn’t even know that side of himself.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Everyone’s eyes were on Jungwon. You weren’t sure what to say as you stared wide-eyed at your boyfriend. You were terrified. The boy you were in love with had almost stabbed the life out of another person.

You attempted to rationalize it, desperately. You had just publicly cheated on him, and it must’ve been an uncharacteristic display of anger. You’d be angry too if you were him, maybe enough to kill. At least that’s what you told yourself.

“Let’s go.” you managed to say to him, and he brushed himself off, his head low as he roughly pushed through the crowds of people to get to the exit.

Fresh air felt like salvation as he heaved in as much into his lungs as he could. His head was beginning to clear, the adrenaline and rum wearing off as he stood facing the nearly empty streets, hands in his pockets.

“Jungwon,” you began, but he shook his head, refusing to look you in the eyes.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now.” he said hollowly, and you bit your tongue, tears beginning to well in your eyes. “Don’t cry, y/n. I can’t take it.”

“It just happened.” you said in a weak defense, and he shook his head again.

You felt hesitant sitting in the front seat with him, but he made no moves to stop you, just reversing the car roughly and pulling out into the street.

It was a silent ride. The kind of silence that made you wonder if the two of you would ever speak again, and you were suddenly struck with the fear that four years may be over in one night. Because of one moment, because of one person.

“Are we gonna be okay?” you asked, your voice barely a whisper. His eyes were firmly set on the road, refusing to look at you. He sighed, hands trembling on the wheel.

“I don’t know.”

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon hadn’t spoken to you for two days.

It was hard to avoid each other, considering you lived in the same apartment. But it was Sunday, and he hadn’t spoken a single word in your direction since you betrayed him two nights previous. And judging from how many times he’d ignored you despite pleas for his attention, he seemed to have no intention of stopping.

You didn’t know what to do, but you couldn’t stand the silence.

“Are you going to leave me?” you finally asked, choking down tears as you sat on the couch. Jungwon was in the kitchen, doing nothing but avoiding you.

“I don’t know.” Jungwon finally spoke, his voice a whisper. Tears began flowing freely from your eyes. “I really don’t know.”

“I know I can’t convince you of anything.” you surrendered, silent sobs escaping your mouth as you cried. “I won’t tell you to stay.”

“I love you, y/n.” Your heart warmed despite your sadness. “More than anything in this god forsaken world. I can’t bear being around you after what you did. But being without you sounds infinitely worse.”

“So what do we do?” He liked that you said ‘we’. It made him feel like you were a team despite what you had put him through. He set down the knife he was holding, his hands trembling as he looked at you. He could barely stand to see you cry.

“We wait.”

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

It turns out that Riki was the kind of person who fell deeply. He hadn’t been in love his entire life; he hadn’t even believed it existed until a few weeks ago. To him, love was a myth, as imaginary as unicorns or pots of gold at the end of rainbows. It was a concept, not a reality. But that’s the thing about not believing in love; when it hits you, it hits hard. And Riki’s mind was racing with radical thoughts, and mostly images of you.

He had called you twelve times since the party, and you hadn’t picked up once. You didn’t show up to class on Monday. Your boss claimed you called out of work sick when he went to visit the diner.

You were avoiding him. And in his mind, that was the worst possibility. But he wasn’t concerned; he would find you. He would always find you.

He just had to find out where you lived. And to do that he had to find you, which was seeming to be difficult. So he’d do the next best thing.

He would find your boyfriend.

It was difficult to find out anything about Jungwon from the internet. He didn’t seem to have a strong social media presence, but after a bit of searching, he found an account with a small following that seemed to match him. From there, he deduced that Jungwon worked at a tech company with a man named Jay, whose profile indicated that the name of it was Enhypen SK. A quick search told him that its headquarters were located downtown. Riki got into his car.

He rolled a crick out of his neck. He had been waiting outside of the building for hours, watching men and women come in and out, in and out. He sat in the front seat of his car, chair reclined as he observed with unrelenting eyes. Finally, there he was.

Brown hair flying in the wind, a cup of coffee in his shaking hand, the contents spilling over the edge as he walked across the street, holding his jacket above his head to cover himself from the rain. Riki could almost laugh at the perfect businessman cliche.

The building wasn’t on a particularly crowded street. There were no cameras monitoring the traffic, as few cars drove down the road. Riki realized with growing delight that there was nobody in sight but him. And Jungwon.

He was on the curb. Riki put his car into drive. The light turned red. Riki peeled out of his parking spot. Jungwon was in the center of the crosswalk.

Riki accelerated.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

You dropped the phone when the hospital told you your boyfriend had been run over by a car. You didn’t have time to think, abandoning the meal you were making, the stove still burning as you snatched your keys off the table and ran out the door without a second’s hesitation.

He thankfully wasn’t dead. They didn’t catch who did it, and Jungwon wouldn’t tell them, if he knew. He had a concussion. Two of his ribs were mildly fractured. He was bleeding internally, but it luckily wasn’t fatal. He had burns along his leg from hot fuel, and a facial laceration from rolling over the shattered windshield, a cut running from the edge of his eyebrow to the apple of his cheek.

The doctors were shocked he was even alive. The perpetrator had hit him at 45 mph, and he rolled over the entire car before hitting the ground. He laid unconscious in the street for 20 minutes, and had to crawl across the street to call for help, refusing to die. Considering his situation, he was lucky; he should’ve been dead.

According to the nurses, he had fought to leave the hospital immediately. He had jumped out of bed the minute he gained consciousness, which shouldn’t have been possible in his state. Only when they demanded he stay did he ask them to call you, and even then, he tried to leave constantly, surprisingly mobile and alert despite being presumed dead.

The staff thought he was a monster.

You ran into his arms the first chance you got, despite the protest from the nurse caring for him. You cried into his chest as he held you, stroking your hair.

“I was afraid you died.” you sobbed, and he shushed you soothingly.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry, Jungwon. You don’t deserve this.” He had the feeling you were talking about more than just the car accident. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” he said, staring at the wall as he held you more tightly. When you released him, you checked him for damage, holding his hand in yours.

Besides burns, bruises, and the cuts on his cheek, he seemed surprisingly fine. He was sitting upright, speaking clearly, seemingly fine. But he was staring blankly at you. You saw nothing in his eyes, not a shred of hope, relief, or fear. Nothing, just dull brown marbles in the sockets of his eyes before he turned away from you.

“Who did this?” you asked shakily, and he clenched his jaw.

“I don’t know.” he responded. You weren’t sure if he was telling the truth, maybe lying out of pride or embarrassment. But you weren’t going to ask, not when he was in this state. “You know, I realized something. When I got hit by that car.” You scooted closer to him, brushing the hair out of his face. It was matted with sweat to his forehead.

“What was it?” you asked gently when he didn’t continue.

“They were right. Your life does flash before your eyes when you almost die.” he said quietly. “And you know, all I saw was you. My entire life, in one blink of an eye. That’s when I realized,” He looked at you. “I can’t afford to lose you. Not to anything.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” you said, blinking away more tears.

“I know. I’m going to make sure of it.” You didn’t know how to respond, so you didn’t. “I forgive you. For everything you did. I don’t care about any of it.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I mean it. All that matters is that I have you.” His grip on your hand tightened, and you pursed your lips, pulling him into an embrace. He was cold as ice.

“I’m just happy I still have you with me.” you said hoarsely.

“I’m never going to let anything tear us apart. Never.”

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon knew exactly who hit him with that car.

He would recognize that face anywhere, even in a brief moment, in a mere second of terror before impact. A flash of those devilish eyes through the windshield. They were the eyes that haunted him, sleeping and waking. And he was determined to get revenge.

This man had changed him. He no longer recognized himself. He looked in the mirror and saw a man haunted by hatred, by anger, and by violence. In his many years of life, he had never despised someone enough to hurt them, and yet every part of him was itching to kill. This was a pest, one that Jungwon was sure to exterminate.

He wasn’t going to tell you anything, no, it would only stress you out. As a couple, you had been through enough recently, and he didn’t want anything else on your plate. You had enough to worry about, with him practically incapacitated.

You visited him every day in the hospital. You slept by his bedside, barely going to class or to your job, just holding his hand as nurses tended to him, doctors flitting in and out of his room. He only had three days left in the hospital until he was discharged.

But he couldn’t wait.

You were dead asleep on the chair beside his bed, your eyes shifting underneath their lids. The room was empty. He ripped the IV out of his arm, getting to his feet.

Under any other circumstances, he shouldn’t have been able to walk. But Jungwon felt stronger than he ever had as he walked through the halls barefoot, his hospital gown fluttering in the wind like a ghost. He walked out of the hospital doors unnoticed, the concrete scraping against his bare feet as he started the walk home.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon owned a gun. It was something he never shared with you; he knew you despised violence. But he was a paranoid person by nature and the idea of a home invader, serial killer, a stalker, frightened him enough to need protection, a Colt Mustang XSP stored securely under the bottom panel of his bedside table. He needed to protect you; it was his god given duty. Fate had brought you together, and he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt you.

He used whatever strength he had to remove the panel of wood, feeling around until his hand reached the hollow barrel of the gun.

Jungwon was a good shot. His father had taken him to a shooting range once a month from the ages of 10 to 18, god knows why. But he noticed something quickly about himself; he always hit the target.

One time, the supervisor at the range had told him he saw something dark in him. He had said Jungwon might not show it, but once in a while, when he was holding that gun, he could see it in his eyes. It wasn’t a good feeling, to hear that as a 16 year old. But now, he was beginning to consider the possibility.

Besides what you had told him, he knew virtually nothing about Riki. He didn’t know his dreams, his accomplishments, his past, not even his age. This didn’t bother Jungwon, in fact, it made him more relieved than anything. The less he knew, the better. It would make it all easier.

And now it was time to visit the little pest.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Riki was disappointed. In you, for ignoring him. In himself, for not finishing the job. And mostly in Jungwon, for refusing to die. He hit him at 45 miles per hour, that should’ve killed him. When he visited the hospital under the guise that he was his cousin, they told him he was bleeding internally, that it might be fatal. And yet, he was alive. He knew it for a fact; Riki waited outside the hospital until you showed up. And you didn’t leave, you never left. Which meant Jungwon was still in there.

It seemed like Jungwon would need something more fatal, which was upsetting. It was the perfect set up; the street was empty, there were no cameras, no witnesses. Jungwon wouldn’t live to tell the tale. Riki prayed that Jungwon didn’t recognize him, if he did, he’d surely tell you. Then he’d really lose you for good.

He was parked outside the hospital for the third day in a row, just waiting to catch you alone. He hoped your boyfriend was in a coma, maybe unable to speak, maybe mentally damaged. He rolled his shoulders, tense with worry and from sitting in the leather seat for so long. The hood of his old silver car was bent from the impact of Jungwon’s body slamming against it, and his license plate was barely hanging on for dear life. He didn’t pay attention to it.

The only thing he cared about was ending him for good.

On the other side of the city, Jungwon had just walked into the housing office of his university. The door creaked as he forced it open, his shoes clicking on the tile floor. He knew a man who worked in the office, a friend of his who played secretary at the front desk. That was the nice thing about being a good person; you make connections everywhere you go.

“Sunghoon.” Jungwon said, and his voice was hollow. The man looked up from his keyboard, pushing his glasses up his forehead with a faint smile.

“Hey,” he said in greeting. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I need a favor.” Sunghoon was immediately concerned with Jungwon’s appearance. He had changed from his gown into normal clothes, but the open cut on his face and the bags under his eyes told the story of what had happened to him. Bruises were littered across his right cheek, and a part of his hair was singed, just below the ear, barely noticeable. He stumbled on his left leg when he walked and he held his ribs tightly with one of his hands.

“Are you okay?” Sunghoon asked with concern.

“I got hit by a car.” he said, and Sunghoon frowned.

“Jesus.” “I need an address.” Sunghoon gestured for him to continue. He knew he wasn’t supposed to give away information like this, but Jungwon was trustworthy. Throughout their friendship, he had shown he was a kind man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. “Freshman named Riki Nishimura.” Sunghoon’s fingers flew across his keyboard.

“Edge of town. Building code is 3405, apartment 2.” Sunghoon recited off the screen, his glasses back on his nose as he read.

“Thanks.” Jungwon said, turning on his heel.

“Don’t you want me to write it down for you?” Sunghoon called after him, and he waved him off, swinging the door open.

“I’ll remember it.”

And he did. Twenty minutes later, he was parked outside.

It was the kind of apartment that had separate units and entrances. The other three apartments seemed completely empty, and the neighborhood seemed practically deserted, if you could even call it a neighborhood. There were two houses down the road, one of which was boarded up, the other was for sale. Then a dead end, the street abruptly stopping in brick and barbed wire. It was good for Jungwon’s situation. It wasn’t like he wanted anyone to hear what he was about to do.

He got out of his car, hand deep in the recesses of his jacket. He rapped on the door, once, twice, thrice. Then he removed the gun from the waistline of his pants, cocking it in a fluid motion and shooting off the lock.

Metal scraps exploded across the steps of the apartment, and the doorknob hung loosely from its socket, the metal lock missing a keyhole, replaced with a burning hot cavity. Jungwon turned the doorknob, and the door swung open easily.

“House call,” he said, his voice echoing around the empty apartment. “Anyone home?” He peeked his head into the kitchen, the living room. Nobody. His free hand fingered the case of bullets in his jacket pocket. He brought the gun for intimidation only; he didn’t think Riki would be stupid enough to make him use it. But he had 17 rounds left in the magazine of his pistol, and he was planning to spend them all if necessary.

It didn’t seem like Riki was home. Jungwon cracked his neck, irritated. He had run out of the hospital on injured legs and a fractured rib, just to be disappointed. He wondered where Riki could possibly be, and hoped he wasn’t anywhere near you.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, keeping his gun by his side. He had 27 missed calls and 45 missed texts, and they were all from you. He tucked it away, trying to push the thought of you out of his head.

He was doing this for you. You’d understand that.

While he was there, he figured he might as well look around. After all, Riki didn’t seem to be home, and he had gone through the effort of blowing off his locks. He creeped up the stairs cautiously, careful to keep his gun ahead of him before he took a step. On the right, there was a bathroom, grimy in the way expected of a teenage boy. On the left was Riki’s room. His closet was the largest thing in the room, stacked to the brim with clothing. It seemed like Riki preferred designer brands over an expensive apartment, and Jungwon pocketed a silver watch sitting on his bedside table.

There was only one more room at the end of the hall. Its door stood slightly ajar, and he could see beams of sun hitting the chestnut floor through the slit. Jungwon walked cautiously towards it, the floorboards creaking under his weight as he pushed the door open.

His eyes widened, pupils dilated. He instinctively took a step back, his gun clattering to the floor as his gaze flitted from the ceiling to the floor, wall to wall. He recoiled from the room, as if it would infect him, shivering with fear. He hadn’t seen anything like this. Not from anyone.

Jungwon’s own eyes watched him from every corner of the room. Photos of himself lined the walls, sporadically pasted against the blue wallpaper. Some were photos he had taken of himself, some that you had taken, accessible through his socials. But the vast majority were photos he had never seen, taken from afar of him at the grocery store inspecting a peach, chatting with a classmate in class, working at his job, his face lit up by his computer on the second floor.

And in the center of the room was you. Your face was painted on a canvas, big enough to almost reach Jungwon’s height, painted intricately with the hand of someone who truly loved their subject. It was as if you were alive and breathing before him, and for a minute, he admired you despite himself. Scrawled at the bottom of the canvas were a mere five words;

I have to save her.

Jungwon was horrified. He felt sick to his stomach with the sudden urge to vomit, and he attempted to control himself, breathing shallowly as he bent to pick up his gun. He aimed it shakily, and it was the first time he trembled while holding a pistol in his hands. He fired ten rounds, each scarring the wall as they tore through the canvas.

Your face was a mess of torn paper and sizzling paint when he was done, and it pained him to see. Jungwon grit his teeth, tucking his gun back into the waistband of his pants as he turned around to exit this god forsaken house.

Now Riki really had to die.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Riki arrived home, and the first thing he noticed was the ten bullets sitting underneath the window of his painting room. If he had walked past just a bit faster, if he wasn’t looking at the ground, he would’ve missed them. But he didn’t, and he bent down to pick them up, the casings barely still warm. When he looked up, there were ten matching holes in the wall. He was immediately on high alert.

When he removed his keys from his pocket, he quickly realized he didn’t need them. Shards of protruding metal, burnt black at the edges, became what once was the lock to his door. The wooden door was ajar, and he opened it as quietly as possible.

He slipped off his shoes at the door, his footsteps silent as he walked through his home. His living room and kitchen looked completely untouched. His nerves burning with fear, Riki reached for a knife, his trembling hands gripping the handle as the metal glinted in whatever dim daylight remained as the sun began to fall below the horizon.

The stairs moaned under his feet as he walked towards the room at the end of the hallway. It didn’t look like anyone had even entered his home; everything was the way he left it. But when he opened the door to that room, he felt like he could cry.

Ten bullet holes. Ten scarred, singed cavities in your gaping face, the canvas torn and burned until you were completely unrecognizable.

His art. The only thing he had been living for. It was destroyed, and he knew exactly who to blame. Tears ran down his face as he approached it, the knife forgotten in his hand while he caressed the mutilated canvas.

I have to save her. Those scrawled words remained untouched at the bottom of his creation, and he ran his hand over them. They rang true.

If Jungwon did this, and Riki knew he did, then he was dangerous. And that meant he had to save you before you ended up like the shredded painting he had so devoutly adored.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

Jungwon had fled the hospital without warning at 5:32 pm. It was 9:00 pm, and you hadn’t heard a word from your boyfriend

You were worried sick. He was hurt, too hurt to be wandering the streets, getting into fights, doing whatever he was doing. You checked his work, but they hadn’t caught sight of him since he left, on the day he was almost killed. None of his teachers had heard from him, nor had his friends. You must’ve called him a hundred times, and not once did he pick up. So, despite yourself, you did the only thing you could think of.

It’s not like you couldn’t guess who’d hit your boyfriend with their car. Jungwon’s unwillingness to tell you about the accident was an immediate red flag, not to mention his sudden switch in attitude. His workplace was in an isolated, corporate area where not many people drove, and it seemed too convenient to be an accident. Not many people had a vendetta against Jungwon, he was too kind to have enemies; except one.

He picked up on one ring, and the other side of the phone was quiet except for the gentle sound of his breathing.

“Riki,” you said, attempting to stabilize your trembling voice. “Let’s meet.”

Riki didn’t ask any questions. He agreed without hesitation, and a part of you almost felt bad. After all, what if he didn’t hit him? What if you were wrong?

But you couldn’t afford to doubt yourself, and you tucked a canister of pepper spray into your pocket before grabbing your keys and running downstairs. In case Jungwon was in trouble, you didn’t have any time to waste.

You were so distracted, you had even forgotten it was Halloween.

You had asked Riki to meet you across town. You knew there was a large construction lot a couple miles behind your school, where nobody ever visited, rarely even the construction workers, especially not at this hour. You needed to get him in a place where nobody would hear you. If he was willing to admit anything that had happened between him and Jungwon, he wouldn’t do it in front of an audience.

You could feel his presence before you saw him. When you heard his slow footsteps through the soft, unpaved ground, it felt like the world had gone black. Something in him had changed. You used to feel joy and love at the sound of his voice and the scent of his cologne, but now it made you uneasy.

“Y/n?” he said, and you saw the dark silhouette morph into his fine features and unkempt hair as he stepped closer. He stopped a few paces away from you, and you attempted to smile.

Before you knew it, he had pulled you into his arms, and you were swimming in his leather jacket, his grip almost painful. The scent of violets and cigarettes drowned you. You felt like you could throw up.

“I’ve been so worried about you.” his voice trembled as he spoke, and you gradually wrapped your arms around him. “Where have you been?”

“The hospital.” you said, your voice a whisper. He released you, and the confused look in his eyes was almost enough to convince you he was innocent. “Jungwon…he got hit by a car.”

“Is he alright?”

“No. But we’ll be okay.” Riki didn’t like that you said ‘we’. It seemed you didn’t care if your boyfriend had almost killed him. It was like he didn’t matter to you.

“Why didn’t you call me back?” he asked in hushed tones.

“I didn’t know what to think.” You wiped away a tear, not even knowing you were crying. “After what happened that weekend-”

“He almost killed me.”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have kissed you.” There was hurt in his eyes, and you didn’t recognize him. The smug, arrogant boy you had known was nowhere to be seen.

“How can you say that?” You shook your head, wiping away more tears. “I don’t care about him, y/n. We have something special.”

“Riki, I can’t.”

“Don’t I matter to you?” he implored, reaching for your hand, holding it tightly like he might not get the chance ever again. He wouldn’t.

“Of course you do. But Riki, I don’t love you.”

“That’s a lie!” he shouted, and the sudden switch in volume made you shudder in fear. “You do love me. You’re just afraid.”

“Of what, Riki? Of you? I’m not scared, I’m an adult, I know what I want. You’re just a confused boy who thinks he’s in love with a girl he can’t have.”

“That’s not true.” he said it so willfully, you almost believed him. “You don’t understand, you just don’t understand. Since I met you, you’re all I can think about. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you. I even-” He cut himself off. He froze, and the only sound was the cold wind as you two stared at each other.

“Even?” you whispered, and he set his jaw.

“I even tried to kill him.”

You felt like your world was crashing down around you. You had imagined a million possibilities in your relationship with Riki. You had imagined kicking him to the curb, indulging in his affections until he got bored, you even imagined leaving Jungwon for him. But in none of your fantasies had you believed him capable of murder.

Your eyes widened in terror, lips trembling, and he could sense your fear.

“Don’t be scared.” he said, coming closer, and you took a step back. “I’m not a killer, y/n. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“But you tried to.” you said, and his eyes darkened. “You tried to kill my boyfriend. You’re not in love with me, Riki, someone who loved me wouldn’t try to do that. That’s not love, it’s obsession.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. You don’t know what you’re doing.” You grew closer to him, placing a warm hand against his cheek. “You have a life outside me. We’re young. Don’t waste your time chasing me and hurting people.”

“Don’t say that,” he repeated, his eyes red with suppressed tears. “I would do anything for you. I love you, I’ve never felt that way about anyone.” You attempted to pay attention to what he was saying, but a twig cracked in the background, drowned out by the sound of his words, but you were listening. You looked over his shoulder. “I can’t be away from you, y/n, I can’t take it.”

“Riki, I can’t be with you. Not now, not ever.”

“Is it because of Jungwon?” he asked, and you shook your head. “I don’t care who’s in my way. I’ll take care of it.”

A ghostly face appeared in the distance, just barely lit enough for you to recognize him. That scar on his face, those bright doe eyes turned dull, you knew that face anywhere. Riki continued to speak, and Jungwon put a silent finger over his mouth.

Something about this situation was wrong. You had this overwhelming sense of terror, and it had its claws around your lungs, draining you of all the breath and blood in your body. Every nerve and cell in your body was screaming, writhing restlessly in white hot pain. Jungwon stepped closer, and your shoulders shook fearfully.

“Riki. I don’t want you to hurt him.” you said, and Riki grabbed your face, his cold fingers gently gripping your chin.

“I don’t care.” he said, and his words cut you like a knife. “I’ll do whatever it takes. You belong with me.”

There was a barrel of a gun, and you felt a strangled scream rising in your throat when you saw that Jungwon was holding it. And the edge of it was directly pointed at the back of Riki’s head.

You tried to scream, you tried to warn him, but there was no time. You dropped to your knees as the blast rang through the empty air, a flash of white and red lighting up the air like fireworks as you covered your ears. An explosion of blood wet the ground, painted strokes of crimson hitting your face and shoes. A silent scream escaped your mouth as Riki’s lifeless body crumpled to the floor inches from where you sat, as terribly beautiful as ever, his wide and fear-stricken eyes immortalized as he stared at you. The last thing he loved before he died.

It was funny, seeing a human die. You thought that you would cry, wail, kick and scream as you brutally mourned the life of someone you had loved. A life that ended in an instant, as easy as pulling a trigger. But you didn’t cry. You just sat there, helpless and silent, waves of grief, dread, anger, every emotion running through you as your eyes and mouth went dry with fear.

Jungwon was a new man. He stood above you, not even looking at the man he had just killed, only looking at you. His eyes seemed black in the night, unforgiving and unapologetic as he gripped the gun in his hand, the barrel covered in blood.

Pools of crimson blood soaked into the soft ground as Riki laid unmoving, the contents of his head spilled across the dirt. His mouth was open in a silent plea, one that nobody would hear, not even God.

Jungwon kneeled in front of you, and a single tear ran down his face as he desperately searched your eyes. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him.

“Oh, God.” you said, your voice hollow and unrecognizable.

“I’m sorry.” he said, and for the first time in months, he sounded fully alive. His voice regained its fullness, no longer slouching and frowning, radiating the power he had lost. “I had to do it. You know I had to.” His hands were covered in blood. There were splatters across his face, and you couldn’t distinguish between the blood running from his own cuts and the blood of the man he had just killed. You felt an overwhelming urge to vomit, and you gagged as you tried to hold it back.

“Jungwon,” you said, voice breaking midway through as you began to cry salty tears. “God, Jungwon, oh my God.”

You had no fight left in you. You felt like a hollow shell as you sat there on the floor, the man whom you loved soaked in the blood of someone you had called a friend. Maybe more than that. You wished you could disappear, that everything would go away, that this would have never happened.

“I’m sorry.” he said, and he pulled you into an embrace.

Despite feeling repulsed by his touch, you craved his skin and his love, so you let him hold you in his blood stained clothes, you let his soiled hands stroke your hair until it was wet with blood.

“I told you,” he said, quietly. “I would never let anything tear us apart.”

You didn’t have the strength to respond, just sobbing until you couldn’t anymore, until the life and tears were drained out of you, until your heart felt like it would stop. Jungwon held you, his own heart beating as fast as lightning, the breath of life rushing through him. Riki didn’t move an inch, didn’t come back to life no matter how hard you cried. And Jungwon was delighted.

Maybe there was something dark in Jungwon. Or maybe he was sane, in a world where you have to do unspeakable things to protect what you love.

And as he held you, sobbing in the night air, your tears mingling with the blood on your face, he began to realize he was just a man. A sick man.

Just as bad as the rest of them.

𖣂 𖣂 𖣂

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